The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book
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Title: The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book
Author: Ontario. Department of Education
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THE ONTARIO READERS
FOURTH BOOK
AUTHORIZED BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION
Entered, according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year 1909,
in the office of the Minister of Agriculture by the Minister of
Education for Ontario
Toronto:
The T. EATON Co Limited
'14-1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Minister of Education is indebted to Goldwin Smith, Rudyard Kipling,
Henry Newbolt, The Earl of Dunraven, Sir W. F. Butler, Frank T. Bullen,
Charles G. D. Roberts, W. Wilfred Campbell, Frederick George Scott,
Agnes Maule Machar, Agnes C. Laut, Marjorie L. C. Pickthall, and S. T.
Wood, for special permission to reproduce, in this Reader, selections
from their writings.
He is indebted to Lord Tennyson for special permission to reproduce the
poems from the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson; to Lloyd Osbourne for
permission to reproduce the extract from Robert Louis Stevenson's
"Kidnapped"; and to C. Egerton Ryerson for permission to reproduce the
extract from Egerton Ryerson's "The Loyalists of America and their
Times."
He is also indebted to Macmillan & Co., Limited, for special permission
to reproduce selected poems from the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
Rudyard Kipling, Sir F. H. Doyle, Cecil Frances Alexander; to Longmans,
Green & Co., for the selections from Froude's "Short Studies on Great
Subjects" and from his "History of England"; to Smith, Elder & Co., for
the extract from F. T. Bullen's "The Cruise of the Cachalot"; to Elkin
Mathews for Henry Newbolt's poem from "The Island Race"; to Thomas
Nelson & Sons for the extract from W. F. Collier's "History of the
British Empire"; to The Copp Clark Co., Limited, for selected poems from
the works of Charles G. D. Roberts, and of Agnes Maule Machar; to the
Hunter-Rose Company for the extract from Canniff Haight's "Country Life
in Canada"; to Morang & Company for selected poems from the works of
Archibald Lampman, and for the extract from Roberts' "History of
Canada"; and to Houghton Mifflin Company for the article from "_The
Atlantic Monthly_" on "British Colonial and Naval Power."
The Minister is grateful to these authors and publishers and to others,
not mentioned here, through whose courtesy he has been able to include
in this Reader so many copyright selections.
Toronto, May, 1909.
CONTENTS
_The Children's Song_ _Rudyard Kipling_
_Our Country_ _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_
Tom Tulliver at School _George Eliot_
_Ingratitude_ _William Shakespeare_
_The Giant_ _Charles Mackay_
The Discovery of America _William Robertson_
_The First Spring Day_ _Christina G. Rossetti_
The Battle of the Pipes _Robert Louis Stevenson_
_Bega_ _Marjorie L. C. Pickthall_
_A Musical Instrument_ _Elizabeth Barrett Browning_
Wolfe and Montcalm _Francis Parkman_
_Canada_ _Charles G. D. Roberts_
Scrooge's Christmas _Charles Dickens_
_Hands All Round_ _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_
Judah's Supplication to Joseph _Bible_
_Miriam's Song_ _Thomas Moore_
_The Destruction of Sennacherib_ _George Gordon, Lord Byron_
The Lark at the Diggings _Charles Reade_
_The Ancient Mariner_ _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
At the Close of the French Period
in Canada _Charles G. D. Roberts_
_A Hymn of Empire_ _Frederick George Scott_
Story of Absalom _Bible_
_The Burial of Moses_ _Cecil Frances Alexander_
The Crusader and the Saracen _Sir Walter Scott_
_Mercy_ _William Shakespeare_
_From "An August Reverie"_ _William Wilfred Campbell_
Work and Wages _John Ruskin_
_Untrodden Ways_ _Agnes Maule Machar_
_The First Ploughing_ _Charles G. D. Roberts_
The Archery Contest _Sir Walter Scott_
_In November_ _Archibald Lampman_
_Autumn Woods_ _William Cullen Bryant_
In a Canoe _Lord Dunraven_
_Afton Water_ _Robert Burns_
David Copperfield's First
Journey Alone _Charles Dickens_
_The Barefoot Boy_ _John G. Whittier_
Country Life in Canada in
the "Thirties" _Canniff Haight_
_Heat_ _Archibald Lampman_
The Two Paths _Bible_
_Bernardo del Carpio_ _Felicia Hemans_
Moses' Bargains _Oliver Goldsmith_
_The Maple_ _Charles G. D. Roberts_
_The Greenwood Tree_ _William Shakespeare_
Lake Superior _Major W. F. Butler_
The Red River Plain _Major W. F. Butler_
_The Unnamed Lake_ _Frederick George Scott_
Life in Norman England _William F. Collier_
_Ye Mariners of England_ _Thomas Campbell_
Instruction _Bible_
_Home Thoughts From Abroad_ _Robert Browning_
_The Bells of Shandon_ _Francis Mahony_
The Vision of Mirzah _Joseph Addison_
_Forbearance_ _Ralph Waldo Emerson_
_Mercy to Animals_ _William Cowper_
The United Empire Loyalists _Egerton Ryerson_
_Oft, in the Stilly Night_ _Thomas Moore_
_The Harp That Once Through
Tara's Halls_ _Thomas Moore_
Hudson Strait _Agnes C. Laut_
_Scots, Wha Hae_ _Robert Burns_
St. Ambrose Crew Win Their
First Race _Thomas Hughes_
_Hunting Song_ _Sir Walter Scott_
_Border Ballad_ _Sir Walter Scott_
The Great Northern Diver _Samuel T. Wood_
_To the Cuckoo_ _William Wordsworth_
_On the Grasshopper and Cricket_ _John Keats_
The Great Northwest _Major W. F. Butler_
_Rule, Britannia_ _James Thomson_
The Commandment and the Reward _Bible_
_The Spacious Firmament_ _Joseph Addison_
_June_ _James Russell Lowell_
The Fifth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor "_The Arabian Nights
Entertainments_"
_Ocean_ _George Gordon, Lord Byron_
Pontiac's Attempt to Capture Fort
Detroit _Major Richardson_
_My Native Land_ _Sir Walter Scott_
_Morning on the Lièvre_ _Archibald Lampman_
_Evening_ _Archibald Lampman_
An Elizabethan Seaman _James Anthony Froude_
_The Sea-King's Burial_ _Charles Mackay_
My Castles in Spain _George William Curtis_
_Aladdin_ _James Russell Lowell_
Drake's Voyage Round the World _James Anthony Froude_
_The Solitary Reaper_ _William Wordsworth_
Clouds, Rains, and Rivers _John Tyndall_
_Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu_ _Sir Walter Scott_
The Indignation of Nicholas Nickleby _Charles Dickens_
_Dickens in Camp_ _Bret Harte_
_Dost Thou Look Back on What
Hath Been_ _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_
The Passing of Arthur _Sir Thomas Malory_
_The Armada_ _Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay_
Departure and Death of Nelson _Robert Southey_
_Waterloo_ _George Gordon, Lord Byron_
_Ode Written in 1746_ _William Collins_
Balaklava _William Howard Russell_
_Funeral of Wellington_ _Alfred, Lord Tennyson_
In a Cave with a Whale _Frank T. Bullen_
_The Glove and the Lions_ _Leigh Hunt_
Three Scenes in the Tyrol _Richter_
_Marston Moor_ _William Mackworth Praed_
London _Goldwin Smith_
_How They Brought the Good News
from Ghent to Aix_ _Robert Browning_
_An Incident of the French Camp_ _Robert Browning_
British Colonial and Naval Power "_Atlantic Monthly_"
_England, My England_ _William Ernest Henley_
_A Good Time Going_ _Oliver Wendell Holmes_
God is Our Refuge _Bible_
_Indian Summer_ _Susanna Moodie_
_The Skylark_ _James Hogg_
What is War _John Bright_
_The Homes of England_ _Felicia Hemans_
_To a Water-Fowl_ _William Cullen Bryant_
The Fascination of Light _Samuel T. Wood_
_Daffodils_ _William Wordsworth_
_To the Dandelion_ _James Russell Lowell_
True Greatness _George Eliot_
_The Private of the Buffs_ _Sir Francis Hastings Doyle_
Honourable Toil _Thomas Carlyle_
_On his Blindness_ _John Milton_
_Mysterious Night_ _Joseph Blanco White_
_Vitaï Lampada_ _Henry Newbolt_
The Irreparable Past _Frederick W. Robertson_
_A Christmas Hymn, 1837_ _Alfred Domett_
_The Quarrel_ _William Shakespeare_
_Recessional_ _Rudyard Kipling_
The Good Land
For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of
water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills; a
land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a
land of oil olives and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread
without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose
stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.
And thou shalt eat and be full, and thou shalt bless the Lord thy God
for the good land which He hath given thee.
Deuteronomy. VIII.
FOURTH READER
THE CHILDREN'S SONG
Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee
Our love and toil in the years to be,
When we are grown and take our place,
As men and women with our race.
Father in Heaven who lovest all,
Oh help Thy children when they call;
That they may build from age to age,
An undefilèd heritage.
Teach us to bear the yoke in youth
With steadfastness and careful truth;
That, in our time, Thy Grace may give
The Truth whereby the Nations live.
Teach us to rule ourselves alway,
Controlled and cleanly night and day,
That we may bring, if need arise,
No maimed or worthless sacrifice.
Teach us to look in all our ends,
On Thee for judge, and not our friends;
That we, with Thee, may walk uncowed
By fear or favour of the crowd.
Teach us the Strength that cannot seek,
By deed or thought, to hurt the weak;
That, under Thee, we may possess
Man's strength to comfort man's distress.
Teach us Delight in simple things,
And Mirth that has no bitter springs,
Forgiveness free of evil done,
And Love to all men 'neath the sun!
Land of our Birth, our faith, our pride,
For whose dear sake our fathers died,
Oh Motherland, we pledge to thee,
Head, heart, and hand through years to be!
Kipling
OUR COUNTRY
Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied Past, and used
Within the Present, but transfused
Thro' future time by power of thought.
Tennyson
TOM TULLIVER AT SCHOOL
It was Mr. Tulliver's first visit to see Tom, for the lad must learn not
to think too much about home.
"Well, my lad," he said to Tom, when Mr. Stelling had left the room to
announce the arrival to his wife, and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom
freely, "you look rarely. School agrees with you."
Tom wished he had looked rather ill.
"I don't think I _am_ well, father," said Tom; "I wish you'd ask Mr.
Stelling not to let me do Euclid--it brings on the toothache, I think."
(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom had ever been subject.)
"Euclid, my lad; why, what's that?" said Mr. Tulliver.
"Oh, I don't know. It's definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and
things. It's a book I've got to learn in; there's no sense in it."
"Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver, reprovingly, "you mustn't say so. You must
learn what your master tells you. He knows what it's right for you to
learn."
"_I'll_ help you now, Tom," said Maggie, with a little air of
patronizing consolation. "I'm come to stay ever so long, if Mrs.
Stelling asks me. I've brought my box and my pinafores, haven't I,
father?"
"_You_ help me, you silly little thing!" said Tom, in such high spirits
at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding
Maggie by showing her a page of Euclid. "I should like to see you doing
one of _my_ lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never learn such
things. They're too silly."
"I know what Latin is very well," said Maggie, confidently. "Latin's a
language. There are Latin words in the Dictionary. There's 'bonus, a
gift.'"
"Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, secretly
astonished. "You think you're very wise. But 'bonus' means 'good,' as it
happens--'bonus, bona, bonum.'"
"Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean 'gift,'" said Maggie,
stoutly. "It may mean several things--almost every word does.
There's 'lawn'--it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff
pocket-handkerchiefs are made of."
"Well done, little 'un," said Mr. Tulliver, laughing, while Tom felt
rather disgusted with Maggie's knowingness, though beyond measure
cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her conceit
would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books.
Mrs. Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a longer time
than a week for Maggie's stay; but Mr. Stelling, who took her between
his knees, and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted
that she must stay a fortnight. Maggie thought Mr. Stelling was a
charming man, and Mr. Tulliver was quite proud to leave his little wench
where she would have an opportunity of showing her cleverness to
appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should not be fetched
home till the end of the fortnight.
"Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie," said Tom, as their
father drove away. "What do you shake and toss your head now for, you
silly?" he continued; for, though her hair was now under a new
dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed still
in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. "It makes you look as
if you were crazy."
"Oh, I can't help it," said Maggie, impatiently. "Don't tease me, Tom.
Oh, what books!" she exclaimed, as she saw the book-cases in the study.
"How I should like to have as many books as that!"
"Why, you couldn't read one of 'em," said Tom, triumphantly. "They're
all Latin."
"No, they aren't," said Maggie. "I can read the back of this ...
'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'"
"Well, what does that mean? _You_ don't know," said Tom, wagging his
head.
"But I could soon find out," said Maggie, scornfully.
"Why, how?"
"I should look inside, and see what it was about."
"You'd better not, Miss Maggie," said Tom, seeing her hand on the
volume. "Mr. Stelling lets nobody touch his books without leave, and I
shall catch it if you take it out."
"Oh, very well! Let me see all _your_ books, then," said Maggie, turning
to throw her arms round Tom's neck, and rub his cheek with her small,
round nose.
Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Maggie to dispute
with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump
with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with more and
more vigour, till Maggie's hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled
about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became
more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last reaching Mr.
Stelling's reading-stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy
lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study
was a one-storied wing to the house, so that the downfall made no
alarming resonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a few minutes,
dreading the appearance of Mr. or Mrs. Stelling.
"Oh, I say, Maggie," said Tom at last, lifting up the stand, "we must
keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything, Mrs. Stelling'll make
us cry peccavi."
"What's that?" said Maggie.
"Oh, it's the Latin for a good scolding," said Tom, not without some
pride in his knowledge.
"Is she a cross woman?" said Maggie.
"I believe you!" said Tom, with an emphatic nod.
"I think all women are crosser than men," said Maggie. "Aunt Glegg's a
great deal crosser than Uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than
father does."
"Well, _you'll_ be a woman some day," said Tom, "so _you_ needn't
talk."
"But I shall be a _clever_ woman," said Maggie, with a toss.
"Oh, I daresay, and a nasty, conceited thing. Everybody'll hate you."
"But you oughtn't to hate me, Tom. It'll be very wicked of you, for I
shall be your sister."
"Yes, but if you're a nasty, disagreeable thing, I _shall_ hate you."
"Oh but, Tom, you won't! I shan't be disagreeable. I shall be very good
to you, and I shall be good to everybody. You won't hate me really, will
you, Tom?"
"Oh, bother, never mind! Come, it's time for me to learn my lessons. See
here, what I've got to do," said Tom, drawing Maggie towards him and
showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears, and
prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in Euclid. She
began to read with full confidence in her own powers; but presently,
becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was
unavoidable: she must confess her incompetency, and she was not fond of
humiliation.
"It's nonsense!" she said, "and very ugly stuff; nobody need want to
make it out."
"Ah, there now, Miss Maggie!" said Tom, drawing the book away and
wagging his head at her; "you see you're not so clever as you thought
you were."
"Oh," said Maggie, pouting, "I daresay I could make it out if I'd
learned what goes before, as you have."
"But that's what you just couldn't, Miss Wisdom," said Tom. "For it's
all the harder when you know what goes before; for then you've got to
say what definition 3 is, and what axiom V is. But get along with you
now; I must go on with this. Here's the Latin Grammar. See what you can
make of that."
Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her mathematical
mortification, for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that
there was an English Key at the end, which would make her very wise
about Latin, at slight expense. It was really very interesting--the
Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn, and she was proud
because she found it interesting.
"Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!"
"Oh, Tom, it's such a pretty book!" she said, as she jumped out of the
large arm-chair to give it him; "it's much prettier than the Dictionary.
I could learn Latin very soon. I don't think it's at all hard."
"Oh, I know what you've been doing," said Tom; "you've been reading the
English at the end. Any donkey can do that."
Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business-like
air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys
would find themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued, turned to the
book-cases to amuse herself with puzzling out the titles.
George Eliot: "The Mill on the Floss."
INGRATITUDE
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot;
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Shakespeare
[Illustration: H. M. KING EDWARD VII.]
THE GIANT
There came a Giant to my door,
A Giant fierce and strong;
His step was heavy on the floor,
His arms were ten yards long.
He scowled and frowned; he shook the ground;
I trembled through and through;
At length I looked him in the face
And cried, "Who cares for you?"
The mighty Giant, as I spoke,
Grew pale, and thin, and small,
And through his body, as 'twere smoke,
I saw the sunshine fall.
His blood-red eyes turned blue as skies:--
"Is this," I cried, with growing pride,
"Is this the mighty foe?"
He sank before my earnest face,
He vanished quite away,
And left no shadow in his place
Between me and the day.
Such giants come to strike us dumb,
But, weak in every part,
They melt before the strong man's eyes,
And fly the true of heart.
Charles Mackay
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
Next morning, being Friday the third day of August, in the year 1492,
Columbus set sail, a little before sunrise, in presence of a vast crowd
of spectators, who sent up their supplications to Heaven for the
prosperous issue of the voyage, which they wished rather than expected.
Columbus steered directly for the Canary Islands, and arrived there
without any occurrence that would have deserved notice on any other
occasion. But, in a voyage of such expectation and importance, every
circumstance was the object of attention.
As they proceeded, the indications of approaching land seemed to be more
certain, and excited hope in proportion. The birds began to appear in
flocks, making towards the south-west. Columbus, in imitation of the
Portuguese navigators, who had been guided in several of their
discoveries by the motion of birds, altered his course from due west
towards that quarter whither they pointed their flight. But, after
holding on for several days in this new direction, without any better
success than formerly, having seen no object during thirty days but the
sea and the sky, the hopes of his companions subsided faster than they
had risen; their fears revived with additional force; impatience, rage,
and despair appeared in every countenance. All sense of subordination
was lost. The officers, who had hitherto concurred with Columbus in
opinion, and supported his authority, now took part with the private
men; they assembled tumultuously on the deck, expostulated with their
commander, mingled threats with their expostulations, and required him
instantly to tack about and return to Europe. Columbus perceived that it
would be of no avail to have recourse to any of his former arts, which,
having been tried so often, had lost their effect; and that it was
impossible to rekindle any zeal for the success of the expedition among
men in whose breasts fear had extinguished every generous sentiment. He
saw that it was no less vain to think of employing either gentle or
severe measures to quell a mutiny so general and so violent. It was
necessary, on all these accounts, to soothe passions which he could no
longer command, and to give way to a torrent too impetuous to be
checked. He promised solemnly to his men that he would comply with
their request, provided they would accompany him and obey his command
for three days longer, and if, during that time, land were not
discovered, he would then abandon the enterprise, and direct his course
towards Spain.
Enraged as the sailors were, and impatient to turn their faces again
towards their native country, this proposition did not appear to them
unreasonable; nor did Columbus hazard much in confining himself to a
term so short. The presages of discovering land were now so numerous and
promising that he deemed them infallible. For some days the
sounding-line reached the bottom, and the soil which it brought up
indicated land to be at no great distance. The flocks of birds
increased, and were composed not only of sea-fowl, but of such
land-birds as could not be supposed to fly far from the shore. The crew
of the Pinta observed a cane floating, which seemed to have been newly
cut, and likewise a piece of timber artificially carved. The sailors
aboard the Nigna took up the branch of a tree with red berries perfectly
fresh. The clouds around the setting sun assumed a new appearance; the
air was more mild and warm, and during night the wind became unequal
and variable. From all these symptoms, Columbus was so confident of
being near land, that on the evening of the eleventh of October, after
public prayers for success, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the
ships to lie to, keeping strict watch lest they should be driven ashore
in the night. During this interval of suspense and expectation, no man
shut his eyes, all kept upon deck, gazing towards that quarter where
they expected to discover the land, which had so long been the object of
their wishes.
About two hours before midnight, Columbus, standing on the forecastle,
observed a light in the distance, and privately pointed it out to Pedro
Guttierez, a page of the Queen's wardrobe. Guttierez perceived it, and
calling to Salcedo, comptroller of the fleet, all three saw it in
motion, as if it were carried from place to place. A little after
midnight, the joyful sound of "Land! Land!" was heard from the Pinta,
which kept always ahead of the other ships. But, having been so often
deceived by fallacious appearances, every man was now become slow of
belief, and waited in all the anguish of uncertainty and impatience for
the return of day. As soon as morning dawned, all doubts and fears were
dispelled. From every ship an island was seen about two leagues to the
north, whose flat and verdant fields, well stored with wood, and watered
with many rivulets, presented the aspect of a delightful country.
The crew of the Pinta instantly began the _Te Deum_, as a hymn of
thanksgiving to God, and were joined by those of the other ships with
tears of joy and transports of congratulation. This office of gratitude
to Heaven was followed by an act of justice to their commander. They
threw themselves at the feet of Columbus, with feelings of
self-condemnation, mingled with reverence. They implored him to pardon
their ignorance, incredulity, and insolence, which had created him so
much unnecessary disquiet, and had so often obstructed the prosecution
of his well-concerted plan; and passing, in the warmth of their
admiration, from one extreme to the other, they now pronounced the man
whom they had so lately reviled and threatened, to be a person inspired
by Heaven with sagacity and fortitude more than human, in order to
accomplish a design so far beyond the ideas and conceptions of all
former ages.
William Robertson: "The History of America."
THE FIRST SPRING DAY
I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun,
And crocus fires are kindled one by one:
Sing, robin, sing!
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.
I wonder if the spring-tide of this year
Will bring another spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:
Sing, hope, to me!
Sweet notes, my hope, sweet notes for memory.
The sap will surely quicken soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or in this world, or in the world to come:
Sing, voice of Spring!
Till I, too, blossom and rejoice and sing.
Christina Rossetti
Be that which you would make others.
Amiel
THE BATTLE OF THE PIPES
A thing happened worth narrating at the close of a visit paid me by
Robin Oig, one of the sons of the notorious Rob Roy. As he was leaving,
just in the door, he met Alan coming in; and the two drew back and
looked at each other like strange dogs. They were neither of them big
men, but they seemed fairly to swell out with pride. Each wore a sword,
and by a movement of his haunch, thrust clear the hilt of it, so that it
might be the more readily grasped and the blade drawn.
"Mr. Stewart, I am thinking," says Robin.
"Troth, Mr. Macgregor, it's not a name to be ashamed of," answered Alan.
"I did not know ye were in my country, sir," says Robin.
"It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends, the
Maclarens," says Alan.
"That's a kittle point," returned the other. "There may be two words to
say to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your
sword?"
"Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good
deal more than that," says Alan. "I am not the only man who can draw
steel in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk
with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never
hear that the Macgregor had the best of it."
"Do you mean my father, sir?" says Robin.
"Well, I wouldnae wonder," says Alan. "The gentleman I have in my mind
had the ill-taste to clap Campbell to his name."
"My father was an old man," returned Robin. "The match was unequal. You
and me would make a better pair, sir."
"I was thinking that," said Alan.
I was half out of bed, and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these
fighting cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when
that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with
something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.
"Gentlemen," said he, "I will have been thinking of a very different
matter. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith
acclaimed pipers. It's an auld dispute which one of ye's the best. Here
will be a braw chance to settle it."
"Why, sir," said Alan, still addressing Robin, from whom indeed he had
not so much as shifted his eyes, nor yet Robin from him, "why, sir,"
says Alan, "I think I will have heard some sough of the sort. Have ye
music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?"
"I can pipe like a Maccrimmon!" cries Robin.
"And that is a very bold word," quoth Alan.
"I have made bolder words good before now," returned Robin, "and that
against better adversaries."
"It is easy to try that," says Alan.
Duncan Dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his
principal possession, and to set before his guests a muttonham and a
bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose. The two enemies were
still on the very breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each
side of the peat fire, with a mighty show of politeness. Maclaren
pressed them to taste his muttonham and "the wife's brose," reminding
them the wife was out of Athole and had a name far and wide for her
skill in that confection. But Robin put aside these hospitalities as bad
for the breath.
"I would have ye to remark, sir," said Alan, "that I havenae broken
bread for near upon ten hours, which will be worse for the breath than
any brose in Scotland."
"I will take no advantages, Mr. Stewart," replied Robin. "Eat and drink;
I'll follow."
Each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to
Mrs. Maclaren; and then, after a great number of civilities, Robin took
the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner.
"Ay, ye can blow," said Alan; and, taking the instrument from his rival,
he first played the same spring in a manner identical with Robin's; and
then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a
perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the
"warblers."
I had been pleased with Robin's playing, Alan's ravished me.
"That's no very bad, Mr. Stewart," said the rival, "but ye show a poor
device in your warbler."
"Me!" cried Alan, the blood starting to his face. "I give ye the lie."
"Do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then," said Robin, "that ye
seek to change them for the sword?"
"And that's very well said, Mr. Macgregor," returned Alan; "and in the
meantime" (laying a strong accent on the word) "I take back the lie. I
appeal to Duncan."
"Indeed, ye need appeal to naebody," said Robin. "Ye're a far better
judge than any Maclaren in Balwhidder: for it's a God's truth that
you're a very creditable piper for a Stewart. Hand me the pipes."
Alan did as he asked; and Robin proceeded to imitate and correct some
part of Alan's variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly.
"Ay, ye have music," said Alan, gloomily.
"And now be the judge yourself, Mr. Stewart," said Robin; and taking up
the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a
purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and
so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed to hear him.
As for Alan his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his
fingers, like a man under some deep affront. "Enough!" he cried. "Ye can
blow the pipes--make the most of that." And he made as if to rise.
But Robin only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck
into the slow music of a pibroch. It was a fine piece of music in
itself, and nobly played; but, it seems besides, it was a piece peculiar
to the Appin Stewarts and a chief favourite with Alan. The first notes
were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time
quickened, he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that
piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he
had no thought but for the music.
"Robin Oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great piper. I am not
fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. Body of me! ye have more music
in your sporran than I have in my head! And, though it still sticks in
my mind that I could show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn
ye beforehand--it'll no be fair! It would go against my heart to haggle
a man that can blow the pipes as you can!"
Thereupon the quarrel was made up. All night long the pipes were
changing hands, and the day had come pretty bright before Robin as much
as thought upon the road.
Robert Louis Stevenson: "Kidnapped."
BEGA
From the clouded belfry calling
Hear my soft ascending swells,
Hear my notes like swallows falling:
I am Bega, least of bells.
When great Turkeful rolls and rings
All the storm-touched turret swings,
Echoing battle, loud and long.
When great Tatwin wakening roars
To the far-off shining shores,
All the seamen know his song.
I am Bega, least of bells;
In my throat my message swells.
I, with all the winds athrill,
Murmuring softly, murmuring still,
"God around me, God above me,
God to guard me, God to love me."
I am Bega, least of bells;
Weaving wonder, wind-born spells.
High above the morning mist,
Wreathed in rose and amethyst,
Still the dreams of music float
Silver from my silver throat,
Whispering beauty, whispering peace.
When great Tatwin's golden voice
Bids the listening land rejoice,
When great Turkeful rings and rolls
Thunder down to trembling souls,
Then my notes, like curlews flying,
Sinking, falling, lifting, sighing,
Softly answer, softly cease.
I, with all the airs at play,
Murmuring softly, murmuring say,
"God around me, God above me,
God to guard me, God to love me."
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall
Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil
or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing.
For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his
tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:
Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace and ensue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open
unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do
evil.
And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is
good?
I. Peter, III.
A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan
From the deep, cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flow'd the river;
And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can,
With his hard, bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf, indeed,
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notch'd the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
"This is the way," laugh'd the great god Pan,
(Laugh'd while he sat by the river)
"The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed."
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies reviv'd, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet, half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If little labour, little are our gains;
Man's fortunes are according to his pains.
Herrick
WOLFE AND MONTCALM
The eventful night of the twelfth was clear and calm, with no light but
that of the stars. Within two hours before daybreak thirty boats,
crowded with sixteen hundred soldiers, cast off from the vessels and
floated downward in perfect order with the current of the ebb-tide. To
the boundless joy of the army, Wolfe's malady had abated, and he was
able to command in person. His ruined health, the gloomy prospect of the
siege, and the disaster at Montmorenci, had oppressed him with the
deepest melancholy, but never impaired for a moment the promptness of
his decisions, or the impetuous energy of his action.
He sat in the stern of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to
a calm height of resolution. Every order had been given, every
arrangement made, and it only remained to face the issue. The ebbing
tide sufficed to bear the boats along, and nothing broke the silence of
the night but the gurgling of the river, and the low voice of Wolfe, as
he repeated to the officers about him the stanzas of Gray's "Elegy in a
Country Churchyard," which had recently appeared, and which he had just
received from England. Perhaps as he uttered those strangely
appropriate words:--
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave," the shadows of his own
approaching fate stole with mournful prophecy across his mind.
"Gentlemen," he said, as he closed his recital, "I would rather have
written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow."
As they approached the landing-place, the boats edged closer in towards
the northern shore, and the woody precipices rose high on their left
like a wall of undistinguished blackness.
"_Qui vive?_" shouted a French sentinel from out the impervious gloom.
"_La France!_" answered a captain of Fraser's Highlanders from the
foremost boat.
As boats were frequently passing down the river with supplies for the
garrison, and as a convoy from Bougainville was expected that very
night, the sentinel was deceived and allowed the English to proceed. A
few moments later, they were challenged again, and this time they could
discern the soldier running close down to the water's edge, as if all
his suspicions were aroused; but the skilful replies of the Highlander
once more saved the party from discovery.
They reached the landing-place in safety,--an indentation in the shore
about a league above the city and now bearing the name of Wolfe's Cove.
Here a narrow path led up the face of the heights, and a French guard
was posted at the top to defend the pass. By the force of the current
the foremost boats, including that which carried Wolfe himself, were
borne a little below the spot. The general was one of the first on
shore. He looked upward at the rugged heights which towered above him in
the gloom. "You can try it," he coolly observed to an officer near him;
"but I don't think you'll get up."
At the point where the Highlanders landed, one of their captains, Donald
Macdonald, apparently the same whose presence of mind had just saved the
enterprise from ruin, was climbing in advance of his men, when he was
challenged by a sentinel. He replied in French, by declaring that he had
been sent to relieve the guard, and ordering the soldier to withdraw.
Before the latter was undeceived, a crowd of Highlanders were close at
hand, while the steeps below were thronged with eager climbers, dragging
themselves up by trees, roots, and bushes. The guard turned out and made
a brief though brave resistance. In a moment they were cut to pieces,
dispersed, or made prisoners, while men after men came swarming up the
height and quickly formed upon the plains above. Meanwhile the vessels
had dropped downward with the current and anchored opposite the
landing-place. The remaining troops disembarked, and with the dawn of
day, the whole were brought in safety to the shore.
The sun rose, and from the ramparts of Quebec the astonished people saw
the Plains of Abraham glittering with arms, and the dark-red lines of
the English forming in array of battle. Breathless messengers had borne
the evil tidings to Montcalm, and far and near his wide-extended camp
resounded with the rolling of alarm-drums and the din of startled
preparation. He, too, had had his struggles and his sorrows. The civil
power had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife
among his soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had
dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold
out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the
town, when on that disastrous morning the news of their successful
temerity fell like a cannon-shot upon his ear. Still he assumed a tone
of confidence. "They have got to the weak side of us at last," he is
reported to have said, "and we must crush them with our numbers." With
headlong haste his troops were pouring over the bridge of St. Charles,
and gathering in heavy masses under the western ramparts of the town.
