4. The scouts had parted on their search, Above the gloomy portal arch, 5. A distant tramping sound he hears; A horseman, darting from the crowd, 6. Beneath the sable palisade, The warder hasted from the wall, Walter Scott. FOR PREPARATION.-I. From Scott's "Marmion": the opening verses describing a scene very common on the border-line between England and Scotland in the days before these two countries were united under one king. Point out on the map the Tweed, Cheviot Hills, and Flodden Field, where the battle subsequently described in "Marmion " was fought. II. Don'-jon (dun'jeon), lŭs'-tre, tur'-rets, sen'-es-çhal (-e-shal). III. Norham (North Home: North Town-situated in the north of England). Make a list of the words of the lesson that begin with capitals, and opposite each write the reason for it. Note the rhymes of search with arch, march, and of lone with shone (possibly Scott pronounced these so as to make perfect rhymes). IV. Castled steep, battled towers, flanking walls, athwart, pennon, mettled, palisade, barricade, warder, sewer, squire, seneschal. V. What kind of armor is implied in the description "flashed back again the western blaze"? Was Norham Castle in the hands of the English, or of the Scotch? (indicated by the "banner"?) "Plump of spears" (plump cluster). = XXVIII. THE COYOTE. 1. The coyote of the farther deserts is a long, slim, sick, and sorry-looking skeleton with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. 2. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that, even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely! so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful! 3. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol-range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you. He will trot fifty yards and stop again; another fifty, and stop again; and, finally, the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. 4. But, if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think that he knows something about speed. The coyote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck farther to the front, and pant more fiercely, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain ! 5. All this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the coyote, and, to save the life of him, he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the coyote glides along, and never pants or sweats, or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is. 6. And next the dog notices that he is getting fagged, and that the coyote actually has to slacken speed a little, to keep from running away from him. And then that towndog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain, and weep, and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the coyote with concentrated and desperate energy. 7. This spurt finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the coyote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say : 8. "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, but-business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day." And forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold, that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude! S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain). FOR PREPARATION.-I. From Mark Twain's "Roughing It." The ludicrous may be found in the use of words which develop two meanings-one of them absurdly opposite to the one intended; or it may be found in actions which are very inadequate for the purpose intended. Note the efforts of the dog in this piece. II. Eo-yōte' (or ki-öt'e, spelled also cayote), ve-loç'-i-pēde, es-pě'-cial-ly (-pěsh'al-), o-pin'-ion (-yun), de-çeit'-ful, fraud'-ful, fierce'-ly (feers'-), in-çensed'. III. What is the absurdity of the assertion, "even the flcas," etc. (2)? IV. Furtive, allegory, pretending, apologizing, ambition, frenzy, ignoble, scrawny, wake (track). V. The humor of this piece turns for the most part on the human consciousness which the author gives to the coyote and to the dog. Note, in the description, the expressions "ignoble swindle," "pretending a threat," "apologizing for it," ""smile a fraudful smile," 99 66 encouragement and worldly ambition," etc. Explain "sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere." XXIX.-FOR A' THAT, AND A' THAT. 1. Is there for honest poverty Wha hangs his head, and a' that? For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that; 2. What though on hamely fare we dine, Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine- For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; 3. Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that- His riband, star, and a' that; 4. A prince can mak a belted knight, Their dignities, and a' that; The pith o' sense and pride o' worth 5. Then let us pray, that come it may- That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, |