Curious Republic of Gondour | Page 8

that it would only cost
two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, and so she

telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for embalming
arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild, sad wail,
that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for stoofhn'
Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin' to stairt a
Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"
The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.

THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A. D. 1870
Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the
customary universal round of the press:
A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional site of
the Garden of Eden.
As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:
Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.
It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest
achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating
away about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart
and home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of
that happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our
ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel
trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of
the nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake
city and an advanced civilisation.
A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the
comprehension of the average mind; but no commonly gifted person
can conceive of such a spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his
powers. Brooklyn is part and parcel of the city of New York, and there
is hardly romance enough in the entire metropolis to re-supply a
Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," in case he happened to run out of it.
Let the reader calmly and dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in

Brooklyn; heralds, pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn;
the marshalling of the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets,
velvet trunks, ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus
and livery-stable patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as
"steeds," "destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly,
humble names these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and
renamed "Mohammed," "Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn;
mounted thus, and armed with swords and shields and wooden lances,
and cased in paste board hauberks, morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and
addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir" Jones, and bearing such titled
grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight," the "Knight of Shenandoah,"
the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight of Maryland," and the
"Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at the toot of the horn
charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a post, and prodding at it
in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and by skewering it and
cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with glory this in Brooklyn;
and each noble success like this duly and promptly announced by an
applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the band playing three bars
of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad daylight. And let the
reader remember, and also add to his picture, as follows, to wit: when
the show was all over, the party who had shed the most blood and
overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at least had
prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient privilege of
naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which naming
had in reality been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process, and
long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in
person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the
county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious
things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two
yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it is true.
This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here
among the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last. It
will be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia,
where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, maiden-
rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is
accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity,

while they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby
history exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; and
an ignoramus.
All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of
Ashby de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those
worthies were to rise up and come here and perform again the
chivalrous deeds of that famous