 Chapter 54 of Hero Tales from History. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Chapter 54 Webster Clay Calhoun. Three great champions in Congress. There were giants in those days a hundred years ago in the United States of America. Not giants in body, but in mind and heart. Besides the presidents and the generals in the War of 1812 and the Indian Wars, the greatest men in America were Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, who were in Congress together. Daniel Webster was the man of New England, Henry Clay of the West, and John C. Calhoun of the South. Daniel Webster was born among the hills of New Hampshire, the ninth of the ten children of his father. He had a huge head, a high forehead, and great deep inquiring eyes. Webster once said that he did not remember when he could not read the Bible. He learned chapter after chapter of it by heart and remembered them all his life. Daniel's father lived on a rocky farm in New Hampshire and had a hard time to educate his growing family. He was called Captain Webster because he had been an officer in the War for Independence. His children used to delight in hearing about General Washington. After Daniel grew up to be a great man, he was proud to tell how the father of his country had trusted his father. Once he said, I should rather have said upon my father's tombstone that he had guarded the person of George Washington and was worthy of such a trust than to have carved upon it the greatest title that the world could give. Captain Webster said to his son one day after a gentleman who was riding by stopped to speak to him, Dan, that man beat me by a few votes when I ran against him for Congress and all because he had a better education. For that reason, I intend you shall have a good education. I hope to see you work your way up to Congress. Daniel's next older brother's name was Ezekiel. He was larger and stronger than Daniel, who because of his poor health was not expected to do hard work on the farm. This gave Daniel time to read and improve his mind. Yet he was not allowed to be idle. He was expected to do chores and other light work about the place. One day Captain Webster went away after giving both boys a certain task to do while he was gone. The lad's boy like spent the day having a good time so that when the father came home, he found the work not done. Zeke, he said sternly, what have you been doing all day? Nothing said Zeke sheepishly. And what have you been doing, Dan, asked Captain Webster. Helping Zeke, said the younger boy with a grin. After that, when anyone was idle, it was said that he was helping Zeke. When the time came for father Webster to send Daniel away to school as he had promised, the younger boy said he would not go unless Zeke could have the same chance. So Captain Webster mortgaged the farm to raise the money to educate both boys. Even then the sons had to stay out of school at times to earn money to help themselves through the academy and college. In mental work, Daniel proved stronger and better able to earn money than his older brother. A good story is told of Daniel's coming after teaching a term of school to see Zeke yield at college and giving his brother $100. Nearly all he had earned. Keeping only $3 for himself until he could earn more. That was Daniel Webster's way of helping Zeke. Daniel was the more brilliant of the two so that he was through college as soon as his brother, though he had not spent so much time there. Their father explained one difference between the sons. Zeke could not tell half he knew, but Daniel could tell more than he knew. By the time Daniel was out of college, his father had become a county judge and was able to offer his youngest son a position as clerk of the court at $1,500 a year, which was a large salary for that time and place. But Daniel refused the place, saying I intend to be a lawyer myself and not to spend my life jotting down other men's doings. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, said Judge Webster, reminding his son that there were already too many lawyers for them all to make a good living. There's always room at the top, said young Daniel Webster. He went to Boston to study law and his fame as attorney and orator spread far and wide. The two sons soon paid their father's debts and proud old Judge Webster soon saw his son Daniel not only in Congress, but acknowledged to be the greatest man in the Senate. Ezekiel Webster did not have so brilliant a career as his younger brother, but Daniel always yielded to Zeke's better judgment. Even in the greatest public affairs, Ezekiel did not live to see Daniel's highest success and it was said that a new look of sadness came into the great Webster's face and never left it after hearing of Zeke's sudden death. Although Daniel Webster was not six feet tall, his high full square brow and dignified bearing made him seem a giant. Carlisle, the great Scottish philosopher, met him in London and said, Daniel Webster is a walking cathedral. When Daniel Webster was still a small boy on his father's rock-ribbed farm in New Jersey, a thin, homely youth of 15 came into the court of chancery in Richmond, Virginia. He was so awkward and bashful and dressed so clearly that the clerks winked at one another and snickered behind his back. That youth whose name was Henry Clay had come to Richmond from a low swampy region called the Slashes, where he lived with his widowed mother. Because he used to ride a poor old horse to a mill near his home to get a little corn ground, Henry Clay was afterward called the Mill Boy of the Slashes. Henry's mother married again and moved out to Kentucky when it was still a Western wilderness. Young Clay stayed in Virginia to study law and was soon admired because of his brightness. He improved his time as well as his appearance so that when he was 18 he was a popular orator and the bright, particular star of the Richmond Debating Society. Then instead of finding room higher up in his home state, Henry went west to be near his mother and to grow up with the country. The 21-year-old attorney hung out his sign in the new and growing town of Lexington, Kentucky. He was good-natured and thoughtful. He understood law very well for so young a man. As he was an eloquent speaker, he became a successful attorney. He married and settled down on a 600-acre estate which he named Ashland. This estate is still known all over the world as the home of Henry Clay. The year before the War of 1812 began, Henry Clay was sent to Congress from Kentucky and was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He raised his eloquent voice against England and bore a strong part in supporting President Madison in carrying on the war. He was so earnest in this that he was known as a leader of the Warhawks. When the war was over, Henry Clay was one of five men sent to Europe by the United States to arrange the terms of peace with Great Britain, a peace which has not been broken for more than a hundred years. Henry Clay was three times a candidate for the presidency. He had done so much for the country that he had made enemies of many whom he had to oppose at different times. So each time he was defeated by a man not nearly so great or powerful, but for whom more people were willing to vote. While Webster and Clay were leaders in Congress, there was great excitement because that body passed a tariff law which the Southern people did not like. Many of the Southern leaders, especially those of South Carolina, said that Congress had no right to pass such a law and that each state might declare the objectionable law, null and void, or of no effect within its borders. Such action by a state was called nullification. There was talk