Chapter 3

His happiness, the Lady Lucinda, though not of outward visage the equal of Jennifrella, was handsome enough for the young knight's daydreams. When asked what attracted him to Lucinda, he would answer ambiguously or mutter something about the light in her eyes. What joy he got sitting with her under a tree in the bright spring, gazing upon her and dallying with her fingers or brushing a love-sick gnat from her collar. But what really twirled Sir Philo's cuff links was Lucinda's wit, her laugh, her playfulness. He relished taking the sprightly maid hand in hand on long walks, listening to the music of her voice and to the sentiments accompanying the music. How he loved to play with her tresses, or when her hair was up, to steal up behind her and kiss her unexpectedly on the back of the neck: for she would invariably produce a little shriek of surprise and delight and embarrassment, and then turning to him, her cheeks glowing irresistibly, attempt to glare and call him "monster," only to spoil her mock anger by bursting into giggles or even outright laughter. She would chide him and call him "rogue," and "impertinent," and he would say something like, "I'll put a stop to this abuse," and then their lips, who were old friends by now, would once again meet for fellowship. Of course, Lucinda would struggle just enough to enhance the enjoyment, until laughter or an unexpected visitor broke their embrace.

Well, enough mush. The point is that an unspoken understanding had developed between them so that only a few months after the rest of the kingdom knew it, they realized that they would one day wed and together laugh and cry through the years until death should wake them.

But to return to the weightier problem of King Cleon. Upon being asked for his advice, Sir Philo recommended that the king choose from among the following options. One, his majesty could choose the wisest and most just suitor for Jennifrella, for such a man would not only make a good king, but he would most likely be a decent husband, too. Or secondly, the king might seek a foreign alliance and marry his daughter to another king's son. This was an alternative which Sir Philo did not recommend, but mentioned only for the sake of completeness. And finally, the last possibility would be to let Jennifrella choose for herself--in which case, everyone knew that Sir Fassade would be the next king, and he, opined Sir Philo, would be "acceptable," producing a government no worse than the current one. (Since I have already described the king's advisor as "thoughtful," I shall now add "tactful" and note that the final participial phrase of the previous sentence was thought but not uttered by the knight.) As for the kind of husband Sir Fassade would make, the princess would have no one to blame but herself.

King Cleon thought the matter over not quite long enough and decided to hold an archery contest, the winner of which would marry his daughter. The degree of Sir Philo's consternation is not recorded in the annals from which I am plagiarizing, but one may suppose that it was substantial, for reasons which will hereinafter appear. Needless to say (except to make the story longer and extend the reader's pleasure), Sir Philo made energetic protests, which eventually descended to rather pathetic entreaties, all in a futile attempt to change the king's mind. But King Cleon would not be dissuaded, and so the news was soon heralded throughout the kingdom, and, as you might suppose, arrow sales shot up immediately and remarkably.

As when a child pounds the ground near an anthill, causing a good many of the residents instantly to surface and run around in massed panic, so on the day of the contest the world arrived in a swarm at the castle of Cleon the Modest and prepared to be a witness, if not the victor, in the winning of Jennifrella.

There were several dozen contenders in the contest, some quite accomplished archers, some more or less dilettantish, and quite a few whose skills put the spectators at random hazard. Amid the noise and enthusiasm on this day stood a grim and silent Sir Philo, deeply troubled about the proceedings for three reasons. First, strictly from a philosophical standpoint, a shooting contest was a completely irrational method of choosing either a spouse or a future king, and irrationality like this always troubled the young knight.

Second, though Sir Fassade was a very good shot, capable of satisfactorily humiliating most of the other contestants, he was no match for Sir Bargle. If they used the word then, I would have to exaggerate only slightly to say that Sir Bargle was, as they say in French, or maybe don't, a jerque. He punctuated nearly every sentence with an oath or a belch, constantly leered at the ladies in waiting (who knew all too well to keep a safe distance from him), and those who attended carefully to his speech noted that the word he used more than any other was "me." In a word (or fourteen, actually), Sir Bargle was a man unlikely to put his personal appetites in second place. The prospect of this knight nuzzling the hair or nibbling the earlobes of Jennifrella was in itself sufficiently revulsive to Sir Philo; the prospect of his becoming king was absolutely unthinkable.

