ory.

Well, on the whole, the public verdict was decidedly in favour of the
King's Idea, which enabled the newspapers gradually to work up a fervent
enthusiasm in their columns; until at length it had become the very
finest Idea ever evolved. After a time it was suggested that a day
should be fixed for public rejoicings in celebration of the King's Idea;
and the scheme grew until it was decided in the Lords and Commons that
the King should proceed in state to the cathedral on the day of
rejoicing, and be crowned as Emperor in honour of the Idea. There was
only one little bit of dissent in the Lower House; and that was when Mr.
Corderoy, M.P. for the Rattenwell Division of Strikeston, moved, as an
amendment, that Bill Firebrand, dismissed by his employer for blowing up
his factory, should be allowed a civil service pension.

So the important day came, and everybody took a holiday except the
pickpockets and the police; and the King was crowned Emperor in the
cathedral, with a grand choral service; and the Laureate wrote a fine
poem calling upon the universe to admire the Idea, and describing the
King as the greatest and most virtuous King ever invented. It was a very
fine poem, beginning:--

Notion that roars and rolls, lapping the stars with its hem;
Bursting the bands of Space, dwarfing eternal Aye.

It became tacitly admitted that the King was the very greatest King in
the world; and he was made an honorary fellow of the Society of
Wiseacres and D.C.L. of the universities.

But one day it leaked out that the Idea was _not_ the King's but the
Prime Minister's. It would not have been known but for the Prime
Minister having taken offence at the refusal of the King to appoint a
Socialist agitator to the vacant post of Lord Chamberlain. You see, it
was this way--the Prime Minister was very anxious to get in his
right-hand man for the eastern division of Grumbury, N. Now, the
Revolutionaries were very strong in the eastern division of Grumbury,
and, by winning the favour of the agitator, the votes of the
Revolutionaries would be secured. So, when the King refused to appoint
the agitator, the Prime Minister, out of nastiness, let out that the
Idea had really been his, and it had been he who had suggested it to the
King.

[Illustration]

There were great difficulties now; for the honours which had been
conferred on the King because of his Idea could not be cancelled; the
title of Emperor could not be taken a