antly personal, perhaps, but written with an
epigrammatical
point that is very rare nowadays--very rare indeed.

Zara: (looking at cartoon) Why do they represent you with such
a
big nose?

King: (looking at cartoon) Eh? Yes, it is a big one! Why,
the
fact is that, in the cartoons of a comic paper, the size
of
your nose always varies inversely as the square of your
popularity. It's the rule.

Zara: Then you must be at a tremendous discount just now! I
see a
notice of a new piece called "King Tuppence," in which an
English tenor has the audacity to personate you on a
public
stage. I can only say that I am surprised that any
English
tenor should lend himself to such degrading
personalities.

King: Oh, he's not really English. As it happens he's a
Utopian,
but he calls himself English.

Zara: Calls himself English?

King: Yes. Bless you, they wouldn't listen to any tenor who
didn't call himself English.

Zara: And you permit this insolent buffoon to caricature you in
a
pointless burlesque! My dear father--if you were a free
agent, you would never permit these outrages.

King: (almost in tears) Zara--I--I admit I am not altogether
a
free agent. I--I am controlled. I try to make the best
of
it, but sometimes I find it very difficult--very
difficult
indeed. Nominally a Despot, I am, between ourselves, the
helpless tool of two unscrupulous Wise Men, who insist on
my
falling in with all their wishes and threaten to denounce
me
for immediate explosion if I remonstrate! (Breaks down
completely)

Zara: My poor father! Now listen to me. With a view to
remodel-
ling the political and social institutions of Utopia, I
have
brought with me six Representatives of the principal
causes
that have tended to make England the powerful, happy, and
blameless country which the consensus of European
civiliza-
tion has declared it to be. Place yourself unreservedly
in
the hands of these gentlemen, and they will reorganize
your
country on a footing that will enable you to defy you