2. Some wicked man would wish to avenge an injury he had received, and in order to do this he would go about among the different kingdoms and persuade the rulers to join with him and try to overcome his enemy; and then there would be terrible bloodshed in order to satisfy one wicked man's revenge. Aristagoras was such a man as this. He was dissatisfied with his king, and wished to become a king himself instead. One day he came to Sparta on this evil errand, and tried to persuade King Cleomenes, the father of little Gorgo, to help his base project. He talked with the king a long time. He promised him power and honor and money if he would do as he wished; more and more money, and, as the king refused, still more and more money he offered, and at last the king almost consented.
3. But it had happened that when Aristagoras had come into the presence of the king, the king's little daughter was standing by his side with her hand in his. Aristagoras wanted Cleomenes to send her away, for he knew very well that it is much harder to induce a man to do something wrong when there is a dear little child at his side. But the king had said, "No, say what you have to say in her presence, too." And so little Gorgo had sat at her father's feet, looking up into his face with her innocent eyes, and listening intently to all that was said. She felt that something was wrong, and when she saw her father look troubled and hesitate, and cast down his eyes, she knew the strange visitor was trying to make him do something he did not quite want to do. She stole her little hand softly into her father's, and said, "Papa, come away—come, or this strange man will make you do wrong."
4. This made the king feel strong again, and, clasping the little maid's hand tightly in his own, he rose and left the tempter, and went away with the child who had saved him and his country from dishonor. Gorgo was only ten years old then, but she was worthy to be a king's daughter, because, being good and true herself, she helped her father to be good and true also.
5. When she grew to be a woman she became the wife of a king, and then she showed herself as noble a queen as she had been a princess. Her husband was that King Leonidas who stood in the narrow pass of Thermopylæ with his small army, and fought back the great hosts of the Persians until he and all his heroic band were killed. But, before this happened, there was a time when the Grecians did not know that the great Persian army was coming to try and destroy them, and a friend of theirs, who was a prisoner in the country where the great Xerxes lived, wishing to warn the Spartans of the coming of the Persians, so that they might prepare, sent a messenger to King Leonidas. But when the messenger arrived, all he had to show for his message was a bare, white waxen tablet. The king and all the lords puzzled over this strange tablet a long time, but could make nothing out of it. At last they began to think it was done for a jest, and did not mean anything.
6. But just then the young Queen Gorgo said, "Let me take it," and after looking it all over she exclaimed, "There must be some writing underneath the wax!" They scraped away the wax from the tablet, and there, sure enough, written on the wood beneath, was the message of the Grecian prisoner and his warning to King Leonidas.
7. Thus Gorgo helped her country a second time; for, if the Spartans had not known that the army was coming, they could not have warned the other kingdoms, and perhaps the Persians would not have been conquered. But as it was, Leonidas and the other kings called their armies together, and, when the Persian host came sweeping over the plains, the Greeks were ready to meet them, and to fight and die for their beautiful Greece.
8. So this one little maid of hundreds of years ago, princess and queen, helped to save her father from disgrace and her country from ruin. And we may feel sure that she was strong and true to the last, even when her brave husband, Leonidas, lay dead in the fearful pass of Thermopylæ, and she was left to mourn in the royal palace at Sparta.
XXXIII.—ALEXANDER SELKIRK.
1. Nearly two hundred years ago, an Englishman, living in London, named Daniel Defoe, wrote the story of Robinson Crusoe to interest and amuse boys and girls. Only think of it! Before that time nobody knew anything about the lonely island, or about the ship that was wrecked there. Nobody could know that Robinson was washed ashore and saved. Nobody could see him build his hut, and plan how to live day by day. Nobody could see his tame goats run out to meet him, or hear his parrot cry, "Poor Robinson Crusoe!" Nobody could form the acquaintance of the faithful man Friday, whom Robinson saved from the cannibals, and who became such a dear friend to him. None of this could any boy or girl at that time enjoy, because the story had not yet come out of the head of Defoe.
2. But, while Robinson Crusoe is a story that never really happened, Daniel Defoe had something to make it out of. In 1704 a Scotch sailor, named Alexander Selkirk, then twenty-eight years old, was left upon Juan Fernandez, an uninhabited island in the Pacific, off the coast of Chili. He had quarreled with the captain of the ship in which he sailed, and the captain sent him ashore to improve his temper. Here he lived alone for four years and four months, when, an English vessel appearing, he was carried back to his native country.