and making his subjects feel that his kingship was not a mere matter of form, but that he was really interested in the most humble life among his people.
It was a strange town, all up-hill and down-hill, with steep rocks and precipices all mixed up with the public streets. The people, for all their busy habits, had no trade, or rather they did not manufacture anything. They built houses, and brought up their families. They wrapped their children up very snugly and carried them about at an earlier age than we consider safe, and they milked their cows, which were large and green and had wings, and they drank the milk, and they gathered the fruit of the trees that grew on the plain below the town, and they got on very well indeed. There was only one drawback to life in Antioch, and that was its uncertainty. At any moment an earthquake might occur, then down would go half the town, and the busy citizens had it all to build again. They soon did it, for they were nothing if not industrious. A much more awful thing was the storm of hot rain that now and then fell on the town, a blighting rain that killed all it touched. This was more dreaded than even the earthquakes, but fortunately it very seldom happened.
