While they were speaking, Argus raised his head, took one last look at
his master, and closed his eyes forever.
A moment later, Ulysses, a despicable figure, old and poor, in ragged
clothing, trembling and leaning on his staff, rested against the pillar
of his own gate. Telemachus was the first to see his father, and
ordered that food should be given the poor beggar, and that he should
be invited to enter the hall and share the comforts of the palace. The
experiences of the poor old mendicant in the palace were more trying
than any that he had had, for he met with nothing but insults and abuse
from the assembled suitors, in spite of the fact that Telemachus more
than once urged them to be generous, and himself set the example
repeatedly.
Once only did Ulysses give way to his rage, and that was when another
beggar insulted him and challenged him to fight. Then Ulysses spread
his broad shoulders, braced his limbs, expanded his ample chest, and
struck but once with his powerful right arm. Although he expended but
half his strength, the blow crushed the jaw-bone of the beggar, and
felled him, stunned and quivering, to the ground, while from his mouth
and nostrils poured a stream of purple blood.
This happened in the street before the palace, and Ulysses, taking no
notice of his fallen foe, flung his tattered scrip across his shoulder,
knotted the thong around his waist, and returned to the palace, where
the nobles joined in sarcastic compliments on his strength.
While Ulysses hung about the palace in beggar's garb, only one person
recognized him, and that was his old nurse Euryclea, who saw upon his
knee a scar, that came from a wound which he had received when a youth
in hunting a wild boar. Then the old nurse had tended the wound, and
now she knew at once her fallen master. With difficulty Ulysses
restrained her joy, and urged her to keep his secret till the time came
to disclose it.
While these things were happening, the suitors grew more and more
insistent, and at a great banquet in the palace they became so riotous
that both Penelope and Telemachus knew that something must be done.
Ulysses was subjected to continual insult, and the suitors, quarreling
among themselves, insisted that Penelope should give them some definite
answer.
Finally the queen and her son perfected a plan and announced to the
suitors that at a certain time after the feast the queen would decide
which she would accept. Penelope then went to the inmost room of the
palace and unlocked the door where the royal treasures lay, and taking
from among them the great bow which Ulysses had carried, and the quiver
that contained his arrows, she brought them down to the hall. This bow
was a gift to Ulysses in his youth, and the warrior had used it in many
a fierce combat, but so powerful was it that none but himself could
bend it.
Taking the bow before the assembled suitors, the majestic queen spoke
as follows: "You make vain pretense that you love me; you speak of me
as a prize, and you say you seek me as a wife. Now hear the conditions
under which I will decide, and commence the trial. Whichever one of you
shall first bend the bow of Ulysses, and send a fleet arrow through the
eyes of twelve axes truly arranged, him will I follow, leaving this
home which has been my delight and which now has come to be but a
torture to me."
She spoke carefully, and at the same time showed the rings and the bow.
But as she touched the powerful weapon, thoughts of her lost king
filled her eyes with tears.
The suitors did not like the plan Penelope proposed, but saw no other
way to gratify their hopes. Although they objected, Telemachus insisted
that Ulysses should be present at the trial, and that he himself should
be the first to make the attempt, for he said, "If I win, then will my
mother go with me."
Three times Telemachus twanged the bow, and three times his arrows sped
along the hall, each time missing by a narrower margin the difficult
mark. As he was about to make the fourth attempt, Ulysses signaled him
to stop, feeling sure that on this trial the young man would succeed.
Disappointed and grieving, Telemachus obeyed, saying, "I have failed,
but it is because of my youth and not my weakness. So let the suitors
try."
The first to make the attempt was Leiodes, a blameless priest, the best
of all the suitors, the only one in the throng who was a decent man,
and who detested the conduct of the wretches who hung about the queen.
However strong his heart, his feeble fingers were not able to bend the
bow, and in despair he passed it on to the next. One after another the
suitors tried and failed, till only two remained; but they were the
mightiest and the best.
At this point Ulysses, still in disguise, summoned two of his old
servants, the masters of his herds and flocks, and with them passed out
of the banquet hall. Once by themselves, the king made himself known,
and in a moment both the men were at his feet, embracing his knees and
shedding tears of joy and gratitude.
Without delay, Ulysses spoke, "We have no time now to indulge in
unseemly joy. Our foes are too numerous and too fierce, and almost
before we know it some one may betray us. Let us return to the banquet
separately; I first, and you following me a few moments later. Tell no
one who I am, but when the remaining suitors refuse to allow me to make
the attempt with the bow, you, Eumaeus, bring the instrument at once.
In the meantime lock every gate of the palace, and set some woman to
lock each door within and leave it locked, no matter what sound of
arms, or shouts, or dying groans they hear. You, Philaetius, guard the
main gate to the palace; guard it faithfully with your life!"
When Ulysses was within, he spoke to the two powerful suitors as
follows: "Take my advice, noble lords, let the bow rest in peace this
day, and tomorrow dispute for the prize. But as you delay the contest,
let me take the bow for one moment and prove to you that I whom you
despise may yet have in my feeble arm some of its ancient force."
Antinous, with lightning flashing from his eyes, yet with some terror
at the bold carriage of the beggar, cried, "Is it not enough, O
miserable guest, that you should sit in our presence, should be
admitted among princes? Remember how the Centaur was treated; dragged
from the hall, his nose shortened and his ears slit. Such a fate may be
yours."
But the queen interfered, saying, "It is impious to shame this stranger
guest who comes at the request of our son Telemachus. Who knows but
that he may have strength to draw the bow? Virtue is the path to
praise; wrong and oppression can bring no renown. From his bearing, and
from his face and his stature, we know our guest can have descended
from no vulgar race. Let him try the bow, and if he wins he shall have
a new sword, a spear, a rich cloak, fine embroidered sandals, and a
safe conveyance to his home."
"O royal mother," interrupted Telemachus, "grant me a son's just right!
No one but a Grecian prince has power to grant or deny the use of this
bow. My father's arms have descended to me alone. I beg you, O queen,
return to your household tasks and leave us here together. The bow and
the arms of chivalry belong to man alone, and most of all these belong
to me."
With admiration for her manly son, Penelope left the banquet hall and
returned to her chamber, where she sat revolving in her mind her son's
words, while thoughts of his noble father brought abundant tears to her
eyes.
In the hall was riot, noise, and wild uproar as Euinaeus started to
place the bow in the hand of Ulysses.
"Go back to thy den, far away from the society of men, or we will throw
you to your dogs!" cried the crowd of disappointed suitors to the
trembling servant.
"Slight their empty words, listen not to them," shouted Telemachus.
"Are you so foolish as to think you can please so many lords? If you
give not the bow to the suppliant, my hands shall drive you from the
land, and if I were strong enough I would expel this whole shoal of
lawless men." Thus encouraged, Euinaeus handed the great bow to the
king.
In the meantime the gates had been closed, and Philaetius secured them
with strong cables, after which he returned silent to the banquet room,
and took his seat with his eyes upon his lord.
In his hands Ulysses turned the bow on all sides, and viewed it over
and over, wondering if time had weakened it, or other injury had come
to it during his long absence. Snarling in anger, the suitors spoke
derisively, but the chieftain disdained reply, and continued with exact
eye to study every inch of his weapon. Then with ease he held the bow
aloft in one hand, and with the other tried its strength. It twanged
short and sharp like the shrill cry of a swallow. Every face paled, and
a general horror ran through all present, for from the skies the
lightning burst, and Jove thundered loudly on high.
Then sitting as he was, Ulysses fitted an arrow to the string and drew
back, leveling his eye to every ring. Then with a mighty pull, he drew
back the bow and gave the arrow wing. Straight it left the string, and
straight it passed through every ring and struck the gate behind,
piercing even the solid wood through and through.
[Illustration: ULYSSES GAVE THE ARROW WING ]
"I have brought no shame to you," said Ulysses, turning to Telemachus,
"nor has my hand proved unfaithful to my aim. I have not lost my
ancient vigor, and ill did I deserve the disdain of these haughty
peers. Let them go and find comfort among themselves, if they can, in
music and banqueting."