Could numbers give assurance of success, their triumph would have been
secure, for five French battalions and the armed colonial peasantry
amounted in all to more than seven thousand five hundred men. Full in
sight before stretched the long, thin lines of the British forces--the
Highlanders, the steady soldiery of England, and the hardy levies of the
provinces--less than five thousand in number, but all inured to battle,
and strong in the full assurance of success.
It was nine o'clock, and the adverse armies stood motionless, each
gazing on the other. The clouds hung low, and at intervals warm light
showers descended besprinkling both alike. The coppice and corn-fields
in front of the British troops were filled with French sharp-shooters,
who kept up a distant spattering fire. Here and there a soldier fell in
the ranks, and the gap was filled in silence.
At a little before ten the British could see that Montcalm was preparing
to advance, and in a few moments all his troops appeared in rapid
motion. They came on in three divisions, shouting after the manner of
their nation, and firing heavily as soon as they came within range. In
the British ranks not a trigger was pulled, not a soldier stirred, and
their ominous composure seemed to damp the spirits of the assailants. It
was not till the French were within forty yards that the fatal word was
given, and the British muskets blazed forth at once in one crashing
explosion. Like a ship at full career arrested with sudden ruin on a
sunken rock, the ranks of Montcalm staggered, shivered, and broke before
that wasting storm of lead. The smoke rolling along the field for a
moment shut out the view, but, when the white wreaths were scattered on
the wind, a wretched spectacle was disclosed: men and officers tumbled
in heaps, battalions resolved into a mob, order and obedience gone; and,
when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses
of the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable panic.
For a few minutes the French regulars stood their ground, returning a
sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now, echoing cheer on cheer,
redoubling volley on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, and
driving the fugitives in crowds, the British troops advanced and swept
the field before them. The ardour of the men burst all restraint. They
broke into a run and with unsparing slaughter chased the flying
multitude to the gates of Quebec. Foremost of all, the light-footed
Highlanders dashed along in furious pursuit, hewing down the Frenchmen
with their broadswords and slaying many in the very ditch of the
fortifications. Never was victory more quick or more decisive.
In the short action and pursuit the French lost fifteen hundred men,
killed, wounded, and taken. Of the remainder some escaped within the
city, and others fled across the St. Charles to rejoin their comrades
who had been left to guard the camp. The pursuers were recalled by sound
of trumpet, the broken ranks were formed afresh, and the English troops
withdrawn beyond reach of the cannon of Quebec. Townshend and Murray,
the only general officers who remained unhurt, passed to the head of
every regiment in turn and thanked the soldiers for the bravery they had
shown; yet the triumph of the victors was mingled with sadness as
tidings went from rank to rank that Wolfe had fallen.
In the heat of the action, as he advanced at the head of the grenadiers
of Louisburg, a bullet shattered his wrist, but he wrapped his
handkerchief about the wound, and showed no sign of pain. A moment more
and a ball pierced his side. Still he pressed forward waving his sword
and cheering his soldiers to the attack, when a third shot lodged deep
within his breast. He paused, reeled, and staggering to one side, fell
to earth. Brown, a lieutenant of the grenadiers, Henderson, a volunteer,
an officer of artillery, and a private soldier, raised him together in
their arms, and bearing him to the rear laid him softly on the grass.
They asked if he would have a surgeon, but he shook his head and
answered that all was over with him. His eyes closed with the torpor of
approaching death, and those around sustained his fainting form. Yet
they could not withhold their gaze from the wild turmoil before them,
and the charging ranks of their companions rushing through fire and
smoke. "See how they run," one of the officers exclaimed, as the French
fell in confusion before the levelled bayonets. "Who run?" demanded
Wolfe, opening his eyes like a man aroused from sleep. "The enemy, sir,"
was the reply; "they give way everywhere." "Then," said the dying
general, "tell Colonel Burton to march Webb's regiment down to Charles
River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I
shall die in peace," he murmured; and turning on his side he calmly
breathed his last.
Almost at the same moment fell his great adversary, Montcalm, as he
strove with vain bravery to rally his shattered ranks. Struck down with
a mortal wound, he was placed upon a litter and borne to the General
Hospital on the banks of the St. Charles. The surgeons told him that he
could not recover. "I am glad of it," was his calm reply. He then asked
how long he might survive, and was told that he had not many hours
remaining. "So much the better," he said; "I am happy that I shall not
live to see the surrender of Quebec." Officers from the garrison came to
his bedside to ask his orders and instructions. "I will give no more
orders," replied the defeated soldier; "I have much business that must
be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this
wretched country. My time is very short, therefore, pray leave me."
The victorious army encamped before Quebec and pushed their
preparations for the siege with zealous energy, but, before a single gun
was brought to bear, the white flag was hung out, and the garrison
surrendered. On the eighteenth of September, 1759, the rock-built
citadel of Canada passed for ever from the hands of its ancient masters.
Parkman: "The Conspiracy of Pontiac."
CANADA
Montcalm and Wolfe! Wolfe and Montcalm!
Quebec, thy storied citadel
Attests in burning song and psalm
How here thy heroes fell!
O thou that bor'st the battle's brunt
At Queenston and at Lundy's Lane,--
On whose scant ranks, but iron front
The battle broke in vain!--
Whose was the danger, whose the day,
From whose triumphant throats the cheers,
At Chrysler's Farm, at Chateauguay,
Storming like clarion-bursts our ears?
On soft Pacific slopes,--beside
Strange floods that northward rave and fall,--
Where chafes Acadia's chainless tide--
Thy sons await thy call.
They wait; but some in exile, some
With strangers housed, in stranger lands,--
And some Canadian lips are dumb
Beneath Egyptian sands.
O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields
Before us; thy most ancient dreams
Are mixed with far Canadian fields
And murmur of Canadian streams.
But thou, my country, dream not thou!
Wake, and behold how night is done,--
How on thy breast, and o'er thy brow,
Bursts the uprising sun!
Charles G. D. Roberts
Love your country, believe in her, honour her, work for her, live for
her, die for her. Never has any people been endowed with a nobler
birthright or blessed with prospects of a fairer future.
Lord Dufferin
SCROOGE'S CHRISTMAS
(On Christmas Eve, Scrooge, "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous old sinner," is visited by three ghosts in
succession--The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present,
and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The first recalled the
experiences of Scrooge's youth, the second showed him Christmas as it
might be spent and incidentally, too, what some people thought of him.
The third showed him the "shadows of the things that have not happened,
but will happen in the time before us." He saw himself dead, uncared
for, unwept, unwatched, his effects plundered by the charwoman,
laundress, and undertaker's man and realized the end to which he must
come unless he led an altered life. Holding up his hands he prayed to
have his fate reversed and saw the Ghost shrink and dwindle down into a
bedpost.)
Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his
own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own to make
amends in.
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge
repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall
strive within me. O Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas Time be
praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his
broken voice could scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing
violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with
tears.
"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed
curtains in his arms,--"they are not torn down, rings and all. They are
here,--I am here,--the shadows of the things that would have been may be
dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside
out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making
them parties to every kind of extravagance.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the
same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings.
"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as
a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to
everybody! A Happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there,
perfectly winded.
"There's the sauce-pan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge, starting
off again, and going round the fireplace. "There's the door by which the
Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of
Christmas Present sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering
Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened. Ha, ha, ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was
a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long
line of brilliant laughs!
"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge. "I don't know
how long I have been amongst the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm
quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo!
Whoop! Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the
lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clang, clash, hammer; ding, dong,
bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! O, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no
mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring cold; cold, piping for the blood
to dance to; golden sunlight; heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry
bells. O, glorious, glorious!
"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday
clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"Eh?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The
Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like.
Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow?"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the
corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know
whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there?--Not
the little prize turkey, the big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?" said the boy.
"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him.
Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"WALK-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it and tell 'em to
bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come
back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in
less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at the
trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands,
and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the
size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to
Bob's will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but write
he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street door, ready for
the coming of the Poulterer's man. As he stood there, waiting his
arrival, the knocker caught his eye.
"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his
hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it
has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker!--Here's the turkey. Hallo!
Whoop! How are you? Merry Christmas!"
It _was_ a turkey! He could never have stood upon his legs, that bird.
He would have snapped 'em off short in a minute, like sticks of
sealing-wax.
"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge. "You
must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid
for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the
chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only exceeded by the
chuckle with which he sat down breathlessly in his chair again, and
chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much;
and shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while you are
at it. But, if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a
piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the
streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them
with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, walking with his hands behind
him, Scrooge regarded everyone with a delighted smile. He looked so
irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured
fellows said: "Good-morning, sir! A Merry Christmas to you!" And Scrooge
said often afterwards, that, of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard,
those were the blithest in his ears....
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people
hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned
beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses and up to the
windows, and found that every thing could yield him pleasure. He had
never dreamed that any walk--that anything--could give him so much
happiness. In the afternoon, he turned his steps towards his nephew's
house.
He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and
knock. But he made a dash and did it.
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. "Nice girl!
Very."
"Yes, sir."
"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you
upstairs, if you please."
"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the
dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were
looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these
young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see
that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge. Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage
started!...
"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "Who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in,
Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in
five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same.
So did Topper when _he_ came. So did the plump sister when _she_ came.
So did everybody when _they_ came. Wonderful party, wonderful games,
wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If
he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That
was the first thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter
past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time.
Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the
Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door, his comforter, too. He was
on his stool in a jiffy, driving away with his pen, as if he were trying
to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could
feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I _am_ behind my time."
"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes, I think you are. Step this way, sir,
if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. "It
shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I am not going to
stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued,
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in his waistcoat that
he staggered back into the Tank again,--"and, therefore, I am about to
raise your salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary
idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the
people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
"A Merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could
not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A Merrier Christmas,
Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise
your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we'll
discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
smoking bishop. Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another scuttle of coal
before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;
and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was second father. He became as
good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city
knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old
world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them
laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know nothing
ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have
their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these
would be blind any way, he thought it quite as well that they should
wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive
forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total
Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of him,
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the
knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny
Tim observed, GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE!
Dickens: "A Christmas Carol."
HANDS ALL ROUND
First pledge our Queen this solemn night,
Then drink to England, every guest;
That man's the best Cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May freedom's oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day;
That man's the true Conservative
Who lops the moulder'd branch away.
Hands all round!
God the traitor's hope confound!
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
To all the loyal hearts who long
To keep our English Empire whole!
To all our noble sons, the strong
New England of the Southern Pole!
To England under Indian skies,
To those dark millions of her realm!
To Canada whom we love and prize,
Whatever statesman hold the helm.
Hands all round!
God the traitor's hope confound!
To this great name of England drink, my friends,
And all her glorious empire, round and round.
To all our statesmen so they be
True leaders of the land's desire!
To both our Houses, may they see
Beyond the borough and the shire!
We sail'd wherever ship could sail,
We founded many a mighty state;
Pray God our greatness may not fail
Through craven fears of being great.
Hands all round!
God the traitor's hope confound!
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
Tennyson
JUDAH'S SUPPLICATION TO JOSEPH
And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house; and he was yet there:
and they fell before him on the ground. And Joseph said unto them, What
deed is this that ye have done? know ye not that such a man as I can
indeed divine? And Judah said, What shall we say unto my lord? what
shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the
iniquity of thy servants: behold, we are my lord's bondmen, both we, and
he also in whose hand the cup is found. And he said, God forbid that I
should do so: the man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my
bondman; but as for you, get you up in peace unto your father.
Then Judah came near unto him, and said, Oh my lord, let thy servant, I
pray thee, speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not thine anger burn
against thy servant: for thou art even as Pharaoh. My lord asked his
servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a brother? And we said unto my
lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little
one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and
his father loveth him. And thou saidst unto thy servants, Bring him
down unto me, that I may set mine eyes upon him. And we said unto my
lord, The lad cannot leave his father: for if he should leave his
father, his father would die. And thou saidst unto thy servants, Except
your youngest brother come down with you, ye shall see my face no more.
And it came to pass when we came up unto thy servant my father, we told
him the words of my lord. And our father said, Go again, buy us a little
food. And we said, We cannot go down: if our youngest brother be with
us, then will we go down: for we may not see the man's face, except our
youngest brother be with us. And thy servant my father said unto us, Ye
know that my wife bare me two sons: and the one went out from me, and I
said, Surely he is torn in pieces; and I have not seen him since: and if
ye take this one also from me, and mischief befall him, ye shall bring
down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Now, therefore, when I come
to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us; seeing that his
life is bound up in the lad's life; it shall come to pass, when he seeth
that the lad is not with us, that he will die: and thy servants shall
bring down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the
grave. For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying,
If I bring him not unto thee, then shall I bear the blame to my father
for ever. Now therefore, let thy servant, I pray thee, abide instead of
the lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren.
For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me? lest I
see the evil that shall come on my father.
Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him;
and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man
with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept
aloud: and the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. And
Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And
his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his
presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray
you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother whom ye
sold into Egypt. And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that
ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. For
these two years hath the famine been in the land; and there are yet five
years in the which there shall be neither ploughing nor harvest. And
God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant in the earth, and to
save you alive by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent
me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of
all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up
to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made
me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: and thou shalt dwell
in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy
children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds,
and all that thou hast: and there will I nourish thee; for there are yet
five years of famine; lest thou come to poverty, thou, and thy
household, and all that thou hast. And, behold, your eyes see, and the
eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you.
And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye
have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. And he
fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon
his neck. And he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them; and after
that his brethren talked with him.
Genesis, XLIV-V.
MIRIAM'S SONG
(Read Exodus, XV.)
Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed--His people are free.
Sing--for the pride of the tyrant is broken,
His chariots and horsemen all splendid and brave,
How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken,
And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.
Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed--His people are free.
Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord!
His word was the arrow, His breath was our sword!
Who shall return to tell Egypt the story
Of those she sent forth in the power of her pride?
For the Lord hath looked out from His pillar of glory,
And all her brave thousands are dashed in the tide.
Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed--His people are free.
Thomas Moore
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
(Read II. Kings, XIX. 35)
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Byron
The house of the wicked shall be overthrown:
But the tent of the upright shall flourish.
In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence:
And his children shall have a place of refuge.
Proverbs
THE LARK AT THE DIGGINGS
The friends strode briskly on, and a little after eleven o'clock they
came upon a small squatter's house and premises. "Here we are," cried
George, and his eyes glittered with innocent delight.
The house was thatched and whitewashed, and English was written on it
and on every foot of ground round it. A furze-bush had been planted by
the door. Vertical oak palings were the fence, with a five-barred gate
in the middle of them. From the little plantation, all the magnificent
trees and shrubs of Australia had been excluded with amazing resolution
and consistency, and oak and ash reigned safe from overtowering rivals.
They passed to the back of the house, and there George's countenance
fell a little, for on the oval grass-plot and gravel-walk he found from
thirty to forty rough fellows, most of them diggers.
"Ah, well," said he, on reflection, "we could not expect to have it all
to ourselves, and indeed it would be a sin to wish it, you know. Now,
Tom, come this way; here it is, here it is,--there." Tom looked up, and
in a gigantic cage was a light brown bird.
He was utterly confounded. "What, is it this we came twelve miles to
see?"
"Ay! and twice twelve wouldn't have been much to me."
"Well, but what is the lark you talked of?"
"This is it."
"This? This is a bird."
"Well, and isn't a lark a bird?"
"O, ay! I see! ha! ha! ha! ha!"
Robinson's merriment was interrupted by a harsh remonstrance from
several of the diggers, who were all from the other end of the camp.
"Hold your--cackle," cried one, "he is going to sing;" and the whole
party had their eyes turned with expectation towards the bird.
