Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 15

"His dead body was found beside the casket, and the heart of Bruce was brought back to Scotland and deposited in the ivy-clad Abbey of Melrose.

"Douglas was a real hero, and few things more engaging than his exploits were ever told under the holly and mistletoe, or in the warm Christmas light of the old Scottish Yule-logs.

"What has interested you most in Scotland?" said Master Lewis to George Howe, continuing the subject.

"I am hardly interested in antiquities at all," said George, frankly.

"I try to be, but it is not in me. A living factory is more to my taste than a dead museum. The most interesting things I have seen are the great Glasgow factories. As for stories, I have been thinking of one that has more force for me than all the legends I ever read."

"We shall be glad to hear you tell it," said Master Lewis. "My business is teaching, and it is my duty to stimulate a love of literature. But I have all respect for a boy with mechanical taste; no lives promise greater usefulness. We will listen to George's story."

"It is not a romantic story," said George. "I will call it

A GLASGOW FACTORY BOY.

"Just above the wharves of Glasgow, on the banks of the Clyde, there once lived a factory boy, whom I will call Davie. At the age of ten he entered a cotton factory as 'piecer.' He was employed from six o'clock in the morning till eight at night. His parents were very poor, and he well knew that his must be a boyhood of very hard labor. But then and there, in that buzzing factory, he resolved that he would obtain an education, and would become an intelligent and a useful man. With his very first week's wages he purchased 'Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin,'

He then entered an evening school that met between the hours of eight and ten. He paid the expenses of his instruction out of his own hard earnings. At the age of sixteen he could read Virgil and Horace as readily as the pupils of the English grammar schools.

"He next began a course of self-instruction. He had been advanced in the factory from a 'piecer' to the spinning-jenny. He brought his books to the factory, and placing one of them on the 'jenny,' with the lesson open before him, he divided his attention between the running of the spindles and rudiments of knowledge. He now began to aspire to become a preacher and a missionary, and to devote his life in some self-sacrificing way to the good of mankind. He entered Glasgow University. He knew that he must work his way, but he also knew the power of resolution, and he was willing to make almost any sacrifice to gain the end. He worked at cotton-spinning in the summer, lived frugally, and applied his savings to his college studies in the winter. He completed the allotted course, and at the close was able triumphantly to say, '_I never had a farthing that I did not earn_.'

"That boy was Dr. David Livingstone."

"An excellent story," said Master Lewis. "A sermon in a story, and a volume of philosophy in a life. Now, Tommy, what is the most attractive thing _you_ have seen?"

"I see it now. Oh, look! look!" said Tommy, flying to the window.

The full moon was hanging over the great castle, whitening its grim turrets.

The boys all gazed upon the scene, which appeared almost too beautiful for reality.

"It looks like a castle in the sky," said Wyllys.

Story-telling was at an end. So the exercises ended with an exhibition of Edinburgh Castle by moonlight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {CaeSAR'S LEGIONS LANDING IN BRITAIN.}]

CHAPTER VII.

A RAINY EVENING STORY AT CARLISLE.

The Druids and Romans.--The Story of the Jolly Harper Man.--"When first I came to Merry Carlisle."

"Carlisle!" said Master Lewis, as the cars stopped at a busy looking city, the terminus of many lines of railway.

"Carlisle?" asked Frank Gray, glancing at the evidences of business energy about the station. "Carlisle? I have heard that the city was a thousand years old."

"An old city may grow," said Master Lewis, on the way to the hotel.

"In 1800, Carlisle had but 4,000 inhabitants, now it has more than 30,000."

Carlisle was the ancient seat of the kings of Cambria, and was a Roman station in the early days of the Christian era. It was destroyed in 900 by the Danes, was ravaged by the Picts and Scots, was doubtless visited by Agricola, Severus, and Hadrian, and it has a part in the history of all the Border wars. Here half-forgotten kings lived; here Roman generals made their airy camps, and near it the grotesque s.h.i.+ps of Roman emperors dropped their sails in the Solway. Here Christianity made an early advent, and the hideous rites of the Druid priests disappeared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMANS INVADING BRITAIN.]

The ancient Druids wors.h.i.+pped in sacred groves; the oaks were their fanes and chapels, but they erected immense stone temples open to the sky, the moon, and stars: these were their cathedrals. In them were great stones used as altars of sacrifice, and on their altars the dark and mysterious priests offered up human victims to their G.o.ds.

The country around Carlisle abounds in Roman and Druidical relics, and in antiquities a.s.sociated with the Border contests. At Penrith may be seen the ruins of a Druid temple, formed of sixty-seven immense stones, called "long Meg and her daughters."

The Isle of Man, the ancient and poetic Mona, whose grand scenery was once the supposed abode of the G.o.ds of the Saxons, lies near the Solway, and to it excursion steamers go from the western coast towns of England carrying pleasure seekers all the long summer days. Here the Druids gathered after the defeat of the Saxons by the Romans, and thither the Romans followed them, and fell upon the long-bearded priests and the wild torch-bearing priestesses, and put them to the sword. The island of Mona may be called the Druid's sepulchre.

The afternoon was rainy, and the boys, though impatient, were confined to the hotel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Ma.s.sACRE OF THE DRUIDS.}]

In the evening Master Lewis said,--

"One of the most quaint and curious of old English ballads is a.s.sociated with Carlisle, and is founded upon a funny story which ill.u.s.trates the rude simplicity of the early English court. The ballad may be found in the Percy Society's Collections, which you may some day examine in the Boston Public Library, or indeed in any great library at home or in England. It is ent.i.tled 'The Jolly Harper Man.'

I will relate it to you in the rather decorated style that I once heard it told to a company of young people at a Christmas gathering in one of the London charity schools. I hope it will interest you as much now as it did the boys and girls who listened to it then.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRUID SACRIFICE.]

THE STORY OF THE JOLLY HARPER MAN AND HIS GOOD FORTUNE.

"Many, many years ago,--as long ago as the days of Fair Rosamond, when Henry Plantagenet and his unruly family governed England, and some think as long ago as old Henry I.,--there lived in Scotland a jolly harper man, who was accounted the most charming player in all the world. The children followed him in crowds through the streets, nor could they be stopped while he continued playing; even the animals in the woods sat on their haunches to listen when he wandered harping through the country; and the fair daughters of the n.o.bles immediately fell in love as often as he approached their castles.

"King Henry had a wonderful horse--a very wonderful horse--named _Brownie_. He did not quite equal in dexterity and intelligence the high-flying animal of whom you have read in the 'Arabian Nights,' but he knew a great deal, and was a sort of philosopher among horses,--just as Newton was a philosopher among men. King Henry said he would not part with him for a province,--he would rather lose his crown. In this he was wise, for a new crown could have been as easily made as a stew-pan; but all the world, it may be, could not produce such another intelligent horse.

"King Henry had fine stables built for the animal,--a sort of horse palace. They were very strong, and were fastened by locks, and bars, and bolts, and were kept by gay grooms, and guarded day and night by soldiers, who never had been known to falter in their devotion to the interests of the king.

"So strongly was the animal guarded, that it came to be a proverb among the English yeomanry, that a person could no more do this or that hard thing than 'they could steal Brownie from the stables of the king.'

"The king liked the proverb; it was a compliment to his wisdom and sagacity. It made him feel good,--so good, in fact, that it led him one day quite to overshoot the mark in an effort that he made to increase the people's high opinion.

"'If any one,' said he, after a good dinner,--'if any one were smart enough to get Brownie out of his stables without my knowledge, I would for his cleverness forgive him, and give him an estate to return the animal.' Then he looked very wise, and felt very comfortable and very secure. 'But,' he added, 'evil overtake the man who gets caught in an attempt to steal my horse. Lucky will it be for him if his eyes ever see the light of the English sun again.'

"Then the report went abroad that the man who would be so shrewd as to get possession of the king's horse should have an estate, but that he who failed in the attempt should lose his head.

"The English court, at this time, was at Carlisle, near the Scottish border. The jolly harper man lived in the old town of Striveling, since called Stirling, at some distance from the border.

"The jolly harper man, like most people of genius, was very poor. He often played in the castles of the n.o.bles, especially on festive occasions; and, as he contrasted the luxurious living of these fat lords with his own poverty, he became suddenly seized with a desire for wealth, and he remembered the proverb, which was old even then, that 'Where there is a will there is a way.'

"One autumn day, as he was travelling along the borders of Loch Lomond, a famous lake in the middle of Scotland, he remembered that there was a cave overlooking the lake from a thickly wooded hill, in which dwelt a hermit, who often was consulted by people in perplexity, and who bore the name of the 'Man of Wisdom.'

"He was not a wicked magician, nor did he pretend to have any dealings with the dead. He was gifted only with what was called clearness of vision; he could see into the secret of things, just as Zerah Colburn could see into difficult problems of mathematics, without study.