--There may be just a weenie little bit more about the Astorian, but
that will come in its proper place. Now I must get on to the
evening.--It was not much of an occasion, merely the usual gathering of
our crowd, or rather of those of us who have no special assignment for
the time in the large Council Room I have described to you.

The President of the Board of Control at present is Marlow, Marlow the
Great, as he is called, the painter whose pictures did so much to
elevate the Patagonians.--No, dear, I never heard of Patagonia before,
but I'm almost sure it's not a planet.--With Marlow came a Mrs. Mopes,
who is engaged in creating schools of fiction by writing stories under
different names and then reviewing them in her own seven magazines.
Next, taking the guests at random, was Baxter, a deadly person in his
human incarnation, whose business it is to make stocks fly up or tumble
down.--I don't know what stocks are, but they must be something very
easily frightened.--Then there was a Mr. Waller, nicknamed the Reverend,
whom the Council allows to speak the truth occasionally, while the rest
of the time he tells people anything they want to hear to win their
confidence. And the two Miss Dooleys who sing so badly that thousands
who can not sing at all leave off singing altogether when they once hear
them. And Mr. Flick, who misbehaves at funerals to distract mourners
from their grief, and a Mr. O'Brien, whose duty it is to fly into
violent passions in public places just to show how unbecoming temper is.

There were many others, so many I can not begin to enumerate them. Some
had written books and were known all over the planet, and some who were
not known at all had done things because there was nobody else to do
them. And some were singers and some were actors, and some were rich and
some were poor to the outside world, but in the Council Room they met