feeling more noble than
ever, being not only knights but the sons of knights, they wouldn't let
in a new man. The mere idea made them so indignant they wanted to lynch
him. "Their loathing for the people seemed almost akin in its intensity
to color prejudice."

[Illustration]

They were also extravagant and improvident and never made money, so the
more they spent the more they had to demand from the people. When every
one had been squeezed dry for miles around, and had been thumped to make
sure, the knights cursed horribly and borrowed from the Church, whether
the Church would or no, or got hold of some money-lender and pulled his
beard and never paid interest.

The Church tried to make them religious and partly succeeded; there were
some Christian knights who were soldierly and courtly, of course. But,
allowing for this (and for my exaggerating their bad side, for the
moment), they certainly were not the kind of men Tennyson led me to
think.

I do not blame Tennyson. He had a perfect right to romanticize. He may
have known what toughs the knights were as well as anybody, but loved
their noble side, too, and dreamed about it until he had made it for the
moment seem real to him, and then hurried up and written his idyls
before the dream cracked. He may never have intended me or any of us to
swallow it whole. "It's not a dashed bible; it's a book of verse," I can
imagine him saying, "so don't be an idiot; don't forget to read your
encyclopedia, too."

But verse is mightier than any encyclopedia. At least it prevails.
That's because the human race is emotional and goes by its feelings. Why
haven't encyclopedists considered this? They are the men I should blame.
What is the use of embodying the truth about everything in a precise
condensed style which, even if we read it, we can't remember, since it
does not stir our feelings? The encyclopedists should write their books
over again, in passionate verse. What we need in an encyclopedia is
lyrical fervor, not mere completeness--Idyls of Economic Jurisprudence,
Songs of the Nitrates. Our present compendiums are meant for scholars
rather than people.

Well, the knights are gone and only their armor and weapons remain; and
our rich merchants who no longer are under-dogs, collect these as
curios. They present them with a magnificent gesture to local museums.
The metal suit which old Sir Percy Mortimer wore, when riding down
merchants, is now in the Briggsville Academy, whi