The government of Leapthrough had, about sixty-three years before, caused one hundred and twenty-six Leaplow ships to be burned on the high seas, or otherwise destroyed.
The pretence was, that they incommoded Leapthrough.

Leaplow was much too great a nation to submit to so heinous an outrage, while, at the same time, she was much too magnanimous and wise a nation to resent it in an every-day and vulgar manner.

Instead of getting in a passion and loading her cannon, she summoned all her logic and began to reason.

After reasoning the matter with Leapthrough for fifty-two years, or until all the parties who had been wronged were dead, and could no longer be benefited by her logic, she determined to abate two-thirds of her pretensions in a pecuniary sense, and all her pretensions in an honorary sense, and to compromise the affair by accepting a certain insignificant sum of money as a salve to the whole wrong.

Leapthrough conditioned to pay this money, in the most solemn and satisfactory manner; and everybody was delighted with the amicable termination of a very vexatious and a seemingly interminable discussion.