Chapters 21
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1 01 - Christopher Columbus The Boy of Genoa: 1446(?)-1506 20:10
Christopher Columbus, the boy of Genoa, Approximately to 1506. A privateer was leaving Genoa on a certain June morning in 1461. The crowds of people had gathered on the quays to see the ship sail. Dark-hued men from the distant shores of Africa, clad in brilliant red and yellow and blue blouses or tunics and hoes, with dozens of glittering gilded chains about their necks and rings in their ears, Jostled sun-brown sailors and merchants from the east, and the fairer-skinned men and women of the north. Genoa was a great seaport in those days, one of the greatest ports of the known world, and her fleet sailed forth to trade with Spain and Portugal, France and England, and even with the countries of the north of Europe.
The sea had made Genoa rich. Had given fortunes to the nobles who lived in the great white marble palaces that shone in the sun, had placed her on an equal footing with that other great Italian sea-city, Venice, with whom she was continually at war. But all the ships that left her harbor were not trading vessels. Genoa, the superb, had many enemies always on the alert to swoop down upon her trade. So she had to maintain a great war-fleet. In addition to this danger, the Mediterranean was then the home of roving pirates, ready to seize any vessel without regard to its flag, which promised to yield them booty. The life of a Genoese boy in those days was packed full of adventures. Most of the boys went to sea as soon as they were old enough to hold an oar or pull a rope, and they had to be ready at any moment to drop the oar or rope and seize a sword or a pike, to repel pirates or other enemies.
There was always the chance of a sudden chase or a secret attack on a Christian boat by savage Missilemen. And so bitter was the endless war of the two religions that in such cases the victors rarely spared the lives of the vanquished, or, if they did, sold them in port as slaves. Moreover, the ships were frail, and the Mediterranean storms severe, And many barks that contrived to escape the pirates fell victims to the fury of head-winds. The life of a Genoese sailor was about as dangerous a life as could well be imagined. On this June morning, a large privateer was to set sail from the port, and the families of the men and boys who were outward bound had come down to say goodbye. The center of one little group was a boy about fifteen.
Strong and broad for his years, though not very tall, with warm olive skin, bright black eyes, and fair hair that fell to his ears. His name was Christopher Colombo, and he was going to sail with a relative called Colombo the Younger, who commanded a ship in the service of Genoa. The young Christopher had always loved to be upon the sea. Among the first sights that he remembered were glimpses of the Mediterranean in fair and stormy weather. The first tales he had heard were stories of strange adventures that had befallen sailors. His home had sprung from the waves, its glory had been drawn from the inland sea. The great chain of high mountains at its back cut it from the land and the pursuits of other cities.
Christopher thought of the sea by day. and dreamed of it by night, and was already planning, when he grew up, to go in search of some of these strange adventures the old bronzed mariners were so fond of describing. The boy's mother and father kissed him good-bye, and his younger brothers and sister looked at him enviously as he left them with a wave of his hand and went on board the ship. The latter was very clumsy, according to our ideas. She rowed high in the water, With a great deck at the stern set like a small house up in the air, and with a great bow that bore the figurehead of the patron saint of the sea, St. Christopher. Her sails were hung flat against the masts, and were painted in broad stripes of red and yellow.
She was very magnificent to look upon, but not very seaworthy. The marble of Genoa's palaces dropped astern. The ship was sailing south, and under favoring breezes soon lost sight of land. Constant watch was kept for other vessels. Any that might appear was more apt to be an enemy than a friend, because Genoa was at war then with many rivals, chief among them Naples and Aragon. Ships had been sailing constantly of late from Genoa to prey upon the commerce of Naples, in revenge for what the Neapolitans had once done to Genoa. Colombo, the captain, was fond of his young kinsman, Christopher, and at the start of the voyage had him in his cabin and told him some of his plans. The captain said he had orders to sail to Tunis to capture the Spanish galley, Fernandina.
The galley was richly laden, and each sailor would have a large share of booty. The boy listened with sparkling eyes. This would be his first chance to have a hand in a fight at sea. The winds of June were favoring, and Colombo's ship soon reached the island of San Pietro of Sardinia. Here, the captain went ashore to try and learn news of the Fernandina. He found friendly merchants who had word from all the Mediterranean ports, and they told him that the galley was not alone, but accompanied by two other Spanish ships. Colombo was a born fighter, and this news did not frighten him. The more ships he might capture, the greater would be his own share of glory, and of prize money. When the captain told his news to the sailors on his return from shore, there was great consternation.
The men had no liking to attack two fighting ships besides a galley. At first they simply murmured among themselves, but the longer they discussed the desperate nature of the plan, the more alarmed they grew. By the time that the ship was ready to sail southward from Sardinia, they had determined to go no farther, and sent three of their leaders to speak to Colombo. The captain was with Christopher studying a map of the Mediterranean when the men came before him. They told him that they positively refused to sail south, and insisted that he put in at Marseilles for more ships and men. Columbo saw that he could not force them to sail farther, so, with what grace he could, he gave his consent to alter the course.
The men left the cabin, and after a few minutes thought the captain spoke to the boy. Christopher, said he, bring me the great compass from the box near the helmsman's stand. Bring it secretly. The men should all be on the lower deck, making ready to sail. Let no one see thee with it. The boy left the cabin and climbed the ladder to the great poop-deck at the stern, where the helmsman had a view far over the sea. He waited until no one was about, and then quickly took the compass from its box, and, hiding it under the loose folds of his cloak, brought it to the captain. He placed it on the table. Then he fastened the door so that no one might enter. Colombo opened the compass case and drew a pot of paint and a brush toward him.
The boy watched breathlessly, while the captain painted over the marks of the compass with thick white paint, and then on top of that drew in new lines and figures in black. He was changing the compass completely. When the work was done, Christopher bore the case back to its box as secretly as he had taken it. Then Colombo went out to the sailors and gave them orders to spread sail. It was rapidly growing dark as they left the coast of Sardinia. At sunrise, when Christopher came on deck to stand his watch, he knew that their ship must be off the city of Carthagena, although all the crew supposed they were well on their way to Marseilles. Not long after, as they were drawing nearer the shore, the lookout signaled a vessel.
She was soon seen to be flying the flag of Naples. Fortunately, this ship was alone at the time, and the sailors were not afraid to attack her. Orders were quickly given to sail as close to her as possible, and preparations were made to board her. The other ships seemed no less eager to engage in battle, and in a very short time grappling-irons were thrown out, and the ships were fastened close together. Then a fierce combat followed between the two crews, as each in turn tried to scale the sides of the other vessel. A sea-fight in the fifteenth century was fought hand to hand, each ship being like a fort, from which small attacking parties rushed out to climb the other's battlements. When men met on the decks, they used sword and pike and dagger, just as they would have on shore.
Fire was thrown from one ship into the rigging and sails of the other, and flames soon caught and greedily devoured the woodwork of the boats. It was wild work. The blazing sails, the broken cheers of the men, the fierce struggle over the two decks. Christopher fought bravely whenever chance offered, but the captain kept him close to his hand to carry messages. It soon appeared that the enemy were the stronger. And they bore the Genoese back, and back farther from their bulwarks, and across their decks. As the enemy gained a foothold, they held torches to everything that would burn, and soon Columbo's ship was wrapped in fire, and the only choice seemed to be between surrender and jumping into the sea.
A burning rope fell from a mast and set fire to Christopher's cloak. He tore the cloak from him. He saw that the Neapolitans must win, and he had no desire to be carried off to Naples as a prisoner. The flames were gaining fast as he leaped on the rail of the free side of the ship and dove overboard. He came up free from the wreckage and found a long sweep-off floating near him. With that support, he struck out for the shore of Africa, only a short distance away. His first sea-fight had nearly proved his last. Self-reliance was the corner-stone of this young mariner's character. He could take care of himself on whatever shore he was thrown. He landed on the beach of Carthagena, and told the story of his adventures to the group of sailors who crowded about him on the sands.
There is a strong sense of comradeship among seamen, and so, although none of the men who heard the boy's tale were from Genoa, they fitted him out with dry clothes, and found enough money to keep him in food. and shelter. There he stayed for some time, waiting until some Genoese bark should put into port. Meanwhile he was very much interested in the stories the seafarers of all lands told the people who would listen to them. Again and again he heard mariners wondering whether there might not be a shorter passage to the rich Indies of the East than the long overland route through China. The question interested him. And he took to studying it with care. One day, an old sailor on the beach told him of his voyages in the western ocean, and how once his ship had come so close to the edge of the world, that but for the miracle of a sudden change in the wind, they must certainly have been carried over the side.
The same bearded seaman told Christopher many other curious things. How he had himself seen beautiful pieces of carved wood, cut in some strange fashion, floating on the western sea, and had picked up one day a small boat which seemed to be made of the bark of a tree, but of a pattern none had ever seen before. Then... And here his voice would sink and his eyes grow large with wonder. He told Christopher how men who were explorers were certain that somewhere in that unsailed western sea, just before one came to the edge, was an island rich in gold and gems and rare delicious fruits, where men never need work if they chose to stay there, or if they came home might bring such treasures with them.
As would put to shame the richest princes of all Europe. It was said that there one caught fish already cooked, and that there people of great beauty lived, with dark red skins and wearing feathers in their hair. And is no one certain of this? asked Christopher, his eyes wide with excitement. Not even the men who have found the African coast and the Isle of Flores? The old sailor shook his head. "'Nay, nay, boy, the wonderful island lies so close to the world's edge that it's a perilous thing to try to find it.' Still," said Christopher, "'t'would be well worth the finding, and sometime when I'm a man and can win a ship of my own, I'm going to make the venture." But the sailor shook his head.
"'Better leave the unknown sea to itself, lad,' said he." A whole skin is worth more to a man than all the gold of King Solomon's mines. Is it true, asked the boy after a time, that there are terrible monsters in the dark sea? That was the name given in those days to the ocean that stretched indefinitely to the west. I've seen pictures of strange creatures on ships' maps, but never saw the like of any of them. No, nor would you be likely to, lad, said the sailor, for such as see those monsters don't come back. But true they are. A great captain told me once that part of the dark sea was black as pitch, and that great birds flew over it looking for ships. You've heard of the giant rock that flies through the air there, so strong that it can pick up the biggest ship that ever sailed in its beak, and carry it to the clouds.
There it crushes ship and men in its talons, and drops men's limbs, armor, timber, all that's left, down to the dark sea monsters who wait to devour the wreckage in their huge jaws. Oh, tis an ugly thought, and enough to keep any man safe this side of the world. In some places fair, in some dark. mused Christopher. It would be worth sailing out there to find which was the truth. Where would be the good of finding that if you never came back, boy? Christopher shrugged his shoulders. Just for the fun of finding out, perhaps, he said. A month later, Christopher saw a galley flying the flag of Genoa enter the harbor. When the captain came on shore, the boy went to him, and telling him who he was, asked for a chance to go as sailor back to Genoa.
The captain knew the boy's father, Domenico Colombo, and gave Christopher a place on the galley. She was sailing north, homeward bound, and a few days later, having safely avoided all hostile ships and storms, the galley came into sight of the beautiful white city in its nest against the hills. It was a happy day when the young sailor landed and surprised his father and mother by walking in upon them. News of Colombo's defeat by the ship of Naples had come to Genoa, and Christopher's family had given him up as lost. But narrow as his escape on that voyage had been, such chances were part of the sailor's life in that age, and Christopher was quite ready to take his share of privation and danger with his mates.
It was only by weathering such storms that he could ever hope to be put in charge of rich merchantmen, or to command his own vessel in his city's defense. So he sailed again soon after, and in a year or two had come to know the Mediterranean Sea as well as the back of his hand. Captains found he was good at making maps, and paid him to draw them. And when he was on shore, he spent all his time studying charts and plans, and soon became so expert that he could support himself by preparing new charts. Yet, in spite of all his study, he found that the maps covered only a small part of the sea, and gave him no knowledge of the waters to the west. There he now began to believe the long-looked-for sea passage to the East Indies must lie.
Christopher grew to manhood, and then a chance shipwreck threw him in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The Portuguese were the great sailors of the age, and the young man met many famous captains who were planning trips to the western coast of Africa and about the Cape of Good Hope. Some of the captains took an interest in the sailor who made such splendid maps, and was so eager to go on dangerous exploring trips, and they brought him to the notice of the King of Portugal. One of them, Tuscanelli, wrote of the young Christopher's great and noble desire to pass to where the spices grow, and listened with interest to his plans to reach those rich spice lands by sailing west. The ideas of Columbus seemed too visionary to most princes, and it was years before he was able to persuade the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, to grant him three small ships and enough men to start upon his voyage.
But on August Third, Fourteen Ninety Two, he finally set sail from Pellos in Spain. All the world knows the history of that great voyage, of the tremendous difficulties that beset Columbus, how his men grew fearful and would have turned back, how he had to change the ship's reckoning as he had seen his cousin change the compass, how he had sometimes to plead with his men and sometimes to threaten them. In time, he found boughs with fresh leaves and berries floating on the sea, and caught the odor of spices from the west. Then he knew he was nearing that magic land of riches sailors dreamt of, and thought he had found the shortest passage to the East Indies and Cathay. That would have been a wonderful discovery, but the one he was actually making was infinitely greater.
Instead of a new sea passage, he was reaching a new continent, and adding a hemisphere to the known world. Such was the result of the dreams and ambitions of the boy born and bred in the old seaport of Genoa.
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2 02 - Michael Angelo The Boy of the Medici Gardens: 1475-1564 23:26
MICHELANGELO. THE BOY OF THE MEDICI GARDENS. 1475-1564. The Italian city of Florence was entering on the golden age of its history toward the end of the fifteenth century. Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, was head of the House of Medici, and first citizen of the proud Republic. He was himself an artist, a poet, and a philosopher. He loved the beautiful things of life, and had gathered about him a little court of men of genius. Florence, at that time, was also a great business city. And among the prominent merchant families was that of the Bunurati. Ludvico Bunurati had several sons, and he had named his second child Michelangelo, and had planned that he should follow him in trade. Fortunately for the world, however, the boy had a will of his own, even while he was still in charge of a nurse, and was just beginning to learn to use his hands.
He would draw simple pictures and paint them whenever he had the chance. His father had little use for a painter, and sent the boy to the grammar school of Francesco d'Urbigno in Florence, thinking to make a scholar of him. There were, however, many studios in the neighborhood of the school, and many artists at work in them, and the boy would neglect his studies to haunt the places where he might see how grown men drew and painted. Watching the artist, young Michelangelo soon formed a lasting friendship with a boy of great talent a few years older than himself, by name of Francisco Granacci. This boy was a pupil of Domenico Gerlando, a very great painter. The more Michelangelo saw Granacci and his work in the studio, the more he longed for a chance to study painting.
He could think of nothing else. He begged his father and uncles to let him be an artist instead of a merchant or a scholar, but the father and uncles, coming from a long line of successful merchants, treated the boy's request with scorn. Michelangelo was determined to be an artist, however, and finally, though with the greatest reluctance, his father signed a contract with Gerlandehoe, by which the boy was to study drawing and painting in his studio, and do whatever other work the master might desire. The master was to pay the boy six gold florins for the first year's work, eight for the second, and ten for the third. The young Bunurati found plenty of work to be done in his master's studio. Besides the regular day's work, he was constantly painting sketches of his own, and trying his hand at a dozen different things.
His eye and hand were most surprisingly true. Time and again the master or some of the older students, coming across the boy at work, would be held spellbound by his skill. One day, when the men had left work, the boy drew a picture of the scaffolding on which they had been standing, and sketched him portraits of the men so perfectly that when his master found the drawing, he cried to a friend in amazement, "'The boy understands this better than I do myself!' There was little in the world about him that this boy failed to see. He soon painted his first real picture, choosing a subject that was popular in those days, the temptation of St. Antony. All kinds of queer animals figured in the picture, and that he might get the color of their shining backs and scales just right, he spent days in the market eagerly studying the fish there for sale.
Again the master was amazed at his pupil's work. and now for the first time began to feel a certain envy of him. This feeling rapidly increased. The scholars were often given some of Gerlandehoe's own studies to copy, and one day Michelangelo brought the artist one of the studies which he had himself corrected by adding a few thick lines. Beyond all doubt, the picture was improved. It was hard, however, for the master to be corrected by his own apprentice. And soon after that the boys' stay in the studio came to an end. Fortunately, his friend Grenacci had already interested the great patron Lorenzo de' Medici in the young Buonarroti, and he was now invited to join the band of youths of talent who made the Medici's palace their home.
In Lorenzo's palace, young Michelangelo was very happy. He was fond of the Medici's sons, boys nearly his own age. Like almost all the rest of Florence, he worshipped the Citizen Prince, whose one desire seemed to be that Florence should be beautiful, and he was happiest of all in the chance to study his own beloved art. In May of each year, Lorenzo gave a pageant, and the spring in which Michelangelo came to the palace, Lorenzo placed the carnival in charge of the boy's friend, Francisco Granacci. Day by day, the boys planned for the great procession. At noon they were free from their teachers, and then they would scatter to the gardens. One such May noon, when the sun was hot, a group of them ran out from the palace and threw themselves on the grass in the shade of a row of poplars.
They were all absorbed in the one subject. Their tongues could scarcely keep pace with their nimble fancies. "'What shalt thou go as, Paolo?' said one. I heard Messer Lorenzo say that thou shouldest be something marvellously fine, but what can be so fine as Romulus in a Roman triumph? I am to be the thrice-gifted Apollo, dressed as your Athenian saw him, with harp and bow, and the crown of laurel on my head. That will be a sight for thee, Ludovico Mio, and for the pretty eyes of thy Bianco also. Paolo laughed as one who well knew the value of his yellow locks and blue eyes in a land of brown and black. "'What art thou to be in Messer Lorenzo's coming pageant, Michael?' The young Michael, a slim, black-haired youth, was lying on his back, his head resting in his hands, his eyes watching the circling flight of some pigeons.
"'I,' he said dreamily, "'oh!' I have given little thought to that. I shall be whatever Francisco wishes. He knows what is needed better than anyone else. As he spoke, a tall youth came into the garden and sat down in the middle of the group. He had curious, smiling eyes, and hands that were fine and pointed like a woman's. He answered all questions easily, telling each what part he was to play in the triumphal procession of Paulus Aemilius. That was to dazzle the good people of Florence on the moral. He had become chief favorite in the little court of young people that the Medici loved to have about him, and his remarkable talent for detail had made him the leader in all entertainments. The boy Michael listened for a time to the flowing words of young Grenacci, then rose and wandered to where some stonemasons had lately been at work.
He stopped in front of a block of marble that was gradually taking the form of the mask of a fawn. Near the block stood an antique mask, a garden ornament, and this the boy studied for a few moments before he picked up one of the mason's deserted tools and began to cut the stone himself. The gay chatter under the poplars went on, but the boy with the chisel, lost in thought, his heavy brows bent into a bow, chipped and cut. Forgetful of everything else, a half-hour passed, and a long shadow fell across the marble. Michael looked up to see his patron, Lorenzo, standing beside him. The boy glanced from the fine, keen face of the Medellin to the marble mask of the old fawn in front of him. "'Well, sirrah,' said Lorenzo, half seriously and half in chest, "'what wilt thou be up to next?' "'Jacopo.' One of the builders gave me a stone, answered the boy, and told me I might do what I would with it.
Yonder is my copy. The old figure is there. But," said Lorenzo critically, your faun is old, and yet you have given him all his teeth. You should have known in a face as aged as that some of the teeth are wanting. True," said the young sculptor. And taking his chisel, with a few strokes he made such a gap in the mouth as no master could have improved. The Medici watched, and when the change was made broke into laughter. "'Right, boy," he cried. "'Tis perfect. Praxiteles himself could not have bettered that." Then, with a quizzical smile, he looked the youth over. "'I knew thou wert a painter, and now a sculptor.'" What will thy clever hand be doing next? Bearing arms in your worship's cause, and the saints be good, exclaimed the boy, his deep eyes full of admiration on his patron's face.
Ah, said Marenzo. So? Well, perhaps the day will come. Florence is like a rose-bed, but I cannot cure the city as I would of thorns. He fell into thought, then roused again. But thou, young Michelangelo, dost know what a time I had to make thy father let thee be a painter, and now thou addest to thy sins and cuttest in marble. Where will be the end of thy infamy?" The boy caught the gleam in his friend's eyes, and his serious face broke into smiles. In Rome, signaled Lorenzo, in the Holy Father's house. There I shall go some day. And why to Rome? Everyone goes to Rome. Thy marvelous pageants are Roman. Art lives there. Yes, mused Lorenzo. Rome, on its hills, is still the eternal city. And yet in those far days to come I doubt if thou wilt be as happy as in Lorenzo's gardens.
How sayest thou, boy? I know not, was the answer. Only I know that I shall go. The laughter of the other boys came to their ears, and Lorenzo turned. "'Thy fawn is done. To-morrow will I speak with Poliziano of our new sculptor.' "'What is Grenache saying over there? Come with me and listen.' So, the prince's arm resting affectionately on the boy's shoulder, they crossed the garden to the noisy group. Life was gay then in Florence. Lorenzo de' Medici was ruling the turbulent city by keeping it occupied with merrymaking, by beautifying its squares with priceless treasures, by helping its poor but ambitious children to win their hearts' desires, by mingling with the citizens at all times, and writing them ballads to sing, and giving them masquets to act.
His house was open to the great men of Italy. On his entertainments he lavished his wealth. Set no bounds to the means he gave Grenacci and the others to make the pageants gorgeous, and superintended everything with his own wonderfully keen eye for beauty. The triumphal procession of Paulus Aemilius on the moor after the little scene in the gardens was an all-day revel. The good folk of Florence left their shops and homes and lined the streets, and for hours, floats drawn by prancing horses and picturing great scenes in Roman history, Passed before the delighted people's eyes. Among the warriors, the heroes, the nymphs and fawns, they recognized their neighbors' children or their own sons and daughters.
They were all parcel of it. It was their own triumph as well as Rome's. Girls sang and danced and smiled. Boys posed and cheered and played heroic parts. The whole youth of the city spent the day in fairyland. Chief among the boys was the little group of artists who were studying in Lorenzo's mansion, and chief among these Grenanci, who was master of the revels. Paolo Tornobuani, who made a wonderful Apollo, seated on a golden globe playing upon a lyre, and the dark-browed Michelangelo clad in a tunic, one of the noble youth of early Rome. His father, Ludovico Buonurati and his mother, Francesca, were in the crowd that watched him pass. "'Yonder he goes,' cried the proud mother. "'Dust see thy son, Ludovico?' But her husband scowled.
He had little use for a son of his who had rather be painter than merchant. A year of happiness passed for the boys in the Medici Gardens, and then the skies of Florence darkened. A monk from San Marco named Savonarola raised his voices to shame the gay people of their extravagance, and his bitter tongue sought out Lorenzo the Magnificent as chief offender. The boy Michelangelo went to hear Savonarola preach, and came away heavy of mind and heart. He heard the beautiful things of the world assailed as sinful, and his beloved master called a servant of the evil one. A winter of reproach came upon the city, and when it ended and Lent was over, darkness fell, for Lorenzo lay dead at his summer home of Correggie in 1492, the year when Columbus discovered America.
For a long time Michelangelo, stunned by his patron's loss, could do no work, and when at last he found the heart to take up his brush and palate, It was no longer in the great house of the Medici, but in a little room he had arranged for himself as a studio under his father's roof. He was not long left to work there in peace. The three sons of Lorenzo, boys of nearly his own age, who had been playmates with him in the gardens, and had studied with him under the same masters, needed his help. The great Medici had said, long before, that of his three sons one was good, One clever, and the third a fool. Giulio, now thirteen years old, was the good one. Giovanni, seventeen years old, already Prince Cardinal of the Church, was the clever one.
And Piero, the oldest, now head of the family Florence, was the fool. The storm raised by Savonarola was ready to break about Piero de' Medici's head. And such friends as were still faithful to him he gathered about him at his house. Michelangelo, his old playmate, was among the number, and so he again moved to the palace. For a brief time they sought to win back the favor of the people by a return to the old-time magnificence. With no wise head to guide, the youths were soon in sore straits. Their love of art, their study of the poets, Their attempt to revive the history of Greece and Rome were all scorned and mocked at as so much wanton dissipation. The boys drew closer together. The fate of their house hung trembling in the balance.
Then one morning a young lute-player named Cartier came to Michelangelo and, drawing him aside from the others, told him that in a dream the night before Lorenzo had appeared to him, robed in torn black garments, and in deep, melancholy tones had ordered him to tell Piero, his son, that he would soon be driven out from Florence, never to return. Michelangelo told the musician to tell Piero, but the latter was too frightened to obey. A few days later he again came to Michelangelo, this time pale and shaking with fear, and said that Larenzo had appeared to him a second time, had repeated what he had said to him before, and had threatened him with dire punishment if he dared again to disobey his strict command.
Alarmed at the news, Michelangelo spoke his mind to Cartier, and bade him set off at once to see Piero, who was at Carregi, and give him his father's warning. Cartier, halfway to Carregi, met Piero and some friends riding in toward Florence. The minstrels stopped their way and besought Piero to hear his story. The young Medici bade him speak. But when he had heard the warning, he laughed, and his friends laughed with him. Bibiena, one of Piero's closest friends, and later to be the subject of one of Raphael's masterpieces, cried aloud in scorn to Cartier, "'Fool! Dost think that Lorenzo gives thee such honor before his own son that he would thus appear to thee rather than to Piero?' With laughter at Cartier's crestfallen face, the gay troupe rode on.
And the poor messenger of evil tidings returned slowly with his news to Michelangelo. By now the boy sculptor was thoroughly alarmed. Like almost every one else of that age, he believed in portents and visions. He therefore took Cartieri's story to heart, and in addition he could see for himself that the foolish, headstrong Pierrot was taking no steps to turn the growing discontent. He hated to leave his friends, but knew that they would pay no heed to his warnings. So, after much hesitation, he decided, with two comrades of about his own age, to go to Venice and seek work in that quieter city. Ordinarily it would have taken the three boys about a week to ride from Florence to Venice, but at that time French troops were scattered through the country, and they had to follow a roundabout course to reach the city by the sea.
They had very little money, and had gone only a short distance when this small amount was exhausted. By that time they had reached the city of Bologna, And there they turned aside. Like most of the Italian cities, Bologna tried to keep itself independent, and to this end the ruling family had made a strange law with regard to foreigners. Every stranger entering the city gates had to present himself before the governor and receive from him a seal of red wax on the thumb. If a stranger neglected to do this, he was liable to be thrown into prison and fined. The boy, Michelangelo, and his two friends knew nothing of this odd law. and injured the city gaily, without having the necessary wax on their thumbs.
As soon as this was noticed, they were seized, taken before a judge, and sentenced to pay six hundred and fifty lyre. They had not that much money between them, and so for a short time were placed under lock and key. Fortunately, news of the boys' arrest came to a nobleman of the city who was much interested in art, and who had already heard of Michelangelo's ability. He at once had the boys set free. and invited Michelangelo to visit him at his home. But Michael did not wish to leave his friends, and felt that it would be an imposition for the three of them to accept the invitation. When he spoke in this fashion to the nobleman, the latter was very much amused. "'Ah, well,' said he, "'if things stand so, I must beg of you to take me also with your two friends to roam about the world at your expense.' The joke showed the boy the absurd side of the matter.
He gave his friends the little money he had left, said goodbye to them, and accepted the invitation to stay in Bologna. A very short time after, Piero de' Medici, driven from Florence by an angry people, came to Bologna and met his old friend of Lorenzo's gardens. For a short time the boys were together, then the young Medici set out to seek aid from other cities in an attempt to rebuild his family fortunes. Meanwhile, the gnome man who had offered Michelangelo a home was delighted with his young friend. He had found him keenly interested in Dante and Petrarch, and equally gifted as a sculptor and a painter. He gave him work to do in the church of San Petronio, and Michael did so well there that the artists of Bologna grew jealous of him, and at the end of the year forced him to leave the city.
Then the boy artist went back to his home, only to find it changed unspeakably. Florence, that had been a city of delight, was now a city of dread. Savonarola held the people's ear, and had taught them to destroy what Lorenzo had led them to love. The monks of San Marco made bonfires of their paintings, priceless manuscripts had met with the same fate, and Lorenzo's house had been robbed of all its sculpture. The gardens were strewn with broken statues that had once been Michelangelo's delight. He walked through them sadly, and realized that he alone was left of that group who had found so much happiness there only a few years before. The words that he had spoken to Lorenzo on the day he chiseled the fawn came back to him, "'To Rome I shall go some day,' and thither he now set his face.
Thereafter the eternal city claimed Michelangelo, cardinal after cardinal, Pope after Pope, employed his marvelous genius to beautify the capital of the world. As he had said, he found work to do in the Holy Father's house. Whatever else they might do, the Italians of that age worshipped art, and there were two stars in their sky, Raphael and Michelangelo. Again fate's wheel turned, and at last Michelangelo returned to Florence, loaded with honors, this time again the guest of a Medici, Giulio, The playmate of his youth, ruling as autocrat, where his father had ruled as a mere citizen. A little later, and the shrewdest of the three boys, Giovanni, became Pope Leo X. As men, the friends of boyhood differed, but they were alike in their devotion to Florence and the things they had learned in her school years before.
At the height of his power, Michelangelo turned his hand to the Medici Chapel. and built their lasting monuments to their glory and his genius. A wonderful return for the rare days of his boyhood in their gardens.
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3 03 - Walter Raleigh The Boy of Devon: 1552-1618 22:25
Holland. Chapter Three Walter Raleigh, the boy of Devin. Summer was over England, and the county of Devon, running down to Cornwall between two seas, was painted in bright hues. The downs were softly carpeted with purple and yellow gorse, and heather that made a wonderful soft mist as one looked across the fields. Low hills, brilliant green ridges against the sky, ran inland from the sea. And in the little hollows here and there nestled small, straw-thatched cottages with shining white walls, or the more pretentious Tudor farmhouses with red or brown roofs and much half-timbered decoration. The Devon winters were long, with heavy snow, and men had to build so that they might have all possible protection from the winds that swept across the open upland country.
So they built down in the valleys and in the long, low inlets from the sea that were called combs, and as a result one might stand on the high moors looking across country and never know there was a house within a mile. It is a country full of surprises.
On a fine morning, when Devon was looking its best, a boy came out of a dwelling that was half farmhouse, Half-manor house, and that lay in a cup of low hills on the edge of a tract of moorland. The house belonged to a man named Walter Raleigh of Fardell, a gentleman of good family whose fortunes had sunk to a low ebb. It was one-storied, with thatched roof, gabled wings, and a projecting central porch. Here lived Mr. Raleigh of Fardell. with his wife, Catherine, four sons, and a daughter. It was a large family for such a small estate, and already the father was wondering what would happen to the younger boys when the little property should have descended, according to the law of the land to the oldest son.
It was the boy, Walter, youngest of the sons, who had come out of the house and stood looking about him. He was a good-looking fellow. with fair hair, blue eyes, and the ruddy English skin. It did not take him long to decide which way to go this morning. He made straight for an oak wood that lay before the house, and followed a little path that led through it. Two miles and a half through the wood lay Budleigh-Sowerton Bay, and Walter liked that best of all the places near his home. He passed the oaks and came out into open country. Here, where the gorse made a soft carpet on the ground, the salt of the sea blew freshly into him. He gave a great shout, and pulling off his cap, ran as fast as he could down to the shore of the bay.
A few boats swung at anchor there, and an old man sat on the beach, mending a fishing net. The boy swept the sea with his eyes from point to point of the bay. looked longingly at the boats, then walked over to the old mariner. "'Good morning, Gaffer,' said he. "'It's a fine sailing breeze out on the bay.' "'And good morning to ye, Master Walter,' said the old man, glancing up from his nets. "'A fine breeze it be, and more's a pity when there's work to be done on shore.' "'So say I,' said the boy, throwing himself down on the sand by the sailor. I'd dearly like to sail across to France today. How comes it you're not to school?" asked the man. School's done. Next month I go to Oxford, to Oriel College.
Methinks tis a great shame to spend one's time studying when there's so much else to be done in the world. The only books I like are those that tell of faraway lands, and adventure and such things. But to Oxford I must go, says father, like a gentleman's son, and so I suppose I must. He lay out on the sand, his head resting in his hands, his eyes gazing up to the sky.
Tell me, Gaffer, if you had your choice of the two, would you rather be a sailor or a gentleman of the court and live at London near Queen Elizabeth? The man laughed. "'Aye, courtier,' he cried. "'I'd die of fright, most like. I've never been to London town, but they say it's a terrible place.'" "'Would you rather sail out to the West, to the Indies, or perhaps to Guinea?' asked Walter. The man nodded. The savages bent so terrifying to a sailor as the folk of London town. "'And in London they might throw you into the tower,' mused Walter. "'You're right, Gaffer. "'Tis better to be free and your own man, even if "'tis only among savages. Think you England will be at war soon?' The sailor looked up from his net and glanced out across the bay.
"'I figure you'll live long enough to do some fighting, lad. Them Spanish dons be planning for to sweep the seas of Englishmen.' Walter sat up and followed the man's gaze out to sea. "'That they'll never do,' said he, "'as long as there are Devon men to build a boat and man it. But if there is a war, I'm going to it.' "'Aye, as Captain, as we two be sittin' here in Budleigh Bay.' "'War's a fearsome thing, lad,' said the sailor. "'I've fought the pirates in the South, and I've seen sights would turn a man's hair gray in a night. "'Tis no holiday work to fight across your decks.' "'Tell me about it,' faked the boy, sitting up and clasping his knees in his hands. "'I love to hear of fights and strange adventures.' So while the sailor worked over his net, he talked of his wanderings, of his cruises, of his battles, of his fights.
And the boy, his eyes wide with admiration, drank in the yarns. Mariner never found a better audience than this small boy of the Devon Coast. It was long past noon when the sailor and Walter left the beach. The boy went back through the woods to the house. and made his lunch in the pantry off of bread and cheese. The family were used to Walter's wanderings, and never waited for him. Now, in his holiday time, he was free to go where he would. Mr. Raleigh of Fardell wanted all his sons brought up as the sons of a gentleman should be. And so, although he was quite poor, he managed to send Walter that autumn to the University of Oxford. Walter was only fifteen. The boys went to college at that age in those days.
Oxford in 1567 was something like the Eaton of today. There were not many college buildings, and the students in cap and gown look quite as young as schoolboys do now. Oriel College was near the broad Christchurch meadows that led down to the river. And from there Walter could look across to the fields where the boys practiced their favorite sport of archery, to the silver thread of the little river as it wound in and out among the trees, and across it to the park where a herd of deer roamed free. The Oxford country, inland and not far from the center of England, was very different from his beloved Devonshire. Here there were many gentlemen's parks, with well-kept lawns and gardens. Lots of small woods, and meadows broken now and again by little sparkling brooks.
Everything was very neat and beautifully cared for, but in Devon was the wide sweep of the high moorlands, the herds of grazing ponies, the glorious carpet of the heather, the salt smell of the sea. Often the boy was homesick for that more barren country, and that shore from which he loved to watch the sails. And very often he was tempted to leave Oriel and go out to seek his fortune by himself. He did not give in to the desire, however. He stayed on for three years, holding his own in his studies and winning the reputation of a good speaker. Walter's chance for adventure came full soon. His mother's family, the Schempernounds, were related to the French Huguenot House of Montgomery. The Catholics and the Huguenots were at war in France, and Walter's cousin Henry obtained permission of Queen Elizabeth to raise a troop of a hundred gentlemen in England to fight with him in France.
He asked Raleigh at Oriole to join him, and the boy eagerly accepted. So he left Oxford, and with a number of others of good family, many scarcely older than himself, he crossed the Channel and entered France. The moment was not a good one. The Huguenots had just lost the Battle of Montcantor, and a little time after their great chief, the Prince of Condé, fell at Genarc. But the small band of English gentleman adventurers was not at all cast down. The Huguenot cause did not mean a great deal to them, and they speedily consoled themselves for Condé's loss. When they actually took the field, they found the warfare of very irregular sort of fighting. A sudden swoop down upon the Catholics in some ill-defended town, a quick retreat at the approach of regular troops, an occasional short skirmish in the open.
