School Reading By Grades: Fifth Year

THE KING AND THE REBEL

In Spain there once lived two men each of whom claimed to be the rightful king. I do not remember their names, the time was so long ago, but to make the story easier to tell, let us call one Alfonso and the other John. Of course John declared that Alfonso was a traitor, and Alfonso said that John was a rebel and must be put down. At last, in a great battle, John overthrew his rival and made himself master of the country. But one strong town which Alfonso had intrusted to a knight called Aguilar still held out, and although John besieged it with all his army, he could not take it.

“You have done enough for honor,” said King John one day to the knight. “Come, open the gates of the town to my army, and I promise that you shall not suffer.”

“If you had read the history of our country,” answered Aguilar, “you would have learned that no man of my family ever surrenders.”

“Then I will starve you where you are!”

“Starve the eagle if you can,” said the knight.

“I will put you and your town to the sword.”

“Try it,” was the reply, and the siege went on.

One morning, as the rising sun was beginning to gild with its rays the highest towers of the city, a trumpet sounded in the camp of the enemy. It was the signal for a parley. The old knight soon appeared on the wall and looked down on the king.

“Surrender,” said King John again. “My rival Alfonso is dead, and our dispute is ended.”

“Sir,” said the knight, “I believe that you speak the truth, but I must see my dead master.”

“Go, then, to Seville, where his body lies,” said the king. “You have my word that no harm shall befall you.”

The knight came out with banners flying and an escort of a few half-starved warriors. As he rode slowly along, the soldiers who knew of his courage and his many brave deeds, greeted him with loud shouts and gazed after him until the red plume above his helmet disappeared in the distance.

As soon as he reached Seville, he went straight to the great church where he was told the body of his master was still lying in its open coffin. Gazing awhile with tearful eyes at the pale face which met his look, he thus spoke to the dead Alfonso: “Sir, I promised never to surrender to any one but yourself the keys of the town which you intrusted to my care. Here they are. I have kept my promise.” With that, he laid the keys on the breast of his master, and then, mounting his steed, he galloped back to his post.

“Well,” said the king, “are you satisfied, and are you willing to give up?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered.

“But where are the keys of the town?”

“I have delivered them to my master, King Alfonso, and of him you may get them. Now I ride on, and we shall meet no more.”

“Not so,” said the king. “You shall hold the town for me and be its governor in my name.”

The followers of the king murmured, and complained at his thus rewarding a rebel. “He is no longer a rebel,” said King John; “such men when won, become the best of subjects.”

– Charles E. A. Gayarré.

DANIEL BOONE

I

The settlement of the wilderness beyond the Alleghany Mountains was promoted by native pioneers. In his peaceful habitation on the banks of the Yadkin River in North Carolina, Daniel Boone, the illustrious hunter, had heard Finley, a trader, describe a tract of land, west of Virginia, as the richest in North America, or in the world. In May, 1769, leaving his wife and offspring, having Finley as his pilot, and four others as companions, the young man, of about three and twenty, wandered forth through the wilderness of America “in quest of the country of Kentucky,” known to the savages as “the dark and bloody ground.” After a long and fatiguing journey through mountain ranges, the party found themselves in June on the Red River, a tributary of the Kentucky, and from the top of an eminence surveyed with delight the beautiful plain that stretched to the northwest. Here they built their shelter and began to reconnoiter the country, and to hunt.

All the kinds of wild beasts that were natural to America – the stately elk, the timid deer, the antlered stag, the wild-cat, the bear, the panther, and the wolf – couched among the canes, or roamed over the rich grasses, which even beneath the thickest shade sprung luxuriantly out of the generous soil. The buffaloes cropped fearlessly the herbage, or browsed on the leaves of the reed, and were more frequent than cattle in the settlements of Carolina. Sometimes there were hundreds in a drove, and round the salt licks their numbers were amazing.

