A connecticut yankee in king arthur`s court

with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.
This was depressingto a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the “poor white” did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was somethingin fact, it was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn`t show on the outside.
Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the Southern “poor white” of the far future. The king presently showed impatience, and said:
“An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye the criminals will abide in their father`s house? They are fleeing, they are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track.”
The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute. I said:
“Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction I think they would try to take. If they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would try to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter.”
The last remark was for the kingto quiet him. On the road the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said:
“What relation were these men to youcousins?”
He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling.
“Ah, my God, how know ye that?”
“I didn`t know it; it was a chance guess.”
“Poor lads, they are lost. And good lads they were, too.”
“Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?”
He didn`t quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly:
“Ye-s.”
“Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!”
It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel.
“Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me an I failed of my duty.”
“Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep still and let those men get away. They`ve done a righteous deed.”
He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time. He looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming, and then said in a cautious voice:
“From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, and seem not to be afraid?”
“They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, I take it. You would not tell anybody I said them?”
“I? I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first.”
“Well, then, let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeating it. I think devil`s work has been done last night upon those innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved. If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck.”
Fear and depression vanished from the man`s manner, and gratefulness and a brave animation took their place:
“Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded. I helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master`s cause; the others helped for none other reason. All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite`s tear, for in that lies safety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I am ready.”
There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existedeven the Russians; plenty of manhood in themeven in the Germansif one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur`s days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while.

Chapter 31.

We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked. We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again. And meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur`s kingdom: the behaviorborn of nice and exact subdivisions of casteof chance passers-by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap`s nose was in the airhe couldn`t even see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.
Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years old. They implored help, but they were so beside themselves that we couldn`t make out what the matter was. However, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to death. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for.
It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time very well. I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to. A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head during the afternoon. A man who hasn`t had much experience, and doesn`t think, is apt to measure a nation`s prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the nation is prosperous; if low, it isn`t. Which is an error. It isn`t what sum you get, it`s how much you can buy with it, that`s the important thing; and it`s that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. In the North a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the South he got fiftypayable in Confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel. In the North a suit of overalls cost three dollarsa day`s wages; in the South it cost seventy-five which was two days` wages. Other things were in proportion. Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they were in the South, because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the other had.
Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and even some goldbut that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith`s. I dropped in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold piece. They furnished itthat is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where I got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and where I was going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, I went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily; told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wife was a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was a Prohibitionist, and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, and so he didn`t give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. Yes, they c…