Walter was sent into Languedoc, and joined in the chase of Catholics through the hills. The country was full of steep cliffs, and there were many caves hidden in them. Fugitives would escape through the open country and meet in these recesses, and the Englishmen would follow, tracking them after the manner of hunters of wild game. Sometimes they would come to the top of a cliff, overlooking a cave in which they had seen men hide. Then they would lower lighted bundles of straw by iron chains. Until they came opposite the mouth of the cave. In a short time the men in hiding would be smoked out and compelled to surrender. Often they had hidden treasures of money or plate in the caves, and these would fall into the captors' hands.
This lure of booty added spice to the hunt. It was rough, wild work, but it was a rough age, and men had few scruples when it came to dealing with their enemies. Young Raleigh proved a good fighter, fond of the hunts through the hills, and always ready for any wild expedition. He cared little enough for the cause for which the troop was supposed to be fighting. It was the opportunity to advance himself that concerned him most. When he came back from France, he found that there was no place for him at the manor house in Devon. As a younger son, he must fight his own way in the world. He had always loved London next after the Devon Coast, and so he went there now, hoping that he might find some favor with the court.
Queen Elizabeth liked to have youths of good family and good looks about her, and there were many of them living in London who used her court as a sort of club. Walter made many friends of his own age, and lived as most of them did, mixing in all the excitements of city life. He was now rather a wild, reckless young blade, as willing to draw his sword in a street fight as to pay compliments to a pretty maid of honor. One day he got into a fight at a tavern with a noisy braggart. He managed to throw the man into a chair and bind him with a rope. Then he knotted the man's beard and mustache together so that his mouth was sealed. The rest of the tavern applauded him for his neat manner of silencing the boaster.
He did not always come out on top, however. On one occasion he fought in the street with Sir Thomas Parrott, and was arrested by the town watch. He was brought to trial and sent to the fleet prison for six days. The imprisonment meant very little to him. It was simply part of the life of adventure he was so fond of living. We must remember that all England in this age of Elizabeth was full of this same spirit of adventure. Young men were rising rapidly. There were a hundred ways to gain distinction, and many of them, although ways which we might consider rather doubtful nowadays, were then regarded as quite proper. Walter Raleigh kept his eyes wide open, and when he saw a promising chance, he was always ready to accept it.
The first adventure that offered was to take part in a seafaring expedition. Englishmen of fortune in those days were in the habit of fitting out privateers to roam the seas, much like pirates. Sir Humphrey Gilbert had planned to send some such ships to the banks of Newfoundland to capture any Portuguese or Spanish vessels that might have gone there for the fishing. He intended to bring his prizes back to some Dutch port, and there sell them. Walter liked this plan, and he talked it over with Sir Humphrey, but for some reason the plan failed. A very little while afterward, however, Sir Humphrey asked him to sail in an expedition that was supposed to be searching for the Northwest Passage to Cathay, but which in reality was intended to seize any heathen lands it might find and occupy them in the name of England.
The fleet sailed, but soon fell in with a Spanish squadron that was looking for just such English rovers. Sir Humphrey's fleet was beaten and forced to return home. So for a time young Raleigh's chance of winning fortune on the seas were ended. He went back to London and took up his former life at court. Very soon he was sent with some troops to Ireland, and there again he had a chance at the same sort of fighting he had known in France. He proved himself a good soldier. He shunned no toil nor danger. But the life he had to lead was a hard one and very poorly paid, and Raleigh saw no chance to make his fortune in that path. Now, however, Raleigh was known to many powerful men. When he gave up the Irish fighting and went back to court, he found that people there had heard of what he had accomplished, and that he had a reputation for courage bordering on recklessness.
That was a quality the English of that day much admired. The great lords were almost all reckless adventurers, plundering wherever they could, and they were glad to find young men who would do their bidding without asking questions. By this time young Raleigh had become typical of his age. having its virtues and its vices. The age was wild, coveting money in order to fling it away on mad schemes, reveling in the dangers as well as the glories of battle and exploration, of plundering Spanish galleons, or of hunting untold riches in the world across the sea. Queen Elizabeth liked daring men, and Rowley took every opportunity to bring himself before her notice. The young courtier had learned all the arts that helped to make men's fortunes, He was tall and very handsome, a splendid swordsman, and a wit who could hold his own with poets and with statesmen.
He still spoke with the strong, broad accent of Devon, and when he learned that the queen liked his unusual accent, he was very careful to see that he never lost it. He studied each chance to please. Elizabeth was extremely vain and extremely fond of romance. One day, as she walked with certain of her lords and ladies, she came to a marshy place, and stopped in hesitation, fearing to soil her slippers. This was the young courtier's chance. Raleigh had been in the background, but seeing the queen hesitate, he sprang forward, and sweeping his new plush cloak from his shoulders, spread it in the mire, so that she might cross. The queen's face lighted up with pleasure at the graceful act, and she thanked the youthful gallant.
Later she saw that he was given many court suits for the cloak he had so admirably ruined. Having thus won her attention, Raleigh next sought to fix himself in his queen's mind. He wrote in the window of a room in which she passed, much time, the line, Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall. Elizabeth learned who was the author of the writing, and scratched the answer underneath. If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all. Raleigh had no fear whatever of falling, but a becoming modesty sat well upon him. The Queen remembered the young man now for these two qualities, his gallantry and his becoming modesty, and saw to it that a man of such spirit should be kept at court. The ardent boy of Devon, the restless Oxford student, the wild Huguenot trooper, had grown to be a man worthy of notice.
He was now, as Walter Scott pictures him in Canilleworth, The young seeker after royal favor, graceful, slender, restless, somewhat supercilious, with a sonnet ever ready on his lips to delight his friends, or an epigram to sting his enemies. We shall see him turn his many talents to great uses. He fell to planning voyages across the Atlantic to discover and settle parts of North America, much as Sir Humphrey Gilbert had done, and as another young man about court, Sir Francis Drake was doing. From the Queen, and from one noble or another who was interested in his marvelous schemes, he obtained the money to fit out several expeditions. Each in turn landed near what is now the Roanoke River, and each brought back rich gifts to the great English Queen.
Among other things, the explorer saw the Indian smoking a dried leaf called tobacco, tried the custom, liked it, and brought it back with him to England. Raleigh had a stroke of genius when he named his colony Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. It pleased her to think that a great empire in the Western world should be named for her. She gave Raleigh whatever he asked, making him practically governor of all the English domain in America. And for a long time, Virginia was supposed to cover even part of what later became New England. He started to colonize the land, but his colonies did not succeed. and he lost all the money he put into them. Nevertheless, his Virginian scheme brought him a great deal of fame, which he now craved, and kept London talking of him.
London was soon to talk still more about this daring, brave, and brilliant West Countryman. The prophecy of the old sailor at Budleigh Salterton Bay came true, and for a brief time all England held its breath while the famous Spanish fleet, called the Armada, bore down upon her coast. Then all over the country gentlemen of fortune manned ships and put to sea, but especially the men of Devon, of Somerset, and Cornwall, counties famed for their sailors. Among these men was Raleigh. His advice was eagerly sought by the Queen's ministers, and when it came to the actual channel fighting he was one of many gallant captains. The great armada came to grief upon the English coast. and Raleigh had added another to his record of achievements.
Having been courtier, colonizer, warrior, Raleigh now blossomed forth as a poet, and became a friend and patron of Edmund Spencer. He had much skill in verse, and he was never lacking in imagination. But his real talents did not lie in that direction, and as in so many other things he soon found himself distracted elsewhere. The story of Raleigh's manhood belongs to history. Turn to Tales of Elizabeth's Court, and you will find his name on almost every page. Now he is high in favor, braving it with the great Earl of Leicester, now down upon his luck, locked in some royal prison, writing verses to his many friends. His was a strange career. At one time there was no man in England whose favor was more sought.
Yet at the end he died upon the scaffold charged with treason. Time proved him guiltless of the charge, and almost at once the English people began to realize how great a light had been extinguished. Through all his varying career, he himself was the same brave, dreamy, ambitious man, the perfect type of that age which we call the Elizabethan. He could not stay in his native land of Devon. Much as he loved its moorland and its bays, he had to listen to the call of London and the sea. And follow where their voices led him. Each way the road was set with many strange adventures, but he met and passed through them all with the high spirits that were part of his age. His courage never failed him, nor his joy in finding his way to fortune with his own sharp wits.
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4 04 - Peter the Great The Boy of the Kremlin: 1672-1725 19:25
Holland.
Chapter Four. Peter the Great. The Boy of the Kremlin, 1672-1725 The halls of the Kremlin, the Tsar's palace in Moscow, were filled with a wild rabble of soldiers on a winter afternoon near the end of the 17th century. The guards of the late Tsar Alexis were storming through the maze of corridors and state apartments, breaking statues, tearing down tapestries, and piercing and cutting to pieces invaluable paintings with their spears and swords. They were big, savage-faced men, pets of the half-civilized Russian rulers, and were called the Streltsy Guard. They had broken into the Kremlin in order to see the boy who was now Tsar, so that they might be sure that his stepmother had not hidden him away, as the rumor went, in order that her own son Peter might have the throne for himself.
But once inside the Kremlin many of the soldiers devoted themselves to pillage, until the ringleaders raised the cry, Where is the Tsar Ivan? Show him to us! Show the boy Ivan to us! Where is he? In a small room on one of the higher floors, a little group of women and noblemen, all thoroughly frightened, were gathered about two boys. The noise of the attack on the palace had come to their ears some time before. They had seen from the windows the mutinous soldiers climbing the walls and beating down the few loyal servants who had withstood them. The din was growing more terrific every instant. It was the matter of only a few minutes before the rioters would break into the room. We must decide at once, friends, said the Tsarina Natalia.
If they enter this room, they'll not stop at killing any of us. The smaller of the two boys, a sturdy lad of eleven years, spoke up. Let me go out onto the red staircase with Ivan, mother. When they see that we are both here, they'll be satisfied. A dozen objections were raised by the frightened men and women of the court. It was much too dangerous to trust the lives of the two boys to the whim of such a maddened mob. Nevertheless, Peter is right, said Natalia. It's the only chance left to us. They think I have done some harm to Ivan. The only way to prove that false is for him to stand before them, and my son must go with him.
The small boy who had spoken before took these words as final. Come, Ivan, said he, and took the other's hand in his. Ivan, a tall, delicate boy, whose face was white with fear, gripped Peter's hand hard. He was used to trusting implicitly to his half-brother, although the latter was two years younger than he. One of the noblemen opened the door, and the two boys went out of the room and crossed the hall to the top of the great red staircase. They looked down on the mob of soldiers who were gradually surging up the stairs, brandishing swords and halberds, fighting among each other for the possession of some treasure, and calling continually, The Tsar! Where are the boys Ivan and Peter? Where are they?
At first, in their excitement, no one noticed the two boys on the stairway. Ivan, who was by nature timid, shrank away from their sight as much as he could, but Peter, who was of a different make, stood out in full view and held fast to his brother's hand. He had inherited the iron nerve of the strongest of his ancestors. He looked at the mutinous rioters with bold, fearless eyes. Presently a soldier caught sight of the younger boy and raised a cry loud above the general din. There is the boy Peter, but where is Ivan? The Tsar! The Tsar! A score of voices took up the cry as all eyes were turned on the landing, and many men started up the stairs. There is Peter, but where is the boy Ivan? came the deafening chorus.
Ivan is here with me. said Peter, his voice clear and high. He tried to pull Ivan nearer to him so that the men might see him. Stand up where they can see you, Ivan, he begged. There is nothing to be afraid of. They only want to see their new Tsar. Trembling with fear, the older boy, who had inherited all the weakness of his race and none of its strength, was finally induced to step close to Peter. So, side by side, their hands clasped, the two looked down on the crowded stairway and faced the mob of soldiers. They made a strange picture, two small boys, standing quite alone, fronting that sea of passionate, angry faces. At sight of Ivan, another cry arose. There's the Tsar! Hail Ivan! Hail the son of the great Alexis!
For a moment the onward rush of the mob was checked, but only for a moment. Three or four soldiers started up the stairs, their lances pointed at Peter, shouting, What shall we do with the son of the false woman, Natalia? They came so close to the boy that their spears almost touched him before they stopped. Had he turned to run, no one can say what might have happened. But he did not run, he did not even draw back, nor show a single sign of fear. I am the son of the Tsar Alexis also, and I am not afraid of any of you. The boy's calm eyes fronted the nearest soldiers steadily. The men heard his words and hesitated. Peter, the son of Alexis, is not afraid of his own father's guards, the boy continued.
That is why I came out here when you called me.
In the hush that had followed his first words, his voice carried clear to all the crowding men. When he finished, there came a silence, and then of a sudden, cheer on cheer rose on the stairs and through the hall. Peter, the son of Alexis. Hail, Peter! Hail the two boy-tzars! The nearest soldiers dropped the points of their spears and joined in the shouting. A flush came into the younger boy's face, and he smiled and squeezed Ivan's hand tighter. He knew that the danger had passed. Slowly the soldiers who had climbed nearest to the boys drew back down the stairs. Swords were returned to scabbards, harsh voices grew quieter, and within a quarter of an hour the red staircase and the great hall were empty of men.
Then the door of the room from which the two boys had come opened, and Natalia and her women stepped out. The Tsarina, a woman of courage herself, took Peter in her arms. "'My brave son,' she murmured, "'thou art worthy of thy father.' I would have stood beside thee, but the people hate me, and it would have been worse for us all. I needed no one, little mother," said Peter. If I am ever to be a ruler, I must not fear to face my own men. Then his face grew more serious. But if I ever am Tsar, they will not break into the Kremlin this way, mother, nor wilt thou need to hide thyself from them. God grant it be so, Peter," answered Natalia. I think they've learned much from thee this very day.
The Strelzi had indeed learned that the boy Peter was no coward, and their dislike changed to affection. But there were others in Moscow who plotted and planned against him, because the family of the late Tsar's first wife were very powerful in Russia, and they hated his second wife Natalia and her son, who had been his father's favorite. Everything that conspirators could do to break the boy's spirit was done. He was time and again placed in peril of his life. He was threatened and tempted and slandered to the people, but all to no avail. His mother did her best to shield him from his enemies, but when she found that her care was not enough, she trusted to his own remarkable judgment and courage.
These never failed either the boy or his mother. As time passed, it grew more and more clear that Peter was as strong as his poor step-brother Ivan was weak, and in order to satisfy the people, the younger boy was made joint-zar with the elder. The real power in Russia, then, however, was the Princess Sophia, Peter's half-sister, and a bitter enemy of both the boy and his mother. She did her best to break her stepbrother's spirit, hoping that he might come to some untimely end, as so many of the royal family had already done. She knew that Ivan was simply a weak tool in her hands, and so bent all her energies to try and ruin the younger Tsar by taking away all restraint from over him, and letting him indulge every pleasure and whim.
He was given a palace of his own in a small village outside Moscow, and Sophia selected fifty boys of his own age to be his playmates. She had his former teachers dismissed and chose such comrades for him as she thought would grow up idle, vicious men. Fortunately, Peter's character was not so easily ruined. His mother and his old teachers had given him the beginning of an education, and instead of falling into Sophia's snares, he immediately started to turn his playmates into scholars. He formed a sort of military school where the boys practiced all the discipline necessary in camp. He himself set to work to learn to use different tools, and in general he studied the trades of his people. He managed to get teachers who could instruct the boy in history and geography, and as a result instead of being good for nothing, the circle of boys in the little palace became unusually energetic and active-minded.
When he finally left the palace, it had become a well-organized military school, and continued to be run as such for a long time afterward. When the Princess Sophia realized that these plans of hers were failing, she decided on a more desperate measure. On the night of August 7, 1689, Peter was suddenly waked in the middle of night by fugitive soldiers coming from the Kremlin, who warned him that Sophia had gathered a band of soldiers to come out to his palace and kill him. The boy, realizing his extreme peril, jumped out of bed and throwing on a few clothes, ran to the stables, where he found his favorite horse and set out with some comrades into the neighboring forest. There they stayed, practically in hiding, until officers came from the palace, bringing him food and clothing, and gradually gathering about him until he had quite a small bodyguard.
By this time he had made up his mind what to do. Feeling sufficiently strong with his friends, he finally set out for a monastery, thinking to find safe refuge there until the storm should pass. Here more friends came to join him, and as the news of Sophia's plot to kill the boy tsar was spread through the country, a new enthusiasm for the youthful Peter sprang up, and the very troops that had formerly sided with the princess now denounced her as a traitor to Russia. Peter wrote to his stepsister asking for explanations about the plot at the Kremlin, but the princess could make no satisfactory reply. The monastery was now crowded with officers of the court who had come to realize that Sophia's power was gone and that the boy Tsar's strength was rising rapidly.
The time had come when he was strong enough to strike. He marched on the Kremlin and captured Sophia and those who had been in the conspiracy with her. Some of the Strelzy guard who had taken part against him were tried and executed, and the Princess Sophia was shut up in a convent for the remainder of her life. Such events did not tend to make the boy a merciful ruler, but surrounded as he was by traitors and spies, he was compelled to rule with an iron hand, if he was to rule at all. From this time dates the beginning of his real influence in Russia. The army had been poorly organized. Now the young king set to work to drill it as effectively as he had drilled his playmates. He learned how cannon were built, and studied the manufacture of all kinds of firearms.
About the same time he became deeply interested in shipbuilding, and determined to build a fleet of war vessels on Lake Plescheyev. He took some young men of his own age with him to the bank of the lake, and there built a one-storied wooden house, a very primitive building, the windows filled with mica instead of glass, and set a double-headed eagle with a gilt wooden crown over the door to show it was the Tsar's residence. Here he worked hard all one winter, he himself taking a hand in all the building that was done, laboring like any carpenter, and enjoying the work far more than the state ceremonies he was obliged to go through with at the Kremlin. But even when he was so far from Moscow and so actively engaged, he sent continual messages to the mother who had so often shielded him from harm.
Once he wrote to her as follows. To my best beloved, and, while bodily life endures, my dearest little mother, the Lady Tsarina and Grand Duchess Natalia Kirilovna. Thy little son, now here at work, Petrushka, asks thy blessing and wishes news of thy health. We, through thy prayers, are all well, and the lake has been cleared of ice to-day, and all the boats except the big ship are finished, only we have to wait for ropes. Therefore I beg thy kindness that these ropes, seven hundred fathoms long, be sent from the artillery department without delay, for our work is waiting for them, and our stay here is so much prolonged.
The Russians of that day knew little about building ships, and so Peter finally went to Amsterdam. Here he dressed like a Dutch sea captain and spent his time with sailors and shipbuilders, and thoroughly enjoyed the difference between this new life and that at home. Many of his native customs he now learned to look upon as uncouth. The Russians had poor taste in dress, the Imperial Guards wore old-fashioned uniforms consisting of a long gown, which made it very difficult for them to move rapidly. Peter saw some French soldiers and at once decided to adopt their smarter and more serviceable style of dress. In the same way, he changed the old Russian military drill to something resembling that of the other European countries.
He had new carriages and furniture and foods imported from France and England, and tried to make Moscow more like a modern city than like the semi-barbarous Asiatic village it had been. The Russian men almost all wore long, flowing beards, and this fashion Peter quickly changed, insisting that the men about him should adopt the fashion of the French court. It is hard to realize how far behind the rest of the countries of Europe the Russia of those days was, yet it is due almost entirely to the young Tsar Peter that this great northern country finally came out from semi-darkness. It must not be supposed that these great changes were at first popular with the court. There were tremendous opposition to almost everything Peter did, but the people gradually realized that he was really working for their benefit, and that he was deeply interested in improving their condition.
Slowly his popularity grew with the middle and lower classes, until finally they spoke of their little tsar, as they called him affectionately, almost as though he were really one of themselves.
Few rulers have had a harder task than did Peter. All during his youth the nobles plotted against him, and as he grew to manhood he escaped assassination again and again by the narrowest of chances, But every time he had to face danger, he grew more self-reliant and more determined, and gradually his grip on the men of both court and army grew so strong that they realized places had changed, and that they were as absolutely his servants as he was their master.
In time Peter became a great king, a fearless, purposeful ruler who knit his people together as no other Tsar had ever been able to do. He led the armies he had himself drilled to many victories. He built a great fleet in the Baltic Sea. He established a new capital near the shores of the Baltic and named it after his own patron saint, St. Petersburg. The history of his life is full of tremendous difficulties and dangers, but he fronted each one as he had fronted the riotous Strelzigards when he was a boy of eleven, and so history has given him the title of most powerful of all Russian Tsars, and has called him Peter the Great.
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5 05 - Frederick the Great The Boy of Potsdam: 1712-1788 22:44
V.
Frederick the Great. The boy of Potsdam. 1712, 1788. A little boy and girl sat playing on a harpsichord in one of the great stiffly-furnished and lofty-ceilinged rooms of the Potsdam Palace outside Berlin. The boy wore his yellow hair in long curls, his eyes were merry and he laughed often, while his sister, who was a little older, seemed quite as happy. The children were practicing for their music lesson, And only too glad to be free of their teachers for a time, because music was dearest to them both. Without a word of warning, the door of the room was thrown open, and a big, heavy-faced man stood on the threshold. What's all this? He cried, his voice snarling with anger, and his small eyes shot with red.
Haven't I given orders that you're never to touch that thing again? At the sound of the man's voice, both children had jumped from their chairs and stood, stiff as ramrods, facing the speaker.
The boy had raised his hand to the side of his head, in salute. Please, sir, said the girl. We're both so very fond of music. Silence! commanded the man, who was no other than their father, Frederick William, King of Prussia. Fritz can speak for himself. He doesn't need a girl to defend him. Wilhelmina has told you, sir, said the boy, how much we both love music. Indeed, I'd rather listen to it than do anything else, and I want to learn how to play it for myself. I don't care anything about being a soldier. The king's face was almost purple with anger. He looked as though he would box the boy's ears on the spot. But he held himself in check. "'You little brat,' he cried. "'A soldier you shall be, and nothing else.' "'Do you think the kingdom of Prussia can be ruled by a crazy fool of a musician?
Don't talk to me of harpsichords, or books, or pictures. You're not to be a woman, but a king.' The boy knew his father too well to attempt any answer. There was no one in Prussia who would dare speak freely before King Frederick William. After scowling at his son in silence for some minutes, the man spoke again. Listen to my orders, and see that you obey them. From today your music-masters are discharged. Every instrument is moved from the palace, and if either of you two is found playing such things, I will have you locked in your rooms for a week. to live on barley and water. Now, sir, step before me to the hairdresser. I'll have those locks of yours shorn so that you'll look less like a girl and more like a grenadier."
Fritz, keeping back the tears in mingled shame and terror, walked to the door and paced down the hall before his father. He tried to hold himself straight like a soldier, but it was hard when he felt as though he were being marched to execution. The king handed the boy over to the hairdresser, and in fifteen minutes the curls were all gone, and Fritz's hair was close-cropped like a man's. As soon as he was free, he ran to his mother's room, and there the gentle queen, Sophia Dorothea, took him in her arms and comforted him. She knew how sensitive her little son was, how absolutely different from his father, and she could sympathize with both the children's suffering, under the king's cruelty.
For once the mother dared to disobey her husband. The next week she told the two children to go to a distant part of the palace grounds where there was a deep wood, and see what they should find there. They obeyed, and ran eagerly down the path to the forest where they had often played under the trees, and in the caves in the rocks. They came to a little greenwood circle completely hidden from the roads. And there found their music master. He led them to a cave and showed them Wilhelmina's little spinet and Fritz's flute lying on it. That was their mother's surprise. She had arranged that the children's music teacher should meet them out there and give them the lessons they wanted. Boy and girl were happy again.
They took up their music eagerly and were soon playing as of old. Perhaps the very secrecy lent the lessons charm. The hours spent in the forest and cave were a great success, but one day Fritz found a small drum at the palace, and forgetting the king's orders, he started to march about the halls, beating it, followed by the admiring Wilhelmina. Suddenly, in the middle of the triumphal procession, the king came upon them. Poor Fritz dropped the drumsticks and stood at attention. While Wilhelmina, behind him, grew white with fear of what should happen.
To their amazement, the king's stern face softened. He smiled. Then he laughed and clapped his hands. Ah, Fritz, now you're a soldier. I mistook you for one of my own guard-boy. The king was delighted. He thought that at last his son was fired with martial fervor. While the boy went back through the halls, beating his drum, Frederick called the Queen to watch their soldier's son, and immediately ordered the court artist to paint a picture of the scene on canvas. A day or two later, he told Fritz of a plan he had in store. He would form a military company of boys of his own age for him, build them an arsenal on the palace ground, and have them drilled by officers of the army. With the King, to speak was to act.
A month had not passed before the small boy, dressed in a general's uniform, found himself in command of about three hundred youths of his own age, all properly equipped with uniforms and arms, and known as Crown Prince Cadets. They made a remarkable contrast to that other regiment, of which King Frederick William was so proud, which was made up of giants, men all over six feet, six inches tall, seized wherever they were found in Prussia. and elsewhere, and forced into his army. The boy general and his cadets were drilled hours at a time, day after day, by the Prussian officers, in the hope of making soldiers of them and nothing else. Fritz hated it. He wanted to read and to learn music, and day by day he found less and less time to steal off to those wonderful meetings in the woods, or to romp with Wilhelmina in the schoolroom.
The French governess who had taught him was taken away, and he was placed under military tutors who made him learn gunnery and battle tactics at the arsenal which his father had built for him on the grounds. When the boy was ten, the king started to take him to all the military reviews. In going from garrison to garrison, the king rode on a hard wagon called a sausage-car, which was simply a padded pole about ten feet long. on which the riders sat astride. Ten or more men would jolt over the roads on such cars with the king's summer and winter, and he made the boy ride in front of him through the broiling sun or the winter snow, waking him whenever he fell asleep by pulling his ear and saying, Too much sleep stupefies a fellow.
In such iron fashion, the father did his best to change the sensitive, gentle nature of his son To something like his own. At the age of ten, Fritz's days were marked out, hour by hour, by Frederick William. Not even Sunday was free. He was marched from teacher to teacher. All sports were denied him, and he was never allowed to read or play. His hair was kept close-cut. His clothes were heavy and coarse. He was treated more like a prisoner than a prince. To the boy's masters, the king gave one direction, teach him to seek all glory in the soldier profession. When his mother or sister dared to interfere, the king would turn on them in a rage. Wilhelmina was sent time and again to her room to be starved until she grew more docile.
The boy's time was divided between Berlin and the Palace of Wursterhausen, a country seat some twenty miles outside the capital. The palace was a very simple dwelling, set in the middle of swampy fields with a fringe of thickets. In the grounds were many natural fish-ponds, and a game of all kinds was plentiful in the woods. The sombre old monarch loved this place, and had built there a fountain with stone steps where he liked to sit in the evening, and smoked his long porcelain pipe. He often had his dinner served by the fountain, and afterward would throw himself down on the grass for a nap. Aside from this simple entertainment, the king's only pleasure lay in hunting in the woods. The children and their mother found Worcesterhausen very unattractive.
The only pets they were allowed were two black bears, very ugly and vicious. They had no comforts indoors, and were treated as though they were children of the meanest peasant. Some boys might have found sport in the fish-ponds, the groves, and the streams about the place, filled as they were with fish and game, but Fritz cared nothing for such things. Their loneliness drew the two children closer and closer together, and their dislike of their father increased with each year that he took them out to Wusterhausen. The father, on his part, was growing more and more contemptuous of his son. He found Fritz cared nothing for the army, nothing for the chase, that the hardship and exposure of rough life were torture to him.
Worse than that, he had discovered some verses in French that Fritz had written, and spoke of them scornfully to the men of his court as the French flute-player and poet. It would have been very hard for the boy if he had not had a mother and sister who were so devoted to him, and did everything they possibly could to protect him from his father's tyranny. When he was fourteen, Frederick William appointed Fritz captain of his grenadier guards. This was the regiment made up of giants, and was one of the most singular passions of the very singular old king. He sent men through the whole of Europe and Asia to search for very tall men. Some of the regiment were almost nine feet high. When a foreign monarch wished to carry favor with the king of Prussia, he would send him a giant.
The king showered favors on these men. He had court painters paint portraits of each one of them. They were the very center of that great army which was the sole pride of the old warrior, and which he was building up so that it should become the greatest military force in Europe. Fritz tried to do his duty as captain of the regiment, and gradually acquired something of a military bearing. For a short time his father was pleased, but his pleasure did not last long, for the boy could not keep away from the fascinations of music and of books, and all of the various arts which were constantly coming into Prussia from France. The flute was Fritz's favorite instrument, And it so happened that a very celebrated teacher of the flute came from Dresden about this time, and gave lessons in the Prussian capital.
As soon as Fritz learned that this man was a splendid teacher, he arranged to have him come secretly to his room at Potsdam. The boy's mother knew of this plan, and did her best to keep his secret. But it was a very dangerous matter, for the old king was growing more and more suspicious, and also more and more fierce. A friend of Fritz's, who was about his own age, stood guard outside the boy's room, while he was having his lesson on the flute, and another guard was stationed at the entrance to the palace grounds, with orders to send word at once if the king should appear. When Fritz was satisfied of his safety, he would go up to his own room, Throw aside the tight, heavy military coat which he hated, and put on a flowing French dressing-gown, scarlet-coloured and embroidered with gold.
Then, dressed to suit himself, he would take his music-lesson and enjoy every minute of the stolen pleasure. One day, however, in the middle of his playing, the friend at the door rushed into the room announcing that the king was coming. This boy and the teacher seized the flutes and music-books and ran into a wood-closet, where they stood shaking with fear. Fritz threw off his dressing-gown, pulled on his military coat, and sat down at a table, opening a book. Now the old king, his brows bent with anger, burst into the room. The sight of his delicate son reading seemed like fuel to his rage. He never minced his words, and proceeded to heap abuse on the head of the poor prince. When all of a sudden he caught sight of the end of the scarlet gown sticking out from behind a screen.
What is that? he cried, and stepping across the room pulled the gown out. Beside himself with rage, he crammed it into the fireplace, and threw after it many of the ornaments the boy had used to decorate his room. Then he walked to the bookshelves and swept all the volumes on the floor, saying that he would have a bookseller by the library next day because his son was to be a soldier and not a scholar. For an hour he stayed there, pacing up and down the room, lecturing Fritz until the boy was almost sick with shame. Finally he left, and the two in the wood closet were able to come out, both of them almost as badly frightened as the prince himself. But if the king treated his son so badly, he treated his daughter Wilhelmina nonetheless so.
He could hardly stand the sight of her at times, and her mother had to arrange a series of screens in her room so that when Frederick William came to see her, the daughter could escape behind them. After such scenes, Fritz and Wilhelmina would try to comfort each other, but the boy was gradually growing more sullen and rebellious. Again and again the boy thought of escape. He would have been only too glad to give up his position as prince in exchange for a chance to live simply in some foreign land, free to follow his own tastes as other boys did theirs. He would have made the attempt, but he knew only too well that should he escape, his father's hand would fall in terrible wrath on his dear sister Wilhelmina.
He decided to stay and bear the burdens of this life the king had planned for him, rather than desert his mother and sister. He was not a coward, even if he was not made of iron. At last the boy felt that he must act in self-defense. His father, suffering from the gout, took to flogging Fritz in the very presence of the lords and ladies of the court. The boy had pride, though his father had done his best to kill it. Once, after striking blows at Fritz's head before the assembled court, the king cried, "'Had I been so treated by my father, I would have blown my brains out. But this fellow has no honor. He takes all that comes.' Fritz could stand such treatment no longer. Praying that Wilhelmina might not suffer, he planned an escape with a friend.
His father was taking him on a journey to the Rhine in the company of a small guard of soldiers, who were told to treat the boy like a prisoner. Three officers were ordered to ride in the same carriage with Fritz, and never to leave him alone. The king was a hard traveler, and seemed positively to wish for extra hardships and fatigues, the party scarcely stopping for food or sleep. At one place, however, a short stay was made, and there Fritz planned to escape. They had arrived at the town very late, and the boy with his officers slept in a barn, as was not infrequently the case. The usual hour for starting in the morning was three o'clock. A little after midnight, Fritz saw that his companions were sound asleep, and rose and crept out into the open air.
He had made arrangements with a servant to meet him with horses on the village green. The boy reached the green and found the horses, but at the same moment one of the guards, who had been awakened by the noise Fritz made in leaving the barn, caught up with him and demanded of the servant who held the horses, "'Sirrah, what are you doing with those beasts?' The man answered, "'I am getting the horses ready for the start.' "'We do not start till five o'clock. Take them back at once to the stable.' The officer pretended not to see Fritz, who had to slink back at his heels to the barn. Fully conscious that his chance to escape was gone. News of this attempt reached the king, and the next day, when he met his son, he said sarcastically, "'Ah, you are still here, then.
I thought that by this time you would have been in Paris.' All the boy's spirit had not been crushed out of him, and he dared to answer, I certainly would have been there now, had I really wished it. Again he tried to escape, and again he was caught, and this time he was brought directly to the king. The father stared at his son as though he were some wild beast, and then said angrily, Why did you attempt a desert? I wanted to escape because you never treat me like your son, but like some common slave. "'You're a cowardly deserter,' said the king, without any feelings of honour.' "'I have as much honour as you have,' answered Fritz, "'and I've done only what I've heard you say you would have done if you had been treated as I have.' The king, maddened beyond description, drew his sword, and would have struck the boy had not a general in attendance thrown himself between them, saying, "'Sire, you may kill me, but spare your son.' The boy was taken out of the room.
and locked in prison, where he was guarded by two sentries with fixed bayonets. The king proclaimed him a deserter from the army, and ordered him tried for that crime. It is small wonder that Fritz declared he would have been glad to exchange his place for that of the poorest serf in Prussia. Fritz was placed in a strongly barred room like a dungeon, with no furniture in it, and lighted by a single slit in the wall so high that the boy could not look out of it. The coarsest brown clothes were given him to wear. He was allowed only one or two books. His food was bought at a nearby butcher shop, and was cut for him, for he was not allowed a knife. The door of his prison was opened three times a day for ventilation, and he was provided with a single tallow candle, which had to be put out by seven o'clock in the evening.
This was the way the Crown Prince of Prussia lived when he was nineteen years old, and if the father did not actually succeed in breaking all the boy's spirit, he was at least changing this lovable, gentle-natured youth into a stern and gloomy young man. Eventually the boy was released from his prison, but as long as his father lived he was treated with all the harshness the king's mind could devise. His sister Wilhelmina was kept away from him, and finally married to a man for whom she cared little. Fritz was cut off from all interest save that of the army, but gradually he began to acquire something of his father's interest in creating a splendid fighting machine. In time he became king of Prussia himself, free at last to do as he would.
He sought out men of genius, musicians, poets, and thinkers. He offered Voltaire, the great Frenchman, a home with him, and his happiest hours were spent in his company, or listening to music, or playing the flute he had loved as a boy. But that was only one side of him, and the side which was least seen. On the world's side, he was the grasping ruler, the great general who forced war on all his neighbors, and who came to be known as the conqueror of Europe. The boy, Fritz of Prussia, might have become one of Europe's greatest sovereigns, for he was naturally endowed with a love of all the finer things of life. Instead, he became a despot, who plunged Europe for years into the horrors of useless war.
For this misfortune, his father was responsible. The loving mother and sister could not counterbalance the terrible severity of the cruel king. Gradually, Fritz changed from the sunny lad who had played in the gardens of Potsdam with Wilhelmina to a severe and arbitrary monarch. His father had taught him that a country's greatness depended on its soldiers, so Fritz made pressure an army and compelled the world to admit the might of his troops. To Europe he was the ambitious tyrant, Frederick the Great. It was only to Wilhelmina and a few friends that he showed a little of that softer nature, which had been his as the boy of Potsdam. At the Charlottenburg Palace hangs a famous portrait of him playing upon the drum.
It was a long step from that boy to the man Frederick the Great.
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6 06 - George Washington The Boy of the Old Dominion: 1732-1799 20:58
Holland. George Washington, The Boy of the Old Dominion, 1732-1799. A few miles below Mount Vernon, on the Potomac River, was the beautiful estate of Bellevoir, belonging to an English gentleman of rank named Lord Fairfax. The broad Potomac wound about the base of the lawn that sloped gently downward from the old colonial mansion, which sat upon a height looking out across the exquisite Virginia country. The Potomac was not a busy river then, and the only trade that came up it was such as was needed to supply the rich planters on the shores with food and clothing. From the porch of Bellevoir, one might see an occasional sailing vessel dropping up with the tide, lately come from England to make a tour of the seaboard states, and to take home cotton and tobacco in exchange for the silks and satins brought out to the colonies.
