-each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that,
I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur,
and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to
something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic's average wage was
3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national
government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day.
Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil
day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased
all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense
into the bargain--a saving which would have been the equivalent
of $800,000 in my day in America. In making this substitution
I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source--the wisdom
of my boyhood--for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom,
howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always
saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary
cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as
the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all
hands were happy and nobody hurt.

Marinel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate;
if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed
along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, "They shall
lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Then the king
stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the
patient graduated and got his nickel--the king hanging it around
his neck himself--and was dismissed. Would you think that that
would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the
patient's faith is strong in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapel
where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd
geese around there--the girl said so herself--and they built the
chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the
occurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick
person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame
and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away
whole and sound; 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 pictur