3. Our very hopes belied our fears, We thought her dying when she slept, 4. For when the morn came dim and sad, Her quiet eyelids closed-she had Thomas Hood. FOR PREPARATION.-I. "Eke" is little used now for add to or lengthen. It was a very common word for also in old English, and its kindred forms eac (Anglo-Saxon), auch (German), og (Danish), och (Swedish), ok (old Norse), etc., were or are still very much used for and or also. II. Through (throo), si'-lent-ly, eye'-lids ('-). III. The prefixes ad and ab (to and from), in and ex (in and out), have been mentioned, and the various changes which they undergo to make them agree in sound with the first letter of the root (i. e., the word to which they are prefixed). Make two lists of ten words each, illustrating the prefixes con (with) and contra (against) (e. g., con-clude shut together; col-lect = pick together; contra-dict say against); also of de (down), super and hyper (over), sub and hypo (under), and per (through). IV. "Wave of life heaving." = V. "Seemed to speak" (i. e., it seemed as though we spoke so low and moved about so slowly, because we had given her the half of our power to eke out her life). LIX. IN THE MAINE WOODS. I. THE FORESTS. 1. What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals, or glades, than you had imagined. Except the few burnt lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted. 2. It is even more grim and wild than you had anticipated-a damp and intricate wilderness, in the spring everywhere wet and miry. The aspect of the country, indeed, is universally stern and savage, excepting the distant views of the forest from hills, and the lake-prospects, which are mild and civilizing in a degree. 3. The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water-so anterior, so superior to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be. These are not the artificial forests of an English king-a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest-laws but those of Nature. The aborigines have never been dispossessed, nor Nature disforested. 4. It is a country full of evergreen-trees, of mossy silver-birches and watery maples-the ground dotted with insipid, small, red berries, and strewn with damp and moss-grown rocks; a country diversified with innumerable lakes and rapid streams, peopled with trout, with salmon, shad, and pickerel, and other fishes. 5. The forest resounds at rare intervals with the note of the chickadee, the blue-jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish-hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, swarming with myriads of black flies and mosquitoes, more formidable than wolves to the white man. 6. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the Indian. Who shall describe the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be mid-winter, is ever in her spring; where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth; and blissful, innocent Nature, like a serene infant, is too happy to make a noise, except by a few tinkling, lisping birds, and trickling rills. II. SHOOTING RAPIDS. 7. We reached the Dam at noon. The boatmen went through one of the log sluices in the bateau, where the fall was ten feet at the bottom, and took us in below. Here was the longest rapid in our voyage, and perhaps the running this was as dangerous and arduous a task as any. 8. In shooting rapids the boatman has this problem to solve: to choose a circuitous and safe course amid a thousand sunken rocks, scattered over a long distance, at the same time that he is moving steadily on at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Stop he cannot: the only question is, Where will he go? The bow-man chooses the course with all his eyes about him, striking broad off with his paddle, and drawing the boat by main force into her course. The stern-man faithfully follows the bow. 9. Down the rapids we shot at a headlong rate. If we struck a rock, we were split from end to end in an instant. Now like a bait bobbing for some river monster amid the eddies; now darting to this side of the stream, now to that, gliding swift and smooth near to our destruction, or striking broad off with the paddle and drawing the boat to right or left with all our might, in order to avoid a rock. We soon ran through the mile, and floated in Quakish Lake. 10. After such a voyage, the troubled and angry waters, which once had seemed terrible and not to be trifled with, appeared tamed and subdued; they had been bearded and worried in their channels, pricked and whipped into submission with the spike-pole and paddle, and all their spirit and their danger taken out of them; and the most swollen and impetuous rivers seemed but playthings henceforth. 11. I began at length to understand the boatman's familiarity with and contempt for the rapids. "Those Fowler boys," said Mrs. M., "are perfect ducks for the water." They had run down to Lincoln, according to her, thirty or forty miles, in a bateau, in the night, for a doctor, when it was so dark that they could not see a rod before them, and the river was swollen so as to be almost a continuous rapid, so that the doctor cried, when they brought him up by daylight, "Why, Tom, how did you see to steer?" "We didn't steer much-only kept her straight." And yet they met with no accident. Henry D. Thoreau. FOR PREPARATION.-I. What have you read from this author? (VII., XLIV.) Describe the following animals: moose, bear, caribou, beaver, shad, trout, pickerel, chickadee. "Lincoln"-in what part of Maine? (Aroostook County.) II. Con-tin'-u-ous-ness, un-in-ter-rupt'-ed, in'-tri-eate, çîv'-il-izing, ăm'-e-thyst, ȧr-ti-fi'-cial (-fish'al), ǎb-o-rig'-i-nes, dís pos-sessed', strewn (strun), myr'-i-ads, mos-quï'-toeş (mus-kē'-), çir-eū'-i-toŭs, straight (strāt). III. Explain the abbreviations: Mrs., Mr., Dr., Co., P. M., N. B., viz., A. D., Aug., Maj., M. D., E., W., N. E., Qr. IV. Continuousness, glades, grim, intricate, aspect," amethyst jewels," "jewel of the first water," anterior, superior, artificial forests, royal preserve, diversified, formidable, sluices, bateau, arduous, waters bearded. V. What view does the author of this piece seem to take of Nature? Does he seem to enjoy the wilderness for its sports (hunting and fishing), or has he the interest of a scientific explorer? (Rather, a poet's interest.) LX.-MARCO BOZZARIS. 1. At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk lay dreaming of the hour In dreams, through camp and court, he bore In dreams, his song of triumph heard; Then pressed that monarch's throne, a king 2. At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, There had the Persian's thousands stood, And now, there breathed that haunted air, 3. An hour passed on; the Turk awoke; He woke to hear his sentries shriek, "To arms! They come-the Greek! the Greek!” And death-shots falling thick and fast |