Page:Baron Trump's marvellous underground journey.pdf/151

Rh Some men will fish all day and not have a bite, and some people will try their whole lives to catch happiness and not get any more than a nibble. They don't use the right kind of bait. Let 'em try a kind act, a live one.

There was something I wanted to ask of the learned Barrel Brow, so the next call I made on him I put this question to him:—

"Is it possible, learned Master, that thy people have absolutely no guide, no overseer, no rulers?"

The great scholar of the Formifolk ceased reading the four books which lay opened before him—one under each hand and one under each foot—as I handed him my silver tablet.

"Little baron," was his reply, "if there were only a bramble bush big enough for all you people of the upper world to jump into and if you could only get rid of your ears too, you would soon be rid of your rulers who oppress you, who prey upon you for no one would have any desire to be a ruler if there was no one left to look at him and if he couldn't hear what the flatterers said about him. Vanity is the soil that rulers spring from, as the mushrooms spring from the rich loam of our dark caverns. They pretend that it is the exercise of power that they are so fond of. Believe them not. It is the gratification of their vanity and nothing else.

"If it were only in thy power to say to every man who itched to be a ruler,—

"'Well and good, brother, a ruler thou shalt be; but bear in mind, weak man, that when thou hast donned thy gaudy uniform and mounted thy gayly caparisoned steed, when thou ridest at the head of troop and cavalcade with ten thousand armed men following thee on foot, as slaves their master, and the plaudits of the foolish multitude rend the air, no eye shall witness the splendor of thy triumph, no ear catch a sound of the deafening cheers,' take my word for it, little baron, no one would want to be a ruler any more.

"Where there are no rulers, little baron," continued the