Because he was just thekind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing likethat if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and hisspirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and thenadroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text andhimself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear himhum.
Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They dodeserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true;and they are among the very first to find it out, too. That was his first great rise, his firstgorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speakof it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such agilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common humanbeing.
He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but onhis graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linensand made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth notdays like that. And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, andlet go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of whichhad a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment naturalto one who was being called upon by greatness.
Merlin's Tower
The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and asumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher stillwhen the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore,but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity,slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it.
That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs,and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise;you could see that, too.
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Then the dame brought two fine newstools--whew! Then she brought two more--as calmly as she could. Sensation again--with awed murmurs. Again she brought two--walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, andthe mason muttered: It was a fine effect. I couldn't haveplayed the hand better myself. She fetched crockery--new, and plenty of it; new wooden gobletsand other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs,roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealthof genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spreadlaid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd hadseen before.
And while they sat there just simply stupefied withwonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, andthe storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had cometo collect. Those multitudes presently began to agitate for another miracle. To be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they had seen the man who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seen him work a miracle themselves—why, people would come a distance to see them.
The pressure got to be pretty strong. There was going to be an eclipse of the moon, and I knew the date and hour, but it was too far away. I would have given a good deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was a big market for it. Next, Clarence found that old Merlin was making himself busy on the sly among those people. I saw that I must do something. I presently thought out a plan. By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison—the same cell I had occupied myself.
Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful. I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we went to work privately. I told him that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. That made his mouth safe enough.
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Clandestinely we made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightning-rod and some wires. This old stone tower was very massive—and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman, and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome, after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt of scale mail.
It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and about half a mile away. Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower—dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peck at a time, in a dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower of London with these charges.
When the thirteenth night was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. Everybody had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to keep clear away—a quarter of a mile away.
Then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-four hours I would consummate the miracle, but would first give a brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if at night.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 7
Of course, we had a blazing sunny day—almost the first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always happen so. I kept secluded, and watched the weather. Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements.
At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared—in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 7. by Mark Twain
For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. Already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see far; these people and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture.
He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable. Then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands.
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He worked himself up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a windmill. By this time the storm had about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully.
Of course, my rod would be loading itself now. In fact, things were imminent.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 7. » Read Online Free Book
I have given you every advantage, and not interfered. It is plain your magic is weak. It is only fair that I begin now. I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful crash and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground in a general collapse of consternation.
Well, it rained mortar and masonry the rest of the week. This was the report; but probably the facts would have modified it. It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome temporary population vanished.