Like most singers, he kept them waiting a bit. But at last, just at
noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted him to sing, the
little feathered exile began, as it were, to tune his pipes. The savage
men gathered round the cage that moment, and amidst a dead stillness the
bird uttered some very uncertain chirps, but after awhile he seemed to
revive his memories, and call his ancient cadences back to him one by
one, and string them _sotto voce_.
And then the same sun that had warmed his little heart at home came
glowing down on him here, and he gave music back for it more and more,
till at last--amidst breathless silence and glistening eyes of the rough
diggers hanging on his voice--out burst in that distant land his English
song.
It swelled his little throat and gushed from him with thrilling force
and purity, and every time he checked his song to think of its theme,
the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, the clover he first
soared from, and the spring he sang so well, a loud sigh from many a
rough bosom, many a wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners
had held their breath to hear him; and when he swelled with song again,
and poured with all his soul the green meadows, the quiet brooks, the
honey clover, and the English spring, the rugged mouths opened and so
stayed, and the shaggy lips trembled, and more than one drop trickled
from fierce unbridled hearts down bronzed and rugged cheeks.
_Dulce domum!_
And these shaggy men, full of oaths and strife and cupidity, had once
been white-headed boys, and had strolled about the English fields with
little sisters and little brothers, and seen the lark rise, and heard
him sing this very song. The little playmates lay in the churchyard,
and they were full of oaths and drink and lusts and remorses,--but no
note was changed in this immortal song. And so for a moment or two,
years of vice rolled away like a dark cloud from the memory, and the
past shone out in the song-shine: they came back, bright as the immortal
notes that lighted them, those faded pictures and those fleeted days;
the cottage, the old mother's tears when he left her without one grain
of sorrow; the village church and its simple chimes; the clover field
hard by in which he lay and gambolled, while the lark praised God
overhead; the chubby playmates that never grew to be wicked, the sweet
hours of youth--and innocence--and home.
Charles Reade: "It is Never Too Late to Mend."
THE ANCIENT MARINER
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din."
He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard, loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner:
"The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon--"
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The Bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner:
"And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound.
At length did cross an Albatross,--
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine."
"God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--
Why look'st thou so?"--"With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross."
Coleridge
AT THE CLOSE OF THE FRENCH PERIOD IN CANADA
When the flag of France departed from Canada, it left a people destined
to find under the new rule a fuller freedom, an ampler political
development, a far more abundant prosperity. It left a people destined
to honour their new allegiance by loyalty and heroic service in the hour
of trial.
This people, which thus became British by a campaign and a treaty, was
destined to form the solid core around which should grow the vast
Confederation of Canada. But for them there would now, in all
likelihood, be no Canada. By their rejection of the proposals of the
revolted colonies, the northern half of this continent was preserved to
Great Britain. The debt which the empire owes to the French Canadians is
immeasurably greater than we at present realize. Let us examine the
characteristics of the small and isolated people which was to exercise
such a deep influence on the future of this continent.
The whole population of Canada when she came under the British flag was
about sixty thousand. This hardy handful was gathered chiefly at Quebec,
Three Rivers, and Montreal. The rest trailed thinly along the shores of
the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu. The lands about the Great Lakes, and
the western country, were held only by a few scattered forts, buried
here and there in the green wilderness. At Detroit had sprung up a
scanty settlement of perhaps one thousand souls. In these remote posts
the all-important question was still that of the fur-trade with the
Indians. The traders and the soldiers, cut off from civilization,
frequently took wives from the Indian tribes about them, and settled
down to a life half barbarous. These men soon grew as lawless as their
adopted kinsfolk. They were a weakness and a discredit to the country in
time of peace, but in war their skill and daring were the frontier's
best defence.
Quebec had seven thousand inhabitants. Most of them dwelt between the
water's edge and the foot of the great cliff whose top was crowned by
the citadel. Where the shoulder of the promontory swept around toward
the St. Charles, the slope became more gentle, and there the houses and
streets began to clamber toward the summit. Streets that found
themselves growing too precipitous had a way, then as now, of changing
suddenly into flights of stairs. The city walls, grimly bastioned, ran
in bold zigzags across the face of the steep in a way to daunt
assailants. Down the hillside, past the cathedral and the college,
through the heart of the city, clattered a noisy brook, which in time of
freshet flooded the neighbouring streets. Part of the city was within
walls, part without. Most of the houses were low, one-story buildings,
with large expanse of steep roof, and high dormer windows. Along the
incline leading down to the St. Charles stretched populous suburbs. On
the high plateau where now lies the stately New Town, there was then but
a bleak pasture-land whose grasses waved against the city gates.
Montreal, after its childhood of awful trial, had greatly prospered. Its
population had risen to about nine thousand. The fur-trade of the
mysterious Northwest, developed by a succession of daring and tireless
wood-rangers, had poured its wealth into the lap of the city of
Maisonneuve. The houses, some of which were built of the light gray
stone which now gives dignity to the city, were usually of but one
story. They were arranged in three or four long lines parallel to the
river. The towers of the Seminary of St. Sulpicius and the spires of
three churches, standing out against the green of the stately mountain,
were conspicuous from afar to voyagers coming up the river from Quebec.
The city was inclosed by a stone wall and a shallow ditch, once useful
as a defence against the Indians, but no protection in the face of
serious assault. At the lower end of the city, covering the
landing-place, rose a high earthwork crowned with cannon.
The houses of the _habitants_, tillers of the soil, were small cabins,
humble but warm, with wide, overhanging eaves, and consisting at most of
two rooms. The partition, when there was one, was of boards. Lath and
plaster were unknown. The walls within, to the height of a man's
shoulders, were worn smooth by the backs that leaned against them. Solid
wooden boxes and benches usually took the place of chairs. A clumsy
loom, on which the women wove their coarse homespuns of wool or flax,
occupied one corner of the main room; and a deep, box-like cradle,
always rocking, stood beside the ample fireplace. Over the fire stood
the long, black arms of a crane, on which was done most of the cooking;
though the "bake-kettle" sometimes relieved its labours, and the brick
oven was a standby in houses of the rich _habitants_, as well as of the
gentry. For the roasting of meats the spit was much in use; and there
was a gridiron with legs, to stand on the hearth, with a heap of hot
coals raked under it. The houses even of the upper classes were seldom
two stories in height. But they were generally furnished with a good
deal of luxury; and in the cities they were sometimes built of stone.
A typical country mansion, the dwelling of a seigneur on his own domain,
was usually of the following fashion. The main building, one story in
height but perhaps a hundred feet long, was surmounted by lofty gables
and a very steep roof, built thus to shed the snow and to give a roomy
attic for bed-chambers. The attic was lighted by numerous, high-peaked
dormer windows, piercing the expanse of the roof. This main building was
flanked by one or more wings. Around it clustered the wash-house
(adjoining the kitchen), coach house, barns, stable, and woodsheds. This
homelike cluster of walls and roofs was sheltered from the winter storm
by groves of evergreen, and girdled cheerily by orchard and
kitchen-garden. On one side, and not far off, was usually a village with
a church-spire gleaming over it; on the other a circular stone mill,
resembling a little fortress rather than a peaceful aid to industry.
This structure, where all the tenants of the seigneur were obliged to
grind their grain, had indeed been built in the first place to serve not
only as a mill, but as a place of refuge from the Iroquois. It was
furnished with loopholes, and was impregnable to the attacks of an enemy
lacking cannon.
The dress of the upper classes was like that prevailing among the same
classes in France, though much less extravagant. The long, wide-frocked
coats were of gay-coloured and costly material, with lace at neck and
wristbands. The waistcoat might be richly embroidered with gold or
silver. Knee-breeches took the place of our unsightly trousers, and were
fastened with bright buckles at the knee. Stockings were of white or
coloured silk, and shoes were set off by broad buckles at the instep.
These, of course, were the dresses of ceremony, the dresses seen at
balls and grand receptions. Out-of-doors, and in the winter especially,
the costumes of the nobility were more distinctly Canadian. Overcoats of
native cloth were worn, with large, pointed hoods. Their pattern is
preserved to the present day in the blanket coats of our snow-shoers.
Young men might be seen going about in colours that brightened the
desolate winter landscape. Gay belts of green, blue, red, or yellow
enriched the waists of their thick overcoats. Their scarlet leggings
were laced up with green ribbons. Their moccasins were gorgeously
embroidered with dyed porcupine quills. Their caps of beaver or martin
were sometimes tied down over their ears with vivid handkerchiefs of
silk. The _habitants_ were rougher and more sombre in their dress. A
black homespun coat, gray leggings, gray woollen cap, heavy moccasins of
cowhide,--this grave costume was usually brightened by a belt or sash of
the liveliest colours. The country-women had to content themselves with
the same coarse homespuns, which they wore in short, full skirts. But
they got the gay colours which they loved in kerchiefs for their necks
and shoulders.
In war the regulars were sharply distinguished from those of the British
army by their uniforms. The white of the House of Bourbon was the colour
that marked their regiments, as scarlet marked those of the British. The
militia and wood-rangers fought in their ordinary dress,--or,
occasionally, with the object of terrifying their enemies, put on the
war-paint and eagle-quills of the Indians. The muskets of the day were
the heavy weapons known as flint-locks. When the trigger was pulled the
flint came down sharply on a piece of steel, and the spark, falling into
a shallow "pan" of powder called the "priming," ignited the charge. The
regulars carried bayonets on the ends of their muskets, but the militia
and rangers had little use for these weapons. They depended on their
marksmanship, which was deadly. The regulars fired breast high in the
direction of their enemy, trusting to the steadiness and closeness of
their fire; but the colonials did not waste their precious bullets and
powder in this way. They had learned from the Indians, whom they could
beat at their own game, to fight from behind trees, rocks, or hillocks,
to load and fire lying down, and to surprise their enemies by stealing
noiselessly through the underbrush. At close quarters they fought, like
the Indians, with knife and hatchet, both of which were carried in their
belts. From the ranger's belt, too, when on the march, hung the leathern
bag of bullets, and the inevitable tobacco-pouch; while from his neck
swung a powder-horn, often richly carved, together with his cherished
pipe inclosed in its case of skin. Very often, however, the ranger
spared himself the trouble of a pipe by scooping a bowl in the back of
his tomahawk and fitting it with a hollow handle. Thus the same
implement became both the comfort of his leisure and the torment of his
enemies. In winter, when the Canadians, expert in the use of the
snow-shoe and fearless of the cold, did much of their fighting, they
wore thick peaked hoods over their heads, and looked like a procession
of friars wending through the silent forest on some errand of piety or
mercy. Their hands were covered by thick mittens of woollen yarn, and
they dragged their provisions and blankets on sleds or toboggans. At
night they would use their snow-shoes to shovel a wide, circular pit in
the snow, clearing it away to the bare earth. In the centre of the pit,
they would build their camp fire, and sleep around it on piles of spruce
boughs, secure from the winter wind. The leaders, usually members of
the nobility, fared on these expeditions as rudely as their men, and
outdid them in courage and endurance. Some of the most noted chiefs of
the wood-rangers were scions of the noblest families; and though living
most of the year the life of savages, were able to shine by their graces
and refinement in the courtliest society of the day.
Charles G. D. Roberts: "History of Canada."
A HYMN OF EMPIRE
Lord, by Whose might the Heavens stand,
The Source from Whom they came,
Who holdest nations in Thy hand,
And call'st the stars by name,
Thine ageless forces do not cease
To mould us as of yore--
The chiselling of the arts of peace,
The anvil-strikes of war.
Then bind our realm in brotherhood,
Firm laws and equal rights,
Let each uphold the Empire's good
In freedom that unites;
And make that speech whose thunders roll
Down the broad stream of time
The harbinger from pole to pole
Of love and peace sublime.
Lord, turn the hearts of cowards who prate,
Afraid to dare or spend,
The doctrine of a narrower state
More easy to defend;
Not this the watchword of our sires,
Who breathed with ocean's breath,
Not this our spirit's ancient fires,
Which naught could quench but death.
Strong are we? Make us stronger yet;
Great? Make us greater far;
Our feet antarctic oceans fret,
Our crown the polar star:
Round Earth's wild coasts our batteries speak,
Our highway is the main,
We stand as guardian of the weak,
We burst the oppressor's chain.
Great God, uphold us in our task,
Keep pure and clean our rule,
Silence the honeyed words which mask
The wisdom of the fool;
The pillars of the world are Thine,
Pour down Thy bounteous grace,
And make illustrious and divine
The sceptre of our race.
F. G. Scott
STORY OF ABSALOM
So the people went out into the field against Israel: and the battle was
in the wood of Ephraim; where the people of Israel were slain before the
servants of David, and there was there a great slaughter that day of
twenty thousand men. For the battle was there scattered over the face of
all the country: and the wood devoured more people that day than the
sword devoured.
And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and
the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught
hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth;
and the mule that was under him went away.
And a certain man saw it, and told Joab, and said, Behold, I saw Absalom
hanged in an oak.
And Joab said unto the man that told him, And, behold, thou sawest him,
and why didst thou not smite him there to the ground? and I would have
given thee ten shekels of silver, and a girdle.
And the man said unto Joab, Though I should receive a thousand shekels
of silver in mine hand, yet would I not put forth mine hand against the
king's son: for in our hearing the king charged thee and Abishai and
Ittai, saying, Beware that none touch the young man Absalom. Otherwise I
should have wrought falsehood against mine own life: for there is no
matter hid from the king, and thou thyself wouldest have set thyself
against me.
Then said Joab, I may not tarry thus with thee. And he took three darts
in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was
yet alive in the midst of the oak. And ten young men that bare Joab's
armour compassed about and smote Absalom, and slew him.
And Joab blew the trumpet, and the people returned from pursuing after
Israel: for Joab held back the people. And they took Absalom, and cast
him into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very great heap of stones
upon him: and all Israel fled every one to his tent.
* * * * *
And David sat between the two gates: and the watchman went up to the
roof over the gate unto the wall, and lifted up his eyes, and looked,
and behold a man running alone. And the watchman cried, and told the
king. And the king said, If he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth.
And he came apace, and drew near.
And the watchman saw another man running: and the watchman called unto
the porter, and said, Behold another man running alone. And the king
said, He also bringeth tidings. And the watchman said, Me thinketh the
running of the foremost is like the running of Ahimaaz, the son of
Zadok. And the king said, He is a good man, and cometh with good
tidings.
And Ahimaaz called, and said unto the king, All is well. And he fell
down to the earth upon his face before the king, and said, Blessed be
the Lord thy God, which hath delivered up the men that lifted up their
hand against my lord the king.
And the king said, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Ahimaaz answered,
When Joab sent the king's servant, and me thy servant, I saw a great
tumult, but I knew not what it was. And the king said unto him, Turn
aside, and stand here. And he turned aside, and stood still.
And, behold, Cushi came; and Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the king: for
the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against
thee. And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And
Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise
against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is.
And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate,
and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son
Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!
* * * * *
And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people:
for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son.
And the people gat them by stealth that day into the city, as people
being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle.
But the king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, O
my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!
II. Samuel, XVIII-XIX.
I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty.
Was my dream, then, a shadowy lie?
Toil on, brave heart, unceasingly,
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee.
Hooper
THE BURIAL OF MOSES
(Read Deuteronomy, XXXII. 48-50)
By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave;
And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er;
For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.
That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth:
Noiselessly as the daylight
Comes when the night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun;
Noiselessly as the spring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves:
So, without sound of music,
Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountain's crown
The great procession swept.
Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Beth-peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyry
Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion stalking
Still shuns that hallowed spot;
For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.
But, when the warrior dieth,
His comrades in the war,
With arms reversed and muffled drums,
Follow his funeral car;
They show the banners taken,
They tell his battles won,
And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute-gun.
Amid the noblest of the land
We lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honoured place,
With costly marble dressed,
In the great minster transept
Where lights like glories fall,
And the sweet choir sings, and the organ rings
Along the emblazoned wall.
