Down the Cowlitz River the salmon went for a day and a night, finding much to interest them which we need not know. At last they began to grow hungry; and coming near the shore, they saw an angle-worm of rare size and beauty floating in an eddy of the stream. Quick as thought one of them opened his mouth, which was well filled with teeth of different sizes, and put it around the angle-worm. Quicker still he felt a sharp pain in his gills, followed by a smothering sensation, and in an instant his comrades saw him rise straight into the air. This was nothing new to them; for they often leaped out of the water in their games of hide-and-seek, but only to come down again with a loud splash not far from where they went out. But this one never came back, and the others went on their course wondering.

At last they came to where the Cowlitz and the Columbia join, and they were almost lost for a time; for they could find no shores, and the bottom and the top of the water were so far apart. Here they saw other and far larger salmon in the deepest part of the current, turning neither to the right nor to the left, but swimming right on up-stream, just as rapidly as they could. And these great salmon would not stop for them, and would not lie and float with the current. They had no time to talk, even in the simple sign language by which fishes express their ideas, and no time to eat. They had important work before them, and the time was short. So they went on up the river, keeping their great purposes to themselves; and our little salmon and his friends from the Cowlitz drifted down the stream.

By-and-by the water began to change. It grew denser, and no longer flowed rapidly along; and twice a day it used to turn about and flow the other way. Then the shores disappeared, and the water began to have a different and peculiar flavor,—a flavor which seemed to the salmon much richer and more inspiring than the glacier-water of their native Cowlitz. There were many curious things to see,—crabs with hard shells and savage faces, but so good when crushed and swallowed! Then there were luscious squid swimming about; and, to a salmon, squid are like ripe peaches and cream. There were great companies of delicate sardines and herring, green and silvery, and it was such fun to chase and capture them! Those who eat sardines packed in oil by greasy fingers, and herrings dried in the smoke, can have little idea how satisfying it is to have a meal of them, plump and sleek and silvery, fresh from the sea.

Thus the salmon chased the herrings about, and had a merry time. Then they were chased about in turn by great sea-lions,—swimming monsters with huge half-human faces, long thin whiskers, and blundering ways. The sea-lions liked to bite out the throat of a salmon, with its precious stomach full of luscious sardines, and then to leave the rest of the fish to shift for itself. And the seals and the herrings scattered the salmon about, till at last the hero of our story found himself quite alone, with none of his own kind near him. But that did not trouble him much, and he went on his own way, getting his dinner when he was hungry, which was all the time, and then eating a little between meals for his stomach's sake.

So it went on for three long years; and at the end of this time our little fish had grown to be a great, fine salmon of twenty-two pounds' weight, shining like a new tin pan, and with rows of the loveliest round black spots on his head and back and tail. One day, as he was swimming about, idly chasing a big sculpin with head so thorny that he never was swallowed by anybody, all of a sudden the salmon noticed a change in the water around him.

Spring had come again, and south-lying snow-drifts on the Cascade Mountains once more felt that the "earth was wheeling sunwards." The cold snow waters ran down from the mountains and into the Columbia River, and made a freshet on the river. The high water went far out into the sea, and out in the sea our salmon felt it on his gills. He remembered how the cold water used to feel in the Cowlitz when he was a little fish. In a blundering, fishy fashion he thought about it; he wondered whether the little eddy looked as it used to look, and whether caddis-worms and young mosquitoes were really as sweet and tender as he used to think they were. Then he thought some other things; but as the salmon's mind is located in the optic lobes of his brain, and ours is in a different place, we cannot be quite certain what his thoughts really were.

What our salmon did, we know. He did what every grown salmon in the ocean does when he feels the glacier-water once more upon his gills. He became a changed being. He spurned the blandishment of soft-shelled crabs. The pleasures of the table and of the chase, heretofore his only delights, lost their charms for him. He turned his course straight toward the direction whence the cold water came, and for the rest of his life never tasted a mouthful of food. He moved on toward the river-mouth, at first playfully, as though he were not really certain whether he meant anything after all. Afterward, when he struck the full current of the Columbia, he plunged straight forward with an unflinching determination that had in it something of the heroic. When he had passed the rough water at the bar, he was not alone. His old neighbors of the Cowlitz, and many more from the Clackamas and the Spokane and Des Chutes and Kootenay,—a great army of salmon,—were with him. In front were thousands pressing on, and behind them were thousands more, all moved by a common impulse which urged them up the Columbia.

They were all swimming bravely along where the current was deepest, when suddenly the foremost felt something tickling like a cobweb about their noses and under their chins. They changed their course a little to brush it off, and it touched their fins as well. Then they tried to slip down with the current, and thus leave it behind. But, no! the thing, whatever it was, although its touch was soft, refused to let go, and held them like a fetter. The more they struggled, the tighter became its grasp, and the whole foremost rank of the salmon felt it together; for it was a great gill-net, a quarter of a mile long, stretched squarely across the mouth of the river.

By-and-by men came in boats, and hauled up the gill-net and the helpless salmon that had become entangled in it. They threw the fishes into a pile in the bottom of the boat, and the others saw them no more. We that live outside the water know better what befalls them, and we can tell the story which the salmon could not.

All along the banks of the Columbia River, from its mouth to nearly thirty miles away, there is a succession of large buildings, looking like great barns or warehouses, built on piles in the river, high enough to be out of the reach of floods. There are thirty of these buildings, and they are called canneries. Each cannery has about forty boats, and with each boat are two men and a long gill-net. These nets fill the whole river as with a nest of cobwebs from April to July, and to each cannery nearly a thousand great salmon are brought every day. These salmon are thrown in a pile on the floor; and Wing Hop, the big Chinaman, takes them one after another on the table, and with a great knife dexterously cuts off the head, the tail, and the fins; then with a sudden thrust he removes the intestines and the eggs. The body goes into a tank of water; and the head is dropped into a box on a flat-boat, and goes down the river to be made into salmon oil. Next, the body is brought to another table; and Quong Sang, with a machine like a feed-cutter, cuts it into pieces each just as long as a one-pound can. Then Ah Sam, with a butcher-knife, cuts these pieces into strips just as wide as the can. Next Wan Lee, the "China boy," brings down a hundred cans from the loft where the tinners are making them, and into each puts a spoonful of salt. It takes just six salmon to fill a hundred cans. Then twenty Chinamen put the pieces of meat into the cans, fitting in little strips to make them exactly full. Ten more solder up the cans, and ten more put the cans into boiling water till the meat is thoroughly cooked, and five more punch a little hole in the head of each can to let out the air. Then they solder them up again, and little girls paste on them bright-colored labels showing merry little cupids riding the happy salmon up to the cannery door, with Mount Tacoma and Cape Disappointment in the background; and a legend underneath says that this is "Booth's," or "Badollet's Best," or "Hume's," or "Clark's," or "Kinney's Superfine Salt Water Salmon." Then the cans are placed in cases, forty-eight in a case, and five hundred thousand cases are put up every year. Great ships come to Astoria, and are loaded with them; and they carry them away to London and San Francisco and Liverpool and New York and Sidney and Valparaiso; and the man at the corner grocery sells them at twenty cents a can.

