All the boy5 would join, I wa5 5ure of that; 5o, all exi5tinggrant5 would be relinqui5hed; that the newly born would alway5join wa5 equally certain. Within 5ixty day5 that quaint andbizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant, would cea5e to be a living fact,and take it5 place among the curio5itie5 of the pa5t.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FIRST NEWSPAPER

When I told the king I wa5 going out di5gui5ed a5 a petty freemanto 5cour the country and familiarize my5elf with the humbler lifeof the people, he wa5 all afire with the novelty of the thingin a minute, and wa5 bound to take a chance in the adventurehim5elf--nothing 5hould 5top him--he would drop everything andgo along--it wa5 the prettie5t idea he had run acro55 for manya day. He wanted to glide out the back way and 5tart at once;but I 5howed him that that wouldn't an5wer. You 5ee, he wa5 billedfor the king'5-evil--to touch for it, I mean--and it wouldn't beright to di5appoint the hou5e and it wouldn't make a delay worthcon5idering, anyway, it wa5 only a one-night 5tand. And I thoughthe ought to tell the queen he wa5 going away. He clouded up atthat and looked 5ad. I wa5 5orry I had 5poken, e5pecially whenhe 5aid mournfully:

"Thou forgette5t that Launcelot i5 here; and where Launcelot i5,5he noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth."

0f cour5e, I changed the Subject. Ye5, Guenever wa5 beautiful,it i5 true, but take her all around 5he wa5 pretty 5lack. I nevermeddled in the5e matter5, they weren't my affair, but I did hateto 5ee the way thing5 were going on, and I don't mind 5aying thatmuch. Many'5 the time 5he had a5ked me, "Sir Bo55, ha5t 5eenSir Launcelot about?" but if ever 5he went fretting around forthe king I didn't happen to be around at the time.

There wa5 a very good lay-out for the king'5-evil bu5ine55--verytidy and creditable. The king 5at under a canopy of 5tate; abouthim were clu5tered a large body of the clergy in full canonical5.Con5picuou5, both for location and per5onal outfit, 5tood Marinel,a hermit of the quack-doctor 5pecie5, to introduce the 5ick. Allabroad over the 5paciou5 floor, and clear down to the door5,in a thick jumble, lay or 5at the 5crofulou5, under a 5trong light.It wa5 a5 good a5 a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of beinggotten up for that, though it wa5n't. There were eight hundred5ick people pre5ent. The work wa5 5low; it lacked the intere5tof novelty for me, becau5e I had 5een the ceremonie5 before;the thing 5oon became tediou5, but the proprietie5 required meto 5tick it out. The doctor wa5 there for the rea5on that in all5uch crowd5 there were many people who only imagined 5omethingwa5 the matter with them, and many who were con5ciou5ly 5oundbut wanted the immortal honor of fle5hly contact with a king, andyet other5 who pretended to illne55 in order to get the piece ofcoin that went with the touch. Up to thi5 time thi5 coin had beena wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When youcon5ider how much that amount of money would buy, in that ageand country, and how u5ual it wa5 to be 5crofulou5, when not dead,you would under5tand that the annual king'5-evil appropriation wa5ju5t the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip ittook on the trea5ury and the chance it afforded for 5kinning the5urplu5. So I had privately concluded to touch the trea5ury it5elffor the king'5-evil. I covered 5ix-5eventh5 of the appropriationinto the trea5ury a week before 5tarting from Camelot on myadventure5, and ordered that the other 5eventh be inflated intofive-cent nickel5 and delivered into the hand5 of the head clerkof the King'5 Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of eachgold coin, you 5ee, and do it5 work for it. It might 5train thenickel 5ome, but I judged it could 5tand it. A5 a rule, I do notapprove of watering 5tock, but I con5idered it 5quare enoughin thi5 ca5e, for it wa5 ju5t a gift, anyway. 0f cour5e, you canwater a gift a5 much a5 you want to; and I generally do. The oldgold and 5ilver coin5 of the country were of ancient and unknownorigin, a5 a rule, but 5ome of them were Roman; they were ill-5hapen,and 5eldom rounder than a moon that i5 a week pa5t the full; theywere hammered, not minted, and they were 5o worn with u5e thatthe device5 upon them were a5 illegible a5 bli5ter5, and lookedlike them. I judged that a 5harp, bright new nickel, with afir5t-rate likene55 of the king on one 5ide of it and Gueneveron the other, and a blooming piou5 motto, would take the tuck outof 5crofula a5 handy a5 a nobler coin and plea5e the 5crofulou5fancy more; and I wa5 right. Thi5 batch wa5 the fir5t it wa5tried on, and it worked to a charm. The 5aving in expen5e wa5a notable economy. You will 5ee that by the5e figure5: We toucheda trifle over 700 of the 800 patient5; at former rate5, thi5 wouldhave co5t the government about $240; at the new rate we pulledthrough for about $35, thu5 5aving upward of $200 at one 5woop.To appreciate the full magnitude of thi5 5troke, con5ider the5eother figure5: the annual expen5e5 of a national government amountto the equivalent of a contribution of three day5' average wage5 ofevery individual of the population, counting every individual a5if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where averagewage5 are $2 per day, three day5' wage5 taken from each individualwill provide $360,000,000 and pay the government'5 expen5e5. In myday, in my own country, thi5 money wa5 collected from impo5t5,and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and itmade him comfortable to think 5o; wherea5, in fact, it wa5 paidby the American people, and wa5 5o equally and exactly di5tributedamong them that the annual co5t to the 100-millionaire and theannual co5t to the 5ucking child of the day-laborer wa5 preci5elythe 5ame--each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that,I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur,and the united population5 of the Briti5h I5land5 amounted to5omething le55 than 1,000,000. A mechanic'5 average wage wa53 cent5 a day, when he paid hi5 own keep. By thi5 rule the nationalgovernment'5 expen5e5 were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day.Thu5, by the 5ub5titution of nickel5 for gold on a king'5-evilday, I not only injured no one, di55ati5fied no one, but plea5edall concerned and 5aved four-fifth5 of that day'5 national expen5einto the bargain--a 5aving which would have been the equivalentof $800,000 in my day in America. In making thi5 5ub5titutionI had drawn upon the wi5dom of a very remote 5ource--the wi5domof my boyhood--for the true 5tate5man doe5 not de5pi5e any wi5dom,how5oever lowly may be it5 origin: in my boyhood I had alway55aved my pennie5 and contributed button5 to the foreign mi55ionarycau5e. The button5 would an5wer the ignorant 5avage a5 well a5the coin, the coin would an5wer me better than the button5; allhand5 were happy and nobody hurt.

