ch never heard of Sir
Percy, and his armor is a memorial to Samuel Briggs of the Briggs
Tailoring Company. In Europe a few ancient families, in financial decay,
are guarding their ancestors' clothing as well as they can, but sooner
or later they will be driven to sell it, to live. And they won't live
much longer at that. The race will soon be extinct.

[Illustration]

Last year I got a bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art about
armor. It described how an American collector saw a fine set in Paris.
"A single view was quite enough to enable him to decide that the armor
was too important to remain in private hands." And that settled it.
These collectors are determined fellows and must have their own
way--like the knights.

But there were difficulties this time. They couldn't at first get this
set. The knightly owner of the armor, "in whose family it was an
heirloom, was, from our point of view, singularly unreasonable: he ...
was unwilling to part with it; the psychological crisis when he would
allow it to pass out of his hands must, therefore, be awaited." For
there comes "a propitious moment in cases of this kind," adds the
bulletin.

Yes, "in cases of this kind" collectors comfortably wait for that crisis
when the silent old knightly owner finally has to give in. They leave
agents to watch him while he struggles between want and pride, agents
who will snap him up if a day comes when the old man is weak. These
agents must be persistent and shrewd, and must present tactful
arguments, and must shoo away other agents, if possible, so as to keep
down the price. When the "propitious" time comes they must act quickly,
lest the knight's weakness pass, or lest some other knight send him help
and thus make them wait longer. And, having got the armor, they hurry
it off, give a dinner, and other merchants come to view it and measure
it and count up the pieces.

This sort of thing has been happening over and over in Europe--the
closing scenes of the order of knighthood, not foreseen at gay
tournaments! They were lucky in those days not to be able to look into
the future. Are _we_ lucky to be blind, at Mount Vernon or on some old
campus? The new times to come may be better--that always is
possible--but they won't be the kind we are building, and they may scrap
our shrines.

Some day when our modern types of capitalists are extinct, in their
turn, will future poets sing of their fine deeds and make young readers
dream?