When he had finished, the knights all looked at one another, but no one spoke a word. Then they looked again at Sir Roland's shield, to make sure that their eyes had not deceived them, and there the golden star was still shining.
After a little silence the lord of the castle spoke.
"Men make mistakes," he said, "but our silver shields are never mistaken. Sir Roland has fought and won the hardest battle of all to-day."
Then the others all rose and saluted Sir Roland, who was the youngest knight that ever carried the golden star.
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Jean Ingelow (1820-1897) was an English poet, novelist, and writer of stories for children, who lived in the fen district of Lincolnshire. Her most noted poem deals with a terrible catastrophe that happened there more than three centuries ago. It is called "The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire." Many reading books for the third or fourth grade contain her dainty and melodious "Seven Times One," in which a little girl expresses the joy and sense of power felt on reaching a seventh birthday. Of her children's books, the favorite is Mopsa the Fairy, which some one has called a "delightful succession of breezy impossibilities." Her shorter stories for children are collected under the title Stories Told to a Child (two series), from which "The Prince's Dream" is taken. It is somewhat old fashioned in method and style, reminding one of the stories of the days of Addison and Steele. Its seriousness is in striking contrast with the more flippant note in much modern writing for children, and it is sure to suggest some questions on the dangers and advantages of great possessions in their effects on labor, liberty, and human happiness in general. However, the moral will take care of itself, and the attention should rest on the means used by the old man to teach the young prince the things he is shut out from learning by experience. The children will easily see that it is an anticipation of the moving-picture method. Some other good stories in the collection mentioned are "I Have a Right," "The Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors," and "Anselmo."
THE PRINCE'S DREAM
JEAN INGELOW
If we may credit the fable, there is a tower in the midst of a great Asiatic plain, wherein is confined a prince who was placed there in his earliest infancy, with many slaves and attendants, and all the luxuries that are compatible with imprisonment.
Whether he was brought there from some motive of state, whether to conceal him from enemies, or to deprive him of rights, has not transpired; but it is certain that up to the date of this little history he had never set his foot outside the walls of that high tower, and that of the vast world without he knew only the green plains which surrounded it; the flocks and the birds of that region were all his experience of living creatures, and all the men he saw outside were shepherds.