programme of chimes. The citizens got into their Sunday clothes, which were most wonderful clothes in their way; and the town-crier, who played the trumpet, got his instrument out and polished it up until it shone like gold. But the man who felt most of the burden of responsibility upon his shoulders was the Head Burgess. He got into his robes of office as quickly as his wife and his three daughters could array him, and then he hastened to the Rathhaus, or Town Hall, and there consulted the archives to find out from the records of his predecessors what it became him to do when his Majesty’s Envoy should announce his errand. He must make a speech, that was clear, for the honor of the Island. But what speech should he make? He could not compose one on the instant--in fact, he could not compose one at all. What had his forerunners done on like occasions? He looked over the record and found that three King’s Envoys had landed on the Island: one in 1699, to announce that the Island had been ceded by one kingdom to another; another in 1764, to inform the people that the great-grandmother of the hereditary Prince was dead; and another in 1848, to proclaim that the Islanders’ right of exemption from conscription was suspended. In not one of these cases, it should be remarked, did the message of King, Prince or Emperor, change the face of affairs on the Island in the smallest degree. The herring market remaining stable, the Ausserlanders cared no whit to whom they paid taxes; as to the death of the Prince’s great-grandmother, they simply remarked that it was a pity to die at the early age of eighty-seven; and when they were told that they would have to get up a draft and be conscripted into the army or navy, they just went fishing, and there the matter dropped. One is not an Ausserlander for nothing. But the Head Burgess found that the same speech had been used on all three occasions. It was short, and he had little difficulty in committing it to memory, for it took the ship of his Majesty’s Envoy six good hours to get into port. This was the speech: “Noble and Honorable, Well and High-Born Sir, the people of Ausserland desire through their representative, the Head Burgess, to affirm their unwavering loyalty to the most illustrious and high-born personage who condescends to assume the government of a loyal and independent populace, and to express the hope that Divine Providence may endow him with such power and capacity as properly befit a so-situated ruler.”