“Now Canonicus, that there may be no more acts of treachery on your part, or through the instigations of those subject to your direction, I shall dictate to you terms in behalf of our Manatitlan colonies that you must keep inviolate, for if they are infringed upon in the least degree we shall hold you and your associates personally responsible. We have heretofore offered you good will, but you have taken advantage of it to impose upon our communities and inflict personal injuries upon our adherents; showing that you are alike destitute of gratitude, and the disposition that inclines to honorable and just reciprocation. In the first place, you are to respect the privileges of all claiming a desire for our protection, whether an Animalculan of Mouthpat birth, or of other nationality. In the second place we shall hold you personally responsible for any acts of cruelty perpetrated by Animalculans under your control upon animal or insect; and for the honor of instinctive humanity we especially interdict all barbarous amusements between man and man. Fortunately, communication has again been opened with our motherland, and by the timely arrival of our cousins, we have been able to avail ourselves of their counsel when most needed. From the enactments of to-day, which have borne witness to the steadfast goodness of your daughter, Idolisima, in her adherence to the inculcations of her Coliseo education, we shall hereafter require that all the Animalculan children of Rome shall from henceforth be submitted to our censorial and educational charge. We are aware that in assuming the charge we undertake an immense and arduous responsibility from the fecundity of your animal propensities. But in time our inauguration will effect the substitution of improved quality for quantity with an affectionate compensation that with cultivation and reciprocation you have the means of realizing in fatherly association with your daughter.” Here he was interrupted by Sir O’Ham Ill Tong,—from whose mouth the clout had been removed,—with the ejaculation: “An sure, by our holy mother, what your honor is plased to say is all gospel truth, and by the same token, if there is any more, I believe it on my shoul! But if your honor will be so obbleeging as to order one of your giants to remove this gorget that binds my throat to the stake, and set me free, if yees have closed what ye are going to say, I can hear the rest more comfortably, and ye’ll save from fire as good a Christian as ever was burnt for pargary,—an for the life of me, I can’t just see how that can be, for I niver spoke a blissed word in the matter at all!”