THE DEGRADED PERSISTENCE OF MING-SHU
of his gigantic brain. To aid the process, female slaves on either side fanned his fiery head with celestial lotus leaves. On the earth, far beneath, cyclones, sand-storms and sweeping water-spouts were forced into being.
"Hear the contemptible wisdom of my ill-formed mouth," said N'guk at length. "If we at once put forth our strength, the degraded Wun Sei is ground"
"Sun Wei, All-knowing One," murmured an attending spirit beneath his breath.
"—the unmentionable outcast whom we are discussing is immediately ground into powder," continued the Highest, looking fixedly at a distant spot situate directly beyond his painstaking attendant. "But what follows? Henceforth no man can be allowed to whisper ill of us but we must at once seek him out and destroy him, or the obtuse and superficial will exclaim, 'It was not so in the days of—of So-and-so. Behold'"—here the Great One bent a look of sudden resentment on the band of those who would have reproached him—"'behold the gods become old and obese. They are not the Powers they were. It would be better to address ourselves to other altars.'"
At this prospect many of the more venerable spirits began to lose their enthusiasm. If every mortal who spoke ill of them was to be pursued what leisure for dignified seclusion would be left?
"If, however," continued the dispassionate Being, "the profaner is left to himself he will, sooner or later, in the ordinary course of human intelligence, become involved in some disaster of his own contriving. Then they who dwell around will say, 'He destroyed the
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