| |
Mark
Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Chapter 4
SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
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-offact 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.
Contents:
Copyright © www.book-portal.net |
|
map