taught, consist entirely of lies. Parts of the tale of "Puss in Boots" or
"Jack and the Beanstalk" may strike the realistic eye as a little unlikely
and out of the common way, so to speak; but they contain some very solid
and very practical truths. For instance, it may be noted that both in
"Puss in Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" if I remember aright, the
ogre was not only an ogre but also a magician. And it will generally be
found that in all such popular narratives, the king, if he is a wicked
king, is generally also a wizard. Now there is a very vital human truth
enshrined in this. Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual
thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy
tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great employer. The
sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting
sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As they say in the
gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a fascinating
personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; and
so is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted sort of people that ladies and
gentlemen have allowed themselves to become. He does, in a manner, cast a
spell, such as that which imprisoned princes and princesses under the
shapes of falcons or stags. He has truly turned men into sheep, as Circe
turned them into swine.

Now, the chief of the fairy tales, by which he gains this glory and
glamour, is a certain hazy association he has managed to create between
the idea of bigness and the idea of practicality. Numbers of the
rabbit-witted ladies and gentlemen do really think, in spite of themselves
and their experience, that so long as a shop has hundreds of different
doors and a great many hot and unhealthy underground departments (they
must be hot; this is very important), and more people than would be needed
for a man-of-war, or crowded cathedral, to say: "This way, madam," and
"The next article, sir," it follows that the goods are good. In short,