that some of the states would withdraw from the Union if the President tried to enforce the hated law. Such withdraw on the part of a state was called secession. About the time these mutterings of disunion were in the air, Robert Y. Hayne, a great orator from South Carolina, made a strong speech in the Senate for the United States maintaining the right of his state to nullify and withdraw from the Union. Daniel Webster, the champion of the Union, delivered one of the greatest appeals ever made by any orator in his famous reply to Hayne. It closed with these now familiar words. Let my last feeble and lingering glance behold the glorious insin of the public, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured. Bearing for its motto, no such miserable question as what is all this worth, or those other words of delusion and folly, liberty first and union afterwards. But everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample foals, as they float over the sea and over the land, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable. The greatest leader in the South and champion of the right of his state, South Carolina, was John C. Calhoun. He also was an eloquent speaker. He declared in the Senate of the United States, and speaking of the tariff law meant to tax goods which people needed, we look upon it as a dead law, null and void and will not obey it. South Carolina nullified the tariff law and threatened to secede from the union. General Andrew Jackson, the bluff old Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, was then president. He declared the union must and shall be preserved. John C. Calhoun and all others, acquainted with old Hickory, as the president was nicknamed, knew that he meant just what he said. It seemed that civil war was about to begin when Henry Clay, who loved the union, averted the danger by proposing a plan of compromise which both sides could accept. CHAPTER XVII. Little Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River into Indiana and lived all winter in an open shed called a half-faced camp, before his father built a better cabin, with bare earth for its floor. Tom Lincoln, Abe's father, was a mighty hunter. He liked to shoot game better than the hard work of clearing land and farming. He thought Abe was timid because he did not like to kill harmless animals or see them suffer. During the fourteen years Abe lived in southern Indiana, he went to school a few weeks at a time, less than a year in all. A girl who went to school when he did used to tell, after she became an old woman, that Abe's first composition was against cruelty to animals. She always remembered how he read this sentence in it. An aunt's life is as sweet to it as ours is to us. One day Abe caught several lads laughing at a turtle as it moved slowly about, showing, as well as a dumb animal could, the misery it was in. For there were burning coals on its back, and the biggest boy stood by with a smoking shingle in his hand. This showed Abe how the hot coals came upon the Terrapin's back. Snatching the shingle from the big bully's hand, he brushed them off and began to paddle the cruel boy with it, calling him a cowardly fellow for herding a helpless turtle. Just before Abe was twenty-one, Father Lincoln moved to newer country in Illinois. Abe's stepsisters were now married, so there was a big family going west in a lumbering wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. One of the stepsisters took with her a pet dog. It was in the midst of winter, and some of the rivers they had to cross were covered with ice. One day the little dog strayed away from the wagon and failed to come back until the Lincoln Party had forded a shallow stream. After crossing, Abe, who was then driving the oxen, saw the poor little fellow jumping about and whining, afraid of being left behind. It was growing dark, and they had to make their camp for the night. All the others were for leaving the troublesome cur to its fate. Mr. Lincoln, in telling of their moving to Illinois, said of this, But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog. Pulling off shoes and socks, I waited across the stream, and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under my arm. His frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a dog's gratitude amply repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone. Many other stories are told of Abraham Lincoln's kindness of heart. When he was a country lawyer, he had to ride from one county seat to another, attending court. The judge and several attorneys rode from place to place where court was to be held. Lawyer Lincoln was the most popular man of them all, because of his good nature and his ready fund of funny stories. The Illinois roads were then nearly always very dusty or very muddy. One day their party saw a hog stuck in a deep mud hole, squealing loudly. The party rode by and laughed at the pig's plight, but no one took the trouble to help it out. But those despairing squeals touched the heart of Abraham Lincoln. He soon fell behind and galloped back to rescue the animal. Taking several rails from the roadside fence, he used one to pry over and another to lift the pig out. By taking care and plenty of time, he managed to place the end of a rail under the hog without hurting it. The animal was now so weak that this took a long time, and Lawyer Lincoln's clothes were badly smeared with mud. At last, when the pig realized that it was free, it started off toward the farmhouse where it belonged, flopping its big ears and grunting gratefully. Mr. Lincoln did not catch up with his friends until they had arrived at the tavern in the next town. When they saw his mud plastered clothes, they all began to laugh, for Lawyer Lincoln did not often have a new set of clothes. When they stopped chaffing him about helping his dear brother in distress, Lincoln said soberly, that farmer's children might have had to go barefoot next winter if he lost his hog. Another day Lincoln was missing. One of the party explained, I saw him an hour ago over the fence, in a grove with the young birds screaming in each hand while he was going around hunting for their nest. It took a long time to find it. Lawyer Lincoln had to let one bird go while he climbed the tree to put the other in its nest. Then he had to climb up again to put the other bird in. So it was after dark when he rejoined his friends at the tavern table. It seemed so absurd for a big man like Lincoln to waste hours on two birds that had fallen out of their nest that even the judge scolded him. Mr. Lincoln replied with deep feeling, Gentlemen, you may laugh, but I could not have slept well tonight if I had not saved those birds. Their cries would have rung in my ears. That spring after he was twenty-one, Abraham Lincoln helped to build a flatboat and went on it to New Orleans to buy stock for a store in the village. While in the southern city with two companions, he witnessed the sale of a mulatto-girl in a slave market. The site filled his righteous soul with wrath. Watching his fists, he exclaimed, Boys, let's get away from this. If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, slavery, I'll hit it hard. So lawyer Lincoln became the champion of the Negro and lifted his voice against slavery. This country cannot exist half slave and half free, he exclaimed. His ringing words in the famous debates with Senator Douglas pleased the people of the North so much that Lincoln was elected president next time. Within six weeks after he went to live in the White House, the civil war broke out. The tender heart of President Lincoln was often hurt when the news of a battle came to Washington with its list of killed and wounded. He