He paused and fell into meditation, when suddenly his face was suffused with the light of a happy thought.  It so elated him that he sprang to his feet and with his staff of office broke the heads of his Chief Admonisher of the Inimical and his Second Assistant Audible Sycophant.  Then he said: 

“I think I comprehend.  Some eighty-five years ago, soon after my induction into office, there came to the court of the Panjandrum a man of this city who had been cast upon the island of Chicago (which I believe belongs to the American archipelago) and had passed many years there in business with the natives.  Having learned all their customs and business methods he returned to his own country and laid before the Panjandrum a comprehensive scheme of commercial reform.  He and his scheme were referred to me, the Panjandrum being graciously pleased to be unable to make head or tail of it.  I may best explain it in its application to a single industry—­the manufacture and sale of gootles.”

“What is a gootle?” I asked.

“A metal weight for attachment to the tail of a donkey to keep him from braying,” was the answer.  “It is known in this country that a donkey cannot utter a note unless he can lift his tail.  Then, as now, gootles were made by a single concern having a great capital invested and an immense plant, and employing an army of workmen.  It dealt, as it does to-day, directly with consumers.  Afflicted with a sonant donkey a man would write to the trust and receive his gootle by return mail, or go personally to the factory and carry his purchase home on his shoulder—­according to where he lived.  The reformer said this was primitive, crude and injurious to the interests of the public and especially the poor.  He proposed that the members of the gootle trust divide their capital and each member go into the business of making gootles for himself—­I do not mean for his personal use—­in different parts of the country.  But none of them was to sell to consumers, but to other men, who would sell in quantity to still other men, who would sell single gootles for domestic use.  Each manufacturer would of course require a full complement of officers, clerks and so forth, as would the other men—­everybody but the consumer—­and each would have to support them and make a profit himself.  Competition would be so sharp that solicitors would have to be employed to make sales; and they too must have a living out of the business.  Honored stranger, am I right in my inference that the proposed system has something in common with the one which obtains in your own happy, enlightened and prosperous country, and which you would approve?”

I did not care to reply.

“Of course,” the Jumjum continued, “all this would greatly have enhanced the cost of gootles, thereby lessening the sales, thereby reducing the output, thereby throwing a number of workmen out of employment.  You see this, do you not, O guest of my country?”