A great man in both England and America was Lord Fairfax. He owned many estates in both countries. But his favorite was this of Belvoir, not only because of its great natural beauty, but because he liked the company of the Virginia planters, who joined a certain frankness and simplicity of life with all the charms of European refinement. Lord Fairfax kept up all the old English customs in his Potomac home. He had a passion for horses and for hunting, and his pack of foxhounds was the best in the colony. Sometimes he had the company of men of his own age to hunt with him, but he was always sure that he could count upon the fellowship of a certain boy, the son of a neighbor named Washington. Whenever the hunting season arrived, Lord Fairfax sent word to Mrs.
Washington that he would be glad of the company of her eldest son, George, and a day or two later the boy would appear at Bellevoir, keying to Mount Horse, and be off for the chase. On one such winter day, Lord Fairfax and his friend George were hunting alone. They had had a good run and caught their fox, and were returning home in a leisurely fashion across the rolling country south of the hills. They were a curious couple. The Englishman was nearly sixty years old, more than six feet tall, very gaunt and big-boned, with gray eyes overhung by bushy brows, sharp features, and keen aquiline nose. He had been a great beau in his youthful days in London, and there was no mistaking the mark of authority that sat upon him.
The boy who rode by his side was not yet sixteen years old, and yet he scarcely seemed a boy, nor would his manner have led one to treat him as such. He was unusually tall and strong for his years, and he had so trained himself in a strict code of conduct that a singular gravity in decision marked his bearing. This might have had much to do with the bond of affection between the man and the youth. Lord Fairfax was not ashamed to listen seriously to the opinions of young George Washington, and he had learnt those opinions were not apt to be trivial, but the result of deep observation and thought. As they rode home, the man asked the boy what he was planning to do. He knew that Mrs. Washington was poor and that her son would have to make his own way in the world.
"'What should you like to be, George?' he inquired. "'I dare say you've had enough schooling by this time.' "'The sea was my first choice, sir,' was the answer. "'My brother Lawrence got me a commission in the Navy. But at the last minute, Mother asked me not to leave her. She's had hard times bringing us all up, and I felt as the eldest that I ought to stay home. So I gave up my commission.' "'That was hard,' said Lord Fairfax. "'And yet I think you did well. There should be openings for a young man in the colonies.'" "'It seems to me I heard that you were very fond of the surveyor's work.' The boy looked up quickly, and his bright eyes flashed. "'So I am, sir. I've made surveys of all the fields near school, and I've got the figures in my books at home.
I should like very much to be a real surveyor.' "'Well, George,' said Lord Fairfax, "'perhaps I can help you then. I've bought lands out west, the other side the Appalachians. It's a big tract I own.' But I know little about it, and I'm told that men are settling out there and taking it up themselves. I should like to have it surveyed, and I think you're just the one to do it." "'I should like it above all things,' said the boy, "'if you think you can trust me to do the work properly.'" Lord Fairfax smiled slightly as he looked down at his companion. He was apt to be somewhat amused at Washington's serious modesty. "'I'll show you the plans after dinner. I almost wish I could go out there with you.'" They were now nearing Belvoir, and the man put spurs to his horse and dashed across the intervening fields.
The boy followed close behind, sitting his horse to perfection. Just before they reached Belvoir, they came to a high hedge. Lord Fairfax put his horse at it and went flying over. A second later, George had followed him. There was no feat of horsemanship, to which he was not equal. A little later, dinner was served in the big dining room at Belvoir. Lord Fairfax had his brother's family living with him and with one or two friends who were apt to be staying at the house as they made quite a large party. The long polished mahogany table gleamed with silver and glass. Candles on it and in sconces about the white paneled walls shed a pleasant luster over the dinner party. It was a time when men and women paid great attention to dress.
The ladies wore light flowered gowns and the men brilliant coats and knee breeches. With lace stocks and white-powdered hair, their manners were of the courts of Europe, polished in the extreme, and they had all been trained to make an art of conversation. Negro servants waited on the table, and the noble lord presided at its head with something of the majesty of a medieval baron in his castle. There were young people present, and George sat with them, paying gallant speeches to the girls and telling stories of sport to the boys. He was a popular youth. Having a singularly gentle manner, which made him a great favorite with those of his own age. After dinner, Lord Fairfax took George to his study and spread out the plans of his western estate.
He told the boy just where to go and what to do, and George made notes in a small pocketbook, asking questions now and then which showed a remarkable knowledge of the surveyor's work. When can you start? Lord Fairfax asked, as he finished with the plans. "'At once,' said the boy, "'if Mother can spare me, and I think she can.' "'Good. I'd like another hunt with you before you go. But when there's work afoot, a man shouldn't tarry. The sooner you start, the better.' A little later, George was sleeping soundly in the guest room above stairs, dreaming of the adventures he hoped soon to have. On a March day in 1748, Washington set out with young George Fairfax, a nephew of the English Lord, to make the surveying expedition.
Their road led by Ashley's Gap, a deep pass through the Blue Ridge, that picturesque line of mountains which had so far marked the boundary of civilized Virginia. When they reached the pass, they found at its base a rapidly rising river. The melting snow, which still lingered on the hilltops, had swollen the stream and in places had made the road almost impassable. The two horsemen, by searching for fords, managed to make their way through the pass. And came out into the wide, smiling valley of Virginia, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghenies. Here flowed that picturesque river called by the Indian name of Shenandoah, which means the Daughter of the Stars. The first stop the travelers made was at a rough lodge house where one of Lord Fairfax's bailiffs lived.
And here the actual work of surveying began. Spring was rapidly coming, and young George Washington was by no means blind to the beauties of the country in that season. He tried, however, to look about him with a practical eye. He studied the valley for building sites. He examined the soil. He made carefully measured maps and drawings after using his surveyor's rod and chain. When he had learned all that he wanted of this locality, he followed the valley down toward the Potomac. He and Fairfax camping out at nights under the trees, sleeping beside a watch fire, and keeping ever on the alert for attack by Indians or wild animals. When they had reached the river, they found it so swollen with spring floods that there seemed no way of crossing it.
Finally, however, they met an Indian with a birchbark canoe and bargained with him to take them across. In this way, swimming their horses, they reached the Maryland side and set out again westward. Shortly after they had left the river, they came to a planter's house where they stayed overnight. The next day they were surprised by the arrival of a war party of thirty Indians. The planter knew how to treat the Indians and soon made friends with them by offering them whiskey. George had seen little of the Red Men and begged them to hold a war dance. The White Men and the Red went out into a meadow and there built a fire, round which the Braves took their seats. The chief made a speech telling of the tribe's deeds of valor and calling on the warriors to win new triumphs.
Gradually, one by one, the reclining members of the band rose and circled about the fire in a slow, swinging step. Two Indians at a little distance beat upon a rough drum made of wood covered with deerskin and half filled with water. As the chief's voice rose higher and higher, and the music grew louder and louder, more and more men joined the dance until finally all the tribe was dancing about the fire, and their pace grew ever faster. Now from time to time, one would leap in the air uttering savage cries and yells, then another, and finally all seemed absolutely lost in a sort of demon's frenzy. Suddenly, at a sharp command from the chief, the dance and the music ceased, and the warriors came up to their white friends smiling and asking for more whiskey.
The scene made a deep impression on George Washington. So far, he had lived only among white people and knew little of the Indians in his native haunts. But from the date of this war dance, he began to study the Red Man's character, and before long, he had become an expert in the art of dealing with these people. For a month, George and young Fairfax traveled through the land that belonged to the latter's uncle, and at the end of that time, the boy had made practically a complete survey of the region. By the middle of April, he was back at Belvoir. His plans were examined and approved, and he was well paid for his services. So pleased was the Englishman with George's work that he used his efforts to get him the appointment of public surveyor.
The position pleased the boy, who at once started to make maps of the whole region lying along the Potomac. He divided his time between his mother's simple house, the big house which his older half-brother Lawrence had built at Mount Vernon, and Lord Fairfax's seat at Belvoir. The strongest friendship had grown up between the nobleman and the boy. And George unquestionably profited greatly by his talks with this man, who was very fond of literature and art, and who had known the most distinguished men and women of Europe. Belvoir had a fine library, and George spent much of his spare time there reading with special eagerness the history of England and Addison's essays in The Spectator. His only schooling had been that which he had gained at a very primitive log schoolhouse, where an old man, originally a bondsman, George, however, was not the boy to be content with such a simple education, and he had made up his mind that if he could not go to William and Mary College, he would at least learn all he could from Lord Fairfax's well-stocked library.
Young Washington's work as a surveyor was shortly cut in upon by the outbreak of trouble with France. In looking over the youths of the neighborhood who were likely to make good soldiers, Attention was almost at once attracted to him. Everybody knew he had a great sense of responsibility, and his feats as an athlete were equally well known. As a small boy, he had been unusually big and strong for his age, and had always delighted in any kind of contest of strength. He could outrun, outride, and outbox any boy of either side of the Potomac, and had proved it in many contests of skill. When he was at hobby school, He had liked to form his mates into companies at recess time, with cane stocks for rifles and dried gourds for drums, and drill them in the manual of arms.
They had fought mimic battles, and Washington always commanded one side. He had really learned a good deal of the art of war in this way, and so, when men were casting about for likely young officers, they naturally thought of the boy surveyor. His brother Lawrence had sufficient influence to procure him an appointment as District Adigent General, and had him make his headquarters at Mount Vernon, where he immediately began to drill the raw recruits of the countryside. But in the midst of these military operations, Lawrence fell ill and had to make a sea voyage to the West Indies, taking his young brother George with him as company. In the West Indies, George caught smallpox. But he made a quick recovery, and after a short convalescence began to enjoy the tropical life which was so entirely new to him.
Unfortunately, Lawrence Washington did not grow stronger and finally came back to Mount Vernon to die under his own roof. He was very young, very high-spirited, and accomplished, and immensely popular with all Virginians. George had looked up to him as to a second father, and his loss was a tremendous blow to him. Lawrence, for his part, must have realized the very unusual qualities of character in his young half-brother. He left his great estate of Mount Vernon together with other property to his wife and daughter, and in case they should die, then to his mother and his brother George. George was asked to take charge of the estates, and although he was still only a boy in years, he showed such splendid ability and judgment in business matters that the whole care of the family interests soon fell upon his shoulders.
We have already seen how deeply this boy impressed older men with his rare judgment, and it is scarcely strange to find that he was soon after picked out by the governor of Virginia to command an expedition sent through the wilderness to treat with the Indian and French. This required physical strength and firm purpose, the courage to deal with the Indians, and shrewdness to treat with the French. Washington was known to have all these qualities. His youth was the only thing against him. And that the governor was glad to overlook. It was a rough and perilous expedition made partly in frail canoes down the great rivers and partly by fighting away through the unbroken woods. Washington met the Indians whom the French had tried hard to win over to their side, and by the most skillful diplomacy induced the chiefs to send back the wampums, which the French had given them as tokens of alliance.
He had studied the Indian character. He was frank and outspoken with them, and as a result won their confidence, so that for a great part of his journey, chiefs of the Delawares, the Shawnees, and other tribes traveled with him. He picked out the place where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet as an admirable site for a fort and made a report of its advantages from a military point of view. Only a year or two later, French engineers proved the correctness of his judgment by settling on the spot as the site of Fort DeCaine, which is now Pittsburgh. Successful as he had been with the Indians, Washington was scarcely less successful with the civilized French commander. This man, like those at Balvoie, recognized at once the self-command, the extreme intelligence, and the modesty of the youth who appeared before him.
The old officer and the young pioneer met as equals and fought diplomatically across the table as to which nation should win the alliance of the Red Men. The negotiations were extremely difficult, enough to try the skill of a man grown old in diplomatic service. But Washington completed his mission successfully, and at last set out to retrace his steps home. Now they had much more difficulty with the Indians and with the elements. Some of their guides turned traitors. And they had to watch their arms by night and day. Ceaseless vigilance had to be used, and time and again, the little band had to make forced marches and change their course on the spur of the moment to throw off bands of pursuing savages.
When they reached the banks of the Allegheny River, they found that it was only partly frozen over, and that great quantities of broken ice were driving down the channel in the middle. Washington knew that a band of hostile Indians was at his heels. And he had to plan some way of crossing the Allegheny. He decided to build a raft, but had only one poor hatchet with which to construct it. The men set to work with this and labored all day, but night came before the raft was finished. As soon as they could, they launched it and tried to steer it across with long poles. When they reached the main channel, the raft became jammed between great cakes of ice, and it seemed as if they would all be swept downstream with it.
Washington planted his pole against the bottom of the stream and pushed with all his might in hopes of holding the raft still until the ice should have gone by. Instead, the current drove the ice against his pole with such force that he was jerked into the water and only saved himself from being swept down the roaring channel by seizing one of the logs. They found it impossible to reach shore. The best they could do was to get to an island near which the raft had drifted. Here they passed the night, exposed to extreme cold and great danger of freezing. But in the morning, the drift ice was found so tightly wedged together that they were able to cross over on it to the opposite bank of the Allegheny.
This was but one of many adventures that befell the little party on its homeward way. Through all kinds of dangers, Washington led his men, and finally he had the satisfaction of bringing the expedition safely back to Williamsburg. where he gave the governor a full report of his remarkable mission. It was practically the first expedition of its kind in Virginia history, and the story of it soon spread far and wide through the Old Dominion. Everywhere men spoke of the remarkable skill the young man had shown in dealing with fickle Indians and crafty French. Report was made of the trained eye with which the young commander had noticed the military qualities of the country. And of the courage he had shown in all sorts of perils.
More than that, the governor of Virginia and other men in power realized that Washington had prudence, good judgment, and resolution to a remarkable degree, and told each other that here was a man worthy to uphold the interests of the colony. From the date of this trip, George Washington became a prominent figure. It was not long before he was to be the mainstay of Virginia. Everyone knows the story of Washington's life. From being the mainstay of Virginia and fighting with General Braddock against the French and Indians, he became the mainstay of the United Colonies and fought through seven long and trying years against the veterans of England. Who can overestimate the great patience and courage and determination that heroic struggle required of him?
We see him taking command of the raw recruits at Cambridge, leading his men in victory at Trenton. Sustaining them in defeat at Monmouth, cheering them through the desperate winter at Valley Forge. Later, we see him as first President of the United States, guiding the new Republic through its first troubled years, and later still as the simple gentleman of Mount Vernon, glad to escape to the peace of the river and fields he loved. There are few figures in history quite so self-reliant as that of this father of his country. The qualities which made him so remarkable a boy. were the same as those which made him so great a man. End of George Washington, The Boy of the Old Dominion, 1732-1799
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7 07 - Daniel Boone The Boy of the Frontier: 1735-1820 19:41
Holland. Chapter Seven. Daniel Boone. The Boy of the Frontier, 1735-1820. Many people were riding to the big red barn that belonged to a Pennsylvania farmer who lived on the outskirts of the little town of Olay in Berks County. It was a Sunday morning early in the summer of 1742, and people from all over the neighborhood were heading for that barn. Almost all of them came on horseback, sometimes man and wife riding separate steeds, sometimes the woman seated behind the man, her hands grasping his coat. A few families—father, mother, and a flock of children—covered the road on foot, the father with a gun usually strapped across his back. A very few people drove up in primitive carriages, something like old-fashioned English chaises.
Those who drove were very proud, because such elegant carriages were rarely seen outside of Philadelphia, and betokened much social prominence. The big doors of the red barn stood wide open. And as soon as the horses were properly tethered, the country people streamed inside. Most primitive benches had been placed in rows facing a broad platform at the farther end, and men, women, and children filed into the seats with all the solemnity of people entering church. As soon as they had settled themselves on the benches, they all stared at the platform. Five swarthy, red-skinned Indians stood on the raised place, And a little in front of them stood a tall, strong-featured white man. The Indians wore their native buckskin clothes and had chains of bright beads about their necks, but their faces were as quiet and peaceful as that of the white man in front of them.
One of them, he who looked the youngest, wore a single brilliant red feather in his long black hair. All the men stood there patiently until the barn was filled. Down in front, close to the platform, sat a small boy, his eyes fixed on the young Indian, who wore the scarlet feather. The boy was about eight years old. His hair was dark and rather long. His blue eyes looked from under light yellowish eyebrows. His mouth was very wide, but his lips were thin and straight. He looked alert and interested. Presently, the white man on the platform, who was a widely-known Moravian missionary, named Count Zinzendorf raised his voice in prayer. The farmers, their wives and children, knelt on the floor of the barn, and when the prayer was ended, the Count stated that at this meeting, or synod, as he called it, they were to hear from five Delaware Indians, lately converted to Christianity.
One after the other, the red man stepped forward and spoke, slowly, and sometimes hesitating over long English words. But with a fine earnestness that was accented by their strong dignified bearing and their firm, well-cut features. The boy in front listened attentively, although he could not understand everything they said. He liked Indians, and as long as he had to go to church, he was glad he could look at these Delawares. The Synod came to an end, and the congregation filed slowly out of the barn. Those who had ridden mounted again and went their homeward way at the slow and decorous pace suitable to Sunday. Squire Boone, who had been sitting on the front bench with his wife, Sarah, and nine of his eleven children, gathered the latter together and guided them, much like a flock of sheep, to his log cabin home near Ole.
One of them, the fourth boy, Daniel by name, had lingered behind. He had waited until the five Delawares were leaving, and then had gone up to the youngest of the Indians and touched his hand. The Indian looked down at the small boy and smiled. "'How?' he said encouragingly. "'Is the feather in your hair a flamingo feather?' asked the boy. The Delaware nodded. "'Yes, him flamingo.' "'How did you win it?' the young man smiled again. Once the Delawares must have rescued from Hurons. The Chief sent me with others to take word. We must go through Iroquois country to get Hurons. Iroquois, bad people, war with us. While the Delawares killed, I take word in safe. Hurons go back with me and help my people.
Chief, give me flamingo feather." Admiration shone in the boy's eyes. I like the Delawares, said he. "'Delawares like you people,' replied the Indian. "'What you name?' "'Daniel Boone. Some day, when I grow up, I'll come and visit you.' "'Good,' said the other. He held out his hand as he was used to seeing white men do. The boy put his palm in the Indian's, and they shook hands. Then Daniel turned and scampered down the road after his father. The boys of the Boone family had a very good time. They lived on what was then the frontier between civilization and the wilderness. They learned to hunt and fish, and to know the habits of the animals of the woods and fields. Moreover, they were almost as used to seeing Indians as to seeing white people, and had none of the fear of them which kept so many of the settlers farther east continually uneasy.
The boys and girls had plenty of work to do. Squire Boone had a big farm. and kept five or six looms working in his house, making homespun clothes for his large family and to sell to his neighbors. He owned a splendid grazing range some little distance north of his home, and sent his cattle there early each spring. Shortly after that Sunday of Count Zinzendorf's missionary meeting, Daniel's mother told him, That he and she were to take the cattle north to this range and watch them during the summer. Squire Boone was needed at the farm, and the older girls were to tend the loom, and the mother had chosen her favorite son to go north with her. At the beginning of summer they drove the cows to the range and stayed there with them until autumn.
Mrs. Boone and Daniel lived in a small cabin far from any neighbors. Near the cabin over a spring was a dairy house. The sturdy woman worked here, making fine butter and cheese, while Daniel kept guard over the cattle, letting them wander over the hills and through the woods as they would, but driving them back to their pen near the cabin at sunset. This duty of herdsman left Daniel much time to himself. He spent this time in studying woodcraft. He grew passionately fond of everything belonging to the wilderness. He knew birds and beasts, the trails through the forest and the course of streams as well as any Indian. He set traps of his own making, and brought his captures proudly home at night to his mother.
At first he had to make his own weapons, and invented a curious implement, simply a slim, smooth-shaved sapling with a bunch of twisted roots at the end. This he learned to throw so skillfully that he could readily kill birds, rabbits, and small game with it. A little later, however, his father gave him a rifle, and he became an expert marksman, able to provide his mother with plenty of game for food. It was a wonderful life for a boy who loved the country. All summer he herded the cattle and roamed through the almost untrodden wilderness. In the winter, His father let him hunt as soon as he had learned to handle a gun. Daniel roamed far and wide across the Never Sink mountain range to the north and west of Monocacy Valley.
He kept his family supplied with great stock of game, and he cured the animals' skins. When he had a sufficient store of skins, he set out to market them in Philadelphia. The city William Penn had founded on the banks of the Delaware was then a small but prosperous village. It had been designed on the plan of a checkerboard, and most of the houses were surrounded by well-kept gardens and flourishing orchards. Primitive as it was, the country boy looked at it with wondering admiration. The houses, which were really very simple, were palaces to him when he thought of his father's log cabin. The men and women, dressed in the latest importations brought from London by sailing vessels, were figures of surpassing style and elegance.
Life in Philadelphia seemed very rich to Daniel Boone. He liked to loiter along the streets and look in at the wide gardens and the comfortable white porches, and he liked to stop and watch a city chaise drive by, with a man in claret or plum-colored suit and a woman in a bright taffeta gown. They were almost a different race from the buckskin-clad people of the wilderness from whom he came. And yet the frontier was, in fact, very near to Philadelphia. A few outlying fields about the town alone separated it from the wild forest. Guards were ever ready to give warning of danger from Indians on the warpath. And friendly Indians were constantly met with on the streets. There were many fur traders, too, who brought their goods to market, as Daniel did, and one was constantly meeting some rough-clad trapper in from the wilds for a few days of city life.
Daniel wandered about slowly, enjoying everything he saw with a boy's delight in the unusual, and finally exchanging the skins he had brought with him for things he needed in his hunting—long, sharp-edged knives, flints, Powder and lead for his gun. When Daniel was fourteen, his older brother married a young Quakeress who had received a better education than any of her neighbors. She liked Daniel, and began to teach him to read and to figure. He was not a brilliant scholar, but he learned enough to do rough surveying work, and to write letters which expressed what he meant, although spelled on a plan of his own. At about the same time, Squire Boone started a blacksmith shop, and Daniel added this work to what he already did as herdsman and hunter.
The work in iron gave him a chance to plan and carry out new ideas of his in regard to guns and traps. The Pennsylvania country was gradually filling up, and in 1750, when Daniel was fifteen, Squire Boone began to wonder where his eleven children would find farming land. Directly westward rose the Allegheny Mountains, a high barrier to pioneers, and reports said that the Indians who lived just beyond them were particularly fierce. Southwest, however, lay alluring valleys, broad meadows between the Appalachian ranges that stretch from Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas into far-off Georgia. Men who wanted new and bigger lands went south into the Blue Ridge Country, And some near neighbors of the Boones had pushed on to the Adkin Valley, which lay in northwestern North Carolina.
Reports came back of the splendid lands they found there. Squire Boone was by nature a pioneer, a man who loved to explore new lands and build new settlements, and so he decided to venture into this new and promising country. There is a world of romance in such a journey as this the Boones now undertook. And they were but one of many thousand families who were pushing west and south, laying the foundations of a great land. Mrs. Boone and the younger children were safely stowed away in canvas-covered wagons such as were later known as prairie schooners. And Squire Boone, with Daniel and the older boys, rode horseback, driving the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan.
They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry, and went on up the rich Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring, and the wagons drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A campfire was built, and the game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding against attack from Indians. Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers. A vast tract of the fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the wilderness. They had only to choose and take, but the zeal for exploration led them on over the table land of western Virginia, through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.
As they neared the Yadkin, they came to a splendid stretch of land, a high prairie with fine grass for cattle, and near-at-hand streams edged with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid prairie, He thought more of those distant, blue-topped heights than of the nearby meadows. He knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown country, and already he felt its call to him to be explored. Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick, near the Yadkin River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities.
Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four or five deer in a day. It was, in truth, a hunter's paradise. In a single day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called bear bacon. There were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats. Turkeys, beavers, otters, and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods. But life was not all sport for the young boons. Various Indian tribes—the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnees—hunted not far away, and although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint and descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.
As the French came down from the north disputing this new land with the English settlers, They made the Indians their allies, and the border warfare grew more bitter. Finally, the English General Braddock decided to march west himself and try to teach the French and Indians a lesson. It was not likely that such a sturdy youth as Daniel Boone could resist the desire to march against the French. The expedition promised him a chance to push farther into the wild western country, if nothing else, and so he joined Braddock's small army with about a hundred other North Carolina frontiersmen. Daniel was made chief wagoner and blacksmith. General Braddock knew nothing of Indian warfare, and the little expedition proved an easy target for their enemies.
The cumbersome and heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English regulars, the frontiersmen and the baggage train, were caught in the deep ravine of Turtle Creek a few miles away from Pittsburgh, and suddenly set upon by ambushed Indians commanded by French officers. Many of the drivers caught in the trap were killed. Daniel, however, contrived to cut the traces of his team, and mounting one of the horses, escaped down and out of the ravine under the fire of shot and arrows. The Indians pursued the fugitives, laying waste the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin. Daniel reached home and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties of friendship with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and the Cherokees.
With their aid, he was able to provide sufficient safeguard against the northern tribes. While he was with Braddock's army, Daniel had met a man named John Finlay, who fired his imagination with stories of his wanderings in the West. He was a fur trader, and his passion for hunting had already led him into the Kentucky wilderness as far as the falls of the Ohio River, where Louisville now stands. He had had countless adventures with Indians, with wild animals, and with the perils of stream and forest. Young Boone drank in the stories eagerly. And resolved that some day he would himself go out to explore the West. Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the westward-moving Shawnees was clear in his ears.
Dangerous days of Indian fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky. At times he fought for his life with roving Indians, and at times he captained some small English garrison beset by the same red men. He won great renown as an Indian fighter, as a hunter, and as an intrepid explorer. The little town of Boonesborough was named for him, and he defended it through a long and perilous siege. But so soon as men came and built homes and staked out farms, Boone must be moving west. What he sought was the wilderness. He was happiest in the great recesses of the woods, or blazing his own trail across untrodden prairies.
He led the vanguard into North Carolina, into West Virginia, into Kentucky, and then into Missouri. He is a splendid example of the man who must go first to prepare the way for others, in every way the best type of those brave, hardy pioneers who were claiming the continent for English-speaking people. The things he had most desired as a boy, he most desired in manhood. The rough life of a new country, and the struggle to overcome the perils of the wild.
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8 08 - John Paul Jones The Boy of the Atlantic: 1747-1792 16:34
Holland. Chapter Eight. John Paul Jones, The Boy of the Atlantic, 1747-1792. The summer afternoon was fair, and the waves that rolled upon the north shore of Solway Firth, in the western lowlands of Scotland, were calm and even. But the tide was coming in, and inch by inch was covering the causeway that led from shore to a high rock some hundred yards away. The rock was bare of vegetation, and sheer on the landward side, but on the face toward the sea were rough jutting points that would give a climber certain footholds, and near the top, smooth ledges. On one or two of these ledges, sea-gulls had built their nests, tucked in under projecting points where they would be sheltered from wind and rain.
Now the gulls would sweep in from sea, curving in great circles until they reached their homes. and then would sit on the ledge, calling to their mates across the water. Except for the cries of the gulls, however, the rock was very quiet. The lazy, regular beat of the waves about its base was very soothing. On the longest ledge, below the sea-gulls' nests, lay a boy about twelve years old, sound asleep, his face turned toward the ocean. Either the gulls' cries or the sun, now slanting in the west, disturbed him. He did not open his eyes, but he clenched his fists and muttered incoherently. Presently, with a start, he awoke. He rubbed his eyes and then sat up. "'What a queer dream,' he said aloud.
The ledge where he sat was not a very safe place. There was scarcely room for him to move, and directly below him was the sea. But this boy was quite as much at home on high rocks or in the water As he was on land, and he was very fond of looking out for distant sailing vessels, and wondering where they might be bound. He glanced along the north shore to the little fishing hamlet of Arbygland, where he lived. He saw that the tide had come in rapidly while he slept, and that the path to the shore was now covered. He stood up, and stretched his bare arms, brown with sunburn, high over his head. Then he started to climb down from the ledge by the jutting points of rock. He was as sure-footed as any mountaineer.
His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm. His feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock, he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, and then, loosing his hold, he dove into the water. In a few seconds he was up again, floating on his back, and a little later he struck out, swimming hand over hand toward a sandy beach to the south. A young man, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the British Navy, stood on the beach, watching the boy swim. When the latter had landed and shaken the water from him much as a dog would, the man approached him. "'Where on earth did you come from, John Paul?' he asked with a laugh.
"'The first thing I knew I saw you swimming in from the sea.' "'I was out on the rock asleep,' said the boy. "'The tide came up and cut me off, and—'oh, Lieutenant Pearson, I had the strangest dream. I dreamt I was in the middle of a great sea-fight. I was captain of a ship, and our yard-arms were on fire, and we were pouring broadsides into the enemy, afraid any minute that we'd sink. How we did fight that ship!' The young officer's eyes glowed. "'And I hope you may some day, John,' he exclaimed. But the strangest part was, our ship didn't fly the English flag, said the boy. At the masthead was a flag I'd never seen, red and white with a blue field, filled with stars in the corner. What country's flag is that?
Pearson thought for a moment. There is no such flag, he said finally. I know them all. And there's none like that. The rest of your dream may come true, but not that about the flag. Come. Let's be walking back to Arbogland. Although John Paul's father came of peaceful farmer and fisherfolk who lived about Solway Firth, his mother had been a highland lassie, descended from one of the fighting clans in the Grampian Hills. The boy had much of the highlander's love of wild adventure, and found it hard to live the simple life of the fishing village. The sea appealed to him, and he much preferred it to the small Scotch parish school. His family were poor, and as soon as he was able he was set to steering fishing yawls and hauling lines.
At twelve he was as sturdy and capable as most boys at twenty. Many men in Arbogland had heard John Paul beg his father to let him cross the Solway to the port of Whitehaven and ship on some vessel bound for America, where his older brother William had found a new home. But his father saw no opening for his younger son in such a life. All the way back to town that afternoon, the boy told Lieutenant Pearson of his great desire, and the young officer said he would try to help him. The boy's chance, however, came in another way. A few days later, it chanced that Mr. James Younger, a big ship owner, It was on the landing-place of Arbigland when some of the villagers caught sight of a small fishing yawl beating up against a stiff northeast squall, trying to gain the shelter of the little tidal creek that formed the harbor of the town.
Mr. Younger looked long at that boat, and then shook his head. "'I don't think she'll do it,' he said dubiously. Yet the boat came on, and he could soon see that the only crew were a man and a boy." The boy was steering, handling the sheets and giving orders, while the man simply sat on the gunwale to trim the boat. "'Who's the boy?' asked the shipowner. "'John Paul,' said a bystander. "'That's his father there.' Mr. Younger looked at the man, pointed out, who was standing near, and who did not seem to be in the least alarmed. "'Are you the lad's father?' he asked. "'Yes, that's my boy John, conning the boat,' said he. "'He'll fetch her in.' This isn't much of a squall for him. The father spoke the truth.
The boy handled his small craft with such skill that he soon had her alongside the wharf. As soon as John Paul had landed, Mr. Younger stepped up to the father and asked to be introduced to the son. Then the shipowner told him how much he had admired his seamanship, and asked if he would care to sail as master's apprentice in a new vessel he owned. Which was fitting out for a voyage to Virginia and the West Indies. The boy's eyes danced with delight. He begged his father to let him go, and finally Mr. Paul consented. The twelve-year-old boy had won his wish to go to sea. A few days later the brig friendship sailed from Whitehaven with small John Paul on board, and after a slow voyage which lasted thirty-two days, dropped anchor in the Rappahannock River of Virginia.
The life of a colonial trader was very pleasant in 1760. The sailing vessels usually made a triangular voyage, taking some six months to go from England to the colonies, then to the West Indies, and so east again. About three of the six months were spent at the small settlements on shore, discharging goods from England, taking on board cotton and tobacco, and bartering with the merchants. The Virginians, who lived on their great plantations with many servants, were the most hospitable people in the world, always eager to entertain a stranger, and the English sailors were given the freedom of the shore. The friendship anchored a short distance down the river from where John Paul's older brother lived, and the boy immediately went to see him and stayed as his guest for some time.
This brother, William, had been adopted by a wealthy planter named Jones. And the latter was delighted with the young John Paul, and tried to get him to leave the sailor's life, and settle on the Rappahannock. But much as John liked the easy life of the plantation, the fine riding horses, the wide fields, and splendid rivers, the call of the sea was dearer to him. And when the friendship dropped down the Rappahannock, bound for Tobago and the Barbados, he was on board of her. Those were adventurous days for sailors and merchants. Money was to be made in many ways, and consciences were not over-careful as to the ways. The prosperous traders of Virginia did not mind taking an interest in some ocean rover bound on pirates' business or in the more lawful slave trade with the west coast of Africa.
For a time, however, young John Paul sailed for Mr. Younger, and was finally paid by being given a one-sixth interest in a ship, called King George's Packet. The boy was now first mate, and trade with England being dull, he and the captain decided to try the slave trade. For two years they made prosperous voyages between Jamaica and the coast of Guinea. Helping to found the fortunes of some of the best-known families of America by importing slaves. After a year, however, John Paul tired of the business and sold his share of the ship to the captain for about 1,000 guineas. He was not yet 21, but his seafaring life had already made him fairly well-to-do. He planned to go home and see his family in Scotland and took passage in the brig John O'Gaunt.
Life on shipboard was full of perils then, and very soon after the brig had cleared the windward islands, the terrible scourge of yellow fever was found to be on the vessel. Within a few days, the captain, the mate, and all of the crew, but five, had died of the disease. John Paul was fully exposed to it, but he and the five men escaped it. He was the only one of those left who knew anything about navigation, so he took command, and after a stormy passage, With a crew much too small to handle the brig, he managed to bring her safely to Whitehaven with all her cargo. He handled her as skillfully as he had the small yawl in Solway Firth. The owners of the John O'Gaunt were delighted and gave John Paul and his five sailors the ten percent share of the cargo which the salvage laws entitled them to.
In addition, they offered him the command of a splendid, full-rigged new merchantman which was to sail between England and America, and a tenth share of all the profits. It was a very fine offer to a man who had barely come of age. But the youth had shown that he had few equals as a mariner. Good fortune shone upon him. He had no sooner sailed up the Rappahannock again, and landed at the plantation where his brother lived, Then he learned that the rich old Virginian, William Jones, had recently died, and in his will had named him as one of his heirs. He had always cherished a fancy for the sturdy, black-haired boy who had made him that visit. The will provided that John Paul should add the planter's name to his own.
The young captain did not object to this, and so henceforth he was known as John Paul Jones. Scores of stories are told of the young captain's adventures. He loved danger, and it was his nature to enjoy a fight with men or with the elements. On a voyage to Jamaica, he met with serious trouble. Fever again reduced the crew to six men, and Jones was the only officer able to be on deck. A huge Negro named Maxwell tried to start a mutiny and capture the ship for his own uses. He rushed at Jones, and the latter had to seize a belaying pin and hit him over the head. The man fell badly hurt, and soon after reaching Jamaica, died. Jones gave himself up to the authorities and was tried for murder on the high seas.
He said to the court, I had two brace of loaded pistols in my belt and could easily have shot him. I struck with a belaying pin in preference because I hoped that I might subdue him without killing him. He was acquitted, and soon after offered command of a new ship built to trade with India. The charm of life in Virginia appealed more and more strongly to the sailor. He liked the new country. The society of the young cities along the Atlantic coast, and he spent less time on the high seas and more time fishing and hunting on his own land and in Chesapeake Bay. He might have settled quietly into such prosperous retirement had not the Minutemen of Concord startled the new world into stirring action.
John Paul Jones loved America, and he loved ships. Consequently, he was one of the very first to offer his services in building a new navy. Congress was glad to have him. He was known as a man of the greatest courage and of supreme nautical skill. On September 23, 1779, Paul Jones, on board the American ship Bonham Richard, met the British frigate Serapis off the English coast. A battle of giants followed, for both ships were manned by brave crews and commanded by extraordinarily skillful officers. The short, black-haired, agile American commander saw his ship catch fire, stood on his quarter-deck while the blazing spars, sails, and rigging fell about him, while his men were mowed down by the terrific broadsides of the Serapis, and calmly directed the fire of shot at the enemy.
Terribly as the Bonham Richard suffered, the Serapis was in still worse plight. Two-thirds of her men were killed or wounded when Paul Jones gave the signal to board her. The Americans swarmed over the enemy's bulwarks, and armed with pistol and cutlass, cleared the deck. The captain of the Serapis fought his ship to the last, but when he saw the Americans sweeping everything before them, and already heading for the quarter-deck, he himself seized the Ensign Halyards and struck his flag. Both ships were in flames, and the smoke was so thick that it was some minutes before men realized his surrender. There was little to choose between the two vessels. Each was a floating mass of wreckage. A little later, the English captain went on board the Bonhomme Richard and tendered his sword to the young American.
