receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of
French brandy, and await the result.'

"'Which would presently arrive in the form of grim Death,' said
Kopy-Keck.

"'If it should, she would yet die in doing our duty,' retorted
Hum-Drum.

"But their Majesties had too much tenderness for their volatile
offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally
unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed the most complete knowledge of the
laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was
impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable body, sharing
all the other properties of the ponderable.

* * * * *

"CHAPTER VIII.--TRY A DROP OF WATER.

"Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been falling in
love. But how a princess who had no gravity at all, could fall into
anything, is a difficulty--perhaps _the_ difficulty. As for her own
feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a
bee-hive of honey and stings to be fallen into. And now I come to
mention another curious fact about her.

"The palace was built on the shore of the loveliest lake in the world;
and the princess loved this lake more than father or mother. The root
of this preference no doubt, although the princess did not recognize