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young Popper who stepped in to smooth the ruffled feathers and suggest a sensible accommodation. Huggins soon found himself working for Popper, and still they remained friends.
    But Huggins was bound to be left behind anyway since he refused to become a Gnomon. Out of a natural perversity and a newspaperman’s terror of being duped, he refused to join anything, and so remained a P.S., or Perfect Stranger, while Popper answered the summons with alacrity and went on to become a power in the great brotherhood. Soon he was writing speeches for the Master and helping him with his books. He talked and wrote with facility, seldom at a loss for a word, or an opinion. He was never Master of Gnomons, nor even a member of the Council of Three, but the common perception that he directed the organization was not far off the mark.
    What Popper did was transform the Gnomon Society. Having gained the confidence of the Master, he was able to persuade him that they must broaden their appeal. The way to do this was to relax the standards. The Codex Pappus , for instance, was much too difficult for most beginners and should be revised. There was too much memory work for the ordinary man; the staggering volume of this stuff must be reduced. Only in this way could the Society expect to grow and become a force in the world.
    Mr. Jimmerson said, “And how would you go about all this, Austin?”
    Popper was turning through the pages of the Codex . “The first thing we must do, sir, is get rid of some of these triangles.”
    â€œYou would do away with the symbolic forms?”
    â€œOh no, not all of them. I would keep the Cone of Fate. Under no circumstances would I tamper with the Jimmerson Spiral.”
    â€œBut you think there are too many triangles? The simplest of polygons?”
    â€œFar too many, sir, for the people I have in mind. Do you remember in school how hard it was to get anyone to join the Geometry Club?”
    â€œI don’t believe we had a Geometry Club in our school.”
    â€œNeither did we but you see what I mean.”
    â€œThe ordinary man, you say. Why should we concern ourselves with ordinary men? Pletho tells us that most of them are pigs or children.”
    â€œSome of them are pigs, certainly, but I need not remind you, sir, that it is our ancient business to transmute base matter into noble matter.”
    â€œThe great work.”
    â€œAs you say. All I want to do, sir, is prepare a simplified version of the Codex for use at a new and elementary level of our craft. Then, step by step, we can lead these men on to the Codex Pappus itself and pure Gnomonism.”
    Popper spoke of thousands of new members and at last the Master came around. He took the proposal to the Council of Three, or T.W.K.—Those Who Know. Mr. Bates liked the idea. Mapes and Epps conceded that it might have some merit—but was Austin Popper the right person to direct such a program? He was willful, erratic. He was vain in his personal apperance. He was sometimes facetious in a most unbecoming way. In his writing he had a vulgar inclination to make everything clear. He had not yet learned to appreciate the beauties of allusion and Gnomonic obfuscation—that fog was there for a purpose. He couldn’t see that to grasp a delicate thing outright was often to crush it.
    But in the end, under pressure from the Master, they gave way and Popper was authorized to proceed. An abridged Codex was prepared, and a new teaching syllabus. A new probationary degree called “Neophyte” was created.
    Popper went on the road with his mission, due east, to Toledo and Cleveland, where he placed small, mystifying notices in the newspapers, and then met in hotel rooms with those men of Ohio who responded. It was a period of trial and error. There was no shortage of idle men on Lake Erie but the wisdom of Atlantis, clarified though it now was, still did not hold their attention. Popper had to grope about for ideas