did not deem himself worthy even to look upon a being of such majestic
rank and acknowledged excellence. This delicate action, by some
incredible process of mental obliquity, was held by those around to be
a deliberate insult, if not even a preconcerted signal, of open
treachery, and had not a heaven-sent breeze at that moment carried the
hat of a very dignified bystander into the upper branches of an
opportune tree, and successfully turned aside the attention of the
assembly into a most immoderate exhibition of utter loss of gravity, I
should undoubtedly have been publicly tortured, if not actually torn
to pieces.

But the incident first alluded to was of an even more
elaborately-contrived density than these, and some of the details are
still unrolled before the keenest edge of this one's inner perception.
Nevertheless, all is now set down in unbroken exactness for your
impartial judgment.

At the time of this exploit I had only ventured out on a few
occasions, and then, save those recorded, to no considerable extent;
for it had already become obvious that the enterprises in which I
persistently became involved never contributed to my material
prosperity, and the disappointment of finding that even when I could
remember nine words of a sentence in their language none of the
barbarians could understand even so much as a tenth of my own, further
cast down my enthusiasm.

On the day which has been the object of this person's narration from
the first, he set out to become more fully instructed in the subjects
already indicated, and proceeding in a direction of which he had no
actual knowledge, he soon found himself in a populous and degraded