The latter looked hard at the English officer. "'Captain Pearson?' he asked questioningly. The other bowed. "'Ah, I thought so.' I am John Paul Jones, once small John Paul, of Arbigland in the Firth. Do you remember me?" Pearson looked at the smoke-grimed face, the keen black eyes, the fine figure. I shouldn't have known you. Yes, I remember now. Paul Jones took the sword that was held out to him, and asked one of his midshipmen to escort the British captain to his cabin. He could not help smiling, as a curious recollection came to him. He looked up at the masthead above him. There floated a flag bearing thirteen red and white stripes, and a blue corner filled with stars. It was the very flag of his dream as a boy.
Thus it was that the sturdy Scotch boy, full of the daring spirit of his highland ancestors, became the great sea-fighter of a new country, and ultimately wrote his name in history as the father of the American Navy.
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9 09 - Mozart The Boy of Salzburg: 1756-1791 21:12
Mozart, the boy of Salzburg. 1756 to 1791. The Great Hall of the famous Musical Society of Bologna in Italy was filled with musicians on the afternoon of October 9, 1770. They had gathered to welcome a small boy who had recently come with his father from the town of Salzburg in Austria. The most marvellous stories of his genius as a composer had preceded him, and his travels through Europe had been one long success. Yet it scarcely seemed possible that a boy of fourteen could know so much about music as this one was said to. That was why the learned men of Bologna had gathered together this afternoon. They were going to test Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's skill. It was about four o'clock when the usher at the door announced Leopold Mozart and his son Wolfgang.
The members of the society faced the newcomers. They saw a tall, fine-looking man, accompanied by a slim, fair-haired boy with smiling eyes and mouth. The boy was richly dressed, with much gold lace upon his coat and trousers. He was perfectly self-possessed, and when he saw the eyes of all the men in the room fixed upon him, he made a low bow. It was gracefully done, and a murmur of welcome rose from the members. So this was the boy of whom all the musicians of Europe were talking. The skill of the young composer was now to be put to the test. Three men approached the boy, the president of the society, and two experienced kapellmeisters, or choirmasters. In the presence of all the members, the boy was given a difficult anthem, which he was invited to set to music in four parts.
He was then led by a beadle into an adjoining room, and the door locked. There the boy set to work on his composition. Just half an hour later, the boy knocked on the door in signal that the music was finished. The beadle opened the door, and the boy presented his completed score to the president. The latter examined the score carefully, then handed it to the kapellmeisters. They, in turn, examined it and passed it on to the other members. Each man, as he looked at the composition, showed his surprise. Finally, it had made the circuit of the room. Then a ballot box was passed, and each member was asked to cast either a white or a black ball, depending on whether he thought the newcomer was worthy to be admitted to the distinguished society of Bologna.
Every ball cast was white.
Young Mozart was then recalled to the room. When he entered this time, he was greeted with cheers. The president met him and informed him of his selection. Then the members pressed about him, eager to praise his work. He had been set a very difficult type of composition and had accomplished in half an hour greater results than any other candidate had ever reached in three hours. The musicians of Bologna decided that the judgments of the European courts as to this boy's genius were correct.
Father and son proceeded on their journey south through Italy. They reached Rome during Holy Week, and learned that the celebrated music of the Miserere was being given in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. It was very difficult to gain admittance to the chapel, as the Pope and many of the cardinals were there. The rich dress of the two visitors, the German they spoke, and the singular air of authority which the boy showed, convinced the Swiss guards at the door that these were people of importance. One soldier whispered to another that this was a young German prince traveling with his tutor. They were allowed to enter, and the boy, accustomed from infancy to the life of courts, immediately walked to the cardinal's table and placed himself between the chairs of two of those princes of the church.
One of the latter, Cardinal Pallavicini, surprised at the boy's assurance, beckoned to him and said, Will you have the goodness to tell me in confidence who you are? Wolfgang Mozart of Salzburg, answered the boy. What? cried the Cardinal. Are you really that famous boy of whom so many men have written to me? Mozart bowed in assent. And are you not Cardinal Pallavicini? he asked in turn. Yes, said the prelate. Why do you ask? My father and I have letters to your eminence, said the boy, and are anxious to wait upon you with our compliments. The cardinal was delighted at the boy's arrival, had a seat placed for him, and talked to him in the intermissions of the service. He complimented him on learning Italian so quickly, saying that he could speak very little German.
When the music was over, Wolfgang kissed the cardinal's hand, and the latter, taking his red birretta from his head, invited the boy to make a long stay at the papal court. The boy was very much impressed by the music of the miserere, and when he left the chapel asked where he could get a copy of it. To his dismay he was told that the music was considered so wonderful that the papal musicians were forbidden on pain of excommunication by the pope to take any part of the score away, or to copy it, or allow anyone else to copy it. Mozart, however, was determined to have a copy of that music, even if he had to pay the penalty of being excommunicated. He soon hit on a plan. The next morning the boy arrived early at the Sistine Chapel and devoted all his thought to remembering the music.
It was exceedingly difficult, performed as it was by a double choir and full of singular effects, one of which was the absence of any particular rhythm. The task of putting down such music in notes was tremendous. Yet, when Wolfgang left the chapel, he went straight home to the lodgings his father had taken and made a sketch of the entire music. He went again on Good Friday morning and sat with his copy hidden in his hat. In that way he corrected and completed it. When it was finished, he told his father of it, and the news soon spread through Rome that this wonderful boy had actually stolen the complete score of the miserere, exactly as it was composed by Allegri. The feat was said to be unheard of, and many considered it impossible.
Certain men of importance called to see Wolfgang's father about it, with the result that the boy was obliged to show what he had written, at a large musical party held for that special purpose. The musician Christofori, who had sung in the choir in the chapel, pronounced the copy absolutely correct. Everyone was amazed, and then so much delighted at the marvelous skill of this boy of 14, that the penalty of excommunication was entirely forgotten. Princes, cardinals, all that part of Rome which loved art and music, had only wondering admiration for the young German musician. There had never been any doubt among those who had met the boy Mozart that he was a genius. At fourteen years of age, he had already been playing the clavier and the violin for a number of years.
His father, himself a musician, was attached to the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and had written a great deal of music. But when he discovered the amazing genius of his two children, his son and daughter, he devoted himself entirely to training them. The boy was born January 27, 1756, and was christened John Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, quite a large collection of names. The girl, Maria, was four years older. When Maria was seven years old, her father began to give her lessons on the clavier, which was an instrument very much like the piano, and the girl soon won the highest reputation for her playing. When she began to play, her small brother Wolfgang, or Wolfall, as he was called in nickname, although only three years old, constantly watched her, and whenever he had the chance tried striking the keys himself.
At four, he had shown the ability to remember solos from concerts he was taken to, and it then first occurred to his father that his son was a genius. Before long, Wolfgang was composing pieces which his father wrote down for him. It was only a year or two later that Leopold Mozart, coming home with a friend one day, found the boy very busy with pen and ink. "'What are you doing there, Wolfgang?' asked the father. Writing a concerto for the clavier, answered the small boy. The first part is just finished. His father smiled. It must be something very fine, I dare say. Let us look at it. No, no, said Wolfer. It isn't ready yet. Leopold, however, picked up the paper, and he and his friend began to laugh as they looked at the rudely scrawled notes.
The paper was also covered with blots, for the boy had kept jabbing his pen to the very bottom of his inkstand, and often wiped the clots of ink across the paper. But after a moment's examination, Leopold stopped laughing, and both men looked hard at the sheet. There were ideas in music scrawled there which even a grown man found it difficult to understand. See," said the father in amazement, it is written correctly and regularly, though it can't be used because it's so difficult we couldn't find anyone who could play it. The boy looked up quickly. It's a concerto, father, and must be practiced a long time before it can be played. It ought to go this way. He began to play it as best he could on the clavier, but could give them only the barest outline of it.
As a matter of fact, the boy had written the music with a full score of accompaniments, ready to be played by a full orchestra. At six, Mozart knew the effect of sounds as shown by notes, and could compose unaided by any instrument. Leopold Mozart could not keep the story of his children's great talents to himself, and in a very short time news of their remarkable ability had spread through Austria. Invitations poured in upon the father, asking him to bring the boy and girl to different courts, and he decided to take them on a concert tour. The children played at all the chief cities of the empire, and everywhere they were welcomed as infant prodigies. The emperor and empress took special delight in them, loaded them with presents, and insisted on having them treated with all the respect given to grown artists.
Little Wolfel appeared at court in a suit of white and gold, very resplendent with lace, ruffles, and ornaments of all sorts. His small sister, in white brocaded taffeta, was dressed exactly like an archduchess in miniature. It is a wonder that both children were not hopelessly spoiled by the treatment they received, but fortunately both had much good sense, and they enjoyed their travels without becoming conceited. Leopold and his children went from Austria to Paris and then to London. Everywhere their concerts met with the same success. In London the most difficult pieces by Bach and Handel were put before the boy, but he played them at sight and without the slightest mistake. Bach was at that time music master to the English queen, and he took special delight in young Mozart.
He would take the boy on his knees and play a few bars, and then have the boy continue them, and so, each playing in turn, they would perform an entire sonata, as if with a single pair of hands. The trip to England set a final seal on Wolferl's fame. His father wrote home, My girl is esteemed the first female performer in Europe, though only twelve years old, and— The high and mighty Wolfgang, though only eight, possesses the acquirements of a man of forty. In short, those only who see and hear can believe, and even you in Salzburg know nothing about him. He is so changed. After a year or two of travel, the family returned home. It was now decided that the boy should try his hand at an opera.
Genius, however, is apt to inspire jealousy, and Mozart was now so well known that many of the leading musicians of Germany plotted against him. It was galling to their pride to find that a child knew so much more than they. As a result, they planned to avoid hearing the boy if they could, so that when asked, they could say they doubted his ability and thought his great skill most likely sham. The father laid a plan to catch one of these men, a well-known Viennese musician. He learned privately of a place where this man would be present on a certain occasion, and had Wolfgang go there, and took with him an exceedingly hard concerto which the man had written. During the afternoon this concerto was placed before the boy, and he played it perfectly.
The musician could not help but show his delight at hearing his own music so wonderfully given. He had to speak the truth. Turning to the people present, he said, "'I can say no less as an honest man that this boy is the greatest man in the world. It could not have been believed.' But in spite of such occasional confessions, the boy had a hard time to succeed. Every possible obstacle was put in the way of his opera. The manager who had agreed to produce the opera was influenced to change his mind. The singers complained of their parts and said that the music was too difficult for them to sing. The copyists so altered the scores that the boy did not recognize his own work at rehearsals. Finally, father and son had to agree that the opera be withdrawn, realizing that if it were played, it would be so wretchedly done that it would bring more blame than praise to his composer.
Yet this boy was not to be daunted. Although his opera, which was a very long work containing 558 pages, was not to be given, he instantly set to work again, and in little more than a month had finished three new works for a full orchestra. Seeing how much the jealousy of other musicians in Germany and Austria hurt his work, the young Mozart turned his eyes toward Italy. That country was the home of the arts, and each city had its band of citizens who were as devoted to music as they were to poetry at the stage. Fortunately, at about the same time, an invitation came from the Empress Maria Theresa, inviting the young musician to compose a dramatic serenade in honor of the wedding of the Archduke Ferdinand in Milan.
It was a great compliment to pay so young a man, and Mozart gladly accepted. Going to Milan, he set to work on the composition. In contrast to the way in which he had lately been treated in Austria, he found everyone in Milan eager to be of help. The singers liked the music and did their best with it. When the serenade was finally publicly given, it made a great impression. The Archduke was delighted with it. For days afterward, Mozart was kept busy receiving callers who wished to offer their congratulations. The Italians proved that they, at least, were not unwilling to admit his greatness. Great honors had come to the young composer of Salzburg, but very little money. Most musicians of that time were simply music masters or choir masters at the different courts.
Their support depended almost entirely upon finding some prince who would keep them at his court. Mozart cast his eyes over Europe and saw no place that offered him much promise. The world was willing enough to shower its praises on him, but not to provide him with his daily bread. There was no place open in Italy, and so, although with regret, he had to turn homeward to Salzburg. Unfortunately, a new archbishop had just been elected for that city, and he was devoted almost entirely to hunting and sports, cared nothing for music, and could not understand why young Mozart was entitled to any special favors from him. Under such circumstances, Mozart could not stay at home. He had to accept such chances as were offered him to make a living.
Being asked to write an opera bouffe for a carnival at Munich, he agreed, and again met with success. The night the opera was given, the theatre was so crowded that hundreds had to be turned away at the doors. At the close of each air, there was a tremendous outburst of applause and calls for the composer. Afterward, Mozart was presented to the whole court of Munich, and received their thanks for the great honor he had done them. Singularly enough, the Archbishop of Salzburg happened to be in Munich at the same time, and was very much surprised at being congratulated on every hand at possessing such a genius at his home. Some of the nobles called upon him and paid him their solemn congratulations, and he was so embarrassed that he could make no reply except to shake his head and shrug his shoulders.
Such trips as that to Munich, however, were now of rare occurrence. Wolfgang, now about nineteen, went back to Salzburg and said to work harder than ever. His skill was tested in many different ways. He wrote compositions for the church, the theatre, and the concert chamber. He played brilliantly on the clavier. He was a wonderful organist at all festivals of the church, and showed the greatest skill on the violin. The archbishop had to have the services of a musician on certain state occasions, and never failed to call on Mozart when he needed it. Yet all that he paid Mozart was a nominal salary, which was actually less than six dollars a year. What was true of the archbishop was now almost equally true of all the court at Salzburg.
The nobles there had never undervalued his services until he wanted to be paid for them. Then he was told that his abilities had been greatly overrated, and was advised to go to Italy and study music seriously there. At last, their neglect forced him to start forth again upon his travels, to see whether he could find a prince who would accept his services at something nearer their real value. In vain, the youth wandered from court to court. Then, for a time, he returned to Salzburg, where the archbishop treated him as a showman-mighter-performing dog, using his great genius in tests of skill before royal visitors. Later he went to the Emperor's Court at Vienna, and there at last he began to receive something of his due.
Not only other musicians, but the public generally admitted his great gifts. He wrote operas, Don Giovanni, the Magic Flute, and The Marriage of Figaro being the most popular of them. Finally he was able to do somewhat as he pleased, instead of writing only to suit the order of a prince or noble who could pay him with some position in his court or at his home. The world acknowledged Mozart's genius from the time when, a small boy of six, he and his sister played the clavier. But the life of a musician in those days, no matter how great his genius, was a hard one, and the world was not very kind to the youth when he grew up and had to make his own way. Perhaps his happiest days were those when his sister and he travelled with their good father and had nothing to think of but the pleasure they could give with their great gifts.
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10 10 - Lafayette The Boy of Versailles: 1757-1834 22:18
Holland Chapter 10 Lafayette The Boy of Versailles, 1757-1834 Marie Antoinette, the little queen of France, was giving effect at the royal palace of Versailles, outside of Paris, and the beautiful gardens of the palace, world-famous for their wonderful statues and fountains, flowers and groves, presented an amazing sight on that midsummer night. A hundred elves and fairies, hobgoblins and wood-nymphs danced in and out about groups of strangely dressed, grown-up people. who were neither in court costume nor in real masquerade. The older lords and ladies of the court were trying to humor their young queen's whim without parting with any of their dignity, and the result of their attempt was this very curious sight, tall, stiff goblins wearing elaborate powdered wigs and jeweled swords, stout wood-nymphs with bare arms and shoulders, and glittering with jewels.
Never had the court of France thought itself so absolutely absurd, and never had the children of that famous court enjoyed themselves so much. They played all sorts of games about the dignified people scattered over the grounds, until the latter were quite ready to believe that the days of elves and fairies had really returned. The boy, Marquis de Lafayette, led the revels. It was he to whom the little queen had appealed for help when she first planned her garden-party. Her boy husband, Louis, the sixteenth, was more interested in machinery than in anything else. He was fond of taking clocks to pieces and putting them together again, and in working over old locks and keys, and so had left his young queen very much to herself ever since he had brought her from Austria to France.
Marie Antoinette was passionately fond of fun, and the stiff lords and ladies of her husband's court bored her extremely. They were anxious, above everything else, to keep up their old ceremonies, and to make life simply a matter of rules. So it was that the girl turned to the young boy Marquis, who was almost as fond of sports as she was, and with his help gathered a band of boys and girls of her own age about her. Then, one summer day, while Louis was busy in his workshop, Marie Antoinette plotted with Lafayette to hold a fete champetre in the gardens, which should be very different from anything the court of France had seen before. She said that all her guests should appear either as goblins or as nymphs.
They would not dance the quadrille, nor any other stately measure, but would be free to romp and play such jokes as might occur to them. When he heard these plans, Lafayette shook his head doubtfully. "'What will the lords-in-waiting say to this?' he asked. "'And your majesty's own ladies of the court?' The queen laughed and shrugged her pretty shoulders. "'Who cares?' she said. "'As long as Louis is king, I shall do what pleases me.' Then she clapped her hands as a new idea occurred to her. "'I shall go to Louis,' she added, "'and have him issue an order commanding every one who attends the fete to dress either as a goblin or a nymph, He would do it for me, I know. When the king heard her request, he good-humoredly agreed, for he found it hard to deny his pretty young wife anything, and so the order was issued.
Imagine the horror of the grown-up courtiers when they heard the command. Unbend sufficiently to dress as goblins and nymphs. Never. The saucy young queen and her friends must be taught a lesson. As soon as she knew of their disapproval, She would, of course, give up her scheme. On the contrary, the Queen did nothing of the sort. She made Lafayette master of ceremonies, and gave strict orders that no one should be admitted to the gardens on the night of the Fête, unless they were dressed as commanded. In the meantime, the boys and girls were planning the costumes they would wear, and rehearsing the play they were to act. But the court party was not to be beaten so easily, and the royal chamberlain and the queen's mistress of the robes hunted up the king in his workshop, and told him that such a performance as was planned would shame the French court in the eyes of the whole world.
Louis listened to them patiently, and said he would consider the matter. Then he sent for his wife and Lafayette and the other ringleaders. Between them they described how absurd the courtiers would look, With such good effect that Louis laughed until he cried. Then he dismissed the whole matter from his mind, and went back to the tools on his work-table, which were the only things that seriously concerned him. Now that the garden party was at its height, Lafayette was the undisputed leader of the youths. It was he who swooped down upon the stately mistress of the robes, and ordered his band of hobgoblins to carry her off to the summer-house on the edge of the woods, and keep her a prisoner there, while they sang her the latest ballads of the parish streets.
It was he who had a ring of fairies dance about the Lord Chamberlain, until that haughty person was so dizzy that he had to put his hands to his eyes and run as rapidly as dignity would let him to a place of safety. The boy took his orders from the beautiful queen of the fairies, Marie Antoinette, Who, more radiant and lovely than ever, sat on the rustic throne and sent her messengers to the different groups in the gardens. Beside her stood the young King Louis, laughing and admiring the ingenuity of her plans. Next day, however, came the retribution. The courtiers were up in arms. They had managed to go through one such evening, but they did not propose to stand another. The most important people in France went to the king and placed their grievances before him.
Louis loved peace, so that now he was willing to take the side of the courtiers, and as a result the day of the children was over. Marie Antoinette, fond of pleasure above everything else, tried to have her way for a short time. But before a month had passed, the weight of its old-time formal dignity had fallen on Versailles, and the children were again made to pattern after their elders. Fond as the young Marquis had been of the good times with playmates of his own age at Versailles, he could not endure the stiff court, nor look with any satisfaction to the formal life which most of the young men of the time led. He was naturally too independent to bow and scrape as was required. In spite of his careful training, he found that he had not acquired the endless flow of frivolous talk which was popular at court.
He was usually silent in company, and more and more given to going away by himself, in order to escape the affectations of the life about him. His only chance seemed to lie in the army, and therefore he spent a great deal of his time with his regiment of black musketeers, and began to plan for a military career. He had been made a cadet of the old French regiment called the Black Musketeers when he was only twelve years old. Then he was a slight little chap, with bright reddish hair and a very fair complexion, and much too small to carry a man's arms. But he was so fond of the splendid-looking set of men that whenever they paraded he was sure to be somewhere near at hand to watch them. The boy's name had been placed on the musketeer's rolls, though not as a regular cadet, very soon after his birth, because his great-uncle had been a member of the regiment, and was eager to have his family name connected with it.
It happened that this twelve-year-old cadet was already a very important person in the Kingdom of France. He had been baptized by the name of Marie-Paul Joseph Roche-Yves-Gilbert de Mottier, and held the title of Marquis de Lafayette. His father had been killed at the Battle of Minden, when he was only twenty-four years old, but had already won a great name for bravery. His mother died soon afterward, and so the young Marquis was left almost alone in his great castle of Chavagnac, in the Auvergne Mountains of southern France. He must have been very lonely with no playmates of his own age, and only masters and governesses about him. He was what people called land poor, which meant that although he owned a large part of French territory, it brought him in but small profit, and he had little money to spend.
To make up for his lack of playmates, his master spent much time drilling the boy Marquis in the etiquette of the French nobility. High-born French youths at that time had many things to learn, but they were such things as would make a boy an ornamental piece of furniture at court. He must be able to enter a drawing-room with perfect dignity, to compliment a lady, to pick up a fan, to offer his arm with an air of gallantry, to take part in the formal dances of the period, to draw his sword in case his honor should require it. The little boys and girls of Louis, the sixteenth's reign, were dressed in stiff court clothes almost as soon as they were old enough to talk, and were taught bows and curtseys, gallant words and dancing steps, when other children would have been playing out of doors.
As a result, they grew up much alike, most of them merely fashion plates to decorate the royal palace at Versailles. Fortunately for the boy, his lonely life in the mountains ended when he was twelve years old. Then his great-uncle sent for him to come to Paris, and placed him at the Colleges du Plessis, where a great many other young courtiers were being educated. The school taught him very little of history, of foreign languages or sciences, but a great deal about riding and fencing and dancing, and how to write a letter which should be full of worldly wisdom. At about the same time his grandfather died, and he inherited a very large fortune, so that the small boy bore not only one of the oldest titles in the kingdom, but possessed enough money to do exactly as he pleased.
There was only one course open to him—the life of a courtier at Versailles. In that age of ceremony, marriage was quite as much a formal matter as other affairs of life. The young marquis's guardians, according to the custom of the time, immediately looked about for a girl of equal rank who might marry their boy. They decided on little Marie-adrienne de Noailles, daughter of a great peer of France. The girl was only twelve years old, and her mother was very unwilling to have her married to a boy whose character was unformed, and whose fortune would allow him to become as wild as he chose. Her father, however, liked the match, and her mother finally agreed, insisting, however, that the children should wait two years before their wedding.
When these arrangements had all been made, and the engagement was formally announced, the boy marquis was taken to call at the house of his future wife, and was presented to her in the garden. Formal paths wound under a row of chestnut trees, carefully tended flower-beds, were arranged, With mathematical precision. A few peacocks strutted across the lawn, and here and there a marble statue or a great stone jar from Italy gave a classic touch to the scene. The small boy dressed in court clothes of velvet, his fair hair in long curls, his three-cornered hat held beneath his arm, his court rapier hanging at his side, bright silver buckles at knees and on shoes, advanced down the walk to the little lady who was waiting for him.
She was in flowered satin, her long, yellow hair falling to her shoulders, her bright blue eyes looking timidly at the boy, and her pale cheeks flushing as he approached. As he stood before her, she held out her hand, and he delicately lifted it with his and touched his lips to her fingers. She blushed redder, then he paid her a few stately compliments, And they walked down the path, laughing shyly at this new intimacy. She had seen few boys before, and he had known few girls, and yet their guardians had destined them for man and wife. It was a curious old-world picture that the two children made, but the scene was quite characteristic of the age. At the time, he lived at Versailles, and made one of the group about the little king and queen.
The guardians of the young marquis expected to find him growing more and more popular with the royal court, and they were very much surprised when they learned how reserved he was becoming, and how little he seemed interested in the pursuits of his age. When they heard of his being one of the ringleaders at the Queen's party, they were horrified. They determined to try and make him more like themselves, and so sought to get him a place in the household of one of the royal family, the Duke de Provence. Lafayette was very much disturbed at the thought, and secretly determined to defeat the plan. Before the position was finally offered him, he went to a masked ball, and, learning which was the Duke de Provence, in disguise, went up to him and spoke Republican sentiments, which were not at all to the nobleman's liking.
Then the boy allowed the masked man to recognize him. The Duke said sharply that he should remember the interview. Thereupon, young Lafayette made him a profound bow, and replied calmly that memory was often called the wit of fools. This, of course, ended the chance of his preferment in the royal household, and the boy was freed from what he considered an irksome task. As a result, however, he was no longer popular at court, and soon asked that he might be allowed to go back to his distant castle in Auvergne, Until he was old enough to take his place in the army. His guardians were glad to have him safely out of the way for a time, and granted his request. So, for a year, the little married Jean-Paul de Lafayette went back to his mountain home, and browsed in his father's library, and rode over his estates.
He liked the peasants in the country. They were a brighter race, not so sullen and discontented as the people in the streets of Paris. But even here, far from Versailles, the boy heard much of the frightful poverty of the people and the gross extravagance of the court. It made him think, and the more he considered the matter, the more he thought the people's claims were just. At the end of a year, the boy went back to Paris and married the girl to whom he had been betrothed. He was sixteen, she fourteen, but the duchess considered that the boy had shown that he was neither a spendthrift nor a fool, and that her daughter could be trusted to him. So the two, scarcely more than school-children, opened their residence in Paris, and took their place in that gay world which was riding so rapidly to its downfall.
Meanwhile, news was constantly coming to France concerning the glorious stand which the American colonists were making against England. The love of liberty was strong in the boy's heart, and the desire to help the colonists soon came to be his greatest wish. Beneath his reserved manner and his silent habits, there lay the greatest enthusiasm and the most determined character. He soon had concluded that there was little hope of winning laurels in the regiment of black musketeers, and he cast his eyes longingly across the seas to where real fighting was taking place. But when he told his wish to his friends, they all opposed him. He went to an old general, who had long been a friend of his family, and urged him to help him in his plan to go to America.
"'Ah, my boy,' said the general. I have seen your uncle die in the Italian wars. I saw your father killed at Minden. I will not help in the ruin of the last member of your family. You would only risk life and fortune over there without any chance of reward. That was exactly what Lafayette was anxious to do, and he would not give up his plan. He crossed the Channel to London, and there met some of the men who were interested in the colonial cause. He went to a secret meeting, and heard them discuss plans to help the Americans. They, on their part, at first looked askance at the tall, slender, reddish-haired young Frenchman, who had so little to save himself, and who seemed so easily embarrassed.
But when they learned that he had a great fortune, and that if he should aid their cause other young noblemen would follow him, they did their best to win his help. They little knew how invaluable his rare spirit would prove in winning freedom for their land. As he was an officer in the French army, the young Marquis found it very difficult to leave France without the consent of the government, and this he could not gain. He and a friend named Baron de Calbes made their plans to escape secretly from Paris to Bordeaux. When they reached the port, he found that his ship was not ready, and before he could sail, two officers arrived from court, bearing peremptory orders, forbidding him to go to America or to assist the colonists.
He would not give up his great desire, and so, although he pretended that he was willing to obey the command, he planned secretly to escape across the Spanish border and sail from a Spanish port. He and a friend left Bordeaux in a post-chaise, Announcing that they were on their way to the French city of Marseille. As soon as their carriage reached the open country, the young Marquis stepped out, and, now disguised as a courier, mounted one of the horses and rode on ahead, ordering the relays. When they reached the road which led towards Spain, they changed their course. The officers, who had been set to spy upon him, however, now were giving chase And at the next inn, Lafayette was obliged to hide in the straw of a stable until the pursuers should pass.
It so happened that he had ridden over that road a little time before, and the innkeeper's daughter knew him by sight. When he rode into the courtyard, she exclaimed, "'There comes the Marquis de Lafayette!' And he was much alarmed, lest some of the bystanders should give away his secret. He made them understand, however, that he was traveling in disguise, so that when the pursuers arrived and asked questions, the people of the inn all agreed that no such gentleman as Lafayette had been seen in the neighborhood. By means of alternate hiding and sudden rapid riding, the Marquis finally crossed the Spanish border and reached the little Sound of Passage. There, on April 20th, 1777, he set sail in a boat happily named La Victoire, Heading for North America.
America owes a great deal to this gallant young Frenchman who crossed the seas to aid the colonies. He was among the first of those foreigners who showed the colonists that the love of liberty was as wide as the world. He came when hope was low, And his coming meant much to the brave men who had to undergo the long, discouraging winter at Valley Forge, and the days when it seemed as though time would prove them only rebels and not patriots. He brought ships, and men, and money, to aid in the great cause, but more than all these were his own magnetic personality and the buoyant spirit that refused to be cast down. The war of independence came to an end, and Lafayette returned home. Trouble was brewing there.
The old nobility had grown too overbearing. The men and women who tilled the soil were constantly hardly better than mere beasts of burden. Such a state could not last. And so the time came when the mobs of Paris broke into the beautiful gardens of Versailles, stormed the palace of the Tuileries, scattered some of the vain and foolish old courtiers, but imprisoned many more, and brought to trial the hapless King Louis and the charming Marie Antoinette. Lafayette, friend of their early days, stood by them through the height of the storm, but there was little he could do against the people's fury. The revolution rolled over king and queen, crushing them and their resplendent court, and when it had passed, a different type of men and women governed France.
Only a few of the old nobility were left, and they had learned their lesson. Lafayette and his wife were of that number. Lover of liberty as he was, these great events could scarcely have surprised him. The people had done much the same as had he when, a boy at Versailles, he rebelled against a selfish court that trod down all opposition with a heel of iron.
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11 11 - Horatio Nelson The Boy of the Channel Fleet: 1758-1805 19:30
Holland. Horatio Nelson, The Boy of the Channel Fleet. 1758-1805. It was a dark, rainy, autumn afternoon, and the small boy, who was trudging along the post-road that led to the English river town of Chatham, was wet to the skin, and thoroughly tired into the bargain. He was thin and pale, with big searching eyes and coal-black hair that hung tangled over his forehead. He had been traveling all day, and had only a roll to eat since early morning. Sometimes he was tempted to stop and ask people he met how far it still was to the town on the Medway. But he overcame the temptation, because he knew that he could reach his destination by six o'clock. and that thinking of the distance still to go would not help him.
Occasionally he would stop, fling his arms about his body for warmth, and stamp his feet hard to drive away the chill. But his stops were not frequent, because he was in a hurry to end his journey. On such an autumn day night sets in early, and the road ahead was simply a gray blur by the time the boy had reached the outskirts of the town. But when he did see the first straggling houses, he could not help giving a little cry of satisfaction. He met a peddler going the other way. "'Is this Chatham?' the boy asked, half-fearing that the answer would be no. "'Yes, this here is Chatham.' "'And where are the docks, the warship docks?' asked the boy. "'Keep straight on this road, and you'll walk clean into the water.
And there's the ships,' said the man." Doubtless he wondered what the boy wanted of the warships, but the lad gave him no chance to satisfy his curiosity. He was hurrying on as fast as he could go. Soon the houses grew more numerous, and the post road had become a street heading through the heart of an old-fashioned town. The boy had never been to Chatham before, but he did not stop to look at any of the curious houses he passed. He saw a pasty-cook's window, filled with buns and tarts, and he remembered how long it had been since breakfast. But even that thought did not make him loiter. He must reach the docks before all the Men-O-War's men had left for the night. Soon a whiff of fresh air blew in his face.
He knew what that meant. He loved that breath of the water. It nerved him to cover the last lap of his long journey at a quick step. Then, to his delight, He found himself at last arrived at the water's edge, and before him a shore covered with boats, and the wide river with the dim outlines of the men o' war. He stood still, peering at the great ships, until an old sailor passed near him. "'Do those ships belong to the Channel Fleet?' asked the boy. The mariner nodded his head. "'That's part of His Majesty's Channel Squadron, my lad. Be you thinkin' a shippin' before the mast?' Perhaps. Could you tell me where to find an officer of the fleet? Are there any still ashore? The sailor glanced at a landing stage nearby.
Aye, there's an officer's gig, and there's the very man you're looking for—the one in the cocked hat, with the gold trim in yonder. Thank you," said the boy, and started on the run for the landing stage, completely forgetting how tired his legs had been. The man in the cocked hat found himself a moment later facing a small, delicate-looking boy, who was asking which vessel was the reasonable. He looked the boy over and then pointed out the frigate which bore that name. "'What do you want with her?' he asked, amused at the eagerness with which the boy looked through the sea of masts at the ship he sought. "'My uncle's her commander, and I'm to serve on her,' came the answer. Again his eyes ran over the small, slender figure before him.
"'What's your name?' He asked. "'Horatio Nelson, sir.' "'Well, Nelson, you look starved, and more like a drowned rat than a midshipman. How long since you had a square meal?' "'Since breakfast.' "'And why didn't you stop in the town, and have a bite on your way here?' "'I promised my father to come straight on to the dock, sir, and report for duty. I said I wouldn't stop until I got here.' "'So nothing could have kept you back, eh?' "'Well?' "'You've reported for duty now, as I'm your superior officer. I don't have to be on board ship for half an hour, so my first order to you is that you come with me to a cook-shop and have some of the roast beef of old England before you set out to sea.' Nothing loath, now that his promise was kept, Nelson went with the lieutenant into one of the small, winding Chatham streets, and entered an inn much frequented by sailors.
Here the officer ordered a hot supper. and sat by the boy while the latter ate it. Nelson was nearly famished. It was a delight to the lieutenant to watch the satisfying of such an appetite. A little later, the officer and the boy were rowed out to the frigate, and Nelson duly delivered by his new friend into the care of the ship's commander. His uncle looked at the boy askance. He seemed very pale, and delicate, and undersized. Even for a boy of thirteen, But the uncle had promised to take him on trial as midshipman, and so, though with much misgiving, he found him his berth. He little knew what the sight of that channel fleet and the smell of that saltwater meant to the new midshipman. The boy's uncle, Captain Suckling by name, who was in command of the sixty-four-gun man-of-war, had been trained in the principles of the old English Navy, which were that hardship was good for a sailor.
And that the more a man was battered about in time of peace, the better he would fight in time of war. Everything above decks was spick and span, and young Horatio gazed with wondering admiration at the neatness of the white decks, continually scraped and holly-stoned until they fairly glistened in the sun, at the imposing size and length of the long lines of black cannon, the special pride of every officer, and at the symmetry And the wonderful height of spars and sails and rigging, forming a very network in the sky. He had loved boats since the days when he had pumped water into the horse trough before his father's house, in order that he might sail paper boats in it. And now it seemed almost impossible to believe that he stood on the deck of a ship of his majesty's service, and was to have a hand in caring for all this cannon and rigging.
He looked wonderingly at the sailors. A bronzed, hardy lot, in their white jackets and trousers that flared widely at the bottom, wearing their hair according to the custom of the day, and long pigtails down their backs. But when he went below decks, he found the picture very different. Everything there was dirt and gloom, foul odors and general misery. The cat o' nine tails was the favorite punishment for sailors. Many a back was deeply scored with the lash. And, worse yet, many a man had been forced into the service against his will, seized at night by the press-gang, cudgelled into insensibility, and carried on board to wake up later, and find himself destined to serve at sea. The food was chiefly salt beef, and in most respects the men were treated little better than so many cattle.
As a result, they might be hardy, They were also as surly and vicious a lot as could be found anywhere. The poor boy had a hard time growing accustomed to such companionship. He had longed for the glory of the sailor's life, without knowing anything about its wretchedness. And now he saw all these horrors spread before his eyes. His uncle, believing that the best way to bring him up was to let him entirely alone to fight his own battles, paid little or no attention to him. And the boy, Brought up in the country home of a clergyman in Norfolk, was very homesick, and often longed for the people and the comforts he had left. But he had a stout heart, and before a great while had conquered this homesickness, and set about to see what work he could find to do.
