CONCERNING A HUMP 73

positive ornament, if you only regarded it
from a proper point of view. A certain
number of persons belonging to this class
carried matters still further, and introduced
the fashion of wearing false or artificial
humps, in order to resemble the Prince and
to prove the sincerity of the opinion which
they professed.

But neither the Prince nor his royal
parents were deceived by this for a moment.
They knew well enough that a hump was a
hump, all the world over, and that no reason-
able person would ever wear one if nature
had kindly allowed him to be born with-
out it.

So the courtiers took nothing by their
foolish action; the fashion of wearing false
humps did not last beyond one season, and
everybody knew that the royal family felt
the state of the Prince as a real misfortune.
Doctors had been consulted ever since the
boy’s birth, but they had done him no good,
and as each fresh doctor generally contra-
dicted somewhat flatly what the last one had
said, and still had no better success in the
new prescriptions which he gave, the King
grew in course of time very angry, and