smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer
and read this sign on his tabard:

"Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It."

That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes
in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the
first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense
of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had
started a number of these people out--the bravest knights I could
get--each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device
or another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerous
enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the
steel-clad ass that _hadn't_ any board would himself begin to look
ridiculous because he was out of the fashion.

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating
suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness
among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people,
if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church.
I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education--next, freedom
--and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that
any Established Church is an established crime, an established
slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in
any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my
own former day--in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb
of time--there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been
born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act
and the Test still in force in it--timbers propped against men's
liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established
Anachronism with.

My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their
tabards--the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got the
king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric
splendor--they were to spell out these signs and then explain to
the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies
were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary's
next move was to get the family together and try it on himself;
he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that could
convince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt
remained, he must catch a hermit--the woods were full of them;
saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be.
They were unspeakably holy, an