At first, both officers and men regarded Horatio as simply a sickly boy and totally unfit for life at sea. But it was not long before he managed in a quiet way, peculiarly his own, to make a name and place for himself on board the Raznebaugh. The story got around that when he was a small boy he had one day escaped from his nurse and ran off into some dense woods near his father's house. He had lost his way and finally, coming to a brook too wide for him to cross, had sat down on a stone on one bank and waited. It was some time after dark. when his distracted family found him. "'I should think you'd have been frightened to death,' his grandmother was reported to have said. "'What's that?' asked the boy.
"'Why, fear it being alone, and the dark coming on.' "'Fear,' said he. "'I don't know what you mean by that. I've never seen it.' His uncle told the story one day to another officer, and within a week young Nelson had been christened Dreadnought. When he was still a very new midshipman, he went for a cruise in the polar seas. One afternoon, some of the men were allowed on the Arctic shore, and Nelson started on a little expedition of his own. The first anyone else knew of it was when another midshipman happened to glance across the field of ice, and caught sight of the huge white body of a polar bear within a few yards of Nelson. He called to his mates and pointed to the boy. They were too far off to help.
They saw Nelson level his musket and saw the wicked head of the bear raised in front of him. They held their breath, waiting for the shot. In the still air they caught the click of the hammer, but heard no report. For some reason the gun had not gone off. With a shout they scrambled over the ice to help him, knowing he was now at the wild beast's mercy. The boy, however, had turned his musket and raised the butt-end in defense, When a gun on the ship boomed out the signal for all hands to go aboard. The signal woke the echoes and thundered over the field of ice, and the bear, frightened, turned tail and ran off as fast as his short legs could carry him. Nelson, his musket still raised, ran after the animal, but by this time the rescue party had come up with him.
What do you mean by hunting polar bears all alone, Dreadnought? asked the other midshipman. Didn't you see him coming? Yes," said the boy, but I wanted his skin to take back home to my father. I might have had him if that gun hadn't sent him away. Now he's lost forever. Well, I vow," said the other, I don't believe there's another chap in the Navy with half your pluck. Such incidents on these showed the young sailor's courage, and he had continual chances to show how rapidly he was learning seamanship. By the time he was fifteen, He was practically possessed of all the knowledge of an able seaman, and was sent on board the ship, seahorse, to the East Indies. His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand.
But it was not long before the captain noticed the lad's smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarter-deck and made him four midshipmen. The captain advised the first lieutenant to keep an eye on the boy. and occasionally to let him have charge of maneuvering the vessel. This the lieutenant did, and to his great surprise found that Nelson was quite as well able to handle the ship as he was himself. The sea-life was doing him good, too. He was no longer the thin, sickly lad who had wandered through the streets of Chatham, but a fine, well-built, sun-tanned youth, well-beloved on deck, and popular with all his mates. Fine as the sea life was for him, life in the East Indies was very trying.
The climate brought fever with it, and Horatio had been in the East but a short time before he fell very ill, and had to be taken from his ship and sent home on board the Dolphin. The ship doctors gave up hope of saving him, but the captain was so much interested in the boy that he spent hours nursing him, and finally he grew better. The voyage from India to England was the most trying time in Nelson's life. He felt that he was not built for the life of a sailor, although his whole mind and heart were set upon rising in that profession. He had no money, no influential friends. He had staked everything on winning his way in the navy. Now it seemed as though he must give up his career and settle down to some small place on shore.
But his talks with the captain gradually stirred new hopes. He was seized with patriotic zeal, and determined at every risk to serve his country on the seas, no matter what suffering it might bring to him. He wanted to act, to do something, and this resolution became suddenly the motive power of his life. From the time of that voyage home on the Dolphin, Nelson, used to say, dated his passion to win fame in the defense of England. When he reached home he was given a position on a new ship, and a little later— took his examination for the rank of lieutenant. His uncle, Captain Suckling, who had commanded the Resinabal, was at the head of the board of examiners before whom Horatio appeared. The boy was very nervous when he entered the room, but answered the questions almost as rapidly as they were put to him, and every answer was full and correct.
He passed the examinations triumphantly, and then his uncle introduced him to the other members of the board. One of them said, Why didn't you tell us he was your own nephew? Because, said the old sailor, I didn't want him to be favored in any way. I was sure he would pass a fine examination, and as you see, I haven't been disappointed. Nelson was given the rank of lieutenant and assigned to the Lostoff. The vessel cruised to the Barbados, in the West Indies, and there the young lieutenant had his first chance to make his mark. The ship fell in with an American letter of mark, and the first lieutenant was ordered to board the American ship. A terrific gale was blowing, and the sea ran so high that in spite of the efforts of the lieutenant he was unable to reach the American boat, and was forced to return to his own frigate.
The captain, very much disturbed at this failure to land the prize, called the officers to him, and asked warmly whether there was not one of them was able to take possession of the other boat. The lieutenant, who had already tried and failed, offered to try again. But Nelson pushed his way forward and exclaimed, "'No! It's my turn now. If I come back, it will be time for you then.' With a few sailors, he jumped into the small boat and plowed through the seas. It was a hard tussle to reach the American, and when they did reach her, the sea was so high, and the prize lay so deep in the trough of the waves, The Nelsons' boat was swept over the deck of the other vessel, and he had to come back from the other side and fight his way against the high sea before he could finally succeed in climbing on board.
He now had a high reputation for courage and daring at sea, fit to equal the name he had won as a skillful mariner. It did not take the captain of the Lowstaff long to realize that that the alertness and enthusiasm of his young lieutenant bespoke a future of the great brilliance in his country's service. In those days England was really at peace, although her eyes were constantly turned across the Channel and wise men were preparing her for war with France. Nelson was sent into all parts of the world, and no matter what were his orders he always carried them out with such skill that rapid promotion followed every return home. Time and again he fell ill, but he was never despondent, because he was determined to continue in his course and serve his country at any cost to himself.
He also saw the war clouds gathering, and realized that it would not be long before he would have the chance to command a squadron against France. The men who had scoffed at him when he first appeared, a puny boy at Chatham, found themselves gradually trusting more and more to his advice, and his uncle, who had at first predicted that three months' service would send Horatio back to shore, was now the first to predict that England would have a good cause to be proud of this slightly built but marvelously active-minded youth. A boy somewhat younger than Nelson was growing up in Corsica, in France, who was soon to win great battles for the latter country, and whose overwhelming ambition was finally to plunge his land into a life-and-death struggle with England.
That boy was named Napoleon Bonaparte. And when he became supreme in France, he realized that it was England who chiefly blocked his schemes at worldwide empire. He planned to invade England and to carry his troops across the Channel, while the great English warships were engaged with his own vessels. But by the time that Napoleon led the troops of France, Horatio Nelson was in command of a British squadron. The French might be all conquering on land, but the English had yet to be defeated on the seas. Before the great decisive battle of Trafalgar, Nelson sent his famous message to all the men under him. England expects every man to do his duty. When the battle was over, the little English admiral had won the greatest naval victory in his country's history.
The same indomitable pluck that had carried him through so many dangers won that great day. He would not be downed, no matter what the odds against him. The same qualities which had sent the delicate boy of thirteen Hurrying through the rain to Chatham, intent only on reaching his goal, brought about the great sea victories of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. CHAPTER XI.
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12 12 - Robert Fulton The Boy of the Conestoga: 1765-1815 16:37
Robert Fulton, The Boy of Conestoga, 1765-1850. It was mid-afternoon on July 3rd, 1778. A group of a dozen boys sat in the long grass that grew close down to the banks of the narrow, twisting Conestoga River, in eastern Pennsylvania. All the boys were hard at work, engaged in a mysterious occupation. By the side of one of them lay a great pile of narrow pasteboard tubes, each about two feet long. And in front of this same small boy stood a keg filled with what looked like black sand. Each of the group was busy working with one of the pasteboard tubes, stopping one and tightly with paper, then pouring in handfuls of the sand from the keg, and from time to time dropping small colored balls into the tubes at various layers of the sand.
These balls came from a box that was guarded by the same boy who had charge of the tubes in the keg, and he dealt them out to the others with continual words of caution. Be careful of that one, George, he said, handing him one of the colored balls. Those red ones were very hard to make, and I haven't many of them, but they'll burn splendidly and make a good show when they go off.
How do you stop the candle when all the balls and powder are in, Rob? asked another boy. "'See this way,' said the young instructor, and he slipped a short fuse into the tube and fastened the end with paper and a piece of twine. "'There's something. Let folks know tomorrow's Fourth of July,' he added proudly as he laid the rocket beside the keg of powder. "'What made you think of them, Rob?' asked one of the boys, looking admiringly at the lad of fourteen who had just spoken. I knew something had to be done, said Robert. As soon as I heard they weren't going to let us burn any candles tomorrow night, because candles are so scarce, I knew we had to do something to show how proud we are that they signed the Declaration of Independence two years ago.
And so I thought things over last night, and worked out a way of making these rockets. They'll be much grander than last year's candle parade. They wouldn't let us light the streets, so we'll light the skies.
"'I wish the Britishers could see them,' said one of the group, and the other added, "'I wish General George Washington could be in Lancaster tomorrow night.' Just before the warm sun dropped behind the tops of the walnut grove beyond the river, the work was done, and a great pile of rockets lay on the grass. Then, as though moved by one impulse, all the boys stripped off their clothes and plunged into the cool pool of the river, where it made a great circle onto the maples. They had all been born and brought up near the winding Conestoga, and had fished in it and swam in it ever since they could remember. The next evening the boys of Lancaster sprang a surprise on that quiet but patriotic town.
The authorities had forbidden the burning of candles on account of the scarcity caused by the War of Independence, and every one expected that second Fourth of July to pass off as quietly as any other day. But at dusk, all the boys gathered at Rob Fulton's house, just outside town, and as soon as it was really dark, proceeded to the town square, their arms full of mysterious packages. It took only a few minutes to gather enough wood in the center of the square for a gigantic bonfire, and when all the people of Lancaster were drawn into the square by the blaze, the boys started their display of fireworks. The astonished people heard the one dull, thudding, report. After another, saw a ball of colored fire flaming high in the air, then a burst of myriad sparks and a rain of stars.
They were not used to seeing skyrockets. Most of them had never heard that there were such things, but they were delighted with them, and hurrahed and cheered at every fresh burst. This was indeed a great surprise. What are they? Where did they come from? How did the boys get them? were the questions that went through the watching crowds, and it was not long before the answer traveled from mouth to mouth. It's one of Rob Fulton's inventions. He read about making them in some book. The father of one of Robert Fulton's friends nodded his head when he heard this news, and said to his wife, I might have known it was young Rob. I've never known such a boy for making things. His schoolmaster told me the other day that when he was only ten, he made his own lead pencils, picking up any bits of sheet lead which happened to come his way, and hammering the lead out of them and making pencils that were as good as any in the school.
The fireworks were a great success. For the better part of an hour, they held the attention of Lancaster, and when the last rocket had shot its stars, everybody there felt that the Fourth of July had been splendidly kept. For a day or two, Rob Fulton was an important personage. Then he dropped back into the ranks with his schoolmates. It was not long after, however, that Robert set himself to work out another problem. The Fultons lived near the Conestoga, and Robert and his younger brothers were very fond of fishing. All they had to fish from was a light raft, which they had built the summer before. In this cumbersome craft, they had to pull from place to place. When they wanted to fish some distance from their farmhouse, They had to spend most of the afternoon polling, and this heavy labor robbed the sport of half its charm.
So a week or two after the Fourth of July, Robert told a couple of boyfriends that he was going to make a boat of his own, and to help them collect the materials he needed. He liked mystery, and told no one of his plans. As soon as school was over, the three conspirators would steal a way to the riverside, and their hammer and saw and plane to their heart's content. Gradually, the boat took shape. Under their hands, and after about ten days' work, a small, light skiff with two paddled wheels joined by a bar and crank were ready to be launched. The idea was that a boy standing in the middle of the skiff could make both wheels revolve by turning the crank, and it only needed another boy holding an oar in the crotch at the stern to steer the craft wherever he wanted to go.
Yet even when the boat was finished, The two other boys were very doubtful whether such a strange-looking object would really work. Robert himself had no doubts upon that score. He had worked the whole plan out before he had even chosen the first plank. The miniature side paddle riverboat was christened the George Washington and launched in a still reach of Conestoga. It was an exciting moment when Robert laid hands on the crank and started the two wheels. They turned easily, and the boat pulled steadily out from shore, and a twist from the steering oar headed downstream. It was a proud moment for the young inventor. As they went down the river and passed people on the banks, he could not help laughing as he saw the surprise on their faces.
Fishing became a better sport than ever when one had a boat of this sort to take one up or downstream. Very little effort sent the paddles a long way, and there were always boys who were eager to take a turn at the crank. Robert's First Experiment with Paddle Wheels. The Lancaster schoolmaster heard of the boat and said to a friend, Take my word for it. The world's going to hear from Rob Fulton some of these days. He can't help turning old goods to new uses, and he doesn't know what it means to be discouraged. I met him the afternoon of the third of July, and he told me that he was going to make some rockets, and I said I thought he would find such a task impossible. No, sir, says Robert to me.
I don't think so. I don't think anything's impossible if you make up your mind to it. That's the sort of boy he is. A large number of Hessian troops were quartered near the Conestoga, and the Lancaster boys thought a great deal about the war for independence, as was natural when the fathers and brothers of Mosul were fighting in it. Such thoughts soon turned Rob Fulton's mind into making firearms, and as soon as his boat had proved itself successful, he planned a new type of gun. And supplied some Lancaster gunsmiths with complete drawings for the whole stock, lock, and barrel, and made estimates of range that proved correct when the gun was finished. But Rob Filton had remarkable talents and more lines than one.
His playmates had nicknamed him Quicksilver Bob because he was so fond of buying that glittering metal and using it in various ways. The name suited him well, for he could turn from one occupation to another and appear to be equally good in each way. Usually, however, when he was not inventing, he was learning how to paint, and he had a number of teachers, one of whom was the famous Major Andre. The little town of Lancaster was an important place during the Revolution. In 1777, the Continental Congress had held its sessions in the old courthouse there, and during the whole time of the war, the town was famous as the deepest supplies for the army. A great deal of powder was stored in the town, and rifles, blankets, and clothing were manufactured there in large quantities.
In the autumn of 1775, Major Andre, who had been captured while on his way to Quebec, was brought to Lancaster for safekeeping. He was allowed certain liberty on parole, and lived in the house of a near neighbor of the Fultons named Caleb Cope. Major Andre was very fond of sketching and spent much of his time in the fields painting pictures of the picturesque little village. No sooner had Rob Fulton heard of the English major's skill with colors that hunted him up and asked for a few lessons. Andre was a very amiable young man and took a great liking to the boy. He gave him many lessons in drawing and also in the use of colors, and young Fulton learned rapidly under his tutoring. Andre was also in the habit of playing marbles and other games with Rob and his young friends, and the boys found him in delightful company.
At about the same time, one of Robert's playmates learned a new way of mixing and preparing colors, using mussel shells to show them off.
The boy carried the shells covered with his new paint to school one day and showed them to Robert. No sooner had young Fulton seen them than he begged to be taught how they were made, and immediately started to work, mixing his own colors. The Revolution had made it very difficult to obtain painting materials from abroad, and almost all the paints the boys used were homemade. Fulton now began to study the making of colors, and in a very short time he was able to add to his stock. Wherever he went, the young inventor and the painter was popular. In the near neighborhood of his home, there were several factories making arms and ammunition for the war, and guards were stationed about the doors to make sure that no trespass was entered, but Quicksilver Bob was allowed to come and go, as he would.
Whenever he saw, he studied, and the first thing they knew, the men in charge of the factories would find the boys submitting new plans and new suggestions to them for improvement of guns or powder. Much to their surprise, these suggestions were almost always good ones, and he became a very welcome visitor. He was paid for some of his work. But much of it he did without any reward, except the knowledge that he was, in a way, serving his country. To help support the little family, he used his skill as a painter in making signs for the village taverns and shops, very much as another boy artist named Benjamin West had done in his youth. It happened that in 1777 some two thousand British prisoners were brought to Lancaster and quartered there.
Such a large number of the enemy naturally caused some alarm among the quiet country people. The officers were lodged at the taverns and at private houses, but the soldiers themselves lived in rude barracks just outside town, and there were so many of them that they were made quite a settlement for themselves. Many of the Hessian troops had their wives with them, and these occupied square huts built of mud and sod. The little encampment had quite a strange appearance, the small mud houses lining primitive streets and looking like some savage settlement. Naturally, the place had a great charm for the Lancaster boys, and whenever they were free from school during that time, Robert and his friends were almost always sure to be found in the neighborhood of the Hessean huts, watching these strange men who had come from overseas.
Fulton drew countless pictures of them, some of which caricatures, but many faithful copies of what he saw. When they were finished, these pictures were in great demand, and some of them were carried as far as As Philadelphia, to show the people there the curious sights of the country near Lancaster. In spite of his skill in these different lines, Robert was not a very successful scholar, and his poor schoolteacher, who was a strict Quaker of Tory principles, found him very hard to put up with at certain times. If some inventive idea occurred to the boy while he was on his way to school, he was quite as likely to stop and work it out as not. One time he came in so very late that the teacher quite lost his patience.
Seizing a rod, he told Robert to hold out his hand and gave him a canning. "'There!' he exclaimed. "'I hope that will make you do something!' But the boy folded his arms and answered very quietly, "'I come to school to have something beaten into my brains and not into my knuckles!' It was very hard for the teachers to do much with such a lad, particularly as the boy was so often really very helpful to him." Another time when he came to school late, he had been at a shop pouring lead into wooden pencils that were better than those that he had made before, and he handed several of them to the master. The man examined them carefully and said they were the best he had ever had. It was hard to school the boy for spending his time in such ways.
One time, when the teacher had tried to rouse his ambition to study history, Robert said to him, My head's so full of original notions that there's no vacant room to store away the records of Dusty old books. Yet, in spite of these stories, the boy could not help picking up a great deal of general information at school, for his mind was always alert, and he was eager to improve on everything that he had done before.
At this time in his boyhood, it is hard to say whether young Fulton was more of the inventor or the artist, but as soon as the war ended, he decided that he would become a painter and went to Philadelphia, then the chief city of the nation, to study his art. He made enough money by the use of his pencil and by making drawings for machinists to support himself, and also saved enough money to buy a small farm for his widowed mother and younger brothers and sisters. Benjamin West, a great painter, had lived near Lancaster and had heard much of Robert Fulton's boyhood inventions, and he now hunted him out in Philadelphia and helped him in his new line of work. The young artist met Benjamin Franklin and found him eager to aid in his plans.
And so, by his perseverance and his friends, he was fortunate enough to make he laid the foundations for his future. When he became a man, the spirit of the inventor finally overcame that of the painter. He went abroad and studied in laboratories in England and France, and then he came home and built a workshop of his own. What particularly interested him was the uses of which steam might be put, and he studied its possibilities until he had worked out his plans for a practical steamboat. How successful these plans were, all the world knows. It was a great day when the crowds that lined the Hudson River saw the Clermont to prove that the area of sailing vessels had closed, and that of steamships had dawned.
But to the boys who had lived along the Conestoga, it did not seem strange that Robert Fulton, who had won fame as an inventor, they had known that he could make Anything he chose since that second Independence Day when he had come to his country's rescue with his homemade skyrockets.
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13 13 - Andrew Jackson The Boy of the Carolinas: 1767-1845 24:08
ANDREW JACKSON, THE BOY OF THE CAROLINAS, 1767-1845. It was hard for a boy to get much of an education in the backwoods districts of the American colonies in 1777, and especially so in such a primitive country as that which lay along the Catawba River in South Carolina. The colonies were at war with England, and all the care of the people was needed to protect their farms from attacks by the enemy, and to give as much help as they could to their country's cause. But if the boys and girls learned little from books, they learned a great deal from hard experience, courage, and self-reliance foremost of all. All of the children learned those lessons at a time when they might come home any day and find their home burned down by the enemy, where their father and older brothers carried away prisoners.
Even more than most of his playmates, however, young Andrew Jackson learned these things, because his life was harder than theirs. And he saw more of the actual fighting. By nature, he was a fighter, and circumstances strengthened that trait in him. Land in the Carolinas was so valuable for cotton-raising that it was not used for building purposes in those days. So the boys who lived near the Catawba were sent to what were called Old Field Schools. And Old Field was really a pine forest, when many crops of cotton Planted season after season without change had exhausted the soil. The fences were taken away, and the land was left waste. Young pines soon sprang up, and in a short time the field would be covered with a thick wood.
In the wood, as near to the road as possible, a small space would be cleared, and the rudest kind of log house built, with a huge fireplace filling one side of the room. The chinks in the logs were filled with red clay. The trunk of a tree, cut into a plank, was fastened to four upright posts and served the whole school as a writing desk. A little below it was stretched a smooth log, and this was the seat for the scholars. A wandering schoolmaster was engaged by the farmers, only for a few months at a time, and he taught the children reading, writing, and arithmetic. When the weather was bad and the roads made of thick red clay were too heavy for travel, Or when there was farming to be done, the school was closed.
This was the only school Mrs. Jackson could send her son Andrew to, and he went there when he was about ten, and took his place on the slab bench. A tall, slim boy with bright blue eyes, a freckled face, very long sandy hair, wearing a rough homespun suit, and with bare feet and legs. He was not very fond of schools. But he did like to be with other boys, and to lead them in any kind of adventure, particularly if there was the chance of a fight. There is much in this country life to interest an active boy like Andrew Jackson. Wherever there were no cotton fields, there were thick pine woods full of wild turkeys and deer to be had for the shooting. The farmers of the Catawba country took their cotton to market in immense covered wagons.
Often needing a week to make the journey, and camping out every night. The boys were in demand to help load the cotton and gather wood for the camp-fires. And many a time Andrew was hired to travel to market with a farmer and his wife and young children. And many a night he spent in a little opening in the woods, eating supper, and sleeping close to a blazing fire of pine-knots that lighted up the trees for yards around. The farmers were not apt to leave their wives and children at home, because either the British or the Indians might sweep down upon the district at any time. So quite a party would travel together, and that added to the fun. Such a life, with plenty of horses to ride, and turkeys to hunt, and journeys to make, with only occasional schooling appealed strongly to Andrew.
In August 1780, when young Jackson was twelve years old, The American general Gates was defeated by the British, and Cornwallis marched into the country of Catawba. Many families left their homes and went north to be safe from the enemy, and among others, Mrs. Jackson and her sons determined to seek a safer home. Andrew's mother and his brother Robert left on horseback, and a day or two later Andrew followed them. The people all through that desolate part of the country were anxious for news of the war. Especially for word of fathers or brothers in the army. And they stood by the roads and asked news eagerly of any chance horseman. At one lonely house, a little girl was stationed at the gate to question travelers.
About sunset one day, she saw a tall, gawkish boy come riding along the road, astride of one of the rough, wild South Carolina ponies. His bare legs were almost long enough to meet under the pony. He wore a torn, wide-brimmed hat, which napped about his face. His scanty shirt and trousers were covered with dust, and his face was burned brown and worn with hardship. He had ridden so far and was so tired that he could scarcely keep a seat. "'Where are you from?' cried the girl, as the boy reined up. From down below, along Waxhall Creek. "'Where are you going?' "'Up along North.' "'Who are you for?' The Commonwealth Congress. What you doin' to the Redcoats down below? Oh, we're poppin' em still.
And what may your name be? Andy Jackson. Anything else you'd like to know? She asked him for news of her father's regiment, but the boy knew little about it, and was soon riding on his way, following the high road to Charlotte. In Charlotte, Jackson's boarded with some relatives, and Andrew worked hard to pay for his food and lodging. He drove cattle, tended the mill, brought in wood, picked beans, and did any odd jobs that fell to his hand. All the time he was hoping for a chance to fight the enemy, and each day he brought home some new weapon. One day it was a rude spear which he had forged while he waited for the blacksmith to finish a job. Another time it was a wooden club, and another a tomahawk.
Once he fastened the blade of a scythe to a pole, and when he reached home... He began cutting down weeds with it, and crying, "'Oh, if only I were a man, how I'd cut down the redcoats with it!' The man with whom he was living happened to be watching him, and said later to Andrew's mother, "'That boy Andy is going to fight his way in this world!' The war between the colonists and the British was especially bitter in the Carolinas, where conditions were more rude and simple than other parts of the country. The stories that came to Andrew were enough to stir any boy's blood. He had heard that at Charleston the farmers had used their cotton bales to build a fork, that the guerrilla leader, Marion, had split saws into sword-blades for his men, that in more than one encounter the Carolina militia had gone into battle with more men than muskets, so that the unarmed men had to stand and watch the battle until some comrade fell and they could rush in and seize his gun.
Popular legends made the Redcoats little less than Devils, fit companions for the Indian bands they sent upon the warpath. News of one attack after another came to the Jackson boys until they could stand in action no longer, and joined a small band of independent riders, not members of any regiment, but free to attack and retreat as they liked. Andrew's first real taste of battle came when he, his brother Robert, and six friends were guarding the house of a neighbor, Captain Sands. The captain had come to see his family, and it was known that the house might be attacked by Tories. Leaving one man to watch, the rest of the defenders stretched themselves out on the floor of the living room and went to sleep.
The sentry also dozed, but toward midnight he was roused by a suspicious noise, and investigating found that two bands of the enemy were approaching the house. One in the front, and one in the rear. He rushed indoors and seized Andrew, who was sleeping next to the door by the hair. "'The Tories are upon us,' he cried in great alarm. The boy jumped up, and he ran out of doors. Seeing men in the distance, he placed his gun in the fork of a tree by the door and hailed the men. They made no reply. He called to them again. There was no answer, but they came on double quick. By this time the other defenders were roused and joined the boy. Andrew fired. and the attacking party answered with a volley.
The Tories who were creeping up from the rear supposed the volley was fired from the defenders, and immediately answered with fire from their guns. Andrew and his companions retreated into the house, having managed for a few moments to draw the enemy's fire in the darkness against each other. The Tories halted and learned their mistake. By now the men and doors opened fire from the windows on both parties. Several tories fell, and the rest were held at bay. Then, very fortunately, a distant bugle was heard sounding the cavalry charge, and the tories, thinking they had been led into an ambush and were about to be attacked in the rear, dashed their horses, and mounting rode off at full speed. It turned out afterward that a neighbor, hearing the firing at Captain Sands' house, had blown his bugle Hoping to give the enemy alarm in the darkness, and that in reality the trick had worked to perfection.
So the Jackson boys had luck with them in their first skirmish. They were not so lucky next time. The British general heard of the activity of the little band of colonists and planned to end them. He heard that about forty of the farmers were gathered at the Waxhall meeting-house, and he sent a body of dragoons, dressed in rough country clothes, to seize them. The farmers were expecting a band of neighbors, and were fooled by the British. Eleven of the forty were taken prisoners, and the rest fled, pursued hotly by the dragoons. Andrew found himself riding desperately by the side of his cousin, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford. For a time they kept to the road, and then turned across a swampy field, where they soon came to a wide slough of mire.
They plunged their horses into the bog. Andrew struggled through, but when he reached the bank he found that his cousin's horse had fallen, and that Thomas was trying to fight off his pursuers with the sword. Andrew started back, but before he could get near his cousin, the latter had been forced to surrender. The boy then turned and succeeded in outriding the dragoons, and finally found refuge in the woods, where his brother Robert joined him that night. The next morning hunger forced the two boys to seek a house, and they crept up to their cousins. They left their guns and horses in the woods and reached the house safely. Unfortunately, a Tory neighbor had seen them, and, seizing their horses and arms, he sent word to the British soldiers.
Before the boys had any notice of attack, the house was surrounded, and they were taken prisoners. Andrew never forgot the scene that followed. There were no men in the house, only his cousin's wife and young children. Nevertheless, the soldiers destroyed everything they could find. smashed furniture, crockery, glass, tore all the clothing to rags, and broke in windows and doors. Then the officer in charge ordered Andrew to clean his high-riding boots, which were crusted with mud. The boy refused to do it, saying, "'I've a right to be treated as a prisoner of war.' The officer swore, and aimed a blow with his sword at Andrew's head. Jackson threw up his left arm as a shield and received two wounds.
One a deep gash on the head, the other on his hand. The officer then turned to Robert Jackson and ordered him to clean his boots. Robert also refused. Then the man struck this boy on the head and knocked him to the floor. It was a bad business, and the whole performance, especially the brutal treatment of a defenseless woman and two boy prisoners, made a deep impression on Andrew's mind. He was only fourteen years old, But his fighting spirit was that of a grown man. Shortly after this, Andrew was ordered to mount a horse and guide some of the soldiers to the house of a well-known man named Thompson. He was threatened with death if he failed to guide them right. There was nothing for it but to obey.
But the boy hid upon a plan by which he might give Thompson a chance to escape. Instead of reaching the house by the usual road, he took the men a roundabout way which brought them into full sight of the place half a mile before they reached it. As Andrew had guessed, some one was on watch, and instantly gave the alarm, so that the Redcoats had the pleasure of seeing the man they saw dash from his house, mount a waiting horse, and make off toward a creek that ran close by. The creek was swollen and very deep, But the rider plunged into it and got safely across. The dragoons, however, did not dare follow, and Thompson, shouting defiance at them, got safely into the woods and away. The prisoners were now gathered together and placed under one escort to be taken to the British prison at Camden, South Carolina.
The journey was a very hard one. Both the Jackson boys and their cousin, Thomas Crawford, were suffering from wounds. But they were allowed no food or water as they were marched the forty miles. The soldiers even forbade the boys scooping up drinking water from one of the streams they crossed. The prison at Camden was wretchedness itself. Two hundred and fifty men and boys were herded into one small enclosure. They were given no beds, no medicine, nor bandages to dress their wounds, only a little bad bread for food. The brothers were separated. Andrew was robbed of his coat and shoes. He was sick and hungry and worried, for he had no idea what had happened to his mother or brother. Then, as a final horror, smallpox broke out in the prison, and the fear of contagion was added to the other torments.
One day Andrew was lying in the sun near the prison gate when an officer was attracted by his youth and came up to talk with him.
The officer seemed kind, and the boy poured out the miseries of the prison life to him. He told how the men were starved or given bad food, and how they were ill-used by the guards. The officer was shocked, and promised to look into the matter. When he did, he found that the contractors were not giving the prisoners the food they were paid to provide, and he reported the matter to those in charge. Shortly after, conditions improved. The news came to the prison that the American General Green was coming to deliver them. They were tremendously excited at the report. General Green had indeed marched on Camden with a small army of twelve hundred men, but as he had marched faster than his artillery, he thought it best to wait on a hill outside the town until the guns should come up with him.
Six days he stayed there, and then the British commander decided to attack him without further delay. The prison yard would have given a good view of the battle, but for a board fence which had lately been built on top of the wall. Andrew looked everywhere for a crack in the boards, but could find none. He managed, however, during the night to cut a hole with an old razor blade, which had been given the prisoners to serve as a meat knife. Through this hole he saw something of the battle next day, and described what he saw to the men in the yard below him. The Americans were not expecting the British attack. When the British general led out his nine hundred men early in the morning, the Americans were scattered over the hill, washing their clothes, cleaning their guns, cooking, and playing cards.
Andrew saw the enemy steal about the base of the hill. There was no way in which he could warn his countrymen. He saw the British steal up the hill and break suddenly on the surprised soldiers. The colonials rushed for their arms, fell into line, met the charge. The American horse dashed upon the British rear, and a cheer went up from the waiting prisoners. Then the British made a second charge, and this time carried men and horses before them down the slope and out into the plain. The Americans ceased firing, and finally broke in full retreat. The prisoners were in a more wretched state than they had been before. After the battle, Andrew's spirits sank to the lowest ebb. He fell ill with the first symptoms of the dreaded smallpox.
His brother was in even worse condition. The wound in his head had not healed, as it had never been properly treated. He also was ill, and it seemed as though both boys were about to fall victims to the plague. Fortunately, at this great crisis, help suddenly appeared. Their devoted mother learned of the boys' state, and went by herself to Camden to see if she could not procure a transfer of prisoners. She saw the British general and arranged that he should free her two sons and five of her neighbors in return for thirteen British soldiers who had been recently captured by a Waxhall captain. The boys were set free and joined their mother. She was shocked to find them so changed by hunger, illness, and wounds.
Robert could not stand, and Andrew was little better off. They were free, however, at last. and Mrs. Jackson planned to get them home as soon as possible. The mother could get only two horses. One she rode, and Robert was put on the other, and held in the saddle by two of the men just freed. Andrew dragged himself wearily behind, without hat, coat, or shoes. Forty miles of wilderness lay between Camden and the boys' old home at Waxhaw near the Catawba. The little party trudged along as best it could, and were only two miles from home when a cold, drenching rain started to fall. The boys, ill already, suffered terribly. Finally they reached home and were put to bed. The cold rain had proved too severe for Robert, and two days later he died.
Andrew, stricken with smallpox, as was his brother, was very ill for a long time. While Andrew was still sick, word came to Waxhall that the condition of some of the men and boys in the Charleston prison ships was even worse than that of the men at Camden. Mrs. Jackson's nephews and many of her friends and neighbors were in the ships, and she felt that she must do something to relieve them. As soon as she could leave Andrew, she started with two other women that traveled a hundred and sixty miles to Charleston. The three women carried medicines and country delicacies and gifts for the prisoners. It was a most heroic journey. They had no protectors, and they were going into the enemy's lines. They succeeded, however, finally managing to gain admittance to the ships, and to deliver the messages from home, the food and the medicines that were so greatly needed.
No one can say how much happiness they brought to those ships in Charleston Harbor. Mrs. Jackson stayed in the neighborhood of the city some time, doing what she could to help her countrymen. Unfortunately, disease was only too rife in the prisons, and it was not long before she became ill with a ship fever, and after a very short illness, died. The news was brought to Andrew, now fifteen years old, as he lay at home, just recovering a little of his strength. He had always been devoted to his mother, and worshipped her memory all the days of his life. The British under Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown October Nineteenth, 1781, and the war in the South practically came to an end. Andrew Jackson came out of the Revolution without father or mother or brother, convalescent in the house of a cousin with bitter memories of the war.
For a long time he was exceedingly weak and dispirited, and that fighting, aggressive nature which had marked his early boyhood Did not return to him for some time. The boy of sixteen had no one to advise him as to what to do. He tired of life in the primitive Waxhall country, and when the British evacuated Charleston he went there and saw something of city life. But his money was soon spent, and he had to decide what he should turn his hand to. The law appealed to him as a good field for advancement, just as it appealed to so many ambitious youths of the new country. At almost the same time, there began the emigration of many Carolina families westward into what was to become the territory of Tennessee.
Land was given to all who would immigrate and settle there. The idea of growing up with a new community appealed to Andrew. He knew he had the power to make his way. In 1788, he started on his journey west, traveling in the company of about a hundred settlers. They had many adventures. Several times they were in danger of attack from Indians. Once it was Jackson himself, sitting by the campfire after the others had gone to sleep, who detected something strange in the hooting of owls about the camp, and waked his friends just in time to save them from being surrounded by a band of redskins on the warpath. At last they reached the small town which had been christened Nashville, and there Andrew decided to settle and practice law.
This was about the time that Washington was being inaugurated first President of the United States. Andrew grew up with Tennessee. He became a big figure in the Western country. He was known as a shrewd, aggressive man, and was sent to Congress from that district. Later, when the War of 1812 came, he was made a General of the American forces, and finally put an end to that war by winning the Battle of New Orleans. Some of the satisfaction of that last campaign may have atoned to him for his own sufferings in the Revolution. When the war ended, he had won the reputation of a great general, and was one of the most popular men in the United States. His nickname of Old Hickory was given him in deep affection.
Shortly afterward, he was elected president, and then re-elected. He was intensely democratic, absolutely fearless, A magnetic leader. There are few more remarkable stories than that of the rise of the barefooted boy of the wax hall, to be the chief of the great republic.
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14 14 - Napoleon Bonaparte The Boy of Brienne: 1769-1821 19:02
Holland. Chapter 14. Napoleon Bonaparte. The Boy of Brienne. 1769-1821. The playground of the French military school at Brienne was a great open space looking down upon the town. Here, on a January afternoon in 1783, a score of boys were hard at work building a snow fort. The winter had been very cold, and a great fall of snow at the first of the year had covered the playground several feet deep. After each storm, the boys in the military school fought battles back and forth over the open ground and up and down the roads that led to the village, but this battle was to be a memorable one. A little corsican named Bonaparte was in charge of the defending forces. He was not very popular among his playmates.