The summer in which, for the first time, a party of white men enjoyed the brilliancy of nature near and in the valley of the Elkhorn passed away in the occupations of exploring parties and the chase. But, one by one, Boone’s companions dropped off, till he was left alone with John Stewart. They jointly found unceasing delight in the wonders of the forest, till, one evening near the Kentucky River, they were taken prisoners by a band of Indians, wanderers like themselves. They escaped, and were joined by Boone’s brother; so that when Stewart was soon after killed by savages, Boone still had his brother to share with him the dangers and the attractions of the wilderness, the building and occupying of the first cottage in Kentucky.

In the spring of 1770 that brother returned to the settlements for horses and supplies of ammunition, leaving the renowned hunter “by himself, without bread, or salt, or even a horse or dog.” The idea of a beloved wife anxious for his safety, tinged his thoughts with sadness; but otherwise the cheerful, meditative man, careless of wealth, knowing the use of the rifle, not the plow, of a strong robust frame, in the vigorous health of early manhood, ignorant of books, but versed in the forest and in forest life, ever fond of tracking the deer on foot, away from men, yet in his disposition humane, generous, and gentle, was happy in the uninterrupted succession of sylvan pleasures. He held unconscious intercourse with beauty old as creation.

One calm summer’s evening, as he climbed a commanding ridge, and looked upon the remote, venerable mountains and the nearer ample plains, and caught a glimpse in the distance of the Ohio, which bounded the land of his affections with majestic grandeur, his heart exulted in the region he had discovered. All things were still. Not a breeze so much as shook a leaf. He kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck. He was no more alone than a bee among flowers, but communed familiarly with the whole universe of life. Nature was his intimate, and she responded to his intelligence.

For him the rocks and the fountains, the leaf and the blade of grass, had life; the cooling air laden with the wild perfume came to him as a friend; the dewy morning wrapped him in its embrace; the trees stood up gloriously round about him as so many myriads of companions. All forms wore the character of desire or peril. But how could he be afraid? Triumphing over danger, he knew no fear. The perpetual howling of the wolves by night round his cottage or his bivouac in the brake was his diversion; and by day he had joy in surveying the various species of animals that surrounded him. He loved the solitude better than the towered city or the hum of business.

Near the end of 1770, his faithful brother came back to meet him at the old camp. Shortly after they proceeded together to the Cumberland River, giving names to the different waters; and he then returned to his wife and children, fixed in his purpose, at the risk of life and fortune, to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which he esteemed a second Paradise.

II

In March, 1775, Daniel Boone, with a body of enterprising companions, proceeded to mark out a path up Powell’s valley, and through the mountains and canebrakes beyond. On the twenty-fifth of the month they were waylaid by Indians, who killed two men and wounded another very severely. Two days later the savages killed and scalped two more. “Now,” wrote Daniel Boone, “is the time to keep the country while we are in it. If we give way now, it will ever be the case,” and he pressed forward to the Kentucky River. There, on the first day of April, at the distance of about sixty yards from its west bank, near the mouth of Otter Creek, he began a stockade fort, which took the name of Boonesboro.

At that place, while the congress at Philadelphia was groping irresolutely in the dark, seventeen men assembled as representatives of the four “towns” that then formed the seed of the state. Among these children of nature was Daniel Boone, the pioneer of the party. His colleague, Richard Calloway, was one of the founders of Kentucky, and one of its early martyrs. The town of St. Asaph sent John Floyd, a surveyor, who emigrated from southwestern Virginia; an able writer, respected for his culture and dignity of manner; of innate good breeding; ready to defend the weak; heedless of his own life if he could recover women and children who had been made captive by the savages; destined to do good service, and survive the dangers of western life till American independence should be fought for and won.

From the settlement at Boiling Spring came James Harrod, the same who, in 1774, had led a party of forty-one to Harrodsburg, and during the summer of that year had built the first log-cabin in Kentucky; a tall, erect, and resolute backwoodsman; unlettered but not ignorant; intrepid yet gentle; never weary of kind offices to those around him; a skillful hunter, for whom the rifle had a companionship, and the wilderness a charm.

