第71章 Chapter 26(2)

I judged that a sharp,bright new nickel,with a first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Guenever on the other,and a blooming pious motto,would take the tuck out of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous fancy more;and I was right.This batch was the first it was tried on,and it worked to a charm.The saving in expense was a notable economy.You will see that by these figures:We touched a trifle over 700of the 800patients;at former rates,this would have cost the government about $240;at the new rate we pulled through for about $35,thus saving upward of $200at one swoop.To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke,consider these other figures:the annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of a contribution of three days'average wages of every individual of the population,counting every individual as if he were a man.If you take a nation of 60,000,000,where average wages are $2per day,three days'wages taken from each individual will provide $360,000,000and pay the government's expenses.In my day,in my own country,this money was collected from imposts,and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it,and it made him comfortable to think so;whereas,in fact,it was paid by the American people,and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely the same --each paid $6.Nothing could be equaler than that,I reckon.Well,Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur,and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to something less than 1,OOO,OOO.A mechanic's average wage was 3cents a day,when he paid his own keep.By this rule the national government's expenses were $90,000a year,or about $250a day.Thus,by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil day,I not only injured no one,dissatisfied no one,but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense into the bargain --a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000in my day in America.In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source --the wisdom of my boyhood --for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom,howsoever lowly may be its origin:in my boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause.The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin,the coin would answer me better than the buttons;all hands were happy and nobody hurt.

Marinel took the patients as they came.He examined the candidate;if he couldn't qualify he was warned off;if he could he was passed along to the king.A priest pronounced the words,"They shall lay their hands on the sick,and they shall recover."Then the king stroked the ulcers,while the reading continued;finally,the patient graduated and got his nickel --the king hanging it around his neck himself --and was dismissed.

Would you think that that would cure?It certainly did.Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it.Up by Astolat there was a chapel where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese around there --the girl said so herself --and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the occurrence --a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach;whereas,on the contrary,thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away whole and sound;and even the well could look upon it and live.Of course,when I was told these things I did not believe them;but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb.I saw the cures effected myself;and they were real cures and not questionable.I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches,arrive and pray before that picture,and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp.

There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony.

In other places people operated on a patient's mind,without saying a word to him,and cured him.In others,experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them,and appealed to their faith,and those patients went away cured.Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne --the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign --has passed away.In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil,but there was no occasion for this diffidence:they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty.

Well,when the priest had been droning for three hours,and the good king polishing the evidences,and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever,I got to feeling intolerably bored.I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state.For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked;again those words were being droned out:"they shall lay their hands on the sick"--when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears:"Camelot WEEKLYHOSANNAH AND LITERARY VOLCANO!--latest irruption --only two cents --all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!"One greater than kings had arrived --the newsboy.But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth,and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.

I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper;the Adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change;is around the corner yet.It was delicious to see a newspaper again,yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines.

I had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence,respect,deference,so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through me:HIGH TIMES IN THE VALLEYOF HOLINESS!