say, forty--and I believed that in that time I could easily
have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager
for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history
of the world--a rounded and complete governmental revolution
without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may
as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it:
I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president
myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I found
that out.

Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified
way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with
a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective
chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known
the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it
and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were
dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal
family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful
as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would
have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition
to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably
vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive;
finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other
royal house, and "Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace
of God King," would sound as well as it would when applied to
the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "And as a rule," said
he, in his neat modern English, "the character of these cats would
be considerably above the character of the average king, and this
would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason
that a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. The
worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and
harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties,
and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that
they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted
no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of
a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and
would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would
soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers
would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill
the vacancies with catlings from our own