Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0129/01292.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01292}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 26}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{king
how
day
dollars
hundred
sir
way
paper
sick
time}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 26

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 layout 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 will 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 sixth-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 seven hundred of the
eight hundred patients; at former rates, this would have cost the government
about two hundred forty dollars; at the new rate we pulled through for about
thirty-five dollars, thus saving upward of two hundred dollars 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 sixty million where average wages are two dollars per days,
three days' wages taken from each individual will provide three hundred sixty
million dollars 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 one hundred
millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day laborer was
precisely the same - each paid six dollars.  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 one
million.  A mechanic's average wage was three cents a day, when he paid his
own keep.  By this rule, the national government's expenses were ninety
thousand dollars a year, or about two hundred fifty dollars 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 eight hundred thousand dollars 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 this 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 headlines.  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-Workscorked!

     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 And Thunder!

     The Buzzard-Roost Astonished!

     Unparalleled Rejoicings!

- 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
week over on the moor south of Sir Balmoralle Merveilleuse's hog pasture.  The
widow has been notified.

     Expedition No. 3 will start about the first of next month on a search
for Sir Sagramour Le Desirous.  It is in command of the renowned Knight of the
Red Lawns, assisted by Sir Persant of Inde, who is competent, intelligent,
courteous, and in every way a brick, and further assisted by Sir Palamides
the Saracen, who is no huckleberry himself.  This is no pic-nic, these boys
mean business.

     The readers of the Hosannah will regret to learn that the hadndsome and
popular Sir Charolais of Gaul, who during his four week's stay at the Bull
and Halibut, this city, has won every heart by his polished manners and
elegant conversation, will pull out to-day for home.  Give us another call,
Charley!

     The business 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 undertakers, than 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 thoughtful Lord High Steward of the Palace's
Third Assistant for several saucers of ice cream a quality calculated to make
the eyes of the recipients humid with grease; and it done it.  When this
administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the
Hosannah would like a chance to suggest.

     The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of South Astolat, is visiting her
uncle, the popular host of the Cattlemen's Boarding House, 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 businesslike; all I say is, it was
not the best way:

                         Court Circular

               On Monday, the King rode in the park.
               "  Tuesday,     "        "       "
               "  Wednesday    "        "       "
               "  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 proofreading, 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 criticize 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; sometime 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.