"Then let him thrice make the circuit of the Peculiar Circle!" was the next command.
Several Elks helped me to my feet, and after gathering up the scattered euchre deck and restoring it and the prayer-book to my outstretched hands, the first attendant seized the rope still dangling from my neck, and led me on a rapid trot around the lodge room. Wherever I passed heavy blows were rained upon my coffin covering, and I imagined I heard several half-suppressed laughs among my tormentors. I was beginning to get mad and had about made up my mind to throw off the wooden yoke I was carrying around, tear the bandage from my eyes, and sail in and punch the heads of half-a-dozen Elks, when I was pounced upon, dragged to the floor and roughly relieved of the coffin. I felt better after this and calmly awaited the next move.
"Bring the candidate before the throne," was the next command of the High Muck-a-Muck.
With the assistance of a few Elks I succeeded in reaching a spot where we stopped, and which, I suppose, was right in the midst of the radiance that hovers nearest the presiding officer's throne. It is needless to say that I felt very badly, and I must have looked frightful, especially when, as happened just then, somebody clapped a demolished stove-pipe hat on my head to add to my already ridiculous aspect. I had hopes, however, that the end was near; but I was sadly mistaken.
"Now, trembling neophyte," said the High Muck-a-Muck, in very impressive tones, "the most important part of our ceremony still remains. Hitherto you have had all the fun; from this time on the fun will be on the side of the assembled Elks. Let the Grand Microscope search the candidate. See that he has no life-preserver under his vest, or pre-Raphælite panel of sole leather concealed in that portion of his pantaloons to which the hind straps of his suspenders are fastened."
"He is entirely defenceless, your Majesty," reported the Grand Microscope, after having made the necessary examination.
"Then let him learn the three motions through which every Prophet passes before attaining to the grand secrets of our Order. Let him test the swiftness of the Descent, the roughness of the Path of Progress, and the suddenness of the Upward flight to glory, and the possession of the everlasting talisman. When this has been done, if the candidate still lives, prepare, my mystic brethren, to welcome him into your circle."
My attendants now dealt with me very kindly. I hardly knew what to think of the easy, almost respectful, manner in which they took me by the arm as we walked along. Not a word was said. Silence intense as that which wields a spell over an audience while some daring act is in progress on the flying trapeze, seemed to surround me. As we walked I felt that there was the slightest bit of a rise—a gradual going upward—to my path. I paid little attention to this, however, because I was receiving unusually kind treatment at the time. I had just made up my mind that I had passed all the perilous places along the road, and was about to mutter to myself a mixture of thanks and self-gratulations for the security and comparative blissfulness of my condition, when, with surprising suddenness, my attendants caught me by the arms and legs, gave me a gentle waft forward, and then, reversing the motion, clapped me upon a rough plank at a very steep incline, down which I shot like lightning, regardless of the splinters that ran up into the tenderest portions of my pantaloons, and occasionally went on short and sharp expeditions into the neighborhood of my backbone. Down! Down!! Down!!! I slid, until I thought I had started from the top end of Jacob's ladder, away up beyond the furtherest space through which the tiniest stars twinkle, and was on a rapid and important journey to the centre of the earth. I kept on thinking this way until, for a moment, there was a cessation of the splinter annoyance upon that portion of my anatomy on which I usually do my sleighing. I felt myself falling, and then I felt myself stop. The force of gravitation was never before so fully and satisfactorily impressed upon me. I got so heavy when I had no further to go that I nearly crushed my life out with my own weight, and the sitting down was done with such alacrity that a pile-driver couldn't have sent the splinters that clung to my pantaloons further into my flesh. Add to this that the first thing I struck was not a spring mattress, or a high hair cushion, but a wheel-barrow, filled with small wooden cones, with sharp edges and cruel points. The shock caused me to send up such a howl that I imagined I could see the hair of every Elk in the land standing on end. A well-defined laugh answered the howl, and before I could think of the front end of the prayers for the dead, I heard the High Muck-a-Muck's voice ring out:—
"Wing him away," he commanded, "on Eincycle, the one-wheeled horse of the Hereafter."
