D. 1870
Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the
customary universal round of the press:
A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional
site of the Garden of Eden.
As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:
Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.
It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest
achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away
about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart and
home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of that
happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our
ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel
trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of the
nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city
and an advanced civilisation.
A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension of
the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such a
spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his 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.
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