"Play to us once more--only once more!"
He suffered himself to be led back to the instrument. The moon shone
brightly in through the window, and lighted up his glorious, rugged head
and massive figure.
"I will improvise a Sonata to the Moonlight!" said he, looking up
thoughtfully to the sky and stars. Then his hands dropped on the keys,
and he began playing a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept
gently over the instrument, like the calm flow of moonlight over the
dark earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time--a
sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of spirits upon the lawn.
Then came a swift agitato finale--a breathless, hurrying, trembling
movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive
terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left us all in
emotion and wonder.
"Farewell to you!" said Beethoven, pushing back his chair, and turning
towards the door--"farewell to you!"
"You will come again?" asked they in one breath.
He paused and looked compassionately, almost tenderly, at the face of
the blind girl.
"Yes, yes," he said hurriedly, "I will come again, and give the young
lady some lessons! Farewell! I will come again!"
Their looks followed us in silence more eloquent than words till we were
out of sight.
"Let us make haste back," said Beethoven, "that I may write out that
Sonata while I can yet remember it."
We did so, and he sat over it till long past day dawn. And this was the
origin of the Moonlight Sonata with which we are all so fondly
acquainted.
UNKNOWN
THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
Black beneath as the night,
With wings of a morning glow,
From his sooty throat three syllables float,
Ravishing, liquid, low;
And 'tis oh, for the joy of June,
And the bliss that ne'er can flee
From that exquisite call, with its sweet, sweet fall--
O-ke-lee, o-ke-lee, o-ke-lee!
Long ago as a child,
From the bough of a blossoming quince,
That melody came to thrill my frame,
And whenever I've caught it since,
The spring-soft blue of the sky
And the spring-bright bloom of the tree
Are a part of the strain--ah, hear it again!--
O-ke-lee, o-ke-lee, o-ke-lee!
And the night is tenderly black,
The morning eagerly bright,
For that old, old spring is blossoming
In the soul and in the sight.
The red-winged blackbird brings
My lost youth back to me,
When I hear in the swale, from a gray fence rail,
O-ke-lee, o-ke-lee, o-ke-lee!
ETHELWYN WETHERALD
TO THE CUCKOO
Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of spring!
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.
What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear.
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?
Delightful visitant! with thee
I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.
The school-boy, wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gay,
Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear,
And imitates thy lay.
What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fliest thy vocal vale,
An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.
Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!
Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.
JOHN LOGAN
THE STORY OF A STONE
A great many years ago, when nearly the whole of Canada was covered with
water, and the Northern Ocean, which washed the highest crests of the
Alleghanies, made an island of the Laurentian Hills, and wrote its name
on the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior, there lived somewhere near
Toronto, in the Province of Ontario, a little animal called a Polyp. He
was a curious creature, very small, not unlike a flower in appearance, a
plant-animal.
One day, the sun shone down into the water and set this little fellow
free from the egg in which he was confined. For a time he floated about
near the bottom of the ocean, but at last settled down on a bit of
shell, and fastened himself to it. Then he made an opening in his upper
side, formed for himself a mouth and stomach, thrust out a whole row of
feelers, and began catching whatever morsels of food came in his way. He
had a great many strange ways, but the strangest of all was his
gathering little bits of limestone from the water and building them up
round him, as a person does who builds a well.
But this little Favosite, for that was his name, became lonesome on the
bottom of that old ocean; so one night, when he was fast asleep and
dreaming as only a coral animal can dream, there sprouted out of his
side another little Favosite, who very soon began to wall himself up as
his parent had done. From these, other little Favosites were formed,
till at last there were so many of them, and they were so crowded
together, that, to economize the limestone they built with, they had to
make their cells six-sided, like those of a honey-comb: on this account
they are called Favosites.
[Illustration]
The colony thrived for a long time, and accumulated quite a stock of
limestone. But at last a change came: there was a great rush of muddy
water from the land, and all the Favosites died, leaving only a stony
skeleton to prove that industrious Polyps had ever existed there.
This skeleton remained undisturbed for ages, until the earth began to
rise inch by inch out of the water. Then our Favosites' home rose above
the deep, and with it came all that was left of its old acquaintances
the Trilobites, who were the ancestors of our crabs and lobsters.
[Illustration: Trilobite]
Then the first fishes made their appearance, great fierce-looking
fellows like the gar pike of our lakes, but larger, and armed with
scales as hard as the armour of a crocodile. Next came the sharks, as
savage and voracious as they now are, with teeth like knives. But the
time of these old fishes and of many more animals came and went, and
still the home of the Favosites lay in the ground.
