The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (12.1897)

The Restless River

By Evelyn Sharp

The land of Nonamia was once ruled by an extremely
original Queen. Even her childhood had been exceptional,
for, although the fairies had been invited as usual to her christen-
ing, not one of them had spoilt the fun by making unpleasant
predictions, and not one of them had given her a single gift, that
could be of any use to her afterwards. So the Queen of Nonamia
had nothing to help her through life, except her own wits ; she
was not even beautiful, and her chief virtue was the patience she
showed for the eternal stupidity of the Nonamiacs. There was
a King of Nonamia, too, but no one knew anything about him,
except that he- was the husband of the Queen of Nonamia ; and
that, indeed, was the most distinctive thing that could be said
about him. For the marriage of the Queen had been just as
original as everything else about her. She employed none of the
usual devices for obtaining an interesting husband, but merely
sent into the next country for the eldest son of the reigning
king.

“ I decline to marry a tailor merely because he has killed a few
giants, or outwitted a bear,” she declared to her guardians, when
they naturally objected to such an obvious mode of selection.
“ He is a tailor, for all that ; and the same may be said of the

woodcutter’s