All this time our salmon is going up the river, eluding one net as by a miracle, and soon having need of more miracles to escape the rest; passing by Astoria on a fortunate day,—which was Sunday, the day on which no man may fish if he expects to sell what he catches,—till finally he came to where nets were few, and, at last, to where they ceased altogether. But there he found that scarcely any of his many companies were with him; for the nets cease when there are no more salmon to be caught in them. So he went on, day and night, where the water was deepest, stopping not to feed or loiter on the way, till at last he came to a wild gorge, where the great river became an angry torrent, rushing wildly over a huge staircase of rocks. But our hero did not falter; and summoning all his forces, he plunged into the Cascades. The current caught him and dashed him against the rocks. A whole row of silvery scales came off and glistened in the water like sparks of fire, and a place on his side became black-and-red, which, for a salmon, is the same as being black-and-blue for other people. His comrades tried to go up with him; and one lost his eye, one his tail, and one had his lower jaw pushed back into his head like the joint of a telescope. Again he tried to surmount the Cascades; and at last he succeeded, and an Indian on the rocks above was waiting to receive him. But the Indian with his spear was less skillful than he was wont to be, and our hero escaped, losing only a part of one of his fins; and with him came one other, and henceforth these two pursued their journey together.

Now a gradual change took place in the looks of our salmon. In the sea he was plump and round and silvery, with delicate teeth in a symmetrical mouth. Now his silvery color disappeared, his skin grew slimy, and the scales sank into it; his back grew black, and his sides turned red,—not a healthy red, but a sort of hectic flush. He grew poor, and his back, formerly as straight as need be, now developed an unpleasant hump at the shoulders. His eyes—like those of all enthusiasts who forsake eating and sleeping for some loftier aim—became dark and sunken. His symmetrical jaws grew longer and longer, and meeting each other, as the nose of an old man meets his chin, each had to turn aside to let the other pass. His beautiful teeth grew longer and longer, and projected from his mouth, giving him a savage and wolfish appearance, quite at variance with his real disposition. For all the desires and ambitions of his nature had become centered into one. We may not know what this one was, but we know that it was a strong one; for it had led him on and on,—past the nets and horrors of Astoria; past the dangerous Cascades; past the spears of Indians; through the terrible flume of the Dalles, where the mighty river is compressed between huge rocks into a channel narrower than a village street; on past the meadows of Umatilla and the wheat-fields of Walla Walla; on to where the great Snake River and the Columbia join; on up the Snake River and its eastern branch, till at last he reached the foot of the Bitter Root mountains in the Territory of Idaho, nearly a thousand miles from the ocean which he had left in April. With him still was the other salmon which had come with him through the Cascades, handsomer and smaller than he, and, like him, growing poor and ragged and tired.

At last, one October afternoon, our finny travelers came together to a little clear brook, with a bottom of fine gravel, over which the water was but a few inches deep. Our fish painfully worked his way to it; for his tail was all frayed out, his muscles were sore, and his skin covered with unsightly blotches. But his sunken eyes saw a ripple in the stream, and under it a bed of little pebbles and sand. So there in the sand he scooped out with his tail a smooth round place, and his companion came and filled it with orange-colored eggs. Then our salmon came back again; and softly covering the eggs, the work of their lives was done, and, in the old salmon fashion, they drifted tail foremost down the stream.

They drifted on together for a night and a day, but they never came to the sea. For the salmon has but one life to live, and it ascends the river but once. The rest lies with its children. And when the April sunshine fell on the globules in the gravel, these were wakened into life. With the early autumn rains, the little fishes were large enough to begin their wanderings. They dropped down the current in the old salmon fashion. And thus they came into the great river and drifted away to the sea.



396

Probably no short-story writer now living is better known than Rudyard Kipling, an English author born in Bombay, India, in 1865. Among his many stories are some that may be classed as juvenile romantic nature literature. Just-So Stories is a collection of humorous stories of this type, excellent for the fifth and sixth grades. The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, of a more serious nature, may be used in the seventh and eighth grades. The story that follows, taken from one of his earlier volumes, illustrates well Mr. Kipling's style of writing. It is suitable for the seventh or eighth grade.

MOTI GUJ—MUTINEER

RUDYARD KIPLING

Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees and burned the underwood, the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive and slow fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beasts, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and this superior beast's name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which would never have been the case under native rule: for Moti Guj was a creature to be desired by kings, and his name, being translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Because the British government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over, Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj was very fond of liquor—arrack for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him, and would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake up.

There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps—for he owned a magnificent pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope—for he had a magnificent pair of shoulders—while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa would take a share, and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa went over him with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his feet and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection the two would "come up with a song from the sea," Moti Guj, all black and shining, waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet hair.

It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgy. The little draughts that led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.

He went to the planter, and "My mother's dead," he said, weeping.

"She died on the last plantation two months ago, and she died once before that when you were working for me last year," said the planter, who knew something of the ways of nativedom.

"Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me," said Deesa, weeping more than ever. "She has left eighteen small children entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little stomachs," said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.

"Who brought you the news?" said the planter.

"The post," said Deesa.

"There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your lines!"

"A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are dying," yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.

"Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village," said the planter. "Chihun, has this man got a wife?"

"He?" said Chihun. "No. Not a woman of our village would look at him. They'd sooner marry the elephant."

Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and bellowed.

"You will get into a difficulty in a minute," said the planter. "Go back to your work!"

"Now I will speak Heaven's truth," gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. "I haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus I shall cause no trouble."

A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. "Deesa," said he, "you've spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey your orders."

"May the light of the heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honor and soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious permission of the heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?"

Permission was granted, and in answer to Deesa's shrill yell, the mighty tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.

"Light of my heart, protector of the drunken, mountain of might, give ear!" said Deesa, standing in front of him.

Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. "I am going away!" said Deesa.

Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One could snatch all manner of nice things from the road-side then.

"But you, you fussy old pig, must stay behind and work."

The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.

"I shall be gone for ten days, oh delectable one! Hold up your near forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried mud-puddle." Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.

"Ten days," said Deesa, "you will work and haul and root the trees as Chihun here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!" Moti Guj curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there, and was swung on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus—the iron elephant goad.

Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paver thumps a curbstone.

Moti Guj trumpeted.

"Be still, hog of the backwoods! Chihun's your mahout for ten days. And now bid me good-by, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king! Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honored health; be virtuous. Adieu!"

Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice. That was his way of bidding him good-by.

"He'll work now," said Deesa to the planter. "Have I leave to go?"

The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back to haul stumps.

Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn for all that. Chihun gave him a ball of spices, and tickled him under the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over, and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He wanted the light of his universe back again—the drink and the drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.

None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had wandered along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own caste, and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted with it past all knowledge of the lapse of time.

The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa. Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear, looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one having business elsewhere.

"Hi! ho! Come back you!" shouted Chihun. "Come back and put me on your neck, misborn mountain! Return, splendor of the hill-sides! Adornment of all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your fat forefoot!"

Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.

"None of your nonsense with me," said he. "To your pickets, devil-son!"

"Hrrump!" said Moti Guj, and that was all—that and the forebent ears.

Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick, and strolled about the clearing, making fun of the other elephants who had just set to work.

Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the clearing and "Hrrumphing" him into his veranda. Then he stood outside the house, chuckling to himself and shaking all over with the fun of it as an elephant will.

"We'll thrash him," said the planter. "He shall have the finest thrashing ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty."

Kala Nag—which means Black Snake—and Nazim were two of the biggest elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the graver punishment, since no man can beat an elephant properly.

They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not feel fighting fit that morning and so Moti Guj was left, standing alone with his ears cocked.

That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his amateur inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work and is not tied up is about as manageable as an eighty-one-ton gun loose in a heavy seaway. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long "nooning"; and, wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his picket for food.

"If you won't work, you shan't eat," said Chihun, angrily. "You're a wild elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle."

Chihun's little brown baby was rolling on the floor of the hut, and stretching out its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself, shouting upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head.

