A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 119: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

116 A QUEER RACE. CHAPTER XIX. WHY NOT QUEEN? ALTHOUGH I spent half the night in poring over log- books and other records, and conversing with Field— who, now that the ice was broken, threw aside his re- serve, and treated me with all the cordiality I could desire—tI rose next morning before the sun, and, accom- panied by Bolsover, and my host, and ten fishermen, went on board the Diana to prepare for the reception of @ueen Mab. | On our way thither Field explained how the present ruler came to her title. ‘T'wo years previously Mabel Fane had succeeded her father, the fourth Protector; and as she strongly objected to the appellation as being unsuitable for a young woman, and the Council of Nine concurred in the objection, it became necessary to choose another. ‘The choice was, however, attended with some difficulty. ‘‘ Protectress,” besides being questionable English, did not sound well. ‘‘Governess,” besides sounding worse, was generally used in another sense. ‘“Ohief”’ and ‘** President ” have no feminine, and Miss Fane made it a condition size qua non that the title selected should denote her sex. The difficulty was solved by an ingenious member of the council. ‘‘ Why not queen?” he said. ‘‘It is the feminine of king; and ‘king,’ in the original significa- tion of the word, meant simply ‘the man who can ’—the strong man, in fact; he who is best qualified to be leader and chief. Hence ‘queen’ means the ‘woman who can,’ and no more implies divine right or royal descent than the title of ‘ Protector’ chosen by the first Denzil.” | Mabel liked the idea. She decided on the spot that she should be called ‘‘queen;” but strictly in the sense mentioned by the member of the council to whom the suggestion was due. As for the shortening of her Chris- tian name to Mab, which was almost in the nature of things, she rather liked it. ‘‘Queen Mab” sounded so much better than ‘‘ Queen Mabel,” she said. ‘‘What sort of a queen does she make?” J asked Field. “© A very queenly one, I should say,” he answered, with a smile; ‘‘and-as you have seen already, she is rather ab- (E(o)/ AA) G JOO cS (E(0)