CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. — THE MOVEMENT AND THE MAN.
CHAPTER II. — A FINANCIAL EXPEDIENT.
CHAPTER III. — AN EXCESS OF AUTHORITY.
CHAPTER IV. — OVERTURES FROM THE OPPOSITION.
CHAPTER V. — I APPRECIATE THE SITUATION.
CHAPTER VI. — MOURONS POUR LA PATRIE!
CHAPTER VII. — THE MINE IS LAID.
CHAPTER VIII. — JOHNNY CARR IS WILLFUL.
CHAPTER XI. — DIVIDING THE SPOILS.
CHAPTER XII. — BETWEEN TWO FIRES.
CHAPTER XIII. — I WORK UPON HUMAN NATURE.
CHAPTER XIV. — FAREWELL TO AUREATALAND.
CHAPTER XV. — A DIPLOMATIC ARRANGEMENT.
In the year 1884 the Republic of Aureataland was certainly not in a flourishing condition. Although most happily situated (it lies on the coast of South America, rather to the north—I mustn’t be more definite), and gifted with an extensive territory, nearly as big as Yorkshire, it had yet failed to make that material progress which had been hoped by its founders. It is true that the state was still in its infancy, being an offshoot from another and larger realm, and having obtained the boon of freedom and self-government only as recently as 1871, after a series of political convulsions of a violent character, which may be studied with advantage in the well-known history of “The Making of Aureataland,” by a learned professor of the Jeremiah P. Jecks University in the United States of America. This profound historian is, beyond all question, accurate in attributing the chief share in the national movement to the energy and ability of the first President of Aureataland, his Excellency, President Marcus W. Whittingham, a native of Virginia. Having enjoyed a personal friendship (not, unhappily, extended to public affairs) with that talented man, as will subsequently appear, I have great pleasure in publicly indorsing the professor’s eulogium. Not only did the President bring Aureataland into being, but he molded her whole constitution. “It was his genius” (as the professor observes with propriety) “which was fired with the idea of creating a truly