The third reason that the king's advisor was grieved about the "score ahead and wed" method of selecting the princess' groom was that the only person in all the realm who could outshoot Sir Bargle was--Sir Philo.

Prithee, talk not to me about psychic conflict--nay, psychic trauma, for I have seen it here, and it is not gentle. Sir Philo traced and retraced many steps around the castle grounds, without thought of direction or destination, the movement of his feet and the tension on his face reflecting the turmoil in his soul. At length, in his anxiety, the brave knight turned to his lady love for succor and advice, and she, with a swiftness that surprised him and a nobility that made him love her more deeply than ever, told him that of course he must put the interest of the kingdom above his personal happiness. She then flew into his arms and burst into inconsolable sobbing for longer than we have time to look in on.

The contest began and proceeded remarkably well, with only the loss of a too-curious cow and a few luckless birds at the hands of the less accomplished suitors. Sir Fassade shot well that day, achieving a personal best. As each arrow hit, closer and closer toward the middle of the target, it made the princess clap a little louder and leap with joy a little higher. A smirk of self-congratulation soon decorated Sir Fassade's handsome face.

A loud belch and a louder laugh announced the commencement of Sir Bargle's shooting. As predicted by Sir Philo, Sir Bargle was an excellent shot. As each arrow landed a good handbreadth closer to the center of the target than any of those of Sir Fassade, the smiles on the faces of the princess and her favorite knight grew less and less until they had been completely replaced by somber looks on the knight and what might be described as silent hysteria on the face of the princess. The look on Sir Bargle's face at the conclusion of his shooting is a little too carnal for me to describe.

As he shot his set of arrows, Sir Philo was forced more than once, after he had fully drawn his bow, to pause, and to wait until a little tremble--attributed by the crowd to nervousness and eagerness to win Jennifrella--left his hands. As each arrow hit the target, remarkably near the middle, it also pierced the very center of Lucinda's heart. The young knight thought more than once about letting an arrow fly wide of the target, but he did his duty, though it brought grief to himself and devastation to the woman he treasured.

Sir Philo's smile as he took the hand of the princess was obviously forced, but no one noticed because Jennifrella was now bawling so spectacularly that the crowd, though not at all wishing to be unkind, found it, frankly, entertaining.

As it does for us all, time passed and life went on.

After a peculiar three years' delay, Lucinda finally made her choice from among several good offers and moved with her new husband to a remote part of the kingdom where it was reported that she was content, though some said that the cooler climate had somewhat subdued her well-known effervescence.

In the fullness of time, Sir Philo exchanged his sword for a crown and ascended the throne. He ruled wisely and justly, and the kingdom prospered. Hero that he was, he had mostly adjusted to the princess' personality, reminding himself as occasion required (and occasion did require), that not only had he acted for the good of the kingdom, but he had wed great beauty and, eventually, personal power. He further reminded himself that Jennifrella had made an adequate wife, even after her face wrinkled and her tummy pudged, and that she had proved to be a reasonable mother to his children. Whenever, in a moment of inattention, he discovered himself pining to enjoy a witty remark or some unguarded laughter, he quoted, hoping that it was true, the old proverb that "we grow most not when something is given but when something is taken away."

All in all, it was a reasonable life with much to be thankful for. Jennifrella's joy was that Sir Philo, now King Philo, remained a generous and loving husband even as her beauty faded; her only regret was that Sir Fassade had married her younger and more amiable sister, and both of them appeared to be altogether too happy. Lucinda's joy was in her two lovely children, whom she took, once or twice, to see the new king as he made a royal progress through their village. Her only regret was that she could reveal only half her heart as she told them what a good man he was. Sir Philo's joy was that he had acted virtuously and now enjoyed a mostly pleasant life, dispensing justice and mercy with care and humanity. His only regret was that he had learned to shoot arrows.

