worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the
circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen
hundred years before I was born, and listen again to
poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry
gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years after-
wards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such
thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at
these antiquities -- but then they always do; I had
noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the
scoffer didn't laugh -- I mean the boy. No, he scoffed;
there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said
the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest
were petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I be-
lieved, myself, that the only right way to classify the
majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic