ack. There was no one there of the name of Raicharan.

THE KINGDOM OF CARDS

I

Once upon a time there was a lonely island in a distant sea where lived
the Kings and Queens, the Aces and the Knaves, in the Kingdom of Cards.
The Tens and Nines, with the Twos and Threes, and all the other members,
had long ago settled there also. But these were not twice-born people,
like the famous Court Cards.

The Ace, the King, and the Knave were the three highest castes. The
fourth Caste was made up of a mixture of the lower Cards. The Twos and
Threes were lowest of all. These inferior Cards were never allowed to
sit in the same row with the great Court Cards.

Wonderful indeed were the regulations and rules of that island kingdom.
The particular rank of each individual had been settled from time
immemorial. Every one had his own appointed work, and never did anything
else. An unseen hand appeared to be directing them wherever they
went,--according to the Rules.

No one in the Kingdom of Cards had any occasion to think: no one had any
need to come to any decision: no one was ever required to debate any
new subject. The citizens all moved along in a listless groove without
speech. When they fell, they made no noise. They lay down on their
backs, and gazed upward at the sky with each prim feature firmly fixed
for ever.

There was a remarkable stillness in the Kingdom of Cards. Satisfaction
and contentment were complete in all their rounded wholeness. There
was never any uproar or violence. There was never any excitement or
enthusiasm.

The great ocean, crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped
the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white
hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding
mother-bird, nestled the island round with its downy plume. For on the
distant horizon a deep blue line betokened another shore. But no sound
of quarrel or strife could reach the Island of Cards, to break its calm
repose.

II

In that far-off foreign land across the sea, there lived a young Prince
whose mother was a sorrowing queen. This queen had fallen from favour,
and was living with her only son on the seashore. The Prince passed his
childhood alone and forlorn, sitting by his forlorn mother, weaving the
net of his big desires. He longed to go in search of the Flying Horse,
the Jewel in the Cobra's hood, the Rose of Heaven, the Magic Roads, or
to find where the Princess Bea