Serendipity

A young man, in the confusion and embarrassment of youth, was walking across the campus of a great university on the way to his philosophy class. At the previous meeting, the professor had posed the question, "If we do not know the purpose of something, how can we know whether any aspect of it is good or bad?" This question, together with the problem for the day, "Does man have a purpose?" had taken complete occupation of the young man's mind, not because of any intrinsic interest, but because the professor was in the habit of calling on students and expecting a thoughtful response. So deeply meditative was the young man that he neglected to observe his path adequately, with the result that he soon bounced his head off an unhappily placed tree in the middle of the lawn.

Picking himself up and dusting himself off, the young man looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his inadvertent folly. The only people nearby were two men, who, although they were just a dozen feet away, were completely oblivious to the young man's accident, for the reason that they were engaged in a somewhat heated argument. Whether to obtain some sympathy for his bruised head, or to excuse his inattention, or perhaps simply because they were standing near a wheel barrow and looked for all the world like gardeners, the young man interrupted them with the slightly exasperated question, "Excuse me, but what is that tree doing there, anyway?"

Now it so happens that these two men were not gardeners at all. They were, in fact, tenured professors of philosophy, the very subject the young man was struggling to understand. They turned to him at once and condescended to admit him to their conversation.

"Well," said the first philosopher, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, "see here. This is a tree." And pointing to the tree the young man was already too-intimately familiar with, concluded with apparent satisfaction, "As Circumplexius has said in the fourth book of his De Scientia, 'An example is the best definition.'"

"I know that is a tree," replied the youth, rubbing his forehead. "What I want to know is, Why is it there in the first place?"

"You see," said the other philosopher to the first, "the dance of the blind with the senile." Then, momentarily stroking his beard, he turned to the young man and continued, "A tree means what it is. The concept of treedom does not subsist in some fortuitous, exogenous hyle--that is the doctrine of carpenters, not of philosophers. As Herman of Rimboa has aptly remarked, 'Inner eyes must perceive beyond what the outer eyes see.'"

"And as the Chinese say, 'The flies buzz in the wind, but men drink their tea,'" added the one with glasses. "Here, son," he went on, pointing again, "this is also a tree. Compare them and deduce treehood by subtracting the anomalous from the universal."

"Certainly you have read Dohesius On the Nature of the Universe in the last twenty-five years," the other philosopher said with some indignation. "Don't you recall his dictum that 'a second example is not an explanation'? How do you pretend to instruct the ignorance of youth when you have never instructed yourself? 'The canvas remains blank when the artist has no paint,' says Hugo de Brassus. Go back to your books."

"And as de Roquefort says, 'To sit on a cheese and eat whey is the destiny of fools.'"

"See here, young man," said the beard, ignoring his colleague, "treeness is a life process displaying the aspiration of matter toward hierarchy, order, and structure. It finds analogues and even homologues in life systems everywhere."

"The frogs croak at night, but the sky remains dark," said the glasses, smirking slightly.

"Nonsense," replied the beard. "What I have said is self-evident. Sir Humphrey Boodle even noted it."

"But Boodle has been refuted these three hundred years."

"Well, Calesimon said so, too."

"Hah!" cried the glasses with a laugh of forced incredulity. "Calesimon! Calesimon was an idiot!"

"Argumentum ad hominem."

"Oh, come on. The man was institutionalized."

"And genetic fallacy, too. My, my."

"Ignore him, son," said the glasses to the youth. "He's not been very well since his wife laughed at his last paper. A tree--"

"She did not laugh," interrupted the beard.

