Part 5 - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Audiobook by Mark Twain (Chs 23-26)

PART 5: CHAPTER XXIII RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN
Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while.
Merlin was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as
hard as ever, but looking pretty down- hearted, for of course he had not started
even a perspiration in that well yet.
Finally I said: "How does the thing promise by this time,
partner?"
"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest enchantment known to the
princes of the occult arts in the lands of the East; an it fail me, naught can avail.
Peace, until I finish."
He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must have made matters
uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled down over
their dens in a dense and billowy fog.
He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted his body and sawed the air
with his hands in a most extraordinary way. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped
down panting, and about exhausted.
Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks and nuns, and behind them a multitude
of pilgrims and a couple of acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious
smoke, and all in a grand state of excitement.
The abbot inquired anxiously for results. Merlin said:
"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these waters, this which I
have but just essayed had done it.
It has failed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared is a truth
established; the sign of this failure is, that the most potent spirit known to the
magicians of the East, and whose name none
may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well.
The mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret of that spell,
and without that secret none can break it.
The water will flow no more forever, good Father.
I have done what man could. Suffer me to go."
Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation.
He turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said:
"Ye have heard him.
Is it true?" "Part of it is."
"Not all, then, not all! What part is true?"
"That that spirit with the Russian name has put his spell upon the well."
"God's wounds, then are we ruined!" "Possibly."
"But not certainly?
Ye mean, not certainly?" "That is it."
"Wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none can break the spell--"
"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true.
There are conditions under which an effort to break it may have some chance--that is,
some small, some trifling chance--of success."
"The conditions--"
"Oh, they are nothing difficult.
Only these: I want the well and the surroundings for the space of half a mile,
entirely to myself from sunset to-day until I remove the ban--and nobody allowed to
cross the ground but by my authority."
"Are these all?" "Yes."
"And you have no fear to try?" "Oh, none.
One may fail, of course; and one may also succeed.
One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions?"
"These and all others ye may name.
I will issue commandment to that effect." "Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile.
"Ye wit that he that would break this spell must know that spirit's name?"
"Yes, I know his name."
"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye must likewise
pronounce it? Ha-ha!
Knew ye that?"
"Yes, I knew that, too." "You had that knowledge!
Art a fool? Are ye minded to utter that name and die?"
"Utter it?
Why certainly. I would utter it if it was Welsh."
"Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to tell Arthur."
"That's all right.
Take your gripsack and get along. The thing for you to do is to go home and
work the weather, John W. Merlin."
It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst weather-failure in the
kingdom.
Whenever he ordered up the danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead
calm, sure, and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats.
But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine his reputation.
However, that shot raised his bile, and instead of starting home to report my
death, he said he would remain and enjoy it.
My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, for they had traveled
double tides.
They had pack-mules along, and had brought everything I needed--tools, pump, lead
pipe, Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire sprays,
electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries--
everything necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle.
They got their supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a solitude
so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed the required conditions.
We took possession of the well and its surroundings.
My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from the stoning up of a well to
the constructing of a mathematical instrument.
An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in ship-shape fashion, and the water
began to rise. Then we stowed our fireworks in the chapel,
locked up the place, and went home to bed.
Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there was a deal to do
yet, and I was determined to spring the miracle before midnight, for business
reasons: for whereas a miracle worked for
the Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is worth six times as much if you
get it in on a Sunday.
In nine hours the water had risen to its customary level--that is to say, it was
within twenty-three feet of the top.
We put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the
capital; we bored into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the
well-chamber and inserted a section of lead
pipe that was long enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond the
threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the two hundred and fifty acres
of people I was intending should be present
on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at the proper time.
We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this hogshead to the
flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down fast, poured in gunpowder till it
lay loosely an inch deep on the bottom,
then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they could loosely stand, all the
different breeds of rockets there are; and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I
can tell you.
We grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder, we placed a whole
magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the roof--blue on one corner, green on
another, red on another, and purple on the last--and grounded a wire in each.
About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of scantlings, about four
feet high, and laid planks on it, and so made a platform.
We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed for the occasion, and topped it
off with the abbot's own throne.
When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every
detail that will count; you want to make all the properties impressive to the public
eye; you want to make matters comfortable
for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for
all they are worth. I know the value of these things, for I
know human nature.
You can't throw too much style into a miracle.
It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes money; but it pays in the end.
Well, we brought the wires to the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the
ground to the platform, and hid the batteries there.
We put a rope fence a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common
multitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open at 10:30,
performance to begin at 11:25 sharp.
I wished I could charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer.
I instructed my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was around, and
be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and make the fur fly.
Then we went home to supper.
The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time; and now for two
or three days a steady avalanche of people had been pouring into the valley.
The lower end of the valley was become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no
question about that.
Criers went the rounds early in the evening and announced the coming attempt, which put
every pulse up to fever heat.
They gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would move in state and
occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time all the region which was under my ban
must be clear; the bells would then cease
from tolling, and this sign should be permission to the multitudes to close in
and take their places.
I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the abbot's solemn
procession hove in sight--which it did not do till it was nearly to the rope fence,
because it was a starless black night and no torches permitted.
With it came Merlin, and took a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word
for once.
