You know the man of kingly air? You run across him everywhere. He seems to think his hat a crown; he talks as though he handed down most all the wisdom that the seers have gathered in a thousand years. His dignity is most sublime; to joke about him is a crime, and when you meet him it is wise to lift your hat and close your eyes; and it would please him if you'd just lie down and grovel in the dust. That is the wiser course, I say, but I'm a feeble-minded jay, and when I meet the swelled-up man, I jolly him the best I can; I would to him the fact recall that he's but mortal, after all. He's naught but bones and legs and trunk, and lungs and lights, and kindred junk; he breathes the same old germy air that's breathed by hoboes everywhere. And when he dies, as die he must, he'll make as cheap a grade of dust as any Richard Roe in town; the monument that holds him down may tell his glories for a while, but folks will read it with a smile, and say: "That dead one must have thought that he was Johnnie on the spot, when he was on this earthly shore; I never heard of him before." |