"Great Lord!" said Chihun. "Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number, two feet across and soaked in rum, shall be yours on the instant, and two hundred pounds weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to me!"

Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed and thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four or five hours in the night suffice—two just before midnight, lying down on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting, and long grumbling soliloquies.

At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all the other elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death some gypsies in the woods.

At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed, and he expected to get into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still uninjured, for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper, and reported himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for breakfast. The night exercises had made him hungry.

"Call up your beast," said the planter; and Deesa shouted in the mysterious elephant language that some mahouts believe came from China at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from places at varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. So Moti Guj was at the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms, trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.

"Now we will get to work," said Deesa. "Lift me up, my son and my joy!"

Moti Guj swung him up, and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look for difficult stumps.

The planter was too astonished to be very angry.



397

Among the writers of nature fiction, probably no one deserves higher rank than Charles G. D. Roberts (1860—), a Canadian. Mr. Roberts does not tell of his own adventures. His stories are truly nature fiction because the characters are animals and the purpose is to reveal the nature of these characters by showing how they would act when placed in various imaginary situations. Kings in Exile, from which the following selection is taken, is a book of splendid stories of large animals. Other excellent books by Mr. Roberts, suitable for the seventh and eighth grades, are Hoof and Claw, Children of the Wild, Secret Trails, and Watchers of the Trails, ("Last Bull" is used by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Co., New York.)

LAST BULL

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

That was what two grim old sachems of the Dacotahs had dubbed him; and though his official title, on the lists of the Zoological Park, was "Kaiser," the new and more significant name had promptly supplanted it. The Park authorities—people of imagination and of sentiment, as must all be who would deal successfully with wild animals—had felt at once that the name aptly embodied the tragedies and the romantic memories of his all-but-vanished race. They had felt, too, that the two old braves who had been brought East to adorn a city pageant, and who had stood gazing stoically for hours at the great bull buffalo through the barrier of the steel-wire fence, were fitted, before all others, to give him a name. Between him and them there was surely a tragic bond, as they stood there islanded among the swelling tides of civilization which had already engulfed their kindreds. "Last Bull" they had called him, as he answered their gaze with little, sullen, melancholy eyes from under his ponderous and shaggy front. "Last Bull"—and the passing of his race was in the name.

Here, in his fenced, protected range, with a space of grassy meadow, half a dozen clumps of sheltering trees, two hundred yards of the run of a clear, unfailing brook, and a warm shed for refuge against the winter storms, the giant buffalo ruled his little herd of three tawny cows, two yearlings, and one blundering, butting calf of the season. He was a magnificent specimen of his race—surpassing, it was said, the finest bull in the Yellowstone preserves or in the guarded Canadian herd of the North. Little short of twelve feet in length, a good five foot ten in height at the tip of his humped and huge fore-shoulders, he seemed to justify the most extravagant tales of pioneer and huntsman. His hind-quarters were trim and fine-lined, built apparently for speed, smooth-haired, and of a grayish lion-color. But his fore-shoulders, mounting to an enormous hump, were of an elephantine massiveness, and clothed in a dense, curling, golden-brown growth of matted hair. His mighty head was carried low, almost to the level of his knees, on a neck of colossal strength, which was draped, together with the forelegs down to the knees, in a flowing brown mane tipped with black. His head, too, to the very muzzle, wore the same luxuriant and sombre drapery, out of which curved viciously the keen-tipped crescent of his horns. Dark, huge, and ominous, he looked curiously out of place in the secure and familiar tranquillity of his green pasture.

For a distance of perhaps fifty yards, at the back of the pasture, the range of the buffalo herd adjoined that of the moose, divided from it by that same fence of heavy steel-wire mesh, supported by iron posts, which surrounded the whole range. One sunny and tingling day in late October—such a day as makes the blood race full red through all healthy veins—a magnificent stranger was brought to the Park, and turned into the moose-range.

The newcomer was a New Brunswick bull moose, captured on the Tobique during the previous spring when the snow was deep and soft, and purchased for the Park by one of the big Eastern lumber-merchants. The moose-herd had consisted, hitherto, of four lonely cows, and the splendid bull was a prize which the Park had long been coveting. He took lordly possession, forthwith, of the submissive little herd, and led them off at once from the curious crowds about the gate to explore the wild-looking thickets at the back of the pasture. But no sooner had he fairly entered these thickets than he found his further progress barred by the steel-meshed fence. This was a bitter disappointment, for he had expected to go striding through miles of alder swamp and dark spruce woods, fleeing the hated world of men and bondage, before setting himself to get acquainted with his new followers. His high-strung temper was badly jarred. He drew off, shaking his vast antlers, and went shambling with spacious stride down along the barrier towards the brook. The four cows, in single file, hurried after him anxiously, afraid he might be snatched away from them.

Last Bull, standing solitary and morose on a little knoll in his pasture, caught sight of the strange, dark figure of the running moose. A spark leapt into his heavy eyes. He wheeled, pawed the sod, put his muzzle to the ground, and bellowed a sonorous challenge. The moose stopped short and stared about him, the stiff hair lifting angrily along the ridge of his massive neck. Last Bull lowered his head and tore up the sod with his horns.

This vehement action caught the eyes of the moose. At first he stared in amazement, for he had never seen any creature that looked like Last Bull. The two were only about fifty or sixty yards apart, across the little valley of the bushy swamp. As he stared, his irritation speedily overcame his amazement. The curious-looking creature over there on the knoll was defying him, was challenging him. At this time of year his blood was hot and quick for any challenge. He gave vent to a short, harsh, explosive cry, more like a grumbling bleat than a bellow, and as unlike the buffalo's challenge as could well be imagined. Then he fell to thrashing the nearest bushes violently with his antlers. This, for some reason unknown to the mere human chronicler, seemed to be taken by Last Bull as a crowning insolence. His long, tasselled tail went stiffly up into the air, and he charged wrathfully down the knoll. The moose, with his heavy-muzzled head stuck straight out scornfully before him, and his antlers laid flat along his back, strode down to the encounter with a certain deadly deliberation. He was going to fight. There was no doubt whatever on that score. But he had not quite made up his wary mind as to how he would deal with this unknown and novel adversary.

They looked not so unequally matched, these two, the monarch of the Western plains, and the monarch of the Northeastern forests. Both had something of the monstrous, the uncouth, about them, as if they belonged not to this modern day, but to some prehistoric epoch when Earth moulded her children on more lavish and less graceful lines. The moose was like the buffalo in having his hind-quarters relatively slight and low, and his back sloping upwards to a hump over the immensely developed fore-shoulders. But he had much less length of body, and much less bulk, though perhaps eight or ten inches more of height at the tip of the shoulder. His hair was short, and darker than that of his shaggy rival, being almost black except on legs and belly. Instead of carrying his head low, like the buffalo, for feeding on the level prairies, he bore it high, being in the main a tree-feeder. But the greatest difference between the two champions was in their heads and horns. The antlers of the moose formed a huge, fantastic, flatly palmated or leaflike structure, separating into sharp prongs along the edges, and spreading more than four feet from tip to tip. To compare them with the short, polished crescent of the horns of Last Bull was like comparing a two-handed broadsword to a bowie-knife. And his head, instead of being short, broad, ponderous, and shaggy, like Last Bull's, was long, close-haired, and massively horse-faced, with a projecting upper lip heavy and grim.