tried to keep up his own spirits and the heart of the nation by his constant flow of stories which made the people smile through their tears. To him it was an awful thing for his brothers in the North to be fighting and slaying their brothers down South. When Abraham Lincoln saw that the time was right, he gave out the Emancipation Proclamation, his order to free four million slaves. He now had a chance to hit that thing, and he did hit it hard. Grand as it was to write that great paper and free all the slaves, it was even greater to show the people of the United States and of the whole world how to look on the bright side of the hardest trials and even to laugh in the face of trouble. President Lincoln had the supreme joy of seeing the purpose of the war accomplished. His Gettysburg Address, which every boy and girl should know by heart, and the words from the Second Inaugural, with malice toward none, with charity for all, are ever-living witnesses of the kind heart and unselfish spirit of Abraham Lincoln. John Cullen Bryant, one of the first of American poets, wrote these lines for the martyr-president's funeral. O slow to smite and swift to spare, gentle and merciful and just, who in the fear of God did spare the sword of power a nation's trust. Pure was thy life, its bloody clothes has placed thee with the sons of light, among the noble hearts of those who perished in the cause of right. End of Section 55 Chapter 56 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Ulysses S. Grant, the general who hated war. This poor little boy has no name, exclaimed Miss Simpson, the aunt who was visiting the Grant family at Point Pleasant, overlooking the Ohio River, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati. The rest of the family agreed that it would be a shame to let the boy go a day longer without a name. Let's name him now, said the aunt. Let's vote on it. The others consented, and each wrote a preferred name on a bit of paper. Then a hat was passed, and all put their slips in it. The aunt took out a ballot which read, Ulysses. This name was on several slips, because Grandfather Grant had just been reading the story of the Siege of Troy. Hiram and Albert were on two other ballots. At last they decided to call the baby, Hiram Ulysses Grant. When Baby Ulysses, as the family called him, was about a year old, the Grants moved to Georgetown, a village about ten miles farther from Cincinnati, and ten miles back from the Ohio. Here little Ulysses grew and began to go to school, and some of the boys called him Hug, from his initials, H-U-G. Other boys, just to be funny, called him Useless. Ulysses' father was a tanner and leather worker. The boy did not like tanning hides because it was dirty, bad smelling work, but he did like horses. Besides his tannery, Mr. Grant owned a small farm. So Ulysses, while he was a boy, learned to plow and harrow, and to haul logs to the creek nearby, where they were floated to the sawmill to be cut up into boards and timber. The lad found a good way to make a horse do the heavy work of lifting or rolling logs onto the sled, so that he and the horse could do that better than two or three men. A visitor in Georgetown was astonished one day to see a boy-dash by, standing on the back of a horse on the run. Circus-rider, the stranger asked. No, only Useless Grant was the reply. When a circus did come to Georgetown, the grand boy was there to see the trained horses and the fancy riding. There was a trick pony that had been trained not to allow a man, or even a boy, to stay on its back. The manager came to the side of the ring and called out that a prize of five dollars in gold would be given to anyone who could ride the pony five times around the ring. Some of the men and boys in the crowd shouted, "'Liss Grant can do it! Try it! Oh, go ahead, Liss!' Though Ulessess was a bashful lad and hated to make a show of himself, the prize, and his desire to see what he could do, were too tempting to resist. So he went to the ringside and began to pat the pony. Then he sprang lightly upon its back. The vicious little beast began to rear and tear around to shake or rub the rider off. But Ulessess hung on in spite of all its frantic efforts. He won the prize, but that five dollars was of small value compared with the lesson he learned of trying hard and not giving up anything he attempted. The grand boy's mastery of horses and his way of finishing whatever he started out to do made his services valuable to the neighbors. He rode hundreds of miles on important business errands. One time he was driving two young ladies in their baggage on a long journey where they had to ford a swollen stream. The ladies, seeing the horses were swimming and that the wagon was full of water, began to scream and take hold of his arms. "'Keep quiet, please,' said Ulessess calmly. "'I'll take you through safe.' And the Grant lad was as good as his word. Sometimes he was asked to break a horse to trot or to pace. The wildest animal would soon become tame and gentle and would do whatever he wished. People thought he would be a horse trainer or jockey or keep a racing staple. But Ulessess's Grant, much as he enjoyed training horses, had a mind above doing that all his life. He was studious at school and excelled in games and sports. One day while playing with a neighbor boy he batted the ball through the window of a neighboring house. Instead of running away or pretending that another boy had done it, Ulessess went at once and knocked at the door of the house, and said to the lady when she came out, "'I have broken your window, but I'm going to get a pane of glass and have it put right in.' The woman, who had seen how it happened, told the Grant boy to go back and play, and she would attend to the glass. In telling about the accident she said Ulessess was no more to blame than the other boy, and ended her story with, "'I like Ulessess, Grant. He's such a square manly little fellow.'" The school at Georgetown was not advanced enough to suit Ulessess's father, so the lad was sent away to a private school at Marysville. When he came home, though he did not like the tannery, he worked faithfully there. He told his father plainly that he would work at tanning hides until he was twenty-one, but not one day after that. What would you like to do, his father asked? I'd like to be a planter, or a river-merchant, or—or get an education, stammered the boy. Father Grant smiled and sent his son off to another school. He knew it would be very wrong to expect a real man to work all his life at something he did not like. While Ulessess was away this time, his father obtained an appointment for his son to go to West Point. Ulessess himself has written about this. I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles distant from Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home. During this vacation my father received a letter from the United States Senator from Ohio. When he read it he said to me, "'Ulessess, I believe you are going to receive the appointment.'" "'What appointment?' I inquired. "'To West Point. I have applied for it.' "'But I won't go,' I said. He said, he thought I would, and I thought so too if he did. Young Grant had such a high idea of the requirements at West Point that he was sure he could never pass the entrance examinations. He began to study algebra and other branches to fit him better, but he said he never gave up hoping something would happen, even that the military academy might burn down, so he would not have to go. He was afraid he would fail. The neighbors also thought his father was making a mistake to send the boy to West Point, when he seemed so little fitted for a soldier. But soon after his