r
owner as spile-drivers for a dike he was building in apprehension of
Noah's predicted flood. It was then that I began to get some insight
into the character of this wonderful person, for as I sat there
listening to his discourse, delivered at the rate of five hundred
words a minute, and apparently covering seven or eight subjects not
necessarily corollary or collateral to each other, at once, and
watched him simultaneously bringing down with unerring aim this
tremendous bag of game, something of the man's intrinsic nature was
revealed to me. His strength, of which we had heard much from
travelers in his own land, lay in an almost scientific lack of
concentration, backed up by a vocabulary of tremendous scope, and a
condition of optical near-sightedness that enabled him to see but
obscurely further than the end of his nose. These attributes gave him
the power to discuss innumerable subjects coeternally, if not
coherently, using his vocabulary with such skill that his meaning
depended entirely upon the interpretation of his remarks by individual
hearers, while the limitations of vision caused him, on the sudden
appearance of masses of any sort, to shoot at them impulsively,
regardless of such minor details as consequences. As a result of these
gifts he was ever hitting something with either the arrows of speech
or the slungshot, which produced a public impression of ceaseless
activity and of material accomplishment. In addition to this it was
his wont to do all things smiling with an almost boyish manifestation
of pleasure, so that he endeared himself to the people and was
pronounced in some respects likeable even by his enemies.

When his lecture was over he descended from his improvised platform
and greeted me most cordially.

"Deeee-lighted!" was the exact word he used as he took my hand and
shook it until my arm worked indifferently well in its socket.

I was not aware that His Highness had ever heard of me before, but it
was not long before I was more than glad that I had come, for it
transpired that I was the one person in all creation that he had most
wished to meet, though for what particular purpose he did not make
clear. In any event, so cordial was his reception of me that for three
or four weeks I had not the heart to mention the particular object of
my mission, and even then I was not permitted to do so because at any
time when I felt that the psychological moment had been reached he
would talk of other