ivolous diversion was more
easily assumed. And so in due course a copy of the play reached the
King's hands.

Perhaps it was through mere inadvertence that the other six did not
accompany it. The King noted the omission; but when once he started to
read the single play which had reached him he forgot all about the
others, for he found that his hands were full. At one stroke of the
scythe he had reaped a plentiful harvest.

Here was a play on the very eve of production, reeking with the
sniggering improprieties which the keeper of the King's conscience had
permitted to become the popular vogue. Suggestions and innuendoes to
which the ordinary theater-going public had now grown accustomed, struck
his inexperienced Majesty as bold and glaring novelties. The mere
cheapness of the wit he passed uncritically by, but the indecencies
were so bare and bald that even he, with all his innocence and
inexperience, could not fail to understand them. The explanation, of
course, was easy; this new version of an old and accepted play had
received the official sanction through oversight. Providence had sent
him to the rescue in the nick of time; and delighted to have found
something which his hand really could do, he took up the blue pencil and
set to work.

Snatches of dialogue, half lines of lyric--especially when it came to
the last verse--here, there, and everywhere he scored them through with
a ruthless hand; and with a renewed sense of usefulness, and a
conscience well at ease, he returned the much deleted copy to the Lord
Functionary.

Before long that official visited him, presenting a grave countenance.
He was by no means enthusiastic over the royal handiwork; the production
was about to take place; the play had already practically been
licensed--silence up to so late a moment having virtually given consent;
and--most difficult point of all--these things which the King was now
ruling out had almost all of them been in the previously accepted
version.

"Then I suppose," said his Majesty, "that nobody really reads the
plays?"

"Oh, yes, sir, they are always read," corrected the Lord Functionary,
"but our readers have necessarily to go upon certain lines. They are
guided by precedent and custom, which it would be highly inadvisable to
disturb."

So he pleaded that the _status quo ante_ might prevail; and yet, man to
man, he could not defend what the King showed him.

"Could you," inquired his Majesty indignantly, "read