YES, it is strange how little
a while at a time a person can
be contented. Only a little while
back, when I was riding and suffering,
what a heaven this peace, this
rest, this sweet serenity in
this secluded shady nook by this
purling stream would have seemed,
where I could keep perfectly
comfortable all the time by pouring
a dipper of water into my armor
now and then; yet already I was
getting dissatisfied; partly
because I could not light my
pipe -- for, although I had long
ago started a match factory,
I had forgotten to bring matches
with me -- and partly because
we had nothing to eat. Here was
another illustration of the childlike
improvidence of this age and
people. A man in armor always
trusted to chance for his food
on a journey, and would have
been scandalized at the idea
of hanging a basket of sandwiches
on his spear. There was probably
not a knight of all the Round
Table combination who would not
rather have died than been caught
carrying such a thing as that
on his flagstaff. And yet there
could not be anything more sensible.
It had been my intention to smuggle
a couple of sandwiches into my
helmet, but I was interrupted
in the act, and had to make an
excuse and lay them aside, and
a
dog got them.
Night approached, and with
it a storm. The darkness came
on fast. We must camp, of course.
I found a good shelter for the
demoiselle under a rock, and
went off and found another for
myself. But I was obliged to
remain in my armor, because I
could not get it off by myself
and yet could not allow Alisande
to help, because it would have
seemed so like undressing before
folk. It would not have amounted
to that in reality, because I
had clothes on underneath; but
the prejudices of one's breeding
are not gotten rid of just at
a jump, and I knew that when
it came to stripping off that
bob-tailed iron petticoat I should
be embarrassed.
With the storm came a change
of weather; and the stronger
the wind blew, and the wilder
the rain lashed around, the colder
and colder it got. Pretty soon,
various kinds of bugs and ants
and worms and things began to
flock in out of the wet and crawl
down inside my armor to get warm;
and while some of them behaved
well enough, and snuggled up
amongst my clothes and got quiet,
the majority were of a restless,
uncomfortable sort, and never
stayed still, but went on prowling
and hunting for they did not
know what; especially the ants,
which went tickling along in
wearisome procession from one
end of me to the other by the
hour, and are a kind of creatures
which I never wish to sleep with
again. It would be my advice
to persons situated in this way,
to not roll or thrash around,
because this excites the interest
of all the different sorts of
animals and makes every last
one of them want to turn out
and see what is going on, and
this makes things worse than
they were before, and of course
makes you objurgate harder, too,
if you can. Still, if one did
not roll and thrash around he
would die; so perhaps it is as
well to do one way as the other;
there is no real choice. Even
after I was frozen solid I could
still distinguish that tickling,
just as a corpse does when he
is taking electric treatment.
I said I would never wear armor
after this trip.
All those trying hours whilst
I was frozen and yet was in a
living fire, as you may say,
on account of that swarm of crawlers,
that same unanswerable question
kept circling and circling through
my tired head: How do people
stand this miserable armor? How
have they managed to stand it
all these generations? How can
they sleep at night for dreading
the tortures of next day?
When the morning came at last,
I was in a bad enough plight:
seedy, drowsy, fagged, from want
of sleep; weary from thrashing
around, famished from long fasting;
pining for a bath, and to get
rid of the animals; and crippled
with rheumatism. And how had
it fared with the nobly born,
the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle
Alisande la Carteloise? Why,
she was as fresh as a squirrel;
she had slept like the dead;
and as for a bath, probably neither
she nor any other noble in the
land had ever had one, and so
she was not missing it. Measured
by modern standards, they were
merely modified savages, those
people. This noble lady showed
no impatience to get to breakfast
-- and that smacks of the savage,
too. On their journeys those
Britons were used to long fasts,
and knew how to bear them; and
also how to freight up against
probable fasts before starting,
after the style of the Indian
and the anaconda. As like as
not, Sandy was loaded for a three-day
stretch.
We were off
before sunrise, Sandy riding
and I limping along
behind. In half an hour we came
upon a group of ragged poor creatures
who had assembled to mend the
thing which was regarded as a
road. They were as humble as
animals to me; and when I proposed
to breakfast with them, they
were so flattered, so overwhelmed
by this extraordinary condescension
of mine that at first they were
not able to believe that I was
in earnest. My lady put up her
scornful lip and withdrew to
one side; she said in their hearing
that she would as soon think
of eating with the other cattle
-- a remark which embarrassed
these poor devils merely because
it referred to them, and not
because it insulted or offended
them, for it didn't. And yet
they were not slaves, not chattels.
By a sarcasm of law and phrase
they were freemen. Seven-tenths
of the free population of the
country were of just their class
and degree: small "independent" farmers,
artisans, etc.; which is to say,
they were the nation, the actual
Nation; they were about all of
it that was useful, or worth
saving, or really respect-worthy,
and to subtract them would have
been to subtract the Nation and
leave behind some dregs, some
refuse, in the shape of a king,
nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive,
acquainted mainly with the arts
of wasting and destroying, and
of no sort of use or value in
any rationally constructed world.
