His Fly-Speck Majesty


  A DISTINGUISHED Advocate of Republican Institutions was seen 
pickling his shins in the ocean.

  "Why don't you come out on dry land?" said the Spectator.  "What 
are you in there for?"

  "Sir," replied the Distinguished Advocate of Republican 
Institutions, "a ship is expected, bearing His Majesty the King of 
the Fly-Speck Islands, and I wish to be the first to grasp the 
crowned hand."

  "But," said the Spectator, "you said in your famous speech before 
the Society for the Prevention of the Protrusion of Nail Heads from 
Plank Sidewalks that Kings were blood-smeared oppressors and hell-
bound loafers."

  "My dear sir," said the Distinguished Advocate of Republican 
Institutions, without removing his eyes from the horizon, "you 
wander away into the strangest irrelevancies!  I spoke of Kings in 
the abstract."