One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban, but they were
there, just the same.
The moment the bells stopped, those banked masses broke and poured over the line like
a vast black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow, and then it
solidified itself, and you could have
walked upon a pavement of human heads to-- well, miles.
We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes--a thing I had counted on
for effect; it is always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its
expectancy.
At length, out of the silence a noble Latin chant--men's voices--broke and swelled up
and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody.
I had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented.
When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my hands abroad, for
two minutes, with my face uplifted--that always produces a dead hush--and then
slowly pronounced this ghastly word with a
kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint:
"Constantinopolitanischerdudel- sackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"
Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched off one of my
electric connections and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous
blue glare!
It was immense --that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up
and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons.
The abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered with
agitated prayers.
Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his corns; he had never seen
anything to begin with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects.
I lifted my hands and groaned out this word--as it were in agony:
"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchens- sprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!"
--and turned on the red fire!
You should have heard that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that crimson hell
joined the blue! After sixty seconds I shouted:
"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampel- thiertreibertrauungsthraenen-tragoedie!"
--and lit up the green fire!
After waiting only forty seconds this time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out
the devastating syllables of this word of words:
"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoer- dermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!"
--and whirled on the purple glare!
There they were, all going at once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious
volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding
rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley.
In the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid against the
background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first time in twenty years.
I knew the boys were at the pump now and ready.
So I said to the abbot: "The time is come, Father.
I am about to pronounce the dread name and command the spell to dissolve.
You want to brace up, and take hold of something."
Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in another minute the spell will be broken, or
no mortal can break it.
If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water gush from the chapel
door!"
I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread my announcement to
those who couldn't hear, and so convey it to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand
exhibition of extra posturing and gesturing, and shouted:
"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain to now disgorge
into the skies all the infernal fires that still remain in him, and straightway
dissolve his spell and flee hence to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years.
By his own dread name I command it-- BGWJJILLIGKKK!"
Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of dazzling lances of
fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a
storm of flashing jewels!
One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people --then suddenly broke
into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they
saw the freed water leaping forth!
The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the chokings in his throat;
without utterance of any sort, he folded me in his arms and mashed me.
It was more eloquent than speech.
And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really no doctors that
were worth a damaged nickel.
You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down in that water and
kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and talk to it as if it were alive, and
welcome it back with the dear names they
gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who was long gone away and lost,
and was come home again. Yes, it was pretty to see, and made me
think more of them than I had done before.
I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down like a
landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and had never come to since.
He never had heard that name before,-- neither had I--but to him it was the right
one. Any jumble would have been the right one.
He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own mother could not have pronounced that
name better than I did. He never could understand how I survived
it, and I didn't tell him.
It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that.
Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out the deep
trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it.
But he didn't arrive.
When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back reverently to make
a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind of a superior being--and I was.
I was aware of that.
I took along a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump, and
set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the people out there were
going to sit up with the water all night,
consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted of it.
To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle itself, and they were full of
wonder over it; and of admiration, too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its
performance.
It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it.
I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it.
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PART 5: CHAPTER XXIV A RIVAL MAGICIAN
My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious now.
It seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable account.
The thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested by my seeing one of my
knights who was in the soap line come riding in.
According to history, the monks of this place two centuries before had been worldly
minded enough to want to wash. It might be that there was a leaven of this
unrighteousness still remaining.
So I sounded a Brother: "Wouldn't you like a bath?"
He shuddered at the thought--the thought of the peril of it to the well--but he said
with feeling:
"One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that blessed refreshment
sith that he was a boy.
Would God I might wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is
forbidden."
And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved he should have at least
one layer of his real estate removed, if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted
the pile.
So I went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this Brother.
He blenched at the idea--I don't mean that you could see him blench, for of course you
couldn't see it without you scraped him, and I didn't care enough about it to scrape
him, but I knew the blench was there, just
the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of the surface, too--blenched,
and trembled. He said:
"Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely granted out of a
grateful heart--but this, oh, this! Would you drive away the blessed water
again?"
"No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge which teaches
me that there was an error that other time when it was thought the institution of the
bath banished the fountain."
A large interest began to show up in the old man's face.
"My knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune, which was
caused by quite another sort of sin."
"These are brave words--but--but right welcome, if they be true."
"They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father.
Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever."
"You promise this?--you promise it? Say the word--say you promise it!"
"I do promise it."
"Then will I have the first bath myself! Go--get ye to your work.
Tarry not, tarry not, but go." I and my boys were at work, straight off.
The ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone
missing.
They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear,
as things accursed.
In two days we had it all done and the water in--a spacious pool of clear pure
water that a body could swim in. It was running water, too.
It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes.
The old abbot kept his word, and was the first to try it.
He went down black and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and
worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, and the game was
made! another triumph scored.
It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness, and I was very well
satisfied, and ready to move on now, but I struck a disappointment.
I caught a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking rheumatism of mine.
Of course the rheumatism hunted up my weakest place and located itself there.
This was the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what time he
was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace.
When at last I got out, I was a shadow.
But everybody was full of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back
into my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward
health and strength again; so I gained fast.
Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my mind to turn out and go a cruise
alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up.
My idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree and wander through the
country a week or two on foot.
