had passed since the Scarecrow had fallen into his Kingdom.
He was not finding his royal duties as pleasant as he had
anticipated. The country was beautiful enough, but being Emperor of
the Silver Islands was not the simple affair that ruling Oz had been.
The pigtail on the back of his hat was terribly distracting, and he
was always tripping over his kimono, to which he could not seem to
accustom himself. His subjects were extremely quarrelsome, always
pulling one another's queues or stealing fruit, umbrellas, and silver
polish. His ministers, the Grand Chew Chew, the Chief Chow Chow, and
General Mugwump, were no better, and keeping peace in the palace took
all the Scarecrow's cleverness.

In the daytime he tried culprits in the royal court, interviewed his
seventeen secretaries, rode out in the royal palanquin, and made
speeches to visiting princes. At night he sat in the great silver
salon and by the light of the lanterns studied the Book of
Ceremonies. His etiquette, the Grand Chew Chew informed him, was
shocking. He was always doing something wrong, dodging the Imperial
Umbrella, speaking kindly to a palace servant, or walking unattended
in the gardens.

The royal palace itself was richly furnished, and the Scarecrow had
more than five hundred robes of state. The gardens, with their
sparkling waterfalls, glowing orange trees, silver temples, towers
and bridges, were too lovely for words. Poppies, roses, lotus and
other lilies perfumed the air, and at night a thousand silver
lanterns turned them to a veritable fairyland.

The grass and trees were green as in other lands, but the sky as
always full of tiny silver clouds, the waters surrounding the island
were of a lovely liquid silver, and as all the houses and towers were
of this gleaming metal, the effect was bewildering and beautiful.

But the Silver Islanders themselves were too stupid to appreciate
this beauty. "And what use is it all when I have no one to enjoy it
with me," sighed the Scarecrow. "And no time to _play!"_

In Oz no one thought it queer if Ozma, the little Queen, jumped rope
with Dorothy or Betsy Bobbin, or had a quiet game of croquet with the
palace cook. But here, alas, everything was different. If the
Scarecrow so much as ventured a game of ball with the gardener's boy,
the whole court was thrown into an uproar. At first, the Scarecrow
tried to please everybody, but finding that nothing pleased the
people in the palace, he decided to plea