in the matter, the more I reflected upon that, the clearer it became that

if only I kept quiet about things, I need not trouble myself about that.

If I was faced by sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely

to demand my lost sphere--or ask them what they meant. At first I had had

a vision of weeping parents and guardians, and all sorts of complications;

but now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth shut, and nothing in that

way could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and thought, the

more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability.

It is within the right of every British citizen, provided he does not

commit damage nor indecorum, to appear suddenly wherever he pleases, and

as ragged and filthy as he pleases, and with whatever amount of virgin

gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right at all to

hinder and detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at last to

myself, and repeated it over as a sort of private Magna Charta of my

liberty.

Once I had put that issue on one side, I could take up and consider in an

equable manner certain considerations I had scarcely dared to think of

before, namely, those arising out of the circumstances of my bankruptcy.

But now, looking at this matter calmly and at leisure, I could see that if

only I suppressed my identity by a temporary assumption of some less

well-known name, and if I retained the two months' beard that had grown

upon me, the risks of any annoyance from the spiteful creditor to whom I

have already alluded became very small indeed. From that to a definite

course of rational worldly action was plain sailing. It was all amazingly

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The First Men In The Moon