This would give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest class
of free citizens on equal terms.
There was no other way to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the
operation of the laws upon it.
If I went among them as a gentleman, there would be restraints and conventionalities
which would shut me out from their private joys and troubles, and I should get no
further than the outside shell.
One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, and had climbed the
ridge which bordered the northern extremity of the valley, when I came upon an
artificial opening in the face of a low
precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage which had often
been pointed out to me from a distance as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt
and austerity.
I knew he had lately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lions
and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and difficult, and
had gone to Africa to take possession, so I
thought I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its
reputation. My surprise was great: the place was newly
swept and scoured.
Then there was another surprise. Back in the gloom of the cavern I heard the
clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation:
"Hello Central!
Is this you, Camelot?--Behold, thou mayst glad thy heart an thou hast faith to
believe the wonderful when that it cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself
manifest in impossible places--here
standeth in the flesh his mightiness The Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear
him speak!"
Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling together of
extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction of opposites and
irreconcilables--the home of the bogus
miracle become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned into a
telephone office! The telephone clerk stepped into the light,
and I recognized one of my young fellows.
I said: "How long has this office been established
here, Ulfius?" "But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it
please you.
We saw many lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, for that
where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town of goodly size."
"Quite right.
It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's a good stand, anyway.
Do you know where you are?"
"Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my comradeship moved
hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, I got me to needed rest, purposing
to inquire when I waked, and report the place's name to Camelot for record."
"Well, this is the Valley of Holiness." It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at
the name, as I had supposed he would.
He merely said: "I will so report it."
"Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late wonders that have
happened here!
You didn't hear of them?" "Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and
avoid speech with all. We learn naught but that we get by the
telephone from Camelot."
"Why they know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anything about the
great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?"
"Oh, that?
Indeed yes. But the name of this valley doth woundily
differ from the name of that one; indeed to differ wider were not pos--"
"What was that name, then?"
"The Valley of Hellishness." "That explains it.
Confound a telephone, anyway.
It is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of
divergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you know the name of the
place now.
Call up Camelot." He did it, and had Clarence sent for.
It was good to hear my boy's voice again. It was like being home.
After some affectionate interchanges, and some account of my late illness, I said:
"What is new?"
"The king and queen and many of the court do start even in this hour, to go to your
valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye have restored, and cleanse themselves of
sin, and see the place where the infernal
spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds --an ye listen sharply ye may hear
me wink and hear me likewise smile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection of those
flames from out our stock and sent them by your order."
"Does the king know the way to this place?"
"The king?--no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads that holp you
with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way, and appoint the places for
rests at noons and sleeps at night."
"This will bring them here--when?" "Mid-afternoon, or later, the third day."
"Anything else in the way of news?"
"The king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested to him; one
regiment is complete and officered." "The mischief!
I wanted a main hand in that myself.
There is only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer a
regular army."
"Yes--and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as one West Pointer in
that regiment." "What are you talking about?
Are you in earnest?"
"It is truly as I have said." "Why, this makes me uneasy.
Who were chosen, and what was the method? Competitive examination?"
"Indeed, I know naught of the method.
I but know this--these officers be all of noble family, and are born--what is it you
call it?--chuckleheads." "There's something wrong, Clarence."
"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do travel hence with the
king--young nobles both--and if you but wait where you are you will hear them
questioned."
"That is news to the purpose. I will get one West Pointer in, anyway.
Mount a man and send him to that school with a message; let him kill horses, if
necessary, but he must be there before sunset to-night and say--"
"There is no need.
I have laid a ground wire to the school. Prithee let me connect you with it."
It sounded good!
In this atmosphere of telephones and lightning communication with distant
regions, I was breathing the breath of life again after long suffocation.
I realized, then, what a creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me
all these years, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as to have
grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it.
I gave my order to the superintendent of the Academy personally.
I also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and a box or so of safety
matches. I was getting tired of doing without these
conveniences.
I could have them now, as I wasn't going to wear armor any more at present, and
therefore could get at my pockets. When I got back to the monastery, I found a
thing of interest going on.
The abbot and his monks were assembled in the great hall, observing with childish
wonder and faith the performances of a new magician, a fresh arrival.
His dress was the extreme of the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing
an Indian medicine-man wears.
He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical figures
in the air and on the floor,--the regular thing, you know.
He was a celebrity from Asia--so he said, and that was enough.
That sort of evidence was as good as gold, and passed current everywhere.
How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's terms.
His specialty was to tell you what any individual on the face of the globe was
doing at the moment; and what he had done at any time in the past, and what he would
do at any time in the future.
He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of the East was doing now?
The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer--this
reverend crowd would like to know what that monarch was at, just as this moment.
The fraud went through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement:
"The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment put money in the palm
of a holy begging friar--one, two, three pieces, and they be all of silver."
A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around:
"It is marvelous!" "Wonderful!"
"What study, what labor, to have acquired a so amazing power as this!"
Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing?
Yes.
He told them what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing.
Then he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the King of the Remote
Seas was about.
And so on and so on; and with each new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy
rose higher and higher.
They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time; but no, he never
had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with unerring precision.
I saw that if this thing went on I should lose my supremacy, this fellow would
capture my following, I should be left out in the cold.