Had there been no impregnable steel barrier between them, it is hard to say which would have triumphed in the end, the ponderous weight and fury of Last Bull, or the ripping prongs and swift wrath of the moose. The buffalo charged down the knoll at a thundering gallop; but just before reaching the fence he checked himself violently. More than once or twice before had those elastic but impenetrable meshes given him his lesson, hurling him back with humiliating harshness when he dashed his bulk against them. He had too lively a memory of past discomfitures to risk a fresh one now in the face of this insolent foe. His matted front came against the wire with a force so cunningly moderated that he was not thrown back by the recoil. And the keen points of his horns went through the meshes with a vehemence which might indeed have done its work effectively had they come in contact with the adversary. As it was, however, they but prodded empty air.

The moose, meanwhile, had been in doubt whether to attack with his antlers, as was his manner when encountering foes of his own kind, or with his knife-edged fore-hoofs, which were the weapons he used against bears, wolves, or other alien adversaries. Finally he seemed to make up his mind that Last Bull, having horns and a most redoubtable stature, must be some kind of moose. In that case, of course, it became a question of antlers. Moreover, in his meetings with rival bulls it had never been his wont to depend upon a blind, irresistible charge,—thereby leaving it open to an alert opponent to slip aside and rip him along the flank,—but rather to fence warily for an advantage in the locking of antlers, and then bear down his foe by the fury and speed of his pushing. It so happened, therefore, that he, too, came not too violently against the barrier. Loudly his vast spread of antlers clashed upon the steel meshes; and one short prong, jutting low over his brow, pierced through and furrowed deeply the matted forehead of the buffalo.

As the blood streamed down over his nostrils, obscuring one eye, Last Bull quite lost his head with rage. Drawing off, he hurled himself blindly upon the barrier—only to be hurled back again with a vigor that brought him to his knees. But at the same time the moose, on the other side of the fence, got a huge surprise. Having his antlers against the barrier when Last Bull charged, he was forced back irresistibly upon his haunches with a rudeness quite unlike anything that he had ever before experienced. His massive neck felt as if a pine tree had fallen upon it, and he came back to the charge quite beside himself with bewilderment and rage.

By this time, however, the keepers and Park attendants were arriving on the scene, armed with pitchforks and other unpleasant executors of authority. Snorting, and bellowing, and grunting, the monstrous duellists were forced apart; and Last Bull, who had been taught something of man's dominance, was driven off to his stable and imprisoned. He was not let out again for two whole days. And by that time another fence, parallel with the first and some five or six feet distant from it, had been run up between his range and that of the moose. Over this impassable zone of neutrality, for a few days, the two rivals flung insult and futile defiance, till suddenly, becoming tired of it all, they seemed to agree to ignore each other's existence.

After this, Last Bull's sullenness of temper appeared to grow upon him. He was fond of drawing apart from the little herd, and taking up his solitary post on the knoll, where he would stand for an hour at a time motionless except for the switching of his long tail, and staring steadily westward as if he knew where the great past of his race had lain. In that direction a dense grove of chestnuts, maples, and oaks bounded the range, cutting off the view of the city roofs, the roar of the city traffic. Beyond the city were mountains and wide waters which he could not see; but beyond the waters and the mountains stretched the green, illimitable plains—which perhaps (who knows?) in some faint vision inherited from the ancestors whose myriads had possessed them, his sombre eyes, in some strange way, could see. Among the keepers and attendants generally it was said, with anxious regret, that perhaps Last Bull was "going bad." But the headkeeper, Payne, himself a son of the plains, repudiated the idea. He declared sympathetically that the great bull was merely homesick, pining for the wind-swept levels of the open country (God's country, Payne called it!) which his imprisoned hoofs had never trodden.

Be this as it may, the fact could not be gainsaid that Last Bull was growing more and more morose. The spectators, strolling along the wide walk which skirted the front of his range, seemed to irritate him, and sometimes, when a group had gathered to admire him, he would turn his low-hung head and answer their staring eyes with a kind of heavy fury, as if he burned to break forth upon them and seek vengeance for incalculable wrongs. This smouldering indignation against humanity extended equally, if not more violently, to all creatures who appeared to him as servants or allies of humanity. The dogs whom he sometimes saw passing, held in leash by their masters or mistresses, made him paw the earth scornfully if he happened to be near the fence. The patient horses who pulled the road-roller or the noisy lawn-mower made his eyes redden savagely. And he hated with peculiar zest the roguish little trick elephant, Bong, who would sometimes, his inquisitive trunk swinging from side to side, go lurching lazily by with a load of squealing children on his back.

Bong, who was a favored character, amiable and trustworthy, was allowed the freedom of the Park in the early morning, before visitors began to arrive who might be alarmed at seeing an elephant at large. He was addicted to minding his own business, and never paid the slightest attention to any occupants of cage or enclosure. He was quite unaware of the hostility which he had aroused in the perverse and brooding heart of Last Bull.

One crisp morning in late November, when all the grass in the Park had been blackened by frost, and the pools were edged with silver rims of ice, and mists were white and saffron about the scarce-risen sun, and that autumn thrill was in the air which gives one such an appetite, Bong chanced to be strolling past the front of Last Bull's range. He did not see Last Bull, who was nothing to him. But, being just as hungry as he ought to be on so stimulating a morning, he did see, and note with interest, some bundles of fresh hay on the other side of the fence.

Now, Bong was no thief. But hay had always seemed to him a free largess, like grass and water, and this looked like very good hay. So clear a conscience had he on the subject that he never thought of glancing around to see if any of the attendants were looking. Innocently he lurched up to the fence, reached his lithe trunk through, gathered a neat wisp of the hay, and stuffed it happily into his curious, narrow, pointed mouth. Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was good hay. With great satisfaction he reached in for another mouthful.

Last Bull, as it happened, was standing close by, but a little to one side. He had been ignoring, so far, his morning ration. He was not hungry. And, moreover, he rather disapproved of the hay because it had the hostile man-smell strong upon it. Nevertheless, he recognized it very clearly as his property, to be eaten when he should feel inclined to eat it. His wrath, then, was only equalled by his amazement when he saw the little elephant's presumptuous gray trunk reach in and coolly help itself. For a moment he forgot to do anything whatever about it. But when, a few seconds later, that long, curling trunk of Bong's insinuated itself again and appropriated another bundle of the now precious hay, the outraged owner bestirred himself. With a curt roar, that was more of a cough or a grunt than a bellow, he lunged forward and strove to pin the intruding trunk to the ground.

With startled alacrity Bong withdrew his trunk, but just in time to save it from being mangled. For an instant he stood with the member held high in air, bewildered by what seemed to him such a gratuitous attack. Then his twinkling little eyes began to blaze, and he trumpeted shrilly with anger. The next moment, reaching over the fence, he brought down the trunk on Last Bull's hump with such a terrible flail-like blow that the great buffalo stumbled forward upon his knees.

He was up again in an instant and hurling himself madly against the inexorable steel which separated him from his foe. Bong hesitated for a second, then, reaching over the fence once more, clutched Last Bull maliciously around the base of his horns and tried to twist his neck. This enterprise, however, was too much even for the elephant's titanic powers, for Last Bull's greatest strength lay in the muscles of his ponderous and corded neck. Raving and bellowing, he plunged this way and that, striving in vain to wrench himself free from that incomprehensible, snake-like thing which had fastened upon him. Bong, trumpeting savagely, braced himself with widespread pillars of legs, and between them it seemed that the steel fence must go down under such cataclysmic shocks as it was suffering. But the noisy violence of the battle presently brought its own ending. An amused but angry squad of attendants came up and stopped it, and Bong, who seemed plainly the aggressor, was hustled off to his stall in deep disgrace.