And yet, by ingenious contrivance,
this gilded minority, instead
of being in the tail of the procession
where it belonged, was marching
head up and banners flying, at
the other end of it; had elected
itself to be the Nation, and
these innumerable clams had permitted
it so long that they had come
at last to accept it as a truth;
and not only that, but to believe
it right and as it should be.
The priests had told their fathers
and themselves that this ironical
state of things was ordained
of God; and so, not reflecting
upon how unlike God it would
be to amuse himself with sarcasms,
and especially such poor transparent
ones as this, they had dropped
the matter there and become respectfully
quiet.
The talk of these meek people
had a strange enough sound in
a formerly American ear. They
were freemen, but they could
not leave the estates of their
lord or their bishop without
his permission; they could not
prepare their own bread, but
must have their corn ground and
their bread baked at his mill
and his bakery, and pay roundly
for the same; they could not
sell a piece of their own property
without paying him a handsome
percentage of the proceeds, nor
buy a piece of somebody else's
without remembering him in cash
for the privilege; they had to
harvest his grain for him gratis,
and be ready to come at a moment's
notice, leaving their own crop
to destruction by the threatened
storm; they had to let him plant
fruit trees in their fields,
and then keep their indignation
to themselves when his heedless
fruit-gatherers trampled the
grain around the trees; they
had to smother their anger when
his hunting parties galloped
through their fields laying waste
the result of their patient toil;
they were not allowed to keep
doves themselves, and when the
swarms from my lord's dovecote
settled on their crops they must
not lose their temper and kill
a bird, for awful would the penalty
be; when the harvest was at last
gathered, then came the procession
of robbers to levy their blackmail
upon it: first the Church carted
off its fat tenth, then the king's
commissioner took his twentieth,
then my lord's people made a
mighty inroad upon the remainder;
after which, the skinned freeman
had liberty to bestow the remnant
in his barn, in case it was worth
the trouble; there were taxes,
and taxes, and taxes, and more
taxes, and taxes again, and yet
other taxes -- upon this free
and independent pauper, but none
upon his lord the baron or the
bishop, none upon the wasteful
nobility or the all-devouring
Church; if the baron would sleep
unvexed, the freeman must sit
up all night after his day's
work and whip the ponds to keep
the frogs quiet; if the freeman's
daughter -- but no, that last
infamy of monarchical government
is unprintable; and finally,
if the freeman, grown desperate
with his tortures, found his
life unendurable under such conditions,
and sacrificed it and fled to
death for mercy and refuge, the
gentle Church condemned him to
eternal fire, the gentle law
buried him at midnight at the
cross-roads with a stake through
his back, and his master the
baron or the bishop confiscated
all his property and turned his
widow and his orphans out of
doors.
And here were
these freemen assembled in
the early morning
to work on their lord the bishop's
road three days each -- gratis;
every head of a family, and every
son of a family, three days each,
gratis, and a day or so added
for their servants. Why, it was
like reading about France and
the French, before the ever memorable
and blessed Revolution, which
swept a thousand years of such
villany away in one swift tidal-wave
of blood -- one: a settlement
of that hoary debt in the proportion
of half a drop of blood for each
hogshead of it that had been
pressed by slow tortures out
of that people in the weary stretch
of ten centuries of wrong and
shame and misery the like of
which was not to be mated but
in hell. There were two "Reigns
of Terror," if we would but remember
it and consider it; the one wrought
murder in hot passion, the other
in heartless cold blood; the
one lasted mere months, the other
had lasted a thousand years;
the one inflicted death upon
ten thousand persons, the other
upon a hundred millions; but
our shudders are all for the "horrors" of
the minor Terror, the momentary
Terror, so to speak; whereas,
what is the horror of swift death
by the axe, compared with lifelong
death from hunger, cold, insult,
cruelty, and heart-break? What
is swift death by lightning compared
with death by slow fire at the
stake? A city cemetery could
contain the coffins filled by
that brief Terror which we have
all been so diligently taught
to shiver at and mourn over;
but all France could hardly contain
the coffins filled by that older
and real Terror -- that unspeakably
bitter and awful Terror which
none of us has been taught to
see in its vastness or pity as
it deserves.
These poor ostensible freemen
who were sharing their breakfast
and their talk with me, were
as full of humble reverence for
their king and Church and nobility
as their worst enemy could desire.
There was something pitifully
ludicrous about it. I asked them
if they supposed a nation of
people ever existed, who, with
a free vote in every man's hand,
would elect that a single family
and its descendants should reign
over it forever, whether gifted
or boobies, to the exclusion
of all other families -- including
the voter's; and would also elect
that a certain hundred families
should be raised to dizzy summits
of rank, and clothed on with
offensive transmissible glories
and privileges to the exclusion
of the rest of the nation's families
-- INCLUDING HIS OWN.
