Spartacus to the Gladiators at Capua.
BY ELIJAH KELLOGG.
It is Friday afternoon. The "scholars" of School Number Nine, having droned through a week of lessons, are beginning the "weekly exercises." Come visitors—Freddy Jones's mother and aunt, and William Groso's father, and the minister, and old Mrs. Huggins, who never misses the occasion, though she has no children of her own. Teacher, working into her voice an unwonted note of encouragement, calls the first name on the program, and Freddy Jones, his legs very stiff, marches to the platform, jerks his head toward teacher, and faces his mates. His legs are no longer stiff; on the contrary, his knee-joints seem to be made of whalebone. His mouth is dry and his forehead is clammy.
Freddy is not the biggest or strongest of the boys; he is not a leader among them. He has even been known to play with the girls. He is sandy as to hair and complexion, and stubby as to hands and feet and nose. Yet he begins: "Ye call me chief——"
How often, while practising the lines up in the attic, he has attained to an exalted sense of his leadership! How often he has leaned metaphorically upon his sword and surveyed with scornful contempt the fawning groundlings, the Roman Adonises, the shouting rabble! He was Spartacus then. But now—now he is a small boy with a doubtful memory; and mother, from the front row of benches, has to prompt him twice.
This thrilling old piece of declamation, this address of Spartacus to the Gladiators, was written by the Rev. Elijah Kellogg, who also wrote a great many books for boys—"The Elm Island Series," the "Pleasant Cove Series," the "Whispering Pine Series," and others which are still read. He was born in Portland, Maine, May 20, 1813; went to Bowdoin College and Andover Theological Seminary; served as a minister and chaplain from 1843 to 1865, and thereafter devoted himself almost exclusively to writing until his death, at Harpswell, Maine, March 17, 1901.
Ye call me chief; and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast the broad Empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm. If there be one among you who can say that ever, in public fight or private brawl, my actions did belie my tongue, let him stand forth and say it. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I was not always thus—a hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron groves of Syrasella.
My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute, there was a friend, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and partook together our rustic meal. One evening, after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army.