If he began to talk about the crops; or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics; or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology--no matter what -- I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale.

Wherever we halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, with this kind of folk, you would see a different result." Well, when he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying I wished he had fetched a hundred.

The thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this: "Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style.
Pity but style was marketable." At last this sort of remark produced an evil result.

Our owner was a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king.

So he went to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty.