ired in a $10,000
costume, representing Henry of Navarre. This costume sat upon his
rugged limbs as though they had been melted into it. The King gazed
complacently upon his manufactured nobleman and bade him proceed.

"August and Sovereign King!" thus began the blacksmith, for such he
was when not intoxicated or attending a costume ball--"August and
Sovereign King, I have been pushed forward by my fellows who have
joined in this petition, with a vast multitude of their co-workers,
similarly gorged with hateful luxury. They ask me to state plainly to
your Majesty that they now know from actual experience how hollow and
worthless are all the glories of the merely rich, whose time is
devoted to vain shows and in devising new delicacies for the palate.
They beseech your Majesty that you, in accordance with your gracious
pleasure, should restore them to their simple and humble paths of
life, wherein they will dwell in reasonable contentment hereafter."

The workman ceased, and the spokesman for wealth and idleness stepped
forward and pleaded his case very eloquently. He showed, in the
petition which many thousands of his class had signed, that through
their recent experience they all had been made to feel the weight of
life as it rests upon those under them. He averred that he and his
fellows were heartily sick of their lives thus ordered, and that they
petitioned the King to send them beyond his confines, or place them in
his army, or, better still, allow them to seek honorable employment in
vocations more in accord with their taste and inclination.

The King, esteeming that he had sufficiently disciplined the wealthy
and had measurably cast out the "daimon of unrest" from the mind of
labor, while at the same time he had given a notable illustration to
all his people of the folly of outrunning too far the sentiments of
your age, and the arrant rot of placing edicts upon the statute books
that at once become a dead letter unless backed by despotic force, and
feeling the security of his position, stood before his petitioners,
lightly leaning on his left foot, with his right hand in the breast of
his coat, and thus addressed them:

"My people, the results flowing from my edict are not otherwise
than I fully believed would result; I am satisfied at the real
good that has been accomplished. Many there are who would like to
see human nature changed by an equally absurd upheaval of the
social fabric,