The canoe and the saddle Author:Theodore Winthrop Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. A KLALAM GRANDEE. The Duke of York was ducally drunk. His brother, King George, was drunk — royally. Royalty may disdain public opinion, and fall as lo... more »w as it pleases. But a brother of the throne, leader of the opposition, possible Regent, possible King, must retain at least a swaying perpendicular. King George had kept his chair of state until an angular sitting position was impossible; then he had subsided into a curvilinear droop, and at last fairly toppled over, and lay in his lodge, limp and stertorous. In his lodge lay Georgius Rex, in flabby insensibility. Dead to the duties of sovereignty was the King of the Klalams. Like other royal Georges, in palaces more regal than this Port Townsend wigwam, in realms more civilized than here, where the great tides of Puget Sound rise and fall, this royal George had sunk in absolute wreck. Kings are but men. Several kings have thought themselves the god Bacchus. George of the Klalams had imbibed this ambitious error, and had proved himself very much lower than a god, much lower than a man, lower than any plebeian Klalam Indian,— a drunken king. In the great shed of slabs that served them for palace sat the Queen,— sat the Queens,—mild-eyed, melancholy, copper-colored persons, also, sad to say, not sober. Etiquette demanded inebriety. The stern rules of royal indecorum must be obeyed. The Queen Dowager had succumbed to ceremony; the Queen Consort was sinking; every lesser queen,—the favorites for sympathy, the neglected for consolation,— all had imitated their lord and master. Courtiers had done likewise. Chamberlain Gold Stick, Black Rod, Garter King at Arms, a dozen high functionaries, were prostrate by the side of prostrate majesty. Courtiers grovelled with their sovereign. Sardanapalus never pre- As to the spellin...« less