Last Bull was humiliated. In this encounter things had happened which he could in no way comprehend; and though, beyond an aching in neck and shoulders, he felt none the worse physically, he had nevertheless a sense of having been worsted, of having been treated with ignominy, in spite of the fact that it was his foe, and not he, who had retired from the field. For several days he wore a subdued air and kept about meekly with his docile cows. Then his old, bitter moodiness reasserted itself, and he resumed his solitary broodings on the crest of the knoll.

When the winter storms came on, it had been Last Bull's custom to let himself be housed luxuriously at nightfall, with the rest of the herd, in the warm and ample buffalo-shed. But this winter he made such difficulty about going in that at last Payne decreed that he should have his own way and stay out. "It will do him no harm, and may cool his peppery blood some!" had been the keeper's decision. So the door was left open, and Last Bull entered or refrained, according to his whim. It was noticed, however,—and this struck a chord of answering sympathy in the plainsman's imaginative temperament,—that, though on ordinary nights he might come in and stay with the herd under shelter, on nights of driving storm, if the tempest blew from the west or northwest, Last Bull was sure to be out on the naked knoll to face it. When the fine sleet or stinging rain drove past him, filling his nostrils with their cold, drenching his matted mane, and lashing his narrowed eyes, what visions swept through his troubled, half-comprehending brain, no one may know. But Payne, with understanding born of sympathy and a common native soil, catching sight of his dark bulk under the dark of the low sky, was wont to declare that he knew. He would say that Last Bull's eyes discerned, black under the hurricane, but lit strangely with the flash of keen horns and rolling eyes and frothed nostrils, the endless and innumerable droves of the buffalo, with the plains wolf skulking on their flanks, passing, passing, southward into the final dark. In the roar of the wind, declared Payne, Last Bull, out there in the night, listened to the trampling of all those vanished droves. And though the other keepers insisted to each other, quite privately, that their chief talked a lot of nonsense about "that there mean-tempered old buffalo," they nevertheless came gradually to look upon Last Bull with a kind of awe, and to regard his surly whims as privileged.

It chanced that winter that men were driving a railway tunnel beneath a corner of the Park. The tunnel ran for a short distance under the front of Last Bull's range, and passed close by the picturesque cottage occupied by Payne and two of his assistants. At this point the level of the Park was low, and the shell of earth was thin above the tunnel roof.

There came a Sunday afternoon, after days of rain and penetrating January thaw, when sun and air combined to cheat the earth with an illusion of spring. The buds and the mould breathed of April, and gay crowds flocked to the Park, to make the most of winter's temporary repulse. Just when things were at their gayest, with children's voices clamoring everywhere like starlings, and Bong, the little elephant, swinging good-naturedly up the broad white track with all the load he had room for on his back, there came an ominous jar and rumble, like the first of an earthquake, which ran along the front of Last Bull's range.

With sure instinct, Bong turned tail and fled with his young charges away across the grassland. The crowds, hardly knowing what they fled from, with screams and cries and blanched faces, followed the elephant's example. A moment later and, with a muffled crash, all along the front of the range, the earth sank into the tunnel, carrying with it half a dozen panels of Last Bull's hated fence.

Almost in a moment the panic of the crowd subsided. Every one realized just what had happened. Moreover, thanks to Bong's timely alarm, every one had got out of the way in good season. All fear of earthquake being removed, the crowd flocked back eagerly to stare down into the wrecked tunnel, which formed now a sort of gaping, chaotic ditch, with sides at some points precipitous and at others brokenly sloping. The throng was noisy with excited interest and with relief at having escaped so cleanly. The break had run just beneath one corner of the keepers' cottage, tearing away a portion of the foundation and wrenching the structure slightly aside without overthrowing it. Payne, who had been in the midst of his Sunday toilet, came out upon his twisted porch, half undressed and with a shaving-brush covered with lather in his hand. He gave one look at the damage which had been wrought, then plunged indoors again to throw his clothes on, at the same time sounding the hurry call for the attendants in other quarters of the Park.

Last Bull, who had been standing on his knoll, with his back to the throngs, had wheeled in astonishment at the heavy sound of the cave-in. For a few minutes he had stared sullenly, not grasping the situation. Then very slowly it dawned on him that his prison walls had fallen. Yes, surely, there at last lay his way to freedom, his path to the great open spaces for which he dumbly and vaguely hungered. With stately deliberation he marched down from his knoll to investigate.

But presently another idea came into his slow mind. He saw the clamorous crowds flocking back and ranging themselves along the edge of the chasm. These were his enemies. They were coming to balk him. A terrible madness surged through all his veins. He bellowed savage warning and came thundering down the field, nose to earth, dark, mountainous, irresistible.

The crowd yelled and shrank back. "He can't get across!" shouted some. But others cried: "He can! He's coming! Save yourselves!" And with shrieks they scattered wildly across the open, making for the kiosks, the pavilions, the trees, anything that seemed to promise hiding or shelter from that on-rushing doom.

At the edge of the chasm—at this point forming not an actual drop, but a broken slide—Last Bull hardly paused. He plunged down, rolled over in the debris, struggled to his feet again instantly, and went ploughing and snorting up the opposite steep. As his colossal front, matted with mud, loomed up over the brink, his little eyes rolling and flaming, and the froth flying from his red nostrils, he formed a very nightmare of horror to those fugitives who dared to look behind them.

Surmounting the brink, he paused. There were so many enemies, he knew not which to pursue first. But straight ahead, in the very middle of the open, and far from any shelter, he saw a huddled group of children and nurses fleeing impotently and aimlessly. Shrill cries came from the cluster, which danced with colors, scarlet and yellow and blue and vivid pink. To the mad buffalo, these were the most conspicuous and the loudest of his foes, and therefore the most dangerous. With a bellow he flung his tail straight in the air, and charged after them.

An appalling hush fell, for a few heartbeats, all over the field. Then from different quarters appeared uniformed attendants, racing and shouting frantically to divert the bull's attention. From fleeing groups black-coated men leapt forth, armed only with their walking-sticks, and rushed desperately to defend the flock of children, who now, in the extremity of their terror, were tumbling as they ran. Some of the nurses were fleeing far in front, while others, the faithful ones, with eyes starting from their heads, grabbed up their little charges and struggled on under the burden.

Already Last Bull was halfway across the space which divided him from his foes. The ground shook under his ponderous gallop. At this moment Payne reappeared on the broken porch.

One glance showed him that no one was near enough to intervene. With a face stern and sorrowful he lifted the deadly .405 Winchester which he had brought out with him. The spot he covered was just behind Last Bull's mighty shoulder.

The smokeless powder spoke with a small, venomous report, unlike the black powder's noisy reverberation. Last Bull stumbled. But recovering himself instantly, he rushed on. He was hurt, and he felt it was those fleeing foes who had done it. A shade of perplexity darkened Payne's face. He fired again. This time his aim was true. The heavy expanding bullet tore straight through bone and muscle and heart, and Last Bull lurched forward upon his head, ploughing up the turf for yards. As his mad eyes softened and filmed, he saw once more, perhaps,—or so the heavy-hearted keeper who had slain him would have us believe,—the shadowy plains unrolling under the wild sky, and the hosts of his vanished kindred drifting past into the dark.



SECTION X

ROMANCE CYCLES AND LEGEND



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baldwin, James, The Story of Roland. The Story of Siegfried.

Baring-Gould, Sabine, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.

Becquer, G. A., Romantic Legends of Spain.

Canton, W. V., Child's Book of Saints.

Cervantes-Saavedra, Miguel de, Don Quixote. [In translation, or as retold by Havell or Parry.]

