“Oh, certainly; and you must give me your free and candid criticisms.”
“Yes, I will do so; and I don’t doubt I shall find profit in the reading of it, and a little bit of myself in more than one of your characters.”
A fortnight after this conversation Miss Stansfield received from her friend the promised story, which we give in the following chapter.
Chapter Seven.
The Selfish Islands.
A certain Eastern despot, whose attention had been painfully drawn to the odious character of selfishness, by finding it exhibited in a very marked manner towards himself by some who had, in looking after their own interests, ventured to thwart the royal will, was resolved to get rid of all the most selfish people out of his capital. To that end he made proclamation that on a certain day he would give a grand banquet to all the unselfish people in the metropolis, nothing being needed for admittance to the feast but the personal application of any one laying claim to unselfishness to the lord chancellor for a ticket.
The king took this course under the firm conviction that all the most selfish people, being utterly blinded by self-esteem to their own failing, would be the very persons most ready to claim admittance to the banquet; and in this expectation he was not disappointed. But he was a little staggered to find that about a thousand persons, of both sexes and of nearly all ages, applied at the office for tickets of admission and many of them such as had not made their appearance in public for many long years past. Thus, when the feast-day came, bed-ridden men and women arrived at the palace dressed out in silks and satins; gouty men hobbled in without their crutches; and multitudes who had long been incapacitated from doing anything but try the patience of their friends and indulge their own whims, made no difficulty of appearing among the guests. And it was strange, too, to see at the king’s table delicate ladies and chronic invalids, who were never met with at places of worship or benevolent meetings, because the cold or the heat, or their nerves or their lungs made it a duty for them to be keepers at home. There were also present about two hundred spoilt children, whose mothers considered them to be “dear unselfish little darlings,” and about an equal number of young ladies and young gentlemen, whose chief delight had consisted in spending their fathers’ money, and studying their own sweet persons in the looking-glass.
Of course, the company behaved with due decorum at the banquet, especially as the king did them the honour of sitting down to table with them, the only exception being on the part of the spoilt children, whom not even the presence of royalty itself could restrain from personal encounters over the more attractive-looking dishes.