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De Lorge's love o'erheard the king,—a beauteous, lively dame,

With smiling lips, and sharp, bright eyes, which always seemed the same;

She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be,

He surely would do wondrous things to show his love for

me;

King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove to prove his love; great glory will be mine."

She dropped her glove to prove his love, then looked at him and smiled;

He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild; The leap was quick, return was quick, he soon regained

his place,

Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.

"In faith," cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose

from where he sat;

"No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."

NOTE.-King Francis. This is supposed to have been Francis I. of France (b. 1494, d. 1547). He was devoted to sports of this nature.

LXXXIX. THE FOLLY OF INTOXICATION.

Iago. WHAT, are you hurt, lieutenant?

Cassio. Ay, past all surgery.

Iago. Marry, heaven forbid!

Cas. Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have

lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation! Iago, my reputation!

Iago. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man! there are ways to recover the general again. Sue to him again, and he's

yours.

Cas. I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

Iago. What was he that you followed with your sword? What had he done to you?

Cas. I know not.

Iago. Is't possible?

Cas. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. Oh that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Iago. Why, but you are now well enough: how came you thus recovered?

Cas. It hath pleased the devil, Drunkenness, to give place to the devil, Wrath; one unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

Iago. Come, you are too severe a moraler. As the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen; but since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.

Cas. I will ask him for my place again: he shall tell

me I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! Oh strange! - Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil!

Iago. Come, come; good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.

Cas. I have well approved it, sir,-I, drunk!

Iago. You or any man living may be drunk at a time, man. I'll tell you what you shall do. Our general's wife is now the general. Confess yourself freely to her; importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband, entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

Cas. You advise me well.

Iago. I protest in the sincerity of love and honest kind

ness.

Cas. I think it freely, and betimes in the morning, I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me: I am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here.

Iago. You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant, I must to the watch.

Cas. Good night, honest Iago.

Shakespeare.-Othello, Act ii, Scene iii.

NOTES.-Iago is represented as a crafty, unscrupulous villain. He applies for the position of lieutenant under Othello, but the latter has already appointed Cassio-who is honest, but of a weak character-to that position; he, however, makes Iago his ensign. Then Iago, to revenge himself for

this and other fancied wrongs, enters upon a systematic course of villainy, part of which is to bring about the intoxication of Cassio, and his consequent discharge from the lieutenancy.

The Hydra was a fabled monster of Grecian mythology, having nine heads, one of which was immortal. Desdemona was the wife of Othello.

XC. STARVED ROCK.

Francis Parkman, 1823-1893, the son of a clergyman of the same name, was born in Boston, and graduated at Harvard University in 1844. He spent more than twenty years in a careful study of the early French explorations and settlements in America; and he published the fruits of his labor in twelve large volumes. Although troubled with an affection of the eyes, which sometimes wholly prevented reading or writing, his work was most carefully and successfully done. His narratives are written in a clear and animated style, and his volumes are a rich contribution to American history.

THE cliff called "Starved Rock," now pointed out to travelers as the chief natural curiosity of the region, rises, steep on three sides as a castle wall, to the height of a hundred and twenty-five feet above the river. In front, it overhangs the water that washes its base; its western brow looks down on the tops of the forest trees below; and on the east lies a wide gorge, or ravine, choked with the mingled foliage of oaks, walnuts, and elms; while in its rocky depths a little brook creeps down to mingle with the river.

From the rugged trunk of the stunted cedar that leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river below, where the catfish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding over the wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current. The cliff is accessible only from the south, where a man may climb up, not without difficulty, by a steep and narrow passage. The top is about an acre in extent.

Here, in the month of December, 1682, La Salle and Tonty began to entrench themselves. They cut away the forest that crowned the rock, built storehouses and dwellings of its remains, dragged timber up the rugged pathway, and encircled the summit with a palisade. Thus the winter was passed, and meanwhile the work of negotiation went prosperously on. The minds of the Indians had been already prepared. In La Salle they saw their champion against the Iroquois, the standing terror of all this region. They gathered around his stronghold like the timorous peasantry of the Middle Ages around the rock-built castle of their feudal lord.

From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis, -for so he named his fort, -high and inaccessible as an eagle's nest, a strange scene lay before his eye. The broad, flat valley of the Illinois was spread beneath him like a map, bounded in the distance by its low wall of wooded hills. The river wound at his feet in devious channels among islands bordered with lofty trees; then, far on the left, flowed calmly westward through the vast meadows, till its glimmering blue ribbon was lost in hazy distance.

There had been a time, and that not remote, when these fair meadows were a waste of death and desolation, scathed with fire, and strewn with the ghastly relics of an Iroquois victory. Now, all was changed. La Salle looked down from his rock on a concourse of wild human life. Lodges of bark and rushes, or cabins of logs, were clustered on the open plain, or along the edges of the bordering forests. Squaws labored, warriors lounged in the sun, naked children whooped and gamboled on the grass.

Beyond the river, a mile and a half on the left, the banks were studded once more with the lodges of the Illinois, who, to the number of six thousand, had returned, since their defeat, to this their favorite dwelling place. Scattered along the valley, among the adjacent hills, or over the neighboring prairie, were the cantonments of a

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