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(while the tremendous knocking is heard again): It looks as if they'd admit themselves.

Count Rolando: I don't like the rude manner of their approach.

Goodforme: They ought to have sent in their cards.

Sir Tomalin: It would be unwise, your Highness, to grant their request. Goodforme: Tell them the doctor says your heart's affected and you can't see any

one.

Prince Florimel: Oh, there's nothing to fear! Who would molest us on this happy day?

Queen Titania: None, my love. Admit them.

Goodforme: Well, if it is all the same to you, just let me out before you let them in.

In response to a royal command, the fairy guards wave their wands and the portcullis flies up. At the head of a cavalcade of his followers, all, as well as himself, disguised, enters the mighty Dragonfel, a wicked enchanter, who, foreseeing in a union of the Brownies and Fays a "trust "dangerous to his own profitable monopoly in evil, is determined to prevent the approaching marriage. He disguises his design, however, along with his person, and avows that, having heard of the marriage, he and his friends have come

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I need no sabre, lance, or spear,

To guard me whene'er I slumber.
My people kneel, but not through fear;
Love governs the entire number.

My slightest wish they all obey;
I never use any axes;

I always let them have their way;
They don't have to pay high taxes.

No undertaker need apply;

I'm not for embalmment crazy. My subjects cry, as I pass by,

"The Brownie king is a daisy."

The song ended, he draws Prince Florimel, who at marriage will succeed him as king, aside for a word or two of friendly advice. "Don't try to raise the tax on tea,' he urges, "or build a Panama canal, or monkey with Queen Lil, and you're all right.'

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Prince Florimel: Rest assured I shall not involve myself.

King: And don't permit your subjects to grow too familiar with you. Don't let them call you "Your Royal Door-knobs" or "Your Kingly Jags!" You'd better avoid "jags" altogether. You mustn't be too dee rigueur, but just hold them off, as it

were.

"Then sit

down and

rest," he
commands;

adding,

"You are
terrible in
all posi-
tions."

Suddenly
there
breaks in
on the bus-

iness and
the merry-
making a

wild alarm from the castle bells; and the

Fays, distracted and in consternation, come trooping in with the news that the queen and her personal attendants have been abducted.

Suspicion immediately falls on is found, have disappeared. On the distant the fair-spoken strangers; for they, too, it horizon line a tiny sail is seen. King Stan

islaus suggests:

We'll build a raft with magic sleight,

And brave the sea ere morning's light. The Brownies respond heartily: "A raft! He finds abundant business awaiting him. a raft! Let's build a raft!" But the For one thing, the Standing Army fall into voyage proves a most stormy and disastrous revolt. As one man they declare, "We're one. While perils upon perils' head accumutired of being the Standing Army." The late, a prayer is heard above the fury of the king meets the crisis with ready sagacity. gale. The Brownies sing:

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The prayer avails. In the distance, rising from the mighty depths, Ne his chariot, driving his sea-horses, with nymphs as attendants, and the Go Mirth in the prow, appears. He quiets the troubled waters and bids the s still. In the wake of his chariot the Brownies proceed to the country of the Dragonfel. And their talk and song show them to be, for all their trials, in e heart at their landing.

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J. Chappie Goodforme: But alas for our art, we were not over smart

All:

Who the water-tight bunkers left out

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