7. Why is nobody on the house-tops now?

8. Who are the only persons not in the street or hastening to the scaffold's foot?

9. Why should even the "palsied few" desire to see him in disgrace?

10. How must they have gotten to the windows?

11. What increases the dismalness of the picture?

12. Why does the rope cut his wrists "more than needs"?

13. Why can he not be sure his forehead bleeds?

14. What were the "year's misdeeds" of the patriot?

15. What is his feeling in the first line of the last stanza? 16. What wish comes to him in the second line?

17. Explain fully the question.

18. In what spirit does he say, "God might question"?

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19. What change as he declares, "Tis God shall repay"?

20. What is his feeling in "I am safer so"?

21. At what point does his character reach its noblest development?

22. What, in general, is the character of the patriot?

23. What is the character of the people?

24. Why does Browning add "An Old Story" as the sub-title of this poem?

REFERENCES

BROWNING: Hervé Riel. Andrea Del Sarto. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

SCOTT: Patriotism.

WHITTIER: Prisoner for Debt. The Lost Occasion.

LONGFELLOW: The Cumberland.

STORY: Io Victis.

ELIOT: The Choir Invisible.

Belisarius.

SARAH PRATT: The Gift of Empty Hands.

JOHN PIERPONT: The Exile at Rest.

SIR HENRY TAYLOR: The Hero.

GEORGE WALLER THORNBURG: The Jacobite On Tower Hill.

BERNARD BARTON: Caractacus.

Crescentius.

THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN

THE

(A FABLE)

HANNAH FLAGG GOULD

HE fable is a fictitious story, or tale, commonly used to convey some useful truth, in which animals or objects are made to become the speakers and actors. People do not like to be told things; they long to discover them. Hence the poet seldom conveys truth by direct methods. His mission is to place suggestive truths before us, letting those truths impress us as they may. A poem has charm when in the conversation of two persons we catch for ourselves a truth we love and desire to live by. But its charm is increased many-fold if we discover such a truth in the imaginary conversation of two objects. The author, seeing a pebble and an acorn lying by the roadside, doubtless, with deeper insight thought of them as almost human as she imagined the life-germ in the one developing, and the cold heart of the other lying still in boastful scorn. Far beyond pebble and acorn, she saw two types of human beings, and she used this simple fable to teach us each a profound lesson she knows we will take gladly, not from her, but from the voiceless lips of the pebble and the acorn.

THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN

"I am a Pebble! and yield to none!"
Were the swelling words of a tiny stone:
"Nor time nor seasons can alter me;

I am abiding, while ages flee.

The pelting hail and the driveling rain.
Have tried to soften me, long, in vain;
And the tender dew has sought to melt
Or touch my heart; but it was not felt.

"There's none can tell about my birth,
For I'm as old as the big, round earth.
The children of men arise, and pass
Out of the world, like blades of grass;
And many a foot on me has trod,
That's gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble! but who art thou,

Rattling along from the restless bough?"

The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay, for a moment, abashed and mute;
She never before had been so near
This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt, for a time, at a loss to know
How to answer a thing so coarse and low.

But to give reproof of a nobler sort
Than the angry look, or the keen retort,
At length, she said, in a gentle tone:
"Since it has happened that I am thrown
From the lighter element, where I grew,
Down to another so hard and new
And beside a personage so august,
Abased, I will cover my head in dust,
And quickly retire from the sight of one
Whom time, nor season, nor storm, nor sun,
Nor the gentle dew, nor the grinding heel,
Has ever subdued, or made to feel!"
And soon, in the earth, she sank away

From the comfortless spot where the Pebble lay.

But it was not long ere the soil was broke
By the peering head of an infant oak:
And, as it rose, and its branches spread,
The Pebble looked up, and wondering said:

"A modest Acorn; never to tell

What was enclosed in its simple shell!
That the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its simple cup!
And meekly to sink in the darksome earth,
Which proves that nothing could hide its worth!

"And O! how many will tread on me,
To come and admire the beautiful tree,
Whose head is towering toward the sky,
Above such a worthless thing as I!
Useless and vain, a cumberer here,
I have been idling from year to year;
But never, from this, shall a vaunting word
From the humble Pebble again be heard,
Till something without me or within,
Shall show the purpose for which I have been."
The Pebble its vow could not forget,
And it lies there wrapped in silence yet.

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. What kind of stone is a pebble?

2. Why did the author select a pebble and acorn instead of real persons to talk this way?

3. Just what is the pebble's boast? Why "swelling words"? 4. How many influences did the pebble say it had resisted? Was this not true?

5. What added weight would these words have, had they come from another?

6. How did the pebble greet the acorn?

7. What was the first effect of the salute upon the acorn?

8. What did the acorn finally resolve to do?

9. What then became of the acorn?

10. Explain

"the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its simple cup."

11. How was it proven that worth cannot be hidden?

12. What effect did all this have on the pebble?

13. Why now call herself "a worthless thing," "useless and vain,

a cumberer here"?

14. What high resolve did the pebble now make? Explain fully. 15. If the pebble were a person, what kind of person would it be (a) in the home; (b) in school; (c) in business?

16. If the acorn were a person, what kind of person would it be (a) in the home; (b) in school; (c) in business?

REFERENCES

LADY CAREW: True Greatness.

MENELLA BUTE SMEDLEY: The Discovery.

MACKAY: Song of Life.

WILLIAM COWPER: The Nightingale and the Glow-worm.
WALTER C. SMITH: The Self-Exiled.

THE SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE FLAG

Ye who love the Republic, remember the claim
Ye owe to her fortunes, ye owe to her name,
To her years of prosperity past and in store,-
A hundred behind you, a thousand before!

The blue arch above us is Liberty's dome,
The green fields beneath us Equality's home;
But the schoolroom to-day is Humanity's friend,-
Let the people, the flag and the schoolroom defend!

'Tis the schoolhouse that stands by the flag;

Let the nation stand by the school!

'Tis the schoolbell that rings for our Liberty old,

'Tis the schoolboy whose ballot shall rule.