The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0129/01297.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 15KB | 255 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01297}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 31}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{marco
how
never
now
little
time
wages
way
farmer
get}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 31

Marco

     We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion, now, and talked.
We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the
little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers
and get back home again.  And meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had
never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me, since I had been in Arthur's
kingdom: the behavior - born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste - of
chance passersby toward each other.  Toward the shaven monk who trudged along
with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal
burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small
farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave
passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in
the air - he couldn't even see him.  Well, there are times when one would
like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

     Presently we struck an incident.  A small mob of half naked boys and
girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking.  The eldest among
them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old.  They implored help,
but they were so beside themselves that we couldn't make out what the matter
was.  However, we plunged into the wood, they scurrying in the lead, and the
trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark
rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death.
We rescued him, and fetched him around.  It was some more human nature; the
admiring little folk imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and had
achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they
had bargained for.

     It was not a dull excursion for me.  I managed to put in the time very
well.  I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was
able to ask as many questions as I wanted to.  A thing which naturally
interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages.  I picked up what I
could under that head during the afternoon.  A man who hasn't had much
experience, and doesn't think, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or
lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages: if the wages be
high, the nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't.  Which is an error.  It
isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it that's the
important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact
or only high in name.  I could remember how it was in the time of our great
civil war in the nineteenth century.  In the North a carpenter got three
dollars a day, gold valuation; in the South he got fifty - payable in
Confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel.  In the North a suit of
overalls cost three dollars - a day's wages; in the South it cost
seventy-five - which was two days' wages.  Other things were in proportion.
Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they were in the
South, because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the
other had.

     Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet, and a thing that
gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation - lots of
milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver;
all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and even some gold
- but that was at the bank, that is to say; the goldsmith's.  I dropped in
there while Marco the son of Marco was haggling with a shopkeeper over a
quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty dollar gold
piece.  They furnished it - that is, after they had chewed the piece, and
rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where I got it,
and who I was, and where I was from, and where I was going to, and when I
expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and
when they got aground, I went right on and furnished them a lot of
information voluntarily: told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and
my first wife was a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was a
Prohibitionist, and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and
a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious
resurrection and so on and so on and so on till even that hungry village
questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put out; but he had to
respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but
I noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a perfectly natural
thing to do.  Yes, they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank
a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking
into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss
of it to change a two-thousand dollar bill for you all of a sudden.  He could
do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer
happened to be carrying so much money around in his pocket; which was
probably this goldsmith's thought, too; for he followed me to the door and
stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration.

     Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was
already glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped the names of the
former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many dollars or cents or
mills or milrays, now.  It was very gratifying.  We were progressing, that
was sure.

     I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting
fellow among them was the blacksmith, Dowley.  He was a live man and a brisk
talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was doing a raging
business.  In fact, he was getting rich, hand over fist, and was vastly
respected.  Marco was very proud of having such a man for a friend.  He had
taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big establishment which bought so
much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar
terms he was on with this great man.  Dowley and I fraternized at once; I had
had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under me in the Colt Arms
Factory.  I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to come out to
Marco's, Sunday, and dine with us.  Marco was appalled, and held his breath;
and when the grandee accepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be
astonished at the condescension.

     Marco's joy was exuberant - but only for a moment; then he grew
thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon
the boss mason, and Smug the boss wheelwright out there, too, the coal dust
on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip.  But I knew what was the
matter with him; he judged that his financial days were numbered.  However,
on our way to invite the others, I said:

     "You must allow me to have these friends come, and you must also allow
me to pay the costs."

     His face cleared, and he said with spirit:

     "But not all of it, not all of it.  Ye cannot well bear a burden like to
this alone."

     I stopped him, and said:

     "Now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend.  I am only a
farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor, nevertheless.  I have been very
fortunate this year - you would be astonished to know how I have thriven.  I
tell you the honest truth when I say I could squander away as many as a dozen
feasts like this and never care that for the expense!"  And I snapped my
fingers.  I could see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's estimation, and
when I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower, for style and
altitude.  "So you see, you must let me have my way.  You can't contribute a