His stand was in the center of the widest part
of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds.
His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on
the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day
for twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly
almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a
stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and
46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste.
It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal
movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some
day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing
machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got
five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out
upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which
was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,
the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power.
These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the
materials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been right
to make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a
dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or
a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect
protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights
everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that
there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England but
you could read on it at a mile distance:
"Buy the only genuine St.
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