2. At different places in the poem, we find that Napoleon was ambitious, yet anxious over the outcome of the battle; that he was thoughtful and resourceful; that while he rejoiced in his victory, he sympathized with the wounded boy.
IV. THE STAGE
The poem is like a little drama or play in one scene. Place Napoleon in his uniform on a little mound, and see him standing there with his head thrust forward, looking at the storming of a city a mile or so away. Things are indistinct in the background because the smoke of the battle obscures the walls and towers of the city. However, Napoleon is not so far away but that he hears the roar, and sees the denser clouds rise at each new discharge of battery guns. From between the clouds comes the single horse with its youthful rider galloping at full speed, without an instant's pause, until the mound is reached. We see the young man leap from his horse and grasp its mane to keep himself from falling, but though his lips are compressed, we see his eyes smiling brightly as he tells the emperor the great news.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
By GHACE E. SELLON
One of the most daring of those who engaged in the sea-fights of the American Revolution was Daniel Hawthorne, commander of a privateer, a man whose courage and enterprise won for him the title of "Bold Daniel." He came of one of the earliest American families, one that had been established in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1637, and had contributed not a little to the fame of that seaport, for his ancestors had been leaders among those whose stern and narrow views of justice had led them to persecute the Quakers and later to put to death innocent people during the awful period of the Salem witchcraft. Yet the same hardihood and fearless uprightness that had won esteem for Daniel Hawthorne had distinguished the family from the very first, and was passed on to the brave commander's descendants. His son Nathaniel, like the long line of notable men who had gone before him, possessed a strict sense of right and wrong, much courage and an especial fondness for the adventurous life on the sea. Though he contributed nothing to the celebrity of his forefathers, his son and namesake, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem, on July 4, 1804, gained for the old New England family a glory that will last.
It was in the home built by his father's father that Nathaniel was born and that he spent the first four years of his life. Yet he was never privileged to hear from the old captain's lips of the exciting sea- skirmishes in which the "Fair America," under the command of "Bold Daniel," had encountered and held her own against British vessels, for his grandfather had died many years before. Nor did the young boy ever know the pleasure of companionship with his father, who died in South America in 1808. In a great measure, too, he was deprived of association with his mother from the time when, following her husband's death, she removed with her children to her father's home, in another part of Salem. So deeply did she feel her loss that she shut herself away from the world during the remainder of her lifetime, and kept such strict privacy that she did not even take her meals with her family. The children were naturally quiet and reserved, and with the example of their mother's seclusion always before them, they took little part in the life outside of their home. Nathaniel did not like school, and, being under the care of relatives who allowed him much freedom, he missed a considerable part of the early school training that most boys receive. Yet his time was not wasted, for there were good books in his home, and these he read of his own free will.
When he was about eight or nine years of age, his mother took her children to live for a time upon property owned by her family on the shore of Lake Sebago, in Maine. Then began a period of great delight for the young boy and his sisters. As the land was mostly covered with woods and the settlements were far apart, there were endless opportunities for fishing and hunting and roaming about the woods or spending long, uninterrupted hours with favorite authors. In the winter Nathaniel passed much time in skating on Lake Sebago, feeling wholly free and at home in the midst of the wild life of nature.
So far as the boy's wishes were concerned, these days in Maine might have continued indefinitely; but his mother, feeling that he needed the discipline of regular study, sent him back to Salem to be prepared by a private teacher for entrance into Bowdoin College. The result of this training was that when he was about eighteen he became a member of the class at Bowdoin to which Longfellow and Horatio Bridge belonged, and thus began a career at college in which he proved himself a somewhat wayward student. The grind and drudgery of courses uninteresting to him he shunned, yet he would not let himself fail in any work that he undertook. Subjects that he liked he mastered readily.
Though he found no pleasure in breaking college rules, yet he made no pretensions to being a model student. He played cards in his room when he might have been studying, and would go off on a fishing trip when the fancy took him, without much regard for unfinished lessons. He looked forward with undisguised pleasure to his vacations spent at home, and on one occasion was so overcome by his desire to bring his studies to an end and leave Brunswick that, a short time before the close of the term, he wrote to his sister Louisa demanding that she invent an excuse for his return home. After stating five reasons for thus quitting Bowdoin, he continued: