demons, in spite of their denials. Doubtless I shall presently
discover others no less powerful.

With honourable distinction this person has at length grasped the
essential details of the spoken language here--not sufficiently well,
indeed, to make himself understood on most occasions, or even to
understand others, but enough to perceive clearly when he fails to
become intelligible or when they experience a like difficulty with
him. Upon an earlier occasion, before he had made so much progress,
being one day left to his own resources, and feeling an internal lack,
he entered what appeared to be a tea-shop of reputable demeanour, and,
seating himself at one of the little marble tables, he freely
pronounced the carefully-learned word "rice" to the attending nymph.
To put aside all details of preparation (into which, indeed, this
person could not enter) he waved his hand gracefully, at the same time
smiling with an expression of tolerant acquiescence, as of one who
would say that what was good enough to be cooked and offered by so
entrancing a maiden was good enough to be eaten by him. After
remaining in unruffled tranquillity for the full portion of an hour,
and observing that no other person around had to wait above half that
period, this one began to perceive that the enterprise was not likely
to terminate in a manner satisfactory to himself; so that, leaving
this place with a few well-chosen phrases of intolerable regret in his
own tongue, he entered another, and conducted himself in a like
fashion. . . . Towards evening, with an unperturbed exterior, but
materially afflicted elsewhere, this person seated himself within the
eleventh tea-shop, and, pointing first towards his own constituents of
digestion, then at the fire, and lastly in an upward direction,
thereby signified to any not of stunted intellect that he had reached
such a condition of mind and body that he was ready to consume