Bread and Circuses

After the publication of the monumental treatise titled “How Important It Is to Be Second-Rate,” and the opening of the bureau “For the Supply of Thoughts for Every Day,” Michael Webb’s business took off. The office was packed with well-dressed clients; secretaries scheduled days of consultations; sometimes the advice was given in advance. The enterprise grew so much that one person couldn’t manage it, and Michael made a move worthy of Napoleon: he organized the “Thinking Corporation of America.”

Business went so successfully that one day Michael Webb decided to step away from work, and now he spent most of his time at a country boarding house “Mountain Echo,” with vacationers like himself who were bored by idleness: a businessman acting as Roosevelt; respectable parents of a movie star getting away from surveillance; a writer and his mistress, and other people—so different, yet united by one life principle: “Bread and circuses!”