man of might as ever I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word that I should say. 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: