As regards Sackermena, the idea certainly afforded no lack of scope and variety. What with drawing maps, writing poetry, framing laws, adding up the totals of her army and reserves, devising for the soldiery “A dark red long coat with silver falcons, and thick leather buskins studden with iron,” and many another guise equally picturesque,—she certainly did not suffer from monotony in her self-chosen occupation. And the above examples by no means exhaust its possibilities. On a stray slip of paper we come upon a formal complaint from a “justice,” who, “passing in disguise through Pe,” was supplied with a loaf deficient in weight; and a tiny booklet (laboriously stitched together by the writer’s hot little hands) has the following title page: THE SACKERMENEE’S POCKET BOOK ---------- _Containing many Little Accounts of their Customs_ ---------- PUBLISHED BY S. L. BLAKE & CO. Hastings 1848 _Jan. 1850_ The two dates seem to indicate that _Sackermena_ flourished for perhaps two years; but the Pocket Book itself was not a hardy plant. The big foolscap sheets were clearly more stimulating to the imagination. The thing is child’s work throughout. From first to last it bears no trace of grown-up criticism; nor is there then or afterwards any note by her parents, teachers or friends, referring in even the most distant way to the faerie region in which the little girl must have spent so much of her time. Another thing strikes one incidentally—considering the atmosphere in which the child was brought up—as rather curious. There is no mention of clergy at Sackermena, nor of any form of church. We are not even told that nothing of the kind existed. Note again that the Despotic Emperor was the grand Lawgiver, General, Judge, Sage, Physician, and, in short, the Father, of his vast dominions. CHAPTER II SCHOOL LIFE “You often say how happy you were as a child,” an intimate friend remarked once to Dr. Jex-Blake, “but you never talk of your school life. I expect you were a terrible pickle?” “Specs so,” was the laconic response, and the subject dropped.