erpretable form.

With the regularity and precision of a drilled army, and with no word
spoken, they moved forward to the attack. Curtains were drawn, cords
pulled, blinds raised, steps mounted. Lusters jingled to the touch of
feathers, cornices shed down their minute particles of dust to the
Charybdian maw of traveling gramophone. Over the carpet metallic
cow-catchers wheezed and groaned with a loud trundling of wheels, and
departed processionally to the chamber beyond. Then by a triple process,
simultaneously conducted, the furniture-sheets were lifted, drawn off,
and folded; a large wicker-table on wheels received and bore them away.
A cloud of light skirmishers followed after; and over every cushion and
seat and polished surface plied their manicurist skill. Then a
storming-party escaladed the gallery from below and the King, to avoid
the embarrassment of an encounter with a body of servitors who had not
the pleasure of his acquaintance, was at last obliged to retire.

But what a wonderful machine had been here revealed to his
gaze--manipulated without a word, marshaled by signs, and composed
entirely of strangers! And to think that all this insect-like marvel of
industry, so expeditious, and done on so huge a scale, had been going on
daily under his own roof, and he had known nothing of it! So this was
how his palace was cleaned for him, and why it never showed a sign of
wear or the marks of muddy boots? Yet never before had any thought on
the matter occurred to him. And what if some fine day those insects,
fired by revolutionary zeal, had taken it to heart to rise up in their
dozens by those escalading ladders to the first story and rush the
private apartments, and murder him in his morning bath or in his bed!
What a surprising and unexplained apparition it would have been! But
now, and for the future, he would know that daily about this time a
large ant-like colony was running about under him, very strong of arm,
very active of leg; and what protection, he wondered, from peril of
sudden inroad was that search under his bed on the ninth day of every
November? Did that really meet and counter modern methods of conspiracy
and assassination, or the growing dangers of labor unrest? He very much
doubted it.

And so, with his head very full of the wonder, the order, and the
underlying disturbance of it all, he passed on to his own inner chamber,
and had now something to tell the Queen as to how their immediate
domest