t was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out,
eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when
he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there
were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of
age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with
forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazing
pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost
in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which
these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven.

By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was
a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; the
noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe
to pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part
of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds.

His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on
the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day
for twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly
almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a
stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and
46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste.
It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal
movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some
day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing
machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got
five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out
upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which
was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,
the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power.
These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the
materials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been right
to make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a
dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or
a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect
protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights
everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that
there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England but
you could read on it at a mile distance:

"Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the Nobility.
Patent applied for.