The youth looked up,--what a beautiful creature he was, with his
brilliant, dark eyes and dusky, warm complexion!

"Why ask for the King's Laureate?" he demanded with a pretty
scorn,--"The PEOPLE'S Sah-luma lives yonder!"--and he pointed to a
mass of towering palms from whose close and graceful frondage a
white dome rose glistening in the clear air,--"Our Poet's fame is
not the outgrowth of a mere king's favor, 'tis the glad and
willing tribute of the Nation's love and praise! A truce to
monarchs!--they will soon be at a discount in Al-Kyris!"

And with a flashing glance of defiance, and a saucy smile, he
passed on, easily sauntering as before.

"A budding republican!" though Theos amusedly, as he pursued his
course in the direction indicated. "That is how the 'liberty,
equality, fraternity' system always begins--first among street-
boys who think they ought to be gentlemen,--then among shopkeepers
who persuade themselves that they deserve to be peers,--then comes
a time of topsey-turveydom and fierce contention and by and by
everything gets shaken together again in the form of a Republic,
wherein the street-boys and shopkeepers are not a whit better off
than they were under a monarchy--they become neither peers nor
gentlemen, but stay exactly in their original places, with the
disadvantage of finding their trade decidedly damaged by the
change that has occurred in the national economy! Strange that the
inhabitants of this world should make such a fuss about resisting
tyranny and oppression, when each particular individual man, by
custom and usage, tyrannizes over and oppresses his fellow-man to