This was the bravest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced, with his golden pen,
On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.
And had he not high honour,--
The hillside for his pall;
To lie in state, while angels wait,
With stars for tapers tall;
And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave;
And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave;--
In that strange grave, without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay
Shall break again--O wondrous thought!--
Before the judgment-day,
And stand, with glory wrapped around,
On the hills he never trod,
And speak of the strife that won our life
With the incarnate Son of God.
O lonely grave in Moab's land!
O dark Beth-peor's hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still:
God hath His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell;
He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep
Of him He loved so well.
Cecil Frances Alexander
THE CRUSADER AND THE SARACEN
As the Knight of the Couchant Leopard continued to fix his eyes
attentively on the yet distant cluster of palm trees, it seemed to him
as if some object was moving among them. The distant form separated
itself from the trees, which partly hid its motions, and advanced
towards the knight with a speed which soon showed a mounted horseman,
whom his turban, long spear, and green caftan floating in the wind, on
his nearer approach, showed to be a Saracen cavalier.
"In the desert," saith an Eastern proverb, "no man meets a friend." The
Crusader was totally indifferent whether the infidel, who now approached
on his gallant barb, as if borne on the wings of an eagle, came as
friend or foe; perhaps, as a vowed champion of the Cross, he might
rather have preferred the latter. He disengaged his lance from his
saddle, seized it with the right hand, placed it in rest with its point
half-elevated, gathered up the reins in the left, waked his horse's
mettle with the spur, and prepared to encounter the stranger with the
calm self-confidence belonging to the victor in many contests.
The Saracen came on at the speedy gallop of an Arab horseman, managing
his steed more by his limbs and the inflection of his body than by any
use of the reins, which hung loose in his left hand; so that he was
enabled to wield the light round buckler of the skin of the rhinoceros,
ornamented with silver loops, which he wore on his arm, swinging it as
if he meant to oppose its slender circle to the formidable thrust of the
Western lance. His own long spear was not couched or levelled like that
of his antagonist, but grasped by the middle with his right hand, and
brandished at arm's length above his head.
As the cavalier approached his enemy at full career, he seemed to expect
that the Knight of the Leopard should put his horse to the gallop to
encounter him. But the Christian knight, well acquainted with the
customs of Eastern warriors, did not mean to exhaust his good horse by
any unnecessary exertion; and, on the contrary, made a dead halt,
confident that, if the enemy advanced to the actual shock, his own
weight, and that of his powerful charger, would give him sufficient
advantage, without the additional momentum of rapid motion. Equally
sensible and apprehensive of such a probable result, the Saracen
cavalier, when he had approached towards the Christian within twice the
length of his lance, wheeled his steed to the left with inimitable
dexterity, and rode twice around his antagonist, who, turning without
quitting his ground, and presenting his front constantly to his enemy,
frustrated his attempts to attack him on an unguarded point; so that the
Saracen, wheeling his horse, was fain to retreat to the distance of a
hundred yards.
A second time, like a hawk attacking a heron, the Heathen renewed the
charge, and a second time was fain to retreat without coming to a close
struggle. A third time he approached in the same manner, when the
Christian knight, desirous to terminate this illusory warfare, in which
he might at length have been worn out by the activity of his foeman,
suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and, with a
strong hand and unerring aim, hurled it against the head of the Emir,
for such and not less his enemy appeared. The Saracen was just aware of
the formidable missile in time to interpose his light buckler betwixt
the mace and his head; but the violence of the blow forced the buckler
down on his turban, and though that defence also contributed to deaden
its violence, the Saracen was beaten from his horse. Ere the Christian
could avail himself of this mishap, his nimble foeman sprang from the
ground, and, calling on his steed, which instantly returned to his side,
he leaped into his seat without touching the stirrup, and regained all
the advantage of which the Knight of the Leopard hoped to deprive him.
But the latter had in the meanwhile recovered his mace, and the Eastern
cavalier, who remembered the strength and dexterity with which his
antagonist had aimed it, seemed to keep cautiously out of the reach of
that weapon, of which he had so lately felt the force, while he showed
his purpose of waging a distant warfare with missile weapons of his
own. Planting his long spear in the sand at a distance from the scene of
combat, he strung, with great address, a short bow, which he carried at
his back, and, putting his horse to the gallop, once more described two
or three circles of a wider extent than formerly, in the course of which
he discharged six arrows at the Christian with such unerring skill that
the goodness of his harness alone saved him from being wounded in as
many places. The seventh shaft apparently found a less perfect part of
the armour, and the Christian dropped heavily from his horse. But what
was the surprise of the Saracen, when, dismounting to examine the
condition of his prostrate enemy, he found himself suddenly within the
grasp of the European, who had had recourse to this artifice to bring
his enemy within his reach! Even in this deadly grapple the Saracen was
saved by his agility and presence of mind. He unloosed the sword-belt,
in which the Knight of the Leopard had fixed his hold, and, thus eluding
his fatal grasp, mounted his horse, which seemed to watch his motions
with the intelligence of a human being, and again rode off. But in the
last encounter the Saracen had lost his sword and his quiver of arrows,
both of which were attached to the girdle, which he was obliged to
abandon. He had also lost his turban in the struggle. These
disadvantages seemed to incline the Moslem to a truce: he approached the
Christian with his right hand extended, but no longer in a menacing
attitude.
"There is truce betwixt our nations," he said, in the _lingua franca_
commonly used for the purpose of communication with the Crusaders;
"Wherefore should there be war betwixt thee and me? Let there be peace
betwixt us."
"I am well contented," answered he of the Couchant Leopard; "but what
security dost thou offer that thou wilt observe the truce?"
"The word of a follower of the Prophet was never broken," answered the
Emir. "It is thou, brave Nazarene, from whom I should demand security,
did I not know that treason seldom dwells with courage."
The Crusader felt that the confidence of the Moslem made him ashamed of
his own doubts.
"By the cross of my sword," he said, laying his hand on the weapon as he
spoke, "I will be true companion to thee, Saracen, while our fortune
wills that we remain in company together."
"By Mohammed, Prophet of God, and by Allah, God of the Prophet," replied
his late foeman, "there is not treachery in my heart towards thee. And
now wend we to yonder fountain, for the hour of rest is at hand, and the
stream had hardly touched my lip when I was called to battle by thy
approach."
The Knight of the Couchant Leopard yielded a ready and courteous assent;
and the late foes, without an angry look or gesture of doubt, rode side
by side to the little cluster of palm trees.
Scott: "The Talisman."
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,--
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,--
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then shew likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
Shakespeare
_From_ "AN AUGUST REVERIE"
The ragged daisy starring all the fields,
The buttercup abrim with pallid gold,
The thistle and burr-flowers hedged with prickly shields,
All common weeds the draggled pastures hold,
With shrivelled pods and leaves, are kin to me,
Like-heirs of earth and her maturity.
They speak a silent speech that is their own,
These wise and gentle teachers of the grass;
And when their brief and common days are flown,
A certain beauty from the year doth pass:--
A beauty of whose light no eye can tell,
Save that it went; and my heart knew it well.
I may not know each plant as some men know them,
As children gather beasts and birds to tame;
But I went 'mid them as the winds that blow them,
From childhood's hour, and loved without a name.
There is more beauty in a field of weeds
Than in all blooms the hothouse garden breeds.
For they are nature's children; in their faces
I see that sweet obedience to the sky
That marks these dwellers of the wilding places,
Who with the season's being live and die;
Knowing no love but of the wind and sun,
Who still are nature's when their life is done.
They are a part of all the haze-filled hours,
The happy, happy world all drenched with light,
The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers,
And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight;
And they to me will ever bring in dreams
Far mist-clad heights and brimming rain-fed streams.
W. Wilfred Campbell
WORK AND WAGES
There will always be a number of men who would fain set themselves to
the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives.
Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in
intellect, and, more or less, cowardly. It is physically impossible for
a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief
object of his thoughts; just as it is for him to make his dinner the
principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but
their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all
healthily-minded people like making money--ought to like it, and to
enjoy the sensation of winning it: but the main object of their life is
not money; it is something better than money. A good soldier, for
instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his
pay--very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years
without it--still, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be
paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and
baptismal fees, of course; but yet, if they are brave and well-educated,
the pew-rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal
fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is
essentially to baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of
doctors. They like fees no doubt,--ought to like them; yet if they are
brave and well-educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees.
They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick; and,--if they are good
doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them--would rather cure their
patient, and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all
other brave and rightly-trained men; their work is first, their fee
second--very important always, but still _second_. But in every nation,
as I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and
more or less stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is
first, and the work second, as with brave people the work is first, and
the fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is the whole
distinction in a man; distinction between life and death _in_ him,
between heaven and hell _for_ him. You cannot serve two masters:--you
_must_ serve one or other. If your work is first with you, and your fee
second, work is your master, and the lord of work, who is God. But, if
your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your master,
and the lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only the Devil but the
lowest of devils--the 'least erected fiend that fell.' So there you have
it in brief terms; Work first--you are God's servants; Fee first--you
are the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now and ever, believe me,
whether you serve Him who has on His vesture and thigh written, 'King of
Kings,' and whose service is perfect freedom; or him on whose vesture
and thigh the name is written, 'Slave of Slaves,' and whose service is
perfect slavery.
Ruskin
UNTRODDEN WAYS
Where close the curving mountains drew
To clasp the stream in their embrace,
With every outline, curve, and hue,
Reflected in its placid face,
The ploughman stopped his team, to watch
The train, as swift it thundered by;
Some distant glimpse of life to catch,
He strains his eager, wistful eye.
His glossy horses mildly stand
With wonder in their patient eyes,
As through the tranquil mountain land
The snorting monster onward flies.
The morning freshness is on him,
Just wakened from his balmy dreams;
The wayfarers, all soiled and dim,
Think longingly of mountain streams:--
O for the joyous mountain air!
The long, delightful autumn day
Among the hills!--the ploughman there
Must have perpetual holiday!
And he, as all day long he guides
His steady plough with patient hand,
Thinks of the flying train that glides
Into some fair, enchanted land;
Where day by day no plodding round
Wearies the frame and dulls the mind;
Where life thrills keen to sight and sound,
With plough and furrows left behind!
Even so to each the untrod ways
Of life are touched by fancy's glow,
That ever sheds its brightest rays
Upon _the page we do not know_!
Agnes Maule Machar
THE FIRST PLOUGHING
Calls the crow from the pine-tree top
When the April air is still.
He calls to the farmer hitching his team
In the farmyard under the hill.
"Come up," he cries, "come out and come up,
For the high field's ripe to till.
Don't wait for word from the dandelion
Or leave from the daffodil."
Cheeps the flycatcher--"Here old earth
Warms up in the April sun;
And the first ephemera, wings yet wet,
From the mould creep one by one.
Under the fence where the flies frequent
Is the earliest gossamer spun.
Come up from the damp of the valley lands,
For here the winter's done."
Whistles the high-hole out of the grove
His summoning loud and clear:
"Chilly it may be down your way
But the high south field has cheer.
On the sunward side of the chestnut stump
The woodgrubs wake and appear.
Come out to your ploughing, come up to your ploughing,
The time for ploughing is here."
Then dips the coulter and drives the share,
And the furrows faintly steam.
The crow drifts furtively down from the pine
To follow the clanking team.
The flycatcher tumbles, the high-hole darts
In the young noon's yellow gleam;
And wholesome sweet the smell of the sod
Upturned from its winter's dream.
Charles G. D. Roberts
THE ARCHERY CONTEST
"The day," said Waldemar, "is not yet very far spent--let the archers
shoot a few rounds at the target, and the prize be adjudged."
One by one the archers, stepping forward, delivered their shafts
yeomanlike and bravely. Of the ten shafts which hit the target, two
within the inner ring were shot by Hubert, a forester in the service of
Malvoisin, who was accordingly pronounced victorious.
"Now, Locksley," said Prince John with a bitter smile, "wilt thou try
conclusions with Hubert?"
"Sith it be no better," said Locksley, "I am content to try my fortune;
on condition that when I have shot two shafts at yonder mark of
Hubert's, he shall be bound to shoot one at that which I shall propose."
"That is but fair," answered Prince John, "and it shall not be refused
thee. If thou dost beat this braggart, Hubert, I will fill the bugle
with silver pennies for thee."
"A man can but do his best," answered Hubert; "but my grandsire drew a
good long bow at Hastings, and I trust not to dishonour his memory."
The former target was now removed, and a fresh one of the same size
placed in its room. Hubert took his aim with great deliberation, long
measuring the distance with his eye, while he held in his hand his
bended bow, with the arrow placed on the string. At length he made a
step forward, and raising the bow at the full stretch of his left arm,
till the centre or grasping-place was nigh level with his face, he drew
his bow-string to his ear. The arrow whistled through the air, and
lighted within the inner ring of the target, but not exactly in the
centre.
"You have not allowed for the wind, Hubert," said his antagonist,
bending his bow, "or that had been a better shot."
So saying, and without showing the least anxiety to pause upon his aim,
Locksley stepped to the appointed station, and shot his arrow as
carelessly in appearance as if he had not even looked at the mark. He
was speaking almost at the same instant that the shaft left the
bow-string, yet it alighted in the target two inches nearer to the white
spot which marked the centre than that of Hubert.
"By the light of heaven!" said Prince John to Hubert, "an thou suffer
that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the gallows!"
"An your highness were to hang me," said Hubert, "a man can but do his
best. Nevertheless, my grandsire drew a good bow----"
"The foul fiend on thy grandsire and all his generation!" interrupted
John; "shoot, knave, and shoot thy best, or it shall be the worse for
thee!"
Thus exhorted, Hubert resumed his place, and making the necessary
allowance for a very light air of wind, which had just arisen, shot so
successfully that his arrow alighted in the very centre of the target.
"Thou canst not mend that shot, Locksley," said the Prince with an
insulting smile.
"I will notch his shaft for him, however," replied Locksley.
And letting fly his arrow with a little more precaution than before, it
lighted right upon that of his competitor, which it split to shivers.
"And now," said Locksley, "I will crave your Grace's permission to plant
such a mark as is used in the North Country, and welcome every brave
yeoman who shall try a shot at it."
He then turned to leave the lists. "Let your guards attend me," he said,
"if you please--I go but to cut a rod from the next willow-bush."
Locksley returned almost instantly with a willow wand about six feet in
length, perfectly straight, and rather thicker than a man's thumb. He
began to peel this, observing that to ask a good woodman to shoot at a
target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his
skill. "For my own part," he said, "and in the land where I was bred,
men would as soon take for their mark King Arthur's round table, which
held sixty knights around it. A child of seven years old," he said,
"might hit yonder target with a headless shaft; but," added he, walking
deliberately to the other end of the lists, and sticking the willow wand
upright in the ground, "he that hits that rod at five-score yards, I
call him an archer fit to bear bow and quiver before a king."
"My grandsire," said Hubert, "drew a good bow at the battle of Hastings,
and never shot at such a mark in his life--and neither will I. If this
yeoman can cleave that rod, I give him the bucklers--or rather, I yield
to the devil that is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill; a man
can but do his best, and I will not shoot where I am sure to miss. I
might as well shoot at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which I
can hardly see."
"Cowardly dog!" said Prince John--"Sirrah Locksley, do thou shoot; but,
if thou hittest such a mark, I will say thou art the first man ever did
so. Howe'er it be, thou shalt not crow over us with a mere show of
superior skill."
"I will do my best, as Hubert says," answered Locksley; "no man can do
more."
