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_ It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully
told; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference;
it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused
the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality.
He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose,
and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright,
with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and
crashing against everything that came in their way and making
altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and
turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed
till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and
wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children.
Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep
from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal
idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists
of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had
got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech--
of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old
played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than
the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed
peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was
born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had
given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years
afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing
as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities--
but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later.
However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh--I mean the boy. No,
he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said
the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were
petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I believed, myself,
that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of
those jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hit
the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet.
However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate
the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use
to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet.
Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me
for fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay
told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, who
all wore the same ridiculous garb that I did--a garb that was a work
of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt
by human hands. However he had nullified the force of the
enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in
a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life
in order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited
to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spoke
of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant,"
and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked and
taloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh
in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that
there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me.
He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of
a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged
me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most
of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for
sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st;
and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before
he named the date.
I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough
in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as
to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being
doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet
it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops.
Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of
the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great
assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would
have made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey
the idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Roderick Random,"
and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first
ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner
in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk
implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our
own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly speaking,
the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable
in English history--or in European history, for that matter--may be
said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, instead
of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters,
had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We should
have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena
which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the
unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur's
people were not aware that they were indecent and I had presence
of mind enough not to mention it.
They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were
mightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficulty
away for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why they
were so dull--why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a
minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear, dear, to think
of it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussed
me; and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage.
Queen Guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and said
she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It was
the only compliment I got--if it was a compliment.
Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes
in another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon,
with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed,
and no end of rats for company. _
Read next: THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND: CHAPTER V - AN INSPIRATION
Read previous: THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND: CHAPTER III - KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE ROUND
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