[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)]@TWC D-Link bookA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court CHAPTER XVII 3/19
At the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the king, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine.
Stretching down the hall from this, was the general table, on the floor.
At this, above the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their families, of both sexes,--the resident Court, in effect--sixty-one persons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, with their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteen persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another.
It was a very fine show.
In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more.
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