e-hearted man whose energies have brought him safe through
years of difficulty; ask him whether he found the crowd to be
base-natured through which he was called upon to force his way? Believe
me, he will tell you "No." Having said this, his majesty broke out into
a blaze, and lay down in his bed again. 'Well,' he said, 'Philip, will
you come to bed with me?'

"'Why, sir,' said I, 'to say the best of it, you're under a
misconception; but if it's in the nature of a coal to take such cheerful
views of things as you appear to do, I'd rather be a coal than what I
am. It's cold work living in the flesh, such as I find it--you seem
jolly as a hot cinder, and for the matter of that, what am I now but
dust and ashes? Coke is preferable.'

"'Coffin and Purse, you're wanted,' cried the king. And, indeed, Mrs.
Pittis, and, indeed, gentlemen, I must turn aside one minute to remark
the singularity of this king's body-guard, Coffin and Purse. 'Cash and
Mortality,' said the king to me, 'make up, according to your theory, the
aim and end of man. So with a couple of cinders you can twit him with
his degradation. Sometimes Coffin, sometimes Purse, leaps out into his
lap when he is cogitating.' 'Yes,' said I 'that will be extremely
humorous. But, so please your majesty, I still have one objection to
joining your honorable body.' 'What is that, Phil?' 'I suppose, if I
sits down in them there flames, they'll burn me.' 'To be sure,' said the
king, kicking up his heels, and scraping a furnace load of live coal
over his body, just as you might pull up the blanket when you're in bed
to-night, Mrs. Pittis. 'Well, your highness,' said I, 'how about the
pain?' 'Pah!' says the king, 'where's your philosophy? Did you never see
a fly jump into a lamp-flame?' 'Yes, sure,' I answered. 'And what
happened then? A moment's crackle, and an end of it. You've no time to
feel pain.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'if your majesty will make a hole for
me as near the middle as is convenient to yourself, I will jump into the
bed straightway.' The king made a great spatter among the coals, and in
I jumped. You know, ma'am, that a great part of our bodies is composed
of water.'

"'I don't know that of any gentleman in this room,' replied the
landlady. 'But I do believe that you are two parts built out of strong
beer.'

"There was a burst--a flash, gentlemen; the liquid part of me went off
in instantaneous steam. I cried out with a sharp burn in my foot. The
pot was bo