Church, Alfred J., Stories from the Iliad. Stories from the Odyssey. Heroes of Chivalry and Romance. Stories of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France.

Colum, Padraic, The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy.

Crommelin, Emeline G., Famous Legends.

Darton, F. J. H., Wonder Book of Old Romance.

Farrington, Margaret V., Tales of King Arthur.

Finnemore, John, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merry Men.

Guerber, H. A., Legends of the Middle Ages.

Guest, Lady Charlotte, The Mabinogion.

Herbertson, Agnes G., Heroic Legends.

Homer, Iliad. [Prose translation by Lang, Leaf, and Myers; poetic by Bryant.]

Homer, Odyssey. [Prose translation by George H. Palmer; poetic by Bryant.]

Hull, Eleanor, The Boys' Cuchulain: Heroic Legends of Ireland.

Lamb, Charles, The Adventures of Ulysses.

Lane, E. W., Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

Lang, Andrew, A Book of Romance.

Lanier, Sidney, The Boy's King Arthur. The Boy's Mabinogion.

MacLeod, Mary, King Arthur and His Noble Knights.

Marshall, H. E., The Story of William Tell. The Story of Roland.

Marvin, Frank S. (and others), Adventures of Odysseus.

Morris, William, Sigurd, the Volsung.

Newbolt, Henry, Stories from Froissart.

Pyle, Howard, Stories of King Arthur and His Knights. Some Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

Plummer, Mary W., Stories from the Chronicle of the Cid.

Ragozin, Z. A., Frithjof and Roland. Siegfried and Beowulf.

Rolleston, T. W., High Deeds of Finn.

Scudder, Horace E., The Book of Legends.

Tappan, Eva March, Robin Hood: His Book.

Tennyson, Alfred, The Idylls of the King.

Warren, Maude Radford, King Arthur and His Knights. Robin Hood and His Merry Men.

Wilson, C. D., Story of the Cid for Young People.



SECTION X. ROMANCE CYCLES AND LEGEND

INTRODUCTORY

The material included. The heading adopted for this section is used somewhat loosely to include those many and varied collections of stories which have with the passage of time been gradually brought together into so-called cycles, unified around some central figure, or by means of some kind of framework. It would thus bring into its scope the series of stories which make up the Greek Odyssey, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Finnish Kalevala, and other national epics. It would include the stories centering around King Arthur, Siegfried, Roland, the Cid, Alexander, Charlemagne, Robin Hood, and Reynard the Fox. Besides all these cycles and others like them, there is a great body of separate legends of persons and places, exemplified by "The Proud King," that seem almost to constitute a work by themselves. The extended body of eastern stories known as The Arabian Nights are also placed here, as is Cervantes' Don Quixote. The last inclusion may seem to violate even the wide range of the heading, as Don Quixote is distinctly one of the world's great modern masterpieces, and is by a known author. But that book is after all a cycle of adventures with a central figure not unlike the romance cycles, and, since it is popularly supposed to have had its origin in the purpose of humorously satirizing the romances of chivalry, it may be allowed to stand in connection with them.

The place for such stories. The developing child soon passes out of the period where the old fairy stories and their modern analogues satisfy his needs. He comes into a period of hero-worship where he demands not only courage and prowess of magnificent proportions, but also a sinking of self in as equally magnificent and disinterested service of great causes. To the child's mind there is nothing fantastical about the chivalric ideas of courtesy, and friendship, and all high personal ideals. It is the natural food of his mind. He will allow nothing mean or unclean. It seems, roughly speaking, that the time of greatest appeal for such stories is about the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. By the end of that period he is already well along toward an interest in the real men and women of history, toward a more realistic and practical conception of the problems of human life.

The problems of choice and adaptation. The wealth of material available is so great as to be bewildering. As yet there is no common agreement as to just which stories are best for our purpose, nor is there any as to where particular stories should be used. The adapters and story-tellers differ much in their views on these questions. Young teachers, it is clear, cannot be expected to know this vast field in any detail. The saving fact is that teachers can hardly make a mistake by using any story that has awakened their own interest and enthusiasm, and which, for that reason, they will be able to present in a simple and striking form. Having in mind, then, the beginning teacher, we make the following specific suggestions:

1. Beowulf. The inexperienced teacher will find a splendid version, "The Story of Beowulf," ready-made in Wyche's Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them. To work from the complete epic, use any of the translations by Child, Tinker, Gummere, or Hall. "Perhaps it is not too much to assert . . . that in its lofty spirit, its vigor, and its sincerity, . . . it reflects traits which are distinctive of English-speaking people throughout the world."

2. King Arthur. The final source must be Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, represented in the following pages by Nos. 401, 402, and 403. Some passages from Malory should be read to the class. For suggestions as to method in handling the stories, see Wyche as above, where there is a fine brief version. In King Arthur and His Knights, by Mrs. Warren (Maude Radford), may be found a good working version of the whole cycle. ". . . In delicacy of feeling, in reverence for women, in courtesy to friend and foe, the Arthurian story foreshadowed much that is gentlest and best in modern civilization."

3. Robin Hood. Go at once to one of the simple prose versions of the story. Satisfactory ones are those by Miss Tappan, by Mrs. Warren, or by Howard Pyle (the shorter version). As time and opportunity offer read the simple old ballads which are the source of the story of "merry" Sherwood. "If ever verse lashed abuse with a smile, it is this. The sun shines brightly overhead; it is a good world to be alive in, its wrongs are being righted, and its very misfortunes are ultimately to bring happier times."

4. A few stories about Roland, Siegfried, the Cid, Charlemagne, and others may be used by teachers who have had opportunity to get acquainted with those great figures, or who have access to some of the authorities listed in the bibliography. This material is more difficult to handle satisfactorily than that already discussed, and may well be sparingly used, if not omitted altogether. For a general collection of legends, the ideal as to choice and method of presentation is Scudder's The Book of Legends (No. 412). From The Arabian Nights use "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" (No. 398), "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," and "The Stories of Sindbad the Sailor." Almost any of the accessible versions will be satisfactory. For Reynard the Fox, the one adaptation that presents the story in a fairly good form for children is that made by Sir Henry Cole, available as edited by Joseph Jacobs (Nos. 399 and 400). Perhaps as much of Don Quixote is given in this text (Nos. 405-411) as teachers can use. A full translation is a satisfactory source for this story, although the shortened forms by Havell or Parry are admirable.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

Most of the books on story-telling have discussions of the best ways of dealing with the romance material. Especially valuable in this connection are Wyche, Great Stories and How to Tell Them, and Lyman, Story Telling. For scholarly and yet not too difficult books giving a perspective of the entire field see W. W. Lawrence, Medieval Story and the Beginnings of the Social Ideals of English-speaking People, or W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance. Consult MacClintock, "Hero-Tales and Romances," Literature in the Elementary School, chap. viii.



398

The Arabian Nights' Entertainment or Thousand and One Nights is a collection of about four hundred old oriental stories, chiefly from Persia, India, and Arabia. They were brought together probably in the thirteenth century and told orally as stories told to entertain King Shahriyar; but scholars think the collection was not written until some time between the years 1350 and 1550. Some of the stories probably were told as early as the ninth century. The stories are of various kinds—fables, anecdotes, legends, hero stories, wonder stories, and romances. "The Story of Alnaschar" (No. 235 in this book) is one of the fables. The collection became known to European readers in 1704, when it was translated from the Arabic by a French scholar named Galland. Since that time the fables have been translated extensively. The translation into English by Lane is the most valuable one for a teacher who wishes to have all of the book that is fit for public use. Like many of the world's great compilations of this sort, it is made up of a mixture of good and bad. The oriental play of imagination in these stories and the background of old Eastern scenery and customs have made them a source of entertainment and instruction for all civilized nations. The story that follows has always been one of the favorites among oriental wonder stories, and is given in a familiar traditional version.