I must put a cog in his wheel, and do it right away, too.
I said: "If I might ask, I should very greatly like
to know what a certain person is doing."
"Speak, and freely. I will tell you."
"It will be difficult--perhaps impossible." "My art knoweth not that word.
The more difficult it is, the more certainly will I reveal it to you."
You see, I was working up the interest.
It was getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around,
and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it:
"If you make no mistake--if you tell me truly what I want to know--I will give you
two hundred silver pennies." "The fortune is mine!
I will tell you what you would know."
"Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand."
"Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise.
It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd--that simple trick of inquiring about
somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away.
The magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his
experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet it.
He looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word.
"Come," I said, "what are you waiting for?
Is it possible you can answer up, right off, and tell what anybody on the other
side of the earth is doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three
yards from you?
Persons behind me know what I am doing with my right hand--they will indorse you if you
tell correctly." He was still dumb.
"Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak up and tell; it is because you don't
know. You a magician!
Good friends, this tramp is a mere fraud and liar."
This distressed the monks and terrified them.
They were not used to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know
what might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now; superstitious
bodings were in every mind.
The magician began to pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an
easy, nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated that his
mood was not destructive.
He said: "It hath struck me speechless, the
frivolity of this person's speech.
Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree
deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors,
them that be born in the purple and them only.
Had ye asked me what Arthur the great king is doing, it were another matter, and I had
told ye; but the doings of a subject interest me not."
"Oh, I misunderstood you.
I thought you said 'anybody,' and so I supposed 'anybody' included--well, anybody;
that is, everybody." "It doth--anybody that is of lofty birth;
and the better if he be royal."
"That, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his opportunity to
smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were not likely that so wonderful a gift as
this would be conferred for the revelation
of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be born near to the summits of
greatness. Our Arthur the king--"
"Would you know of him?" broke in the enchanter.
"Most gladly, yea, and gratefully." Everybody was full of awe and interest
again right away, the incorrigible idiots.
They watched the incantations absorbingly, and looked at me with a "There, now, what
can you say to that?" air, when the announcement came:
"The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these two hours
sleeping a dreamless sleep."
"God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself; "may that sleep be to
the refreshment of his body and his soul."
"And so it might be, if he were sleeping," I said, "but the king is not sleeping, the
king rides." Here was trouble again--a conflict of
authority.
Nobody knew which of us to believe; I still had some reputation left.
The magician's scorn was stirred, and he said:
"Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and magicians in my life days,
but none before that could sit idle and see to the heart of things with never an
incantation to help."
"You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it.
I use incantations myself, as this good brotherhood are aware--but only on
occasions of moment."
When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up.
That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after the queen and the
court, and got this information:
"They be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king."
I said: "That is merely another lie.
Half of them are about their amusements, the queen and the other half are not
sleeping, they ride.
Now perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king and
queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?"
"They sleep now, as I said; but on the morrow they will ride, for they go a
journey toward the sea." "And where will they be the day after to-
morrow at vespers?"
"Far to the north of Camelot, and half their journey will be done."
"That is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles.
Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done, and they will be here,
in this valley." That was a noble shot!
It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter
to his base. I followed the thing right up:
"If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail: if he does I will
ride you on a rail instead."
Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the king had passed through
two towns that were on the line. I spotted his progress on the succeeding
day in the same way.
I kept these matters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if he
kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon.
There was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed to be
no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange thing, truly.
Only one thing could explain this: that other magician had been cutting under me,
sure. This was true.
I asked a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician had tried
some further enchantments and found out that the court had concluded to make no
journey at all, but stay at home.
Think of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in
such a country.
These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in history, and the
only one within their memory that had a positive value, and yet here they were,
ready to take up with an adventurer who
could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word.
However, it was not good politics to let the king come without any fuss and feathers
at all, so I went down and drummed up a procession of pilgrims and smoked out a
batch of hermits and started them out at two o'clock to meet him.
And that was the sort of state he arrived in.
The abbot was helpless with rage and humiliation when I brought him out on a
balcony and showed him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand
to offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad his spirit.
He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces.
The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various buildings were
vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a rush toward the coming procession; and
with them went that magician --and he was
on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation was in the mud, and mine was
in the sky again.
Yes, a man can keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit around
and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business right along.
>
PART 5: CHAPTER XXV A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION
When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or visited a distant
noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the
administration moved with him.
It was a fashion of the time.
The Commission charged with the examination of candidates for posts in the army came
with the king to the Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just
as well at home.
And although this expedition was strictly a holiday excursion for the king, he kept
some of his business functions going just the same.
He touched for the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried
cases, for he was himself Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
He shone very well in this latter office.
He was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest,--
according to his lights. That is a large reservation.
His lights--I mean his rearing--often colored his decisions.
Whenever there was a dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower
degree, the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether
he suspected it or not.
It was impossible that this should be otherwise.
The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known
and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a
band of slaveholders under another name.
This has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any--even to the noble
himself--unless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply
formulates a fact.
The repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not its name.
One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to
recognize--and in but indifferently modified measure --the very air and tone of
the actual slaveholder; and behind these
are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling.
They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's old and inbred
custom of regarding himself as a superior being.
