Chapter 24

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 groundnut 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 thee, 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 honeybees; 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 doorstone, 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 frog's 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 shouldst know thy joy Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

NOTE.--The Hesperides, in Grecian mythology, were four sisters (some traditions say three, and others, seven) who guarded the golden apples given to Juno as a wedding present. The locality of the garden of the Hesperides is a disputed point with mythologists.

LXXXVIII. THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS. (321)

James Henry Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859. Leigh Hunt, as he is commonly called, was prominent before the public for fifty years as "a writer of essays, poems, plays, novels, and criticisms." He was born at Southgate, Middlesex, England. His mother was an American lady. He began to write for the public at a very early age. In 1808, In connection with his brother, he established "The Examiner," a newspaper advocating liberal opinions in politics. For certain articles offensive to the government, the brothers were fined 500 Pounds each and condemned to two years' imprisonment. Leigh fitted up his prison like a boudoir, received his friends here, and wrote several works during his confinement. Mr. Hunt was intimate with Byron, Shelley, Moore, and Keats, and was associated with Byron and Shelley in the publication of a political and literary journal. His last years were peacefully devoted to literature, and in 1847 he received a pension from the government. ###

King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport, And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court; The nobles filled the benches round, the ladies by their side, And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed: And truly 't was a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar, they rolled on one another: Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing through the air: Said Francis, then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."

De Lorge's love o'erheard the king,--a beauteous, lively dame, With smiling lips, and sharp, bright eyes, which always seemed the same; She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave call be, He surely would do wondrous things to show his love for me; King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove to prove his love; great glory will be mine."

She dropped her glove to prove his love, then looked at him and smiled; He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild; The leap was quick, return was quick, he soon regained his place, Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face. "In faith," cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he sat; "No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."

NOTE.--King Francis. This is supposed to have been Francis I. of France (b. 1494, d. 1547). He was devoted to sports of this nature.

LXXXIX. THE FOLLY OF INTOXICATION. (322)

Iago. What, are you hurt, lieutenant? Cassio. Ay, past all surgery. Iago. Marry, heaven forbid! Cas. Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation! Iago, my reputation!

Iago. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man! there are ways to recover the general again. Sue to him again, and he's yours.

Cas. I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

Iago. What was he that you followed with your sword? What had he done to you?

Cas. I know not.

Iago. Is't possible?

Cas. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. Oh that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Iago. Why, but you are now well enough: how came you thus recovered?

Cas. It hath pleased the devil, Drunkenness, to give place to the devil, Wrath; one unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

Iago. Come, you are too severe a moraler. As the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen; but since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.

Cas. I will ask him for my place again: he shall tell me I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! Oh strange!--Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil! Iago. Come, come; good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.

Cas. I have well approved it, sir,--I, drunk!

Iago. You or any man living may be drunk at a time, man. I'll tell you what you shall do. Our general's wife is now the general. Confess yourself freely to her; importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband, entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

Cas. You advise me well.

Iago. I protest in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.

Cas. I think it freely, and betimes in the morning, I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me; I am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here.

Iago. You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant, I must to the watch.

Cas. Good night, honest Iago. Shakespeare.--Othello, Act ii, Scene iii.

NOTES.--Iago is represented as a crafty, unscrupulous villain. He applies for the position of lieutenant under Othello, but the latter has already appointed Cassio--who is honest, but of a weak character--to that position; he, however, makes Iago his ensign. Then Iago, to revenge himself for this and other fancied wrongs, enters upon a systematic course of villainy, part of which is to bring about the intoxication of Cassio, and his consequent discharge from the lieutenancy.

The Hydra was a fabled monster of Grecian mythology, having nine heads, one of which was immortal.

Desdemona was the wife of Othello.

XC. STARVED ROCK. (325)

Francis Parkman, 1823-1893, the son of a clergyman of the same name, was born in Boston, and graduated at Harvard University in 1844. He spent more than twenty years in a careful study of the early French explorations and settlements in America; and he published the fruits of his labor in twelve large volumes. Although troubled with an affection of the eyes, which sometimes wholly prevented reading or writing, his work was most carefully and successfully done. His narratives are written in a clear and animated style, and his volumes are a rich contribution to American history. ###

The cliff called "Starved Rock," now pointed out to travelers as the chief natural curiosity of the region, rises, steep on three sides as a castle wall, to the height of a hundred and twenty-five feet above the river. In front, it overhangs the water that washes its base; its western brow looks down on the tops of the forest trees below; and on the east lies a wide gorge, or ravine, choked with the mingled foliage of oaks, walnuts, and elms; while in its rocky depths a little brook creeps down to mingle with the river.

