McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader Part 53

Ham. Arm'd, say you?

Mar. Ber. Arm'd, my lord.

Ham. From top to toe?

Mar. Ber. My lord, from head to foot.

Ham. Then saw you not his face?

Hor. Oh, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.

Ham. What, look'd he frowningly?

Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Ham. Pale or red?

Hor. Nay, very pale.

Ham. And fix'd his eyes upon you?

Hor. Most constantly.

Ham. I would I had been there.

Hor. It would have much amazed you.

Ham. Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?

Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

Mar. Ber. Longer, longer.

Hor. Not when I saw't.

Ham. His beard was grizzled,--no?

Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver'd.

Ham. I will watch to-night; Perchance 't will walk again.

Hor. I warrant it will.

Ham. If it a.s.sume my n.o.ble father's person, I'll speak to it, though h.e.l.l itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue: I will requite your loves. So, fare you well: Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you.

DEFINITIONS.--Tru'ant, wandering from business, loitering. Trust'er, a believer. At-tent', attentive, heedful. De-liv'er, to communicate, to utter. Cap-a-pie' (from the French, pro. kap-a-pee'), from head to foot.

Trun'cheon (pro. trun'shun), a short staff, a baton. Bea'ver, a part of the helmet covering the face, so constructed that the wearer could raise or lower it. Ten'a-ble, capable of being held.

NOTES.--What make you from Wittenberg? i.e., what are you doing away from Wittenberg?

Wittenberg is a university town in Saxony, where Hamlet and Horatio had been schoolfellows.

Elsinore is a fortified town on one of the Danish islands, and was formerly the seat of one of the royal castles. It is the scene of Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

Hard upon; i.e., soon after.

Funeral baked meats. This has reference to the ancient custom of funeral feasts.

My dearest foe; i.e., my greatest foe. A common use of the word "dearest"

in Shakespeare's time.

Or ever, i.e., before.

Season your admiration; i.e., restrain your wonder.

The dead vast; i.e., the dead void.

Armed at point; i.e., armed at all points.

Did address itself to motion; i.e., made a motion.

Give it an understanding, etc.; i.e., understand, but do not speak of it.

I will requite your loves, or, as we should say, I will repay your friends.h.i.+p.

CX. DISSERTATION ON ROAST PIG.

Charles Lamb (b. 1775, d. 1834) was born in London. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he was a schoolfellow and intimate friend of Coleridge. In 1792 he became a clerk in the India House, London, and in 1825 he retired from his clerks.h.i.+p on a pension of 441 Pounds. Lamb never married, but devoted his life to the care of his sister Mary, who was at times insane. He wrote "Tales founded on the Plays of Shakespeare," and several other works of rare merit; but his literary fame rests princ.i.p.ally on the inimitable "Essays of Elia" (published originally in the "London Magazine"), from one of which the following selection is adapted.

1. Mankind, says a Chinese ma.n.u.script, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day.

2. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his "Mundane Mutations," where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The ma.n.u.script goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following:

3. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion till it was reduced to ashes.

4. Together with the cottage,--a sorry, antediluvian makes.h.i.+ft of a building, you may think it,--what was of much more importance, a fine litter of newborn pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods we read of.

5. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor a.s.sailed his nostrils unlike any scent which he had before experienced.

6. What, could it proceed from? Not from the burnt cottage,--he had smelt that smell before,--indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think.

7. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his b.o.o.by fas.h.i.+on to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life, indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted--crackling!

Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now; still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit.

8. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself up to the newborn pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fas.h.i.+on, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with a retributory cudgel, and, finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies.