of the north shall
stream upon the bed of the river, and where the rock once stood shall
rise up the Elephant, and the Squirrel that once led him shall now go
before him and lead him up the quivering rays to the sky, where he
shall become a constellation never before seen by men, but then
discovered and named

The Elephant.

Now he sleeps still in the deep forest. It must all be true, for I have
seen him there, and so have others.

_Vaterville, Valley of the Mad,
White Mountains._

[Illustration]

The Old Brown Coat.

ALICE'S STORY.

The Gift.

[Illustration]

The royal family of the Kingdom of Percan had an old brown coat which
they prized very highly; it was so old that no one could say exactly
when it was made, but the story was that the Phoenix made it for the
first King of Percan, so it must have been very old. Only the ruler of
the kingdom was allowed to put it on, which he did once a year, on New
Year's Day. Anybody else who wore it either would die or become king.
Such an old coat would have to be mended occasionally, for though the
King put it on very carefully on New Year's Day--sixteen men helping him
on with it and taking two hours to do it in--and though he only wore it
an hour and then put it away safely in a cedar chest for the rest of the
year,--yet for all this care the coat, being so old and weak, frequently
was torn. Whenever this sad event happened, the sixteen men who were
called "Coat-Tails to His Majesty," (because they were appendages to the
coat,) carried the coat to the oldest woman in the kingdom, who was
obliged to mend it. If she were so old as to be helpless, the Sixteen
Coat-Tails put her to death and then went to the woman next to her in
age, who was of course the oldest then, until at last they found one who
could mend it. Then they all kept guard over her to see that neither she
nor any one else put it on, and when the coat was mended, they carried
it back to the king's palace and put it away in the cedar chest. Once
safely locked up, the Sixteen Coat-Tails sat on the chest by turns all
the rest of the year. They were very trusty men indeed; it was a great
honour to be one of the Coat-Tails.

Now, at the time when this story commences, the King of Percan was
Shahtah the Great. He was called the Great, because he weighed so much
and measured so far round the waist; since he had come to the throne, he
had been growing greater and more powerful, until his