At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies,
and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. She
would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain
experiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mine
to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an
escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks
entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve
the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation.
I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time,
and the date was now arriving for their first public effort.
This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue
from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose
my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either
team who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. As for material of this
sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn't
throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course,
I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't
do that when they bathed.
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