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E was one of the most intrepid of our war correspondents, and his name was Mitchell. Something was being said about the creation of little imaginary kingdoms since the Prisoner of Zenda showed the way. One of us had smiled at the poverty of imagination visible in the efflorescence of multiple kingdoms, but it was somebody who had no more conception of the richness of cerebral life involved in even daring to infringe the Zenda copyright than he had of the force that goes to the bursting of buds in the spring.

"But you know," said Mitchell, "there really are those little kingdoms, rafts of 'em, if you're clever enough to hunt 'em down." "You don't mean to tell me," said I, "that any inch of Europe lies there uncharted, waiting for your swashbuckling pen? That you can put out a careless finger, to the east presumably, somewhere round Bulgaria or Roumania, and hit a kingdom made to your hand?"

"Oh, but they exist," said he, with the irritating dogmatism of the man who has in his pocket the very fact that will floor

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My triumph this, but I was not allowed to score.

"I could tell you what happened in one of those same kingdoms."

"Same latitude, I dare say, round the corner from Roumania?"

"Not so far away. We'll call it the kingdom of Arcady. Good old name. Stands for illogical content, makes you lubricated and expectant at the start. I dropped in there because for five years there'd been the most eccentric goings on. King Solon— I'm making up names-he'd died, and his wife, Queen Ismia, in the minority of the young prince, Belphoebus, had been acting regent. The things that woman had done! To begin with, the king, some time before his death, had got up a report that a few of his former subjects living in the little province of Flos, nominally under the protection of the King of Altaria, were unjustly

treated there. They were allowed to naturalize only after a residence of seven years. During that seven years they were ineligible for public office, and he called it a sin and a shame to leave them unchampioned. So he proposed to annex Flos-for purely philanthropic reasons, mind you, and he did it. The Florians didn't make any resistance. They'd been indifferently miserable under the Altarians, and couldn't do much worse here."

"What did the King of Altaria say to it?" "Oh, he did what a pig does at crucial points of pig history. He squealed. Because, you see, he knew the true inwardness."

"Paternal feeling?"

"Not for a minute. That was the second reason, made to wear outside. There's always a serviceable reason hidden by the other, like a flannel petticoat under mother's black silk. The real reason was that the Florians had discovered quicksilver to an astounding extent. It was a good time to annex 'em. Also because Altaria was busy with a boundary war on her other border, with the Tellurians. I never felt sure Arcady and old Telluria hadn't hatched up the whole thing between themselves and shared the loot. Briefly, then, Flos became Arcadian."

"Wasn't there any row?" said I. "Didn't it stir up the tribunal at The Hague? I never heard—”

"You make me tired," said Mitchell. "When I tell you these things happened, if you're a polite person you wont pin me down and ask me fool questions. It hurts my professional feelings. Well, the first thing Queen Ismia did was to ask the Florians if they wanted to be given back. They deliberated. They'd developed a caution bump after untold experiences of fryingpan and fire, and they implied they'd wait and see how the regent behaved herself, and whether the prince was a good provider and the old ship of state didn't seem likely to careen too far. The queen was all there from the start. She shortened the hours of work for the silk spinners, and she built up the national theatre. And on Lady Day the girls from the silk mill would come to the palace, bales in hand, and present them toward the support of the theatre. They came crowned with garlands and sang national songs, old ones dug out of the past

by a poet they had, and altogether it was a proud little festival. It brought tears to the eyes, if you'll permit the banality. And so it was with all trades. If workers wanted to give a little bit of extra time, they were furnished with raw material, and they threw in the finished product toward the national theatre. So it was their theatre. See?"

I was irritating enough to ask here if he were a socialist, and he brought his complex capable hand down on the table.

"Now," said he, "don't accuse me of propaganda. I'm telling you what happened, that's all. And it happened. You'd better believe it. It was always my impression that the queen had shown all a woman's guile-a woman's in addition to a queen's, and you know a queen must have some instinct of statecraft even if she's only expected to bear princes. She's neighbor to it, so to speak, and snuffed it in with her breath. She had used her arsenal of persuasive weapons to convince the kingdom it wasn't she that brought about the kind, pretty, sanitary ways of government, but the prince. All through his minority she was weaving a magic carpet for him to ride straight into the affections of his people. And he had done that very thing. He was a fine upstanding fellow with honest eyes, but not tried at all as yet, not forced up against circumstance and made to take his leap or die in the ditch. My first sight of him was the day I pottered into the kingdom. I was in no particular hurry, and I wanted to go in just that way, walking, Rücksack for luggage, to test the democratic feel of the place. I'd heard a lot about it, and if there was plenty of material lying round loose, I was going to write a book. Just as I was sitting down by the roadside-there was an oleander hedge at my back-to eat my cheese sandwich, to give me heart to storm the castle, a young man went by, clattery-bing, on a big gray horse. Two old road-menders saluted, and he returned it in a kind of gayety I liked; and then the road-menders, as if they couldn't contain their pride in him, turned to me and clacked, 'That's our prince.'