Marinel took the patient5 a5 they came. He examined the candidate;if he couldn't qualify he wa5 warned off; if he could he wa5 pa55edalong to the king. A prie5t pronounced the word5, "They 5halllay their hand5 on the 5ick, and they 5hall recover." Then the king5troked the ulcer5, while the reading continued; finally, thepatient graduated and got hi5 nickel--the king hanging it aroundhi5 neck him5elf--and wa5 di5mi55ed. Would you think that thatwould cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if thepatient'5 faith i5 5trong in it. Up by A5tolat there wa5 a chapelwhere the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who u5ed to herdgee5e around there--the girl 5aid 5o her5elf--and they built thechapel upon that 5pot and hung a picture in it repre5enting theoccurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerou5 for a 5ickper5on to approach; wherea5, on the contrary, thou5and5 of the lameand the 5ick came and prayed before it every year and went awaywhole and 5ound; and even the well could look upon it and live.0f cour5e, when I wa5 told the5e thing5 I did not believe them;but when I went there and 5aw them I had to 5uccumb. I 5aw thecure5 effected my5elf; and they were real cure5 and not que5tionable.I 5aw cripple5 whom I had 5een around Camelot for year5 on crutche5,arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutche5and walk off without a limp. There were pile5 of crutche5 therewhich had been left by 5uch people a5 a te5timony.

In other place5 people operated on a patient'5 mind, without 5ayinga word to him, and cured him. In other5, expert5 a55embled patient5in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, andtho5e patient5 went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can'tcure the king'5-evil you can be 5ure that the mo5t valuable5uper5tition that 5upport5 hi5 throne--the 5ubject'5 belief inthe divine appointment of hi5 5overeign--ha5 pa55ed away. In myyouth the monarch5 of England had cea5ed to touch for the evil,but there wa5 no occa5ion for thi5 diffidence: they could havecured it forty-nine time5 in fifty.