tine
escapes. But supplied with the thirtieth part of all that Aspasia
could desire; glorying in being the spouses of a king; nor in the
remotest degree anxious about eventual dowers; they were care-free,
content, and rejoicing, as the rays of the morning.

Poor old men, then; it would be hard to distill out of your fate, one
drop of the balm of consolation. For, commissioned to watch over
those who forever kept you on the trot, affording you no time to hunt
up peccadilloes; was not this circumstance an aggravation of hard
times? a sharpening and edge-giving to the steel in your souls?

But much yet remains unsaid.

To dwell no more upon the eternal wear-and-tear incident to these
attenuated old warders, they were intensely hated by the damsels.
Inasmuch, as it was archly opined, for what ulterior purposes they
were retained.

Nightly couching, on guard, round the seraglio, like fangless old
bronze dragons round a fountain enchanted, the old men ever and anon
cried out mightily, by reason of sore pinches and scratches received
in the dark: And tri-trebly-tri-triply girt about as he was,
Donjalolo himself started from his slumbers, raced round and round
through his ten thousand corridors; at last bursting all dizzy among
his twenty-nine queens, to see what under the seventh-heavens was the
matter. When, lo and behold! there lay the innocents all sound
asleep; the dragons moaning over their mysterious bruises.

Ah me! his harem, like all large families, was the delight and the
torment of the days and nights of Donjalolo.

And in one special matter was he either eminently miserable, or
otherwise: for all his multiplicity of wives, he had never an heir.
Not his, the proud paternal glance of the Grand Turk Solyman, looking
round upon a hundred sons, all bone of his bone, and squinting with
his squint.

CHAPTER LXXXI
Wherein Babbalanja Relates The Adventure Of One Karkeke In The Land
Of Shades

At our morning repast on the second day of our stay in the hollow,
our party indulged in much lively discourse.

"Samoa," said I, "those isles of yours, of whose beauty you so often
make vauntful mention, can those isles, good Samoa, furnish a valley
in all respects equal to Willamilla?"

Disdainful answer was made, that Willamilla might be endurable enough
for a sojourn, but as a permanent abode, any glen of his own natal
isle was unspeakably superior.

"In the great valley of Savaii," cried Samoa, "for every lea