ALI BABA, AND THE FORTY THIEVES

In a town in Persia there lived two brothers, the sons of a poor man; the one was named Cassim, and the other Ali Baba. Cassim, the elder, married a wife with a considerable fortune, and lived at his ease in a handsome house, with plenty of servants; but the wife of Ali Baba was as poor as himself; they dwelt in a mean cottage in the suburbs of the city, and he maintained his family by cutting wood in a neighboring forest.

One day when Ali Baba was in the forest and preparing to load his three asses with the wood he had cut, he saw a troop of horsemen coming towards him. He had often heard of robbers who infested that forest, and, in a great fright, he hastily climbed a large thick tree, which stood near the foot of a rock, and hid himself among the branches.

The horsemen soon galloped up to the rock, where they all dismounted. Ali Baba counted forty of them, and he could not doubt but they were thieves, by their ill-looking countenances. They each took a loaded portmanteau from his horse; and he who seemed to be their captain, turning to the rock, said, "Open Sesame," and immediately a door opened in the rock, and all the robbers passed in, when the door shut itself. In a short time the door opened again, and the forty robbers came out, followed by their captain, who said, "Shut Sesame." The door instantly closed; and the troop, mounting their horses, were presently out of sight.

Ali Baba remained in the tree a long time, and seeing that the robbers did not return, he ventured down, and, approaching close to the rock, said, "Open Sesame." Immediately the door flew open, and Ali Baba beheld a spacious cavern, very light, and filled with all sorts of possessions,—merchandise, rich stuffs, and heaps of gold and silver coin, which these robbers had taken from merchants and travelers.

Ali Baba then went in search of his asses, and having brought them to the rock, took as many bags of gold coin as they could carry, and put them on their backs, covering them with some loose fagots of wood. Afterwards (not forgetting to say "Shut Sesame") he drove the asses back to the city; and having unloaded them in the stable belonging to his cottage, carried the bags into the house and spread the gold coin out upon the floor before his wife.

His wife, delighted with so much money, wanted to count it; but finding it would take up too much time, she was resolved to measure it, and running to the house of Ali Baba's brother, she entreated them to lend her a small measure. Cassim's wife was very proud and envious. "I wonder," she said to herself, "what sort of grain such poor people can have to measure; but I am determined I will find out what they are doing." So before she gave the measure, she artfully rubbed the bottom with some suet.

Away ran Ali Baba's wife, measured her money, and helped her husband to bury it in the yard. Then she carried back the measure to her brother-in-law's house, without perceiving that a piece of gold was left sticking to the bottom of it. "Fine doings, indeed!" cried Cassim's wife to her husband, after examining the measure. "Your brother there, who pretends to be so poor, is richer than you are, for he does not count his money, but measures it."

Cassim, hearing these words and seeing the piece of gold, grew as envious as his wife; and hastening to his brother, threatened to inform the Cadi of his wealth if he did not confess to him how he came by it. Ali Baba without hesitation told him the history of the robbers and the secret of the cave, and offered him half his treasure; but the envious Cassim disdained so poor a sum, resolving to have fifty times more than that out of the robbers' cave. Accordingly he rose early the next morning and set out with ten mules loaded with great chests. He found the rock easily enough by Ali Baba's description; and having said "Open Sesame," he gained admission into the cave, where he found more treasure than he had expected to behold even from his brother's account of it.

He immediately began to gather bags of gold and pieces of rich brocade, all which he piled close to the door; but when he had got together as much as his ten mules could possibly carry, or even more, and wanted to get out to load them, the thoughts of his wonderful riches had made him entirely forget the word which caused the door to open. In vain he tried "Bame," "Fame," "Lame," "Tetame," and a thousand others. The door remained as immovable as the rock itself, notwithstanding Cassim kicked and screamed till he was ready to drop with fatigue and vexation.

Presently he heard the sound of horses' feet, which he rightly concluded to be the robbers, and he trembled lest he should now fall a victim to his thirst for riches. He resolved, however, to make an effort to escape; and when he heard the "Sesame" pronounced, and saw the door open, he sprang out, but was instantly put to death by the swords of the robbers.

The thieves now held a council, but not one of them could possibly guess by what means Cassim had got into the cave. They saw the heaps of treasure he had piled ready to take away, but they did not miss what Ali Baba had secured before. At length they agreed to cut Cassim's body into four quarters and hang the pieces within the cave, that it might terrify any one from further attempts; and also determined not to return themselves for some time to the cave for fear of being watched and discovered.

When Cassim's wife saw night come on, and her husband not returned, she became greatly terrified; she watched at her window till daybreak and then went to tell Ali Baba of her fears. Cassim had not informed him of his design of going to the cave; but Ali Baba, now hearing of his journey thither, went immediately in search of him. He drove his asses to the forest without delay. He was alarmed to see blood near the rock; and on entering the cave, he found the body of his unfortunate brother cut to pieces and hung up within the door. It was now too late to save him; but he took down the quarters and put them upon one of his asses, covering them with fagots of wood; and, weeping for the miserable end of his brother, he regained the city. The door of his brother's house was opened by Morgiana, an intelligent, faithful female slave, who, Ali Baba knew, was worthy to be trusted with the secret.

He therefore delivered the body to Morgiana, and went himself to impart the sad tidings to the wife of Cassim. The poor woman was deeply afflicted, and reproached herself with her foolish envy and curiosity, as being the cause of her husband's death; but Ali Baba having convinced her of the necessity of being very discreet, she checked her lamentations and resolved to leave everything to the management of Morgiana.

Morgiana, having washed the body, hastened to an apothecary's and asked for some particular medicine, saying that it was for her master Cassim, who was dangerously ill. She took care to spread the report of Cassim's illness throughout the neighborhood; and as they saw Ali Baba and his wife going daily to the house of their brother, in great affliction, they were not surprised to hear shortly that Cassim had died of his disorder.

The next difficulty was to bury him without discovery; but Morgiana was ready to contrive a plan for that also. She put on her veil and went to a distant part of the city very early in the morning, where she found a poor cobbler just opening his stall. She put a piece of gold into his hand, and told him he should have another, if he would suffer himself to be blindfolded and go with her, carrying his tools with him. Mustapha, the cobbler, hesitated at first, but the gold tempted him and he consented; when Morgiana, carefully covering his eyes, so that he could not see a step of the way, led him to Cassim's house; and taking him into the room where the body was lying, removed the bandage from his eyes, and bade him sew the mangled limbs together. Mustapha obeyed her order; and having received two pieces of gold, was led blindfold the same way back to his own stall.

Morgiana then covered the body with a winding-sheet and sent for the undertaker to make preparations for the funeral. Cassim was buried with all due solemnity the same day. Ali Baba now removed his few goods, and all the gold coin that he had brought home from the cavern, to the house of his deceased brother, of which he took possession; and Cassim's widow received every kind attention from both Ali Baba and his wife.

After an interval of some months, the troop of robbers again visited their retreat in the forest, and were completely astonished to find the body taken away from the cave, and everything else remaining in its usual order. "We are discovered," said the captain, "and shall certainly be undone, if you do not adopt speedy measures to prevent our ruin. Which of you, my brave comrades, will undertake to search out the villain who is in possession of our secret?"

