'What are prisons?'

   'A kind of hothouses,' said the Owl, 'for the culture of feeble moral principles that the Struggle for Existtence has been too much for. They are a wonderful system. The weak morality is supplied with bread and water and a cell to develop in, and it is exercised on a treadmill, and allowed to expand and pick oakum, and so it is turned into a beautiful plant of virtue.'

   'What do they do with it then?'

   'Then they let it run wild, unless it comes across a Home Missionary, or a School Board, or Dr. Barnardo, and gets trained.'

   'Oh!' said Queen Mab. 'Are there many of these hothouses?'

   'A good many. You see, such a number of the members of the lower portion of the higher civilisation have moral principles that need training. The moral principle is the latest product of evolution, or so the professor says, and evolution has not yet got quite into the way of always turning it out first class. Like everything else, it wants practice. Some moral principles are excellent; but others are really bungles, and require periodical prison culture. At present we need policemen for the transplanting; but it is hoped that, in the course of an era or two, the automatic method will be so much further developed that a member of the higher civilisation who gets very drunk, or steals, will put himself to prison at once, by reflex action. I told you about that: it is a lengthy subject; but the kingfisher and I quite mastered it one day, and I daresay you will. It is much easier than portions of the Thirty-nine Articles.'

   'I know what that is,' said Queen Mab; 'the missionaries were talking about it once.'

   'I have taken a good deal of trouble,' said the Owl, 'but there were parts of the Thirty-nine Articles I never could make out. They are a kind of tinned theology, and so much tinned that no one appreciates them but the theologians.'

   'Why is the theology tinned?' asked the Queen. 'Why don't they have it fresh and fresh?'

   'They like it old,' said the Owl. 'They have tried various ways of treating it, for theology does not keep well in a scientific atmosphere. Frozen theology has been experimented with by Archdeacon Farrar and others, and has some vogue. But the popular taste prefers it tinned. And yet it is very tough, in Articles. I am surprised that no one has written a simple explanation of 

 Prev. P 31/70 next