As a result of the whole totality of the effects of this happening, at which time my poor “wisdom tooth” became a complete sacrifice, not only did my consciousness begin, from that time on, constantly absorbing, in connection with everything, the very essence of the essence of my deceased grandmother’s behest – God bless her soul – but also in me at that time, because I did not go to a “qualified dentist” to have the cavity of this tooth of mine treated, which as a matter of fact I could not do because our home was too far from any contemporary center of culture, there began to ooze chronically from this cavity a “something” which – as it was only recently explained to me by a very famous meteorologist with whom I chanced to become, as is said, “bosom friends” owing to frequent meetings in the Parisian night restaurants of Montmartre – had the property of arousing an interest in, and a tendency to seek out the causes of the arising of every suspicious “actual fact”; and this property, not transmitted to my entirely by heredity, gradually and automatically led to my ultimately becoming a specialist in the investigation of every suspicious phenomenon which, as it so often happened, came my way. BTG I

“It is needless to say”, he continued, “that there also in this second center of culture of the three-brained beings of your planet, breeding there on the continent of Ashhark the destruction of beings of other forms for Sacrificial-Offerings entirely ceased; and, if isolated instances occurred, the beings of that group themselves settled accounts with the offenders without compunction. BTG XX

“From the investigations of this countryman of ours, it seems that long ago before the period to which my tale about the majestic city of Babylon referred, namely, at the time when the process of the existence of those strange beings was proceeding mainly on the continent Asia alone, and when their chief center of culture was Tikliamish, there were on that said continent of Europe, which is now the chief place of existence of your favorites, as yet no definitely organized communities. BTG XXIX

“Although every time the place of the center of culture of your favorites, those strange three-brained beings, has been changed, and what is called a new ‘civilization’ has arisen, and each new civilization has brought for the beings of succeeding epochs something both new and maleficent, nevertheless, not one of these numerous civilizations has ever prepared so much evil for the beings of later epochs, including of course the contemporary epoch, as that famous ‘Greco-Roman civilization’. BTG XXIX

“It is necessary to tell you that it had already become in general customary that when beings from the whole of the planet, who have already completely given themselves up to their, as I said, inner ‘evil–God’, flock to this chief center of culture, then these beings, among other of their maleficent actions, further do this: they occupy themselves out of idleness, in order to satisfy their whims, with devising ‘new-forms-of-manifestations-of-their-Hasnamussianing’, or as is said there, with ‘new fashions’, and spread them from there over the whole of the planet. BTG XXXVII

“This was precisely during the period when the chief center of culture for the whole of your planet was the country Tikliamish and when this country was experiencing the height of its splendor. BTG XLII

“I then even remembered that I had already once long before very seriously reflected on this matter in the period of my fifth personal sojourn on the surface of your planet, when the city of Babylon was considered the center of culture of these strange three-brained beings, and when I had, on account of some similar question, to make a ‘logical analysis’ of just this strange feature of the psyche of these peculiar three-brained beings. BTG XLII

“I very well remember when such a society first arose there in the town of Samoniks in the country Tikliamish just at that period when this country was regarded as the chief center of culture for all the three-brained beings of this peculiar planet of yours. BTG XLIII