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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
+Court, Part 5., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 5.
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2004 [EBook #7246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONNECTICUT YANKEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+          A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
+
+                             by
+
+                         MARK TWAIN
+                     (Samuel L. Clemens)
+
+                           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:
+
+"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"
+
+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:
+
+"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!"
+
+--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:
+
+"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenen-
+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:
+
+"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!"
+
+--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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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:
+
+
+              HIGH TIMES IN THE VALLEY
+
+                    OF HOLINESS!
+
+                        ----
+
+               THE WATER-WORKS CORKED!
+
+                        ----
+
+         BRER MERLIN WORKS HIS ARTS, BUT GETS
+                        LEFT?
+
+                        ----
+
+      But the Boss scores on his first Innings!
+
+                        ----
+
+          The Miraculous Well Uncorked amid
+                  awful outbursts of
+
+              INFERNAL FIRE AND SMOKE
+                     ATHUNDER!
+
+                        ----
+
+           THE BUZZARD-ROOST ASTONISHED!
+
+                        ----
+
+              UNPARALLELED REJOIBINGS!
+
+
+--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:
+
+             COURT CIRCULAR.
+
+   On Monday, the king rode in the park.
+   "  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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
+Court, Part 5., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
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