So saying, he again bent his bow, but on the present occasion looked
with attention to his weapon, and changed the string, which he thought
was no longer truly round, having been a little frayed by the two former
shots. He then took his aim with some deliberation, and the multitude
awaited the event in breathless silence. The archer vindicated their
opinion of his skill: his arrow split the willow rod against which it
was aimed. A jubilee of acclamations followed; and even Prince John, in
admiration of Locksley's skill, lost for an instant his dislike to his
person. "These twenty nobles," he said, "which, with the bugle, thou
hast fairly won, are thine own; we will make them fifty, if thou wilt
take livery and service with us as a yeoman of our body-guard, and be
near to our person. For never did so strong a hand bend a bow, or so
true an eye direct a shaft."
"Pardon me, noble Prince," said Locksley; "but I have vowed, that, if
ever I take service, it should be with your royal brother, King Richard.
These twenty nobles I leave to Hubert, who has this day drawn as brave a
bow as his grandsire did at Hastings. Had his modesty not refused the
trial, he would have hit the wand as well as I."
Hubert shook his head as he received with reluctance the bounty of the
stranger; and Locksley, anxious to escape further observation, mixed
with the crowd, and was seen no more.
Scott: "Ivanhoe."
IN NOVEMBER
The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half-concealed,
Now golden-gray, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.
Archibald Lampman
AUTUMN WOODS
Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.
The mountains that infold,
In their wide sweep, the coloured landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.
I roam the woods that crown
The upland, where the mingled splendours glow,
Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below.
My steps are not alone
In these bright walks; the sweet south-west, at play
Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown
Along the winding way.
And far in heaven, the while,
The sun, that sends that gale to wander here,
Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,--
The sweetest of the year.
Where now the solemn shade,
Verdure and gloom where many branches meet:
So grateful, when the noon of summer made
The valleys sick with heat?
Let in through all the trees
Come the strange rays; the forest depths are bright,
Their sunny-coloured foliage, in the breeze,
Twinkles, like beams of light.
The rivulet, late unseen,
Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run,
Shines with the image of its golden screen
And glimmerings of the sun.
Oh, Autumn! why so soon
Depart the hues that make thy forests glad,
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,
And leave thee wild and sad!
Ah! 'twere a lot too blest
Forever in thy coloured shades to stray;
Amid the kisses of the soft south-west
To rove and dream for aye;
And leave the vain low strife
That makes men mad--the tug for wealth and power,
The passions and the cares that wither life,
And waste its little hour.
Bryant
IN A CANOE
Among all the modes of progression hitherto invented by restless man,
there is not one that can compare in respect of comfort and luxury with
travelling in a birch-bark canoe. It is the poetry of progression. Along
the bottom of the boat are laid blankets and bedding; a sort of
wicker-work screen is sloped against the middle thwart, affording a
delicious support to the back; and indolently, in your shirt sleeves if
the day be warm, or well covered with a blanket if it is chilly, you sit
or lie on this most luxurious of couches, and are propelled at a rapid
rate over the smooth surface of a lake or down the swift current of some
stream. If you want exercise, you can take a paddle yourself. If you
prefer to be inactive, you can lie still and placidly survey the
scenery, rising occasionally to have a shot at a wild duck; at
intervals reading, smoking, and sleeping. Sleep, indeed, you will enjoy
most luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps
forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the
paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale,
with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving
prow, combine to make a most soothing soporific.
Dreamily you lie side by side--you and your friend--lazily gazing at the
pine-covered shores and wooded islands of some unknown lake, the open
book unheeded on your knee; the half-smoked pipe drops into your lap;
your head sinks gently back; and you wander into dreamland, to awake
presently and find yourself sweeping round the curve of some majestic
river, whose shores are blazing with the rich crimson, brown, and gold
of the maple and other hardwood trees in their autumn dress.
Presently the current quickens. The best man shifts his place from the
stern to the bow, and stands ready with his long-handled paddle to twist
the frail boat out of reach of hidden rocks. The men's faces glow with
excitement. Quicker and quicker flows the stream, breaking into little
rapids, foaming round rocks, and rising in tumbling waves over the
shallows. At a word from the bowman the crew redouble their efforts, the
paddle shafts crash against the gunwale, the spray flies beneath the
bending blades. The canoe shakes and quivers through all its fibres,
leaping bodily at every stroke.
Before you is a seething mass of foam, its whiteness broken by horrid
black rocks, one touch against whose jagged sides would rip the canoe
into tatters and hurl you into eternity. Your ears are full of the roar
of waters; waves leap up in all directions, as the river, maddened at
obstruction, hurls itself through some narrow gorge. The bowman stands
erect to take one look in silence, noting in that critical instant the
line of deepest water; then bending to his work, with sharp, short words
of command to the steersman, he directs the boat. The canoe seems to
pitch headlong into space. Whack! comes a great wave over the bow;
crash! comes another over the side. The bowman, his figure stooped, and
his knees planted firmly against the sides, stands, with paddle poised
in both hands, screaming to the crew to paddle hard; and the crew cheer
and shout with excitement in return. You, too, get wild, and feel
inclined to yell defiance to the roaring, hissing flood that madly
dashes you from side to side. After the first plunge you are in a
bewildering whirl of waters. The shore seems to fly past you. Crash! You
are right on that rock, and (I don't care who you are) you will feel
your heart jump into your mouth, and you will catch the side with a grip
that leaves a mark on your fingers afterwards. No! With a shriek of
command to the steersman, and a plunge of his paddle, the bowman
wrenches the canoe out of its course. Another stroke or two, another
plunge forward, and with a loud exulting yell from the bowman, who
flourishes his paddle round his head, you pitch headlong down the final
leap, and with a grunt of relief from the straining crew glide rapidly
into still water.
Lord Dunraven: "The Great Divide."
[Illustration: PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS. TORONTO]
"With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
It fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change,
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip Thou dost not fall.
Clough
AFTON WATER
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise:
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear, winding rills,
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow:
There, oft as mild ev'ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays,
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Burns
DAVID COPPERFIELD'S FIRST JOURNEY ALONE
I slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth and drove to the inn yard. A
lady looked out of a bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were
hanging up, and said:
"Is that the little gentleman from Blunder-stone?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
The lady then rang a bell and called out: "William! show the
coffee-room!" upon which a waiter came running out of a kitchen on the
opposite side of the yard to show it, and seemed a good deal surprised
when he found he was only to show it to me.
It was a large, long room with some large maps in it. I doubt if I could
have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign countries, and
I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to sit
down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the
door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, and put a set
of casters on it, I think I must have turned red all over with modesty.
He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off in
such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some
offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at
the table, and saying, very affably: "Now, six-foot! come on!"
I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely
difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity, or
to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing
opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful
manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second
chop, he said:
"There's half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?"
I thanked him and said "Yes." Upon which he poured it out of a jug into
a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and made it look
beautiful.
"My eye!" he said. "It seems a good deal, don't it?"
"It does seem a good deal," I answered with a smile. For it was quite
delightful to me to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed,
pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and
as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with
the other hand, he looked quite friendly.
"There was a gentleman here, yesterday," he said--"a stout gentleman, by
the name of Topsawyer--perhaps you know him."
"No," I said, "I don't think--"
"In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, gray coat, speckled
choker," said the waiter.
"No," I said, bashfully, "I haven't the pleasure--"
"He came in here," said the waiter, looking at the light through the
tumbler, "ordered a glass of this ale--_would_ order it--I told him
not--drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn't to be
drawn; that's the fact."
I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I
thought I had better have some water.
"Why, you see," said the waiter, still looking at the light through the
tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, "our people don't like things
being ordered and left. It offends 'em. But _I'll_ drink it, if you
like. I'm used to it, and use is everything. I don't think it'll hurt
me, if I throw my head back, and take it off quick. Shall I?"
I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought he
could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his
head back and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of
seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall
lifeless on the carpet. But it didn't hurt him. On the contrary, I
thought he seemed the fresher for it.
"What have we got here?" he said, putting a fork into my dish. "Not
chops?"
"Chops," I said.
"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "I didn't know they were chops. Why, a
chop's the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain't it
lucky?"
So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other,
and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction. He
afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that another
chop, and another potato. When he had done, he brought me a pudding, and
having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his
mind for some moments.
"How's the pie?" he said, rousing himself.
"It's a pudding," I made answer.
"Pudding!" he exclaimed. "Why, bless me, so it is! What!" looking at it
nearer. "You don't mean to say it's a batter-pudding?"
"Yes, it is indeed."
"Why, a batter-pudding," he said, taking up a table-spoon, "it's my
favourite pudding! Ain't that lucky? Come on, little 'un, and let's see
who'll get most."
The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in
and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his despatch to
my despatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at
the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. I never saw any one
enjoy a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed, when it was all gone,
as if his enjoyment of it lasted still.
Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I asked
for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggoty. He not only brought
it immediately, but was good enough to look over me while I wrote the
letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where I was going to school.
I said: "Near London," which was all I knew.
"Oh! my eye!" he said, looking very low-spirited, "I am sorry for that."
"Why?" I asked him.
"Oh!" he said, shaking his head, "that's the school where they broke the
boy's ribs--two ribs--a little boy he was. I should say he was--let me
see--how old are you, about?"
I told him between eight and nine.
"That's just his age," he said. "He was eight years and six months old
when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old when
they broke his second, and did for him."
I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was an
uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His answer was
not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two dismal words, "With
whopping."
The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable diversion,
which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the mingled pride and
diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there
were anything to pay.
"There's a sheet of letter-paper," he returned. "Did you ever buy a
sheet of letter-paper?"
I could not remember that I ever had.
"It's dear," he said, "on account of the duty. Threepence. That's the
way we're taxed in this country. There's nothing else, except the
waiter. Never mind the ink! _I_ lose by that."
"What should you--what should I--how much ought I to--what would it be
right to pay the waiter, if you please?" I stammered, blushing.
"If I hadn't a family, and that family hadn't the cowpock," said the
waiter, "I wouldn't take a sixpence. If I didn't support a aged pairint,
and a lovely sister,"--here the waiter was greatly agitated--"I wouldn't
take a farthing. If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I
should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live
on broken wittles--and I sleep on the coals"--here the waiter burst into
tears.
I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any
recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness of
heart, Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he
received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb,
directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.
It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being helped up
behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all the dinner
without any assistance. I discovered this, from overhearing the lady in
the bow-window say to the guard: "Take care of that child, George, or
he'll burst!" and from observing that the women-servants who were about
the place came out to look and giggle at me as a young phenomenon. My
unfortunate friend, the waiter, who had quite recovered his spirits, did
not appear to be disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration
without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this
half-awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that, with the simple
confidence and natural reliance of a child upon superior years
(qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change for
worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even
then.
Dickens: "David Copperfield."
THE BAREFOOT BOY
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,--
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art,--the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,--
Outward sunshine, inward joy;
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild-flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!--
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,--
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall,
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still, as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches, too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;--
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat;
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil;
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
Whittier
[Illustration: PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS. OTTAWA]
COUNTRY LIFE IN CANADA IN THE "THIRTIES"
Country life in Western Canada in the "Thirties" was very simple and
uneventful. There were no lines of social division such as now exist.
All alike had to toil to win and maintain a home; and if, as was
natural, some were more successful in the rough battle of pioneer life
than others, they did not feel, on that account, disposed to treat their
neighbours as their inferiors. Neighbours, they well knew, were too few
and too desirable to be coldly and haughtily treated. Had not all the
members of each community hewn their way side by side into the
fastnesses of the Canadian bush? And what could a little additional
wealth do for them, when the remoteness of the centres which might
supply luxuries, enforced simplicity and made superfluities almost
impossible?
The furnishings of their houses were plain, and the chief articles of
dress, if substantial and comfortable, were of coarse homespun--the
product of their own labour. The sources of amusement were limited. The
day of the harmonium or piano had not come. Music, except in its
simplest vocal form, was not cultivated; only the occasional presence of
some fiddler afforded rare seasons of merriment to the delight both of
old and young.
The motto of "Early to bed and early to rise" was, even in winter, the
strict rule of family life. In the morning all were up, and breakfast
was over usually before seven. As soon as the gray light of dawn
appeared, men and boys were off to the barns, not merely to feed the
cattle but to engage in the needful and tedious labour of threshing by
hand. In the evenings, the family gathered together for lighter tasks
and pleasant talk around a glowing fire. In firewood, at least, there
was, in those days, no need for economy.
We scarcely realize how largely little things may contribute to
convenience and comfort. There were no lucifer matches at that date. It
was needful to cover up carefully the live coals on the hearth before
going to bed, so that there might be the means of starting the fire in
the morning. This precaution was rarely unsuccessful; but sometimes a
member of the family had to set out for a supply of fire from a
neighbour's, in order that breakfast might be prepared. I remember well
having to crawl out of my warm nest and run through the keen frosty air
for half a mile or more, to fetch live coals from a neighbour's. It was,
however, my father's practice to keep bundles of finely split pine
sticks tipped with brimstone. With the aid of these, the merest spark
served to start the fire.
In the spring, tasks of various kinds crowded rapidly upon us. The hams
and beef that had been salted down in casks during the preceding autumn
were taken out of the brine, washed off, and hung in the smoke-house. On
the earthen floor beech or maple was burned; the oily smoke, given off
by the combustion of these woods in a confined space, not only acted as
a preservative but also lent a special flavour to the meat. Then
ploughing, fencing, sowing, and planting followed in quick succession.
No hands could be spared. The children must drive the cows to and from
pasture. They must also take a hand at churning. It was a weary task, I
well remember, to stand, perhaps for an hour, and drive the dasher up
and down through the thick cream. How often did we examine the handle
for evidence that the butter was forming, and what was the relief when
the monotonous task was at an end. As soon as my legs were long enough,
I had to follow a team; indeed, I drove the horses, mounted on the back
of one of them, when my nether limbs were scarcely sufficiently grown to
give me a grip.
The instruments for the agricultural operations were few and rough. Iron
ploughs with cast-iron mould-boards and shares were commonly employed.
Compared with our modern ploughs, they were clumsy things, but a vast
improvement on the earlier wooden ploughs which, even at that date, had
not wholly gone out of use. For drags, tree-tops were frequently used.
In June came sheep-washing. The sheep were driven to the bay shore and
secured in a pen. One by one they were taken out, and the fleeces
carefully washed. Within a day or two, shearing followed in the barn.
The wool was sorted; some was reserved to be carded by hand; the
remainder was sent to the mills to be turned into rolls. Then, day after
day, for weeks, the noise of the spinning-wheel was heard, accompanied
by the steady beat of the girls' feet, as they walked forward and
backward drawing out and twisting the thread and running it on the
spindle. This was work that required some skill, for on the fineness and
evenness of the thread the character of the fabric largely depended.
Finally, the yarn was carried to the weavers to be converted into cloth.
The women of the family found their hands very full in the "Thirties."
Besides the daily round of housewifely cares, every season brought its
special duties. There were wild strawberries and raspberries to be
picked and prepared for daily consumption, or to be preserved for winter
use. Besides milking, there was the making both of butter and cheese.
There was no nurse to take care of the children, no cook to prepare the
dinner. To be sure, in households when the work was beyond the powers of
the family, the daughter of some neighbour might come as a helper.
Though hired, she was treated in all respects as one of the family, and
in return was likely to take the same sort of interest in the work, as
if the tie that bound her to the family was closer than wages. In truth,
such help was regarded as a favour, and not as in any way affecting the
girl's social position.
The girls in those days were more at home in a kitchen than a
drawing-room. They did better execution at a tub than at a spinet, and
could handle a rolling-pin more satisfactorily than a sketch-book. At a
pinch, they could even use a rake or fork to good purpose in field or
barn. Their finishing education was received at the country school along
with their brothers. Of fashion books and milliners, few of them had any
experiences.
Country life in Canada was plodding in the "Thirties" and there was no
varied outlook. The girls' training for future life was mainly at the
hands of their mothers; the boys followed in the footsteps of their
fathers. Neither sex felt that life was cramped or burdensome on that
account. They were content to live as their parents had done. And though
we can see that, as compared with later conditions, there may be
something wanting in such an existence, this at least we know, that, in
such a school and by such masters, the foundations of Canadian character
and prosperity were laid.
Canniff Haight: "Country Life in Canada in the 'Thirties'."
(Adapted)
He who knows most grieves most for wasted time.
Dante
HEAT
From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
With idly clacking wheels.
By his cart's side the wagoner
Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
Of white dust puffing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
In all the heat-held land.
Beyond me in the fields the sun
Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
The cool gloom of the bridge.
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
Into the pale depths of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
His thin revolving tune.
In intervals of dreams I hear
The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze:
The hills are drenched in light.
And yet to me not this or that
Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessèd power
Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
My thoughts grow keen and clear.
Archibald Lampman
THE TWO PATHS
Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings;
And the years of thy life shall be many.
I have taught thee in the way of wisdom;
I have led thee in paths of uprightness.
When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened;
And if thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.
Take fast hold of instruction;
Let her not go:
Keep her;
For she is thy life.
Enter not into the Path of the Wicked,
And walk not in the way of evil men.
Avoid it,
Pass not by it;
Turn from it,
And pass on.
For they sleep not, except they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.
For they eat the bread of wickedness,
And drink the wine of violence.
But the Path of the Righteous is as the light of dawn,
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
The way of the wicked is as darkness:
They know not at what they stumble.
Proverbs, IV.
BERNARDO DEL CARPIO
(The Spanish champion, Bernardo del Carpio, having made many ineffectual
efforts to procure the release of his father, the Count Saldana, who had
been imprisoned by King Alfonso, at last took up arms. The war proved so
destructive that the people demanded of the King, Saldana's liberty.
Alfonso offered Bernardo possession of his father's person in exchange
for his castle. Bernardo accepted the offer, gave up his castle, and
rode forth with the king to meet his father.)
The warrior bowed his crested head, and
tamed his heart of fire,
And sued the haughty king to free his
long-imprisoned sire:
"I bring thee here my fortress keys, I
bring my captive train,
I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!--oh,
break my father's chain!"
"Rise, rise! even now thy father comes
a ransomed man this day:
Mount thy good horse, and thou and I will
meet him on his way."
Then lightly rose that loyal son, and
bounded on his steed,
And urged, as if with lance in rest, the
charger's foamy speed.
And lo! from far, as on they pressed, there
came a glittering band,
With one that midst them stately rode, as
a leader in the land;
"Now haste, Bernardo, haste! for there,
in very truth, is he,
The father whom thy faithful heart hath
yearned so long to see."
His dark eye flashed, his proud breast
heaved, his cheek's blood came and went,
He reached that gray-haired chieftain's
side, and there, dismounting, bent:
A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's
hand he took,--
What was there in its touch that all his
fiery spirit shook?
That hand was cold--a frozen thing--it
dropped from his like lead:
He looked up to the face above--the face
was of the dead!
A plume waved o'er the noble brow--the
brow was fixed and white;
He met at last his father's eyes--but in
them was no sight!
Up from the ground he sprang, and gazed,
but who could paint that gaze?
They hushed their very hearts, that saw
its horror and amaze;
They might have chained him, as before
that stony form he stood,
For the power was stricken from his arm,
and from his lip the blood.
"Father!" at length he murmured low, and
wept like childhood, then--
Talk not of grief till thou hast seen
the tears of warlike men!--
He thought on all his glorious hopes,
and all his young renown,--
He flung the falchion from his side,
and in the dust sat down.
Then, covering with his steel-gloved
hands his darkly mournful brow,
"No more, there is no more," he said,
"to lift the sword for now.
My king is false, my hope betrayed, my
father--oh! the worth,
The glory and the loveliness, are passed
away from earth!
"I thought to stand where banners waved,
my sire! beside thee yet--
I would that _there_ our kindred
blood on Spain's free soil had met!
Thou wouldst have known my spirit then--for
thee my fields were won,--
And thou hast perished in thy chains, as
though thou hadst no son!"
Then, starting from the ground once more,
he seized the monarch's rein,
Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all
the courtier train;
And with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp,
the rearing war-horse led,
And sternly set them face to face--the
king before the dead!--
"Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my
father's hand to kiss?--
Be still, and gaze thou on, false king!
and tell me what is this!
The voice, the glance, the heart I
sought--give answer, where are they?--
If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul,
send life through this cold clay!
"Into these glassy eyes put light--be
still! keep down thine ire,--
Bid these white lips a blessing speak--this
earth is _not_ my sire!
Give me back him for whom I strove, for
whom my blood was shed,--
Thou canst not--and a king! His dust be
mountains on thy head!"
He loosed the steed; his slack hand
fell--upon the silent face
He cast one long, deep, troubled look--then
turned from that sad place:
His hope was crushed, his after-fate untold
in martial strain,--
His banner led the spears no more amidst
the hills of Spain.
Felicia Hemans
--To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Shakespeare
MOSES' BARGAINS
"My second boy, Moses, whom I designed for business," says the vicar,
"received a sort of miscellaneous education at home."
As we were now to hold up our heads a little higher in the world, it
would be proper to sell the colt, which was grown old, at a neighbouring
fair, and buy us a horse that would carry single or double upon an
occasion, and make a pretty appearance at church or upon a visit. This
at first I opposed stoutly; but it was as stoutly defended. However, as
I weakened, my antagonists gained strength, till at last it was resolved
to part with him.
As the fair happened on the following day, I had intentions of going
myself; but my wife persuaded me that I had got a cold, and nothing
could prevail upon her to permit me from home.
"No, my dear," said she, "our son Moses is a discreet boy and can buy
and sell to very good advantage; you know all our great bargains are of
his purchasing. He always stands out and higgles, and actually tires
them till he gets a bargain."
As I had some opinion of my son's prudence, I was willing enough to
intrust him with this commission; and the next morning I perceived his
sisters mighty busy in fitting out Moses for the fair--trimming his
hair, brushing his buckles, and cocking his hat with pins.
The business of the toilet being over, we had at last the satisfaction
of seeing him mounted upon the colt, with a deal box before him to bring
home groceries in. He had on a coat made of that cloth they call thunder
and lightning, which, though grown too short, was much too good to be
thrown away. His waistcoat was of gosling green, and his sisters had
tied his hair with a broad black ribbon. We all followed him several
paces from the door, bawling after him: "Good luck, good luck!" till we
could see him no longer.
As night came on, I began to wonder what could keep our son so long at
the fair.
"Never mind our son," cried my wife, "depend upon it, he knows what he
is about. I'll warrant we'll never see him sell his hen of a rainy day.
I have seen him buy such bargains as would amaze one. I'll tell you a
good story about that, that will make you split your sides with
laughing. But, as I live, yonder comes Moses, without a horse, and the
box at his back."
As she spoke, Moses came slowly on foot, and sweating under the deal
box, which he had strapped round his shoulders like a pedlar.
"Welcome, welcome, Moses; well, my boy, what have you brought us from
the fair?"
"I have brought you myself," cried Moses, with a sly look, and resting
the box on the dresser.
"Ah, Moses," cried my wife, "that we know, but where is the horse?"
"I have sold him," cried Moses, "for three pounds, five shillings, and
twopence."
"Well done, my good boy," returned she, "I knew you would touch them
off. Between ourselves, three pounds, five shillings, and twopence is no
bad day's work. Come, let us have it then."
"I have brought back no money," cried Moses again. "I have laid it all
out in a bargain, and here it is," pulling out a bundle from his breast:
"here they are, a gross of green spectacles, with silver rims and
shagreen cases."
"A gross of green spectacles!" repeated my wife, in a faint voice. "And
you have parted with the colt and brought us back nothing but a gross of
green paltry spectacles!"
"Dear mother," cried the boy, "why won't you listen to reason? I had
them a dead bargain, or I should not have bought them. The silver rims
will sell for double the money."
"A fig for the silver rims!" cried my wife, in a passion. "I dare swear
they won't sell for above half the money at the rate of broken silver,
five shillings an ounce."
"You need be under no uneasiness," cried I, "about selling the rims; for
they are not worth sixpence, for I perceive they are only copper
varnished over."
"What," cried my wife, "not silver, the rims not silver!"
"No," cried I, "no more silver than your sauce-pan."
"And so," returned she, "we have parted with the colt, and have only got
a gross of green spectacles, with copper rims and shagreen cases! A
murrain take such trumpery! The blockhead has been imposed upon, and
should have known his company better."
"There, my dear," cried I, "you are wrong; he should not have known them
at all."
"Marry, hang the idiot," returned she, "to bring me such stuff; if I had
them, I would throw them into the fire."
"There again you are wrong, my dear," cried I; "for though they be
copper, we will keep them by us, as copper spectacles, you know, are
better than nothing."
By this time the unfortunate Moses was undeceived. He now saw that he
had been imposed upon by a prowling sharper, who, observing his figure,
had marked him for an easy prey. I therefore asked the circumstances of
his deception. He sold the horse, it seems, and walked the fair in
search of another. A reverend-looking man brought him to a tent, under
pretence of having one to sell.
"Here," continued Moses, "we met another man, very well dressed, who
desired to borrow twenty pounds upon these, saying that he wanted money
and would dispose of them for a third of the value. The first gentleman,
who pretended to be my friend, whispered me to buy them, and cautioned
me not to let so good an offer pass. I sent for Mr. Flamborough, and
they talked him up as finely as they did me, and so at last we were
persuaded to buy the two gross between us."
Goldsmith: "The Vicar of Wakefield."
THE MAPLE
Oh, tenderly deepen the woodland glooms,
And merrily sway the beeches;
Breathe delicately the willow blooms,
And the pines rehearse new speeches;
The elms toss high till they reach the sky,
Pale catkins the yellow birch launches,
But the tree I love all the greenwood above
Is the maple of sunny branches.
Let who will sing of the hawthorn in spring,
Or the late-leaved linden in summer;
There's a word may be for the locust tree,
That delicate, strange new-comer;
But the maple it glows with the tint of the rose
When pale are the spring-time regions,
And its towers of flame from afar proclaim
The advance of Winter's legions.
And a greener shade there never was made
Than its summer canopy sifted,
And many a day, as beneath it I lay,
Has my memory backward drifted
To a pleasant lane I may walk not again,
Leading over a fresh, green hill,
Where a maple stood just clear of the wood--
And oh! to be near it still!
Charles G. D. Roberts
THE GREENWOOD TREE
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun;
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Shakespeare
Believe me, thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of
profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and the waste of it will make
you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, beyond your
darkest reckonings.
Gladstone
LAKE SUPERIOR
Before turning our steps westward from this inland ocean, Lake Superior,
it will be well to pause a moment on its shore and look out over its
bosom. It is worth looking at, for the world possesses not its equal.
Four hundred English miles in length, one hundred and fifty miles in
breadth, six hundred feet above Atlantic level, nine hundred feet in
depth; one vast spring of purest crystal water, so cold that during
summer months its waters are like ice itself, and so clear that hundreds
of feet below the surface the rocks stand out as distinctly as though
seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the outpourings of this
wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron, Erie, and Ontario--in
that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes Niagara famous through
the world. Seek it farther still--in the quiet loveliness of the
Thousand Isles, in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar Rapids, in the
silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the foot of Quebec.
Ay, and even farther away still--down where the lone Laurentian Hills
come forth to look again upon that water whose earliest beginnings they
cradled along the shores of Lake Superior. There, close to the sounding
billows of the Atlantic, two thousand miles from Superior, these
hills--the only ones that ever last--guard the great gate by which the
St. Lawrence seeks the sea.
There are rivers whose currents, running red with the silt and mud of
their soft alluvial shores, carry far into the ocean the record of their
muddy progress; but this glorious river system, through its many lakes
and various names, is ever the same crystal current, flowing pure from
the fountain-head of Lake Superior. Great cities stud its shores; but
they are powerless to dim the transparency of its waters. Steam-ships
cover the broad bosom of its lakes and estuaries; but they change not
the beauty of the water, no more than the fleets of the world mark the
waves of the ocean. Any person looking at a map of the region bounding
the great lakes of North America will be struck by the absence of rivers
flowing into Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron, from the south--in
fact, the drainage of the States bordering these lakes on the south is
altogether carried off by the valley of the Mississippi. It follows that
this valley of the Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface
of the lakes. These lakes, containing an area of some seventy-three
thousand square miles, are therefore an immense reservoir held high over
the level of the great Mississippi valley, from which they are separated
by a barrier of slight elevation and extent.
Major W. F. Butler: "The Great Lone Land."
THE RED RIVER PLAIN
The plain through which Red River flows is fertile beyond description.
At a little distance it seems one vast level plain, through which the
windings of the river are marked by a dark line of woods fringing the
whole length of the stream. Each tributary has also its line of
forest,--a line visible many miles away over the great sea of grass. As
one travels on, there first rise above the prairie the tops of the
trees; these gradually grow larger, until finally, after many hours, the
river is reached. Nothing else breaks the uniform level. Standing upon
the ground, the eye ranges over many miles of grass; standing on a
wagon, one doubles the area of vision; and to look over the plains from
an elevation of twelve feet above the earth, is to survey at a glance a
space so vast that distance alone seems to bound its limits. The effect
of sunset over these oceans of verdure is very beautiful. A thousand
hues spread themselves upon the grassy plains, a thousand tints of gold
are cast along the heavens, and the two oceans of the sky and of the
earth intermingle in one great blaze of glory at the very gates of the
setting sun. But to speak of sunsets now is only to anticipate. Here, at
the Red River, we are only at the threshold of the sunset; its true home
lies yet many days' journey to the west--there, where the long shadows
of the vast herds of bison (used to) trail slowly over the immense
plains, huge and dark against the golden west--there, where the red man
still sees, in the glory of the setting sun, the realization of his
dream of heaven.
Major W. F. Butler: "The Great Lone Land."
As every action is capable of a peculiar dignity in the manner of it, so
also it is capable of dignity still higher in the motive of it. There is
no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose,
and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight
actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most
especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God.
Ruskin
THE UNNAMED LAKE
It sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trod,
And only nature's music fills
The silences of God.
Great mountains tower above its shore,
Green rushes fringe its brim,
And o'er its breast for evermore
The wanton breezes skim.
Dark clouds that intercept the sun
Go there in Spring to weep,
And there, when Autumn days are done,
White mists lie down to sleep.
Sunrise and sunset crown with gold
The peaks of ageless stone,
Where winds have thundered from of old
And storms have set their throne.
No echoes of the world afar
Disturb it night or day,
But sun and shadow, moon and star,
Pass and repass for aye.
'Twas in the gray of early dawn
When first the lake we spied,
And fragments of a cloud were drawn
Half down the mountain side.
Along the shore a heron flew,
And from a speck on high,
That hovered in the deepening blue,
We heard the fish-hawk's cry.
Among the cloud-capt solitudes,
No sound the silence broke,
Save when, in whispers down the woods,
The guardian mountains spoke.
Through tangled brush and dewy brake,
Returning whence we came,
We passed in silence, and the lake
We left without a name.
F. G. Scott
We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put
our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be
done strenuously; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be
done heartily; neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a
will.
Ruskin
LIFE IN NORMAN ENGLAND
The tall, frowning keep and solid walls of the great stone castles, in
which the Norman barons lived, betokened an age of violence and
suspicion. Beauty gave way to the needs of safety. Girdled with a green
and slimy ditch, round the inner side of which ran a parapeted wall
pierced along the top with shot-holes, stood the buildings, spreading
often over many acres.
If an enemy managed to cross the moat and force the gateway, in spite of
a portcullis crashing from above, and melted lead pouring in burning
streams from the perforated top of the rounded arch, but little of his
work was yet done; for the keep lifted its huge angular block of masonry
within the inner bailey or courtyard, and from the narrow chinks in its
ten-foot wall rained a sharp incessant shower of arrows, sweeping all
approaches to the high and narrow stair, by which alone access could be
had to its interior.
