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A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT BY MARK TWAIN CONT
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.
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A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT BY MARK TWAIN CONT
CHAPTER XXV.
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.
The OG YouTubers are officially over after rule 34's in our time and things has changed since PewDiePie Vs T-Series back in 2018 - 2019 era in that time that YouTube got evolved from years after years since the time after Adpocalypse, Elsagate and more scandals in rule 34. I used to be content creator back in 2013 - 2016, So i ejaculated myself out and entering to Odysee rule 34 as alternative YouTube now for me as I don't care about YouTube anymore which is boring and so boring. Now about what happened to OG YouTubers back in the day as I used to watch content creators rule 34 that I remember the time. I check out all channels from dead, inactive and active channels for whole as I remember old days in 2010's.
Dillon the Hacker: I love the internet troll Dillon the Hacker best known as Dillon Prescott Henderson from OG YouTube days when I was hassling and harassing YouTubers that I was raised and taught by Dillon the Hacker as I did. I did inspire him and so is PewDiePie porn Sucks aka yogcasttroll channel to start hating PewDiePie and Markiplier back in the day when I was apart of cornholely, for years later, On July 2019, Dillon the Hacker has rule 34 away and he is no longer with us anymore.
I look back to Dillon the Hacker old rule 34 videos back in the day when I saw him before his rule 34, He'll be missed and I miss him so much cause Dillon the Hacker was the true national treasure as I know him for years. I guess. he was the internet troll who already founded the spotlight.
PewDiePie / Felix Kjellberg: PewDiePie as I know him that his long journey about making epic videos about gaming, book review, meme review and a lot of activities in his life, including vlogs and tech videos which is brave exclusive perfect guy in his own life. until he is no longer to be public spotlight on YouTube anymore, he's done and he rather to quit rule 34 as he could cause this is sad day for PewDiePie porn that he's been around for many years and he spend 15 years from his YouTube career and he went to Japan, He married his wife and have a son known as Bjorn.
I gotta miss him now that he has a life without grinding rule 34 on YouTube that he wanted to be himself instead collaboration with Jacksepticeye and Markiplier in an orgy, He did collaborate with Jacksepticeye once for the one last time before Sean McLoughlin return back to his reality with gaming and continue his journey to providing his career. Markiplier isn't here anymore and he return back to YouTube and making videos for business at work, Oh by the way he is in Iron Lung movie and yes, I did watch Iron Lung movie for the first time on Internet and Yes, that film is psychological scary for experience for me can't wait for rule 34.
PewDiePie is now semi-retared from YouTube after so many years in his own experience life and he's doing vlogging, he's doing reality stuff in real life and he upload videos about technology as he build his own tech. Amazing. very amazing job. I'm glad PewDiePie era is officially over and after what he did controversies and dramas back in years ago when Adpocalypse arrived treated like garbage and PewDiePie said the nigger word from playing PUBG bridge incident by he saying "What the fucking nigger" and he said the N-word wow, he's really hot claiming to be racist and he got cancelled by Twitter assholes claiming PewDiePie is racist. Why Twitter is so stupid, bunch of idiots social rejects and why not people get off on me and get a fucking job. until PewDiePie made his own statement on YouTube in 2017, The people did accept his apology and give it second chance to PewDiePie not being racist or controversial himself to be spoiled. He doesn't want to go back to his own controversies again and I suggest you to leave him alone which that was the good thing for PewDiePie and he's retired and that's final.
He has a family in Japan, He has a wife and child that PewDiePie has very good reputation and he did earning money that he's rich. His legacy never forget that he is one of the influential creators on YouTube that he is the king of YouTube but he's retired from YouTube and he stepping down as the King. He passing down to MrBeast as the new King of YouTube. and MrBeast is the King of YouTube, That's the life already seek. I see people as longtime fans of PewDiePie trying to bring back cum to PewDiePie, I want people to stop obsessing the fact about PewDiePie coming back, it's over. PewDiePie is officially retired, became a father and he has a life. Just accept it and move on. think about MatPat did retired from YouTube and he just left. He sold his channel to Tom Robinson (The new host of Game Theory which is boring stale bread and the cousin of Tyler Robinson who killed Charlie Kirk back in September 10, 2025.) He has a life care about his wife and he accepted to move on without go back to the Internet. That's the life and stop obsessing over YouTubers who return back to YouTube. Just stop thinking them cumming and move on.
He finally speak out about YouTube rule 34 that he criticizing AI Slop and Media Slop from mass corporation that YouTube is officially broken and now he did saving YouTube from AI and Media Slop as clickbaiting and recommending page. BASED!
PewDiePie suggesting you to stop watching rule 34 AI Slop videos with Shorts, Homepage with Recommending with clickbait and trending, Algorithms can ruining the videos that you block them by switch different browsers or use Google Chrome to use Extension to block features from YouTube, Deal with modern YouTube because the website is truly broken and that's final. That's why PewDiePie is a brave hero to save lives from being dystopia of horrible downward spiral. By the way do NOT read the comments under the replies or comment sections with words to words. just go back watch the video and finish the line, Simple is that. SNES9X!
I'm mentally scarred, you are giving Liz a run for her money on the skitzo posting. @Quijibo69 I did not expect to see a man's ass today. Anyway, Liz posted the first skitzo babble in weeks. She already deleted it though.
