Chapter XXV: A Competitive Examination

by Mark Twain

　　When the king traveled for change of air, or madea progress, or visited a distant noble whom hewished to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part ofthe administration moved with him. It was a fashionof the time. The Commission charged with the examination of candidates for posts in the army camewith the king to the Valley, whereas they could havetransacted their business just as well at home. Andalthough 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, asusual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and triedcases, for he was himself Chief Justice of the King'sBench.He shone very well in this latter office. He was awise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honestbest and fairest, -- according to his lights. That is alarge reservation. His lights -- I mean his rearing --often colored his decisions. Whenever there was adispute between a noble or gentleman and a person oflower degree, the king's leanings and sympathies werefor the former class always, whether he suspected it ornot. It was impossible that this should be otherwise.The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder'smoral perceptions are known and conceded, the worldover; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but aband of slaveholders under another name. This has aharsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any --even to the noble himself -- unless the fact itself be anoffense: for the statement simply formulates a fact.The repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not itsname. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak ofthe classes that are below him to recognize -- and inbut indifferently modified measure -- the very air andtone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these arethe slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling. They are the result of the same cause in bothcases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merelythe fault of his training, his natural and unalterablesympathies. He was as unfitted for a judgeship aswould be the average mother for the position of milkdistributor to starving children in famine-time; herown children would fare a shade better than the rest.One very curious case came before the king. Ayoung girl, an orphan, who had a considerable estate,married a fine young fellow who had nothing. Thegirl's property was within a seigniory held by theChurch. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scionof the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on theground that she had married privately, and thus hadcheated the Church out of one of its rights as lord ofthe seigniory -- the one heretofore referred to as le droitdu seigneur. The penalty of refusal or avoidance wasconfiscation. The girl's defense was, that the lordshipof the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the particular right here involved was not transferable, butmust be exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated;and that an older law, of the Church itself, strictlybarred the bishop from exercising it. It was a veryodd case, indeed.It reminded me of something I had read in myyouth about the ingenious way in which the aldermenof London raised the money that built the MansionHouse. A person who had not taken the Sacramentaccording to the Anglican rite could not stand as acandidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters wereineligible; they could not run if asked, they could notserve if elected. The aldermen, who without anyquestion were Yankees in disguise, hit upon this neatdevice: they passed a by-law imposing a fine of L400upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate forsheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, afterbeing elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they wentto work and elected a lot of Dissenters, one afteranother, and kept it up until they had collectedL15,000 in fines; and there stands the stately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizen inmind of a long past and lamented day when a band ofYankees slipped into London and played games of thesort that has given their race a unique and shadyreputation among all truly good and holy peoples thatbe in the earth.The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop'scase was just as strong. I did not see how the kingwas going to get out of this hole. But he got out. Iappend his decision:"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter beingeven a child's affair for simpleness. An the youngbride had conveyed notice, as in duty bound, to herfeudal lord and proper master and protector the bishop,she had suffered no loss, for the said bishop could havegot a dispensation making him, for temporary conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, andthus would she have kept all she had. Whereas, failing in her first duty, she hath by that failure failed inall; for whoso, clinging to a rope, severeth it abovehis hands, must fall; it being no defense to claim thatthe rest of the rope is sound, neither any deliverancefrom his peril, as he shall find. Pardy, the woman'scase is rotten at the source. It is the decree of thecourt that she forfeit to the said lord bishop all hergoods, 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 notyet three months old. Poor young creatures! Theyhad lived these three months lapped to the lips inworldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets theywere wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdeststretch of the sumptuary laws allowed to people oftheir degree; and in these pretty clothes, she cryingon his shoulder, and he trying to comfort her withhopeful words set to the music of despair, they wentfrom 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 termssatisfactory to the Church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. Men write many fine and plausiblearguments 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 ofcourse poor material for a republic, because they hadbeen debased so long by monarchy; and yet even theywould have been intelligent enough to make short workof that law which the king had just been administeringif it had been submitted to their full and free vote.There is a phrase which has grown so common in theworld's mouth that it has come to seem to have senseand meaning -- the sense and meaning implied when itis used; that is the phrase which refers to this or thator the other nation as possibly being "capable of selfgovernment"; and the implied sense of it is, that therehas been a nation somewhere, some time or otherwhich wasn't capable of it -- wasn't as able to governitself as some self-appointed specialists were or wouldbe to govern it. The master minds of all nations, inall ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from themass of the nation, and from the mass of the nationonly -- not from its privileged classes; and so, nomatter what the nation's intellectual grade was; whetherhigh or low, the bulk of its ability was in the longranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never sawthe day that it had not the material in abundancewhereby to govern itself. Which is to assert an alwaysself-proven fact: that even the best governed