<p><SPAN name="c10" id="c10"></SPAN></p>
<h2> CHAPTER X </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="10-117.jpg (138K)" src="images/10-117.jpg" width-obs="100%" /></div>
<p><br/></p>
<p>BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION</p>
<p>The Round Table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was a good
deal discussed, for such things interested the boys. The king thought I
ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that I might gain renown
and be the more worthy to meet Sir Sagramor when the several years should
have rolled away. I excused myself for the present; I said it would take
me three or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly;
then I should be ready; all the chances were that at the end of that time
Sir Sagramor would still be out grailing, so no valuable time would be
lost by the postponement; I should then have been in office six or seven
years, and I believed my system and machinery would be so well developed
that I could take a holiday without its working any harm.</p>
<p>I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. In
various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all sorts of
industries under way—nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and
steel missionaries of my future civilization. In these were gathered
together the brightest young minds I could find, and I kept agents out
raking the country for more, all the time. I was training a crowd of
ignorant folk into experts—experts in every sort of handiwork and
scientific calling. These nurseries of mine went smoothly and
privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats, for nobody
was allowed to come into their precincts without a special permit—for
I was afraid of the Church.</p>
<p>I had started a teacher-factory and a lot of Sunday-schools the first
thing; as a result, I now had an admirable system of graded schools in
full blast in those places, and also a complete variety of Protestant
congregations all in a prosperous and growing condition. Everybody
could be any kind of a Christian he wanted to; there was perfect freedom
in that matter. But I confined public religious teaching to the
churches and the Sunday-schools, permitting nothing of it in my other
educational buildings. I could have given my own sect the preference
and made everybody a Presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have
been to affront a law of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts
are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions,
and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped
with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely
accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and
stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a
united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and
then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to
do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought.</p>
<p>All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. They
had formerly been worked as savages always work mines—holes grubbed
in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by hand, at the
rate of a ton a day; but I had begun to put the mining on a scientific
basis as early as I could.</p>
<p>Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir Sagramor's challenge
struck me.</p>
<p><br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="10-119.jpg (148K)" src="images/10-119.jpg" width-obs="100%" /></div>
<p><br/></p>
<p>Four years rolled by—and then! Well, you would never imagine
it in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in
safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect
government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect
earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot
the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life
perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his
despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is
not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is
possible.</p>
<p>My works showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at
his command. Unsuspected by this dark land, I had the civilization
of the nineteenth century booming under its very nose! It was fenced
away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable
fact—and to be heard from, yet, if I lived and had luck. There
it was, as sure a fact and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano,
standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the blue sky and giving no
sign of the rising hell in its bowels. My schools and churches were
children four years before; they were grown-up now; my shops of that day
were vast factories now; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a
thousand now; where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now.
I stood with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on
and flood the midnight world with light at any moment. But I was not
going to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not my policy. The
people could not have stood it; and, moreover, I should have had the
Established Roman Catholic Church on my back in a minute.</p>
<p>No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had
confidential agents trickling through the country some time, whose office
was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little
at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare the way
gradually for a better order of things. I was turning on my light
one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue to do so.</p>
<p>I had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom, and they
were doing very well. I meant to work this racket more and more, as
time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. One of my deepest
secrets was my West Point—my military academy. I kept that most
jealously out of sight; and I did the same with my naval academy which I
had established at a remote seaport. Both were prospering to my
satisfaction.</p>
<p><br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="10-121.jpg (35K)" src="images/10-121.jpg" width-obs="100%" /></div>
<p><br/></p>
<p>Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right hand.
He was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn't anything he
couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for
journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper
line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for experimental circulation in
my civilization-nurseries. He took to it like a duck; there was an
editor concealed in him, sure. Already he had doubled himself in one way;
he talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style
was climbing, steadily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama
mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either
by matter or flavor.</p>
<p>We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraph
and a telephone; our first venture in this line. These wires were
for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until a riper
day should come. We had a gang of men on the road, working mainly by
night. They were stringing ground wires; we were afraid to put up
poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were
good enough, in both instances, for my wires were protected by an
insulation of my own invention which was perfect. My men had orders to
strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with
any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence, and leaving
experts in charge. Nobody could tell you how to find any place in the
kingdom, for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck
it by accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without
thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and another we
had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but
the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the
thing up, for the present; it would be poor wisdom to antagonize the
Church.</p>
<p><br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="10-122.jpg (97K)" src="images/10-122.jpg" width-obs="100%" /></div>
<p><br/></p>
<p>As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been when I
arrived in it, to all intents and purposes. I had made changes, but
they were necessarily slight, and they were not noticeable. Thus
far, I had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the taxes which
provided the royal revenues. I had systematized those, and put the
service on an effective and righteous basis. As a result, these
revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more
equably distributed than before, that all the kingdom felt a sense of
relief, and the praises of my administration were hearty and general.</p>
<p>Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did not mind it, it could
not have happened at a better time. Earlier it could have annoyed
me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. The
king had reminded me several times, of late, that the postponement I had
asked for, four years before, had about run out now. It was a hint
that I ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation
of a size to make me worthy of the honor of breaking a lance with Sir
Sagramor, who was still out grailing, but was being hunted for by various
relief expeditions, and might be found any year, now. So you see I
was expecting this interruption; it did not take me by surprise.</p>
<p><br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="11-125.jpg (108K)" src="images/11-125.jpg" width-obs="100%" /></div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.