These and their associates, the fathers of Kentucky, seventeen in all, met on the 23d of May, beneath the great elm tree of Boonesboro, outside of the fort, on the thick sward of the fragrant white clover. The convention having been organized, prayers were read by a minister of the Church of England. A speech was then delivered to the convention in behalf of the proprietary purchases of the land from the Cherokees. To it a committee, of which Calloway was the head, made reply. “Deeply impressed,” they said, “with a sense of the importance of the trust our constituents have reposed in us, we will attempt the task with vigor, not doubting but unanimity will insure us success. That we have a right, as a political body, without giving umbrage to Great Britain, or any of the colonies, to frame rules for the government of our little society, cannot be doubted by any sensible or unbiased mind.”

So reasoned the fathers of Kentucky. In their legislation, it was their chief care to copy after the happy pattern of the English laws. Their colony they called Transylvania. For defense against the savages, they organized a militia; they discountenanced profane swearing and Sabbath breaking; they took thought for preventing the waste of game, and improving the breed of horses; and by solemn agreement they established as the basis of their constitution the annual choice of delegates; taxes to be raised by the convention alone; perfect religious freedom and general toleration.

Thus a little band of hunters put themselves at the head of the countless hosts of civilization in establishing the great principle of intellectual freedom. Long as the shadows of the western mountain shall move round with the sun, long as the rivers that gush from those mountains shall flow toward the sea, long as seedtime and harvest shall return, that rule shall remain the law of the West.

The state of Kentucky honors the memory of the plain, simple hearted man, who is best known as its pioneer. He was kindly in his nature, and never wronged a human being, not even an Indian, nor, indeed, animal life of any kind. “I with others have fought Indians,” he would say; “but I do not know that I ever killed one. If I did, it was in battle, and I never knew it.” In woodcraft he was acknowledged to be the first among men. This led him to love solitude, and to hover on the frontier, with no abiding place, accompanied by the wife of his youth, who was the companion of his long life and travel. When, at last, death put them both to rest, Kentucky reclaimed their bones from their graves far up the Missouri; and now they lie buried on the hill above the cliffs of the Kentucky River, overlooking the lovely valley of the capital of that commonwealth. Around them are emblems of wilderness life; the turf of the blue grass lies lightly above them; and they are laid with their faces turned upward and westward, and their feet toward the setting sun.

Such is the account which George Bancroft, the first of American historians, gives of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky, and of the founding of the commonwealth of which Boone was the earliest and most distinguished promoter. Few other works have contributed so much to the dignity and distinction of our literature as has Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” from which this extract has been taken.

FULTON’S FIRST STEAMBOAT

It is common to speak of Robert Fulton as the inventor of the steamboat. Other persons before him, however, had experimented with machinery for propelling vessels by steam. They had met with but little success or encouragement, and it was left for Fulton to demonstrate the practical value of steam as a means of propulsion and to show the superiority of steamboats to vessels depending solely upon the wind for motive power. Robert Fulton was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. He began his experiments with steam in 1793, and his first successful steamboat, the “Clermont,” was launched on the Hudson in 1807. The trip from New York to Albany occupied thirty-two hours, the rate of speed being about five miles an hour. Mr. Fulton himself has left us the following account of the trial of his boat: —

When I was building my first steamboat, the project was viewed by the public at New York either with indifference or contempt, as a visionary scheme. My friends indeed were civil, but they were shy. They listened with patience to my explanations, but with a settled cast of incredulity on their countenances. I felt the full force of the lamentation of the poet —

 
“Truths would you teach, to save a sinking land?
All shun, none aid you, and few understand.”
 

As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building yard while my boat was in progress, I often loitered, unknown, near the idle groups of strangers gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh rose at my expense, the dry jest, the wise calculations of losses and expenditure; the dull but endless repetition of “the Fulton folly!” Never did an encouraging remark, a bright hope, or a warm wish cross my path.

