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The type of story is adapted precisely to the requirements of the author's plan. That the propping-up of an animal that has been slain is good saga-material, or has the sanction of earlier usage, is admitted, and need not be dwelt upon here. The type to which the dragon story belongs has a bearing on its relationship to the Grendel story.
A little more ought to be said about the propping-up of the dragon. That it served an excellent purpose is evident. It provided the occasion for Hjalti's asking for the king's sword, in the use of which he displayed his courage and from which he received his new name.
That he is more than half right, however, when lingering remains of insular prejudice tinge his solicitude to save his native land from entangling alliances, and keep its free government from striking hands with despotism, we incline to believe; and we honor him that his loyalty is not mere adulation, but duly seasoned with the democratic principle that would have the stability of the throne the people's love, the people being of infinitely greater importance than the propping-up or the propagation of royal houses.
The correct employment of button-sticks and of the magic cleaner called Soldier's Friend; the polishing of one's out-of-use boots and their placing, on the floor, with tied laces, and with their toes in line with the bed's legs; the substitution of lost braces' buttons by "bulldogs"; the furbishing of one's belt; the propping-up of the front of one's cap with wads of paper in the interior of the crown; the devices whereby non-spiral puttees can be coaxed into a resemblance of spiral ones and caused to ascend in corkscrews above trousers which refuse to tuck unlumpily into one's socks these, and a host of other matters, always kept a proportion of the hut-dwellers awake and busy and loquacious even in the somnolent post-prandial half-hour before 2 o'clock.
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