They all looked unhit, and
said they didn't know; that they
had never thought about it before,
and it hadn't ever occurred to
them that a nation could be so
situated that every man COULD
have a say in the government.
I said I had seen one -- and
that it would last until it had
an Established Church. Again
they were all unhit -- at first.
But presently one man looked
up and asked me to state that
proposition again; and state
it slowly, so it could soak into
his understanding. I did it;
and after a little he had the
idea, and he brought his fist
down and said HE didn't believe
a nation where every man had
a vote would voluntarily get
down in the mud and dirt in any
such way; and that to steal from
a nation its will and preference
must be a crime and the first
of all crimes. I said to myself:
"This one's
a man. If I were backed by
enough of his sort,
I would make a strike for the
welfare of this country, and
try to prove myself its loyalest
citizen by making a wholesome
change in its system of government."
You see my
kind of loyalty was loyalty
to one's country,
not to its institutions or its
office-holders. The country is
the real thing, the substantial
thing, the eternal thing; it
is the thing to watch over, and
care for, and be loyal to; institutions
are extraneous, they are its
mere clothing, and clothing can
wear out, become ragged, cease
to be comfortable, cease to protect
the body from winter, disease,
and death. To be loyal to rags,
to shout for rags, to worship
rags, to die for rags -- that
is a loyalty of unreason, it
is pure animal; it belongs to
monarchy, was invented by monarchy;
let monarchy keep it. I was from
Connecticut, whose Constitution
declares "that all political
power is inherent in the people,
and all free governments are
founded on their authority and
instituted for their benefit;
and that they have AT ALL TIMES
an undeniable and indefeasible
right to ALTER THEIR FORM OF
GOVERNMENT in such a manner as
they may think expedient."
Under that gospel, the citizen
who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's
political clothes are worn out,
and yet holds his peace and does
not agitate for a new suit, is
disloyal; he is a traitor. That
he may be the only one who thinks
he sees this decay, does not
excuse him; it is his duty to
agitate anyway, and it is the
duty of the others to vote him
down if they do not see the matter
as he does.
And now here
I was, in a country where a
right to say how the
country should be governed was
restricted to six persons in
each thousand of its population.
For the nine hundred and ninety-four
to express dissatisfaction with
the regnant system and propose
to change it, would have made
the whole six shudder as one
man, it would have been so disloyal,
so dishonorable, such putrid
black treason. So to speak, I
was become a stockholder in a
corporation where nine hundred
and ninety-four of the members
furnished all the money and did
all the work, and the other six
elected themselves a permanent
board of direction and took all
the dividends. It seemed to me
that what the nine hundred and
ninety-four dupes needed was
a new deal. The thing that would
have best suited the circus side
of my nature would have been
to resign the Boss-ship and get
up an insurrection and turn it
into a revolution; but I knew
that the Jack Cade or the Wat
Tyler who tries such a thing
without first educating his materials
up to revolution grade is almost
absolutely certain to get left.
I had never been accustomed to
getting left, even if I do say
it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which
had been for some time working
into shape in my mind was of
a quite different pattern from
the Cade-Tyler sort.
So I did not talk blood and
insurrection to that man there
who sat munching black bread
with that abused and mistaught
herd of human sheep, but took
him aside and talked matter of
another sort to him. After I
had finished, I got him to lend
me a little ink from his veins;
and with this and a sliver I
wrote on a piece of bark --
Put him in the Man-factory
--
and gave it to him, and said:
"Take it to
the palace at Camelot and give
it into the hands of
Amyas le Poulet, whom I call
Clarence, and he will understand."
"He is a priest, then," said
the man, and some of the enthusiasm
went out of his face.
"How -- a priest?
Didn't I tell you that no chattel
of the
Church, no bond-slave of pope
or bishop can enter my Man-Factory?
Didn't I tell you that YOU couldn't
enter unless your religion, whatever
it might be, was your own free
property?"
"Marry, it
is so, and for that I was glad;
wherefore it liked
me not, and bred in me a cold
doubt, to hear of this priest
being there."
"But he isn't
a priest, I tell you."
The man looked far from satisfied.
He said:
"He is not
a priest, and yet can read?"
"He is not a priest and yet
can read -- yes, and write, too,
for that matter. I taught him
myself." The man's face cleared. "And
it is the first thing that you
yourself will be taught in that
Factory --"
"I? I would
give blood out of my heart
to know that art.
Why, I will be your slave, your
--"
"No you won't,
you won't be anybody's slave.
Take your family
and go along. Your lord the bishop
will confiscate your small property,
but no matter. Clarence will
fix you all right." |