The Crow's Nest

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Day Clarence. The Crow's Nest

The Crow's Nest. The Three Tigers

As They Go Riding By

Odd Countries

On Cows

Stroom and Graith

Legs vs. Architects

To Phoebe

Sex, Religion and Business

An Ode to Trade

Objections to Reading

On Authors. The Enjoyment of Gloom

Buffoon Fate

The Wrong Lampman

The Seamy Side of Fabre

In His Baby Blue Ship

Problems. The Man Who Knew Gods

Annual Report of the League for Improving the Lives of the Rich

From Noah to Now

Sic Semper Dissenters

Humpty-Dumpty and Adam

How It Looks to a Fish

A Hopeful Old Bigamist

The Revolt of Capital

Still Reading Away?

Portraits. A Wild Polish Hero and the Reverend Lyman Abbott

Mrs. P's Side of It

The Death of Logan

Portrait of a Lady

Grandfather's Three Lives

Story of a Farmer

Отрывок из книги

What kind of men do we think the mediæval knights really were? I have always seen them in a romantic light, finer than human. Tennyson gave me that apple, and I confess I did eat, and I have lived on the wrong diet ever since. Malory was almost as misleading. My net impression was that there were a few wicked, villainous knights, who committed crimes such as not trusting other knights or saying mean things, but that even they were subject to shame when found out and rebuked, and that all the rest were a fine, earnest Y. M. C. A. crowd, with the noblest ideals.

But only the poets hold this view of knights, not the scholars. Here, for example, is a cold-hearted scholar, Monsieur Albert Guerard. He has been digging into the old mediæval records with an unromantic eye, hang him; and he has emerged with his hands full of facts which prove the knights were quite different. They did have some good qualities. When invaders came around the knights fought them off as nobly as possible; and they often went away and fought Saracens or ogres or such, and when thus engaged they gave little trouble to the good folk at home. But in between wars, not being educated, they couldn't sit still and be quiet. It was dull in the house. They liked action. So they rode around the streets in a pugnacious, wild-western manner, despising anyone who could read and often knocking him down; and making free with the personal property of merchants and peasants, who they thought had no special right to property or even to life. Knights who felt rough behaved as such, and the injuries they inflicted were often fatal.

.....

"And how much is that?"

"Why, not so very damn much perhaps," we answer. "But at least you'll keep sane."

.....