“Sit down and have something,” he exclaimed. “What’ll it be? Tea, lemonade, beerine or just a drink from the old town pump? Here’s a new soft bottled beverage that’s having quite a run with the boys. It’s made of ginger, red pepper, turpentine, cocaine, yeast and chewing tobacco. Here’s another drink the boys call the ‘lame mule,’ because it hasn’t any kick. Ha, ha! Would you like to have some more of my jokes?”
“In just a few minutes, Your Majesty, but business before pleasure. I have been asked to interview you on the subject of prohibition, but I had no idea that booze was under the ban up here.”
“Oh, yes, we had to follow the fashion. Queen Cole, as you may not know, has been president of the West Jupiter W. C. T. U. for years, and when America did the Sahara act, why there was nothing to it but we must give prohibition a whirl too. But I dunno. I kind of think we’ll be back on the old basis again some day.
“Sometimes, however, I can’t help wondering what’ll be the next great reform. Abolishing tobacco, prob’ly. The fellows who never succeeded in learning to smoke are getting busy already, I see. If I called for my bowl today I wouldn’t get it, and I suppose along about week after next, if I call for my pipe, somebody will tell me that all tobacco is prohibited except Wheeling tobies containing less than half of one per cent of the real thing. I can still call for my fiddlers three, but the next thing I know they’ll be locking me up for running a cabaret without a license and a cover charge.
“You never can tell where those measly reformers will break out next. One of these mornings you’ll pick up the paper and read: ‘Association for the Prohibition of Lemon Pie Introduces Bill in Congress. Alarming Increase in Indigestion Attributed to Seductive Delicacy. New Law Provides for Right of Search of Pantries.’ There’d be a lot of kicks, but what’s the use? Folk would go around wearing buttons inscribed: ‘No Pie, No Work.’ Orators would point out that the workingman must have his pie. Schoolboys would go on strike. New England farmers would protest that their breakfasts had been spoiled. But the pie amendment would be slipped in some appropriation bill as a joker, and then good-bye pie.
“That would be only a starter. The scheme to have the government prescribe what you shall eat and drink and smoke is only beginning to get up speed. Every domestic menu will have to be O. K’d by the Secretary of the Interior. There will be laws to make everybody go to bed at ten and get up at six, to prohibit the wearing of blue neckties with red whiskers, to compel the printing of all baseball reports in English, and to force pedestrians to wear license numbers, front and rear, and give three loud honks on approaching congested cross-walks.
“You’ll have to get up in the morning by the official whistle, eat breakfast according to the food controller, ride to work in a government street car, work so many hours, play a round of golf on the public links, don a Bureau of Health mask to kiss your wife when you get home, eat another government meal, sit on the front porch and smoke a tobaccoless cigar, fight the mosquitos awhile—remembering the anti-profanity amendment to the old Federal Constitution—and then go to bed when the curfew sounds, being careful not to transgress the state anti-snoring law. That’s what you’re coming to.
“‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul.’ Ah, my boy, I’m afraid the emphasis is going to be on the ‘was.’ I try to keep up the bluff that I’m enjoying myself; it’s a tough task. Take away my pipe, and my bowl, and my fiddlers three, and you can have my job as king. A king will have no more fun than a commoner. But here comes the Queen. Sh! Sh! Not a word of this to Her Majesty.
“Yes, my dear, this young man and I have just been having a chat about the delights and benefits of prohibition. As I was saying, what a glorious thing it is to think that husbands who used to hang around bar-rooms after office hours will now spend their evenings at home, sitting by the fireside reading Woodrow Wilson’s ‘History of the American People’ in nine volumes, net, and drinking hot lemonade. Must you go so soon? Well, good-bye. And listen: if you must print what I said, perhaps you’d better not use my name. Just say ‘one of our most prominent citizens,’ or something. Farewell.”
And as I stepped into the cockpit of my ethereal airplane I reflected that some kings, after all, are no different from other men.