seventeenth birthday the neighbors bade Ulysses goodbye, expecting him to come home because he could not pass. Ulysses found the West Point building still standing when he arrived. He registered, and, to his surprise, was permitted to enter as a cadet. They made a mistake in recording his name, writing it, Ulysses S, instead of H. Ulysses Grant. He was tired of being called Hug, and, as it seemed too much trouble to correct the error, he let it go, accepting the S for his middle initial. As his mother's maiden name was Simpson, he let them name him Ulysses Simpson Grant, in honor of the U.S. government and his little mother. But even then the boys made fun of his initials, U.S., calling him United States and Uncle Sam Grant. From this he was nicknamed Sam. Cadet Ulysses did well enough in his studies and developed a taste for drawing and painting. He thought he would rather be a watercolor artist than a soldier. The idea of shooting at men was shocking to him. The sight of blood made him sick, just like a girl the fellows said. But there were horses at the academy, so the young cadet managed to be quite happy. He learned to ride like an Indian and to leap from one horse to the back of another as he met it running in the opposite direction. The one thing for which he was remembered by the other cadets was the great feat of jumping York, a huge horse, over a bar. Everyone was afraid the vicious horse, if forced to clear such a height, might kill his rider. I can't die but once, remarked Cadet Grant Cooley, and made the horse jump over the bar without the least harm to horse or rider. The record of Grant on York, then made, has never been beaten since. The people of Ulysses' hometown had changed their minds about him when he came home after two years, in his mid-course furlough, as a cadet, in full uniform with gold lace and gilt buttons. After he had been President of the United States, Ulysses, as Grant said, this summer vacation was the happiest time in his whole life because everyone was so kind and his family were so proud of him. When he finished his course at the Military Academy and was graduated, it was said of him, there is Sam Grant. He's a splendid fellow, a good, honest man against whom nothing can be said and from whom everything may be expected. Cadet Grant went home for a while and then entered military service near St. Louis. Here he became acquainted with Miss Julia Dent, who afterward became Mrs. Grant, wife of the great General and President of the United States. He had the usual experiences of young army officers in the Southwest, with wild beasts and savage Indians. He tells of being wakened early one morning by hearing shots near at hand. Coming up, he learned that two men had been fighting a duel. He afterward wrote, I don't believe I could ever have the courage to fight a duel. If I should do another man such a wrong as to justify him in killing me, I would make my reasonable amends in my power if convinced of the wrong done. I place my opposition to dueling on higher grounds. No doubt most of the duels have been fought for want of moral courage, on the part of those engaged, to decline. Lieutenant Grant's friends thought it strange for the bravest man they ever met to say, I don't believe I could ever have the courage to fight a duel. But some things that seemed heroic to others did not seem so to Ulysses S. Grant. He spoke almost with scorn of mere physical courage. It is moral courage that counts. The heroism that will face a sneer and bravely say, that is not right, and I will not do it. He had shown this kind of courage as a boy when other lads dared him to come out with them at night and disobey his little mother. In the Mexican war, while fighting desperately in Monterey, the Americans ran short of powder. Who would dare go back through the streets of the town held by the enemy and carry the request for more ammunition and reinforcements? Sam Grant volunteered, and rode Indian fashion, keeping his horse between him and the Mexicans' bullets. He made the dangerous run with both his horse and himself unhurt, relieved the Americans, and thus helped to save the day at Monterey. When the civil war broke out, Captain Grant was in business. He had withdrawn from the army, and had been mentioned as a military deadbeat working in his father's leather store at $50 a month. He at once enlisted as a volunteer, and was sent to command a brigade in Missouri. Within a year the name of General U.S. Grant was on every tongue. He had won the battles of Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry, and had made his famous demand of unconditional surrender, words which meant that they were to yield without asking any favors. After that people said his initials, U.S., stood for Unconditional Surrender Grant. He went from one triumph to another until his enemies in the West were beaten. Then President Lincoln called him to end the war in the East, a thing which five Northern Generals before him had failed to do. Though he won great victories for his country and became the most successful general of his day, the greatest thing General Grant ever said was, Let us have peace. When Richmond was captured he refused to enter the city as its conqueror. When General Lee surrendered the Northern Commander treated the enemy general as a friend and a brother. A grateful nation elected General Grant twice to the presidency of the United States. After he left the White House he and Mrs. Grant made a trip around the world and became the guests of kings, queens, princes, prime ministers, and peoples. Wherever General Grant went he went as a man of peace. When he visited Prince Bismarck, the man of blood and iron, who taught the Germans that everything they did would be right if only they had the power to do it, General Grant apologized for his record as a soldier. In this way the greatest living general became the foremost man in the world for peace. He had learned to regard war as a duel between nations. He thought that was quite as wrong as dueling between men and that war was due to moral cowardice rather than to courage. General Grant gave this as his belief. Though I have been trained as a soldier and have taken part in many battles there never has been a time when, in my opinion, some way could have not been found to prevent the drawing of the sword. End of Section 56. Chapter 57 of Hero Tales from History This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sam Collier Hero Tales of History by Smith Burnham. The Noble Soul of Robert E. Lee Robert E. Lee's father Colonel Henry Lee was a hero of the Revolutionary War. He was commander of the famous company known as Lee's Legion. He was called Light Horse Harry because he was so ready and alert with his cavalry regiment. He was such a friend of the commander in chief that it was said, General Washington loves Harry Lee as if he were his own son. Therefore, when the father of his country died, Robert E. Lee's father was chosen by Congress to deliver the great oration in his memory. It was in this brilliant address that Colonel Henry Lee used the now familiar words describing Washington as first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Like George Washington, Robert Lee was born in Virginia near the Potomac River in a huge brick house which looked like a mansion, a castle, and a fort all in one. When Robert was four, his father moved to Alexandria near the new city of Washington to send a boy with his brothers and sisters to school. The next year, the War of 1812, often called the Second War for Independence, was declared. The father's rank was raised at once from Colonel to General Henry Lee. But General Lee was badly hurt while defending a friend