Then came the long, hot, damp epoch, when thick mists hung over the
earth, and great ferns and rushes, as stout as an oak and as tall as a
steeple, grew in Nova Scotia, in Pennsylvania, and in other parts of
America where coal is now found. Huge reptiles, with enormous jaws and
teeth like cross-cut saws, and smaller ones with wings like bats, next
appeared and added to the strangeness of the scene.
But the reptiles died; the ferns and the rush-trees fell into their
native swamps, and were covered up and packed away under great layers of
clay and sand brought down by the rivers, till at last they were turned
into coal, forming for us, what someone has called, beds of petrified
sunshine. But all this while the skeleton of the Favosites lay
undisturbed.
Then the mists cleared away as gradually as they had come, the sun shone
out, the grass grew, and strange four-footed animals came and fed upon
it. Among these were odd-looking little horses no bigger than foxes;
great hairy monsters larger than elephants, with tremendous tusks; hogs
with snouts nearly as long as their bodies; and other strange creatures
that no man has ever seen alive. But still the house of the Favosites
remained where it was.
Next came the great winter, and it continued to snow till the mountains
were hidden. Then the snow was packed into ice, and Canada became one
solid glacier. This ice age continued for many thousands of years.
At last the ice began to melt, and the glacier came slowly down the
slopes, tearing up rocks, little and big, and crushing and grinding and
carrying away everything in its course. It ploughed its way across
Ontario, and the skeleton of our Favosites was rooted out from the quiet
place where it had lain so long, and was caught up in a crevice of the
ice. The glacier slid along, melting all the while, and covering the
land with clay, pebbles, and boulders. At last it stopped, and as it
gradually melted away, all the rocks and stones and dirt it had carried
with it thus far, were deposited into one great heap, and the home of
the Favosites along with them.
Ages afterwards a farmer, near Toronto, when ploughing a field, picked
up a curious bit of "petrified honey-comb," and gave it to a geologist
to hear what he would say about it. And now you have read what he said.
D. B.
THE SNOW-STORM
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,--
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows:
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow:
And ere the early bed-time came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,--
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant splendour, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp's supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse thrust his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The cock his lusty greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornèd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.
All day the gusty north wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
WHITTIER: "Snow-bound."
THE HEROINE OF VERCHÈRES
Verchères was a fort on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, about
twenty miles below Montreal. A strong block-house stood outside the
fort, and was connected with it by a covered way. On the morning of the
twenty-second of October, (1692) the inhabitants were at work in the
fields, and nobody was left in the place but two soldiers, two boys, an
old man of eighty, and a number of women and children. The commandant
was on duty at Quebec; his wife was at Montreal; and their daughter,
Madeline, fourteen years of age, was at the landing-place not far from
the gate of the fort, with a man-servant.
Suddenly she heard firing from the direction where the settlers were at
work, and an instant after the servant called out: "Run, miss!--run!
here come the Indians!" She turned and saw forty or fifty of them at the
distance of a pistol-shot. She ran to the fort as quickly as possible,
while the bullets whistled about her ears, and made the time seem very
long. As soon as she was near enough to be heard, she cried out: "To
arms!--to arms!" hoping that somebody would come out and help her; but
it was of no use. The two soldiers in the fort were so scared that they
had hidden in the block-house.
When she had seen certain breaches in the palisade stopped, she went to
the block-house, where the ammunition was kept; and there she found the
two soldiers, one hiding in a corner, and the other with a lighted match
in his hand.
"What are you going to do with that match?" she asked. He answered:
"Light the powder and blow us all up." "You are a miserable coward!"
said she. "Go out of this place." She then threw off her bonnet, put on
a hat, and taking a gun in her hand she said to her two brothers: "Let
us fight to the death. We are fighting for our country and our
religion."
The boys, who were ten and twelve years old, aided by the soldiers, whom
her words had inspired with some little courage, began to fire from the
loop-holes on the Indians, who, ignorant of the weakness of the
garrison, showed their usual reluctance to attack a fortified place, and
occupied themselves with chasing and butchering the people in the
neighbouring fields. Madeline ordered a cannon to be fired, partly to
deter the enemy from an assault, and partly to warn some of the soldiers
who were hunting at a distance.