He kept very much to himself, and when he did mix with the others, he had a habit of ordering them about. Most of the other boys were afraid of him. Time and again, when he had been disturbed as he stood reading a book in a distant corner of the schoolroom, or walking by himself in the playground, he had turned fiercely upon his playmates and had scattered them before him with the passion of his face inwards. But when they wanted a leader, the boys turned to Bonaparte, and now, when they had decided to build a great fort, they left the direction of it entirely to his care. The Corsican boy, who was fourteen years old, stood in the middle of the ground, his hands clasped behind his back, nodding now in one direction, now in another, as he ordered the boys where to bank the snow, how high to build the ramparts, and in what lines.
He was not very tall, and his face was quite colorless. Under a broad brow his piercing gray eyes darted here and there, and then were quiet in study. He wore a blue military coat with red facings and bright buttons, and a vest of blue faced with white and blue knee-breeches, and a military cocked hat. From time to time he drew lines on the snow with a sharp-pointed stick. Once or twice, when he found a boy idling, he spoke to him sharply, but for the most part he kept strict silence. After a time a young master, dressed like a priest, came out of the school door and walked over toward Bonaparte. He smiled as he saw the intense look on the boy's face and the rough plan sketched before him on the snow.
He came up to the boy and stood looking down at him. "'Well, my young Spartan,' said he, "'what are you planning now? Some new way to save the town from siege?' The boy glanced up at his teacher, and a little smile parted his thin lips. "'No, Monsieur Pichigrew, I was considering how we might drive the French troops out of Corsica.' "'From Corsica!' exclaimed the master. "'Corsica belongs to France, and you are a French cadet.' The boy shook his head solemnly. "'Corsica should be free,' he answered. "'We are more Italian than French. "'I hate your barbarous words. My tongue trips over them. "'If I had my way, no Frenchman would be left in the island.' "'Then it's well you don't have your way, Bonaparte,' said M.
Pichegre, laughing. Suddenly the boy's brow clouded, and his eyes grew serious. You think I shan't have my way, then? You don't know me. No one knows me. Wait until I grow up. Then you shall see. The master was used to this boy's strange fancies, and now he simply shrugged his shoulders. Well, well, we'll wait and see, but you must learn to curb your temper if you ever expect to do great things in the world. Why? said the boy. Must a general curb his temper? It's his part to give orders, not take them, and that, sir, is the part I mean to play. Again the master shrugged his shoulders, and the same quizzical smile his face always wore when watching this boy lighted his eyes. At least we are agreed on one thing, Bonaparte.
Both of us know the most glorious profession in the world is that of the soldier. Ah, that I might some day be a captain of artillery. Why not? said the boy. Isn't all of Europe one big camp? Can't any man rise who has the strength to draw a sword? Believe me, Monsieur Pichigrou, if you really want to be a captain, you shall be one. The master glanced at the boy, then looked quickly away. "'You are a strange lad, my little Spartan,' said he. "'I don't think I ever knew a boy quite like you.' The teacher moved away, and the boy continued making his drawings with a pointed stick. By the time the afternoon had ended, the square fort of snow was finished. It was by far the finest fortification the boys of Brienne had ever built.
It had four bastions and a rampart three and one-half feet long. Water was poured over the top and sides so that ice might form, and it looked like a very difficult place to take. When he considered it finished, Bonaparte ordered the boys to quit work, and taking up a book he had thrown on the ground before him, he started to stroll up and down by the farther wall of the parade. He was fond of walking here, book in hand, studying some military treatise, and though only a boy, he had gained the power of shutting out all thoughts except those of his study. Some of the boys had put together a rough sort of skyrocket, and now brought it out from the house to light it in the playground. One boy touched a match to the fuse, and the others leaped back out of reach.
There was a loud explosion, and the firework, failing to shoot off as was intended, simply fizzled in a shower of sparks near the feet of the boy by the wall. He glanced up, looked at the flames, and then at the circle of boys beyond. In an instant he had seized his stick and was among them, hitting the boys over their heads and calling them all the names he could think of, beside himself in a sudden storm of passion because he had been disturbed. They fled before his attack like leaves before a whirlwind. In a few moments he had cleared the playground. Then he threw down his stick and picked up his book again. A few minutes later M. Pichigrou, who had been told of the explosion, came over to him.
"'You must not lose your temper in that way, my boy,' said he. "'Someday you will learn to regret it.'" "'Why?' said the Corsican lad. "'I was studying here. I was reading how great Hannibal crossed the Alps, and that pack of fools broke in upon me. I will not be disturbed.' "'You'll teach them to hate you,' said the master, trying to argue the boy out of his ill-temper. "'No. I'll teach them to do as I want, or let me alone when I wish it. That's all I ask of them—to be let alone.' The master, shaking his head, thought that the boy would soon have his way, for day by day he grew more solitary, and his playmates' fear of him increased. The teachers at the school, and also some of the servants, saw the fort on the playground that afternoon, and the news of it spread through the town.
According to a report, it was very different from the snow forts the boys usually built, much more ingenious and complicated, and along military lines. As a result, the next morning many of the townspeople came to see the fortifications and examined them with great interest while the boys were indoors at study. When they were free in the afternoon, the battle began, one party of the boys leading the attack from the streets of the town, the other under Bonaparte defending the bastions and ramparts. Attack and defense were well handled. The boys had already learned many military tactics, and they thoroughly enjoyed this mimic warfare, but the Corsican lad was much too clever for his adversaries.
He was continually inventing new schemes to surprise his opponents, now sending out a party of skirmishers to attack them in the rear or on the flanks, again luring them into a direct assault upon the ramparts, and then leading his soldiers up and over the ice walls to scatter the enemy down the street. By sunset there was no doubt as to who was the victor. The flag, which was the prize of battle, was formally awarded to the boys who had held the fort. There was no doubt that young Napoleon Bonaparte knew how to lead others. He had shown that ability to an amazing degree ever since he had first entered the school of Brienne when he was only nine years old. The boys at Brienne were all being trained to be soldiers, and they were all brought up in strict military discipline which would have been irksome to many a boy.
The young Corsican, however, liked it and seemed to thrive on it. Some of the rules of the school were curious. Until they were 12 years old, the boys had to keep their hair cut short. After that, they were allowed to wear a pigtail, but could powder their hair only on Sundays and Saints' Days. Each boy had a separate room, which was much like a cell, containing a hard bed with only a rug for covering. The boys had to stay in school for six years, and they were never allowed to leave on any pretense whatever. During the long vacation, which lasted from September 15 to November 2, they had only one lesson a day and had plenty of time for outdoor sports. Everything possible was done to fire their ardor for military life.
They were encouraged to read the lives of great men, especially Plutarch's lives, and those historical plays which deal with great French scenes. History and geography were the chief studies, and after those two, mathematics. In all of these branches, Bonaparte took great delight. Singularly enough, the school, although designed to train boys for warriors, was entirely under the charge of an order of friars. Neither teachers nor boys could help but admit Napoleon's great strength of character. When the abbé in charge organized the school into companies of cadets, the command of one company was given to this boy. He ruled those under him with a rod of iron, and finally the boys, who were the commanders of the other companies, decided to hold a court-martial.
Bonaparte was brought before them, and charged with being unworthy to command his schoolfellows, because he disdained them and had no real regard for them. Arguments attacking him were made by various boys, but when it came to Napoleon's turn to defend himself, he refused, on the ground that whether he were commander or not made little difference to him. The court-martial thereupon decided to degrade him from his rank, and a formal sentence was read aloud to him. He seemed very little concerned, and took his place with the other privates without any show of ill feeling. For almost the first time, the boys felt a sort of affection for him because he bore his humiliation so well. Unlike most boys, he really seemed to care very little whether he was popular or not.
All he asked was a chance to learn the art of warfare. He was happiest when he was left alone to study history. Plutarch's Lives was his favorite book, and his favorite nation among the ancient people was that of Sparta because he admired the Spartans' stern sense of heroism and hoped to copy them. That was the reason M. Pichigreux had given him the nickname of the Spartan, and the name stuck to him for years. The Corsican boy's first desire was to be a sailor. He hoped he might be sent to the southern coast of France, where he would be near his own beloved island home. It so happened, however, that one of the French military instructors came to Brienne after Napoleon had been there about five years, and immediately took an interest in the boy.
A little later, he, with four others, was chosen to enter a famous military school in Paris as what were known as gentlemen cadets. The report that was sent to Paris respecting Bonaparte stated that he was domineering, imperious, and obstinate, but in spite of these qualities, he was chosen because of his great ability in mathematics and the art of warfare. The military school of Paris was one of the sites of the French capital. Famous visitors were always taken there, and the cadets were intended to form the flower of the French army. Only a few of the boys who were at the schools in the provinces were chosen to come to Paris, and those who were chosen were put through a rigid course of study and a physical drill in preparation for service in the army.
Most of the boys were sons of the nobility, and were accustomed to bully their less distinguished comrades. When Bonaparte had been in Paris a very short time, he had his first fight with such a boy. He was quite able to hold his own, but all that first year he was continually set upon by the Parisians who loved to taunt him with being a little Corsican, and to make ridiculous nicknames out of his two long names. He lost something of his reserve because he liked the military side of the Paris school much better than the church atmosphere at Brienne. Nothing made him so indignant as to hear his native land spoken of slurringly, and there were many of his comrades who took a special delight in doing this.
The boys would draw caricatures of him standing with his hands behind his back in his favorite attitude, his brows frowning and his eyes thoughtful, and underneath would write, Bonaparte planning to rescue Corsica from the hands of the French. Whenever he had a chance, he spoke bitterly of the injustice of a great people oppressing such a tiny island as his. Finally, some of his words came to the ears of the general in charge of the school. He said it once for the boy, and said to him, Sir, you are a scholar of the King. You must learn to remember this, and to moderate your love of Corsica, which, after all, forms part of France. Bonaparte was wiser than to make any answer. He simply saluted and withdrew.
But he paid no heed to the advice, and one day, shortly afterward, he again spoke to a priest of the unjust treatment of Corsica. The latter waited until the boy came to him at the confessional, and then rebuked him on this subject. Bonaparte ran back through the church crying loud enough for all those present to hear him. I didn't come in here to talk about Corsica, and that priest has no right to lecture me on such a subject. The priest, as well as the others in charge, soon learned that it was useless to try to change this boy's views, or indeed to keep him from expressing them when he had a chance. They were learning, just as Monsieur Pichegreux and the friars at Brienne had learned, that he would have his own way, in spite of all opposition.
When he was sixteen, Napoleon and his best friend, a boy named Desmays, were ordered to join the regiment of La Fierre, which was then accorded in the south of France. Napoleon was glad of this change, which brought him nearer to his island home, and he also felt that he would now learn something of actual warfare. The two boys were taken to the regiment in charge of an officer, who stayed with them from the time they left Paris until the carriage set them down at the garrison town. The Regiment of Lafierre was one of the best in the French army, and the boy immediately took a great liking to everything connected with it. He found the officers well-educated and anxious to help him. He declared the blue uniform with red facings to be the most beautiful uniform in the world.
He had to work hard, still studying mathematics, chemistry, and the laws of fortification, mounting guard with the other subalterns, and looking after his own company of men. He seemed very young to be put in charge of grown soldiers, but his great ability had brought about this extraordinarily rapid promotion. He had a room in a boarding house kept by an old maid, but took his meals at the inn of the Three Pigeons. Now that he was an officer, he began to be more interested in making a good appearance before people. He took dancing lessons and suddenly blossomed out into much popularity among the garrison. Older people could not help but see his great strength of character, and time and again it was predicted that he would rise high in the army.
He had not been long with his regiment when he was given leave of absence to visit his family in Corsica. His father had died, but his mother was living, with a number of children. All of them looked to Napoleon for help. When he reached his home, although he was only seventeen, he was hailed as a great man. Not only his own family, but all the neighbors and townspeople spoke of him with pride and expected that he would do a great deal for their island. He still had the same passion for that rocky land, and spent hours wandering through the grottoes by the seashore, or in the dense olive woods, or lying under a favorite oak tree reading history and dreaming of his future. The open life of the fields and the pleasures of the farm appealed strongly to him, but he knew that there was more active work for him to do in the world, and so, after a short stay, he went back to the mainland.
It was not long before great events took place in France. The people arose against their king, and the first gusts of the French Revolution blew him from his throne. The young Napoleon was a great lover of liberty. He wished it for Corsica, and he wished it for the French people. It seemed at first as though the island might be able to win its independence owing to the disorder in France, and the Bonapartes sided with the conspirators who were working towards this end. But the young lieutenant attended strictly to his own business. He watched the rapid march of events from a distance, and when he went to Paris, he was careful not to ally himself too closely with any particular party. Finally, the Republic was proclaimed, and Napoleon saw that there would be an immediate chance for fighting.
He had complained as a boy that the trouble with the officers was that they had not had a real taste of battle. He hoped to be able to learn his profession on the actual field. At a time like this, when everyone doubted his neighbor, and no one knew how long the present government would last, one quality of the young lieutenant, his steadfast sticking to duty, made him conspicuous. Whoever might rule the country, he stuck to his work of drilling the men under him, and step by step he advanced until he became a lieutenant colonel. Finally, his great chance came. The city of Toulon, on the Mediterranean, rebelled against the Convention, which had in turn become the governing power of France, and surrendered itself to the English.
French troops were sent to the city, and at the very beginning of the fighting the commander of the artillery was wounded by a ball in the shoulder. Napoleon was next in rank and took his place. The siege lasted for days, and the young commander was obliged to exercise all his ingenuity to hold his position before the English lines. It was like a repetition of the old fight of the Brienne schoolyard, only now Bonaparte led the attacking forces, and he found this a more difficult task than to defend his own iced ramparts. There was also trouble with some of the officers, and one of them ordered Napoleon to place his guns in a certain line of attack. The Corsican youth refused, declaring that he would not serve under a man who was wanting in the simplest principles of warfare.
The commander was indignant, but all his friends said to him, You had better let that young man alone. He knows more about this than you. If his plan succeeds, the glory will be all yours. If he fails, the blame will be his. The officer took the advice and told young Captain Cannon, as he called Napoleon, that he might have his own way, but that he should answer for the success of his plan with his head. Very well, said the youth. I am quite satisfied with that arrangement. The siege lasted a long time, and then it was finally decided to carry the town by a grand assault. All possible forces were brought to the attack, and at last Tolune was taken. The young lieutenant colonel distinguished himself greatly in his first real battle.
His horse was shot under him, and he was wounded with a bayonet thrust in the thigh, but he kept his men in place, and finally advancing, they succeeded in covering both the town and the fleet in the sea. When the fighting was over, the general in command wrote to Paris, I have no words to describe the merit of Bonaparte, much science, as much intelligence, and too much bravery. This is but a feeble sketch of this rare officer, and it is for you ministers to consecrate him to the glory of the Republic. Such was the young Napoleon at twenty-three. Almost immediately he was made General of Brigade and was looked upon as one of the coming defenders of the French Republic. He went to Paris, was loaded with honors, and given post after post in the service of his country.
For a time he proved a great defender of his people. For a time he served the republic as no other man could. But when defense was no longer needed, he could not sheathe his sword. He had to use it for attack, whether the cause were just or not. As he won victory after victory and tasted power, he discarded even the republic that had made him, and placed himself upon the throne as emperor. That same love of power which had made him was also his undoing. He could not rest content with what he had. As he had predicted to Monsieur Pichigrou that afternoon at Brienne, he would have his own way, and very much as he had treated his schoolfellows, there he later grew to treat the nations of Europe. As a result, they, like his playfellows, combined against him, and sent him down finally among the privates.
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15 15 - Walter Scott The Boy of the Canongate: 1771-1832 20:40
Holland. Chapter 15. Walter Scott. The Boy of the Cannongate. The business office of a Scotch solicitor is not an especially cheerful place at any time, and the interior of such a room looked particularly cheerless on a late winter afternoon in Edinburgh in 1786. A boy of fifteen sat on a high stool at an old oak desk and watched the snow falling in the street. Occasionally he could see people passing through the windows, men and women wrapped to their ears in plaid shawls, for the wind whistled down the street so loudly that the boy could hear it, and the cold was bitter. The boy looked through the window until he almost felt the chill himself, and then, to keep warm, held his head in his hands and fastened his eyes on the big, heavy-leaved book in front of him, which bore the unappealing title, Erskine's Institutes.
The type was fine, and this young student had to read each line a dozen times before he could understand it. Sometimes his eyes would involuntarily close, and he would doze a few moments, only to wake with a start to look quickly at another desk near the fire, where his father sat steadily writing, and then to a table in the corner where a very old man was always sorting papers. The winter light grew dim, so dim that the boy could no longer see to read. He closed the book with a bang. "'Father?' "'Yes, Walter, lad?' The lawyer looked up from his writing and smiled at the figure on the high stool. "'I'd best be going home. There's no more light here to see by.' "'A good reason, Walter. Grab yourself up warm, for the night is cold.' Young Walter slid down from his seat and stretched his arms and legs to cure the stiffness in them.
He was a sturdy, well-built lad with tasseled yellow hair, frank eyes with a twinkle in them, and a mouth that was large and betokened humor. When he walked, he limped, but he held himself so straight that when he was still, no one would have noticed the deformity. Five minutes later, the boy was plowing his way through the narrow streets of the Canongate, the old part of Edinburgh that had as ancient a history of street brawls as the Paris Kennels. Nobody who could help it was abroad, and Walter was glad when he reached the door of his father's house in Georgia Square and could find shelter from the cutting wind. The Scotch evening meal was simple, soon over, and then came the time to sit before the blazing logs on the great open hearth and tell stories.
The older people were busy at cards in another room, and Walter, with a group of boys of his own age who lived in the neighborhood and liked to be with the lame lad, had the fireside to themselves. In front of the fire, young Walter was no longer the sleepy student of Erskine's Institutes. His eyes shone as he told story after story of the French border, half of them founded on old ballads or legends he knew by heart, and half the product of his own eager imagination. Whole poems filled with battles and hunts and nightly adventures he could recite from memory, and his eye for the color and trappings of history was so keen that the boys could see the very scenes before them. They sat in a circle about him, listening eagerly to story after story, forgetting everything but the boys' words, and showing their fondness and admiration for the romancer in each glance.
Walter was minstrel and prophet and historian to the boys of the Canongate by the winter fire, as he was to be later to the whole nation of Englishmen. By the next day, the snow had ceased falling, and the open squares of the city presented the finest mimic battlefields that could be imagined. The boys of Edinburgh were divided into clans, according to the part of the city in which they lived, and carried on constant warfare as long as the winter lasted. Walter Scott and his brothers belonged to a clan that made George's Square their headquarters, and their nearest and dearest enemies were the boys of the Cross Causeway, a poorer section of the city that lay not very far distant.
On the day the storm ceased, Walter left his high stool and ponderous book early, and joined his friends in solid array in their square. While they waited for the enemy to come up The boys built snow fortifications across the square and stocked them with ammunition sufficient to stand a siege. Still, no enemy appeared, and, eager for a chance to try their aim, the boys of the square boldly left their own haunts and proceeded down the cross-causeway in search of the foe. The enemy's country lay through narrow, winding streets, and there was a great need of care to avoid an ambuscade. Slipping from door to door, from one point of vantage to the next, the boys made the whole distance of the enemy's land without sight of an enemy.
They came to the further boundary and raised a cheer of defiance when, suddenly, a hail-storm of snowballs struck them, and from a side street the boys of Cross Causeway shot out. The invaders fired one round, then turned and fled before a fierce charge. Back the way they came, the boys retreated, and after them came the enemy, pelting them without mercy and with good aim. In the van of the pursuit ran a tall, fair-haired boy, who wore the bright green breeches of a tailor's clerk, who was famous for his prowess in these schoolboy battles, and who, because of his clothes, had been given the picturesque nickname of Green Brix. Young Scott and his friends ran back into their square, but the enemy were close upon their heels.
Green Brix was now far in the lead of his forces, so far in the lead that he might have been cut off had not the pursued been panic-stricken. Over their own fortifications the boys fled and dropped behind them for safety. Their banner, a flag given them by a lady of the square, waved defiantly in Green Brix's face. The tall boy leaped upon the rampart and seized the standard when a blow from a stick brought him to the ground. He fell, stunned, and the blood poured from a cut in his head. The watchman of Georgia Square was used to the boys' battles, but not to such an ending to them. He hurried over to the fallen green breeks, and the boys of both armies melted silently away. Shortly after, Green Brix was in the hospital, his head bandaged, but otherwise little the worse for his mishap.
A confectioner in the cross-causeway acted as a messenger between the boys of the causeway and the square, and to him Walter Scott and his brother went early the next morning and asked if he could take Green Brix some money to pay for his wound and loss of time in the tailor's shop. Green Breaks in the hospital had been asked to tell the name of the one who had struck him, but he had refused, point-blank, and none of either party could be found to tell. When the wounded leader heard of Walter's offer, he refused to accept the money, on the ground that such accidents were apt to happen to any one in battle, and that he did not need the money. Walter sent another message, inquiring if Greenbreex's family were in need of anything he could supply, and received the answer that he lived with his aged grandmother, who was very fond of taking snuff.
Thereupon Walter presented the old woman with a pound of snuff, and as soon as Greenbreex was out of the hospital, made him one of his friends. With the opening of spring, Walter spent all his spare hours in his favorite pursuit, riding through the country on a search for old legends or curious tales of the neighborhood. Scottish history was his never-ending delight. He knew every battle in the vicinity of Edinburgh, and could tell how the armies had come to meet, and what was the result. Stories of sprites and goblins, of witches and magicians, were eagerly sought by him. Many an old woman was led to tell the lame boy with the eager eyes the tales she had heard as a schoolgirl, and was well repaid by the boy's rapt attention.
Hardly a stick or a stone, a stream or a hill in the lowlands that had a history but Walter Scott learned it, and at the same time he learned to know the plain people, all their habits and customs and all the little eccentricities that made up their characters. Every Saturday in fair weather, and more frequently during the vacations, his father allowed him a holiday from the office. Walter and a boy friend named John Irving used to take two or three books from the public library of Edinburgh and go out into the neighboring country, to Salisburg Crags, Arthur's Seat, or to a height called Blackford Hill, from which there was a splendid view of the lowland country. There they read the books together, Walter always a little ahead of his friend, and obliged to wait at the end of every two pages for him to catch up.
The books were almost always stories of knights errant, the romances of Spenser, the castles of Otranto. The translations from such Italian writers as Ariosto were very popular. Often the boys would climb high over the rocks to find places where they would be sheltered from the wind, and the harder the nooks were to reach, the better they liked them. Walter, in spite of his lameness, was a good climber, and time and again, when it seemed as though they had contrived to get into a place from which there was no way out, and must call to passers-byes for help, he would manage to discover some jutting stone or crevice in the rock that allowed them finally to make a perilous escape. That sort of adventure appealed to the boy tremendously.
He liked to use his wits in grappling with some natural difficulty, as the heroes of his story so often had to do. The boys devoured a great many books in these expeditions, which lasted over two years, and Walter so mastered the pages that he read that he could recite long passages from them to his friend weeks after they had finished the stories. Finally, they fell into the habit of making up stories of knights for themselves. First, Walter telling the adventures of a knight to John, and leaving the hero in some very difficult situation for John to rescue him from, and then John carrying on the story with another adventure. The boys were so fond of their heroes that neither had the heart to kill the brave knight, and they could find no other way to bring his adventures to an end.
Although Walter spent considerable time in his father's office, he was still studying under a tutor with other boys, preparing for college. He was a brilliant scholar when he wanted to be, but all subjects did not interest in him. At one time there was a certain boy who always stood at the top of Walter's class whom young Scott could not supplant, try as he would. Finally Walter noticed that whenever the master asked that boy a question, the latter always fumbled with his fingers at a certain button on the lower part of his waistcoat. Walter Scott thereupon determined to cut off that particular button and see what would happen. He found a chance soon after, and cut off the button with a knife, while the owner of the coat was not looking.
Then Walter waited with the greatest interest to see what would happen. The next time the master asked questions of the youth at the head of the class, Walter saw the boy's fingers feel for the button, and then saw him look down at the piece on his coat where it should have been. When he saw it was missing, he grew confused, stammered, muttered to himself, and could not answer the question. Walter came next, and, being able to answer the question, took the other boy's place, chuckling to himself. He did not hold it long. He had simply wished to see what would happen, and having found out, he was quite willing to surrender the place to the boy, who was really the better scholar. In a thousand ways Walter showed his love of history and romance.
Anything that was picturesque, whether it was a view or an old dirk, caught his attention at once. For a short time he took lessons in an oil painting from a German. He soon found that he had not the eye nor the hand for the work. But it happened that the teacher's father had been a soldier in the army of Frederick the Great, and as soon as Walter found this out, he plied the man with questions. Long afterward, he said, he vividly remembered the man's picturesque account of seeing a party of the famous black hussars bringing in forage carts which they had captured from the Cossacks, with the wounded Cossacks themselves lying high up on the piles of straw. Often in good weather, the boys of Georgia Square would go on long excursions into the country, frequently staying away from home for several days at a time.
On one such occasion, they found themselves some twenty miles away from Edinburgh, without a single sixpence left among them. Walter said afterwards, We were certainly put to our shifts, but we asked every now and then at a cottage door for a drink of water, and one or two of the good wives, observing our worn-out looks, brought out milk in place of water. So with that, and hips and haws, we came in little the worse. His father was not at all pleased with his long absence, and asked how he had managed with so little money. "'Pretty much like ravens,' said the boy. "'I only wished I had been as good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in the vicar of Wakefield. If I had his art, I should like nothing better than to tramp like him from cottage to cottage over the world.' "'I doubt,' said his father.
"'I greatly doubt, sir. You were born for nay better than a scapegoat.'" It may be that as a result of these chance expeditions, Walter's father finally came to realize that the boy might be made use of in certain legal business that required sending messengers into the highlands. Soon he was sent with some legal papers to the McLarens, who lived in that beautiful lake country about Loch Lomond, which Scott was later to make famous in Lady of the Lake.
Soon he was sent with some legal papers to the McLarens, who lived in that beautiful lake country about Loch Lomond, which Scott was later to make famous in The Lady of the Lake. It was the first time he had been in that country, and the changing panorama unrolled before his eyes like a land of dreams. It happened that Walter was traveling in the company of a sergeant and six men from a highland regiment stationed in Stirling, and so he journeyed quite like some ancient chieftain, with a front and rear guard and bearing arms. The sergeant was a thorough highlander, full of stories of Rob Roy and of his own early adventures, and an excellent companion. The trip was a great success, and fired Walter's desire to see more of a country which even then was only half-civilized.
A little later he had another chance, being sent north to visit another of his father's clients, an old Jacobite who had fought in the uprisings of 1715 and 1745. Paul Jones was threatening the descent of the Scotch coast, and Walter had the satisfaction of seeing the old Jacobite chief making ready to bear arms again, and heard him exult at the prospect of drawing Claymore once more before he died. The boy was so delighted at the stories the old man told that the latter invited him to visit that fall, and so he spent his holiday with him. Riding northward on this visit, the Vale of Perth first burst on his view. Long afterwards he described the tremendous impression the sight made upon him. I reckon like pulling up the reins, he wrote later, without meaning to do so, and gazing on the scene before me as if I had been afraid it would shift, like those in the theatre, before I could distinctly observe its different parts, or convince myself that what I saw was real.
Even as he remembered so vividly the tales the old men and women had told him when he was a very little boy, the stories of his grandmother, of border warfare, of heroes of Scotland such as Watt of Hardin and White Willie of Elkwood, Merrymen, much like Robin Hood and Little John, and as he remembered the romances he and his friend had read in the hills, so he was now treasuring up wild bits of scenery with all the ardour of poet or painter. He was growing to know Scotland as no other man had ever known it. The boy Walter had little knowledge then of the great use to which he was later to put his love of Scottish history. He expected to be a lawyer, and was stunning to that end, But all his spare moments were spent in hunting legends of his land.
He became eager to visit the then wild and inaccessible region of Liddesdale, so that he might see the ruins of the famous castle for the Hermitage, and try to pick up some of the ancient writing ballads, as they were called, songs which were said to be still preserved among the descendants of the old moss troopers, who had followed the banners of the House of Douglas when they were lords of that remote castle. He found a man who knew that rugged country well, and for seven successive years Walter Scott made a raid, as he called it, into that country, following each stream to its source and studying every ruined tower or castle from foundation stone to topmost battlement. There were no inns in the whole district.
The explorers had to stop overnight at any Chance Shepherd's hut or farmer's cottage, but everywhere they met with open welcome, and from each home they gathered songs and stories and sometimes relics of border wars to take back with them to Edinburgh. Even then, the youth had little notion of what he should do with all these facts he was gathering. The friend he traveled with said later, Walter was making himself all the time, but he didn't akin maybe what he was about till years had passed. At first he thought a little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun. In course of time, Scott was called to the bar as a lawyer, and took his place with the dozens of young men who hung about the Parliament House in Edinburgh, waiting for briefs of cases to be argued.
There were lots of debating clubs in the Scotch capital at that time, and Scott was a member of several. Some time was spent in an argument, but more in telling stories and in singing songs. Here the young lawyer ruled supreme. No other man could tell such tales as he, and none knew so many, and such curious songs. The stories were not all his own. Frequently he retold old ones that he had heard, dressing them up to suit his taste. Once a friend complained that he had changed the story told him the day before. Why, said Scott with twinkling eyes, I don't change stories. I only put a cocked hat on their heads and stick a cane into their hands, to make them fit for going into company. Fifteen years passed, and all England was reading eagerly the wonderful historical poems and romances written by a man who called himself the Wizard of the North.
Scotland had always been a desolate, barren country in the eyes of the rest of the world, its history unknown, its people cold and uninviting. Suddenly, all that was changed. Scotland sprang into being a land of romance, filled with poetry, a country full of glorious scenery, a people descended from the line of kings. Even the narrow streets of Edinburgh and the old Canongate itself became historic ground under the wizard's spell. The wizard was Walter Scott, and now he found the whole world as eager to hear the stories and poems he had to tell about his country as his boyfriends had been years before. He had not changed much as he grew up. At the height of his fame, Walter Scott was still in spirit the eager boy of the old city, finding romance everywhere about him because he looked for it with the eyes of youth.
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16 16 - James Fenimore Cooper The Boy of Otsego Hall: 1789-1851 17:25
James Fenimore Cooper. The Boy of Otsego Hall. The finest house in central New York State in 1801 was Otsego Hall. The owner of the house, a Mr. Cooper, fond of old English customs, lived much like a lord of the manor of the old country, and kept open house for his neighbors of the region. On a Saturday afternoon in September of that year he was giving a great party, and all the roads in the neighborhood of Cooperstown, which had been named in honor of this popular gentleman, led to Otsego Hall. A gay stream flowed up to the great stone posts that flanked the entrance driveway. There were men in bright-hued, tight-fitting trousers with high-shining top-boots, brilliant plum- and claret-colored coats, and fawn or scarlet waistcoats with lace stocks at their throats, their hair well-powdered, their tri-cornered hats matching their vivid coats.
They rode fine, spirited horses, and they knew how to ride, for most of them had seen service under General Washington. Some of the ladies also rode, but more of them came in open carriages. These latter wore flowered satins, and carried painted fans and sunshades. Some came across fields on foot, a young gallant swinging a light gold-headed cane, and paying lavish compliments to the fair girl, whose dimples were heightened by small beauty patches cut in stars or crescents. The gay throng wound up the long drive of Otsego Hall, themselves scarcely less brilliant than the flowers beside the path. At the top of the drive was a big white colonial mansion, with its high-storied porch and great white pillars.
On the porch stood the genial host in a buff-colored suit with knee-breeches, his kindly face radiating welcome to each guest. The riders sprang from their saddles and threw the bridles to the waiting servants. The chaises and chariots emptied their owners and were whisked away. All mounted the wide steps, greeted Mr. Cooper, and passed across the porch into the polished hall. Here stood a large round table with a huge punch-bowl in the center, and a ring of shining glasses about it. Each guest toasted the fair lady of the manor, and some particular lady of his own fancy, with such charming sentiments as his wit supplied. There was a great buzz of talk and laughter and neighborly greeting. Presently three young men, all dressed in the height of fashion, came up the driveway and shook hands with Mr.
Cooper. He was especially glad to see them, for they were sons of men he had known in war times. All three came of wealthy families living in the city of New York, and were now traveling north to learn something of the business possibilities of the young country. They stopped for a moment to chat with Mr. Cooper, and then two of them entered the hall. The third was looking at a small boy, who, dressed like Mr. Cooper in buff clothes, stood at one side of the porch. "'Who is the youngster?' asked the visitor. Mr. Cooper turned about to see. "'Oh, that is my son James.' He beckoned to the boy. "'Come here, son. I want you to meet Captain Philip Kent, one of Father's old friends.' The boy, not at all abashed, put out his hand and welcomed Captain Trent.
"'Have you ever fought Indians?' he asked solemnly. Kent laughed and winked at Mr. Cooper. "'Oh, yes.' We've all fought Indians in our day, but thank God that day has passed. What we want now is a chance to rest in quiet and try our hands at writing and singing and painting like other civilized people. He saw that some other guests were arriving and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. Come, James, you and I don't care to go salute the ladies just yet. Let's find a place in the garden and have a talk. They went down a gravel path and turned into the rose garden. A bench invited them to rest. Captain Kent sat down, and drawing a gilded snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket offered it to the boy. The very best rapi, he said.
James Cooper shook his head. I don't like snuff, sir. I'd rather smoke a pipe. Captain Kent took snuff and flicked the grains from his coat with his handkerchief. "'Tut-tut, young man, if you are to be a man of fashion, and I misdoubt your father's son could be aught else, you must like what the fashion likes. The gentlemen of St. James' Palace still take snuff, and are never seen smoking pipes, like some of our clumsy Dutchmen over here. But St. James' Palace is in London, and we're free from England now.' "'Quite so, my good sir, but our fashions still come from across the seas.' "'And what is a man of fashion?' asked the boy. Captain Kent smiled. Ah, so you are concerned? Good. Well, I am a man of fashion, and so are those two friends of mine who just entered your hall.
A man of fashion has a discriminating taste in wines and foods. He knows what colors go in harmony, how to draw his sword in any matter of honor, how to tread a minuet, oh, yes, and how to write verses to his lady's eyes. The captain put his hand in the pocket of his coat and drew out several folded sheets of paper. He spread them out on his knee. Do you know Miss Betty Cosgrove? He asked. The boy nodded. Yes, indeed. She lives very near us, and always gives me plum cake when I go there with messages from Mother. Ah, she does, exclaimed Kent, as though greatly struck and charmed by the idea. Well, Mr. James Cooper, I have written some verses in her honor, hoping I might offer them to her here this afternoon.
I'll read them to you. She's indoors, said the boy. I saw her come. Quite so, but I hope to lure her out here later, and I want to rehearse the verses. What do you think of this?" The young man held the paper before him and read from it. Every few lines he would glance at the boy. James did not think much of the poetry. He heard a great deal about tresses and eyes and smiles, about gods and goddesses, but nothing about soldiers or Indians. He was surprised that the captain should have become so red in the face, and that his eyes should shine so brightly. What do you think of it? asked Captain Kent when he had finished. "'I don't understand it,' said James. Then he added frankly, "'I don't think much of poetry.' "'May heaven grant she does,' exclaimed the captain.
"'I think tis quite a fair performance for an humble poet.' He folded the verses and put them away. "'Someday you will be doing the same thing, Mr. Cooper.' "'No,' said the boy. "'I'm to go to Yale College at New Haven next year and learn Greek.' "'Tis better to write verses than learn Greek,' objected Kent. He put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "'But there's better yet waiting to be done, boy.' In London men write what they call novels, wonderful stories of the great world of fashion. There's one called Amelia by Henry Fielding, and another named Clarissa Harlow by Richardson. Why should not someone write such tales of our country? Alas, I fancy because we as yet have so little fashion. But we've plenty of hunters and Indians and sailors, said the boy.
I wish I had a book about what's happened in those great woods back of Albany. "'Write it, lad, write it,' said the captain. "'We've had our soldiers. You and your friends must be our poets and writers. I envy you. Now, let's be going in to greet the ladies.' The lower floor of Otsego Hall was now filled with people. All the gentry of the countryside were gathered in the great hall, in the dining-room, and other apartments that opened into it. Captain Kent and his boy friend made their way through the crowd, and the captain bent over the hand of Mrs. Cooper, and congratulated her on having so fine a son. The boy liked his gallant friend and stayed near him, even when the captain finally caught sight of Miss Betty Cosgrove talking with his two mates in a corner of the hall.
James watched the captain advance and in his most polished manner bend over the lady's hand and touch it with his lips. Then the four of them started to laugh and talk rapidly, as though they had a great many things to tell each other. The boy thought this very tiresome, and was about to make his way back to the porch and freedom, when he heard a man who stood on the broad stairs call out, "'Ladies and gentlemen, I give you all a toast. Our worthy friend and most gracious host, Mr. Cooper.' Servants passed glasses of punch to the guests, and soon all held their glasses raised high. "'I pledge them,' cried the man on the stairs, and the toast was drunk with a murmur of cheers. "'Another to our charming hostess,' someone cried.
And this also was drunk. Then Captain Kent clapped his hands for silence. "'Ladies and gentlemen of Cooperstown,' said he, "'three of us here have journeyed from New York City to pay our duty to the fairest maid in all the thirteen states. We have none like her on Manhattan Island. I give you Mistress Betty Cosgrove.' The three young men raised their glasses. The rest followed their example, and the toast was drunk. Miss Cosgrove blushed the color of the rose she wore. One of the young men looked down to find a small boy pulling his sleeve. What is it? he asked. Captain Kent's been writing verses to her, too, said James Cooper. He read them to me in the garden. Ho, ho! came the laughing answer.
Good enough. He turned about. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Captain Kent is a poet. He has some verses in his pocket written to the adorable Mistress Betty. Shall we hear them? Yes, yes, came a chorus of voices. It was poor Kent's turn to blush. He looked very uncomfortable. Miss Cosgrove glanced at him with wide, inquiring eyes. He had not expected to read his poetry in such a setting. Hay stepped forward, and, seizing little James Cooper under the arms, lifted him to a chair. "'Behold,' he said, "'I should be glad to read the verses, but this gentleman, Master Cooper, has told me they are poor, and he should know because he plans to be an author.' The captain's diversion succeeded. The guests were looking at the boy.
"'My son James an author,' exclaimed Mrs. Cooper. "'It's the first I've heard of it.' "'I don't want to,' said the boy, very uncomfortable now that he was the centre of notice. "'I want to be a soldier.' "'That's right,' said his father, "'and I hope you may be if ever the country needs you. Friends, I give you these United States.' By the time that toast was drunk, Captain Kent had drawn Miss Cosgrove into a little alcove under the stairs, and James had stolen out of the Great Hall. James Cooper was a very fortunate boy. His father's house stood in one of the loveliest reaches of country on the Atlantic coast. Cooperstown lay on the southeastern shore of Otsego Lake, where the Susquehanna rushes out through a fertile valley between high hills.
Bays and points of woodland break the lake's edge, and in the distance rise the clear blue slopes of mountains. Otsego Hall was built about the time when the young republic was stretching out for space in which to grow. Mr. Cooper found this lovely lake, and built on the frontier. Beyond his home spread seemingly endless forests, filled with the wandering bands of the Indians of the Six Nations, and with all manner of wild animals. The lake was the home of flocks of gulls, loons, and wild duck, and more times than he could count, young Cooper had seen a long file of Indian canoes steal swiftly across its upper bays. It was an ideal region for a boy of an adventurous turn of mind, fond of the outdoor world.
The heir of Otsego Hall was not such a boy of the wilderness as were Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, or Abraham Lincoln. He did not have to fight his way in the rough new world as they did. Mr. Cooper was well-to-do, and intended that his son should take a proper place in the young nation. There was little he could learn at the local academy, and so he soon was sent to school at Albany, where he lived in the home of an English clergyman who was fond of denouncing the war of the Revolution and the new country. and so made James Cooper more of an ardent patriot than ever. When he was thirteen he was sent to Yale College, and felt himself almost a grown man. He had been better prepared than most of his classmates, and so decided he did not need to study to keep up with them.
Instead of working, he devoted all his time to sport, and to wandering through the beautiful country about New Haven. He was learning a great deal about outdoor life and storing his mind with pictures, but at the same time was learning little of the Latin and Greek, which his teachers thought vastly more important. He got into scrape after scrape with other boys of his way of thinking, and finally in his third year a midnight frolic led to his being dismissed. Mr. Cooper took his son's side and argued with the faculty, but the boy had to leave. His father looked about for some means of taming his son's wild habits, and decided to send him to sea for a time. Nothing could have pleased James better.
He wanted to see the world, and he was fond of ships. He had no special ambition, but rather looked forward to serving in the Navy. In the fall of 1806, he sailed from New York on the ship Stirling, bound for England with a freight of flour. The voyage was a long and stormy one, and the boy, who was simply a sailor before the mast, got a good taste of life at sea. He enjoyed it thoroughly. When they reached England, he went to London in his sailor's clothes and knocked about that great city, much like any other jack on shore. He made friends quickly, enjoyed any new adventure, and stored up a great stock of stories to take home. The boy enjoyed his voyage before the mast so much that when he returned to New York, he asked his father to get him a commission in the United States Navy.
Mr. Cooper was able to do this, and James was soon after sent as midshipman with a party of men to bring a brig of sixteen guns on Lake Ontario. It took them a winter to build the ship, and during that time the party stayed at the tiny settlement of Oswego, a collection of some twenty houses. All around lay the unbroken forest stretching thirty or forty miles without a break. There was abundance of game, many Indians, and a splendid chance to live the frontier life that Cooper loved. He now knew the habits of the wild red men and whites, the lore of the woods, the perils and joys of the sea, and as he helped to build the gunboat, he learned a thousand things, and he was to turn to splendid uses later.
The boy had now grown to manhood, and yet no sign of his real work had appeared. He was not especially fond of books or history. His views of the charm of a soldier's life were much those he had spoken to Captain Kent at Otsego Hall. It seemed as though he were settled in the Navy. It is strange how chance determined the fate of young Cooper. About this time his grandmother asked him to take her name, and for a while he called himself Fenimore Cooper. Then, a little later, he married, and his wife did not like the idea of his leaving her on long sea voyages. He seems to have been quite willing to give up the navy and settle down at Otsego Hall as lord of the manor after his father's fashion. He liked the life of a country gentleman, and spent his time planting trees, draining swamps, planting lawns, and cultivating flowers and fruits.
By the time he was thirty he had tried his hand at almost everything except writing. It happened that as Cooper was one day reading aloud to his wife from an English novel, he threw the book down, exclaiming, "'Why, I believe I could write a better story myself!' His wife laughed and asked him to prove it. He said he would, and thereupon sat down and began to lay out a plot. A few days later he was deep in work on the story, and he kept at it until he had finished a two-volume novel, which he called Precaution. His wife and friends liked it and urged him to publish it. So in November, 1820, appeared the first of that great series of Native American stories which were to give the young nation a distinct place in English literature.
Chance began them, but the first few books proved so successful that Cooper settled at once into the career of novelist. The famous Leather-Stocking Tales followed, and the world made the acquaintance of the America of the Indian and the Pioneer in the Deerslayer, the last of the Mohicans, the Pathfinder, the Pioneers, and the Prairie. Here he tells the romantic story of the conquest of the wilderness, and draws the portraits of the pioneer, the hunter, and the Indian. The same character, Harvey Birch, called Leatherstocking, runs through them all, first as a youth in the novels that deal with the red men, with the great characters of Chingachgook and Uncas, then as a man in the dramas of the white men who blazed the trail westward through the forests and settled the great prairies.
The story of Daniel Boone inspired him in these latter novels, and he tells of such scenes as the Great Prairie Fire and the Panther Fight with the vividness of an eye-witness. The Pioneers is laid on the shore of Lake Ontario, where he built the warship and the Deerslayer about the little lake near Otsego Hall. He wrote great tales of the sea also, in one of which, the pilot, he took as his hero, John Paul Jones, tales founded on his own knowledge of a sailor's life, one at first hand. But it was the Indian tales that brought him greatest fame. Whether the pictures of the men of the Six Nations be accurate or not, they made direct appeal to the imagination of the world, and Indian character will always stand as Cooper drew it.
Shakespeare and Scott have made English history for us, and Cooper has done the same thing for the history of the Indian. Cooper said later that he might have chosen happier periods for his stories, more stirring events, and perhaps more beautiful scenes, but none which would have lain so close to his heart. He never forgot what had interested him so deeply in his boyhood, and when he wrote he went back to his boyhood memories. Little had he realized in those days how the words Captain Kent spoke in the garden would come true. He had drifted into writing before he realized what a great untrodden field lay before him. The story of James Fenimore Cooper is an inspiration to every American. It is the history of a man who loved his country deeply, and who was as fine-spirited a gentleman as he was a great author.
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17 17 - John Ericsson The Boy of the Göta Canal: 1803-1889 15:43
by Kay Hand. Historic Boyhoods by Rupert S. Holland. Chapter 17. John Erickson, the Boy of the Jota Canal. Among the Swedish country people there still lingers a primitive half-belief in witches and goblins, and nymphs and elves of the forests and the sea. Many a simple mountaineer, returning home from some lonely trip, tells tales of prophetic voices he heard whispering in the wind, or of gnomes who interrupted his slumbers in the woods. One such legend runs as follows. A wealthy farmer named Ericsson, who owned many acres in the Swedish province of Vrmland, had in his service a crippled lad whose business it was to tend the sheep. This work kept him away from people much of the time, and led him through the pine woods, beside the little tarns, or hidden inland lakes, and up and down the wild mountains where the fairy people dwell.
He grew quite accustomed to meeting wood or lake nymphs in his wanderings, and became so friendly with them that they often gave him good advice, such as when to expect a storm or where he might find the best grazing for his flock. One day he was caught in the rain, and when he found shelter in a deserted barn, he was so wet and exhausted that he fell into a troubled sleep. While he slept, a pixie came to him and whispered in his ear that in time to come a house should be built on that part of Farmer Erickson's land, and that two boys should be born there who should make the name of Erickson known round the world. The shepherd was much excited by the news, and as soon as he reached the Erickson house he told the fairy's prophecy.
The family were very much concerned and wrote the prophecy down in the family Bible, and also spread the story through the province. That was in the 17th century. Near the end of the 18th century, young Olaf Erikson married and built him a home on that part of the family land where the old barn had stood. He had three children, a daughter named Caroline, and two sons named Niles and John. One day the mother heard the old legend and identified the place with her husband's house, and so became convinced that her boys were to become world famous. They came of very good stock, and the family traced their ancestry back to the great Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, who had been the Norse discoverer of America.
Olaf and his wife, Brita, were devoted to their children. Olaf was part owner of a mine at the town of Langsbauscheiten, near where they lived. The children had a governess for a time, and father and mother taught them what they could, but most of their days were spent playing in the thick pine woods along the shores of the little lake height which lay in front of their house. Sometimes Olaf took the two boys with him to the mine, and from almost the first visit, a perfect passion for machinery took possession of the younger boy, John. After that, he was always playing with pencils and paper, with bits of wood and metal, and spent hours drawing figures in the sand on the beach of the lake. About this period, hard times befell Sweden.
The small northern country, half the size of Texas, with fewer people than the single city of London, never very rich, had trouble keeping her independence from Russia. Her king was a weakling, and lost part of his land. Then, a gentleman of fortune, a man who had been a French lawyer's apprentice, and had risen to be a marshal, one whose sword had helped to carve out an empire for Napoleon, suddenly was elected king of Sweden. He brought the little country French support and better times, but meantime Olaf Erikson had lost his property and found that he must seek work at once to keep his family from starving. Olaf had lost his share in the mine and had been living in the depths of the pine forest choosing lumber for builders.
He had encouraged his son John's talent for machinery and now began to believe that the old prophecy might really come true. He had seen John, only ten years old, build a miniature sawmill and pumping engine at the mine, and had been as much astonished as any of the men there when his son proudly showed them the designs he had drawn for a new kind of pump to drain the mines of water. Even when the little family had left the mining town and were living in the deep woods, the boy continued working out his own inventions. He made tools for himself using sharp pine needles for the points of a drawing compass he fashioned out of sticks. begging his mother for a few hairs from her fur coat to make paint brushes, and actually devising a ball and socket joint for a small windmill he was building.
Everything he could lay his hands on he turned to some mechanical use, and all his thoughts seemed bent in that one direction. The new king of Sweden was now planning to build a great ship canal at Jota to unite the Baltic and North Seas, a scheme which had for a long time appealed to Swedish patriots as a protection against their great grasping neighbor, the Russian bear. Through the influence of a friend, Count Platon, Olaf Eriksson was given work in connection with the canal and moved his family with him to a town called Forsvik. Here, a great many soldiers were at work, for the canal was in charge of the army, and many skilled engineers were gathered to superintend the building. Almost at the same time when Olaf reported for work, Count Platon and the other officers were surprised to see a small boy, not more than 13 years old, come every day to watch the digging, to study the machinery, and to ask questions of everyone in the place.
He was a handsome boy, well-built, with light, close-cut curling hair. Fair as Swedish boys almost always are, with clear blue eyes and a very firm mouth and chin. While other boys of his age were at school or playing, he would stand on the bank of the canal, studying by the hour some piece of machinery. Then on another day he would come with a pad of paper, some crude homemade drawing tools, and pencils, and perching himself on a pile of rocks or of lumber, would draw the machinery as a skilled draftsman might, then work over his sketch, apparently adding to it or altering it to suit ideas of his own. Count Platon watched the boy for several days, then one morning went up to him. "'May I see what you're doing?' he asked.
The boy, who had been absolutely absorbed in his work, looked up. "'It's the sketch of a new pump to drain the canal,' said he. "'I made one for Father's Mine in Wurmland, and I don't see why the same plan can't be used here. It'll do the work more quickly.' Count Platon looked at the drawing on the boy's lap, and listened intensely while the young inventor explained how the machine should work. He was astounded at the knowledge the boy had of engineering. "'You're Olaf Erikson's son, aren't you?' he asked finally. The boy nodded. Yes, I'm John Erickson. I've an older brother, Niles, who's fifteen. Is Niles as much of an engineer as you are? He knows a good deal about it. Father taught us both, but I don't think he's as fond of machines as I am.
The Count laughed. It sounded strange to him to hear a small boy talk of machinery so eagerly. He could not doubt the boy's earnestness, however. He had watched him for several days and had just examined his plans. The boy evidently met what he said. "'Well, John, you're certainly a remarkable lad. I shouldn't wonder if you'd the making of a genius in you.' He considered a few minutes, and then went on. "'We need some engineers here to show these stupid soldiers what to do. How'd you like to try such a job?' The boy jumped from his seat in his excitement. "'I'd like it very much, sir. Do you mean to tell the men what to do, and to have real tools to work with?' Count Platon smiled. "'Yes, to have entire charge of a part of the work.' That's what I mean.
I really think you could do it. How old are you, John? I'll be fourteen very soon. Hmm, mused the Count. It seems absurd to put a boy of fourteen in charge of six hundred soldiers. And yet if he has the skill to do the work, why not? And there's small doubt that he has. Well, John, I'll see what can be done. Meet me here tomorrow morning. The next day, Count Platon found John anxiously awaiting him. He told the boy at once that his plan had proved successful, and that both John and Niles were to be enrolled as cadets in the mechanical corps of the Swedish army, and that John was to be put in charge of part of the canal building. The boy was highly delighted. He knew now that he should have a chance to try, in actual working, some of the inventions he had planned on paper.
As soon as he had thanked his kind friend, the Count, he ran home to tell his mother the news of Niles' and his good fortune. It was a curious sight when the officer in command of the troops placed 600 soldiers in charge of young John Erickson. They were too well trained to laugh, but they were tremendously surprised when they saw that their future orders were to come from this small curly-haired lad, just barely turned 14. Olaf Erikson himself was scarcely less surprised than the men. He knew his son's great mechanical ability, but he could hardly believe that others had come to realize it so soon. A few days of actual work on the canal, however, proved that Count Platon had made no mistake.
John knew what ought to be done, and he could show the soldiers new and better ways of getting results, although he was actually too small to reach the eyepiece of his leveling instrument without the aid of a camp stool, which he carried about with him. He brought out some of the mechanical drawings he had worked over, and had machinery made after them, and whenever his inventions were tried, they met with success. For several years John commanded his 600 men at the Jota Canal, and then he decided to enter the army. He had grown tall, and was noted for his great strength and skill in feats of arms. At 17 he was made an ensign in the Rifle Corps, and soon after a lieutenant in the Royal Chasseurs.
He was fond of the life of the army, but he saw there was no great future in it for him, and he could not give up his passion for science and invention. He procured an appointment as surveyor for the district of Jämtland, and found himself free again to work on his own lines. Sweden is a rugged country, its northern parts serried by great fjords, its mountains steep and often desolate, its forests thick and many. The young surveyor was in his element roughing it through the wild country, with an eye to improving it for cultivation and for defense, making elaborate maps of its hills and valleys and charts of its fjords and bays. He had a genius for such work, and the drawings he sent back to Stockholm were invaluable for the development of Sweden.
Their surveyors were paid according to the work they did, but John Erickson worked so rapidly that the officials were afraid it would cause a scandal if it were known how much money he was receiving. So they carried him on their account books as two different men and paid him for two men's work. In his spare hours in Jemtland and Norland, John was busy with inventions. As a boy, he had been delighted to watch his father make a vacuum in a tube by means of fire. Now he worked over uses to which he could put that idea, and finally invented a flame engine based largely on that principle. That success led him to study engines more deeply and had much to do with deciding his later career. Sweden had shown the world much that was new in the building of the Jota Canal, and many of the improvements had been due to the boy cadet Ericsson.
He was now persuaded to write a book on canals, explaining his inventions and describing the Swedish plans. In such a scientific book, the drawings of diagrams were as important as the writing. As soon as John realized that, he could not resist the temptation to try his hand at inventing a machine which should properly engrave the plates he was drawing. It was pure delight to him to exercise his wits on such a problem, and as a result, in a short time he had made a machine for engraving plates which was used successfully in preparing the illustration for his book on canals. The youth had now won wide recognition throughout Sweden for his inventive skill, but his own country offered him small opportunities, devoted though he was to the land and the people.
There was more chance for such a man in a country like England, and there he now went. Stevenson was working then on his steam engine, and Erickson studied the same subject and built an engine which in many ways was superior to the Englishman's. In whatever direction he turned his mind, he was able to find new ideas for improving on old methods. Erickson soon built a locomotive for the directors of the railway between Liverpool and Birmingham, which was the lightest and fastest yet constructed, starting off at the rate of 50 miles an hour. He could not find the opportunities he wished, however, in England, and went to Germany, and from there came to the United States. It was in America that Erickson won his greatest triumphs.
He had invented a screw propeller for boats, and found a splendid market for this type of machinery. He built the steamship Princeton, the first screw seamer with her machinery under the water line. This was a great improvement on the old top-heavy style of steamboats, but how great was only to be known when war showed that ironclads with machinery safely sunk beneath the water line, and so out of reach of the enemy's guns, were to revolutionize naval warfare. By the time of the American Civil War, men in all countries were experimenting with these new ideas for ships which Erickson had launched upon the world. News came to Washington that the Confederate government had an all-iron boat, low in the water, which could ram the high-riding wooden ships of the Union Navy, and would furnish little target for their fire.
The Union was in great alarm, for it looked as though this small iron floating battery could do untold damage to the Union shipping. There was only one man to appeal to if the North were to offset this southern ship, which had been christened the Merrimack. John Erickson was the man, and he agreed to build an ironclad which should be superior to the Merrimack and to build her in 100 days. On March 8, 1862, the Merrimack steamed into Hampton Roads, fully expecting to destroy the Union Fleet there. But instead, to the great amazement of her officers and men, a little iron boat, so small that she looked like a tiny pillbox on a plank, steamed out to meet her. She was so tiny it was almost impossible to hit her.
She was almost entirely underwater, and her gun turret was built to revolve so that she could fire in any direction. It was like a battle between David and Goliath, and when the day was over, David had won, and the Merrimack had to bow to the iron pillbox which had been named the Monitor. Proud was John Erickson then, and rightly so, for he had invented an entirely new kind of ship, and one which was to give its name of Monitor to all ships of its kind. The building of the Monitor for its successful battle with the Merrimack was the most dramatic incident in Erickson's career as an inventor, but his whole life showed a series of wonderful inventions which, for value and wide range, can probably only be compared with those of Edison.
The prophecy which the fairy had made to the shepherd in Sweden had come true. The name of Eriksson was known throughout the world, and in addition to John, older brother Niles had won great renown in Sweden. He was made director of canals there, and created a nobleman for his great services to science and to his native land. On the battery of New York City, overlooking the wonderful harbor that is filled with ships of every country, stands the statue of a tall, handsome man, somewhat of the type of those Norsemen who were the great adventurers of the Atlantic seas. The statue is of the man who built the Monitor, and who brought to the new world the genius for invention which he had first shown on the hills and in the woods of Sweden in the days when, a boy of fourteen, he had taught men how to build the great canal at Jota.
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18 18 - Garibaldi The Boy of the Mediterranean: 1807-1882 18:41
Holland. Chapter 18. Garibaldi. The Boy of the Mediterranean. The town of Nice lay blazing with color under the hot August sun. The houses, with their shining red-tiled roofs, their painted yellow walls, their striped and checkered awnings, were scarcely less vivid than the waters of the bay, which sparkled like a sea of opals under the rich blue Mediterranean sky. Color was everywhere, brilliant even in the sun-tanned cheeks, the black hair and eyes, the orange and gold and red caps, and sashes of the three boys who stood on the beach, looking out at the homecoming fleet of feluccas and fish-smacks. "'If only I were a man,' exclaimed one of the boys. "'No more Latin lessons with the Padre. I could sail and fish all day like Brother Carlo, and sometimes I'd visit strange lands like He went to Africa, and had the sort of adventures fathers tell of.
"'I'll be a sailor, too,' says Sar," agreed the tallest of the three, nodding his head. "'Only poor Giuseppe here will have to stay ashore and be a priest.' He turned a sympathetic face toward Giuseppe, who stood with his arms folded, his black eyes looking hungrily out to sea. "'Ay, he'll be teaching other boys just as the Padre teaches us,' said César. This prophecy was more than the third boy could stand. He turned quickly toward his friends. "'I'll have adventures, too,' he exclaimed. "'I'll not stay here in Nice all my life. I'll go to Genoa, and to Rome, and perhaps I'll fight the Turks. I want to do things, too.' His deep eyes shone with excitement, and his face glowed. "'Look, you, Caesar and Raphael, why shouldn't we all turn sailors now?' Both boys laughed.
But they were used to the mad ideas of young Giuseppe Giobaldi. He, however, was not laughing. Why not? I have been out to sea a hundred times with Father. He lets me handle his boat sometimes, though he does say that I am to enter the church. Your brother, Cesar, has a boat that he never uses. Why shouldn't we sail on her to Genoa? Giuseppe was a born leader. The other boys looked doubtfully at each other, then back at him. The gleam in his eyes held them. "'Let's sail to-morrow, at dawn. You,' César, furnish the boat. I'll bring bread and sausage from home, and Raphael shall get a jug of water. Your brother's boat is sound, César. We shall sail along the shore to Genoa.' "'Someone will catch sight of us and stop us,' objected Raphael.
"'Nay, we'll wait till the other boats are out. They'll all be off before dawn, and we'll have the beach to ourselves.'" "'I have a compass my uncle gave me on my name-day,' said Cesar. "'I'll bring that.' "'And I'll bring some fishing-lines,' put in Raphael, unwilling to be outdone." So, almost before they knew it, the other two boys had agreed to Giuseppe's plan, just as the boys of Nice usually unconsciously followed his lead.
The Mediterranean was all silver and blue when the three boys met next day in the early summer dawn at the pier near the Porto Olimpio, where Carlo Perotti's boat lay. Rafael had brought a jug of water and some fishing lines, Giuseppe a basket of provisions, and Cesar his compass. They could hardly wait until the last of the fishing boats had put out to sea before they ran down the pier to embark in their own small craft. The Red Dragon was the boat's name. She was old and weather-beaten, a simple boat with only a shallow cabin, such as is used in the Mediterranean to coast along the shore. Under Giuseppe's leadership, the food and water were stowed on board, the sail raised, and the boat cast off from the pier.
Cesar took the tiller, and with a light morning breeze the red dragon drew proudly away from the beach and headed eastward toward Genoa. As the sun rose higher, the breeze stiffened, the sail filled, and the brilliant dragon spread out his red body and tail. Each of the boys had sailed this inland sea a hundred times before, but never had it seemed so wonderful a place as on this summer morning. The water dashed along the gull-whale, and sometimes sent as warm spray into their faces. Beside them lay the curving harbor, beyond that the red and yellow and brown roofs and walls of Nice, and still further back the dim blue outlines of the mountains.
They were so excited that for some time they forgot that they had had no breakfast. Presently, Raphael remembered it, and Giuseppe's basket was opened, and its stock of rye bread, bologna sausage, and olives handed around. The boys were surprised to find how hungry they were, but like prudent captain, Giuseppe only let them eat a small part of the rations. Suppose we should run into a spell of calm weather before we sighted Genoa, he said. After breakfast, Raphael took the helm, and Cesar and Giuseppe lay up in the bow and planned what they would do after they landed at Genoa.
Meanwhile, the three families of Perotti, D'Andres, and Garibaldi, and Nice were considerably excited. A boy in each family had disappeared. Knowing what close friends the three boys were, the fathers sought each other. Each family had the same tale to tell. Then came word that Carlo Perotti's boat was missing, and this gave the searchers a clue. They went to the beach, but only to find that all the fishing boats had put out to sea some time ago. Signor Garibaldi, however, was a man of resources and influence, and within an hour he had found a Coast Guard captain who would take him in pursuit. The Coast Guard boat was big, and she could triple the speed of the small red dragon. By ten o'clock the runaway boat was sighted just opposite Monaco.
The boys saw the pursuers coming, but even by crowding on all their sail, they could not gain a lead. So when the Coast Guard came alongside of them, they surrendered. Even though they had not reached Genoa, the lads had tasted the salt of adventure. Giuseppe's father boarded the Red Dragon and treated the whole matter as a summer's lark, helped the young sailors to bring their boat about, and tacking across toward Monaco, and then up to the deeper sea. Gave them a lesson in sailing that made them quickly forget that they were going back to Nice. On that sail home, the father learned a good deal about Giuseppe. He heard the boys talk freely to each other, and he listened. And as he listened, he realized that this son of his was not the quiet type of boy who would make a good priest, but that he craved the roving life of the sea, descended as he was from generations of sailors.
He himself knew the perils of the sea only too well, how hard a man must work in its service, and how little he might gain, and how much securer was a life on shore. But he also knew that when once the sea called to a boy of Nice, it was useless to try to make him forget that call. Giuseppe would not a good priest make, and he might make a good sailor. So the watchful father decided, as he brought the little boat back to shore, to let his son follow his natural bent. After their adventures, Giuseppe and his two friends went quietly on with their school life. Giuseppe's father had promised to teach him something about navigation in the evenings, and had told him that if he would only be patient and wait a short time, he should make a cruise in earnest.
One day, as the boy and his father were coming home from church, a tall, black-haired man stepped up to them, and, holding out his hand, said, Signor, will you give us something for the refugees of Italy? Giuseppe's father gave the man a few coins, which he received with the greatest thanks. As they walked on, the boy kept turning back to look at the tall, gaunt-faced man they had met. Finally, he said, "'Who was he, father? And what did he mean by the refugees of Italy?' The father looked down into the boy's eager eyes. "'Our poor country,' said he, "'has been thrown to the ground, "'and different people have been beating her "'and trying to keep her down, "'but chiefly the big, white-coated Austrians, Giuseppe, boy.
"'Every once in a while some of our men band together "'and tried to do something to help Italy "'get to her feet again. "'That man who asked for money was such a man. "'Why did he look so sad and white, father, "'and why did he say the refugees? "'Our men are very few, Giuseppe, and have poor arms. And the enemy's army is very large, and their men are veteran soldiers, so that we always lose. Then those who fought, like that poor fellow, have to fly and seek refuge out of Italy until the storm blows past. Giuseppe clasped his hands behind his back, and his face grew very thoughtful. So that man has been to war, he said, and for us, and the money you gave him is to help them the next time. Exactly," said the father, with a smile at the boy's serious manner.
Giuseppe was not usually very thoughtful. "'How long do you think the refugees will have to go on fighting, father, before the enemy are finally driven out of our land?' "'Oh, they'll have to fight for years and years, and perhaps they'll never win, for the enemy is much stronger than we Italians.' "'Then,' said Giuseppe, "'I'm glad, for that will give Cesar and Raphael and me a chance to help them fight.' "'I'm going to be a refugee myself some day. Will you teach me, Father, how to use a sword?' "'All in good time,' said the man, smiling. "'You've got your hands full learning the points of the compass just now.' For some reason Giuseppe could not get the tall, black-haired man out of his mind, and the next day at recess he told his two friends of his meeting with him, and what he had learned about him.
"'Couldn't we find him or another man like him this afternoon?' said Cesar, very much interested. "'We'll hunt,' agreed Giuseppe. "'A refugee could tell us much better stories than those old sailors can.' After school, the three boys looked through the main streets of Nice, but no one asking for alms for the cause of Italy. They went down to the harbor, but there were no such men there. Finally, on a little square, they came upon the very man Giuseppe had seen the day before. He was sitting on the grass under a tree, and seemed to be asleep, for his head was sunk on his folded arms. They crossed over to him quietly. Although the day was warm, he had a great coat fastened around his shoulders, and a soft, broad-rimmed hat pulled down upon his eyes.
He looked tired out. The three boys stood in front of the man, and finally his eyes opened. He smiled as he saw them staring at him. "'What do you want with me, signor?' said he. Giuseppe dropped onto the grass beside him. "'I know now what you meant when you said the refugees of Italy yesterday,' he explained. We three boys mean to be refugees some day. We've made a vow that we'll fight the Austrians until there isn't one of the three of us left. We'd like very much to hear some of the things you've done." The man threw back his cloak and sat up, a trifle straightened. "'Three future refugees,' he exclaimed. "'The world moves. You want to be pushing me away already, do you? Sit down. I'll tell you what I can.'" The boy sat in front of him and listened with rapt attention, while he told them that his home was in a little town halfway between Nice and Genoa, that he was a member of a secret society called the Carbonari, and that the first rule of that society was that a man must do exactly as he was told without asking why.
Not long before he had received a secret message telling him to go to the city of Milan. Taking his sword and pistols with him, he had left his wife and children and gone to Milan. And there he had awaited a long time while the leaders of the society planned to surprise the Austrian garrison and drive the troops out of the city.
The night of the attempt finally arrived, but some one had betrayed them. No sooner had they met at the place agreed on than word came that they must scatter instantly if they wanted to escape the Austrian bayonets. Each had gone his own way, trying to get as far from Milan as he could. He had managed to get to Nice, where he was near the French border. He could cross at any time. Meanwhile, he and the other refugees had to ask alms or starve. The boys had heard of the Society of the Carbonari, which had spread all over Italy, and they listened to this story by one of its members with the greatest interest. They asked him a great many questions, but he would only answer a few of them. He only told them such facts as were public property.
Inquiries about the Society itself were met with a smile and a shake of the head. Before they left him, they made him take the few coins they had in their pockets to help him, and other refugees of their country. They also made him write their names on a piece of paper, so that when the next uprising should come, they might be sent for. And they solemnly organized a secret society among themselves, to last until a time when they would be old enough to join the Carbonari. From that day, Giuseppe kept his eyes open for any other refugees who might be roaming through the streets of Nice. Occasionally he found some war-torn soldier or sailor whom the authorities allowed to sit in the sun in one of the city squares or down on the quays, but younger and more active refugees were scarce, and preferred to cross frontier to Marseilles.
Giuseppe and Raphael and Cesar, however, were not to be discouraged. As soon as they could, they laid their hands on long cloaks and broad-rimmed hats, and dressed as nearly as possible to their black-haired friend. They invented countersigns and mottos, planned conspiracies, and patterned themselves as nearly after the Carbonari as they could. But there was no new uprising at that time, and so after a while the boys lost interest in the game of conspiracy. His love of the sea came back more strongly than ever to Giuseppe, and he begged his father to take him on his next cruise. His mother thought he was too young to leave the church school, but the boy, already large and strong for his years, was growing very restless, and there was no telling what mischief he might get into if he were kept at home.
In the long evenings, he was always asking his father to describe to him the strange cities he had visited on his travels. He begged him, Especially to tell him about Rome and her seven wonderful hills, the city from which his earliest childhood had fascinated him more than any other place in the world. Do you think I'll ever get to Rome, Father Giuseppe would ask. Yes, we'll go there together some day before long, little son, his father would answer. So indeed they did. When Giuseppe was about fifteen years old, he was allowed to make his first long voyage on a brigantine bound from Nice to Odessa. And a year later he sailed on his father's Feluca to Rome. The city of the Caesars seemed even more wonderful than he had dreamed.
It was the heart of the world to him, and he never forgot the deep impression that first sight of it made upon him. After his first voyage, the young Garibaldi sailed with many captains and saw a great deal of the world, rounding Cape Horn, voyaging to the far north, and even crossing the Atlantic and visiting South America. He was always deeply interested in strange lands. He loved the thrill of any adventure, and the sight of an act of injustice or cruelty, nothing could keep him from going at once to the rescue.
When he was in South America, he heard that the Italians were rising against their foreign masters, and were planning to fight for freedom. He sailed for home instantly, and no sooner did he land than he was leading a company of friends to join the Italian army. He was fearless, generous, and open-hearted as a child. Wherever he went, men flocked to his command. Within a few months, the young man was virtually general of an army, and fighting and winning battle after battle in the Alps. At the end of a year, his fame had crossed Europe. The freedom of Italy, however, was not won in a single campaign. Although Garibaldi's troops were victorious, some of the other Italian armies were not, and before long, that first war of independence came to an end.
For a time, the Austrians' hold over the cities of Italy seemed stronger than ever, and Garibaldi and many of his friends were forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in other countries. Again, Garibaldi crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and this time he went to New York and took up the trade of candle-maker, living in a small frame house on Staten Island. He liked Americans. They understood him and his burning desire for Italian freedom better than any other foreigners he met. He stayed on Staten Island until the chance came for him to go to sea again, as a captain of a merchantman. And after that, it was only a short time before he was again in the Alps, his sword drawn, his devoted volunteers behind him.
It was long before the dream of Italian patriots came true, and Rome became the capital of a united country, but during those years, Garibaldi led crusade after crusade. He wore the simple costume of an Italian peasant, with a red shirt which was copied by all his men. This red-shirted army swept the enemy out of Sicily and Naples, drove them back through the Alps, won so continually that the superstitious Neapolitans believe that their leader must be in league with the evil one. But the people of Italy worshipped this general beyond all their other heroes. Even their praises could not spoil the simplicity of Garibaldi's nature. When his work was done, he went home to live quietly with his family.
The friends of his boyhood found him very little changed, the same lover of Italy and the sea, the same adventurous, generous spirit he had been as a youth in Nice. In those youthful days his boyfriends had followed him without question. Now the whole of Italy looked to him as their leader. He had succeeded in doing what hundreds of other men had dreamed of doing, driving the Austrians permanently out of the peninsula, and restoring to his countrymen the ancient liberty of Italy. Yet whether as a boy upon the Mediterranean, or as a liberator of a nation, he was always the same, frank, straightforward, high-minded, Giuseppe.
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19 19 - Abraham Lincoln The Boy of the American Wilderness: 1809-1865 20:37
Holland Chapter 19. Abraham Lincoln. The Boy of the American Wilderness.
Squire Josiah Crawford was seated on the porch of his house in Gentryville, Indiana, one spring afternoon, when a small boy called to see him. The squire was a testy old man, not very fond of boys. And he glanced up over his book, impatient and annoyed at the interruption. What do you want here? he demanded. The boy had pulled off his raccoon-skin cap, and stood holding it in his hand, while he eyed the old man. They say down at the store, sir, said the boy, that you have a Life of George Washington. I'd like mighty well to read it. The squire peered closer at his visitor. Surprised out of his annoyance at the words, he looked over the boy, carefully examining his long, lank figure, the tangled mass of black hair, his deep-set eyes, and large mouth.
He was evidently from some poor country family. His clothes were homemade, and the trousers were shrunk until they barely reached below his knees. son of Tom Lincoln, down on Pigeon Creek. The squire said to himself, It must be that Tom Lincoln, who, folks say, is a ne'er-do-well, and moves from place to place every year because he can't make his farm support him. Then he said aloud to the boy, What do you want with my life of Washington? I've been learning about him at school, and I'd like to know more. The old man studied the boy in silence for some moments. Something about the lad seemed to attract him. Finally he said, "'Can I trust you to take good care of the book, if I lend it to you?' "'As good care,' said the boy, "'as if it was made of gold, "'if you'd only please let me have it for a week.' His eyes were so eager that the old man could not withstand them.
