such a mate, and to see heirs arising under your joint tuition, to convey down your royal blood to the latest posterity? Would not this, I say, be a grateful reflection to you in your declining years?" "Truly, father," says the king, "as you have painted it, the prospect could not fail to please, and under the circumstances you have put it, it would meet my approbation; but where is such a thing as a woman of this character to be found? I fear only in the imagination." "Sir," says I, after a seeming muse for some time, "what should you think of Oniwheske, the king of Norbon's daughter? he has but that one child, I hear."--"Dear father, have done," says his majesty; "to what purpose should you mention her? We but barely know that there is such a State, we have never had any intercourse; and, besides, as you say he has but one child, can you suppose she will ever marry, to leave so fine a kingdom, and live here?"--"But, sir," says I, "now we are supposing, suppose she should, with her father's consent, be willing to marry you, would you have her for your queen?"--"To make any doubt of that, father," says he, "is almost to suppose me a fool."--"Then, sir," says I, "her father has consented, and she too; and if I durst have presumed so far, or had known your mind sooner, she would I believe have ventured with me to have become yours, but you might have slighted her, and crowned heads are not to be trifled with; but since you are pleased to show your approbation of it, I can assure you, sir, her person will yield to none in your majesty's dominions; for, sir, I have been there, and have seen her, and she is your own, and her kingdom too, upon demand." "Father," says the king, looking earnestly at me, "I have been frequently, since I knew you first, in doubt of my own existence. My life seems a dream to me; for if existence is to be judged of by one's faculties only, I have been in such a delusion of them ever since, that as I find myself unable to judge with certainty of any other thing, so I am subject to doubt whether I really exist. Are these things possible that you tell me, father?" I then told him the whole affair, and advised him by all means to accept the offer, and marry the princess out of hand. His majesty, when I had brought him thoroughly to believe me, was as eager to consummate the marriage, as I was to have him; but then, whether he should go to her, or she come to him, was the question. I told him it was a thing unusual for a sovereign to quit his own dominions for a wife; but would advise an embassy to her father, with notice that his majesty would meet and espouse her on the frontiers of the two kingdoms. The ambassadors returning with an appointment of time and place, it was not above a month before I had settled Stygee on the thrones of Sass Doorpt Swangeanti and Mount Alkoe, with the reversion of the kingdom of Norbon, without a competitor.