As I understand it, imported kings
generally get five millions a year and house-rent free. Young George
of Greece gets that. As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to
take the national note for considerable; but even with things in that
sort of shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to
eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give
bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there
while he is learning his trade. England is the place for that. Fifty
thousand dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is
born, and this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more
and more indispensable to his country. Look at Prince Arthur. At first
he only got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he
can dance, there is simply no telling what wages he gets.

I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and
endeavour to get along with less quarantine. Do you know, Spain keeps
her ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each
year, because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next
about the plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough,
the hives, and the rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and
elephantiasis any more than a great and enlightened civilisation minds
freckles. Soap would soon remove her anxious distress about foreign
distempers. The reason arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the
people squander so much of it on their persons, and then when they die
it is improvidently buried with them.

I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to
the rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit to be City
Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble,
is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they
are armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and
demonstrative kind.

I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen
Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to
Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she
has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.

I should also require that--

I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The Tribune" did not
mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care two cents.

THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC

One calamity to which the