"'Wait here a minute,' he said. and went into the house. When he returned, he brought the coveted volume with him, and handed it to the boy. "'There it is,' said he. "'I'm going to let you have it. But be sure it doesn't come to harm down on Pigeon Creek.' The boy, with the precious volume tucked tightly under his arm, went down the single street of Gentryville, with the joy of anticipation in his face. He could hardly wait to open the book, and plunge into it. He stopped for a moment at the village store to buy some calico his stepmother had ordered, and then struck into the road through the woods that led to his home. The house which he found at the end of his trail was a very primitive one.
The first home Tom Lincoln had built on the creek, when he moved there from Kentucky, had been merely a pole shack. Four poles driven into the ground, with forked ends at the top, Other poles lay crosswise in the forks, and a roof of poles built on the square. There had been no chimney, only an open place for a window, and another for a door, and strips of bark and patches of clay to keep the rain out. The new house was a little better. It had an attic, and the first floor was divided into several rooms. It was very simple, however, in reality only a big log cabin. The boy came out of the woods, crossed the clearing about the house, and went in at the door. His stepmother was sitting at the window sewing.
He held up the volume for her to see. "'I've got it,' he cried. "'It's the life of Washington, and now I'm going to learn all about him.' He had barely time to put the book in the woman's hands, before his father's voice was heard calling him out of doors. There was work to be done on the farm. In the rest of that afternoon, Abe was kept busily employed, and as soon as supper was finished, his father set him to work mending harness. At dawn the next day, the boy was up and out in the fields, the life of Washington in one pocket, the other pocket filled with corn-dodgers. Unfortunately, he could not read and run a straight furrow. When it was noon-time, he sat under a tree, munching the cakes, And plunged into the first chapter of the book.
For half an hour he read, and ate. Then he had to go on with his work until sundown. When he got home, he had his supper standing up, so that he could read the book by the candle that stood on the shelf. After supper he lay in front of the fire, still reading and forgetting everything about him. Gradually the fire burned out, the family went to bed, and young Abe was obliged to go up to his room in the attic. He put the book on the ledge on the wall, close to the head of his bed, so that nothing might happen to it. During the night a violent storm arose, and the rain came through a chink in the log walls. When the boy woke he found that the book was a mass of wet paper. The type blurred, and the cover beyond repair.
He was heartbroken at the discovery. He could imagine how angry the old squire would be when he saw the state of the book. Nevertheless, He determined to go to Gentryville at the earliest opportunity and see what he could do to make amends. The next Sunday morning found a small boy standing on the squire's porch, with the remains of the book in his hand. When the squire learned what had happened, he spoke his mind freely. He told Abe that he was as worthless as his father, that he did not know how to take care of valuable property, and that he would never loan him another book as long as he lived. The boy faced the music, and when the angry tirade was over, said that he would like to shuck corn for the squire, and in that way pay him the value of the ruined volume.
Mr. Crawford accepted the offer, and named a price far greater than any possible value of the book, and Abe set to work, spending all his spare time in the next two weeks shucking the corn and working as chore boy. So he finally succeeded in paying back the full value of the ruined life of Washington. This was only one of many adventures that befell Abraham Lincoln while he was trying to get an education. His mother had taught him to read and write, and ever since he had learned, he had longed for books to read. One day he said to his cousin, Dennis Hanks, Denny, the things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who will get me one. Dennis was very fond of his younger cousin, and as soon as he could save up the money, he went to town and bought a copy of The Arabian Nights.
He gave this to Abe, and the latter at once started to read it aloud by the wood fire in the evenings. His mother, his sister Sally, and Dennis were his audience. His father thought the reading only a waste of time, and said, Abe, Your mother can't work with you pestering her like that." But Mrs. Lincoln said the stories helped her, and so the reading went on. When he came to the story of how Sinbad the sailor went too close to the magic rock, and lost all the nails out of the bottom of his boat, Abe laughed until he cried. Dennis, however, could not see the humor. "'Why, Abe,' said he, "'that yarn's just a lie.' "'Perhaps so,' answered the small boy. But if it is, it's a mighty good lie. As a matter of fact, Abe had very few books.
His earliest possessions consisted of less than half a dozen volumes. A pioneer's library. First of all was the Bible, a whole library in itself, containing every sort of literature. Second was Pilgrim's Progress, with its quaint characters and vivid scenes told in simple English. Aesop's Fables was a third, and introduced the log-cabin boy to a wonderful range of characters—the gods of mythology, the different classes of mankind, and every animal under the sun. And fourth was a history of the United States, in which there was the charm of truth, and from which Abe learned valuable lessons of patriotism. He read these books over and over till he knew them by heart. He would sit in the twilight, and read a dictionary as long as he could see.
He could not afford to waste paper upon original compositions, and so he would sit by the fire at night and cover the wooden shovel with essays and arithmetical problems, which he would shave off and then begin again. The few books he was able to get made the keen-witted country boy anxious to find people who could answer his questions for him. In those days, many men, clergymen, Judges and lawyers rode on circuit, stopping overnight at any farmhouse they might happen upon. When such a man would ride up to the Lincoln clearing, he was usually met by a small boy, who would fire questions at him before he could dismount from his horse. The visitor would be amused, but Tom Lincoln thought that a poor sort of hospitality.
He would come running out of the house and say, Stop that, Abe! What's happened to your manners? Then he would turn to the traveller. You must excuse him, light stranger, and come in to supper. Then Abe would go away whistling to show that he did not care. When he found Dennis, he would say, Pa says it's not polite to ask questions, but I guess I wasn't meant to be polite. There's such a lot of things to know, and how am I going to know them if I don't ask questions? He simply stored them away until a later time, and when supper was over, He usually found his chance to make use of the visitor. In that day, Indiana was still part of the wilderness. Primeval woods stood close to Pigeon Creek, and not far away were roving bands of sacks and sioux, and also wild animals, bears, wild cats, and lynxes.
The settlers fought the Indians, and made use of the wild creatures for clothing and food, and to sell at the country stores. The children spent practically all their time out of doors, and young Abe Lincoln learned the habits of the wild creatures, and explored the far recesses of the woods. From his life in the woods, the boy became very fond of animals. One day some of the boys at school put a lighted coal on a turtle's back in sport. Abe rescued the turtle, and when he got a chance, wrote a composition in school about cruel jokes on animals. It was a good paper, And the teacher had the boy read it before the class. All the boys liked Abe, and they took to heart what he had to say in the matter.
It was a rough sort of life that the children of the early settlers led, and the chances were all in favor of the Lincoln boy growing up to be like his father, a kind-hearted, ignorant, near-do-well type of man. His mother, however, who came of a good Virginia family, had done her best to give him some ambition. When she had said to him, Abe, learn all you can, and grow up to be of some account. You've got just as good Virginia blood in you as George Washington had. Abe did not forget that. Soon after the family moved to Pigeon Creek, his mother died, and a little later a stepmother took her place. This woman soon learned that the boy was not the ordinary type, and kept encouraging him to make something of himself, and she was always ready to listen when he read to help him with his lessons.
To cheer him, when he got too old to wear his bare-skin suit, she told him that if he would earn enough money to get some muslin, she would make him some white shirts, so that he would not be ashamed to go to people's houses. Abe earned the money, and Mrs. Lincoln purchased the cloth and made the shirts. After that, Abe cut quite a figure in Gentryville, because he liked people, and knew so many good stories that he was always popular with the crowd. Small things showed the ability that was in the raw country lad. When he was only fourteen, a copy of Henry Clay's speeches fell into his hands, and he learned most of them by heart, and what he learned from them interested him in history. Then a little later his stepmother was ill for some time, and Abe went to church every Sunday, and on his return repeated the sermon almost word for word to her.
Again he loved to argue, and would take up some question he had asked of a stranger, and go on with it when the latter returned to the creek, perhaps months after the first visit. Mrs. Lincoln noted these things, and made up her mind that her stepson would be a great man some day. Most frequently she thought he would be a great lawyer, because, as she said, when Abe got started arguing, the other fellow would pretty soon say he had enough. Probably at this time Abe was more noted for his love of learning new things and for his great natural strength than for anything else. He was in no sense an infant prodigy. It took him a long time to learn. But when he had once acquired anything, it stayed by him permanently.
The books he had read he knew from cover to cover, and the words he had learned to spell at the school spelling bees he never forgot. Now and again he tried his hand at writing short compositions. Usually on subjects he had read of in books. And these little essays were always to the point, and showed that the boy knew what he was discussing. One or two of these papers got into the hands of a local newspaper, and appeared in print, much to Abe's surprise, and to his stepmother's delight. Yet, after all, these qualities were not the ones which won him greatest admiration in the rough country life. The boys and young men admired his great size and strength. For when he was only nineteen, he had reached his full growth, and stood six feet four inches tall.
Countless stories were current about his feats of strength. At one time, it was said, young Abe Lincoln was seen to pick up and carry away a chicken coop weighing six hundred pounds. At another time, Abe happened to come upon some men, who were building a contrivance for lifting some heavy posts from the ground. He stepped up to them and said, "'Say, let me have a try.' And in a few minutes he had shouldered the posts and carried them where they were wanted. As a rail-splitter he had no equal. A man for whom he worked told his father that Abe could sink his axe deeper into the wood than any man he ever saw. This great strength was a very valuable gift in such a community as that of Gentryville.
And many people respect this boy even more than would his learning and his kindness of heart. A little later he lived in a village named New Salem. And there he found a crowd of boys who were called the Clary's Grove Boys, who were noted for the rough handling they gave to strangers. Many a new boy had been hardly dealt with at their hands. Sometimes they would lead him into a fight, and then beat him black and blue, and sometimes they would nail the stranger into a hog's head and roll him down a steep hill. When Abe Lincoln first came to the town, they were afraid to tackle him. But when their friends taunted him, the crowd of young roughs, with being afraid of Lincoln's strength, they decided to lay a trap for him.
The leader of the gang was a very good wrestler, and he seized an opportunity when all the men of the town were gathered at the country store to challenge Abe to a wrestling match. Abe was not at all anxious to accept the challenge, but was finally driven to it by the taunts the gang threw at him. A ring was made in the road outside the store, and Abe and the bully set to. The leader of the gang, however, found that he could not handle this tall young stranger as easily as he had handled other youths. He gave a signal for help. Thereupon the rest of the rough swarmed about the two wrestlers, and by kicking at Abe's legs and trying to trip him, they nearly succeeded in bringing him to the ground.
When he saw how set they were on downing him, Abe's blood rose, and suddenly putting forth his whole strength, he seized his opponent in his arms, and very nearly choked the life out of him. For a moment it looked as though the rest of the crowd would set upon Lincoln, and that he would have to fight the lot of them single-handed. He sprang back against the wall, and called to them to come on. But he looked so able to take care of any number that they faltered, and in a moment their first fury gave place to an honest admiration for Lincoln's nerve. That ended his initiation, and as long as he stayed in New Salem, The Clary's Grove boys were his devoted followers. The leader of the gang, whom Abe had nearly throttled, became his sworn friend, and this bond lasted through life.
When other men threatened Abe or spoke against him in any way, this youth was always first to stand up for him, and acted as his champion many times. Curiously enough, and after years, when Abe had become a lawyer, he defended his old opponent's son when the young man was on trial for his life, and succeeded in saving him. Such an adventure as this with the Clary's Grove boys was typical of the way in which Abe, as he grew up, came to acquire a very definite position in the community. In one way and another, he gained the reputation which the boys gave him of being not only the strongest, but also the cleverest fellow that had ever broke into the settlement. There were many strong men in that country, but there were very few really clever ones.
And the simple farmers were only too willing to admire brains when they met them. The time had passed when the boy could stay in the small surroundings of Pigeon Creek. First he tried life on one of the river steamboats, then served as a clerk in a store at the town of New Salem. And there he began at odd moments to study law. A little later he knew enough law to become an attorney, and went to Springfield. And after that it was only a short time before he had won his clients. His cousin Denny came to hear him try one of his first cases. He watched the tall, lank young fellow, still as ungainly as in his early boyhood, and heard him tell the jury some of those same stories he had read aloud before the fire.
When Abe had finished, his cousin said to him, "'Why did you tell those people so many stories?' "'Why, Denny,' said Abe, "'a story teaches a lesson. God tells truths in parables. They are easier for common folks to understand and recollect. Such was the simple boyhood of Abraham Lincoln, but its very simplicity, and the hardships he had to overcome to get an education, made him a strong man. He knew people, and when he came later to be President, and to guide the country through the greatest trial in its history, it was those same qualities of perseverance and courage and trust in the people that made the simple-minded man the great helmsman of the Republic.
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20 20 - Charles Dickens The Boy of the London Streets: 1812-1870 20:18
XXX. or to volunteer.
Charles Dickens. The Boy of the London Streets. The little fellow who worked all day long in the tumble-down old house by the River Thames, pasting oil-paper covers on boxes of blacking, fell ill one afternoon. One of the workmen, a big man named Bob Fagin, made him lie down on a pile of straw in the corner. and placed blacking bottles filled with hot water beside him to keep him warm. There he lay until it was time for the men to stop work. And then his friend Fagin, looking down upon the small boy of twelve, asked if he felt able to go home. The boy got up, looking so big-eyed, white-cheeked and thin, that the man put his arm about his shoulder. "'Never mind, Bob. I think I'm all right now,' said the boy.
"'Don't you wait for me.' Go on home. You ain't fit to go alone, Charlie. I'm coming along with you. Deed I am, Bob. I'm feeling as spry as a cricket." The little fellow threw back his shoulders and headed for the stairs. Fagin, however, insisted on keeping him company, and so the two, the shabbily dressed undersized boy and the big strapping man, came out into the murky London twilight and took their way over the Blackfriars Bridge. "'Been spending your money at the pastry shops, Charlie again.' "'That's what was the matter with you, I take it.' The boy shook his head. "'No, Bob. I'm trying to save. When I get my week's money, I put it away in a bureau drawer, wrapped in six little paper packages, with a day of the week on each one, that I know just how much I've got to live on.
And Sundays don't count. Sometimes I do get hungry, though. So hungry.' Then I look in at the windows, and play at Bein' Rich. They crossed the bridge, the boy's big eyes seeming to take note of everything. The man, duller-witted, listening to his chatter. Several times the boy tried to say good-night, but Fagin would not be shaken off. "'I'm goin' to see you to your door, Charlie, lad,' he said each time. At last they came into a little street near the Southwark Bridge. The boy stopped by the steps of a house. "'Here tis, Bob. Good night. It was good of you to take the trouble for me.' "'Good night, Charlie.' The boy ran up the steps, and, as he noticed that Fagin still stopped, he pulled the doorbell.
Then the man went on down the street. When the door opened, the boy asked if Mr. Fagin lived there, and, being told that he did not, said he must have made a mistake in the house. Turning about, he saw that his friend had disappeared around a corner. With a little smile of triumph, he made off in the other direction. The door of the Marshall Sea prison stood open like a great black mouth. The boy, tired with his long tramp, was glad to reach it and to run in. Climbing several long flights of stairs, he entered a room on the top story where he found his family. His father, a tall, pompous-looking man dressed all in black. His mother, An amiable but extremely fragile woman, and a small brother and sister seated at a table eating supper.
The room was very sparsely furnished. The only bright spot in it was a small fire in a rusty grate, flanked by two bricks to prevent burning too much fuel. There was a vacant place at the table for Charles, and he sat down upon a stool, and ate as ravenously as though he had not tasted food for months. Meanwhile, the tall man at the head of the table talked solemnly to his wife at the other end, using strange long words which none of the children could understand. Supper over Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, for that was their name, and the two younger children sat before the tiny fire, and Mr. Dickens talked of how he might raise enough money to pay his debts, leave the prison, and start fresh in some new business.
Charles had heard these same plans from his father's lips a thousand times before, and so he took from the cupboard an old book, which he had bought at a little second-hand shop a few days before, a small tattered copy of Don Quixote, and read it by the light of the tallow candle in the corner. The line soon blurred before the boy's tired eyes. His head nodded, and he was fast asleep. He was awakened by his father's deep voice. "'Time to be leaving, Charles, my son. You have not forgotten that my pecuniary situation prevents my choosing the hour.' at which I shall close the door of my house. Fortunately, it is a predicament which I trust will soon be obviated to our mutual satisfaction. The small fellow stood up, shook hands solemnly with his father, kissed his mother, and took his way out of the great prison.
Opened doors on various landings gave him pictures of many queer households. Sometimes he would stop as though to consider some unusually puzzling face or figure. Into the night again he went, and wound through a dismal labyrinth of the dark and narrow streets of old London. Sometimes a rough voice or an evil face would frighten him, and he would take to his heels and run as fast as he could. When he passed the house where he had asked for Mr. Fagan, he chuckled to himself. He would not have had his friend know for worlds that his family's home was the Marshallsea prison. Even that room in the prison, however, was more cheerful than the small back-attic chamber where the boy fell asleep for the second time that night.
He slept on a bed made up on the floor, but his slumber was no less deep on that account. The noise of workmen in a timber-yard under his window woke Charles when it seemed much too dark to be morning. It was morning, however, and he was quickly dressed, and making his breakfast from the penny cottage loaf of bread, a section of cream cheese, and a small bottle of milk, which were all he could afford to buy from the man who rented him the room. Then he took the roll of paper marked with the name of the day from the drawer of his bureau, and counted out the pennies into his pocket. They were not many. He had to live on seven shillings a week, and he tucked them away very carefully in a pocket, lest he lose them and have to do without his lunch.
He was not yet due at the blacking factory, but he hurried away from his room and joined the crowd of early morning people already on their way to work. He went down the embankment along the Thames until he came to a place where a bench was set in a corner of a wall. This was his favorite lounging place. London Bridge was just beyond. The river lay in front of him, and he was far enough away from people to be safe from interruption. As he sat there watching the bridge and the Thames, a little girl came to join him. She was no bigger than he, perhaps a year or two older. But her face was already shrewd enough for that of a grown-up woman. She was the maid of all work at a house in the neighborhood, and she had fallen into the habit of stopping to talk for a few moments with the boy on her way to work in the morning.
She liked to listen to his stories. This was the boy's hour for inventing his tales. He could spin wonderful tales about London Bridge, the tower, and the wharves along the river. Sometimes he made up stories about the people who passed in front of them. And they were such astonishing stories that the girl remembered them all day as she worked in the house. He seemed to believe them himself. His eyes would grow far away and dreamy, and his words would run on and on until a neighboring clock brought him suddenly back to his own position. "'You do know a heap o' things, don't you?' said the little girl, lost in admiration. "'I'd rather have a shillin', though, than all the fairy tales in the world.' "'I wouldn't.' said Charles stoutly.
I'd rather read books than do anything else. You've got to eat, though, objected his companion, and books won't make you food. Taint common sense. She relented in an instant. It's funny, though, Charlie Dickens. Good-bye till tomorrow. Charles went on down to the old blacking factory by Hungerford Stairs, a ramshackle building almost hanging over the river, damp and overrun with rats. His place was in a recess of the counting-room on the first floor, and as he covered the bottles with the oil-paper tops and tied them on with string, he could look from time to time through a window at the slow coal-barges swinging down the river. There were very few boys about the place. At lunch-time he would wander off by himself, and selecting his meal from a careful survey of several pastry-cooks' windows, invest his money for the day in fancy cakes or a tart.
He missed the company of friends of his own age. Even Fanny, his oldest sister, he saw only on Sundays, when she came back to the marshalsea from the place where she worked, to spend the day with her family. It was only grown-up people that he saw most of the time, and they were too busy with their own affairs to take much interest in the small, shabby boy, who looked just like any one of a thousand other children of the streets. Of all the men at the factory, it was only the big, clumsy fellow named Fagin, who would stop to chat with the lad. So it was that Charles was forced to make friends with whomever he could, people of any age or condition, and was driven to spend much of his spare time roaming about the streets, lounging by the river, reading stray books by a candle in the prison, or in the little attic where he slept.
It was not a boyhood that seemed to promise much. In spite of this hard life which he led, Charles really lost his love of fun. or his natural high spirits. When he was about twelve years old, his father came into a little money, which enabled him to pay his debts, so that he was released from prison. He was also able to send his son to school. Here he quickly blossomed out into a leader among the boys. He was continually inventing new games and queer languages, which were made by adding extra syllables to ordinary words. Frequently, he and several of his school friends Charles was also continually writing short stories, which he lent to his friends on payment of marbles or slate pencils or white mice, which the boys were very fond of keeping in their desks.
He and a few others built a small theatre, and painted gorgeous scenery for it, and then gave regular plays, which he specially wrote for the theatre. To the great entertainment of the other boys and the masters. This comfortable school life was a great contrast to the hard knocks he had to endure when he was at the Blacking Factory, and he flourished under its influence, and began to show something of his real talent for entertaining those about him. Mr. Dickens, however, soon concluded that Charles ought to be making a start in some business, and so a few years after he had entered school, he was placed as Clark in the office of a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn. Here he had to run errands through the busy streets of London's business life, copy all legal documents, and answer the clients who came to call on the firm.
The other clerks found young Dickens immensely entertaining. He could mimic every one who called at the office, and in addition he knew the different cockatty voices of all the rabble of the London streets. He had learnt to know the queer types of people who drifted about the river banks and the poorer sections of the city. He knew every small inflection of their voices, and their every trick and gesture, and now he acted them out to the great delight of the other clerks. But he could put his powers of mimicry to greater uses. He went to the theater, particularly to hear Shakespeare's plays, as often as he could, and then would repeat long passages from the plays, giving the exact voice and manner of the leading actors.
Many friends predicted that Charles would be a great actor himself one day, and so perhaps he might. Had not his interests all been drawn another way? At the time he was so much charmed at the thought of becoming an actor that he wrote to the manager of the theatre at Covent Garden, telling him what he thought of his own gifts for the stage, and asking if he might have an appointment. The manager wrote that they were very busy at that time with the new play, but that he would write him soon when he might have a chance to meet him. A little later Charles was invited to go to the theatre. and act a short piece in the presence of Charles Kemble, a very famous actor. When the day arrived, however, he was suffering from a very bad cold, which had so swollen his throat that he could hardly speak at all.
As a result, he could not go to the theatre, and before he had another chance to try his luck, he had made up his mind that he would rather be a writer than an actor. It did not take Charles long to realize that the law was not to his taste. He did not like what he saw of lawyers, and was much more apt to make fun of them to imitate them. Looking about for some very interesting work, he took to studying shorthand in the evenings. He found it very hard to learn, particularly as he had to dig it out of books in the reading-room of the British Museum. But he persevered, and finally became very skilful, so that when he was sent by one of the newspapers to report a debate in the House of Commons, he did so extremely well.
That expert stated there never was such a shorthand writer before. The life of a reporter had great charm for the youthful Dickens. He liked the adventurous side of it, the chance to see strange scenes and mix in interesting events. He had a great many strange adventures of his own, and told later how on one occasion, soon after he had become a reporter, he was sent far out of London to take down a political speech. and how, coming back, he had to write out his shorthand notes, holding his paper on the palm of his hand, and by the light of a dull, flickering lantern, while the coach galloped at fifteen miles an hour through wild and hilly country at midnight. In addition to reporting speeches, Charles was sent to write notices of new plays in the theaters, and also reviewed new books.
He signed these reviews with his nickname, And it was not long before these articles by Boz attracted the attention of a great many judges of good writing. The chief editor of the Morning Chronicle, for which Charles wrote, said of the youth, He has never been a great reader of books or plays, and knows but little of them, but has spent his time in studying life. Keep Boz in reserve for great occasions. He will aye be ready for them. So it proved, and he might have been a prominent newspaper man, Just as he might have been a great actor, and not the desire to see what he could do with the story seized upon him. We have Dickens' own words to tell us how he wrote a little paper in secret, with much fear and trembling, and then dropped it stealthily into a dark little box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street.
A little later his story appeared in the magazine to which he had sent it, and he tells us how, as he looked at his words standing so gravely before him, and all the glory of print. He walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because his eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there. He had been very much excited over this venture of his little story. Now he took the fact of its success to indicate that it was worth his while to practice using his pen as a writer of fiction. After that, Charles Dickens, although he continued working as a reporter, Spent his spare hours in writing comic accounts of the various scenes of London life, which he knew so well.
These were published as fast as they were written, over the pen-name of Boz. He was paid almost nothing for them, but he persevered, prompted by his inborn love of writing and the fun he had had in describing curious types of people. Then one day a young man who had just recently become a publisher called at Charles's lodgings and told him that he was planning to publish a monthly paper in order to sell certain pictures by Robert Seymour, an artist who had just finished some sporting plates for a book called The Squib Annual. Seymour had drawn most of the pictures for this new venture, and they were almost all of a cockney sporting type. Now Charles was asked if he would write something to go with the pictures.
Someone suggested that he should tell the adventures of a Nimrod Club, the members of which should go out into the country on fishing and hunting expeditions, which would suit the drawings. But this did not appeal to the young writer, as he knew very little about these country sports, and was much more interested in describing curious people. He asked for a day or two's time to think the matter over, and then finally sent the publishers the first copy of what he chose to call the Pickwick Papers. According to a common custom of the time, the author was allowed to write a story as it was needed by the printer. so that the first numbers of the Pickwick papers appeared, while Charles was still working on the next ones.
This often put him to great inconvenience, as he sometimes found it hard to invent new adventures, to fit Seymour's pictures, and yet had to have the story written by a certain time. He wrote to a friend one night, I have at this moment got Pickwick and his friends on the Rochester coach, and they are going on swimmingly, in company with a very different character from any I have yet described. Alfred Jingle, who I flatter myself will make a decided hit. I want to get them from the ball to the inn before I go to bed, and I think that will take until one or two o'clock at the earliest. The publishers will be here in the morning, so you will readily suppose I have no alternative but to stick to my desk.
The public was slow in appreciating the humor of the Pickwick Papers, and the series dragged until Part IV appeared, and with it the character of Sam Weller. This original and very entertaining figure turned the scales, and almost instantly there was the greatest demand for the Pickwick Papers. By the time the series was finished, the name of Boz was constantly on almost every English tongue. Here again fortune had had much to do with deciding Dickens' career. Had the series failed, he might have continued merely a reporter, but the humorous figure of Weller tipped the scales in favor of his adopting the profession of novelist. From that time on, one novel after another flowed from Dickens' pen.
For many of their most vivid pictures he was indebted to the hard life of his boyhood, and the strange people he had known in the days, when he worked in the Blacking factory, finally grew into some of his greatest characters. The little maid of all work became the marchioness in the old curiosity shop, Bob Fagan loaned his name to Oliver Twist, and in David Copperfield we read the story of the small boy who had to fight his way through London alone. Those days of boyhood had given him a deep insight into human nature, into the humor and pathos of other people's lives, and it was that rare insight that enabled him to become in time one of the greatest of all English writers, Charles Dickens, the beloved novelist of the Anglo-Saxon people.
Newport Ritchie, Florida.
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21 21 - Otto von Bismarck The Boy of Göttingen: 1815-1898 14:29
A tall, slender boy, followed by a great Danish hound, walked down the main street of the German town of Göttingen in Hannover one spring morning in 1832. The small round cap Gay with Colors told the world that the boy was a student at the university, and also that he belonged to one of the students' clubs, or fighting corps, as they were called. But this boy looked quite a dandy. A white sash was tied about his waist, high polished boots came up to his knees, and he wore a knot of colors on his breast, the same colors he sported in his cap, the emblem that he belonged to the Brunswick student corps. Moreover, he carried himself with rather a haughty manner, and the big dog, following at his heels, walked in much the same way.
Presently there came strolling along the street a group of a half-dozen boys who wore the round caps of the Hanoverian club. Something about the boy with the dog struck them as comical, and they began to laugh and nudge each other, and when they came up to the boy they stopped and stared at him in undisguised amusement. Quick colours sprang to his cheeks. He hesitated, and then came to a full stop. It was not pleasant to be singled out as a laughing-stock in the main street of Göttingen. "'Well, what are you laughing at?' he demanded, looking squarely at the group of boys. One of them waved his hand eerily in answer. "'At the magnificence of our new little brunnswicker,' he answered mockingly.
"'So?' And are you accustomed to laugh at magnificence? The boy's brows were bent, and his lips had set in a very stern line. When it amuses us, we laugh, put in one of the others. Then I'd have you know it's ill manners to laugh, and I'll teach you better as soon as we get Schlagers in our hands. And who may you be? asked the one who had spoken first. My name is Otto von Bismarck. I come from Prussia, and I am a new student here. And which of us will you fight? I'll fight you all. Send your man to me at my room, and I'll agree on any time and place. Then, with his head held very high, the boy walked on, and the Great Dane followed at his heels. Bismarck, said one of the Hannover boys to the others, it seems to me I've heard of him.
They say he's splendid company. He's surely got pluck enough, agreed another. I like the way he faced a lot of us. So they went on down the street, discussing the new student. Otto, no whit daunted by his adventure, shortly after returned to his room. He lighted a big china-bowled pipe and was smoking and reading when the messenger from the boys he had challenged came to see him. Otto offered him a pipe, and the two were soon eagerly discussing horses and dogs and telling about the fine hunting there was to be had in the different parts of Germany in which their homes lay. They caught on together famously, and finally the visitor, who was the chief of his corps, said, What a shame we got into this trouble over nothing.
You're too good a fellow for any of us to fight. We shouldn't have guided you that way. Let me see if I can't fix matters up. I'm quite ready to fight them all, said Otto stoutly. I told them so, and I always stand by my word. I know, said the other, who by now had taken a great liking to the young Prussian. But you're not the sort to get really angry at such a little thing, and I like you too much to want to cross swords with you. And I like you, answered Otto warmly, but remember I'm quite ready if the others aren't of your way of thinking. The Hannover boy went back to his clubmates and told them the result of his talk with Otto. He said the letter was not a coxcomb or a dandy, but one of the best-humoured fellows he had ever met, and if he had been driven to showing his temper on the street that morning, it was the result of their rudeness and not Otto's ill-will.
The other boys quite agreed with what their captain said, and he was asked to carry their regrets to Otto for the unfortunate meeting and their hope that the duels might not be fought. The reconciliation was at once carried out, but the adventure did not end there as far as the young paladin named Bismarck was concerned. The Hannover captain, who was a year or two older than Otto and knew much more about the university, became his best friend, and soon one boy was rarely seen without the other. There was no regular Prussian student corps at Göttingen, and so Otto, when he had reached a university and had been invited to join the Brunswick club, had at once accepted. Now his chum began to show him how much better the Hannover corpse was than that of Brunswick, and argued with him that as it was not a matter of home pride, but simply a question as to which boys he liked best, he had better join his new friends' club.
It took a little persuasion to convince Otto that his wishes really all lay that way, and so he resigned from the corpse of Brunswick and was received into that of Hannover.
As soon as this news spread through the university, the Brunswickers were very indignant. They declared that they had been grossly insulted, and that Otto von Bismarck should be made to pay for this slight upon them. Their captain and best swordsman at once challenged Otto to fight with the Schläger. Otto accepted, and the duel quickly took place. This Schläger fighting was an old custom of all the German universities, and every boy who belonged to a corpse was pretty sure to fight one or more such duels. The Schläger is very heavy and clumsy compared with the dueling sword, and requires a very strong wrist and arm. Instead of dexterous fencing, the fighting is done by downright slashing and cutting, and usually ends when one or the other fighter has received a cut on the face.
The duel takes place with a great deal of ceremony, each student being attended by a number of his own club, and each corps values at its highest honour the reputation of having the best fighters in the university. Otto proved his strength in his first duel with the Brunswick captain. He himself received a number of hard blows, but he gave more than he took and finally cut his opponent on the cheek. That ended the duel, and each boy retired satisfied. Otto, because he had won, and the Brunswick captain, because he had another scar to prove his fighting spirit. But the Brunswickers were not yet satisfied that their reputation was entirely cleared, and so in a few days Otto received a challenge from the next best fighter of their corps, and having fought him was challenged by another, and so the affair continued until he had met and defeated almost every student in the Brunswick club.
He fought twenty Schläger duels during his first year at the university, and came out of them so well that he was ranked as one of the best fighters at Göttingen, and the Hanoverians were very proud of him. In only one encounter was the young Prussian wounded. He was fighting with a student named Biederwig, and the latter's sword blade snapped in two as Otto was parrying his fierce attack. The broken edge gave Bismarck a slight cut on the cheek, and Bedeweg at once claimed the victory. The officers of the clubs, however, decided that the duel was a drawn encounter. By this time, Otto, who was just eighteen, had become the leader among the students of Göttingen.
Such customs seem strange and almost barbarous to Anglo-Saxon boys, but this duelling played a large part in the college life of Germans at that time. Otto was not by nature quarrelsome, but he was bound to hold his own with his friends, and to do that he felt that he must take his part in the rough life about him. Very soon after the fight with Biederweg, he was drawn into a much more serious affair. Among his close friends was a young German baron who had fallen out with an English student named Knight. Each of them felt that their quarrel demanded serious settlement, and they determined to fight with pistols instead of swords. At first Otto refused to have anything to do with the meeting, but at the last minute the baron's second withdrew, and the baron begged Otto to take his place.
Otto could not refuse this appeal of his friend, and so reluctantly consented. When the two met, Otto paced out a much longer distance than was usual in such cases, and had them stand very far apart. When the word was given, each student fired, but both were so nervous that their shots went very wide. Then Otto at once interfered, stating that the honour of each was now fully satisfied, and refusing to let them continue. Here he showed that masterfulness of character which had already made him a leader, and which now at once compelled the dualists to submit. Such a meeting as this was, however, contrary to the laws of the university, and all the boys who took part in it were at once severely punished.
The other students told how Otto had ended the fight and begged that he be let off, but the rector would not listen to their requests, and Bismarck was ordered to undergo 11 days of solitary confinement. When he was released, he was welcomed back by all the student corps and became more of a hero than ever.
But Otto von Bismarck's college life was not all fighting. Although he was not much of a student, he was keenly interested in everything about him, and fond of arguing in all sorts of subjects. History was his favorite study. He devoured stories of great kings and statesmen and soldiers, his keen mind always intent on discovering the reason for the success or failure of each. There was then at Göttingen a young American by name John Lothrop Motley, Who was as much interested in history as was Otto, and even more fond of an argument. The two became close friends, and often set up half the night to settle some dispute between them. Motley was the more eager, and often the young German would wake in the morning to find his American friend sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting to go on with their discussion of the night before.
It was Motley also who interested Otto so much in American history that he took a leading part in celebrating the 4th of July at Göttingen.
His college life taught the young Prussian student many valuable things that are not told in books. He grew up with a fine knowledge of the boys of his own age and with a strength and courage which made him admired by all his friends. A little later, when he was at home on a vacation, he was riding with several neighbors around the pond. The banks of the pond were very steep. Suddenly Otto heard a cry behind him. Turning, he saw that the groom's horse had stumbled and pitched the rider into deep water. The man was terribly frightened, and it was evident that he either did not know how to swim or was too excited to try to do so. The other horsemen stood still, doing nothing but call to the groom.
Otto, however, tore off his coat and sword, and plunged in. The man caught at him, and clung to him so tightly that it looked as though Otto would be pulled down with him. Once both disappeared entirely underwater, but Otto's great strength saved him, and after a short time he was able to drag the groom to shore. Great events call for great men, and usually find them. The adventures of his college life had never found the Prussian boy wanting in nerve or courage, he had always seized his chance and made the most of it. He did the same thing as he grew into manhood and tried for a time life in the army, then on his father's farmland, and then in Parliament. Great changes were coming over Europe as Otto grew to manhood.
Old countries were falling apart and new ones being formed, and there was need of strong men to advise and to check the people. Especially was this true of Germany, which was then a collection of small kingdoms loosely joined together. When these kingdoms needed a man to steer them through the troubled waters that were gathering around them, Otto von Bismarck saw his opportunity and took it. He became the great statesman of Germany, the Iron Chancellor, as he was often called, the man who built the present German Empire and gave its crown to his own sovereign, William I of Prussia. He was a man of tremendous power, aggressive, fearless, masterful, showing the same sturdy traits that had made him in his youth the most feared and admired Schlägerfighter in all Göttingen.
End of chapter 21. End of Historic Boyhoods by Rupert S. Holland