from a mob in Baltimore. It was very hard for a brave man like Light Horse Harry to be sent away for his health instead of leading in another fight for his country's liberties. The general did not become better, and after five years of absence and longing, he started home to die. But the end came while he was on his way, and Lee children were told one sad day that they would never see the dear father's face again. Robert was now 11, the same age as George Washington when he lost his father. Mrs. Lee was not left so poor as Washington's mother, but she was an invalid. The oldest Lee's son was in Harvard College, and the next was a midshipman in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. So Robert was left at home to take care of his mother. He nursed her with a hand as gentle as a woman's. Yet in his strong, manly arms, he carried her out to the family coach when she was well enough to go for a drive. No mother ever had more reason to be proud of her tall, handsome son than the widow of Henry Lee, feeling that his mother could not afford to send him to college, young Robert studied hard to enter West Point Military Academy. Because the country was still new and settlers had to defend their homes and lives from Indians, and also because the nations were always at war, such boys as George Washington and Robert Lee said to themselves, when I'm a man, I'll be a soldier. When Robert was 18, he became a West Point cadet. After he left home, his brave little mother exclaimed, how can I do without Robert? He is both son and daughter to me. Cadet Lee's life was without doubt the bravest any young man ever led at West Point. Young Jefferson Davis, who was there at the same time, fell off a cliff and nearly lost his life while breaking the rules of the academy. Young Ulysses Grant wrote home 10 years later that it was impossible to get through at West Point without demands. But Robert E. Lee went through the whole four years without a single black mark. More than this, he did not drink. The young gentlemen of that day thought that serving of wine necessary in polite society. He did not even smoke. It was a wonder that the other cadets did not hate a young man who seemed to feel that he must behave better than the rest of them. What kept them all from calling him a goody goody boy, a snob or a prig? It was the love of his kind heart which they could see shining through his strange courage. Robert Lee finally realized that he had come to West Point to learn at his country's expense how to be a soldier and that the first duty of a soldier is to obey. If he had left his post and sneaked off the academy grounds to drink or gamble or break some other rule, he would have been a deserter who in real army life would have deserved to be shot. But he never acted as if he felt above the rest. And so his fellow cadets did not sneer at Robert E. Lee. One of them said of him afterward, he was the only one of all the men I have known who could laugh at the faults and follies of others without losing their affection. A graduation, Lieutenant Lee was the most popular man at West Point. He ranked second in his class and received the highest military honor in the course. The physical courage of Robert E. Lee was put to the supreme test in the Mexican war. On a dark night, he found a way across the dangerous lava field cracked in all directions by deep crevices without light, without a companion or guide where scarcely a step could be taken without fear of death. General Scott, then chief in command, reported this act to be the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by anyone in the campaign. In his official statement about the whole war, this general stated that the United States success in Mexico was largely due to the skill, valor and courage of Robert E. Lee, the greatest military genius in America. Colonel Lee's high military reputation made it natural for President Lincoln to offer him the highest command of the United States Army when the Civil War broke out. But Colonel Lee did not accept the honor. He did not believe in slavery and did not think it was right for any of the states to secede or leave the Union. But he was a Virginia and he could not bring himself to lead an army to burn his own home or to kill or drive out his relatives, friends and neighbors. He had heard his father who was once governor of the state say with deepest feeling, Virginia is my country, her will I obey no matter how sad my fate may be. So when his native state went out of the Union, Robert E. Lee resigned as Colonel in the United States Army and went with her. The Southern people soon made Lee their general and it became as he thought his duty to defend the homes and lives of the people, not only of Virginia, but also of the other states of the South. General Lee soon proved that he was the last general Scott had said the greatest military genius in America. With smaller armies and poor supplies and weapons and those of the North, he gained great victories. The second battle of the Nasus or Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. He defeated five Northern generals one after another. It took Grant the sixth general sent against him a whole year to hammer and surround Lee's ragged, starving heroes and capture them at last when they were almost as helpless as a little flock of shorn sheep. And so noble and dignified was his character that he was honored and admired by North and South alike. The motto of West Point Military Academy is duty, honor, country. All through his life and all that he did, Robert E. Lee showed that he respected honor, loved his country and almost worshiped duty. He expressed this thought when he wrote, duty is the sublimest word in our language. End of The Noble Soul of Robert E. Lee, Chapter 57 of Hero Tales of History. Recording by Sam Collier. Chapter 58 of Hero Tales from History. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Wayne Cook. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Davy Farragut, the hero of Mobile Bay. After the War of Independence, there lived in a cabin among the mountains of Tennessee, a Spaniard named Farragut who had come to America to help the people in their fight for liberty. He had married a brave little Scotch woman. While her husband was away one day, several Skulking Indians hung around and watched for a chance to get into the cabin. The mother had seen them and sent her two little boys up under the roof while she stood inside the door for hours with an ax in her small hands to kill the first Indian who tried to enter. After a long watch, the red men stole away as much afraid of the fire in that little woman's eye as of the ax in her hands. One of the two boys who crouched in almost breathless silence up in the cabin loft was Davy Farragut. When this lad was seven, his father was appointed sailing master in the Navy and moved with his family to live by the large lake near New Orleans. When off duty, Farragut took his boy sailing on the lake. One day, when he was out fishing, he found an old man lying in the bottom of a rowboat, alone and unconscious. Farragut took the sick man home for his wife to nurse. In a few days, the stranger died of yellow fever. The good wife caught the dread disease and died too. The poor father was left to care for five motherless children under 10 years of age. It turned out the captain David Porter, who was then in command of the naval station at New Orleans, was the dead man's son. In gratitude for the care of his dying father, Captain Porter offered to adopt one of the Farragut boys. David was chosen and the naval officer took the sturdy little lad to his home in New Orleans and afterward to Washington where he was sent to a good