Hannibal is spoken of in history as one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived. His crossing the Alps, his generalship when opposed to disciplined and powerful forces, his sustaining himself in the enemy's country for fifteen years, with a large army without calling upon his own country for aid, his power over his forces, which were made up of different nationalities, holding them subject to his authority, and keeping down discontent and mutiny, show him to have possessed remarkable powers and great genius. In his unflinching enmity to Rome he was true to the teachings of his childhood. From his babyhood he had been taught this lesson, that he must hate this enemy of his country, and to lift Carthage to a height of power and wealth above Rome, was the aim of his life. He knew that unless Rome could be destroyed there was always danger for Carthage. They
were rivals and one or the other must go down and this was why he waged such an uncompromising war against Rome.
But our hero who set out to conquer Rome was at last conquered. After many years of success in Italy, a danger threatened his own Carthage. The Romans had determined to carry the war into Africa; and Hannibal was obliged to hasten home to defend the city. He met the Roman forces under Scipio at Zama, and was defeated and forced to sue for peace. He would not have yielded, but his countrymen compelled him to accept the terms which Rome offered, humiliating though they were. After this, troubles followed him, and finally when he was about sixty-five years old the Romans having gained in power and supremacy demanded his surrender, he fled from Carthage, and at last seeing no hope of escape or relief, he killed himself by opening a little cup hidden in a ring, containing a drop of poison, which he swallowed.
While we cannot approve his course, knowing as we do, in this Christian age, that there are better things to live and labor for than the carrying out of a plan of revenge and hostility towards an enemy, we must admire many things
in the character of Hannibal. His courage, his patriotism, his unflinching devotion to the cause he had sworn to live and die for and his faithfulness to what he believed to be his duty, or as he would probably have expressed it his destiny. We must pity him that when he had grown old, disappointed and discouraged, he had no other resource in his troubles but to plunge himself into an unknown world by his own act. In those days of darkness, before the light of the Gospel was shed upon the world, it was considered a brave act to take one's own life when irretrievable disaster had befallen. While learning our lessons from the admirable traits in our hero's character, be thankful that we have that light.
CHAPTER XI.
IRVING, WASHINGTON.
Among the memoirs of my childhood none are more vivid than those connected with the school which I attended up to my tenth year; the schoolhouse, the teachers, the scholars, but above all the school books are well remembered. That was a proud and happy morning somewhere about my eighth birthday when I first carried my new American Manual to school. Now you are puzzled; you have no idea what sort of a book that was. They went out of use long ago, though in this district of which I write the old books were retained longer than in many more favored sections. The American Manual was a book of selections of prose and verse for the use of reading classes, and it was through that old book, that I became familiar with the name and writings of Washington Irving. My first lesson in pathos was "The Widow's Son;"
the sad story of "George Somers" impressed me strongly and helped to form a taste for that kind of reading. There was no biographical sketch of the author in those old books, and it was not till long afterwards that I learned anything about the writer of one of my favorite sketches.