Dr. Primrose in "The Vicar of Wakefield," and also of the Man in Black of "The Citizen of the World," and the preacher of "The Deserted Village."

A few years later Goldsmith wrote a comedy, "The Good-natured Man," which brought him nearly five hundred pounds, although it was not a success on the stage. With characteristic improvidence he scattered his profits to the winds. He took fine chambers, furnished them handsomely, and gave expensive dinners and suppers. He was much with Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, and other famous men of the day, and he lived far beyond his means. He loved society, although he always made a poor appearance in it. His tongue lacked the grace of his pen, and he remained, as he had been from boyhood, the butt of good-natured ridicule. A wit of the day thus described him in a mock epitaph:

"Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,

Who wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.”

In 1770 appeared Goldsmith's finest poem, "The Deserted Village," which won immediate and complete success. Like The Vicar of Wakefield," this exquisite poem is full of recollections of early years and scenes. The village, "sweet Auburn," was that hamlet of Lissoy where his boyhood was spent, and most of the characters described are portraits from life.

Goldsmith's fame was now at its highest. But debt held him fast in its terrible talons. He worked on, but he had to trade on the future, to draw heavy advances from his booksellers, in order to meet the wants of the hour. His "History of England," his "History of the

Earth and Animated Nature," his "Histories of Greece and Rome," were merely the means of paying off old debts and of contracting new ones. These histories con

veyed in Goldsmith's clear, flowing language the information more dryly given elsewhere. They were not always accurate, for he often wrote about subjects of which he knew but little; but their pleasant style made them popular.

"She Stoops to Conquer," his second and most successful comedy, appeared in 1773, and holds its place on the stage to-day as one of the best specimens of old English comedy.

His hands were full of unfinished work and he was still overwhelmed with debt, when an old illness seized him. Low fever set in. He took medicine against the advice of his doctors, and died after nine days' illness. His last hours were clouded with the memory of his reckless life and of his foolish, thriftless ways.

His friends found in his character much to love, but little to respect. "He was so generous he quite forgot to be just; he forgave injuries so readily that he might be said to invite them; and was so liberal to beggars that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher." But whatever the failings of the man, the author is one of the foremost figures of a brilliant age. His poems, his essays, his comedies, his one great story, have taken enduring rank among the masterpieces of English litera

ture.

NANTAUQUAS COMES TO THE RESCUE

BY MARY JOHNSTON

Miss Johnston is a Virginian who has won popularity by her historical romances, "Prisoners of Hope," "To Have and to Hold," and "Audrey."

"To Have and to Hold," from which this selection is taken, is a tale of colonial Virginia. Nantauquas, the young war chief who rescued Captain Percy and Diccon from their Indian captors, was the brother of Pocahontas.

I

Suddenly, in the first gray dawn, as at a trumpet's call, the village awoke. From the long, communal houses poured forth men, women, and children; fires sprang up, dispersing the mist, and a commotion arose through the length and breadth of the place. The women made haste with their cooking, and bore maize cakes and broiled fish to the warriors who sat on the ground in front of the royal lodge. Diccon and I were loosed, brought without, and allotted our share of the food. We ate sitting side by side with our captors, and Diccon, with a great cut across his head, seized the Indian girl who brought him his platter of fish, and pulling her down beside him kissed her soundly, whereat the maid seemed not ill pleased and the warriors laughed.

In the usual order of things, the meal over, tobacco should have followed. But now not a pipe was lit, and the women made haste to take away the platters and to get all things in readiness. The werowance of the Paspaheghs rose to his feet, cast aside his mantle, and began to speak. He was a man in the prime of life, of a great

figure, strong as a Susquehannock, and a savage, cruel and crafty beyond measure. Over his breast, stained with strange figures, hung a chain of small bones, and the scalp locks of his enemies fringed his moccasins. His tribe being the nearest to Jamestown, and in frequent altercacation with us, I had heard him speak many times, and knew his power over the passions of his people. No player could be more skillful in gesture and expression, no poet more nice in the choice of words, no general more quick to raise a wild enthusiasm in the soldiers to whom he called. All Indians are eloquent, but this savage was a leader among them.

He spoke now to some effect. Commencing with a day in the moon of blossoms when for the first time winged canoes brought white men into the Powhatan, he came down through year after year to the present hour, ceased, and stood in silence, regarding his triumph. It was complete. In its wild excitement the village was ready then and there to make an end of us, who had sprung to our feet and stood with our backs against a great bay tree, facing the maddened throng.

So much the best for us would it be if the tomahawks left the hands that were drawn back to throw, if the knives that were flourished in our faces should be buried to the haft in our hearts, that we courted death, striving with word and look to infuriate our executioners to the point of forgetting their former purpose in the lust for instant vengeance. It was not to be. The werowance spoke again, pointing to the hills with the black houses upon them, dimly seen through the mist. A moment, and

the hands clenched upon the weapons fell; another, and we were upon the march.

As one man, the village swept through the forest toward the rising ground that was but a few bowshots away. The young men bounded ahead to make preparation; but the approved warriors and the old men went more sedately, and with them walked Diccon and I, as steady of step as they. The women and children for the most part brought up the rear, though a few impatient hags ran past us, calling the men tortoises who would never reach the goal. One of these women bore a great burning torch, the flame and smoke streaming over her shoulder as she ran. Others carried pieces of bark heaped with the slivers of pine of which every wigwam has store.

The sun was yet to rise when we reached a hollow amongst the low red hills. Above us were the three long houses in which they keep the image of Okee and the mummies of their kings. These temples faced the crimson east, and the mist was yet about them. Hideous priests, painted over with strange devices, the stuffed skins of snakes knotted about their heads, in their hands great rattles which they shook vehemently, rushed through the doors and down the bank to meet us, and began to dance around us, contorting their bodies, throwing up their arms, and making a hellish noise. Diccon stared at them, shrugged his shoulders, and with a grunt of contempt sat down upon a fallen tree to watch the enemy's maneuvers. The place was a natural amphitheater, well fitted for a spectacle. Those Indians who could not crowd into the narrow level spread themselves over the rising ground,