Even as Ulysses spoke, Telemachus girded on his shining sword, seized a
javelin, and took his stand at his father's side.
From that moment Ulysses ceased to be the beggar, and stripped of his
rags he stood forth like a god, full before the faces of the astonished
suitors. He lifted his bow, and threw before his feet a rattling shower
of darts.
"We have another game to play this day, O coward princes!" he
exclaimed. "Another mark we must reach with our arrows. May Phoebus
assist us, and our labor not be in vain!"
With the last word, the great chieftain loosed his arrow, and on its
wing death rode to Antinous, who at that moment had raised a golden
bowl from which to drink. The fateful arrow passed through his neck,
and he fell upon the floor, and the wine from the tumbling goblet
mingled with his blood.
The rest of the suitors were confounded at what they saw, and thronged
the hall tumultously, half in fear and half in anger.
"Do you aim at princes?" they cried. "This is the last of the unhappy
games you shall play. Death now awaits you, and vultures shall tear
your body."
"Dogs, you have had your day," the Greek warrior spoke. "You thought
there was no further fear of Ulysses, and here you have squandered his
wealth, made his house your home, and preyed upon his servants. Worse
than all, fired by frenzy, you have claimed even the wife of your
chieftain. You have known neither shame nor dread of the gods, and now
is come the hour of vengeance. Behold your King!"
The confused suitors stood around with pale cheeks and guilty heads
before the dreadful words of Ulysses.
Eurymachus alone was bold enough to speak. "If you are indeed Ulysses,
great are your wrongs, for your property has been, squandered, and riot
and debauchery have filled your palace. But at your feet now lies
Antinous, whose wild ambition meant to slay your son and divide your
kingdom. Since he is dead, spare the rest of your people. Our gold and
treasures shall defray the expense, and the waste of years shall be
refunded to you within the day. Until then, your wrath is just."
With high disdain the king thus sternly spoke, "All the treasures that
we had before you began your pillage, joined with all your own, would
not bring you mercy. I demand your blood and your lives as prizes, and
shall not cease till every one of you lies as pale as yonder wretch
upon the floor. You have but one choice--to fight or to fly."
All the great assembly trembled with guilty fears excepting Eurymachus
alone, who calling upon the others to follow him, drew his traitor
sword, and rushed like a lion against his lord.
As they met, Ulysses turned aside the sword of his rushing foe, and
forced his own through the traitor's breast. Eurymachus dropped his
sword from his weakening hand, and fell prone upon the table, breaking
it to the ground, and scattering the rich viands over the marble floor.
Almost at the same moment Amphinomus rushed forward to the attack, but
Telemachus drove his brazen spear through the breast of the fierce foe,
who fell crashing to the stones.
"Arm! great father, arm!" cried Telemachus. "In haste I run for other
arms and missiles, for helmet and shield. Let the two servants stand
faithfully by your side till I return."
"Haste!" replied Ulysses, "lest the host come upon us all at once, and
we be driven from our post."
Telemachus flew to the room where the royal armor lay, and brought with
him four brazen helmets, eight shining spears, and four broad shields.
Still among the coward princes the arrows of Ulysses were flying, each
carrying death to an enemy. Each placed a helmet upon his head, and
buckled on an armor, and thus clothed, the four stood shoulder to
shoulder, awaiting the onset, for by this time the surviving princes
had remembered the strength that lay in their numbers, and prepared to
charge together upon the king and his attendants.
Now Minerva, the wise goddess and friend of Ulysses, appeared again
before him as the aged Mentor, and advised him how to fight. Then with
change of form, she suddenly perched like a swallow on a rafter high,
where, unperceived, she could watch the struggle.
The conflict that followed was a sight worthy of the gods, for again
and again the traitor princes charged upon the doughty four, each time
losing some of their number; for rarely did it fail that the king and
each of his faithful adherents took at least one life from the
multitude. Again and again clouds of darts threatened the life of the
king and his son, but every time Minerva blew them aside,
and they fell harmless upon the floor, or buried themselves in the
woodwork behind the struggling heroes. At last but three of the
attacking party remained alive. First of these was Leiodes, the priest,
who had first tried the bow of Ulysses.
