by Mark Twain

Lately there appeared an item effect, same went the customary universal round press:

telegraph station has just been established traditional site Garden of Eden

As companion , nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly :

Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament Middle Ages

hard the most startling, the idea highest achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away practical concerns world's daily life heart and home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea happiest expression brag, vanity, and mock-heroics ancestors, the "tournament," coming out grave to flaunt its tinsel trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities high noon nineteenth century, and under the patronage of great, broad-awake city and an advanced civilisation

"tournament" in Lynchburg is thing easily comprehension average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers Brooklyn is part and parcel city of New York, and hardly romance enough entire metropolis to re-supply Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," he happened to run out of it Let the reader calmly and dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds, pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks, ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds," "destriers," and "chargers," and divested friendly, humble names these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed "Mohammed," "Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks, morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir" Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight," the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight Blue Ridge," the "Knight of Maryland," "Knight Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and toot horn charging fiercely upon helpless ring hung on post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and by skewering it and cavorting back judges' stand covered with glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and promptly announced by an applauding toot herald's horn, and "the band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad daylight And let the reader remember, and also add picture, as follows, to wit: show was all over, the party who had shed the most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which naming had in reality been done for, him "cut-and-dried" process, and long in advance, by committee of ladies, but the crowning in person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken county hospital on shutter his wounds dressed--these curious things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than yesterdays It seems impossible, and yet true

doubtless the first appearance "tournament" up here rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last well to let it retire permanently rural districts of Virginia, where, said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is accepted and believed in peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history exposes him as braggart, ruffian, fantastic vagabond; and an ignoramus

All romance aside, what shape would our admiration heroes of Ashby de la Zouch be likely , practical age, if those worthies were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous deeds famous passage of arms ? Nothing but New York jury insanity plea could save them from hanging, amiable Bois-Guilbert pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down nameless ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day The doings so-called "chivalry" Middle Ages were absurd enough, even were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and when their surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick lances, and with muffin-rings to represent the foe, and all midst refinement and dignity of carefully-developed modern civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy

Now, for next exhibition, fine representation of one chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in their European homes, just before starting Holy Land, to seize and take protection the Sepulchre and defend it from "pollution "