Why does a man build a house? To live in, I suppose -to have a home. But is a fine house a home? I mean, is a "palatial residence," with Mrs. Potiphar at the head of it, the "home" of which we all dream more or less, and for which we ardently long as we grow older? A house, I take it, is a retreat to which a man hurries from business, and in which he is compensated by the tenderness and thoughtful regard of a woman, and the play of his children, for the rough rubs with men. I know it is a silly view of the case, but I'm getting old and can't help it.

Men are tyrants, Mr.

"You men are intolerable. Potiphar. They are ogres who entice us poor girls into their castles, and then eat up our happiness, and scold us while they eat."

Well, I suppose it is so. I suppose I am an ogre and enticed Polly into my castle. But she didn't find it large enough, and teased me to build another.

"How about the library?" said she one day.

"What library?" inquired I.

"Why, our library, of course.'

"I haven't any.

"Do you mean to have such a house as this without a library?"

"Why," said I plaintively, "I don't read books—I never did, and I never shall; and I don't care anything about them. Why should I have a library?"

"Why, because it's part of a house like this."

"Mrs. P., are you fond of books?"

"No, not particularly. But one must have some regard to appearances. Suppose we are Hottentots, you don't want us to look so, do you?"

I thought that it was quite as barbarous to imprison a lot of books that we should never open, and that would stand in gilt upon the shelves, silently laughing us to scorn, as not to have them if we didn't want them. I proposed a compromise.

"Is it the looks of the thing, Mrs. P.?" said I. "That's all," she answered.

"Oh! well, I'll arrange it."

So I had my shelves built, and my old friends Matthews and Rider furnish me with complete sets of handsome gilt covers to all the books that no gentleman's library should be without, which I arranged, carefully, upon the shelves, and had the best-looking library in town. I locked 'em in, and the key is always lost when anybody wants to take down a book. However, it was a good investment in leather, for it brings me in the reputation of a reading man and a patron of literature.

O! dear me, I wonder if this is the "home sweet home" business the girls used to sing about! Music does certainly alter cases. I can't quite get used to it. Last week I was one morning in the basement breakfast-room, and I heard an extra cried. I ran out of the area door-dear me !before I thought what I was about; I emerged bareheaded from under the steps, and ran a little way after the boy. I know it wasn't proper. I am sorry, very sorry. I am afraid Mrs. Croesus saw me; I know Mrs. Gnu told it all about that morning: and Mrs. Settum Downe called directly upon Mrs. Potiphar, to know if it were really true that I had lost my wits, as everybody was saying. I don't know what Mrs. P. answered. I am sorry to have compromised her so. I went immediately and ordered a pray-do of the blackest walnut. My resignation is very gradual. Kurz Pacha says they put on gravestones in Sennaar three Latin words-do you know Latin? if you don't, come and borrow some of my books. The words are: ora pro me!

8. Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was a great historian and a master of English. His theme was America-the story of the pioneer in the West, of the conflicts of the settler and the Indian. He personally experienced the life about which he wrote, going West soon after graduating from Harvard and

living with the Indians. The following extract illustrates the sincerity and soundness of his style.

THE DEATH OF PONTIAC

(From The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Chapter XXXI)

He who, at the present day, crosses from the city of St. Louis to the opposite shore of the Mississippi, and passes southward through a forest festooned with grape-vines, and fragrant with the scent of flowers, will soon emerge upon the ancient hamlet of Cahokia. To one fresh from the busy suburbs of the American city, the small French houses, scattered in picturesque disorder, the light-hearted, thriftless look of their inmates, and the woods which form the background of the picture, seem like the remnants of an earlier and simpler world. Strange changes have passed around that spot. Forests have fallen, cities have sprung up, and the lonely wilderness is thronged with human life. Nature herself has taken part in the general transformation; and the Mississippi has made a fearful inroad, robbing from the luckless Creoles a mile of rich meadow and woodland. Yet, in the midst of all, this relic of the lost empire of France has preserved its essential features through the lapse of a century, and offers at this day an aspect not widely different from that which met the eye of Pontiac, when he and his chiefs landed on its shore.

The place was full of Illinois Indians; such a scene as in our own time may often be met with in some squalid settlement of the border, where the vagabond guests, bedizened with dirty finery, tie their small horses in rows along the fences, and stroll idly among the houses, or lounge about the dramshops. A chief so renowned as Pontiac could not remain long among the friendly Creoles of Cahokia without being summoned to a feast; and at such primitive entertainment the whiskey-bottle would not fail to play its part. This was in truth the case. Pontiac drank deeply, and, when the carousal was over, strode down the village street to the adjacent woods, where he was

heard to sing the medicine songs, in whose magic power he trusted as the warrant of success in all his undertakings.

An English trader, named Williamson, was then in the village. He had looked on the movements of Pontiac with a jealousy probably not diminished by the visit of the chief to the French at St. Louis; and he now resolved not to lose so favorable an opportunity to despatch him. With this view, he gained the ear of a strolling Indian, belonging to the Kaskaskia tribe of the Illinois, bribed him with a barrel of liquor, and promised him a farther reward if he would kill the chief. The bargain was quickly made. When Pontiac entered the forest, the assassin stole close upon his track; and, watching his moment, glided behind him, and buried a tomahawk in his brain.

The dead body was soon discovered, and startled cries and wild howlings announced the event. The word was caught up from mouth to mouth, and the place resounded with infernal yells. The warriors snatched their weapons. The Illinois took part with their guilty countryman; and the few followers of Pontiac, driven from the village, fled to spread the tidings and call the nations to revenge. Meanwhile the murdered chief lay on the spot where he had fallen, until St. Ange, mindful of former friendship, sent to claim the body, and buried it with warlike honors, near his fort of St. Louis.

Thus basely perished this champion of a ruined race. But could his shade have revisited the scene of murder, his savage spirit would have exulted in the vengeance which overwhelmed the abettors of the crime. Whole tribes were rooted out to expiate it. Chiefs and sachems, whose veins had thrilled with his eloquence; young warriors, whose aspiring hearts had caught the inspiration of his greatness, mustered to revenge his fate; and, from the north and the east, their united bands descended on the villages of the Illinois. Tradition has but faintly preserved the memory of the event; and its only annalists, men who held the intestine feuds of the savage tribes in no more account than the quarrels of panthers or wildcats, have left but a meagre record. Yet enough remains to tell us

that over the grave of Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement, than flowed from the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus; and the remnant of the Illinois who survived the carnage remained for ever after sunk in utter insignificance.

Neither mound nor tablet marked the burial-place of Pontiac. For a mausoleum, a city has risen above the forest hero; and the race whom he hated with such burning rancor trample with unceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave.

9. John Fiske (1842-1901) was another one of our most famous historians. He was long connected with Harvard. His theme, like Parkman's, was America, but he stressed the institutional and governmental side of the story of the American nation. (For readings see Bibliography, p. 267.)

10. Henry W. Grady (1850-1889), was an eloquent Southern speaker and writer who did much by his addresses and writings to establish the right feeling between the North and the South after the Civil War.

THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW

(From The New South, a speech delivered before the New England Society at its annual dinner in New York City, December 12, 1886. This made a great sensation. Grady himself said: 66 When I found myself on my feet,-I knew then that I had a message for that assemblage. As soon as I opened my mouth it came rushing out.")

"There was a South of slavery and secession-that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedomthat South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill at Tammany Hall in 1866, true then and true now, I shall make my text to-night.

My friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow

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