"--is a woody plant containing specialized structures, larger overall than a bush and often, as you see here [pointing] having only one trunk rather than many."

"And is this the effect of dotage or of primordial ignorance?"

"False dilemma, Mr. Logician."

"Surely you were there that day in bonehead English when they distinguished between 'definition' and 'explanation.' You are familiar with the English language, aren't you? The young man has asked for an explanation."

"Well, as Frabonarde says, 'The whole is known by its parts.'"

"The doctrine of those who pull the wings from fruit flies."

"Yes, it would be too straightforward for someone who needs six hundred pages to discover that he doesn't know what he is talking about."

"A classic example of the projectionist error. Not everything you don't understand is a problem with the text," said the beard, tapping his finger to his temple.

"If I may be permitted one last allusion to Oriental wisdom, I would note only that the Chinese have said, 'Men hurt their eyes seeking a water lily in a rock garden--even in a large rock garden.'"

"I thought you knew that the Poems of Chen had been exposed as a product of nineteenth-century Europe. Don't make it a habit to go around quoting hoaxes. It gives philosophy a bad name."

"Excuse me, sirs," the youth interjected, "but I have to go now."

"Very well," said the beard. "Only remember, with the knowledge you attain, seek to achieve understanding."

"Oh, so now we are quoting the Bible!" cried the glasses with triumphant scorn. "The rest of the department will be interested in this."

"I was not quoting the Bible. I have never even read the Bible."

"Why don't you ask God to bless him while you're at it?"

"Listen, don't you think I know that your doctrine of cosmic mental states is just a front and that you're a closet monotheist?"

"And may I remind you that slander is an offense punishable by law?"

"And is this the state of a wise man?" asked the beard, looking at the sky, "to threaten his friend for speaking truth?"

"Now he's even praying! I can't believe this!"

"'We cannot see around corners,' says Germulphius, 'so what is left to the man who refuses to see in a straight line?'"

"Someone like your wife," answered the glasses. "No doubt by now she's found twelve more insupportably ridiculous assertions in your paper on aperceptual phenomenalism."

"Well, at least my wife reads my papers. At least my wife can read."

"My wife is an avid reader of literature."

"Since when did the television listings become 'literature'? That's the most transparent semantic ploy I have ever heard."

"Are you accusing me of owning a television?"

"He who can see the maggots need not ask if the dog is dead."

"'Ignore the shadow cast by a passing vapor,' says Phonetes."

"You've always been sloppy with bibliography, haven't you?" demanded the beard. "Phonetes would have been utterly embarrassed to have said that."

"No matter. Truth needs no ascription."

"That statement is obviously the product of extensive reading and protracted thought. With a little more effort, no doubt you'll be able to announce that the sun shines on a clear day."

"I suppose you have never read von Hoch: 'I had always known what he said, but I did not live it until I heard it spoken.'"

"I reject that statement together with its sordid implications. It smacks of the grimy hands of utilitarianism. In a minute you'll be insisting that philosophy have practical consequences for berry pickers and children. Perhaps you would be happier as some sort of mechanic where you could get your hands on things, rather than as one who pretends to instruct youth."

"You and Sir Peter Poole, who was proud that he couldn't tell a hoe from a rake."

"Well, what of that? My profession is philosophy, and I look for truth, not for mud."

"Even the sun cannot be seen through a silver coin."

"I have never accepted money for anything I've published," said the beard hotly.

"'Beware of those who look to the right and walk to the left,' says della Corta."

"How dare you accuse me--" At this point they were interrupted. A young man, deeply preoccupied with thinking about the purpose of mankind, had just bounced his head against a tree and--ah, but this is where you came in.

A Tale Revealing the Wisdom Of Being a Cork on the River of Life

Once upon a time, not very far from a town pretty much like yours, an old, nearsighted man was wandering down a country road quite pleasantly, musing to himself thusly: "I wonder what I should seek today? Some new treasure of the Orient, or a lost clue to the secrets of nature? That would be nice, as I spit" (and here, had there been but a small brass spittoon by the wayside, a clear ring would have sounded across the nearby pastures), "but," continued the old man, "this is pretty barren ground hereabouts, so I'd best not set my hopes too high. I'll start by looking for a silver dollar."