At length the day arrived when the experiment was to be made. To me it was a most trying and interesting occasion. I wanted my friends to go on board and witness the first successful trip. Many of them did me the favor to attend, as a matter of personal respect; but it was manifest they did it with reluctance, fearing to be partakers of my mortification and not of my triumph.

The moment approached in which the word was to be given for the vessel to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given, and the boat moved on a short distance, and then stopped and became immovable.

To the silence of the preceding moment now succeeded murmurs of discontent and agitation, and whispers and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated, “I told you so – it is a foolish scheme. I wish we were well out of it.” I elevated myself on a platform, and addressed the assembly. I stated that I knew not what was the matter; but if they would indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or abandon the voyage for that time.

This short respite was conceded without objection. I went below and examined the machinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight defect in a part of the work. This was soon remedied; the boat was put again in motion; she continued to move on. All were still incredulous; none seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses.

We left the fair city of New York; we passed through the romantic and ever-varying scenery of the Highlands; we descried the clustering houses of Albany; we reached its shores; yet even then imagination superseded the force of fact. It was doubted if it could be done again.

THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE TREE

 
Come, let us plant the apple tree!
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
Wide let its hollow bed be made;
There gently lay the roots, and there
Sift the dark mold with kindly care,
And press it o’er them tenderly,
As round the sleeping infant’s feet
We softly fold the cradle sheet;
So plant we the apple tree.
 
 
What plant we in this apple tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest.
We plant upon the sunny lea
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple tree.
 
 
What plant we in this apple tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May wind’s restless wings,
When from the orchard row he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors.
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl’s silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom
We plant with the apple tree.
 
 
What plant we in this apple tree?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop when gentle airs come by
That fan the blue September sky,
While children, wild with noisy glee,
Shall scent their fragrance as they pass
And search for them the tufted grass
At the foot of the apple tree.
 
 
And when above this apple tree
The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls whose young eyes o’erflow with mirth
Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth;
And guests in prouder homes shall see,
Heaped with the orange and the grape,
As fair as they in tint and shape,
The fruit of the apple tree.
 
 
The fruitage of this apple tree
Winds and our flag of stripe and star
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view
And ask in what fair groves they grew;
And they who roam beyond the sea
Shall think of childhood’s careless day
And long hours passed in summer play
In the shade of the apple tree.
 
 
But time shall waste this apple tree.
Oh! when its aged branches throw
Their shadows on the world below,
Shall fraud and force and iron will
Oppress the weak and helpless still?
What shall the task of mercy be
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
Of those who live when length of years
Is wasting this apple tree?
 
 
“Who planted this old apple tree?”
The children of that distant day
Thus to some aged man shall say;
And, gazing on its mossy stem,
The gray-haired man shall answer them:
“A poet of the land was he,
Born in the rude but good old times;
’Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes
On planting the apple tree.”
 

– William Cullen Bryant.

THE CORN SONG

 
Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
 
 
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
 
 
We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest fields with snow.
 
 
Through vales of grass and meads of flowers
Our plows their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.
 
 
We dropped the seed o’er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.
 
 
All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
And waved in hot, midsummer’s noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
 
 
And now with autumn’s moonlit eves,
Its harvest time has come,
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
 
 
There, when the snows about us drift,
And winter winds are cold,
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
And knead its meal of gold.
 
 
Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board;
Give us the bowl of samp and milk
By homespun beauty poured!
 
 
Where’er the wide old kitchen hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,
Who will not thank the kindly earth,
And bless our farmer girls!
 
 
Then shame on all the proud and vain,
Whose folly laughs to scorn
The blessing of our hardy grain,
Our wealth of golden corn!
 
 
Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard’s fruit,
The wheatfield to the fly.
 
 
But let the good old crop adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us, for his golden corn,
Send up our thanks to God.
 

– John G. Whittier.