Although belonging to the aristocratic caste, yet these servants of the state wield their power with magnificent impartiality, weeding out the weaklings alike in the families of noble, merchant or plebeian. Adult degenerates are always removed to the island of Madù off the northern coast. Here the sexes are kept apart, but the poor creatures are permitted to live in tolerable comfort and to receive visits from their relatives, who however (it must be confessed) usually display no very marked anxiety to avail themselves of this privilege. For as time advances, it is commonly coming to be regarded as a social offence to harbour in one's household any idiotic or misshapen being. Thus almost all Meleagrians now heartily concur in the state regulations whereby all infants with obvious mental or bodily defects are at once strangled by the officials who attend in the train of the visiting councillors, and they also make little or no objection to the deporting of grown criminals to Madù. This public acquiescence in a measure destined solely for the improvement of the race as a whole is, I believe, of comparatively recent date. For a long time the removal of malformed and idiotic infants, as well as the enforced deportation of lunatics or seriously diseased persons, was strongly resented by their families; but firm persistence on the part of the hierarchy and a gradual spread of reasonableness among the whole community have slowly gained the public approval for severe regulations that were at first as novel as they were distasteful. I particularly mention this case, as it tends to show that though conciliation of the populace must always form one of the leading tenets of the council's policy, yet it can on occasion enforce an unpopular edict throughout the nation in its own interest, despite the indignant protests of all classes. I have been told that the then reigning King, a most enlightened Switzer, did splendid service for the council by personally in his capacity of Child of the Sun, ordering his father's own people to obey the new regulations. How long ago this struggle arose I have no notion; and oh, how often have I yearned to learn more concerning that predecessor of mine whose memory is still gratefully held by the hierarchy to-day! How and under what circumstances did he finally "cease to reign"? Did he later on attempt to oppose the ruling body, after having saved it from possible collapse? But no questions of mine, however artfully or artlessly addressed, could ever secure me any but evasive answers.