With this thought, the man's eyes brightened and he continued now more alertly down the road, staring intently at the ground and knocking little pebbles around with his cane. After a little, he thought he saw something ahead. Mending his pace somewhat, he hurried (as an old man with a cane hurries) up to the object, which he now believed to be a quarter. When he stooped down to pick it up, however, he found it to be merely a bottle cap, covered with red ants eating the remaining sugar. "Just what I was looking for!" exclaimed the old man with glee, even though the ants began to sting him on the thumb and forefinger. "Bottlecaps can be very useful." So he put the new possession into his pocket and once more began his stroll, still watching the ground.

He had hardly begun to wonder what he might find next, when, there, just a little way off, he saw a pearl lying in the roadbed. "Surely," he thought, "nothing is round or shiny exactly like a pearl, so I could not be mistaken this time." So he began to amble over without delay. As he came nearer, his joy increased. "Hee hee!" the old man laughed, before stifling his mirth lest he call attention to himself and bring competitors for his newfound treasure. He even paused a moment and looked around to see if anyone had noticed him or the pearl.

The way seemed clear so he closed the final distance, reached down, and picked it up. Instantly he was aware that this was no pearl, but just a partly dried up chicken brain, which must have fallen off some farmer's cart, or been left by some animal in haste. "Just what I was looking for!" the old man said very joyfully. "Chicken brains make real good soup." Into his pocket with the bottle cap went the brains, and down the road with his cane went the old man.

It was not long after this that he saw another, much larger item in the road before him, which looked, from where he now was, just exactly like a fat roll of paper money. Blessing his astrological reading promising riches for that day, he made his way up to the spot with a speed truly remarkable for a person of his age and infirmities, and anxiously bent over to retrieve his treasure. A closer look, however, and a confirming touch revealed that the man had found a "road apple," or, as it is sometimes called, a "horse biscuit." "Just what I was looking for," the old man said, now more perfectly pleased than ever; "I can use this biscuit to cook my chicken soup. Seems dry enough to burn right well."

Now the old man, between his nearsightedness and his preoccupation with his great discoveries, wandered unknowingly over to the side of the road, and pretty soon he stepped off into a ditch and fell down with remarkable violence. A farmer not very far off saw this episode, and hurried over to help the old man up. As he got to his feet, the old man, wincing with pain and holding one arm, cried out with a tone of satisfaction, "A broken arm! Just what I was looking for! A broken arm can be very useful." The farmer blinked once or twice, recognizing that this sentiment did not conform with what his own would have been under the like circumstances, but he said nothing. Instead, he quite generously helped the old gentleman into his cart and took him to town.

When the two arrived, the farmer dutifully summoned a doctor and the constable and some others of note in the place and repeated how the old man had fallen and broken his arm, only to exclaim that such a result was apparently what he had intended. This narrative caused some strange looks and a little discussion among them, and no one could think what to do next (aside from fixing the man's arm), when the constable suddenly remembered that he did not know the man's name. "Sir," he asked, "have you any identification?"

"Why, I think so, sonny," replied the old man, beginning to fumble in his various pockets, and then, to the indescribable surprise of his audience, to remove what they did not know, and could not have imagined, were the souvenirs from his previous wanderings. When his pockets were finally emptied, there was still no identification, but instead, on the table before them, his interrogators saw the following objects, namely, viz., and to wit: the bottle cap, the chicken brains, the horse manure, a piece of grimy string, a cigar butt, three pieces of chewed and flattened gum, a wing nut with stripped threads, a rusty nail (bent in two places), part of a candy wrapper, some rat pills (eleven of them), half a marble, and a common pebble.