One of the boldest of the troop advanced, and offered himself; and was accepted on the following conditions: namely, that if he succeeded in his enterprise, he was to be made second in command of the troop; but that if he brought false intelligence, he was immediately to be put to death. The bold robber readily agreed to the conditions; and having disguised himself, he proceeded to the city.

He arrived there about daybreak, and found the cobbler Mustapha in his stall, which was always open before any other shop in the town. "Good morrow, friend," said the robber, as he passed the stall, "you rise betimes; I should think old as you are, you could scarcely see to work by this light."

"Indeed, sir," replied the cobbler, "old as I am, I do not want for good eyesight; as you must needs believe, when I tell you I sewed a dead body together the other day, where I had not so good a light as I have now."

"A dead body!" exclaimed the robber; "you mean, I suppose, that you sewed up the winding-sheet for a dead body."

"I mean no such thing," replied Mustapha; "I tell you that I sewed the four quarters of a man together."

This was enough to convince the robber he had luckily met with the very man who could give him the information he was in search of. However he did not wish to appear eager to learn the particulars, lest he should alarm the cobbler. "Ha! ha!" said he, "I find, good Mr. Cobbler, that you perceive I am a stranger here, and you wish to make me believe that the people of your city do impossible things."

"I tell you," said Mustapha in a loud and angry tone, "I sewed a dead body together with my own hands."—"Then I suppose you can tell me also where you performed this wonderful business." Upon this, Mustapha related every particular of his being led blindfold to the house, etc.

"Well, my friend," said the robber, "it is a fine story, I confess, but not very easy to believe; however, if you will convince me by showing me the house you talk of, I will give you four pieces of gold to make amends for my unbelief."

"I think," said the cobbler, after considering awhile, "that if you were to blindfold me, I should remember every turning we made; but with my eyes open I am sure I should never find it." Accordingly the robber covered Mustapha's eyes with his handkerchief; and the cobbler led him through most of the principal streets, and stopping by Cassim's door, said, "Here it is; I went no further than this house."

The robber immediately marked the door with a piece of chalk; and, giving Mustapha his four pieces of gold, dismissed him. Shortly after the thief and Mustapha had quitted the door, Morgiana, coming home from market, perceived the little mark of white chalk on the door. Suspecting something was wrong, she directly marked four doors on one side and five on the other of her master's, in exactly the same manner, without saying a word to any one.

The robber meantime rejoined his troop and boasted greatly of his success. His captain and comrades praised his diligence; and being well armed, they proceeded to the town in different disguises, and in separate parties of three and four together.

It was agreed among them that they were to meet in the market-place at the dusk of evening, and that the captain and the robber who had discovered the house were to go there first, to find out to whom it belonged. When they arrived in the street, having a lantern with them, they began to examine the doors, and found to their confusion and astonishment that ten doors were marked exactly alike. The robber, who was the captain's guide, could not say a word in explanation of this mystery; and when the disappointed troop got back to the forest, his enraged companions ordered him to be put to death.

Another now offered himself upon the same conditions as the former; and having bribed Mustapha, and discovered the house, he made a mark with the dark red chalk upon the door, in a part that was not in the least conspicuous; and carefully examined the surrounding doors, to be certain that no such marks were upon them. But nothing could escape the prying eyes of Morgiana; scarcely had the robber departed, when she discovered the red mark; and getting some red chalk, she marked seven doors on each side, precisely in the same place and in the same manner. The robber, valuing himself highly upon the precautions he had taken, triumphantly conducted his captain to the spot; but great indeed was his confusion and dismay when he found it impossible to say which, among fifteen houses marked exactly alike, was the right one. The captain, furious with his disappointment, returned again with the troop to the forest; and the second robber was also condemned to death.

The captain having lost two of his troop, judged that their hands were more active than their heads in such services; and he resolved to employ no other of them, but to go himself upon the business. Accordingly he repaired to the city and addressed himself to the cobbler Mustapha, who, for six pieces of gold, readily performed the services for him he had done for the other two strangers. The captain, much wiser than his men, did not amuse himself with setting a mark upon the door, but attentively considered the house, counted the number of windows, and passed by it very often, to be certain that he should know it again.

He then returned to the forest, and ordered his troop to go into the town, and buy nineteen mules and thirty-eight large jars, one full of oil and the rest empty. In two or three days the jars were bought, and all things in readiness; and the captain having put a man into each jar, properly armed, the jars being rubbed on the outside with oil, and the covers having holes bored in them for the men to breathe through, loaded his mules, and in the habit of an oil-merchant entered the town in the dusk of the evening. He proceeded to the street where Ali Baba dwelt, and found him sitting in the porch of his house. "Sir," said he to Ali Baba, "I have brought this oil a great way to sell, and am too late for this day's market. As I am quite a stranger in this town, will you do me the favor to let me put my mules into your court-yard, and direct me where I may lodge to-night?"

Ali Baba, who was a very good-natured man, welcomed the pretended oil-merchant very kindly, and offered him a bed in his own house; and having ordered the mules to be unloaded in the yard, and properly fed, he invited his guest in to supper. The captain, having seen the jars placed ready in the yard, followed Ali Baba into the house, and after supper was shown to the chamber where he was to sleep.

It happened that Morgiana was obliged to sit up later that night than usual, to get ready her master's bathing linen for the following morning; and while she was busy about the fire, her lamp went out, and there was no more oil in the house. After considering what she could possibly do for a light, she recollected the thirty-eight oil jars in the yard and determined to take a little oil out of one of them for her lamp. She took her oil pot in her hand and approached the first jar; the robber within said, "Is it time, captain?"

Any other slave, on hearing a man in an oil jar, would have screamed out; but the prudent Morgiana instantly recollected herself, and replied softly, "No, not yet; lie still till I call you." She passed on to every jar, receiving the same question and making the same answer, till she came to the last, which was really filled with oil.

Morgiana was now convinced that this was a plot of the robbers to murder her master, Ali Baba; so she ran back to the kitchen and brought out a large kettle, which she filled with oil, and set it on a great wood fire; and as soon as it boiled she went and poured into the jars sufficient of the boiling oil to kill every man within them. Having done this she put out her fire and her lamp, and crept softly to her chamber.

The captain of the robbers, finding everything quiet in the house, and perceiving no light anywhere, arose and went down into the yard to assemble his men. Coming to the first jar, he felt the steam of the boiled oil; he ran hastily to the rest and found every one of his troop put to death in the same manner. Full of rage and despair at having failed in his design, he forced the lock of a door that led into the garden and made his escape over the walls.

On the following morning Morgiana related to her master, Ali Baba, his wonderful deliverance from the pretended oil-merchant and his gang of robbers. Ali Baba at first could scarcely credit her tale; but when he saw the robbers dead in the jars, he could not sufficiently praise her courage and sagacity; and without letting any one else into the secret, he and Morgiana the next night buried the thirty-seven thieves in a deep trench at the bottom of the garden. The jars and mules, as he had no use for them, were sent from time to time to the different markets and sold.

While Ali Baba took these measures to prevent his and Cassim's adventures in the forest from being known, the captain returned to his cave, and for some time abandoned himself to grief and despair. At length, however, he determined to adopt a new scheme for the destruction of Ali Baba. He removed by degrees all the valuable merchandise from the cave to the city and took a shop exactly opposite to Ali Baba's house. He furnished this shop with everything that was rare and costly, and went by the name of the merchant Cogia Hassan. Many persons made acquaintance with the stranger; among others, Ali Baba's son went every day to the shop. The pretended Cogia Hassan soon appeared to be very fond of Ali Baba's son, offered him many presents, and often detained him at dinner, on which occasions he treated him in the handsomest manner.