"O gracious king, hear my supplication! I have never dishonored your
house by word or deed, and often I tried to check the injustice of the
rest, but they never listened to my words. Do not make yourself guilty
of insult to my consecrated head."
"Priest you are," returned Ulysses, "but your vows have been made
against me, and against me have your daily prayers been said. Moreover,
you aspired to the hand of my wife, and as you joined in the common
crime against me, you deserve the common fate."
Even as he spoke, he seized a sword from the hand of one of the dead
princes, and swung it flashing through the air, and that moment the
priest's head rolled muttering on the floor. There remained only
Phemius, the reverend minstrel, whose poems had pleased the king in
earlier days, and Medon, the faithful friend and servant of Telemachus.
Neither had taken part in the struggle, and both were spared.
"Be bold," Ulysses said to them, "and rely on the friendship of my son.
Live, and be to the world an example, to show how much more safe are
good than evil deeds. Go out to the open court and leave us here in
this room of blood and carnage."
Carefully the rooms were then searched by Ulysses and his followers,
but nowhere could they find a single living traitor. The dead lay on
the floor in heaps like fish that had been cast from the net upon the
sands, and lie stiffening in the air.
Ulysses was not content till he had punished every evil servant and
treacherous man and woman about the palace or in the town in proportion
to his misdeeds.
Then by the aid of Euryclea, his faithful old nurse, he robed himself
in garments fit for the shoulders of a king, and prepared to meet the
queen.
During all this time Penelope had remained in her apartments terrified
by the confusion and noise of fighting in the palace, but praying
always for her son. We can imagine her surprise and delight when she
learned how the battle had turned, and that the beggar, who had fought
so manfully, was indeed none other than her husband Ulysses.
Once more in possession of the throne, the Greek hero and his son
rapidly destroyed every vestige of the unhappy days that had passed,
and soon the kingdom was again enjoying a prosperous and happy reign.
JOHN BUNYAN
The father of John Bunyan was a poor tinker, a mender of pots and
kettles, working sometimes in his own house and sometimes in the homes
of others. His son followed the same occupation and did his work well.
Even after he became a popular preacher and a great author he kept on
with his humble calling. It was a queer occupation for a man of genius,
and scarcely any one would expect the man who followed it to write a
book that would be more widely read than anything except the Bible.
Evidently Bunyan was no common tinker.
John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a village near Bedford, in 1628, a year
famous in English history as that in which the king, Charles I, was
forced to grant the Petition of Right presented by the House of
Commons. But the commotion in politics produced little effect on father
and child, and the latter grew up as most English boys of his time did
grow, except that he had the advantage of attending a grammar school in
Bedford, a greater advantage than it seems unless we remember that
there were then no common schools in England.
The young tinker was a violent and passionate boy, profane, and a
leader in all the mischief of his kind. In his own account of his early
life written long years afterward he accuses himself of all manner of
sins. Yet from what he says in other places we know that he was far
from being the worst of boys, and that many things that gave him the
greatest concern were curiously exaggerated by his uneasy conscience.
He must have been a strange little fellow, for while he was swearing,
lying and leading raids upon his neighbors' fruit orchards he was often
terrified by the awfulness of his sin and "trembling at the thoughts of
the fearful torments of hell-fire."
To appreciate his feelings fully, we must remember the age in which he
lived as the time when everything in the Bible was taken as wholly
literal, when people believed that sin was followed by awful
punishments in a fiery hell, and when miraculous events were considered
common.
The young John must have known such occurrences as the following,
related by Froude in his Life of Bunyan:
"A man commonly called 'Old Tod' came one day into court, in the Summer
Assizes at Bedford, to demand justice upon himself as a felon. No one
had accused him, but God's judgment was not to be escaped, and he was
forced to accuse himself. 'My lord,' said Old Tod to the judge, 'I have
been a thief from my childhood. I have been a thief ever since. There
has not been a robbery committed these many years, within so many miles
of this town, but I have been privy to it.' The judge, after a
conference, agreed to indict him for certain felonies which he had
acknowledged. He pleaded guilty, implicating his wife along with him,
and they were both hanged."
