McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader

Examples — Sitting 46

And they took Absalom, and cast him into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very great heap of stones upon him; and all Israel fled, everyone to his tent. Now Absalom, in his lifetime, had taken and reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the king's dale; for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance; and he called the pillar after his own name; and it is called unto this day, Absalom's Place.

Then said Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok, Let me now run, and bear the king tidings, how that the Lord hath avenged him of his enemies. And Joab said unto him, Thou shalt not bear tidings this day, but thou shalt bear tidings another day: but this day thou shalt bear no tidings, because the king's son is dead. Then said Joab to Cushi, Go, tell the king what thou hast seen. And Cushi bowed himself unto Joab, and ran.

Then said Ahimaaz the son of Zadok yet again to Joab, But howsoever, let me, I pray thee, also run after Cushi. And Joab said, Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing that thou hast no tidings ready? But howsoever, said he, let me run. And he said unto him, run. Then Ahimaaz ran by the way of the plain, and overran Cushi.

And David sat between the two gates; and the watchman went up to the roof over the gate unto the wall, and lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, a man running alone. And the watchman cried, and told the king. And the king said, If he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth. And he came apace, and drew near.

And the watchman saw another man running, and the watchman called unto the porter, and said, Behold, another man running alone. And the king said, He also bringeth tidings. And the watchman said, Methinketh the running of the foremost is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok. And the king said, He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings.

And Ahimaaz called, and said unto the king, All is well. And he fell down to the earth upon his face before the king, and said, Blessed be the Lord thy God, which hath delivered up the men that lifted up their hand against my lord the king. And the king said, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Ahimaaz answered, When Joab sent the king's servant, and me thy servant, I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was. And the king said unto him, Turn aside and stand here. And he turned aside, and stood still.

And behold, Cushi came; and Cushi said, Tidings my lord the king; for the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee. And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is.

And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! --II Samuel, Chap. xviii.

CXXIII. ABRAHAM DAVENPORT. (424)

'T was on a May day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night In day of which the Norland sagas tell, The Twilight of the Gods.

The low-hung sky Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below. Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked A loving guest at Bethany, but stern As Justice and inexorable Law.

Meanwhile in the old Statehouse, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, Trembling beneath their legislative robes. "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn," Some said; and then, as if with one accord, All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.

He rose, slow-cleaving with his steady voice The intolerable hush. "This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord's command To occupy till he come. So at the post Where he hath set me in his providence, I choose, for one, to meet him face to face, No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do his work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.

Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read, Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands, An act to amend an act to regulate The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon, Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport, Straight to the question, with no figures of speech Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without The shrewd, dry humor natural to the man: His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while, Between the pauses of his argument, To hear the thunder of the wrath of God Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.

And there he stands in memory to this day, Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen Against the background of unnatural dark, A witness to the ages as they pass, That simple duty hath no place for fear. --Whittier.

NOTE.--The "Dark Day," as it is known, occurred May 19th, 1780, and extended over all New England. The darkness came on about ten o'clock in the morning, and lasted with varying degrees of intensity until midnight of the next day. The cause of the phenomenon is unknown.

CXXIV. THE FALLS OF THE YOSEMITE. (426)

Thomas Starr King, 1824-1863, was born in New York City. His father was a Universalist minister; and, in 1834, he settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The son was preparing to enter Harvard University, when the death of his father devolved upon him the support of his mother, and his collegiate course had to be given up. He spent several years as clerk and teacher, improving meanwhile all possible opportunities for study. In 1846 he was settled over the church to which his father had preached in Charlestown. Two years later, he was called to the Hollis Street Unitarian Church in Boston. Here his eloquence and active public spirit soon made him well known. He also gained much reputation as a public lecturer. In 1860 he left the East to take charge of the Unitarian church in San Francisco. During the remaining years of his life, he exercised much influence in the public affairs of California. He died suddenly, of diphtheria, in the midst of his brilliant career.

Mr. King was a great lover of nature. His "White Hills," describing the mountain scenery of New Hampshire, is the most complete book ever written concerning that interesting region. ###

The Yosemite valley, in California, is a pass about ten miles long. At its eastern extremity it leads into three narrower passes, each of which extends several miles, winding by the wildest paths into the heart of the Sierra Nevada chain of mountains. For seven miles of the main valley, which varies in width from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half, the walls on either side are from two thousand to nearly five thousand feet above the road, and are nearly perpendicular. From these walls, rocky splinters a thousand feet in height start up, and every winter drop a few hundred tons of granite, to adorn the base of the rampart with picturesque ruin.

