Connecticut Yankees & Charles's speech

There's an old story that the British never tire of telling.

- R. PRASANNAN

There was this rich American tourist visiting Magdalen College at Oxford, and getting bowled over by the sight of the finest, freshest, and greenest lawn he had ever seen.

There he spots an ancient gardener tending the greens, and asks how he had got the lawn so flawless. "It is simple, sir, really," says the gardener scratching his head. "First you prepare the ground then you sow your seed, and then you roll it and mow it and roll it and mow it for 300 years." Much the same was the message delivered last week by Charles Rex Tertius to America, a land that claims to be the world's oldest democracy, but as the king put it in good humour, since just "the other day". For full four days he made them forget their war worries, gas prices and foul-smelling presidential texts, and transported them to a fairy-tale world of king's English, courtly manners and royal refinement. A day more around, and-who knows?--he would have made them ask for tea-and-scones.