"Oh,' said I, blowing my sandwich (for microbes are no respecters of the dust of princes), 'where's his retinue?""

"One of the old men was bent like a sickle, but he straightened up to something rather magnificent.

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"Am I to tell her majesty,' I said, 'that her poet declines to come?'"-Page 223.

"That's our prince,' said he. 'Our prince has no call for guards. We're Arcadians. He's Prince of Arcady.'

"But I turned, by the chance that is the inner direction of the mind, and saw in the field a running figure. It leaped ditches. It ran like a scarecrow made of sticks, and I even fancied scarecrow's rags were fluttering from its thin, swift legs.

"Look at that,' said I. 'Is that going to head off your prince?'

"But the gaffer had gone back to his chronic apathy, and looked, open-mouthed, for a minute, and then fell to work at his stones. And I finished my sandwich, and tramped on into the town and up to the open castle gates. I had understood that in Arcady you might have free access to the prince and Queen Ismia, and indeed might claim shelter there so long as the bedrooms held out. There was a soldier at the gate,

a sympathetic sort of fellow, and finding by my own word that I was an American on my travels, with a great desire to pay my respects, he passed me on, and another official did the same; and I was actually, toilstained as I was from my tramp and the prince's passing, led into the morning-room where the prince and his mother were at table like any simple folk. The signs of grandeur were in the hall itself, the wonderful lancet-windows, the cedars outside with centuries since Lebanon in their bones,and, too, in the prince and his mother, the very cut of them. They looked mighty nice to me, that mother and son. She was a slim, small woman-yes, really little; there wasn't much to her except her royal manners-with lots of white hair, and he was the big lad I told you about. They wore the ancient costume of the country, and it fitted the lancet-windows like a glove.

I was prepared for that. It had been one of her astounding clevernesses, though ascribed, of course, to the prince. They had thought it encouraging to national feeling, national industries, to return to the national dress. No head waiter's swallowtail in his. No Parisian latest agony for the lady. The clothes were ready for a picture gallery, for grand opera. And they looked indestructible. I could believe they'd been laid away in cedar chests for longer than the prince had lived.

"The queen had my card beside her plate. She smiled at me and she looked very charming. I could see at once she was the sort of woman you want to pick a nosegay for, or lay down your cloak in the mud. "You have come on a gala day,' said she. 'We are going on pilgrimage. Will you join us?'

"The man had brought another platethere was very informal service and the prince motioned me to his right hand. And I sat down as I was, and wished I had not eaten the cheese sandwich."

"What language do they speak?" I asked.

"Oh, any language. There's an Arcadian patois something like German, but often they speak French."

"They knew who you were," said I. "They had your card. They wouldn't admit any obscure man to breakfast. You know that, Mitchell."

"Oh, go 'way," said Mitchell. "Go 'way wid yer blarney. Anyhow, I was there, and the queen was good to me. Well, I asked lots about Arcady, hinted at my book, and they were as right down cosey and sensible as you please. She, the queen, came to business at once, straight as a string. She told me what the prince had done to touch up the government and trim it with gimp and fancy lace, and how they'd gone a long way on the road before anybody got wind of it. They're such an inconsiderable kingdom, you see, in point of territory. Even you never heard of 'em."

"Mrs. Prig never did either," said I. "We 'don't believe there's no sich a person.""

"Well, you pack your grip next summer, and I'll buy you a ticket and give you an elementary phrase-book and you see. But when the outlying continents did hear of the changes in Arcady, first they got gay.

VOL. L.-21

They said, 'Arcady's looking up.' Then they said it was comic opera. Then when they began to run over the tax list it made 'em sit up. But I'm giving you only the retail side of it. When breakfast was over, we three, the prince and the queen and me, plain American, we went out to walk on the terrace, and there was a sunken garden and a peacock strutting back and forth through a pleached alley, and there were flags on the towers. And the queen began to tell me what a festival it was to-day: for you see, by luck, it was the day for the silkweavers to come and bring their bales; and by George they did come, and a mighty pretty sight it was, girls walking two and two, holding up their bales as if they were shields with heroes on 'em, and everybody garlanded. And the girls sang: and the songs were all gentle, simple songs of sowing seed and reaping grain and blessing the apple-trees and thanking the good God. And then the queen asked me if I had ever heard of Erdreich, the poet, and I said I had, and knew a lot of his stuff by heart. You see Erdreich was one of those destined chaps that aren't perhaps discovered when the curtain goes up, but have an entrance that determines the course of the play. With all this revival of the ancient humble life, here was Erdreich, by God's luck, ready to snatch the old ballads out of time forgot, and put them in modern dress, just as simple, just as pure; and there were those, scholars and such, that said the revival of the ancient spirit of Arcady was just because Erdreich had taught the populace to sing peace and kindliness into themselves, and there was great bandying about of the old saw about caring not who made the history of the nation so somebody might make the songs. And this day, said the queen, she and the prince and certain of the royal household were going to ride to the home of Erdreich, perhaps ten miles out in the valley of the Arca, and pay their respects. His crowning would come later, and that would be official and the kingdom would take part. But this was only to show in what love they held him. The prince— always the prince!-had judged it best.

"While we were talking about Erdreich, a man came out: I hesitate to say lackey. You see everybody had the same look of intentness on the business in hand and, if I may make a very subtle thing so definite,

of love for Arcady. This man came out and gave the queen a written message, and she read it, and without changing a shade of expression, except that the red came into her cheeks, she gave it to the prince.

"The King of Telluria!' said he, speaking out as impulsively as you might if you'd got a wire to say Aunt Sophy was imminent and you knew there was no custard pie. 'Coming here. Coming to-day, with a small retinue. What does it mean?'

"They were both troubled. I could see royalty wasn't in the habit of bearing down on 'em, even neighboring royalty. But the queen said quite sweetly, like a housekeeper caught making jam and putting a good face on her stained fingers, that the visit to Erdreich should be given up. And then, if you will believe me, I was offered a room at the palace, and they would send for my luggage.'

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"Because you were the distinguished Mitchell."

"Distinguished nothing. Because I was going to write a book about Arcady, and they wanted most tremendously to have it done. Already I thought I'd discovered something: that the queen prized Arcady almost as much as she prized the prince. As for him, I didn't know. He hadn't had his test.

"Now the rest of this story I am going to tell you as I had it afterward when I could braid the strands together. If you ask me why I knew this or that, or how I could have been in the room or in three places at once, I can't and sha'n't tell you. Ask a weaver how he got that little thread of blue, when his blue had given out. Maybe he walked forty miles for it. Maybe he wrenched a flower off its stem and made a dye. My weaving is life, and you've got to accept the web as I toss it to you done." "That's a bargain," said I. "Give us the web. All I ask is to see and handle."

"Good for you! Some things you've always got to take on trust, as that the doctor won't poison you, though he knows how, and that there isn't a bull in the pasture mixed up with the huckleberries. Well, the King of Telluria came, he and all his knights riding on fierce horses as if they'd been statues come to life. They'd taken train to the border and ridden the rest. I give you my word I could see just how they'd look if I'd had the formula for stiff

ening 'em into equestrian statues to be sold for public squares. The king was the regular old sort. If you'd painted him up, you could have tucked him into a pack of cards and nobody'd have known the difference. Now, I am an attentive student of modern affairs, and I knew what that quick breath of the prince meant when he heard they were coming. There had been newspaper nods and whispers about a match between the prince and the Princess Eda of Telluria, and if the prince had been a common Johnnie like you or me, he would have said, 'Mother, do you s'pose she's coming, too?' But, living under the freeze of royal etiquette, all he could do was simply to say nothing and kick his princely self for a fool for hoping even for a minute that princesses could go round calling with their fathers unannounced.

"And the next entrance was the incredible one of the Princess Eda herself. The king and his suite had been taken off to their rooms, and the prince had gone after them, and while the queen stood in the great hall thinking hard—perhaps about how she should guide the ship of state with these buccaneers bearing down on it—a slim young girl, with her yellow hair tied up tight under a veil, and her eyes obscured behind goggles, ran in and up to her, as if she knew just where she meant to go. And the queen started, and being a queen, though in Arcady, perhaps wondered whose head had got to come off for allowing even this butterfly invasion; but the princess held up a hand and said, 'Hush! hush!' and kissed her. And the queen started and said, 'Eda, Eda! Why, Eda!' then, just like any other mother, 'How glad he'll be!' But Eda made her understand at once that there was no man in it at all. She had come as wildly as the storm comes out of the north. She had to come. Why? She didn't know. All a girl's yague, wistful wonder under driving impulse shone out in her here. At least she wanted to set foot in Arcady. And she could never run away from home save when her father, too, was absent; and how often could you hope to find a king out of his kingdom? And she had impressed, kidnapped, terrorized old Bertelius, the librarian and her friend, and he and she had motored by the mountain road in terror of their lives, by cliff and chasm; because, you see (here her mouth

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