The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely the fault of
his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies.
He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother for the position of
milk-distributor to starving children in famine-time; her own children would fare a
shade better than the rest.
One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an orphan, who had a
considerable estate, married a fine young fellow who had nothing.
The girl's property was within a seigniory held by the Church.
The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of the great nobility, claimed the
girl's estate on the ground that she had married privately, and thus had cheated the
Church out of one of its rights as lord of
the seigniory--the one heretofore referred to as le droit du seigneur.
The penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation.
The girl's defense was, that the lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop,
and the particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be exercised by
the lord himself or stand vacated; and that
an older law, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising
it. It was a very odd case, indeed.
It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which
the aldermen of London raised the money that built the Mansion House.
A person who had not taken the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not
stand as a candidate for sheriff of London.
Thus Dissenters were ineligible; they could not run if asked, they could not serve if
elected.
The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat
device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine of L400 upon any one who should refuse
to be a candidate for sheriff, and a fine
of L600 upon any person who, after being elected sheriff, refused to serve.
Then they went to work and elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it
up until they had collected L15,000 in fines; and there stands the stately Mansion
House to this day, to keep the blushing
citizen in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees slipped into
London and played games of the sort that has given their race a unique and shady
reputation among all truly good and holy peoples that be in the earth.
The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just as strong.
I did not see how the king was going to get out of this hole.
But he got out. I append his decision:
"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a child's affair for
simpleness.
An the young bride had conveyed notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and
proper master and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said bishop
could have got a dispensation making him,
for temporary conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus would
she have kept all she had.
Whereas, failing in her first duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for
whoso, clinging to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no
defense to claim that the rest of the rope
is sound, neither any deliverance from his peril, as he shall find.
Pardy, the woman's case is rotten at the source.
It is the decree of the court that she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her
goods, even to the last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in the
costs.
Next!" Here was a tragic end to a beautiful
honeymoon not yet three months old. Poor young creatures!
They had lived these three months lapped to the lips in worldly comforts.
These clothes and trinkets they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the
shrewdest stretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in
these pretty clothes, she crying on his
shoulder, and he trying to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair,
they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, bedless, breadless;
why, the very beggars by the roadsides were not so poor as they.
Well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to the Church and the
rest of the aristocracy, no doubt.
Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact
remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.
Arthur's people were of course poor material for a republic, because they had
been debased so long by monarchy; and yet even they would have been intelligent
enough to make short work of that law which
the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free
vote.
There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to
seem to have sense and meaning--the sense and meaning implied when it is used; that
is the phrase which refers to this or that
or the other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government"; and the
implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some time or other
which wasn't capable of it--wasn't as able
to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it.
The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude
from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only--not from its
privileged classes; and so, no matter what
the nation's intellectual grade was; whether high or low, the bulk of its
ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw
the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself.
Which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best governed and most
free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its
people; and that the same is true of
kindred governments of lower grades, all the way down to the lowest.
King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond my calculations.
I had not supposed he would move in the matter while I was away; and so I had not
mapped out a scheme for determining the merits of officers; I had only remarked
that it would be wise to submit every
candidate to a sharp and searching examination; and privately I meant to put
together a list of military qualifications that nobody could answer to but my West
Pointers.
That ought to have been attended to before I left; for the king was so taken with the
idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must get about it at once, and get
up as good a scheme of examination as he could invent out of his own head.
I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much more admirable was
the one which I should display to the Examining Board.
I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosity.
When the Board was assembled, I followed him in; and behind us came the candidates.
One of these candidates was a bright young West Pointer of mine, and with him were a
couple of my West Point professors. When I saw the Board, I did not know
whether to cry or to laugh.
The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as Norroy King-at-Arms!
The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in his department; and all three
were priests, of course; all officials who had to know how to read and write were
priests.
My candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head of the Board
opened on him with official solemnity: "Name?"
"Mal-ease."
"Son of?" "Webster."
"Webster--Webster. H'm--I--my memory faileth to recall the
name.
Condition?" "Weaver."
"Weaver!--God keep us!"
The king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one clerk fainted, and the
others came near it. The chairman pulled himself together, and
said indignantly:
"It is sufficient. Get you hence."
But I appealed to the king. I begged that my candidate might be
examined.
The king was willing, but the Board, who were all well-born folk, implored the king
to spare them the indignity of examining the weaver's son.
I knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to
theirs and the king turned the duty over to my professors.
I had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began.
It was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in details
of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining and countermining,
grand tactics, big strategy and little
strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege
guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice,
revolver practice--and not a solitary word
of it all could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand--and it was
handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would
stump the angels themselves, and do it like
nothing, too--all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and constellations,
and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, and bedtime, and every other
imaginable thing above the clouds or under
them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make him wish he hadn't
come--and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last, I was proud
enough to hug him, and all those other
people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caught
out and snowed under. I judged that the cake was ours, and by a
large majority.
Education is a great thing.
This was the same youth who had come to West Point so ignorant that when I asked
him, "If a general officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of
battle, what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said:
"Get up and brush himself." One of the young nobles was called up now.
I thought I would question him a little myself.
I said: "Can your lordship read?"
His face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me:
"Takest me for a clerk? I trow I am not of a blood that--"
"Answer the question!"
He crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "No."
"Can you write?" He wanted to resent this, too, but I said:
"You will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments.
You are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing of the sort will be
permitted.
Can you write?" "No."
"Do you know the multiplication table?" "I wit not what ye refer to."
"How much is 9 times 6?"
"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the
fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to
know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge."
"If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pence the bushel, in exchange for a sheep
worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny, and C kill the dog before delivery, because
bitten by the same, who mistook him for D,
what sum is still due to A from B, and which party pays for the dog, C or D, and
who gets the money?
If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages in the form of
additional money to represent the possible profit which might have inured from the
dog, and classifiable as earned increment, that is to say, usufruct?"
"Verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of God, who moveth in mysterious
ways his wonders to perform, have I never heard the fellow to this question for
confusion of the mind and congestion of the ducts of thought.
Wherefore I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and
godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful
difficulties without help of mine, for
indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but
damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation
wrought."
"What do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation?"
"If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them whilst that I lay
sick about the beginning of the year and thereby failed to hear his proclamation."
"What do you know of the science of optics?"
"I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and sheriffs of
counties, and many like small offices and titles of honor, but him you call the
Science of Optics I have not heard of before; peradventure it is a new dignity."
"Yes, in this country."
Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official position, of any
kind under the sun!
Why, he had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the
disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and
punctuation.
It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that sort out of his
majestic supply of incapacity for the job.
But that didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, it
only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet.
After nagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him and they turned him
inside out, on the line of scientific war, and found him empty, of course.
He knew somewhat about the warfare of the time--bushwhacking around for ogres, and
bull-fights in the tournament ring, and such things--but otherwise he was empty and
useless.
Then we took the other young noble in hand, and he was the first one's twin, for
ignorance and incapacity.
I delivered them into the hands of the chairman of the Board with the comfortable
consciousness that their cake was dough. They were examined in the previous order of
precedence.
"Name, so please you?" "Pertipole, son of Sir Pertipole, Baron of
Barley Mash." "Grandfather?"
"Also Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash."
"Great-grandfather?" "The same name and title."
"Great-great-grandfather?" "We had none, worshipful sir, the line
failing before it had reached so far back."
"It mattereth not. It is a good four generations, and
fulfilleth the requirements of the rule." "Fulfills what rule?"
I asked.
"The rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the candidate is not
eligible."
"A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can prove four
generations of noble descent?"
"Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned without that
qualification." "Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing.
What good is such a qualification as that?"
"What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss,
since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself."
"As how?"
"For that she hath established the self- same rule regarding saints.
By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead four generations."
"I see, I see--it is the same thing.
It is wonderful.
In the one case a man lies dead-alive four generations--mummified in ignorance and
sloth--and that qualifies him to command live people, and take their weal and woe
into his impotent hands; and in the other
case, a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that qualifies
him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's grace approve of this
strange law?"
The king said: "Why, truly I see naught about it that is
strange.
All places of honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be
of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their property and would be so
without this or any rule.
The rule is but to mark a limit.
Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, which would bring into contempt
these offices, and men of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take
them.
I were to blame an I permitted this calamity.
You can permit it an you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority,
but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not comprehensible to
any."
"I yield. Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald's
College." The chairman resumed as follows:
"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and State did the
founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the British
nobility?"
"He built a brewery."
"Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and
qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for decision after
due examination of his competitor."
The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility
himself. So there was a tie in military
qualifications that far.
He stood aside a moment, and Sir Pertipole was questioned further:
"Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?"
"She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; she was gracious and
pure and charitable, of a blameless life and character, insomuch that in these
regards was she peer of the best lady in the land."
"That will do. Stand down."
He called up the competing lordling again, and asked: "What was the rank and condition
of the great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your great house?"
"She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own unholpen
merit from the sewer where she was born." "Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this
is the right and perfect intermixture.
The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not in contempt; it is the humble
step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an origin like to
thine."
I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation.
I had promised myself an easy and zenith- scouring triumph, and this was the outcome!
I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face.
I told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end.
I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition.
I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, and he couldn't
have done a wiser thing.
It would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as
many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country, even if
there should finally be five times as many
officers as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied regiment,
the King's Own regiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own way,
and go whither it would and come when it
pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent.
This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the nobility, and they would
all be satisfied and happy.
Then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials,
and officer it with nobodies, as was proper--nobodies selected on a basis of
mere efficiency--and we would make this
regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint, and
force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, to the end that whenever the
King's Own was tired and wanted to go off
for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time, it could go
without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, and business
going to be continued at the old stand, same as usual.
The king was charmed with the idea. When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable
notion.
I thought I saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last.
You see, the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived race and very
fruitful.
Whenever a child was born to any of these- -and it was pretty often--there was wild
joy in the nation's mouth, and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart.
The joy was questionable, but the grief was honest.
Because the event meant another call for a Royal Grant.
Long was the list of these royalties, and they were a heavy and steadily increasing
burden upon the treasury and a menace to the crown.
Yet Arthur could not believe this latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my
various projects for substituting something in the place of the royal grants.
If I could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for one of these
outlying scions from his own pocket, I could have made a grand to-do over it, and
it would have had a good effect with the
nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing.
