In one corner men were sucking
oranges, as if they had lived their whole lives on salt: in another,
stuffing pumpkin, like cannibals at their first child. Here one took in
at a mouthful a bunch of grapes, from which might have been pressed a
good quart. Another was lying on the ground from a surfeit of
mulberries. The effect of this irrational excess will be conceived by
the judicious reader. Calcutta itself never suffered from a cholera
morbus half so fearful. Thousands were dying. Were I Thucydides or
Boccaccio, I would write pages on this plague. The commonwealth itself
must soon have yielded its ghost, for all order had ceased throughout
the island ever since they had deserted pine-apples. There was no
Government: anarchy alone was perfect. Of the Fruit Committee, many of
the members were dead or dying, and the rest were robbing orchards.
At this moment of disorganisation and dismay a stout soldier, one of the
crab-apple faction, who had possessed sufficient command over himself,
in spite of the seeming voracity of his appetite, not to indulge to a
dangerous excess, made his way one morning into the old Hall of
Audience, and there, groping about, succeeded in finding the golden head
of the Statue; which placing on the hilt of his sword, the point of
which he had stuck in the pedestal, he announced to the city that he had
discovered the secret of conversing with this wonderful piece of
mechanism, and that in future he would take care of the health and
fortune of the State.
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