powers. Brooklyn is part
and parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance
enough in the entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with
"chivalry," in case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader calmly
and dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds,
pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling
of the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks,
ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable
patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds,"
"destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble
names these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed
"Mohammed," "Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus,
and armed with swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste
board hauberks, morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as
"Sir" Smith, and "Sir" Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The
Disinherited Knight," the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the
Blue Ridge," the "Knight of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret
Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at the toot of the horn charging fiercely
upon a helpless ring hung on a post, and prodding at it in trepidly with
their wooden sticks, and by and by skewering it and cavorting back to
the judges' stand covered with glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble
success like this duly and promptly announced by an applauding toot from
the herald's horn, and "the band playing three bars of an old circus
tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad daylight. And let the reader remember,
and also add to his picture, as follows, to wit: when the show was all
over, the party who had shed the most blood and overturned and hacked to
pieces the most knights, or at least had prodded the most muffin-rings,
was accorded the ancient privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of
Love and Beauty--which naming had in reality been done for, him by the
"cut-and-dried" process, and long in advance, by a committee of ladies,
but the crowning he did in person, though suffering from loss of blood,
and then was taken to the county hospital on a shutter to have his
wounds dressed--these curious things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no
longer ago than one or two yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it
is true.

This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here
among the rolling-mills and factories, and will