The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cyr Readers: Book 8
Title: The Cyr Readers: Book 8
Author: Ellen M. Cyr
Release date: July 4, 2015 [eBook #49358]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif and the Online
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STRATFORD ON AVON
From photograph. Copyright, 1898, Published by A. W. Elson, Boston.
Engraved by Robert Varley.
THE
Cyr Readers
ARRANGED BY GRADES
BY
ELLEN M. CYR
BOOK EIGHT
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenæum Press
1901
Copyright, 1899, 1901
By GINN & COMPANY
——
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO
MY LITTLE SON
Ruel Stevenson Smith
PREFACE.
THE appreciative reading of a piece of good literature is an experience far reaching in its influence. There is a delight in following a great author as he reveals the treasure of his thought or presents to the imagination the beauty which he beholds and interprets.
The study of literature assists one to enjoy these experiences and profit by them.
Among the countless books which have been written are a few which have been chosen by all mankind. They stand the test of time and change; for they are the outcome of those giant souls, who were not limited by time nor space and who seemed to gaze with far-seeing eyes into eternity.
A large proportion of the pupils in our grammar schools would never read these classics, if their interest in them were not awakened in the schoolroom.
Many of these books are represented in this series, for this has been the end constantly in view. The names of the world’s greatest writers and their faces have become familiar to the child, so that he is now able to take down from the shelves the writings of many great men, and giving his imagination to the author’s leading, be transported into any region or age, and experience joys and sorrows outside of his own life.
I acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Edward Everett Hale and Little, Brown & Co., for extract from “The Man without a Country”; also to Messrs. Elliot & Frye, London, for use of a copyright photograph of Carlyle.
ELLEN M. CYR.
CONTENTS.
T H E C Y R R E A D E R S
B O O K E I G H T
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
Thomas Carlyle was born in a little village in Scotland, in the year 1795.
His father, James Carlyle, was a poor mason, so poor that at times there was scarcely enough food in the house for his family; but the father resolved that the boy should have an education, and saved, little by little, the money to pay for it.
When Thomas was ten years old, he and his father walked to the town of Annan, where Thomas was to enter the academy. The father little dreamed, as they trudged along together, that one day his son would be famous as one of the world’s greatest writers, so great that even the Queen of England would wish to talk with him.
He studied at the academy of Annan for three years. His father, dressed in his coarse workman’s clothes, once visited him there. Thomas was afraid that the other boys would laugh at him, but the sturdy Scotchman was so dignified that he won their respect.
When Thomas reached the age of thirteen his parents decided to send him to the great University at Edinburgh. They walked through the village streets with him and watched him start on the highway. It was a journey of a hundred miles, and he traveled all the way on foot.
These experiences made the boy brave and resolute. He was not afraid of the world.
A few years after leaving the University he began to earn his living by writing. For many years his income was small, as he would only write what he thought would make the world better. He used to say that he would write his books as his father built his houses, so that they would last. He scolded the world for its faults, but he was very kind-hearted.
His “History of the French Revolution” is a wonderful work. When the first volume of this history was written, Carlyle loaned it to a friend, and the manuscript was accidentally destroyed. Carlyle did not utter a word of reproach, although the loss meant months of study and thought, but set manfully to work and wrote it once more.
He was fond of German literature, and translated the “Wilhelm Meister” by Goethe. He wrote many other books, and became so famous that when Gladstone retired from office as Lord Rector of Edinburgh, Carlyle was made his successor. It was a great triumph for the mason’s son; but in the midst of his new honors his wife died, and there was no one to share his happiness.
Not long after this, Queen Victoria sent for Carlyle and granted him a personal interview. On his eightieth birthday he was honored by gifts from Scotland, England, and Germany. He died in 1881.
In the village of Entepfuhl dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife—childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful, though now verging toward old age.
Andreas had been grenadier sergeant and even regimental schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning hook, cultivated a little orchard, on the produce of which he lived not without dignity.
Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season, all of which Andreas knew how to sell. On evenings he smoked or read (as beseemed a regimental schoolmaster), and talked to the neighbors about the victory of Rossbach; and how “Fritz the Only” had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, and had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp sentinel demanded the password, “Peace, hound!” before any of his staff adjutants could answer. “There is what I call a king!” would Andreas exclaim; “but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes.”
Gretchen, the housewife, had been won by the deeds rather than the looks of her husband, nevertheless she at heart loved him both for his valor and wisdom. Was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness, that understood Büsching’s Geography, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead on the battlefield?
The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true house-mother can; she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier cap, but the whole habitation, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay; a roomy cottage, embowered in fruit trees and forest trees, evergreens and honeysuckles, rising many-colored from amid shaven grass plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden tools and seats where, especially on summer nights, a king might have wished to sit and smoke and call it his.
Into this home, one meek, yellow evening, it was that a stranger of reverend aspect entered, and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. He was closely muffled in a wide mantle, which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some basket, over-hung with green Persian silk, saying only: “Good Christian people, here lies for you an invaluable loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it; with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty will it one day be required back.” Uttering which singular words in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the stranger gracefully withdrew; and before Andreas and his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was gone.
Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the orchard gate stood quietly closed; the stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle and noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it all a trick of imagination, or a visit from some spirit; only that green silk basket, such as neither imagination nor spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlor table.
Toward this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappings, no Pitt diamond or Hapsburg regalia, but in the softest sleep a little red-colored infant! Beside it lay a roll of gold, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a baptismal certificate, wherein, unfortunately, nothing but the name was decipherable.
To wonder and conjecture were unavailing then and thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl did tidings transpire of any such figure as the stranger. Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was what to do with this little sleeping infant! Amid amazements and curiosities which had to die away without satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable, prudent people needs must, on nursing it, if possible, into manhood.
Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, traveled forward by quick but easy stages. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that he seldom cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut out for him than whimpering.
Most graceful is the following little picture: “On fine evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper, bread crumbs boiled in milk, and eat it out of doors. On the coping of the orchard wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set up the pruning ladder, my porringer was placed; there many a sunset have I, looking at the western mountains, consumed my evening meal.
“Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of the world’s expectation as day died, were still a Hebrew speech for me; nevertheless I was looking at the fair, illuminated letters, and had an eye for their gilding.”
With the little one’s friendship for cattle and poultry we shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a certain deeper sympathy with animated nature. He says again: “Impressive enough was it to hear in early morning the swineherd’s horn, and know that so many hungry quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him for breakfast on the heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching in again with short squeak, almost in military order; and each trotting off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling.”
Thus encircled by mystery, waited on by the four seasons, with their changing contributions, for even grim winter brought its skating matches, its snowstorms and Christmas carols, did the child sit and learn. These things were the alphabet whereby in after time he was to syllable and partly read the grand volume of the world; what matters it whether such alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it?
For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all; his existence was a bright, soft element of joy, out of which wonder after wonder bodied itself forth to teach by charming.
From “Sartor Resartus.”
A SCENE FROM WILLIAM TELL.
SHERIDAN KNOWLES.
Scene I.
[WILLIAM TELL, ALBERT HIS SON, AND GESLER.]
Gesler. What is thy name?
Tell. My name?
It matters not to keep it from thee now:—
My name is Tell.
Ges. Tell!—William Tell?
Tell. The same.
Ges. What! he so famed ’bove all his countrymen
For guiding o’er the stormy lake the boat?
And such a master of his bow, ’tis said
His arrows never miss!—Indeed—I’ll take
Exquisite vengeance!—Mark! I’ll spare thy life—
Thy boy’s too!—both of you are free—on one
Condition.
Tell. Name it.
Ges. I would see you make
A trial of your skill with that same bow
You shoot so well with.
Tell. Name the trial you
Would have me make.
Ges. You look upon your boy
As though instinctively you guessed it.
Tell. Look upon my boy! What mean you? Look upon
My boy as though I guessed it!—Guessed the trial
You’d have me make!—Guessed it
Instinctively! you do not mean—no—no—
You would not have me make a trial of
My skill upon my child!—Impossible!
I do not guess your meaning.
Ges. I would see
Thee hit an apple at the distance of
A hundred paces.
Tell. Is my boy to hold it?
Ges. No.
Tell. No!—I’ll send the arrow through the core!
Ges. It is to rest upon his head.
Tell. Great Heaven, you hear him!
Ges. Thou dost hear the choice I give—
Such trial of the skill thou art master of,
Or death to both of you; not otherwise
To be escaped.
Tell. O monster!
Ges. Wilt thou do it?
Albert. He will! he will!
Tell. Ferocious monster!—Make
A father murder his own child.
Ges. Take off
His chains, if he consent.
Tell. With his own hand!
Ges. Does he consent?
Alb. He does. [Gesler signs to his officers, who proceed
to take off Tell’s chains. Tell all the time unconscious
what they do.]
Tell. With his own hand!
Murder his child with his own hand—This hand!
The hand I’ve led him, when an infant, by!
’Tis beyond horror—’tis most horrible.
Amazement! [His chains fall off.] What’s that you’ve done to me.
Villains! put on my chains again. My hands
Are free from blood, and have no gust for it,
That they should drink my child’s! Here! here! I’ll not
Murder my boy for Gesler.
Alb. Father—father!
You will not hit me, father!—
Tell. Hit thee!—Send
The arrow through thy brain—or, missing that,
Shoot out an eye—or, if thine eye escape,
Mangle the cheek I’ve seen thy mother’s lips
Cover with kisses!—Hit thee—hit a hair
Of thee, and cleave thy mother’s heart—
Ges. Dost thou consent?
Tell. Give me my bow and quiver.
Ges. For what?
Tell. To shoot my boy!
Alb. No, father—no!
To save me!—You’ll be sure to hit the apple—
Will you not save me, father?
Tell. Lead me forth—
I’ll make the trial!
Alb. Thank you!
Tell. Thank me! Do
You know for what?—I will not make the trial,
To take him to his mother in my arms,
And lay him down a corpse before her!
Ges. Then he dies this moment—and you certainly
Do murder him whose life you have a chance
To save, and will not use it.
Tell. Well—I’ll do it: I’ll make the trial.
