WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

France to Joan of Arc and he lost the throne and ended the

dynasty which Henry IV. had started in business with such good

prospects. In the picture we see him sad and weary and downcast,

with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. It is a

pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.

Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares. (Fig. 20.)

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed,

with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes

the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and

make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and

become wealthy. That flower which he is wearing in his

buttonhole is a rose–a white rose, a York rose–and will serve

to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one was

the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the

Lancastrian dynasty.

Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square. (Fig. 21.)

His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you

get the reigns displayed upon the wall this one will be

conspicuous and easily remembered. It is the shortest one in

English history except Lady Jane Grey’s, which was only nine

days. She is never officially recognized as a monarch of

England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we should

like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair

and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost

our lives besides.

Richard III.; two WHITE squares. (Fig. 22.)

That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very

good king. You would think that this lion has two heads, but

that is not so; one is only a shadow. There would be shadows for

the rest of him, but there was not light enough to go round, it

being a dull day, with only fleeting sun-glimpses now and then.

Richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and fell at the

battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that flower in the

pot, but we will use it as Richard’s trade-mark, for it is said

that it grows in only one place in the world–Bosworth Field–and

tradition says it never grew there until Richard’s royal blood

warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow.

Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares. (Fig. 23.)

Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he

preferred peace and quiet and the general prosperity which such

conditions create. He liked to sit on that kind of eggs on his

own private account as well as the nation’s, and hatch them out

and count up their result. When he died he left his heir

2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a king to

possess in those days. Columbus’s great achievement gave him the

discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to

search out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot’s

ship up there in the corner. This was the first time that

England went far abroad to enlarge her estate–but not the last.

Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.)

That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.

Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.)

He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that

thing over his head, which is a LAST–shoemaker’s last.

Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.)

The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of

the smoke. The first three letters of Mary’s name and the first

three of the word martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out

in her day and martyrs were becoming scarcer, but she made

several. For this reason she is sometimes called Bloody Mary.

This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing

through a period of nearly five hundred years of England’s

history–492 to be exact. I think you may now be trusted to go

the rest of the way without further lessons in art or

inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the scheme now,

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