And therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren--" But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength -- strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose.

Take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass.

It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place.

And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it.
When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that I had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a long way off with her people.
"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting thereby.

In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knight since it was christened, but he found strange adventures--" "This is not good form, Alisande.