Alb. Father—
Tell. Speak not to me:
Let me not hear thy voice—Thou must be dumb;
And so should all things be—Earth should be dumb
And Heaven—unless its thunders muttered at
The deed, and sent a bolt to stop it! Give me
My bow and quiver!—
Ges. When all’s ready.
Tell. Well! lead on!
Scene II.
Persons.—Enter, slowly, People in evident distress—Officers, Sarnem, Gesler, Tell, Albert, and soldiers—one bearing Tell’s bow and quiver, another with a basket of apples.
Ges. That is your ground. Now shall they measure thence
A hundred paces. Take the distance.
Tell. Is the line a true one?
Ges. True or not, what is’t to thee?
Tell. What is’t to me? A little thing,
A very little thing—a yard or two
Is nothing here or there—were it a wolf
I shot at! Never mind.
Ges. Be thankful, slave,
Our grace accords thee life on any terms.
Tell. I will be thankful, Gesler!—Villain, stop!
You measure to the sun!
Ges. And what of that?
What matter whether to or from the sun?
Tell. I’d have it at my back—the sun should shine
Upon the mark, and not on him that shoots.
I cannot see to shoot against the sun—
I will not shoot against the sun!
Ges. Give him his way! Thou hast cause to bless my mercy.
Tell. I shall remember it. I’d like to see
The apple I’m to shoot at.
Ges. Stay! show me the basket!—there—
Tell. You’ve picked the smallest one.
Ges. I know I have.
Tell. O! do you?—But you see
The color on’t is dark—I’d have it light,
To see it better.
Ges. Take it as it is:
Thy skill will be the greater if thou hit’st it.
Tell. True—true! I did not think of that—I wonder
I did not think of that—Give me some chance
To save my boy! [Throws away the apple with all his force.]
I will not murder him,
If I can help it—for the honor of
The form thou wearest, if all the heart is gone.
Ges. Well, choose thyself.
Tell. Have I a friend among the lookers on?
Verner. [Rushing forward.] Here, Tell!
Tell. I thank thee, Verner!
He is a friend runs out into a storm
To shake a hand with us. I must be brief:
When once the bow is bent, we cannot take
The shot too soon. Verner, whatever be
The issue of this hour, the common cause
Must not stand still. Let not to-morrow’s sun
Set on the tyrant’s banner! Verner! Verner!
The boy!—the boy! Thinkest thou he hath the courage
To stand it.
Ver. Yes.
Tell. How looks he?
Ver. Clear and smilingly:
If you doubt it—look yourself.
Tell. No—no—my friend:
To hear it is enough.
Ver. He bears himself so much above his years—
Tell. I know!—I know.
Ver. With constancy so modest!—
Tell. I was sure he would—
Ver. And looks with such relying love
And reverence upon you—
Tell. Man! Man! Man!
No more! Already I’m too much the father
To act the man!—Verner, no more, my friend!
I would be flint—flint—flint. Don’t make me feel
I’m not—Do not mind me!—Take the boy
And set him, Verner, with his back to me.
Set him upon his knees—and place this apple
Upon his head, so that the stem may front me,—
Thus, Verner; charge him to keep steady—tell him
I’ll hit the apple! Verner, do all this
More briefly than I tell it thee.
Ver. Come, Albert! [Leading him out.]
Alb. May I not speak with him before I go?
Ver. No.
Alb. I would only kiss his hand.
Ver. You must not.
Alb. I must!—I cannot go from him without.
Ver. It is his will you should.
Alb. His will, is it?
I am content, then—come.
Tell. My boy! [Holding out his arms to him.]
Alb. My father! [Rushing into Tell’s arms.]
Tell. If thou canst bear it, should not I?—Go, now,
My son—and keep in mind that I can shoot—
Go, boy—be thou but steady, I will hit
The apple—Go!—God bless thee—go.—My
bow!— [The bow is handed to him.]
Thou wilt not fail thy master, wilt thou?—Thou
Hast never failed him yet, old servant—No,
I’m sure of thee—I know thy honesty.
Thou art stanch—stanch.—Let me see my quiver.
Ges. Give him a single arrow.
Tell. Do you shoot?
Sol. I do.
Tell. Is it so you pick an arrow, friend?
The point, you see, is bent; the feather jagged:
[Breaks it.]
That’s all the use ’tis fit for.
Ges. Let him have another.
Tell. Why, ’tis better than the first,
But yet not good enough for such an aim
As I’m to take—’tis heavy in the shaft:
I’ll not shoot with it! [Throws it away.] Let me see my quiver.
Bring it!—’Tis not one arrow in a dozen
I’d take to shoot with at a dove, much less
A dove like that.—
Ges. It matters not.
Show him the quiver.
Tell. See if the boy is ready.
[Tell here hides an arrow under his vest.]
Ver. He is.
Tell. I’m ready, too! Keep silent for
Heaven’s sake and do not stir—and let me have
Your prayers—your prayers—and be my witnesses
That if his life’s in peril from my hand,
’Tis only for the chance of saving it. [To the people.]
Ges. Go on.
Tell. I will.
O friends, for mercy sake, keep motionless
And silent.