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Go home; don't bother about romance outside of books. There it is safe. The English are right. They may be snobs when they travel abroad, but they travel securely. Romance, adventure! Bah! So much twaddle has been written about the East that cads and scoundrels are mistaken for Galahads and D'Artagnans. Few men remain in this country who can with honor leave it. Who knows what manner of man I am?"
Thus the ring of raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round table of Sir Galahads, sans peur et sans reproche.
The Renaissance took up the old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but works of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil Bias," and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos.
Ah, well! what did it matter? The true, honest life now beginning to declare itself would soon tell its own tale, and prove that there are more Sir Galahads walking on the earth than people dream of, whose "strength is the strength of ten, because their hearts are pure."
Wouldn't that be serving our country, too, Aunt Allison, just a little speck?" He asked the question anxiously. Malcolm said nothing, but also waited with a wistful look for her answer. "My dear little Sir Galahads," she said, bending over to give each of the boys a good-night kiss, "you will be 'really truly' knights if you can live up to the motto you have chosen.
"All this is most distasteful to me." He left the room, followed by Betty's mocking laugh. But Miss Carter said with a sigh, "He can't expect us all to live up to his ideals. It is better not to have any, like my practical self. But I'm afraid he sits out there in his damp old library and dreams of a world in which all the men are Sir Galahads and all the women Madame Rolands.
No chambered nautilus was to have better opportunity to expand the tender mansions of its soul. Beside the bed was a bookshelf with a reading lamp. The problem Roger was discussing was what books and pictures might be the best preachers to this congregation of one. To Mrs. "We don't want her feasting her imagination on young Galahads," he had remarked at breakfast.
Forget the maudlin sentiment of thy books and old romances thy pure Sir Galahads, thy "vary parfait gentil knightes," thy meek and lowly lovers serving their ladies on bended knee; open thine eyes, learn that women to-day love only the strong hand, the bold eye, the ready tongue; kneel to her, and she will scorn and contemn you. Out upon thee, pale-faced student!
The British were a race of shop-keepers; no matter how chivalrous the call, nothing would persuade them to jeopardise their money-bags. If they did for once leap across their counters to become Sir Galahads, then the Dominions would seize that opportunity to secure their own base safety and to fling the Mother Country out of doors.
They revel in descriptions of desirous damsels with burning eyes who crave companionship, but when an artfully devised encounter throws one of these passionate persons across the path of the man behind the pen, does he falter or swerve or make a misstep? Never. Right there is where the blood of the Galahads tells. Supremely he rises above temptation! Gracefully he sidesteps!
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