Filled with terror by the fearful things he heard and saw, it is no
wonder that so sensitive a child was haunted by such nightmares as are
described by one of his biographers.
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN 1628-1688]
Once he dreamed that he was in a pleasant place, jovial and rioting,
when an earthquake rent the earth, out of which came bloody flames, and
the figures of men tossed up in globes of fire, and falling down again
with horrible cries and shrieks and execrations, while devils mingled
among them, and laughed aloud at their torments. As he stood trembling,
the earth sank under him, and a circle of flames embraced him.. But
when he fancied he was at the point to perish, one in shining white
raiment descended and plucked him out of that dreadful place, while the
devils cried after him to take him to the punishment which his sins
deserved. Yet he escaped the danger, and leapt for joy when he awoke
and found it was a dream.
At seventeen, Bunyan was a tall, active lad still wild and reckless, an
inventor of tales, who swore to their truth, a great leader in athletic
sports, but free from drunkenness and other coarse vices. The Civil War
was nearing its end, and martial deeds drew Bunyan to enlist, but his
term of service was short and it is not known on which side he served.
Soon after this he married an excellent girl, an orphan, who had been
brought up religiously and who made an excellent wife for the
successful tinker. He was now a regular attendant upon the Established
Church, though, as he says, still retaining his wicked life.
The story of Bunyan's conversion is one that is difficult for us to
understand. To him it was a series of terrifying experiences, a
succession of agonizing struggles, which grew only the more terrible
after he was convinced of his own sinful ways. He tells the story of
his fearful spiritual contest in the plainest, most matter-of-fact way,
but scarcely mentions his home life, his daily work, or the growth of
his family.
To him, the Devil was a very real person, who came as a tempter and
would not be denied, long after Bunyan had completely reformed his ways
and was living a life of strict honesty, purity and self-denial. No
sooner had his manner of living become perfect, as we should consider
it, than mental and spiritual temptations fell upon him. He believed
that he had denied and sold his Savior; that he had committed the one
sin for which no atonement was possible, and that he stood on the brink
of a very real hell in whose sulphurous flames his body would burn
forever. We cannot help pitying the poor country workman whose tender
conscience and loyal soul tortured him with pains, worse a thousand
times than those of physical death. No doubt his mind wavered in the
balance, for such agonies lead to insanity, if they are not the
evidence of it.
At last, however, his self-tormenting ceased, and his weary soul found
rest in a comforting belief in Christ's forgiveness. As a result of his
worry his health had given way, and he felt that his end was at hand.
But after peace came to him and he joined the Baptist Church his
strength came back, and for several years he kept at his business,
making good progress and finding himself at twenty-five years of age in
a better position in life than that to which he had been born.
There came to him a further call, and ignorant as he was of history,
literature and philosophy, he entered the ministry of his church. He
knew his Bible thoroughly, he had experienced all the terrors of the
lost and all the joys of the redeemed, and he possessed that living
enthusiasm that carries conviction to others. So, when he spoke to the
people among whom he had passed his life, he caught the imagination of
every one and bore them all along on the flood of his eloquence. No
such preacher was there in England; and everywhere, in woods, in barns,
on the village greens and in the chapels of the towns he preached his
religion.
In the height of his fame, the Commonwealth ended, the Puritans lost
their control of political affairs, and Charles II was restored to the
throne of England. Soon the separate meetings of the Nonconformists
were prohibited, and Bunyan was warned that he must cease his
preaching. No one could be more firm, however, in following the
dictates of his conscience than this reformed tinker*, and so, although
he knew arrest and imprisonment faced him, he arranged to meet his
people and deliver to them a farewell address in November, 1660. At
that meeting the constables found him and took him away without any
resistance on his part. The government was anxious to deal liberally
with Bunyan, for his fine character and good influence were both
recognized, but the sturdy exhorter declined to stop his preaching and
would not give the least assurance that he would not continue to spread
his faith. As a consequence he was committed to the Bedford jail, where
he was not kept, however, in close confinement for any great part of
the time. His family were allowed to visit him, and his friends often
came in numbers to listen to his addresses.