A canoe was presently seen approaching the landing-place. In it was a
settler named Fontaine, trying to reach the fort with his family. The
Indians were still near; and Madeline feared that the new-comers would
be killed, if something were not done to aid them. Distrusting the
soldiers, she herself went alone to the landing-place.
"I thought," she said, in her account of the affair, "that the savages
would suppose it to be a ruse to draw them towards the fort, in order
to make a sortie upon them. They did suppose so; and thus I was able to
save the Fontaine family. When they were all landed, I made them march
before me in full sight of the enemy. We put so bold a face on it, that
they thought they had more to fear than we. Strengthened by this
reinforcement, I ordered that the enemy should be fired on whenever they
showed themselves.
"After sunset a violent north-east wind began to blow, accompanied with
snow and hail, which told us that we should have a terrible night. The
Indians were all this time lurking about us; and I judged by all their
movements that, instead of being deterred by the storm, they would climb
into the fort under cover of darkness."
She then assembled her troops, who numbered six, all told, and spoke to
them encouraging words. With two old men she took charge of the fort,
and sent Fontaine and the two soldiers with the women and children to
the block-house. She placed her two brothers on two of the bastions, and
an old man on a third, while she herself took charge of the fourth. All
night, in spite of wind, snow, and hail, the cry of "All's well" was
kept up from the block-house to the fort, and from the fort to the
block-house. One would have supposed that the place was full of
soldiers. The Indians thought so, and were completely deceived, as they
afterwards confessed.
At last the daylight came again; and as the darkness disappeared, the
anxieties of the little garrison seemed to disappear with it. Fontaine
said he would never abandon the place while Madeline remained in it. She
declared that she would never abandon it: she would rather die than give
it up to the enemy.
She did not eat or sleep for twice twenty-four hours. She did not go
once into her father's house, but kept always on the bastion, except
when she went to the block-house to see how the people there were
behaving. She always kept a cheerful and smiling face, and encouraged
her little company with the hope of speedy succour.
"We were a week in constant alarm," she continues, "with the enemy
always about us. At last a lieutenant, sent by the governor, arrived in
the night with forty men. As he did not know whether the fort was taken
or not, he approached as silently as possible. One of our sentinels,
hearing a slight sound, cried: 'Who goes there?' I was at the time
dozing, with my head on a table and my gun lying across my arms. The
sentinel told me that he heard voices from the river. I went at once to
the bastion to see whether they were Indians or Frenchmen who were
there. I asked: 'Who are you?' One of them answered: 'We are Frenchmen
come to bring you help.'"
"I caused the gate to be opened, placed a sentinel there, and went down
to the river to meet them. As soon as I saw the lieutenant I saluted
him, and said: 'I surrender my arms to you.' He answered gallantly:
'They are in good hands, Miss.' He inspected the fort, and found
everything in order, and a sentinel on each bastion. 'It is time to
relieve them,' said I; 'we have not been off our bastions for a week.'"
A band of converts from St. Louis arrived soon afterwards, followed the
trail of their heathen countrymen, overtook them on Lake Champlain, and
recovered twenty or more French prisoners.
PARKMAN: "Frontenac and New France."
(Adapted)
JACQUES CARTIER
In the seaport of St. Malo, 'twas a smiling morn in May,
When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the westward sailed away;
In the crowded old Cathedral, all the town were on their knees,
For the safe return of kinsmen from the undiscovered seas;
And every autumn blast that swept o'er pinnacle and pier,
Filled manly hearts with sorrow, and gentle hearts with fear.
A year passed o'er St. Malo--again came round the day,
When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the westward sailed away;
But no tidings from the absent had come the way they went,
And tearful were the vigils that many a maiden spent;
And manly hearts were filled with gloom, and gentle hearts with fear,
When no tidings came from Cartier at the closing of the year.
But the earth is as the Future, it hath its hidden side,
And the Captain of St. Malo was rejoicing in his pride;
In the forests of the North--while his townsmen mourned his loss--
He was rearing on Mount Royal the _fleur-de-lis_ and cross;
And when two months were over, and added to the year,
St. Malo hailed him home again, cheer answering to cheer.
He told them of a region, hard, iron-bound and cold,
Nor seas of pearl abounded, nor mines of shining gold;
Where the wind from Thule freezes the word upon the lip,
And the ice in spring comes sailing athwart the early ship;
He told them of the frozen scene, until they thrilled with fear,
And piled fresh fuel on the hearth to make them better cheer.
