Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/161

 should also bear in mind that this particular "he" was "more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." On many an occasion it will be found a salutary and useful fact to remember.

Once upon a time, so we are told, there was an Age of Chivalry. The word "chivalry" is stated in the dictionary to be derived from the French "cheval" a horse, and "chivalrous" men were, in the literal meaning of the term, merely men who rode about on horseback. But chivalry has somehow come to imply respect, devotion, and reverence for women. The "chivalrous" knight is supposed to have gone all over the world, wearing the glove or the ribbon of his "ladye faire," in his helmet, and challenging to single combat every other knight that dared to question the supremacy of her beauty and virtue. I confess at once that I do not believe in him. If he ever existed he must have been a most unnatural and abnormal product of humanity, as unlike his first progenitor Adam as he could well be. For even in the "Round Table" romances one finds an entire lack of chivalry in the so-called chivalrous knights of King Arthur. Their moral principles left much to be desired, and the conduct of Sir Meliagraunce who betrayed the loves of Lancelot and the Queen was merely that of a common sneak. Coward Adam spoke in him, as in many of the Arthurian heroes,—and that they were more "chivalrous" than the modern male gossips who jeer away a woman's name and honour in their smoking and gaming rooms, is a legend which like that of the Tree of Good and Evil itself, requires stronger confirmation than history as yet witnesseth.