How tired one gets of that door! The "caitiff" in these
chronicles of when knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from
"the highest battlement"--the second highest would not do at all; or
else he is thrown into "the deepest dungeon of the castle"--the second
deepest dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero
habitually "cleaves" his foeman "to the midriff," the "midriff"
being what the properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain
fictional historian of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim:
"My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;" but that is an exceptionally
lofty flight of diction. My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in
the course of long interviews with her lover remains unrecognized--a
diaphanous literary invention that must have been old when the Pyramids
were young. The heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called
"a springald," puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for
his sister or anybody else he pleases.
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