of northern Europe wiped the dressing from their coarse red whiskers on
the snowy table-cloth of the Briton.

[Illustration: THEY WIPED THEIR COARSE RED WHISKERS ON THE SNOWY
TABLE-CLOTH.]

In West Wales, or Dumnonia, was the home of King Arthur, so justly
celebrated in song and story. Arthur was more interesting to the poet
than the historian, and probably as a champion of human rights and a
higher civilization should stand in that great galaxy occupied by Santa
Claus and Jack the Giant-Killer.

The Danes or Jutes joined the Angles also at this time, and with the
Saxons spread terror, anarchy, and common drunks all over Albion. Those
who still claim that the Angles were right Angles are certainly
ignorant of English history. They were obtuse Angles, and when bedtime
came and they tried to walk a crack, the historian, in a spirit of
mischief, exclaims that they were mostly a pack of Isosceles Try Angles,
but this doubtless is mere badinage.

They were all savages, and their religion was entirely unfit for
publication. Socially they were coarse and repulsive. Slaves did the
housework, and serfs each morning changed the straw bedding of the lord
and drove the pigs out of the boudoir. The pig was the great social
middle class between the serf and the nobility: for the serf slept with
the pig by day, and the pig slept with the nobility at night.

And yet they were courageous to a degree (the Saxons, not the pigs).
They were fearless navigators and reckless warriors. Armed with their
rude meat-axes and one or two Excalibars, they would take something in