Only a careless, stupid boy perched on a high stool within the schoolroom, trying to learn his lesson, long after his companions had been dismissed to their several homes. Only the biggest dunce at Slate-em’s Academy, who wouldn’t try, like other boys, to master his tasks—not because he hadn’t the ability to do so, but because he wanted to be a King. Yes, dear readers, Noel Biffin, son of Jack Biffin, the tin-smith, wanted to be a King. Nothing less would satisfy him. No, not even the rank of Duke or Prince; so, instead of minding his lessons, young Biffin drew Kings on his slate and in his copy-book, and was therefore compelled to ride the wooden horse after school hours.
It was a very beautiful evening, with a grand sunset glow flooding Slate-em’s Academy, and wrapping the Dunce round and round as with an amber-coloured mantle, orange tinted. The old usher, nodding in his chair, was quite unconscious of the halo which played round and about his bald, venerable head, and made him appear for one brief moment like one of the Apostles. The good, patient old man was tired with the heat, and weary with the incessant chatter of the boys, and so he dozed in comfort, and saw not the wee, shapely creature who entered at the window and approached the boy as he stood upon the stool and bent the knee before him. Although small, the stranger was very handsome, and decked from head to heel in bright, glittering armour, with a crimson plume adorning his helmet.
“May it please your gracious Majesty,” he said, doffing his helmet, “my name is Popgun—Sir Guy Fawkes Popgun, Knight—one of your Majesty’s subjects from the realm of Shadowland.” The Dunce nearly fell from the stool in amazement at the strange words. He looked towards the still sleeping master, and from him to the armour-clad Knight at his feet, and replied in a low tone, “Hush! Don’t speak so loud. I haven’t learnt my lesson yet; if he wakens he’ll thrash me. Now, what do you want?”
“Pardon, your liege,” rejoined the Knight respectfully, “I am sent as ambassador from the good people of Shadowland to inform your Majesty that you have been unanimously elected monarch of our wide and spacious dominions, and I beg that it may please you to allow me to conduct you thither without delay.”
“A King! Am I really a King after all?” cried Biffin, jumping from the stool.
“Every inch a King, your Majesty,” replied Sir Guy Fawkes Popgun, replacing his headpiece. “Will your liege follow me?”
“Stop, where is Shadowland?” inquired the boy.
“Speeding away across the country as swift as the wind.”
“On the borders of Fancy, where dwell my kindred, the Australian elves. Fairyland will have none but a mortal to reign over her. Come, your Majesty.” And with a dignified bearing the Elfin Knight strode past the slumbering usher, and led the newly-elected Majesty of Elfland out at the door, which opened at their approach. Beyond the school, out on the open play-ground, stood two fine-looking emus, splendidly caparisoned, and ready for a journey; and before young Biffin knew what he was about he and his companion were mounted thereon, and were speeding away across the country as swift as the wind. Small townships, hills and valleys, tracts of gloomy forests, and broad lakes appeared before them, and disappeared behind them again, before the boy could say “Jack Robinson.” Indeed, poor Biffin hadn’t breath to say anything, they proceeded so swiftly. At length they came to a large sandy desert on the confines of which rose a chain of lofty mountains. After crossing the desert these mountains looked so steep and high that further progress appeared at an end, but the Knight went to a cave close by and brought forth a pair of flying horses, which flew upward with them in a moment and landed them far away on the other side in safety—and this was Shadowland of the Elfins. What poet’s brain, teeming with strange wild fancies, could give expression to such a scene of loveliness as Noel the Dunce saw here? What travel-stained worshipper of Nature, traversing the girdle of the globe, ever feasted his eyes on a more glorious prospect? Not at Rome, filled as it is with monuments of man; nor at Athens, where Paul found the tablet inscribed, “To the Unknown God”; or on that Ionian Isle, where the inspired John wrote “The Revelation.” Beautiful and sacred are all three to view, but I have feasted my soul on scenes equally grand and sublime in this new land where the Universal Spirit of “Our Father” seemed to rest, and attract the uplifted eyes and the inmost thoughts of the Soul to the Invisible Presence.
The flying steeds alighted in a ravine shut in by walls of fantastic rocks, peaked and turreted like the gable of some old feudal castle. Here a mounted escort, composed of the potent and mighty of the empire, awaited their coming, and led the King upwards to a grassy platform, shaded by a patch of hoary trees, where a throne built of wild-flowers had been erected for his reception. The site commanded a fine view of the surrounding country, and the elected monarch beheld with satisfaction thousands and thousands of his subjects assembled on the plains below to do him homage, and whose cheers and shouts rang far and wide when he ascended the throne to read the proclamation.
From time to time, for generations past, the Elfin Kings had to read their own proclamations, but when young Biffin received the paper from the hands of the Prime Minister his heart sank within him. His progress at school had been so slow that he was unable to read print fluently. How, then, was he to master the contents of the closely-written parchment in his hand? At that moment he would have given all his toys at home, even to his crop-eared pony, to have been able to read writing; but he couldn’t read or spell, nor make anything better than a pot-hook.
“May it please your Majesty to read the proclamation to the people?” whispered Sir Guy Fawkes Popgun in the King’s ear.
“I—I cannot read,” replied his Majesty, trembling with shame and vexation.
“Cannot read!” repeated the courtiers, looking at each other. “Surely your Majesty is jesting.”
“Indeed, gentlemen, I’m afraid I’m a dunce,” replied Biffin sheepishly.
“A dunce, who cannot read, and yet has the silly presumption to be a King!” shouted the fairy populace in a mocking tone. “Hurrah for King Dunce! Long live King Dunce!”
And such is the uncertainty of popular favour in Elfland, that the vast assembly, who but a moment before had exhibited such hearty tokens of good-will, began to hoot and clamour in derision. They pulled the monarch from his throne, stripped him of his robes of state, and carried him to a rocky peak, where they doffed his crown and replaced it with a wreath of straw; while their shouts—“Long live King Dunce! Hurrah for King Dunce!”—once more rent the air.
In all his troubles at home, and his canings and disappointments with his lessons at school, our hero never felt so humbled and crestfallen in his life before. He would have given anything to be enabled to read and write well. And this wish would have been easily gratified, had he but paid a little attention to his books while at the Academy; but he hadn’t done so, and the result was his downfall from the proud position he had so long coveted.
What availed his regrets now, when he was led away a prisoner, and placed in a dark cave, guarded by seven monsters, whose bodies were covered with long feathers, and who had heads like monkeys? It availed nothing that they set him hard lessons day and night, beat him with rods, until he was bruised all over, and suffered such pain that he made his escape from the cave. But the monsters were after him across the country, over hill and dale, until he came to the top of the high mountain which overlooked the desert, and the monsters being close behind, there was nothing left for him in his last extremity but to leap for his life and liberty.
And Noel Biffin did leap; but instead of being dashed to pieces, the Dunce came down from his perch on the stool to the floor of the schoolroom, the noise of which roused the usher from his nap, who gave the stupid boy a dose of cane pie and sent him home.