Art

“When the two mentioned sincere and honest learned beings of the Earth constated what they then called such a ‘distressing phenomenon,’ they deliberated a long time about it with the result that they decided to take advantage of the exceptional circumstance that so many learned beings were together in one city to confer collectively for the purpose of finding some means for averting at least this distressing phenomenon, which proceeded on the Earth owing to the abnormal conditions of the life of man.

“And it was just for this purpose that they organized that said club and called it the ‘Club-of-Adherents-of- Legominism.’

“So many like-thinking beings at once responded to their appeal, that two days after my own admission as a member of this club, the enrollment of new members already ceased.

“And on the day when new members ceased to be ad- mitted, the number of those enrolled amounted to a hun- hundred and thirty-nine learned beings; and it was with this number of members that the club existed until the said Persian king abandoned his former caprice connected with those terrestrial learned beings.

“As I learned after my enrollment as a member of that club, all the learned beings had arranged on the very first day of its opening a general meeting at which it was unanimously resolved to hold daily general meetings, when reports and discussions on the two following questions were to be made: namely, the measures to be taken bythe members of the club on their return home for the collection of all the Legominisms existing in their native lands, and for placing them at the disposal of the learned members of this club which they had founded; and sec- ondly, what was to be done in order that the Legomin- isms might be transmitted to remote generations by some other means than only through initiates.