 and even the well
could look upon it and live. Of course when I was told these things, I did not
believe them; but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the
cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. I saw
cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray
before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp.
There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a
testimony.
    In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word
to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients in a room and
prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away
cured. Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil, you can be sure
that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne - the subject's
belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign - has passed away. In my youth
the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no
occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in
fifty.
    Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king
polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as
ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. I was sitting by an open window not
far from the canopy of state. For the five hundredth time a patient stood
forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned
out, »They shall lay their hands on the sick -« when outside there rang clear as
a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries
about my ears: »Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano! - latest irruption
- only two cents - all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!« One
greater than kings had arrived - the newsboy. But I was the only person in all
that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial
magician was come into the world to do.
    I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the Adam newsboy of
the world went around the corner to get my change; is around the corner yet. It
was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock
when my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines. I had lived in a
clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so
