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The Banished King
by
“Now,” said the King to the Sphinx, “I am in favor of moving on. I am tired of this place, where every sentiment is so mingled with others that you can never tell what anybody really thinks or feels. I don’t believe any one in this country was ever truly glad or sorry. They mix one sentiment so quickly with another that they never can discover the actual ingredients of any of their impulses.”
“When this King first began to mingle his sentiments,” said the Sphinx, “it was because he always desired to think and feel exactly right. He did not wish his feelings to run too much one way or the other.”
“And so he is never either right or wrong,” said the King. “I don’t like that, at all. I want to be one thing or the other.”
“I have wasted a good deal of time at this place,” remarked the King, as they walked on, “and I have seen and heard nothing which I wish to teach my people. But I must find out some way to prevent every thing going wrong in my kingdom. I have tried plan after plan, and sometimes two or three together, and have kept this up year after year, and yet nothing seems to do my kingdom any good.”
“Have you heard how things are going on there now?” asked the Sphinx.
“Give it up,” said the King. “But I don’t mind saying of my own accord, and not as answer to any question, that I have sent a good many communications to my Queen, but have never received any from her. So I do not know how things are going on in my kingdom.”
They then travelled on, the long line of followers coming after, keeping their relative positions a hundred yards apart, and passing over all the ground the King had traversed in his circuitous walks about the city. Thus the line crept along like an enormous snake in straight lines, loops, and coils; and every time the King walked a hundred yards a fresh man from his capital city was obliged to take his place at the tail of the procession.
“By the way,” said the Sphinx, after they had walked an hour or more, “if you want to see a kingdom where there really is something to learn, you ought to go to the country of the Gaumers, which we are now approaching.”
“All right,” said the King. “Let us go there.”
In the course of the afternoon they reached the edge of a high bluff. “On the level ground, beneath this precipice,” said the Sphinx, “is the country of the dwarfs called Gaumers. You can sit on the edge of the bluff and look down upon it.”
The King and the Sphinx then sat down, and looked out from the edge over the country of the little people. The officer of the court who had formed the head of the line wished very much to see what they were looking at, but, when the line halted, he was not near enough.
“You will notice,” said the Sphinx, “that the little houses and huts are gathered together in clusters. Each one of these clusters is under a separate king.”
“Why don’t they all live under one ruler?” asked the King. “That is the proper way.”
“They do not think so,” said the Sphinx. “In each of these clusters live the Gaumers who are best suited to each other; and, if any Gaumer finds he cannot get along in one cluster, he goes to another. The kings are chosen from among the very best of them, and each one is always very anxious to please his subjects. He knows that every thing that he, and his queen, and his children eat, or drink, or wear, or have must be given to him by his subjects, and if it were not for them he could not be their ruler. And so he does every thing that he can to make them happy and contented, for he knows if he does not please them and govern them well, they will gradually drop off from him and go to other clusters, and he will be left without any people or any kingdom.”