He had something like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed to look upon it
as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate him in any way so quickly and so
surely as by an attack upon that venerable institution.
If I ventured to cautiously hint that there was not another respectable family in
England that would humble itself to hold out the hat--however, that is as far as I
ever got; he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too.
But I believed I saw my chance at last. I would form this crack regiment out of
officers alone--not a single private.
Half of it should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to Major-
General, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; and they would be glad to do this
when they should learn that the rest of the
regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood.
These princes of the blood should range in rank from Lieutenant-General up to Field
Marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and fed by the state.
Moreover--and this was the master stroke -- it should be decreed that these princely
grandees should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title
(which I would presently invent), and they
and they only in all England should be so addressed.
Finally, all princes of the blood should have free choice; join that regiment, get
that great title, and renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant.
Neatest touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be born into the
regiment, and start fair, with good wages and a permanent situation, upon due notice
from the parents.
All the boys would join, I was sure of that; so, all existing grants would be
relinquished; that the newly born would always join was equally certain.
Within sixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant, would cease to be
a living fact, and take its place among the curiosities of the past.
>
PART 5: CHAPTER XXVI THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman to scour the
country and familiarize myself with the humbler life of the people, he was all
afire with the novelty of the thing in a
minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure himself--nothing should stop
him--he would drop everything and go along- -it was the prettiest idea he had run
across for many a day.
He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; but I showed him that that
wouldn't answer.
You see, he was billed for the king's-evil- -to touch for it, I mean--and it wouldn't
be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth considering,
anyway, it was only a one-night stand.
And I thought he ought to tell the queen he was going away.
He clouded up at that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when
he said mournfully:
"Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is, she noteth not the
going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth."
Of course, I changed the Subject.
Yes, Guenever was beautiful, it is true, but take her all around she was pretty
slack.
I never meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hate to see
the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying that much.
Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seen Sir Launcelot about?" but
if ever she went fretting around for the king I didn't happen to be around at the
time.
There was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business--very tidy and
creditable.
The king sat under a canopy of state; about him were clustered a large body of the
clergy in full canonicals.
Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel, a hermit of the
quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick.
All abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors, in a thick jumble,
lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light.
It was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being gotten up for
that, though it wasn't. There were eight hundred sick people
present.
The work was slow; it lacked the interest of novelty for me, because I had seen the
ceremonies before; the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me to
stick it out.
The doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were many people who
only imagined something was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound
but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly
contact with a king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the
piece of coin that went with the touch.
Up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a
dollar.
When you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country,
and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the
annual king's-evil appropriation was just
the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the
treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus.
So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king's-evil.
I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting
from Camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into
five-cent nickels and delivered into the
hands of the head clerk of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of
each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it.
It might strain the nickel some, but I judged it could stand it.
As a rule, I do not approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough in
this case, for it was just a gift, anyway.
Of course, you can water a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do.
The old gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown origin,
as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen, and seldom rounder
than a moon that is a week past the full;
they were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that the devices upon
them were as illegible as blisters, and looked like them.
I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a first-rate likeness of the king on
one side of it and Guenever on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the
tuck out of scrofula as handy as a nobler
coin and please the scrofulous fancy more; and I was right.
This batch was the first it was tried on, and it worked to a charm.
The saving in expense was a notable economy.
You will see that by these figures: We touched a trifle over 700 of the 800
patients; at former rates, this would have cost the government about $240; at the new
rate we pulled through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop.
To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these other figures: the
annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of a contribution
of three days' average wages of every
individual of the population, counting every individual as if he were a man.
If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average wages are $2 per day, three days'
wages taken from each individual will provide $360,000,000 and pay the
government's expenses.
In my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen
imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so;
whereas, in fact, it was paid by the
American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the
annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the
day-laborer was precisely the same--each paid $6.
Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon.
Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, and the united populations of
the British Islands amounted to something less than 1,000,000.
A mechanic's average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep.
By this rule the national government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250
a day.
Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil day, I not only
injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths
of that day's national expense into the
bargain--a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day in
America.
In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source--
the wisdom of my boyhood--for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom,
howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my
boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign
missionary cause.
The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would
answer me better than the buttons; all hands were happy and nobody hurt.
Marinel took the patients as they came.
He examined the candidate; if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he
was passed along to the king.
A priest pronounced the words, "They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall
recover."
Then the king stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the patient
graduated and got his nickel--the king hanging it around his neck himself--and was
dismissed.
Would you think that that would cure? It certainly did.
Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it.
Up by Astolat there was a chapel where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used
to herd geese around there--the girl said so herself--and they built the chapel upon
that spot and hung a picture in it
representing the occurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerous for a
sick person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame and the
sick came and prayed before it every year
and went away whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live.
Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them; but when I went there
and saw them I had to succumb.
I saw the cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable.
I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and
pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp.
There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a
testimony.
In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word to
him, and cured him.
In others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to
their faith, and those patients went away cured.
Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most
valuable superstition that supports his throne--the subject's belief in the divine
appointment of his sovereign--has passed away.
In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was
no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty.
Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing
the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, I got
to feeling intolerably bored.
I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state.
