Dane Barbados Jr. on: Employment (part II)

For the next two years your Humble, Dane Barbados Jr., worked 14 hour shifts in his country's largest, deepest, coalmine. Clothed in the thick, black, clouds of his country's coal dust none of his citizenry recognized the young monarch.

For two years I slept, with naught but my filthy, coaldust encrusted, work garments to keep me warm. During those two years I strove to do my father's bidding, living on naught but what I and I alone had earned. During those two years, by the infallable count of Dane Barbados Jr., I snapped the necks of over 100 rodents and bruised my tender young knuckles shattering the jaws of over 100 toughs of the mines who would seek to victimize your Humble.

At the end of those two years, after shoving a rat into the mouth of one of the mine's quarrelous denizens did Dane Barbados Jr. finally feel that he had, indeed, learned the value of hard work.

I strode triumphantly up to the gilded palace gates, my helmet clasped under my arm and my young jaw, just starting to show the first signs of stubble, raised, daring the Gods themselves to deny my entry.

What the Gods themselves couldn't do the monarch, Dane Barbados Sr., could. With another sealed envelope. This newest communique made your Humble aware that if he again approached the palace without first being summoned that he would not only face disownment but also banishment from the realm only after recieving most greivous bodily harm at the hands of the monarch himself.

Dane Barbados Jr. was not pleased.

To be continued...