for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse, and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.

I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterward with the original, I discovered many faults, and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language; and this encouraged me to think I might possibly, in time, come to be a tolerable English writer of which I was extremely ambitious.

My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun to print a newspaper. It was the second that appeared in America, and was called the New England Courant. He had some ingenious men among his friends, who amused themselves by writing little pieces for this paper, which gained it credit and made it more in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us.

Hearing their conversation, and their accounts of

the approbation their papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among them; but, being still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would object to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper, I put it at night under the door of the printing-house.

It was found in the morning, and communicated to his writing friends when they called in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation, and that, in their different guesses at the author, none were named but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity. I suppose, now, that I was rather lucky in my judges, and that, perhaps, they were not really so very good ones as I then esteemed them.

in den'tures, the contract by which a youth is bound to a master as an apprentice.

jour'ney man, a man hired to work
by the day; or, one who has
mastered a trade.

im'port, meaning, importance.
Grub Street, a street in London de-

scribed as being much inhabited by writers of the poorer sort. So any poor production is called grub street."

66

The Spectator, a

series of essays,

edited by Joseph Addison, in the form of a periodical, from 1711 to 1712.

Он, many a shaft at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant!

And many a word at random spoken,

May soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken.

BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE

CHARLES WOLFE

This poem was written after reading an account of the battle of Corunna (Spain) between the English and the French, in 1809. Sir John Moore was commander of the English troops. Abandoned by the Spaniards, and threatened by a great army under Napoleon, he was obliged to retreat, and he was killed while the troops were embarking to leave Corunna. The poem describes his burial in the citadel by his loyal men.

NOT a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly, at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeams' misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay, like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

MEMORIAL TO SIR JOHN MOORE IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,

And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on,
In the grave where a Briton has laid him!

But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring;

And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory! We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But we left him alone in his glory.

up'braid, to charge with something | reck, care; take heed. go'ry, covered with blood.

wrong.

CHARLES WOLFE (1791-1823) was a native of Dublin, Ireland, and a graduate of Trinity College, where he was famed for scholarship and literary ability. Besides this renowned poem, Wolfe wrote one or two songs full of tender pathos and delicate beauty.

GRASS

JOHN RUSKIN

GATHER a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing there, as it seems, is of notable goodness or beauty. There is a very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point, not a perfect point either, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much-cared-for example of Nature's workmanship, made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven. There is also a little pale and hollow stalk,