But when he changed the strain,--he told how soon is cast
In early Spring, the fetters that hold the waters fast;
How the Winter causeway, broken, is drifted out to sea,
And the rills and rivers sing with pride the anthem of the free;
How the magic wand of Summer clad the landscape to his eyes,
Like the dry bones of the just when they wake in Paradise.
He told them of the Algonquin braves--the hunters of the wild;
Of how the Indian mother in the forest rocks her child;
Of how, poor souls, they fancy in every living thing
A spirit good or evil, that claims their worshipping;
Of how they brought their sick and maimed for him to breathe upon;
And of the wonders wrought for them, thro' the Gospel of St. John.
He told them of the river, whose mighty current gave
Its freshness for a hundred leagues to ocean's briny wave;
He told them of the glorious scene presented to his sight,
What time he reared the cross and crown on Hochelaga's height;
And of the fortress cliff, that keeps of Canada the key;--
And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from perils over sea.
THOMAS D'ARCY M'GEE
ANTS AND THEIR SLAVES
Peter Huber, the son of the noted observer of the ways and habits of
bees, was walking one day in a field near Geneva, Switzerland, when he
saw on the ground an army of reddish-coloured ants on the march. He
decided to follow them and to find out, if possible, the object of their
journey.
On the sides of the column, as if to keep it in order, a few of the
insects sped to and fro. After marching for about a quarter of an hour,
the army halted before an ant-hill, the home of a colony of small, black
ants. These swarmed out to meet the red ones, and, to Huber's surprise,
a combat, short but fierce, took place at the foot of the hill.
A small number of the blacks fought bravely to the last, but the rest
soon fled, panic-stricken, through the gates farthest from the
battle-field, carrying away some of their young. They seemed to know it
was the young ants that the invaders were seeking. The red warriors
quickly forced their way into the tiny city and returned, loaded with
children of the blacks.
Carrying their living booty, the kidnappers left the pillaged town and
started toward their home, whither Huber followed them. Great was his
astonishment when, at the threshold of the red ants' dwelling, he saw
numbers of black ants come forward to receive the young captives and to
welcome them--children of their own race, doomed to be bond-servants in
a strange land.
Here, then, was a miniature city, in which strong red ants lived in
peace with small black ones. But what was the province of the latter?
Huber soon discovered that, in fact, these did all the work. They alone
were able to build the houses in which both races lived; they alone
brought up the young red ants and the captives of their own species;
they alone gathered the supplies of food, and waited upon and fed their
big masters, who were glad to have their little waiters feed them so
attentively.
The masters themselves had no occupation except that of war. When not
raiding some village of the blacks, the red soldiers did nothing but
wander lazily about.
Huber wanted to learn what would be the result if the red ants found
themselves without servants. Would the big creatures know how to supply
their own needs? He put a few of the red insects in a glass case, having
some honey in a corner. They did not go near it. They did not know
enough to feed themselves. Some of them died of starvation, with food
before them. Then he put into the case one black ant. It went straight
to the honey, and with it fed its big, starving, silly masters. Here was
a wonder, truly!
The little blacks exert in many things a moral force whose signs are
plainly visible. For example, those tiny wise creatures will not give
permission to any of the great red ones to go out alone. Nor are these
at liberty to go out even in a body, if their small helpers fear a
storm, or if the day is far advanced. When a raid proves fruitless, the
soldiers coming back without any living booty are forbidden by the
blacks to enter the city, and are ordered to attack some other village.
Not wishing to rely entirely on his own conclusions, Huber asked one of
the great naturalists of Switzerland, Jurine, to decide whether or not
mistakes had been made regarding these customs of the ants. This
witness, and indeed others, found that Huber's reports were true.
"Yet, after all," says Huber, "I still doubted. But on a later day I
again saw in the park of Fontainebleau, near Paris, the same workings of
ant life and wisdom. A well-known naturalist was with me then, and his
conclusions were the same as mine.
"It was half-past four in the afternoon of a very warm day. From a pile
of stones there came forth a column of about five hundred reddish ants.
They marched rapidly toward a field of turf, order in their ranks being
kept by their sergeants. These watched the flanks, and would not permit
any to straggle.
"Suddenly the army disappeared. There was no sign of an ant-hill in the
turf, but, after awhile, we detected a little hole. Through this the
ants had vanished. We supposed it was an entrance to their home. In a
minute they showed us that our supposition was incorrect. They issued in
a throng, nearly every one of them carrying a small black captive.