Por. I had it of him. You are all amazed: Here is a letter, read it at your leisure;

It comes from Padua, from Bellario:

There you shall find, that Portia was the doctor,
Nerissa there, her clerk. Lorenzo here

Shall witness, I set forth as soon as you,
And even but now returned; I have not yet
Entered my house. Antonio, you are welcome;
And I have better news in store for you,
Than you expect: unseal this letter soon;
There you shall find, three of your argosies.
Are richly come to harbor suddenly.

You shall not know by what strange accident

I chanced on this letter.

Ant.

I am dumb.

Bass. Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?
Gra. Were you the clerk?

Ant. Sweet lady, you have given me life and living; For here I read for certain that my ships

Are safely come to road.

Por.

How now, Lorenzo?

My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.

Ner. Ay, and I'll give them him without a fee. There do I give to you and Jessica,

From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,

After his death, of all he dies possessed of.

Lor. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
Of starved people.

Por.

It is almost morning,

And yet I am sure you are not satisfied

Of these events at full. Let us go in;
And charge us there upon inter'gatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.

[Exeunt.

- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE"

Gra. There are a sort of men, whose visages

Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;

And do a wilful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;

As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
O, my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise,

For saying nothing; who, I am very sure,

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers, fools.

Bass. In my school-days, when I lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight

The selfsame way, with more advisèd watch,

To find the other forth; and by advent'ring both
I oft found both.

Por. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages, princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

1

WHAT WILL POWER DID FOR ME

I Do not remember my father and mother. My earliest recollection is that I was one of a number of children in the care of an old woman who, later on, I learned was half-witted.

We were dirty, ragged, and poorly fed. As I grew older I learned that I was a pauper in the county poorhouse, and that This is all I have ever known about them. my parents were dead. We were huddled together-children and mumbling old men and women, many of them crippled, blind, and weak-brained. To the few who were passably intelligent was given the care of the others. Those who were able to do a little work, including the children, had to cultivate the farm for the benefit of the overseer, who had the farm because he bid lower than anyone else, and thus was interested only in making all he could out of the job. I think I could not have been more than four years old when I was put to work picking up chips in the woodyard. As I grew older I was set to other tasks, and many a beating I got when my work did not satisfy the overseer.

This life went on until I was thirteen or fourteen years old. One evening, just as I had finished milking, a cow kicked over the bucket, and half of the milk was lost. I told the overseer, and he gave me the worst beating I had ever had and sent me to bed without supper. That night, when all the others were sleeping, I left the house and made my way to the railroad. A freight train was standing there, and I crept into an empty box car and went to sleep.

I was awakened in the morning by a train man shouting, "Out of that, you little bum!" The train had stopped to put off supplies for a gang of men who were doing the grading for a new

railroad that was to cross the one I was on. The gang were working near by. Child-curious, I walked over to look around.

As I got up close one of the men yelled, "Where's that water boy? We can't dig without drinkin'!"

"I'll get you water; where do I get it?" I said, stepping forward. He told me, and I soon had the gang drinking like camels. While I was dispensing the second bucket a big roughlooking man came up, and after looking me over, asked, "Who are you?" "I am the water boy," I said, not knowing what else to say. "Who put you on the job?" "No one, sir, I put

myself on."

"Where is that water boy who was here yesterday?" "Left last night," put in one of the men.

At noon when they knocked off for dinner I was about used up. I had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours and was getting faint. As I sat on the bank while the men were eating, one of them, called Tom, said to me, "It's lunch time, kid." I did not

answer.

"Where is your lunch, kid?"

"Left it behind," I said.

"Left it where?"

"About a hundred miles back, I guess."

He looked at me sharply. "Come here, kid," he said kindly. "What's this you are giving us?"

So I told them all about myself, showed them my body, which was covered with black and blue marks, and added, "Those bruises are why I ran away."

"Good boy," said one of the men; "you will do." These were the first kind words I remember as ever having been spoken to me, and they helped me a lot. The men shared their dinner with me. It was the best meal I had ever eaten.

228

When the gang quit work for the day, Tom said, "Come with me, kid!" and he took me to the wooden shack where the gang slept and had their breakfast and supper. A German boarded them by the week.

After supper Tom took me to the cook. "Mike," he said (and I thought this was an odd name for a Dutchman), "here is He is our new water boy. Don't a kid who is down and out. you think that he could help you enough morning and night to pay for his grub?"

"How vos you down and outs, son?" asked the German.

vill I told my story over again and showed him my bruised body. a devil!" he said. "Now you "Dot oferseer vos a devil gets up at four o'clock and helps me mit the breakfast, and at night helps me to vash de dishes and cleans tings up, and vot you eats you vill enough haf paid for."

I was given a bunk, a straw tick, and a blanket, and before turning in Mike gave me a hot water bath and rubbed me all over with arnica. When I got into my bunk I dare say there was never a happier boy in the world.

When I was in the poorhouse I was called George Black; whether it was my right name I never knew. One evening I was sitting, thinking over my past, when this good German, the best friend I ever had, put his hand on my head. "Son," he said, "it vos not goot to look at dot blackness. Puts him behind you, and looks at dot brightness in front of you; it vos better always so!"

This struck me as good advice, and the first thing I did was to drop George Black for the cheerier name I bear to-day. Regular hours and plenty of wholesome food soon made a I had always been strong for my age, and in big change in me. time I was able to carry two buckets of water at a time.