The valley is of such irregular width, and bends so much and often so abruptly, that there is a great variety and frequent surprise in the forms and combinations of the overhanging rocks as one rides along the bank of the stream. The patches of luxuriant meadow, with their dazzling green, and the grouping of the superb firs, two hundred feet high, that skirt them, and that shoot above the stout and graceful oaks and sycamores through which the horse path winds, are delightful rests of sweetness and beauty amid the threatening awfulness.

The Merced, which flows through the same pass, is a noble stream, a hundred feet wide and ten feet deep. It is formed chiefly of the streams that leap and rush through the narrower passes, and it is swollen, also, by the bounty of the marvelous waterfalls that pour down from the ramparts of the wider valley. The sublime poetry of Habakkuk is needed to describe the impression, and, perhaps, the geology, of these mighty fissures: "Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers."

At the foot of the breakneck declivity of nearly three thousand feet by which we reach the banks of the Merced, we are six miles from the hotel, and every rod of the ride awakens wonder, awe, and a solemn joy. As we approach the hotel, and turn toward the opposite bank of the river, what is that

"Which ever sounds and shines, A pillar of white light upon the wall Of purple cliffs aloof descried"?

That, reader, is the highest waterfall in the world--the Yosemite cataract, nearly twenty-five hundred feet in its plunge, dashing from a break or depression in a cliff thirty-two hundred feet sheer.

A writer who visited this valley in September, calls the cataract a mere tape line of water dropped from the sky. Perhaps it is so, toward the close of the dry season; but as we saw it, the blended majesty and beauty of it, apart from the general sublimities of Yosemite gorge, would repay a journey of a thousand miles. There was no deficiency of water. It was a powerful stream, thirty-five feet broad, fresh from the Nevada, that made the plunge from the brow of the awful precipice.

At the first leap it clears fourteen hundred and ninety-seven feet; then it tumbles down a series of steep stairways four hundred and two feet, and then makes a jump to the meadows five hundred and eighteen feet more. But it is the upper and highest cataract that is most wonderful to the eye, as well as most musical. The cliff is so sheer that there is no break in the body of the water during the whole of its descent of more than a quarter of a mile. It pours in a curve from the summit, fifteen hundred feet, to the basin that hoards it but a moment for the cascades that follow.

And what endless complexities and opulence of beauty in the forms and motions of the cataract! It is comparatively narrow at the top of the precipice, although, as we said, the tide that pours over is thirty-five feet broad. But it widens as it descends, and curves a little on one side as it widens, so that it shapes itself, before it reaches its first bowl of granite, into the figure of a comet. More beautiful than the comet, however, we can see the substance of this watery loveliness ever renew itself and ever pour itself away.

"It mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, Is an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald;--how profound The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs."

The cataract seems to shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus the most charming fretwork of watery nodules, each trailing its vapory train for a hundred feet or more, is woven all over the cascade, which swings, now and then, thirty feet each way, on the mountain side, as if it were a pendulum of watery lace. Once in a while, too, the wind manages to get back of the fall, between it and the cliff, and then it will whirl it round and round for two or three hundred feet, as if to try the experiment of twisting it to wring it dry.

Of course I visited the foot of the lowest fall of the Yosemite, and looked up through the spray, five hundred feet, to its crown. And I tried to climb to the base of the first or highest cataract, but lost my way among the steep, sharp rocks, for there is only one line by which the cliff can be scaled. But no nearer view that I found or heard described, is comparable with the picture, from the hotel, of the comet curve of the upper cataract, fifteen hundred feet high, and the two falls immediately beneath it, in which the same water leaps to the level of the quiet Merced.

CXXV. A PSALM OF LIFE. (429)

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;--

Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. --Longfellow.

CXXVI. FRANKLIN'S ENTRY INTO PHILADELPHIA. (431)

Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, was born in Boston. He received little schooling, but being apprenticed to his brother, a printer, he acquired a taste for reading and study. In 1723, he went to Philadelphia, where he followed his chosen calling, and in time became the publisher of the "Pennsylvania Gazette" and the celebrated "Poor Richard's Almanac."

As a philosopher Franklin was rendered famous by his discovery of the identity of lightning with electricity. His career in public affairs may be briefly summarized as follows: In 1736 he was made Clerk of the Provincial Assembly; in 1737, deputy postmaster at Philadelphia; and in 1753, Postmaster general for British America. He was twice in England as the agent of certain colonies. After signing the Declaration of Independence, he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to France in 1776. On his return, in 1785, he was made "President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," holding the office three years. He was also one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States.