A proud, a vain, an envious, a jealous, an uncharitable heart may beat as well under the hair shirt of the self-torturing flagellist as under the purple robes of the monarch ; and Antony in his dreary cell and Simon Stylites on his lonely pillar may have been as far from the kingdom of heaven as the sensual Belshazzar at his luxurious banquet, or the worldly-minded Pilate in his tesselated hall.

This is the Hadith which at times annoy many un-Islamically inclined youth.

It’s a dynamic that goes back to the rude, rule-breaking Groucho Marx—destroyer of élites!—and Margaret Dumont, pop culture’s primal pearl-clutcher.

Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on its hill-slope that same Bury, Stow, or Town of St. Edmund; already a considerable place, not without traffic