"The Charter of the Holy Thorn has not gone," said the King.
"Nor has your Majesty's title to the Crown of Jerusalem; but who ever thinks of enforcing it?"
"I am willing to resign it any day," replied his Majesty. "I can also, if you think it advisable, abolish the Charter of the Holy Thorn and the Knighthood with it. But I don't think the Knights would quite like that."
"If it comes to a question of liking," said the Prime Minister, "I do not think they will quite like washing beggars' feet in public."
"Oh, I do the washing and the drying," said the King. "They only carry the basins and put on the boots. I have looked up the whole ceremony; it's very impressive. You have only to read it and you will become converted: it is so symbolical."
The Prime Minister objected that though in its origin the ceremony might have had symbolic meaning and beauty, its performance now-a-days would be looked upon as a mere form and superstition, contrary to the spirit of the age.
This reminded the King of a certain "maxim."
"'The spirit of the age,'" he quoted, "'is the industrious collection of bric-à-brac--good, bad, and indifferent': this one happens to be good, and has been neglected. And talk about forms and ceremonies!--what can be more formal, superstitious, and idiotic than the procession of Court functionaries and King's Musketeers (with the Dean of the Chapels Royal carrying a candle) which, on every ninth of November--the anniversary of the Bed-Chamber Plot--comes to look under my bed to see whether assassins are not lurking there? On one occasion I was laid up with influenza, but I had to submit to that form and superstition because it had become traditional. And all the papers gloated over the fact, and called it 'a link in the chain of monarchy,' though as a matter of fact the conspiracy in question had been got up against that branch of the succession which we afterwards succeeded in dethroning. All the personal inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr. Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are forms and superstitions, then I institute the Order of the New Broom, and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear me now!")