Page:Paine--J Archibauld McKaney collector of whiskers.djvu/166

  "There was only one sorrow in my year and a half at that job. An Italian barber was washed ashore from a wrecked liner, and when we found a razor in his pocket I was foolish enough to tell the King what it was for. He ordered the poor castaway to be stoned to death with green cocoanuts, for there was no reasoning with His Bloodthirsty Majesty. The barber was a heretic, a blasphemer, a menace to law and order, and several other things, and I couldn't save him from his fate. The royal notion was that any man that dare lay hand on a whisker with felonious intentions was a hidjus monster, and had ought to be exterminated quicker 'n scat.

"I disremember how many years it was before there came to pass what is called in the history of Lemuel Wilkins Island 'The Red Whisker Rebellion.' There was a tradition that some day a man with a red beard would come from Heaven or appear in some kind of astonishin' manner, and he would be the great and exalted King and reign forever and ever, amen. I used to sit under a cocoanut tree and 148]