ce.

"I believe it's he again," said Cleary. "He must have a trap-door. He's
got on another uniform. I think it's a Frank admiral's uniform. There
go the Frank guns. He's passing their fleet."

"Yes, it is a Frank naval uniform," said a foreign officer near them,
as he scrutinized the deck with his glasses.

Before each of the fleets the same maneuvre was carried out. As their
guns fired, the Emperor would disappear for a few moments, and in an
incalculably short time he would appear again in the uniform of an
admiral of the fleet in question. When he had passed the last fleet he
disappeared once more, and came back to sight clad in the white and
silver armor of a general officer of his own army, with helmet and
plume. The flash-light now changed colors through the whole gamut of
the rainbow, and the Emperor knelt in the attitude of Columbus
discovering America.

Sam was immensely impressed.

"Oh, Cleary!" he said, "if we only had an Emperor."

"The President is doing his best," said Cleary. "Don't blame him."

"Oh, but what can he do? Why haven't we some one like that to embody
the ideal of the State, to picture us to ourselves, to realize our
aspirations?"

As he said this a strange noise arose from the crowd near the
landing-stage where the Emperor was about to alight. The far greater
part of this crowd was composed of natives, and they had been entirely
taken aback by the exhibition. They were just beginning to understand
it, and as the war-lord moved about the deck followed by the glare of
the flash-light, and again struck an attitude before descending into
the gig which was to take him ashore, some one of the Porsslanese in
the crowd laughed. His neighbor laughed too, then another and then
another, until the whole native multitude was laughing. The laugh
rippled along the shore through the long stretch of natives collected
there like the swells from a passing steamer. It seemed to extend back
from the shore through the whole town, and, tho it was undoubtedly
fancy, Sam thought he heard it spreading, like the rings from a stone
thrown into the water, over the entire land. The foreigners stood
aghast. The Porsslanese are not a laughing people. They had never been
known to laugh before except in the most feeble manner. The events of
the past year had not been especially humorous, and the coming of the
great war-lord was far from being a laughing matter. Yet with the
pe