“I never heard that such a thing was done. None of our people have that kind of learning.”
“Well, but you have schools and colleges, and you acquire knowledge, don’t you?”
“We have a few schools; but only the low-born children attend them, and they are taught only what their fathers learned. We do not try to know more. We reverence the past. It is a matter of pride among us to preserve the habits, the manners, the ideas, the social state which our fore-fathers had when they were sundered from their nation.”
“You live here pretty much as King Arthur and his subjects lived?”
“Yes. We have our chivalry; our knight errants; our tournaments; our castles—everything just as it was in the old time.”
“My dear,” said the Professor to Miss Baffin, “the wildest imagination could have conceived nothing like this. We shall be afforded an opportunity to study the middle ages on the spot.”
“Sometimes,” said the Hermit, gravely, “I have secret doubts whether our way is the best, whether in England and the rest of the world men may not have learned while we have remained ignorant; but I cannot tell. And no one would be willing to change if we could know the truth.”
“My friend,” said the Professor, with a look of compassion, “the world has gone far, far ahead of King Arthur’s time! It has almost forgotten that there ever was such a time. You would hardly believe me, at any rate you would not understand me, if I should tell you of the present state of things in the world. But if I stay here I will try to enlighten you gradually. I feel as if I had been sent here as a missionary for that very purpose.”
“Do you come from England?”
“Oh, no! I was going thither. I came from the United States. You never heard of them, of course. They are a land right across the ocean from England, about three thousand miles.”