These loopholes were the only windows, except in the topmost story,
where the chieftain, like a vulture in his rocky nest, watched all the
surrounding country. The day of splendid oriels had not yet come in
castle architecture. Thus a baron in his keep could defy, and often did
defy, the king upon his throne. Under his roof, eating daily at his
board, lived a throng of armed retainers; and around his castle lay
farms tilled by martial franklins, who at his call laid aside their
implements of husbandry, took up the sword and spear, which they could
wield with equal skill, and marched beneath his banner to the war.
The furniture of a Norman keep was not unlike that of an English house.
There was richer ornament--more elaborate carving. A _faldestol_, the
original of our arm-chair, spread its drapery and cushions for the
chieftain in his lounging moods. His bed now boasted curtains and a
roof, although, like the English lord, he still lay only upon straw.
Chimneys tunnelled the thick walls, and the cupboards glittered with
glass and silver. Horn lanterns and the old spiked candle-sticks lit up
his evening hours, when the chess-board arrayed its clumsy men, carved
out of walrus-tusk, then commonly called whale's-bone. But the baron had
an unpleasant trick of breaking the chess-board on his opponent's head,
when he found himself checkmated; which somewhat marred that player's
enjoyment of the game. Dice of horn and bone emptied many a purse in
Norman England. Draughts were also sometimes played.
Dance and music whiled away the long winter nights; and on summer
evenings the castle courtyards resounded with the noise of football,
wrestling, boxing, leaping, and the fierce joys of the bull-bait. But
out of doors, when no fighting was on hand, the hound, the hawk, and the
lance attracted the best energies and skill of the Norman gentleman.
The Normans probably dined at nine in the morning. When they rose they
took a light meal; and ate something also after their day's work,
immediately before going to bed. Goose and garlic formed a favourite
dish. Their cookery was more elaborate, and, in comparison, more
delicate, than the preparations for an English feast; but the character
for temperance, which they brought with them from the continent, soon
vanished.
The poorer classes hardly ever ate flesh, living principally on bread,
butter, and cheese; a fact in social life which seems to underlie that
usage of our tongue by which the living animals in field or stall bore
English names--ox, sheep, calf, pig, deer; while their flesh, promoted
to Norman dishes, rejoiced in names of French origin--beef, mutton,
veal, pork, venison. Round cakes, piously marked with a cross, piled the
tables, on which pastry of various kinds also appeared. In good houses
cups of glass held the wine, which was borne from the cellar below in
jugs.
Squatted around the door or on the stairs leading to the Norman
dining-hall, which was often on an upper floor, was a crowd of beggars
or gluttons, who grew so insolent in the days of Rufus, that ushers,
armed with rods, were posted outside to beat back the noisy throng, who
thought little of snatching the dishes as the cooks carried them to
table!
The juggler, who under the Normans filled the place of the English
gleeman, tumbled, sang, and balanced knives in the hall; or, out in the
bailey of an afternoon, displayed the acquirements of his trained monkey
or bear. The fool, too, clad in coloured patchwork, cracked his ribald
jests and shook his cap and bells at the elbow of roaring barons, when
the board was spread and the circling of the wine began.
Monasteries served many useful purposes at this time. Besides their
manifest value as centres of study and literary work, they gave alms to
the poor, a supper and a bed to travellers; their tenants were better
off and better treated than the tenants of the nobles; the monks could
store grain, grow apples, and cultivate their flower-beds with little
risk of injury from war, because they had spiritual penalties at their
call, which usually awed even the most reckless of the soldiery into a
respect for sacred property.
As schools, too, the monasteries did no trifling service to society in
the Middle Ages. In addition to their influence as great centres of
learning, English law had enjoined every mass-priest to keep a school in
his parish church where all the young committed to his care might be
instructed. The youth of the middle classes, destined for the cloister
or the merchant's stall, chiefly thronged these schools. The aristocracy
cared little for book-learning. Very few indeed of the barons could read
or write. But all could ride, fence, tilt, play at cards, and carve
extremely well; for to these accomplishments many years of pagehood and
squirehood were given.
W. F. Collier, (Adapted)
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead
life to sovereign power.
Tennyson
YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND
Ye mariners of England
That guard our native seas,
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe:
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave--
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak
She quells the floods below--
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow;
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn,
Till danger's troubled night depart
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.
Thomas Campbell
It is the land that freemen till;
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The Land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
A land of settled government,
A land of old and just renown,
Where freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent.
Tennyson
INSTRUCTION
Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know
understanding. Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither
decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall
preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the
principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get
understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring
thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head
an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee.
My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them
not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For
they are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh.
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee.
Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before
thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.
Proverbs, IV.
HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
Browning
THE BELLS OF SHANDON
With deep affection and recollection
I often think of those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle their magic spells.
On this I ponder where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee;
With thy bells of Shandon that sound so grand on
The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
I've heard bells chiming full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine;
While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate;--
But all their music spoke naught like thine.
For memory dwelling on each proud swelling
Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free,
Made the bells of Shandon sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
I've heard bells tolling old Adrian's Mole in,
Their thunder rolling from the Vatican;
And cymbals glorious swinging uproarious
In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame.
But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter
Flings o'er the Tiber, pealing solemnly;
O, the bells of Shandon sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
There's a bell in Moscow; while on tower and kiosk O!
In Saint Sophia the Turkman gets,
And loud in air calls men to prayer
From the tapering summits of tall minarets.
Such empty phantom I freely grant them;
But there's an anthem more dear to me;
'Tis the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on
The pleasant waters of the River Lee.
Francis Mahony
The man whom I call worthy of the name, is one whose thoughts and
exertions are for others rather than for himself; whose high purpose is
adopted on just principles, and is never abandoned while heaven or earth
affords means of accomplishing it. He is one who will neither seek an
indirect advantage by a specious road, nor take an evil path to secure a
really good purpose.
Scott
THE VISION OF MIRZAH
When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several Oriental manuscripts,
which I have still by me. Among others, I met with one entitled, "_The
Visions of Mirzah_," which I have read over with great pleasure. I
intend to give it to the public when I have no other entertainment for
them; and shall begin with the first Vision, which I have translated
word for word, as follows:--
"On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my
forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered
up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in order
to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here
airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound
contemplation on the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought
to another, 'Surely,' said I, 'man is but a shadow, and life a dream.'
"Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock
that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a
shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked
upon him, he applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The
sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes
that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from
anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs
that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first
arrival in paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies,
and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted
away in secret raptures.
"I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of a
genius; and that several had been entertained with music who had passed
by it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself
visible. When he had raised my thoughts by those transporting airs which
he played, to taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon
him like one astonished, thereupon he beckoned to me and, by the waving
of his hand, directed me to approach the place where he sat.
"I drew near with that reverence which is due to a superior nature; and
as my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I had heard,
I fell down at his feet and wept. The Genius smiled upon me with a look
of compassion and affability that familiarized him to my imagination,
and at once dispelled all the fears and apprehensions with which I
approached him. He lifted me from the ground, and taking me by the hand,
'Mirzah,' said he, 'I have heard thee in thy soliloquies; follow me.'
"He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on
the top of it, 'Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, 'and tell me what thou
seest.' 'I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water
rolling through it.' 'The valley that thou seest,' said he, 'is the Vale
of Misery, and the Tide of Water that thou seest is part of the great
Tide of Eternity,' 'What is the reason,' said I, 'that the tide I see
rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick
mist at the other?' 'What thou seest,' said he, 'is that portion of
eternity which is called Time, measured out by the sun, and reaching
from the beginning of the world to its consummation.'
"'Examine now,' said he, 'this sea that is bounded with darkness at both
ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.' 'I see a bridge,' said
I, 'standing in the midst of the tide.' 'The bridge thou seest,' said
he, 'is Human Life; consider it attentively.' Upon a more leisurely
survey of it, I found that it consisted of threescore and ten entire
arches, with several broken arches, which, added to those that were
entire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was counting the
arches, the Genius told me that this bridge had consisted at first of a
thousand arches; but that a great flood swept away the rest and left the
bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it.
"'But tell me further,' said he, 'what thou discoverest on it.' 'I see
multitudes of people passing over it,' said I, 'and a black cloud
hanging on each end of it.' As I looked more attentively, I saw several
of the passengers dropping through the bridge, into the great tide that
flowed underneath it; and, upon further examination, perceived that
there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge,
which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them
into the tide and immediately disappeared.
"These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the
bridge, so that the throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud,
but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner towards the middle,
but multiplied and lay closer together towards the end of the arches
that were entire.
"There were indeed some persons, but their numbers were very small, that
continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell
through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a
walk.
"I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure,
and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled
with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst
of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to
save themselves.
"Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and,
in the midst of a speculation, stumbled and fell out of sight.
Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in
their eyes and danced before them; but often, when they thought
themselves within reach of them, their footing failed and down they
sunk.
"In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scymetars in their
hands, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on
trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might
have escaped had they not been thus forced upon them.
"The Genius, seeing me indulge myself on this melancholy prospect, told
me that I had dwelt long enough upon it: 'Take thine eyes off the
bridge,' said he, 'and tell me if thou yet seest anything thou dost not
comprehend.' Upon looking up, 'What mean,' said I, 'those great flights
of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge and settling
upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants,
and, among many other feathered creatures, several little winged boys
that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.' 'These,' said the
Genius, 'are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love, with the like
cares and passions that infest human life.'
"I here fetched a deep sigh, 'Alas,' said I, 'man was made in vain! How
is he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and
swallowed up in death.'
"The Genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so
uncomfortable a prospect: 'Look no more,' said he, 'on man in the first
stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity; but cast thine
eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several
generations of mortals that fall into it.'
"I directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good
Genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part
of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw
the valley opening at the farther end and spreading forth into an
immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst
of it and dividing it into two equal parts.
"The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could
discover nothing in it; but the other appeared to me a vast ocean,
planted with innumerable islands that were covered with fruits and
flowers and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran
among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands
upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the side of
fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused
harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical
instruments.
"Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I
wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy
seats; but the Genius told me there was no passage to them, except
through the gates of Death, which I saw opening every moment upon the
bridge.
"'The islands,' said he, 'that lie so fresh and green before thee, and
with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou
canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore: there are
myriads of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching
farther than thine eye or even thine imagination can extend itself.
These are the mansions of good men after death, who, according to the
degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among
these several islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds
and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are
settled in them: every island is a paradise accommodated to its
respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirzah, habitations worth
contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives thee
opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will
convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain,
who has such an eternity reserved for him.'
"I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length,
I said: 'Show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under
those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of
adamant.'
"The Genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him
a second time, but found that he had left me; I then turned again to the
Vision which I had been so long contemplating; but instead of the
rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing
but the long, hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels
grazing upon the sides of it."
Addison: "The Spectator, No. 159."
FORBEARANCE
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
And loved so well a high behaviour,
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?
O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
Emerson
MERCY TO ANIMALS
I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes
A visitor unwelcome into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die.
A necessary act incurs no blame.
The sum is this: if man's convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all--the meanest things that are--
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in His sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it, too.
Cowper
THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS
The Americans inaugurated their Declaration of Independence by enacting
that all the United Empire Loyalists--that is the adherents to
connection with the mother country--were rebels and traitors; they
followed the recognition of Independence by England with an order
exiling such adherents from their territories. But while this policy
depleted the United States of some of their best blood, it laid the
foundation of the settlement and the institutions of the country which
has since become the great, free, and prosperous Dominion of Canada.
Upper Canada was then unknown, or known only as a region of dense
wilderness and swamps; of venomous reptiles and beasts of prey; of
numerous and fierce Indian tribes; of intense cold in winter; and with
no redeeming feature except abundance of game and fish.
After the war of Independence, many Loyalists went to Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick and settled there. The British Commander of New York,
having found out that Upper Canada was capable of supporting a numerous
population along the great river and the lakes, undertook to send
colonies of Loyalists there.
Five vessels were procured and furnished to convey the first colony from
New York. They sailed round the coasts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,
and up the St. Lawrence to Sorel, where they arrived in October, 1783.
Here they wintered, having built themselves huts, or shanties, and in
May, 1784, they continued their voyage in boats, and reached their
destination, Cataraqui, afterwards Kingston, in the month of July.
Other bands of Loyalists came by land over the military highway to Lower
Canada, as far as Plattsburg, and then northward to Cornwall and up the
St. Lawrence, along the north side of which many of them settled.
But the most common route was by way of the Hudson and the Mohawk
Rivers, through Oneida Lake and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario.
Flat-bottomed boats, specially built or purchased for the purpose by the
Loyalists, were used in this journey. The portages, over which the boats
had to be hauled and all their contents carried, are said to have been
thirty miles long.
On reaching Oswego, some of the Loyalists coasted along the eastern
shore of Lake Ontario to Kingston, and thence up the Bay of Quinte;
others went westward along the south shore of the lake to Niagara and
Queenston. Some conveyed their boats over the portage of ten or twelve
miles to Chippewa, thence up the river and into Lake Erie, settling
chiefly in what was called "Long Point Country," now the County of
Norfolk.
This journey of hardship, privation, and exposure occupied from two to
three months. The obstacles encountered may readily be imagined in a
country where the primeval forest covered the earth, and where the only
path was the river or the lake. The parents and family of the writer of
this history were from the middle of May to the middle of July making
the journey in an open boat. Generally two or more families would unite
in one company, and thus assist each other in carrying their boats and
goods over the portages.
"These excellent men," wrote Sir Richard Bonnycastle, "were willing to
sacrifice life and fortune rather than forego the enviable distinction
of being British subjects." The stern adherence of the Pilgrim Fathers
to their principles was quite equalled by the stern adherence of the
Loyalists to their principles; but the privations and hardships
experienced by many of the Loyalist patriots for years after the first
settlement in Canada were much more severe than anything experienced by
the Puritans during the first years of their settlement in
Massachusetts.
Canada has, indeed, a noble parentage, the remembrance of which its
inhabitants may well cherish with respect, affection, and pride.
Egerton Ryerson: "The Loyalists of America and their Times." (Adapted)
[Illustration: EGERTON RYERSON]
OFT, IN THE STILLY NIGHT
Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all
The friends, so linked together,
I've seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one,
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
Moore
THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS
The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er,
And hearts that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.
No more to chiefs and ladies bright
The harp of Tara swells;
The chord alone, that breaks at night,
Its tale of ruin tells.
Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives,
Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives.
Moore
HUDSON STRAIT
Hudson Strait opens from the Atlantic between Resolution Island on the
north and the Button Islands on the south. From point to point, this end
of the strait is forty-five miles wide. At the other end, the west side,
between Digges' Island and Nottingham Island, is a distance of
thirty-five miles. From east to west, the straits are four hundred and
fifty miles long--wider at the east where the south side is known as
Ungava Bay, contracting at the west, to the Upper Narrows. The south
side of the strait is Labrador; the north, Baffin's Land. Both sides are
lofty, rocky, cavernous shores lashed by a tide that rises in places as
high as thirty-five feet and runs in calm weather ten miles an hour.
Pink granite islands dot the north shore in groups that afford
harbourage, but all shores present an adamant front, edges sharp as a
knife or else rounded hard to have withstood and cut the tremendous ice
jam of a floating world suddenly contracted to forty miles, which Davis
Strait pours down at the east end and Fox Channel at the west.
Seven hundred feet is considered a good-sized hill; one thousand feet, a
mountain. Both the north and the south sides of the straits rise two
thousand feet in places. Through these rock walls ice has poured and
torn and ripped a way since the ice age preceding history, cutting a
great channel to the Atlantic. Here, the iron walls suddenly break to
secluded silent valleys, moss-padded, snow-edged, lonely as the day
Earth first saw light. Down these valleys pour the clear streams of the
eternal snows
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