From the rugged trunk of the stunted cedar that leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river below, where the catfish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding over the wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current. The cliff is accessible only from the south, where a man may climb up, not without difficulty, by a steep and narrow passage. The top is about an acre in extent.

Here, in the month of December, 1682, La Salle and Tonty began to entrench themselves. They cut away the forest that crowned the rock, built storehouses and dwellings of its remains, dragged timber up the rugged pathway, and encircled the summit with a palisade. Thus the winter was passed, and meanwhile the work of negotiation went prosperously on. The minds of the Indians had been already prepared. In La Salle they saw their champion against the Iroquois, the standing terror of all this region. They gathered around his stronghold like the timorous peasantry of the Middle Ages around the rock-built castle of their feudal lord.

From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis,--for so he named his fort,--high and inaccessible as an eagle's nest, a strange scene lay before his eye. The broad, flat valley of the Illinois was spread beneath him like a map, bounded in the distance by its low wall of wooded hills. The river wound at his feet in devious channels among islands bordered with lofty trees; then, far on the left, flowed calmly westward through the vast meadows, till its glimmering blue ribbon was lost in hazy distance.

There had been a time, and that not remote, when these fair meadows were a waste of death and desolation, scathed with fire, and strewn with the ghastly relics of an Iroquois victory. Now, all was changed. La Salle looked down from his rock on a concourse of wild human life. Lodges of bark and rushes, or cabins of logs, were clustered on the open plain, or along the edges of the bordering forests. Squaws labored, warriors lounged in the sun, naked children whooped and gamboled on the grass.

Beyond the river, a mile and a half on the left, the banks were studded once more with the lodges of the Illinois, who, to the number of six thousand, had returned, since their defeat, to this their favorite dwelling place. Scattered along the valley, among the adjacent hills, or over the neighboring prairie, were the cantonments of a half score of other tribes, and fragments of tribes, gathered under the protecting aegis of the French.

NOTES.--The curious elevation called Starved Rock is on the south side of Illinois River, between La Salle and Ottawa. There is a legend according to which it is said that over one hundred years ago, a party of Illinois Indians took refuge here from the Pottawatomies; their besiegers, however, confined them so closely that the whole party perished of starvation, or, as some say, of thirst. From this circumstance the rock takes its name.

La Salle (b. 1643, d. 1687) was a celebrated French explorer and fur trader. He established many forts throughout the Mississippi Valley,-- among them, Fort St. Louis, in 1683.

Tonty was an Italian, who formerly served in both the French army and navy, and afterwards joined La Salle in his explorations.

XCI. PRINCE HENRY AND FALSTAFF. (327)

PRINCE HENRY and POINS, in a back room, in a tavern. Enter FALSTAFF, GADSHILL, BARDOLPH, and PETO.

Poins. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been?

Falstaff. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! marry, and amen! Give me a cup of sack, boy. Ere I lead this life long, I'll sew nether stocks, and mend them, and foot them, too. A plague of all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue. Is there no virtue extant? (He drinks, and then continues.) You rogue, here's lime in this sack, too; there is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man: yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it. A villainous coward! Go thy ways, old Jack; die when thou wilt: if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There live not three good men unhanged, in England; and one of them is fat and grows old; a bad world, I say! I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms, or anything. A plague of all cowards, I say still.

Prince Henry. How now, woolsack? What mutter you?

Fal. A king's son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild geese, I'll never wear hair on my face more. You, Prince of Wales!

P. Henry. Why, you baseborn dog! What's the matter?

Fal. Are you not a coward? Answer me to that; and Poins there?

Poins. Ye fat braggart, an ye call me coward, I'll stab thee.

Fal. I call thee coward? I'll see thee gibbeted ere I call thee coward: but I would give a thousand pounds I could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight enough in the shoulders, you care not who sees your back: call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing! Give me them that will face me. Give me a cup of sack. I am a rogue, if I have drunk to-day.

