These, and other inconveniences of a like nature, which the
fastidious might distort into actual hardships, have never been
denied, yet at no period of the nine thousand years of our
civilisation has it been the custom to lure out the unwary, on the
plea of an agreeable entertainment, and then to abandon him into the
society of eleven club-bearing adversaries, one of whom may be
depicted as in the act of imparting an unnecessary polish to the edge
of his already preternaturally acute weapon, while those of his own
band offer no protection, and three tiers of very richly-dressed
maidens encourage him to his fate by refined gestures of approval.
Doubtless this person had unconsciously allowed his inner meditations
to carry him away, as it may be expressed, for when he emerged from
this strain of reverie it was to discover himself in the chariot-road
and--so incongruously may be the actions when the controlling
intelligence is withdrawn--even proceeding at a somewhat undignified
pace in a direction immediately opposed to an encounter with the brown
locusts. From this mortifying position he was happily saved by
emerging from these thought-dreams before it was too late to return,
and, also, if the detail is not too insignificant to be related, by
the fact that certain chosen runners from his own company had reached
a point in the road before him, and now stood joining their
outstretched arms across the passage and raising gravity-dispelling
cries.
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