school. In Washington, the secretary of the Navy saw what a bright, honest, pleasant-faced lad David Farragut was and, when he was 10 years old, appointed him a midshipman on his adopted father's ship. This was early in the war of 1812. After Porter's warship, the Essex had captured a British ship, the Alert. Middie Davey, lying awake in his hammock, saw sailor of the Alert standing near with a cocked pistol in his hand. Davey pretended to be asleep and the man passed on. The boy got up, crept into Captain Porter's cabin, and whispered to him what he had just seen. Fire, fire, shouted the captain, and the sailors of the Essex came scrambling up on deck. Porter ordered them down to capture the imprisoned sailors of the Alert who were preparing to kill the American crew and take the ship to England. Before any damage was done, the astonished Britishers were all in irons, thanks to the wide-awake shrewdness of 11-year-old midshipman Farragut. Captain Porter was ordered to sail around South America into the Pacific Ocean to warn American crews that there was a war going on between the United States and Great Britain. He was also to capture British ships as prizes. Over one of these ships, he placed in command David Farragut, then a boy of 12. When Davey ordered the British sailors to fill away the main topsoil, the former captain of the ship was angry. It was bad enough to be captured and to have the ship taken to and a South American porter's surprise, but to have its crew ordered about by an American boy of 12 seemed too much for an English captain to bear. Shouting that he would shoot any Englishman who dared to touch a rope without his orders, the former captain went below to get his pistols to carry out his threat. Captain Farragut sent one of his men to follow the swearing captain down and to tell him that if he came back on deck with a pistol in his hand, he would himself be shot and pitched overboard. The man decided not to come back. Young David brought the British ship into port and reported to his proud, foster father what he had done. The Essex fought a great battle with two British warships and Farragut himself has left a description of the sights in his first great sea fight. I shall never forget the horrid impression made upon me at the sight of the first man I've ever seen killed. It staggered me at first, but they soon began to fall so fast that it all appeared like a dream and produced no effect on my nerves. Some gun primers, for loading the cannon, were wanted and I was sent after them. And going below, while I was on the wardroom ladder, the captain of the gun directly opposite the hatchway was struck full in the face by an 18-pound shot and fell back on me. We tumbled down the hatch together. I lay for some moment stunned by the blow, but soon recovered consciousness enough to rush up on deck. The captain, seeing me covered with blood, asked if I were wounded. To which I replied, I believe not, sir. Then, said he, where are the primers? This brought me to my senses and I ran below again and brought up the primers. After being powder boy and doing all sorts of service on a man of war, the little midi was taken prisoner but was released at the close of the war. When Farragut was 15, he went on a cruise in the Washington to watch for pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. While anchored off Naples, he witnessed the interruption of the great volcano Vesuvius. A naval chaplain, then American counselor, Tunis, begged to have the Farragut youth stay with him and study French, Italian literature and mathematics. While on a horseback journey to the desert of Sahara, David suffered a sunstroke which hurt his eyes so that he was unable to read much afterwards. On his return home, Farragut passed the necessary examinations and at 18 received the rank of lieutenant in the Navy. Then he went to New Orleans and found that his father was dead and that his own sister did not know him. Here he was exposed to yellow fever and was very ill of it in a hospital after his return to Washington. Lieutenant Farragut was married soon after his recovery and spent most of his time on shore until the breaking out of the Civil War. At that time he was living in Norfolk, Virginia. He did not, however, approve of the act of Virginia in withdrawing from the Union. People told him that if he thought that, it would not be safe for him to live in Virginia. He replied coolly, well then, I can live somewhere else. And he and his wife packed up and went to live on the Hudson River above New York City. Though born and bred in the South, Farragut was a Union man and offered his services to his country. He was appointed to take New Orleans. It was the largest city in the South and an important seaport. Its capture would cut short the war by preventing the South from selling cotton. Also, it would open the Mississippi so that the Western States could have that outlet to the sea. It was a dangerous undertaking, but Farragut was glad of the chance to risk his life for his country. He said as he started out, if I die in the attempt, it will only be what every officer has to expect. Captain Farragut now commanded a fleet of 48 ships, carrying over 200 guns. In six days and nights, his mortars threw nearly 6,000 shells on the two forts barring his way, one on each side of the Mississippi. The enemy sent five blazing rafts to set fire to his fleet, but Farragut's men either dodged the burning craft or towed them out of the way. One heroic deed was the cutting, under fire from the forts, of the great chain which had been stretched across the Mississippi to keep the ships from coming up to New Orleans. This was one of the greatest naval battles in the war. For with a few wooden ships, Farragut ran against the current and passed the two forts, meeting fire rafts and fighting with a large fleet above the forts. Two of the enemy's warships were ironclads. He finally captured the city of New Orleans after great loss of life on both sides. The next day, the happy victor wrote home, "'My dearest wife and boy, I am so agitated that I can scarcely write, and shall only tell you that it pleased Almighty God to preserve my life through a fire such as the world has scarcely known. He has permitted me to make a name for my dear boy's inheritance as well as for my comfort and that of my family. The hero of New Orleans was soon made rear-admal for this splendid service to the country. But there was, to be still, another test of the courage of David Glasgow Farragut. It came two years later in Mobile Bay, which he entered with 14 ships and four monitors or small ironclad boats. He saw his monitor, the Tecumse, sinking with all aboard. "'What's the trouble?' came through his speaking trumpet to the men on the monitor nearest the sinking-craft. "'Torpedoes!' was the reply. "'What was to be done? Should he risk the whole fleet in a harbor filled with lurking mines?' The good admiral sought help from above. "'Oh God!' he whispered. "'Direct me what to do.' Farragut heard the answer in his heart. Without an instant delay, he shouted to the captain of his own ship, the Hartford, "'Go ahead, give her all the steam you've got.'" The Hartford took the lead and became the chief target of forts and batteries on shore as well as the southern gun-boats in the harbor. As if that was not dangerous enough, the heroic admiral took his place in plain sight, high above the deck, where he could better direct the battle, and so that he could still keep his commanding place as struck by a cannon-ball, his devoted men lashed him to the rigging. That is one of the heroic pictures in the history of patriotism. Farragut tied up in the rigging of his flagship and born amid the