and mostfree and most enlightened monarchy is still behind thebest condition attainable by its people; and that thesame is true of kindred governments of lower grades,all the way down to the lowest.King Arthur had hurried up the army businessaltogether 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 determiningthe merits of officers; I had only remarked that itwould be wise to submit every candidate to a sharpand searching examination; and privately I meant toput together a list of military qualifications that nobody could answer to but my West Pointers. Thatought to have been attended to before I left; for theking was so taken with the idea of a standing armythat he couldn't wait but must get about it at once,and get up as good a scheme of examination as hecould 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 Ishould display to the Examining Board. I intimatedthis, gently, to the king, and it fired his curiosityWhen the Board was assembled, I followed him in;and behind us came the candidates. One of thesecandidates 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 tocry or to laugh. The head of it was the officer knownto later centuries as Norroy King-at-Arms! The twoother members were chiefs of bureaus in his department; and all three were priests, of course; all officialswho had to know how to read and write were priests.My candidate was called first, out of courtesy tome, and the head of the Board opened on him withofficial solemnity:"Name?""Mal-ease.""Son of?""Webster.""Webster -- Webster. H'm -- I -- my memoryfaileth to recall the name. Condition?""Weaver.""Weaver! -- God keep us!"The king was staggered, from his summit to hisfoundations; one clerk fainted, and the others camenear it. The chairman pulled himself together, andsaid 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, butthe Board, who were all well-born folk, implored theking to spare them the indignity of examining theweaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough toexamine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirsand the king turned the duty over to my professors.I had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put upnow, and the circus began. It was beautiful to hearthe lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation,mining and countermining, grand tactics, big strategyand little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry,artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatlingguns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice,revolver practice -- and not a solitary word of it allcould these catfish make head or tail of, you understand -- and it was handsome to see him chalk offmathematical nightmares on the blackboard that wouldstump the angels themselves, and do it like nothing,too -- all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, andconstellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, anddinner time, and bedtime, and every other imaginablething above the clouds or under them that you couldharry or bullyrag an enemy with and make him wishhe hadn't come -- and when the boy made his militarysalute and stood aside at last, I was proud enough tohug him, and all those other people were so dazed theylooked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caughtout and snowed under. I judged that the cake was ours,and by a large majority.Education is a great thing. This was the sameyouth who had come to West Point so ignorant thatwhen I asked him, "If a general officer should have ahorse shot under him on the field of battle, what oughthe to do?" answered up naively and said:"Get up and brush himself."One of the young nobles was called up now. Ithought 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 bloodthat --""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, andmake no comments. You are not here to air yourblood or your graces, and nothing of the sort will bepermitted. 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 reasonthat the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hathnot in my life-days occurred, and so, not having noneed to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.""If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pencethe bushel, in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence anda dog worth a penny, and C kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same, who mistook himfor D, what sum is still due to A from B, and whichparty pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets themoney? If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claimconsequential damages in the form of additional moneyto represent the possible profit which might haveinured from the dog, and classifiable as earned increment, that is to say, usufruct?""Verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence ofGod, who moveth in mysterious ways his wonders toperform, have I never heard the fellow to this questionfor confusion of the mind and congestion of the ductsof thought. Wherefore I beseech you let the dog andthe onions and these people of the strange and godlessnames work out their several salvations from theirpiteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine,for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas anI tried to help I should but damage their cause themore and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.""What do you know of the laws of attraction andgravitation?""If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them whilst that I lay sick about the beginningof 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 ofcastles, and sheriffs of counties, and many like smalloffices and titles of honor, but him you call the Scienceof Optics I have not heard of before; peradventure itis a new dignity.""Yes, in this country."Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying foran official position, of any kind under the sun! Why,he had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if youleave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. It wasunaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help ofthat sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity forthe job. But that didn't prove that he hadn't materialin him for the disposition, it only proved that hewasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After nagging him alittle more, I let the professors loose on him and theyturned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, andfound him empty, of course. He knew somewhatabout the warfare of the time -- bushwhacking aroundfor ogres, and bull-fights in the tournament ring, andsuch things -- but otherwise he was empty and useless.Then we took the other young noble in hand, and hewas the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity.I delivered them into the hands of the chairman of theBoard with the comfortable consciousness that theircake was dough. They were examined in the previousorder of precedence."Name, so please you?""Pertipole, son of Sir Pertipole, Baron of BarleyMash.""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 orelse the candidate is not eligible.""A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in thearmy unless he can prove four generations of nobledescent?""Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officermay be commissioned without that qualification.""Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. Whatgood is such a qualification as that?""What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir andBoss, since it doth go far to impugn the wisdom ofeven our holy Mother Church herself.""As how?""For that she hath established the self-same ruleregarding saints. By her law none may be canonizeduntil 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 thatqualifies him to command live people, and take theirweal and woe into his impotent hands; and in theother case, a man lies bedded with death and wormsfour generations, and that qualifies him for office in thecelestial camp. Does the king's grace approve of thisstrange law?"The king said:"Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange.All places of honor and of profit do belong, by naturalright, to them that be of noble blood, and so thesedignities in the army are their property and would beso without this or any rule. The rule is but to mark alimit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood,which would bring into contempt these offices, andmen of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scornto take them. I were to blame an I permitted thiscalamity. You can permit it an you are minded so todo, for you have the delegated authority, but that theking should do it were a most strange madness and notcomprehensible to any.""I yield. Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald's College. "The chairman resumed as follows:"By what illustrious achievement for the honor ofthe Throne and State did the founder of your greatline lift himself to the sacred dignity of the Britishnobility?""He built a brewery.""Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in allthe requirements and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case open for decision afterdue examination of his competitor."The competitor came forward and proved exactlyfour generations of nobility himself. So there was atie in military qualifications that far.He stood aside a moment, and Sir Pertipole wasquestioned further:"Of what condition was the wife of the founder ofyour line?""She came of the highest landed gentry, yet shewas not noble; she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and character, insomuch thatin these regards was she peer of the best lady in theland.""That will do. Stand down." He called up thecompeting lordling again, and asked: "What was therank and condition of the great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your great house?""She was a king's leman and did climb to thatsplendid eminence by her own unholpen merit fromthe sewer where she was born.""Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the rightand perfect intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours,fair lord. Hold it not in contempt; it is the humblestep which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of thesplendor of an origin like to thine."I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. Ihad promised myself an easy and zenith-scouringtriumph, and this was the outcome!I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointedcadet in the face. I told him to go home and bepatient, this wasn't the end.I had a private audience with the king, and made aproposition. I said it was quite right to officer thatregiment with nobilities, and he couldn't have done awiser thing. It would also be a good idea to add fivehundred officers to it; in fact, add as many officersas there were nobles and relatives of nobles in thecountry, even if there should finally be five times asmany officers as privates in it; and thus make it thecrack regiment, the envied regiment, the King's Ownregiment, and entitled to fight on its own hook and inits own way, and go whither it would and come whenit pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell andindependent. This would make that regiment theheart's desire of all the nobility, and they would allbe satisfied and happy. Then we would make up therest of the standing army out of commonplace materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper --nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency -- andwe would make this regiment toe the line, allow it noaristocratic freedom from restraint, and force it to doall the work and persistent hammering, to the end thatwhenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to gooff for a change and rummage around amongst ogresand have a good time, it could go without uneasiness,knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it, andbusiness going to be continued at the old stand, sameas 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 stubborndifficulty 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 itwas pretty often -- there was wild joy in the nation'smouth, and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. Thejoy 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 aheavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasuryand a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could notbelieve this latter fact, and he would not listen to anyof my various projects for substituting something inthe place of the royal grants. If I could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for oneof these outlying scions from his own pocket, I couldhave made a grand to-do over it, and it would havehad a good effect with the nation; but no, he wouldn'thear of such a thing. He had something like areligious passion for royal grant; he seemed to lookupon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could notirritate him in any way so quickly and so surely as byan attack upon that venerable institution. If I ventured to cautiously hint that there was not anotherrespectable family in England that would humble itselfto hold out the hat -- however, that is as far as I evergot; he always cut me short there, and peremptorily,too.But I believed I saw my chance at last. I wouldform this crack regiment out of officers alone -- not asingle private. Half of it should consist of nobles,who should fill all the places up to Major-General, andserve gratis and pay their own expenses; and theywould be glad to do this when they should learn thatthe rest of the regiment would consist exclusively ofprinces of the blood. These princes of the blood shouldrange in rank from Lieutenant-General up to FieldMarshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped andfed by the state. Moreover -- and this was the masterstroke -- it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudyand awe-compelling title (which I would presently invent), and they and they only in all England shouldbe so addressed. Finally, all princes of the bloodshould have free choice; join that regiment, get thatgreat title, and renounce the royal grant, or stay outand receive a grant. Neatest touch of all: unborn butimminent princes of the blood could be born into theregiment, 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, allexisting grants would be relinquished; that the newlyborn would always join was equally certain. Withinsixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly, the RoyalGrant, would cease to be a living fact, and take itsplace among the curiosities of the past.