On the summit of this tripod was raised the machine of state.
This was found to be a capital invention in theory, though practice, as practice is very apt to do, subjected it to some essential modifications.

The king, having his stick all his own way, gave a great deal of trouble to the two other sets of stick-holders; and, unwilling to disturb the theory, for that was deemed to be irrevocably settled and sacred, the nobility, who, for their own particular convenience, paid the principal workmen at the base of the people's stick to stand steady, set about the means of keeping the king's stick, also, in a more uniform and serviceable attitude.

It was on this occasion that, discovering the king never could keep his end of the great social stick in the place where he had sworn to keep it, they solemnly declared that he must have forgotten where the constitutional foot-hole was, and that he had irretrievably lost his memory--a decision that was the remote cause of the recent calamity of Captain Poke.

The king was no sooner constitutionally deprived of his memory, than it was an easy matter to strip him of all his other faculties; after which it was humanely decreed, as indeed it ought to be in the case of a being so destitute, that he could do no wrong.

By way of following out the idea on a humane and Christian-like principle, and in order to make one part of the practice conform to the other, it was shortly after determined that he should do nothing; his eldest first-cousin of the masculine gender being legally proclaimed his substitute.