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INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 109

as the one here given. What must have been the power of this indomitable leader whose boy-soldiers, fired by his spirit, could perform such miracles of heroism!

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:

A mile or so away,

On a little mound, Napoleon

Stood on our storming-day.

With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

Just as perhaps he mused, "My plans
That soar, to earth may fall,
Let once my army-leader Lannes
Waver at yonder wall,-"

Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound

Full-galloping; nor bridle drew

Until he reached the mound.

Then off there flung in smiling joy,

And held himself erect

By just his horse's mane, a boy:
You hardly could suspect-

(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)

You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace

We've got you Ratisbon!

The Marshal's in the market-place,

And you'll be there anon,

To see your flag-bird flap his vans.
Where I, to heart's desire,

Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.

The chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes

A film the mother-eagle's eye

When her bruised eaglet breathes.
"You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:

"I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,
Smiling, the boy fell dead.

NOTES

1. Ratisbon-The city of Regensburg on the Danube opposite the mouth of the river Regen.

2. Napoleon-Look up the career of Napoleon in any good history text. Locate Regensburg on the map.

3. Prone-Here inclined.

4. Lannes-Jean Lannes, Duc de Montebello (1769-1809). One of Napoleon's most brilliant and trusted marshals.

He

was fatally wounded in the battle of Aspern against the Austrians later in the year.

5. Flag-bird-The eagles of France, or eagle-standard.

6. Vans-Wings.

7. "As sheathes a film the mother-eagle's eye." The eagle, like the chicken or the duck, has a third eyelid, a thin, translucent membrane called the winking membrane, which it can draw over its eye at will.

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. Give a brief sketch of the history of Napoleon.

2. In what characteristic attitude is he pictured to us?

3. Explain "prone brow oppressive with its mind."

4. In what mood was Napoleon when he caught the first glimpse of the approaching messenger?

5. What is shown in “smiling joy"? How do you account for

this mood?

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 111

6. What tells us how intensely the boy has suffered in his Emperor's cause?

7. Whose "heart's desire' was it? What inspired such a desire? 8. Why should the soldier's pride in the boy be touched to the quick at the suggestion that he was just wounded?

9. In what spirit did the boy make the sacrifice? How can you account for this?

10. What are the most prominent traits of character shown of Napoleon in the poem?

11. What prominent traits are shown of the boy?

12. What inspired in this boy such a spirit of genuine heroism?

REFERENCES

O'REILLY: Ensign Epps the Color Bearer.

The Drummer Boy at Shiloh.

WHITTIER: The Hive at Gettysburg.

HUNT: The Glove and the Lions.

HUGO: The Carronade.

HALLECK: Marco Bozzaris.

TICKNOR: Little Giffin.

MILLER: The Defense of the Alamo.

PHOEBE CARY: A Leak in the Dyke.

MOORE: The Minstrel-Boy.

PIERPONT: Napoleon at Rest.

A

IN SCHOOL DAYS

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

HALO lingers around the schoolboy memories of

the grown man. Many are unable to separate the ideas of drudgery from thoughts of school. To them the old man's cherished recollections of the joys, the heartaches, and the associations of school days are incapable of explanation. When the calm musings that come with the ripening years of a well-spent life are revealed to us, we see new reasons for this loving search for the things of the past that childish enthusiasm and admiration have made hallowed and sacred. And this will be so, no matter how forbidding some of the surroundings may have been.

John G. Whittier passed many happy days in the schoolhouse described in the following verses. A tall post at present marks its site. The legend on this post, "Here Whittier went to school," cannot fail to bring to the minds of his friends the little girl on whose grave the grasses had "forty years been growing." On the wall of the room where Whittier was born may still be seen an odd little sampler worked by the busy, nervous fingers that twitched the blue-checked apron at the close of that short but memorable winter day. And when we think how proudly the "restless feet" of the little boy later bore him to the forefront of those who battled for every good cause, we do not wonder that the little brown schoolhouse was very dear to him even in its grotesque ugliness on the bare, bleak New England hillside. No

IN SCHOOL DAYS

113

wonder either that Oliver Wendell Holmes, soon after the publication of the poem, wrote the author congratulating him on having written the greatest schoolboy poem in the English language. Nor is it strange that the genial, warmhearted "Autocrat" found his cheeks wet with tears when he had finished reading the schoolroom idyl.

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Still sits the schoolhouse by the road,

A ragged beggar sunning;

Around it still the sumachs grow,

And blackberry vines are running.

*Used by special permission of the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co.

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