Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/241

226 DOES CIVILIZATION aVlLIZE? QUERY. The authbrities have been perused so as to ac- quire some conception of a tournament. A ht^le his- tory was dug up which impelled the jotting down here. The period is about seventy-five years before the celebi;ated passage of arms just told of, and the query arises, "])oes civilization civilize?" The follow- ing is what is referred to: "Over the vice of the higher classes they (the clergy) exerted no influence whatever; the king paraded his mistress as a queen of beauty through London, the nobles blazoned their infamy in court and tournament. In these days, says a canon of the tinges, arose a great rumor and clamor among the people that wherever there was a tournament, there came a great concourse of ladies of the most costly and be^autif ul, but not of the best in the kingdom, sometimes forty or fifty in number, as if they were a part of the tournament, in diverse and wonderful niale apparel, in partly-colored tunics with short caps and bands wound cord-wise around their heads, and girdles bound with gold and silver, and daggers in pouches across, their body; then they proceeded on chosen coursers to the place of tourney, and so expended and wasted their goods and vexed their bodies with scurrilous wantonness, that the murmur of the people sounded everywhere; and thus they neither feared God nor blushed at the chaste voice of the people." It was arranged to have the leaders take part in the joust with swords, or rather single sticks in lieu of foils, but the termination of the last entertainment