Chapter XL: Three Years Later

by Mark Twain

　　When I broke the back of knight-errantry thattime, I no longer felt obliged to work in secret.So, the very next day I exposed my hidden schools,my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factoriesand workshops to an astonished world. That is tosay, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth.Well, it is always a good plan to follow up anadvantage promptly. The knights were temporarilydown, but if I would keep them so I must just simplyparalyze them -- nothing short of that would answer.You see, I was "bluffing" that last time in the field;it would be natural for them to work around to thatconclusion, if I gave them a chance. So I must notgive them time; and I didn't.I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, postedit up where any priest could read it to them, and alsokept it standing in the advertising columns of thepaper.I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions.I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistantsand stand up against the massed chivalry of the wholeearth and destroy it.I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said;I could do what I promised. There wasn't any wayto misunderstand the language of that challenge.Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that thiswas a plain case of "put up, or shut up." Theywere wise and did the latter. In all the next threeyears they gave me no trouble worth mentioning.Consider the three years sped. Now look aroundon England. A happy and prosperous country, andstrangely altered. Schools everywhere, and severalcolleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Evenauthorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was first in the field, with a volume of gray-headedjokes which I had been familiar with during thirteencenturies. If he had left out that old rancid one aboutthe lecturer I wouldn't have said anything; but Icouldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book andhanged the author.Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equalbefore the law; taxation had been equalized. Thetelegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity wereworking their way into favor. We had a steamboat ortwo on the Thames, we had steam warships, and thebeginnings of a steam commercial marine; I was gettingready to send out an expedition to discover America.We were building several lines of railway, and ourline from Camelot to London was already finished andin operation. I was shrewd enough to make all officesconnected with the passenger service places of highand distinguished honor. My idea was to attract thechivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keepthem out of mischief. The plan worked very well, thecompetition for the places was hot. The conductor ofthe 4.33 express was a duke; there wasn't a passengerconductor on the line below the degree of earl. Theywere good men, every one, but they had two defectswhich I couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: theywouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knockdown" fare -- I mean rob the company.There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn'tin some useful employment. They were going fromend to end of the country in all manner of usefulmissionary capacities; their penchant for wandering,and their experience in it, made them altogether themost effective spreaders of civilization we had. Theywent clothed in steel and equipped with sword andlance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't persuade aperson to try a sewing-machine on the installmentplan, or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or aprohibition journal, or any of the other thousand andone things they canvassed for, they removed him andpassed on.I was very happy. Things were working steadilytoward a secretly longed-for point. You see, I hadtwo schemes in my head which were the vastest of allmy projects. The one was to overthrow the CatholicChurch and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins --not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-pleaseone; and the other project was to get a decree issuedby and by, commanding that upon Arthur's deathunlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given tomen and women alike -- at any rate to all men, wiseor unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age shouldbe found to know nearly as much as their sons attwenty-one. Arthur was good for thirty years yet, hebeing about my own age -- that is to say, forty -- andI believed that in that time I could easily have theactive part of the population of that day ready andeager for an event which should be the first of its kindin the history of the world -- a rounded and completegovernmental revolution without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may as well confess,though I do feel ashamed when I think of it: I wasbeginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself. Yes, there was more or less humannature in me; I found that out.Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution,but in a modified way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royalfamily at the head of it instead of an elective chiefmagistrate. He believed that no nation that had everknown the joy of worshiping a royal family couldever be robbed of it and not fade away and die ofmelancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. Hesaid, then have cats. He was sure that a royal familyof cats would answer every purpose. They would beas useful as any other royal family, they would knowas much, they would have the same virtues and thesame treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughablyvain and absurd and never know it, they would bewholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sounda divine right as any other royal house, and "TomVII., or Tom XI., or Tom XIV. by the grace of GodKing," would sound as well as it would when appliedto the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "And asa rule," said he, in his neat modern English, "thecharacter of these cats would be considerably abovethe character of the average king, and this would bean immense moral advantage to the nation, for thereason that a nation always models its morals after itsmonarch's. The worship of royalty being founded inunreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easilybecome as sacred as any other royalties, and indeedmore so, because it would presently be noticed thatthey hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisonednobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort,and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverencethan the customary human king, and would certainlyget it. The eyes of the whole harried world wouldsoon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system,and royal butchers would presently begin to disappear;their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlingsfrom our own royal house; we should become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world;within forty years all Europe would be governed bycats, and we should furnish the cats. The reign ofuniversal peace would begin then, to end no moreforever...... Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow -- fzt! -- wow!"Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and wasbeginning to be persuaded by him, until he explodedthat cat-howl and startled me almost out of my clothes.But he never could be in earnest. He didn't knowwhat it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectlyrational and feasible improvement upon constitutionalmonarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it,or care anything about it, either. I was going to givehim a scolding, but Sandy came flying in at thatmoment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs thatfor a minute she could not get her voice. I ran andtook her in my arms, and lavished caresses upon herand said, beseechingly:"Speak, darling, speak! What is it?"Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped,almost inaudibly:"Hello-Central!""Quick!" I shouted to Clarence; "telephone theking's homeopath to come!"In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib,and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, andeverywhere, all over the palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance -- membranous croup! I bentdown and whispered:"Wake up, sweetheart! Hello-Central"She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made outto say:"Papa."That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. Isent for preparations of sulphur, I rousted out thecroup-kettle myself; for I don't sit down and wait fordoctors when Sandy or the child is sick. I knew howto nurse both of them, and had had experience. Thislittle chap had lived in my arms a good part of itssmall life, and often I could soothe away its troublesand get it to laugh through the tear-dews on its eyelashes when even its mother couldn't.Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came stridingalong the great hall now on his way to the stockboard; he was president of the stock-board, and occupied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought of SirGalahad; for the stock-board consisted of the Knightsof the Round Table, and they used the Round Tablefor business purposes now. Seats at it were worth --well, you would never believe the figure, so it is nouse to state it. Sir Launcelot was a bear, and he hadput up a corner in one of the new lines, and was justgetting ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but whatof that? He was the same old Launcelot, and whenhe glanced in as he was passing the door and found outthat his pet was sick, that was enough for him; bullsand bears might fight it out their own way for all him,he would come right in here and stand by little HelloCentral for all he was worth. And that was what hedid. He shied his helmet into the corner, and in halfa minute he had a new wick in the alcohol lamp andwas firing up on the croup-kettle. By this time Sandyhad built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything was ready.Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up thekettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with atouch of lactic acid added thereto, then filled the thingup with water and inserted the steam-spout under thecanopy. Everything was ship-shape now, and we satdown on either side of the crib to stand our watch.Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that shecharged a couple of church-wardens with willow-barkand sumach-tobacco for us, and told us to smoke asmuch as we pleased, it couldn't get under the canopy,and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in theland who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, therecouldn't be a more contented or comfortable sightthan Sir Launcelot in his noble armor sitting in graciousserenity at the end of a yard of snowy church-warden.He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was justintended to make a wife and children happy. But, ofcourse Guenever -- however, it's no use to cry overwhat's done and can't be helped.Well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, rightstraight through, for three days and nights, till thechild was out of danger; then he took her up in hisgreat arms and kissed her, with his plumes fallingabout her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy'slap again and took his stately way down the vast hall,between the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials,and so disappeared. And no instinct warned me thatI should never look upon him again in this world!Lord, what a world of heart-break it is.The doctors said we must take the child away, if wewould coax her back to health and strength again.And she must have sea-air. So we took a man-ofwar, and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons, andwent cruising about, and after a fortnight of this westepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctorsthought it would be a good idea to make something ofa stay there. The little king of that region offered ushis hospitalities, and we were glad to accept. If hehad had as many conveniences as he lacked, we shouldhave been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was,we made out very well, in his queer old castle, by thehelp of comforts and luxuries from the ship.At the end of a month I sent the vessel home forfresh supplies, and for news. We expected her backin three or four days. She would bring me, alongwith other news, the result of a certain experimentwhich I had been starting. It was a project of mineto replace the tournament with something which mightfurnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry,keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, andat the same time preserve the best thing in them,which was their hardy spirit of emulation. I had hada choice band of them in private training for some time,and the date was now arriving for their first publiceffort.This experiment was baseball. In order to give thething vogue from the start, and place it out of thereach of criticism, I chose my nines by rank, notcapacity. There wasn't a knight in either team whowasn't a sceptered sovereign. As for material of thissort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur.You couldn't throw a brick in any direction and notcripple a king. Of course, I couldn't get these peopleto leave off their armor; they wouldn't do that whenthey bathed. They consented to differentiate the armorso that a body could tell one team from the other, butthat was the most they would do. So, one of theteams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore platearmor made of my new Bessemer steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I ever saw.Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way,but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemerwas at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound ahundred and fifty yards sometimes. And when a manwas running, and threw himself on his stomach to slideto his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port.At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires,but I had to discontinue that. These people were noeasier to please than other nines. The umpire's firstdecision was usually his last; they broke him in twowith a bat, and his friends toted him home on ashutter. When it was noticed that no umpire eversurvived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. SoI was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank andlofty position under the government would protecthim.Here are the names of the nines:BESSEMERS ULSTERSKING ARTHUR. EMPEROR LUCIUS.KING LOT OF LOTHIAN. KING LOGRIS.KING OF NORTHGALIS. KING MARHALT OF IRELAND.KING MARSIL. KING MORGANORE.KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN. KING MARK OF CORNWALL.KING LABOR. KING NENTRES OF GARLOT.KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE. KING MELIODAS OF LIONES.KING BAGDEMAGUS. KING OF THE LAKE.KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES. THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA.Umpire -- CLARENCE.The first public game would certainly draw fiftythousand people; and for solid fun would be worthgoing around the world to see. Everything would befavorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weathernow, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.