these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed "Mohammed,"
"Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with
swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks,
morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir"
Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight,"
the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight
of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at
the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a
post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and
by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with
glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and
promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the
band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad
daylight. And let the reader remember, and also add to his picture, as
follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had shed the
most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at
least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient
privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which
naming had in reality been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process,
and long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in
person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the
county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious
things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two
yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it is true.

This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here among
the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last. It will
be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia,
where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured,
maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is