is grand--this is splendid; but will not England resist?"

"Let her. This rock is a Gibraltar."

"True. But about the empire? Do we need an empire and an emperor?"

"What you need, my friends, is unification. Look at Germany; look at
Italy. They are unified. Unification is the thing. It makes living dear.
That constitutes progress. We must have a standing army and a navy.
Taxes follow, as a matter of course. All these things summed up make
grandeur. With unification and grandeur, what more can you want? Very
well--only the empire can confer these boons."

So on the 8th day of December Pitcairn's Island was proclaimed a free
and independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of
Butterworth I, Emperor of Pitcairn's Island, took place, amid great
rejoicings and festivities. The entire nation, with the exception of
fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in
single file, with banners and music, the procession being upward of
ninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a
minute passing a given point. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the
history of the island before. Public enthusiasm was measureless.

Now straightway imperial reforms began. Orders of nobility were
instituted. A minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put
in commission. A minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at
once with the formation of a standing army. A first lord of the treasury
was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open
negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with
foreign powers. Some generals and admirals were appointed; also
some chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the
bedchamber.

At this point all the material was used up. The Grand Duke of Galilee,
minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire
had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to
serve in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a stand-still. The
Marquis of Ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. He
said he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have
somebody to man her.

The emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the
boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed
them into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates,
officered by one lieutenant-general and two major-