P. Henry. O villain! thy lips ate scarce wiped since thou drunkest last.

Fal. All's one for that. A plague of all cowards, still say 1. (He drinks.)

P. Henry. What's the matter?

Fal. What's the matter! There be four of us here have ta'en a thousand pounds this morning.

P. Henry. Where is it, Jack? where is it?

Fal. Where is it? Taken from us it is; a hundred upon poor four of us.

P. Henry. What! a hundred, man?

Fal. I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have 'scaped by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four, through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a handsaw; look here! (shows his sword.) I never dealt better since I was a man; all would not do. A plague of all cowards! Let them speak (pointing to GADSHILL, BARDOLPH, and PETO); if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness.

P. Henry. Speak, sirs; how was it?

Gadshill. We four set upon some dozen--

Fal. Sixteen, at least, my lord.

Gad. And bound them.

Peta. No, no, they were not bound.

Fal. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them; or I am a Jew, else--an Ebrew Jew.

Gad. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us--

Fal. And unbound the rest; and then come in the other.

P. Henry. What! fought ye with them all?

Fal. All? I know not what ye call all; but if I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish: if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then I am no two-legged creature.

P. Henry. Pray heaven, you have not murdered some of them.

Fal. Nay, that's past praying for; for I have peppered two of them; two I am sure I have paid; two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, and call me a horse. Thou knowest my old ward; (he draws his sword and stands if about to fight) here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me--

P. Henry. What! four? Thou saidst but two even now.

Fal. Four, Hal; I told thee four.

Poins. Ay, ay, he said four.

Fal. These four came all afront, and mainly thrust at me. I made no more ado, but took all their seven points in my target, thus.

P. Henry. Seven? Why, there were but four, even now.

Fal. In buckram?

Poins. Ay, four, in buckram suits.

Fal. Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.

P. Henry. Prithee, let him alone; we shall have more anon.

Fal. Dost thou hear me, Hal?

P. Henry. Ay, and mark thee, too, Jack.

Fal. Do so, for it is worth the listening to. These nine in buckram, that I told thee of--

P. Henry. So, two more already.

Fal. Their points being broken, began to give me ground; but I followed me close, came in foot and hand; and, with a thought, seven of the eleven I paid.

P. Henry. O, monstrous! eleven buckram men grown out of two!

Fal. But three knaves, in Kendal green, came at my back, and let drive at me; for it was so dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand.

P. Henry. These lies are like the father of them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained, nott-pated fool; thou greasy tallow keech--

Fal. What! Art thou mad! Art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?

P. Henry. Why, how couldst thou know these men in Kendal green, when it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? Come, tell us your reason; what sayest thou to this?

Poins. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.

Fal. What, upon compulsion? No, were I at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason on compulsion, I.

P. Henry. I'll be no longer guilty of this sin: this sanguine coward, this horseback breaker, this huge hill of flesh--

Fal. Away! you starveling, you eel skin, you dried neat's tongue, you stockfish! Oh for breath to utter what is like thee!--you tailor's yard, you sheath, you bow case, you--

P. Henry. Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again; and when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this.

Poins. Mark, Jack.

P. Henry. We two saw you four set on four; you bound them, and were masters of their wealth. Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down. Then did we two set on you four, and with a word outfaced you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here in the house.--And, Falstaff, you carried yourself away as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy, and still ran and roared, as ever I heard a calf. What a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in fight! What trick, what device, what starting hole, canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?

Poins. Come, let's hear, Jack. What trick hast thou now?

Fal. Why, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, bear ye, my masters: was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules; but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince; instinct is a great matter; I was a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself and thee during my life; I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, lads, I am glad you have the money. Hostess, clap to the doors. Watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold; all the titles of good-fellowship come to you! What! shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?

P. Henry. Content; and the argument shall be thy running away.

Fal. Ah, no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me!

Shakespeare.-Henry IV, Part I, Act ii, Scene iv.

NOTES.--The lime is a fruit allied to the lemon, but smaller, and more intensely sour.

The strappado was an instrument of torture by which the victim's limbs were wrenched out of joint and broken.

Hercules is a hero of fabulous history, remarkable for his great strength and wonderful achievements.

XCII. STUDIES. (332)