“We have deferred the unpleasant subject we are about to introduce, to the latest possible moment consistent with the responsibility of our charge,” said the prætor of Coliseo, “that the impression of our welcome might remain cheerful until you had fully compared the extent of our worthiness with your expectations. The sooner anxiety is dispelled with a knowledge of impending evil the better. The Mouthpat seed our mutual ancestors sowed, just before the close of the first falcon era, in taking root assimilated with the native Animalculan races, and in process imparted their own deleterious habits and prejudices to their entertainers. With a wider scope for the gratification of their sensual instincts, they soon united with the democratic rabble of Rome in opposing what they termed our pedantic puritanism. With their coadjutive stimulation our allies in the exampled practice of purity and goodness were subjected to annoyances and persecutions and were denied the right of local option, as natives, in selecting for themselves a choice of education for their children. As we could not extend our protection to the good throughout the broad expanse of Rome, we established self- supporting colonies in the country as asylums of resort for the oppressed, so that in consolidated association they might receive our more effective support and aid. Still, in defiance of intimidation and actual injuries, we had more applications for the admission of Roman children to our schools than we could accommodate. The deported Mouthpats, from the first, became adherent imitators of Giga habits and customs, and fanatically zealous in support of the Catholic dogmas. Before their advent, the Animalculans of Rome had been content that the Giga priests should enact their parts in ceremonial worship. But the Mouthpats urged that the practice of vicarious worship through a race barred from direct communication by mouth interlocution was a subterfuge of the most damnable tendency. Their labors for the reconstruction of the ritualistic tenets, and regeneration of the Animalculans from proxied dependency upon Giga religious administration, was finally rewarded with the election of a pope of Mouthpat descent. This pope, Innocent the First, in Mouthpat designation, now occupies the silicoth residences relinquished to the first cargo of his ancestors, by ours on their removal to the Coliseum. In imitation of Giga example, although he claims higher merit from his strict administration of the ordinances of the church, he has established a court of inquisition for the trial and punishment of heretics.