"What will be fun?"

"A revolution."

Whether anybody except a magpie would have called it "fun" I don't know,
but it certainly was a remarkable scene.

As soon as the cathedral bell began to toll and the minute-guns to
fire, announcing to the kingdom that it was without a king, the people
gathered in crowds, stopping at street corners to talk together. The
murmur now and then rose into a shout, and the shout into a roar. When
Prince Dolor, quietly floating in upper air, caught the sound of their
different and opposite cries, it seemed to him as if the whole city had
gone mad together.

"Long live the king!" "The king is dead--down with the king!" "Down with
the crown, and the king too!" "Hurrah for the republic!" "Hurrah for no
government at all!"

Such were the shouts which traveled up to the traveling-cloak. And then
began--oh, what a scene!

When you children are grown men and women--or before--you will hear and
read in books about what are called revolutions--earnestly I trust that
neither I nor you may ever see one. But they have happened, and may
happen again, in other countries besides Nomansland, when wicked kings
have helped to make their people wicked too, or out of an unrighteous
nation have sprung rulers equally bad; or, without either of these
causes, when a restless country has fancied any change better than no
change at all.