Rumfiz, gave me much trouble, for though many of the inhabitants were descended from his own people, they insisted on making themselves independent (as they called it), and having a king of their own. They were great cannibals, and used to eat each other up without ceremony, and as for hissing, hooting, and swearing, few people could match them. The name of the island was Blarney Botherum. When I first visited them, I thought, from their own account, that they were a nation of heroes kept in chains by King Rumfiz for his own especial pleasure and amusement, and that if I could make them free they would set a bright example to the rest of the world of intelligence, civilisation, and all the virtues which adorn human nature. I soon, however, discovered that the people of Blarney Botherum were the greatest humbugs under the sun. They had got a set of people among them whom they called medicine men, who told them that there was a big medicine man in a distant part of the world, whom they were to obey instead of King Rumfiz, and that, provided they told him the truth, and gave them cocoa-nuts and breadfruits, they might tell as many lies as they liked to the king, and might rob and cheat him as much as they pleased. Whenever, therefore, the little medicine men wanted cocoa-nuts and bread-fruits, they used to tell the people the big one required food, and their whole occupation was to throw dust in the eyes of King Rumfiz (as the Turks say), so that he might not find out their knavery." CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Mr Johnson leaned back in his seat, when, slowly stooping down for his tumbler, he brought it deliberately to his mouth, and took a prolonged sip. Then shaking his head, he observed, "Politics are awful things to meddle with--the very thought of what I endured, turns my throat into a dust-hole." Again he sipped, and again he shook his head. "Young gentlemen," he said solemnly, "if ever any of you rise to the top of the profession, and I hope you may--and should his Majesty, King George, send for you, and offer to make you a Prime Minister, take an old man's advice, and respectfully decline the honour. Say that standing at the helm of one of his ships, and fighting her as long as there is a shot in the locker, is one thing, and standing at the helm of State, and being badgered by friends and foes alike, is another. You may quote me as an authority. Well, I was telling you how I managed when I was Prime Minister to King Rumfiz, and of the trouble caused me by certain personages in the island of Blarney Botherum. "I was not long in discovering the tricks of these medicine men, and of their friends who lived on a trade they called patriotism, but the difficulty was to catch them. I at last, however, found a few tripping, and having hung them up, the rest were very soon brought into a state of implicit obedience to my commands.