k abroad at all without some twenty silken cords fastened to as
many parts of her dress, and held by twenty noblemen. Of course
horseback was out of the question. But she bade good-by to all this
ceremony when she got into the water.

And so remarkable were its effects upon her, especially in restoring
her for the time to the ordinary human gravity, that Hum-Drum and
Kopy-Keck agreed in recommending the king to bury her alive for three
years; in the hope that, as the water did her so much good, the earth
would do her yet more. But the king had some vulgar prejudices against
the experiment, and would not give his consent. Foiled in this, they
yet agreed in another recommendation; which, seeing that one imported
his opinions from China and the other from Thibet, was very remarkable
indeed. They argued that, if water of external origin and application
could be so efficacious, water from a deeper source might work a
perfect cure; in short, that if the poor afflicted princess could by
any means be made to cry, she might recover her lost gravity.

But how was this to be brought about? Therein lay all the
difficulty--to meet which the philosophers were not wise enough. To
make the princess cry was as impossible as to make her weigh. They
sent for a professional beggar; commanded him to prepare his most
touching oracle of woe; helped him out of the court charade box, to
whatever he wanted for dressing up, and promised great rewards in the
event of his success. But it was all in vain. She listened to the
mendicant artist's story, and gazed at his marvellous make up, till she
could contain herself no longer, and went into the most undignified
contortions for relief, shrieking, positively screeching with laughter.

When she had a little recovered herself, she ordered her attendants to
drive him away, and not give him a single copper; whereupon his look of
mortified discomfiture wrought her punishment and his revenge, for it
sent her into violent hysterics, from which she was with difficulty
recovered.

But so anxious was the king that the suggestion should have a fair
trial, that he put himself in a rage one day, and, rushing up to her
room, gave her an awful whipping. Yet not a tear would flow. She
looked grave, and her laughing sounded uncommonly like screaming--that
was all. The good old tyrant, though he put on his best gold
spectacles to look, could not discover the smallest cloud in the serene
blue of her ey