For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses
stroked; again those words were being droned out: "they shall lay their hands on
the sick"--when outside there rang clear as
a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about
my ears: "Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano!--latest irruption--only
two cents --all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!"
One greater than kings had arrived--the newsboy.
But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty
birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.
I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the Adam-newsboy of the world
went around the corner to get my change; is around the corner yet.
It was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when
my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines.
I had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that
they sent a quivery little cold wave through me:
HIGHTIMESINTHEVALLEY OFHOLINESS!
---- THEWATER-WORKSCORKED!
BRERMERLINWORKSHISARTS,BUTGETS LEFT?
---- ButtheBossscoresonhisfirstInnings!
TheMiraculousWellUncorkedamid awfuloutburstsof
INFERNALFIREANDSMOKE ATHUNDER!
THEBUZZARD-ROOSTASTONISHED! ----
UNPARALLELEDREJOIBINGS!
--and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud.
Once I could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now
its note was discordant.
It was good Arkansas journalism, but this was not Arkansas.
Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits,
and perhaps lose us their advertising.
Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper.
It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it.
I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have
seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life.
There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:
LOCAL SMOKE AND CINDERS.
Sir Launcelot met up with old King Agrivance of Ireland unexpectedly last weok
over on the moor south of Sir Balmoral le Merveilleuse's hog dasture.
The widow has been notified.
Expedition No. 3 will start adout the first of mext month
on a search f8r Sir Sagramour le Desirous.
It is in com- and of the renowned Knight of the Red Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of
Inde, who is compete9t. intelligent, courte- ous, and in every way a brick, and
fur- tHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Sara- cen, who is no huckleberry hinself.
This is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s.
The readers of the Hosannah will re- gret to learn that the hadndsome and popular Sir
Charolais of Gaul, who dur- ing his four weeks' stay at the Bull and Halibut, this
city, has won every heart by his polished
manners and elegant cPnversation, will pUll out to-day for home.
Give us another call, Charley!
The bdsiness end of the funeral of the late Sir Dalliance the duke's son of Cornwall,
killed in an encounter with the Giant of the Knotted Bludgeon last Tuesday on the
borders of the Plain of Enchantment was in
the hands of the ever affable and efficient Mumble, prince of un3ertakers, then whom
there exists none by whom it were a more satisfying pleasure to have the last sad
offices performed.
Give him a trial.
The cordial thanks of the Hosannah office are due, from editor down to devil, to the
ever courteous and thought- ful Lord High Stew d of the Palace's Third Assistant V t
for several sau- ceTs of ice crEam a
quality calculated to make the ey of the recipients hu- mid with grt ude; and it
done it.
When this administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the
Hosannah would like a chance to sudgest.
The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the popular
host of the Cattlemen's Board- ing Ho&se, Liver Lane, this city.
Young Barker the bellows-mender is hoMe again, and looks much improved by his
vacation round-up among the out- lying smithies.
See his ad.
Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew that quite well, and
yet it was somehow disappointing.
The "Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified
respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful
familiarities.
But even it could have been improved. Do what one may, there is no getting an air
of variety into a court circular, I acknowledge that.
There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's
sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse.
The best way to manage--in fact, the only sensible way--is to disguise
repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a
new cuticle of words.
It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court
is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole
column, with a good appetite, and perhaps
never notice that it's a barrel of soup made out of a single bean.
Clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-
like; all I say is, it was not the best way:
COURTCIRCULAR. OnMonday,thekingrodeinthepark.
"Tuesday,""" "Wendesday"""
"Thursday""" "Friday,"""
"Saturday""" "Sunday,"""
However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it.
Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were
not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough Arkansas proof-
reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur's day and realm.
As a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did
not much mind these things.
They are common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticise other people on grounds
where he can't stand perpendicular himself.
I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one
meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around
me besieged me so with eager questions: What is this curious thing?
What is it for? Is it a handkerchief?--saddle blanket?--
part of a shirt?
What is it made of? How thin it is, and how dainty and frail;
and how it rattles. Will it wear, do you think, and won't the
rain injure it?
Is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation?
They suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how to read Latin
and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of the letters, but they could make
nothing out of the result as a whole.
I put my information in the simplest form I could:
"It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time.
It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain what paper is.
The lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by I
will explain what printing is.
A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute
detail--they can't be told apart." Then they all broke out with exclamations
of surprise and admiration:
"A thousand! Verily a mighty work--a year's work for
many men." "No--merely a day's work for a man and a
boy."
They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two.
"Ah-h--a miracle, a wonder! Dark work of enchantment."
I let it go at that.
Then I read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within
hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well,
and was accompanied by astonished and
reverent ejaculations all through: "Ah-h- h!"
"How true!" "Amazing, amazing!"
"These be the very haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!"
And might they take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine
it?--they would be very careful.
Yes.
So they took it, handling it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy
thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed
its pleasant smooth surface with lingering
touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes.
These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes --how beautiful
to me!
For was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and
homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it?
I knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take
her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their
heads over it in a tranced adoration that
makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it
were not, for that time.
I knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king,
conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half- way to that serene far summit or yields
half so divine a contentment.
During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and
down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and I sat
motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment.
Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once, if I might never taste it more.
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