Page:The water-babies.djvu/302

THE WATER BABIES Then came Tom to the Island of Polupragmosyne, which some call Rogues' Harbour (but they are wrong; for that is in the middle of Bramshill Bushes and the county police have cleared it out long ago). There everyone knows his neighbour's business better than his own; and a very noisy place it is, as might be expected, considering that all the inhabitants are ex officio on the wrong side of the house in the "Parliament of Man, and the Federation of the World"; and are always making wry mouths, and crying that the fairies' grapes were sour.

There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses, nails driving hammers, birds' nests taking boys, books making authors, bulls keeping china-shops, monkeys shaving cats, dead dogs drilling live lions, blind brigadiers shelfed as principals of colleges, play-actors not in the least shelfed as popular preachers; and, in short, everyone set to do something which he had not learnt, because in what he had learnt, or pretended to learn, he had failed.

There stands the Pantheon of the great Unsuccessful, from the builders of the Tower of Babel to those of the Trafalgar Fountains; in which politicians lecture on the constitutions which ought to have marched, conspirators on the revolutions which ought to have succeeded, economists on the schemes which ought to have made everyone's fortune, projectors on the discoveries which ought to have set the Thames on fire, and (in due time) presidents on the union which ought to have re-united, and secretaries of state on the greenbacks which ought 274