ts despotism with
benignant intelligence and spending its income honestly upon the
development of both the city and the island. The motley populace would
probably be none the worse for it. The Government could upon a liberal
tariff collect not less than thirty-five millions of annual revenue.
Twenty-five of these millions would suffice for its own support.
Ten millions a year laid out upon harbors, roadways and internal
improvements in general would within ten years make the Queen of the
Antilles the garden spot and playground of Christendom. They would build
a Casino to outshine even the architectural miracles of Charles Garnier.
Then would Havana put Cairo out of business and give the Prince of
Monaco a run for his money.

With the opening of every Monte Carlo season the newspapers used to
tell of the colossal winnings of purely imaginary players. Sometimes
the favored child of chance was a Russian, sometimes an Englishman,
sometimes an American. He was usually a myth, of course. As Mrs. Prig
observed to Mrs. Camp, "there never was no sich person."

III

Charles Garnier, the Parisian architect, came and built the Casino, next
to the Library of Congress at Washington and the Grand Opera House
at Paris the most beautiful building in the world, with incomparable
gardens and commanding esplanades to set it off and display it.
Around it palatial hotels and private mansions and villas sprang into
existence. Within it a gold-making wheel of fortune fabricated the
wherewithal. Old Man Grimaldi in his wildest dreams of land-piracy--even
Old Man Hohenzollern, or Old Man Hapsburg--never conceived the like.

There is no poverty, no want, no taxes--not any sign of dilapidation
or squalor anywhere in the principality of Monaco. Yet the "people,"
so called, have been known to lapse into a state of discontent. They
sometimes "yearned for freedom." Too well fed and cared for, too rid of
dirt and debt, too flourishing, they "riz." Prosperity grew monotonous.
They even had the nerve to demand a "Constitution."

The reigning Prince was what Yellowplush would call "a scientific gent."
His son and heir, however, had not his head in the clouds, being in
point of fact of the earth earthly, and, of consequence, more popular
than his father. He came down from the Castle on the hill to the
marketplace in the town and says he: "What do you galoots want, anyhow?"

First, their "rights." Then a change in the commander-in-chief of the