the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said
Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for
the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while
ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no
blood, be ye never so sore wounded; therefore, keep
well the scabbard always with you. So they rode
into Carlion, and by the way they met with Sir Pellinore;
but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinore saw
not Arthur, and he passed by without any words.
I marvel, said Arthur, that the knight would not
speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw you not; for
and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed.
So they came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were
passing glad. And when they heard of his adventures
they marveled that he would jeopard his person so
alone. But all men of worship said it was merry
to be under such a chieftain that would put his person
in adventure as other poor knights did.”
SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply
and beautifully told; but then I had heard it only
once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant
to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and
he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a
sufficiently poor quality. He tied some metal
mugs to a dog’s tail and turned him loose, and
he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of
fright, with all the other dogs bellowing after him
and battering and crashing against everything that
came in their way and making altogether a chaos of
confusion and a most deafening din and turmoil; at
which every man and woman of the multitude laughed
till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs
and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was
just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was so
proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling
over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal
idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with
humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it
after everybody else had got through. He was
so set up that he concluded to make a speech —of
course a humorous speech. I think I never heard
so many old played-out jokes strung together in my
life. He was worse than the minstrels, worse
than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly
sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was
born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes
that had given me the dry gripes when I was a boy
thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about
convinced me that there isn’t any such thing
as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at
these antiquities —but then they always
do; I had noticed that, centuries later. However,
of course the scoffer didn’t laugh—I
mean the boy. No, he scoffed; there wasn’t
anything he wouldn’t scoff at. He said
the most of Sir Dinadan’s jokes were rotten and
the rest were petrified. I said “petrified”