whizzing of cannon-balls and the bursting of shells, carrying the stars and stripes through the fire and the smoke of battle to one of the grandest victories ever won in naval warfare. CHAPTER 59 OF HERO TALES FROM HISTORY This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recording is in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. Hero Tales from History by Smith Barnum. THE STRANUOUS LIFE OF ROSEVELT Theodore Roosevelt's father was a well-to-do businessman in New York City. His forefathers were Dutchmen from Holland who had come over when the country was new. The Roosevelt's had been wealthy and well-known for 200 years. Though Theodore's father was able to give his family everything they needed or desired, he could not give this little son health and strength where the baby was born frail and weakly. He suffered so with asthma that his anxious parents feared he could not live long. One dark night when baby Teddy was gasping for breath, they took him driving 15 miles into the country where he could have pure air. While yet in his childhood, Theodore Roosevelt began the long, sturdy fight to conquer his weak body and make the most of himself. He was a self-made man even more than if he had been born poor but healthy in a log cabin. As a tiny child, he tried to do what he saw well, strong boys do. As soon as he could run about the house, he would climb up and perform such daring feats that the neighbors were often frightened. His father fitted up a gymnasium on a porch for him so that he could have fresh air while taking his health exercises. It was a long, hard fight but young Theodore's brave spirit won the victory over his frail body. While his body grew big and strong, his brave heart seemed to grow larger too and he showed a broad, unselfish spirit. Thus his big, warm, strong heart conquered his poor, puny body. Almost in babyhood, Teddy began to read. His sister tells how he came to her one day still wearing a stiff white dress and his curly hair long, dragging a book that was too big to carry in his little arms to ask her what foraging ants were. While learning to walk, ride horseback and swim, Theodore Roosevelt was reading books and finding out all he could about birds, butterflies and other insects by watching and catching them. He and several other boys at Oyster Bay where the family spent many summers collected and mounted specimens and started what the boys called the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History. While preparing a butterfly for his museum, Theodore happened to look at it through a small glass and found that he could not see as well as other boys. His father had spectacles fitted to his eyes and everything looked so much clearer and brighter that he went about laughing and shouting, I can see, I can see. The year when Theodore was 11, the family traveled to Europe and Egypt. During their trip up the Nile, he made quite a collection of the bright birds of that country for his museum. His brother scolded because Theodore kept live specimens and mounting materials in the wash bowls and pitchers in the rooms of the hotels where they were staying. The boys lived and studied in Germany long enough for Theodore to learn to speak German quite well. At 16, young Roosevelt went to Harvard University. He was a good student, yet he spent much of his time in athletic sports. He would tie his glasses tight to his head and box with the biggest fellows he could find who would fight with him. Of these misfit matches, the other students said, Roosevelt has a bad handicap, but when he lacks in size and strength, he makes up and pluck. He spent his college vacations in the backwoods of Maine and when he was graduated at 21, he had not only shown himself to be a good student, but he had gained much in health and strength. Also, he read much more than was required in his college studies and had begun to write his first big book, The History of the Naval War of 1812. After graduation, Theodore began to study law and decided to go into politics. Many of the ward headquarters of New York City were in saloons. As he went about with the ward workers, they expected their silk stocking candidate as they called young Roosevelt to favor the saloons and to use his role of money freely. But instead of this, Theodore Roosevelt told them plainly that if elected, he would fight against them and their bad methods. He was elected and he kept his word. He began as a reformer, exposing and opposing bribery and other wicked things that were being carried on in politics. As police commissioner of New York, he found much that was wrong and fought and struggled to make it right. He was assistant secretary of the Navy when the war was declared against Spain. He could not rest day or night because he found so much to do in getting ready to carry on the war. It was he who set the word to Admiral Dewey on the other side of the world, which prepared him for battle and helped the United States with the famous victory of Manila Bay. He was so keen and active that President McKinley said to his cabinet, Roosevelt has the whole program of the war mapped out, but he resigned from his office to become a colonel of the Rough Riders and was soon leading his brave company of cowboys and college men up San Juan Hill in the face of a blazing Spanish battery. Although Colonel Roosevelt was by no means highest in military rank, he became the hero of the United States war with Spain. When that war was over, he was elected governor of New York. All the bosses hated this man who would not consent to their robbing or cheating the people. They asked him to run for vice president of the United States, thinking that his hands would be tied or vice president has very little to say as to how the government shall be conducted. But in a few months, President McKinley with whom Roosevelt was elected vice president was shot and killed. This made Theodore Roosevelt president of the United States. Four years later, he was elected president again. His courageous spirit and true heart with his active brain and tireless body made him one of the greatest presidents of the United States. He had kept himself in good health and spirits by his constant labors and many risks as a cowboy on his own ranches and by hunting grizzly bears and other big game in the far west. Even while living in the White House, he showed his friends and fellow workers in the government what he meant by the strenuous life. Many expressions first used by Theodore Roosevelt are now heard in common conversation. This is the first use he made of the words, the strenuous life. I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort. The square deal was another expression of his as in this statement, the labor union shall have a square deal and the corporation shall have a square deal and in addition all private citizens shall have a square deal. The big stick, another phrase of Roosevelt's was not so well understood. He said of this, there is a homely old adage which runs speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far. Other words of his such as Molly Cottle, pussyfoot hit the line hard and 100% American almost explained their own meanings. A year after leaving the White House, Colonel Roosevelt went hunting big game, elephants, lions, rhinos and so forth through the heart of Africa. On the way back, he was the guest of kings, emperors and important citizens of Europe. After his return home, he went on a dangerous trip of adventure and discovery in South America. From all these hunting trips, he brought home many rare specimens for collections called by his name in the finest Natural History Museum in the United States. It was even proposed to name the wonderful Panama Canal which he did most to put through the Roosevelt Canal. His last years were spent in urging the patriotic men and women of America to take the part of human freedom and force the square deal among the nations of Europe. Among his last words were, he who is not willing to die for his country is not worthy to live in his country. He believed in preventing war by being fit and prepared to fight. One of the best things he did was to help in arranging the peace treaty between Japan and Russia. Theodore Roosevelt's life motto as expressed by his actions was, in time of peace prepare for war and in time of war prepare for peace. End of chapter 59. Chapter 60 of Hero Tales from History. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham. Clara Barton, the angel of the battlefield. Miss Clara Barton, a quiet little old lady used to tell stories of her childhood among the hills of central Massachusetts. She remembered how she was taken to the village school for the first time and how the teacher, a tall, kind-looking man, put her in the spelling class with the smallest children to study such words as dog and cat. I don't spell there, said little Clara. I spell in artichoke. And the small three-year-old showed her contempt for words of three letters by turning the leaves of her spelling book till she came to a page of wide three-syllable columns beginning with artichoke. The teacher had to hide a smile from the small girl who could spell such long words. Clara was fond of her handsome big brother. My brother, David, was very fond of horses, she said, telling about him in later life. He was the buffalo bill of that part of the country. It was his delight to take me, a little girl five years old, to the field, seize a couple of beautiful young horses and gathering the reins of both bridles in one hand, throw me on the back of one colt, then spring upon the other himself. Catching me by one foot and bidding me, cling fast to the mane, we would go galloping away over field and fin, in and out among the other colts, in wild glee like ourselves. They were merry rides we took. This was my riding school. I never had any other, but it served me well. To this day, my seat on a saddle or on the bareback of a horse is as secure and tireless as in a rocking chair and far more fun. Sometimes in later years, when I found myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper saddle flying for life for liberty, I blessed my baby lessons and wild gallops among the beautiful colts. By the words, riding for life on a strange horse in a trooper saddle, Ms. Barton referred to her life as an army nurse. When she, with the mounted soldiers, sometimes found herself in great danger when the enemy's cavalry was close behind. At the age of 11, Clara had her first chance to learn to be a nurse and fit herself for her life work. Her brother, David, then a young man, fell from the ridge pole of a large barn he was helping to build. The shock of this fall affected his mind besides making him ill and body. He wanted no one near him, but the brave little sister he had taught to ride like the wind. So Clara stayed with her big brother day and night for two long years. She was 13 when he was well again, Ms. Barton told long afterward of the strange feeling she had at that time. I was again free, my work done. I wondered that my father took me to ride so much and that my mother hoped she could make me some new clothes now. For in those two years, I had not grown an inch. My shut in life had made me the more bashful. I had grown even more timid, shrinking and sensitive in the presence of others. Also, I was afraid of giving trouble by making my wants known. Instead of feeling that my freedom gave me time for play, it seemed to me like time wasted. And I looked about anxious to find something useful to do. Then the family sent Clara away to school hoping to conquer her painful shyness. She studied so hard that at the age of 15 she became a teacher. There were not many public schools in those days, 25 years before the civil war. And the few free schools were looked down on by well to do people as charity schools. Clara Barton began with one of these schools when she had at first only six poor children to teach. But she was such a good teacher that before long, 600 came there to be pupils under her charge. She tried very hard to help everyone she could. At the end of 18 year service as a teacher, she had become almost an invalid and had lost her voice. Still she could not bear to be idle while she had the use of her hands. From early girlhood, her handwriting had been plain and neat. This, with her great desire to work, helped her to find a place in the patent office in Washington. Clara Barton was one of the first women to hold a position in the employee of the United States government. This gave offense to some of the men in that department. In those days, most people thought it improper for a woman to work in an office. So these men stared at the new clerk, making remarks in her hearing about brazen, strong-minded, women's rights women, adding that such a creature was not fit to associate with gentlemen like themselves. Sensitive and shrinking though she was, Ms. Barton kept on. She was soon promoted to a position of trust. It was not long before she found that some of the very men who had insulted her were patent thieves, guilty of selling government secrets. Her duty to the country, rather than a wish for revenge, obliged her to report the wrongs that these un-gallant gentlemen had done, and they were promptly dismissed from the service they had betrayed. During the years of her humdrum life as a government clerk, Ms. Barton was thrilled by the story she read in the newspapers of the noble work of Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse in the Crimean War between Great Britain and Russia. It was said that the English soldiers adored nurse Nightingale almost as if she were an angel from heaven, and some of them kissed her shadow when it fell upon their pillows as she passed by. When Fort Sumter was fired on, and President Lincoln began calling for soldiers to defend the country, Clara Barton was soon found at the front in places of great danger, fitting up a house or even an old barn for a hospital. She went about on the battlefields looking for wounded men and doing all she could to relieve and help them. She ministered to the dying, writing many a last letter to give comfort to the sorrowing ones at home. Corresponding with newspapers in the North, she did wonders in obtaining medicines, hospital supplies, and comforts for her sick and wounded brothers in the army. She was appointed lady manager of all the hospitals at the front in Virginia. Those who knew most about her great work declared that her services to her country were wider reaching even than those of Florence Nightingale, the greatest nurse the world had yet known. Then it was that the grateful soldiers called Clara Barton the angel of the battlefield. During the last weeks of his life, President Lincoln sent for Ms. Barton and asked her to undertake the difficult task of finding out in as many cases as possible what had become of the 80,000 soldiers reported missing from the Union Army. At this memorable meeting, the great heart of the White House stood face to face with one of the greatest-hearted women in the world of that day. Clara Barton spent four years more tracing out the fate of 30,000 missing men. To her great joy, she learned that thousands upon thousands of those who had been reported as deserters had bravely given their lives for their country. Ms. Barton then went to Europe to rest awhile and regain the health she had lost by overwork. While there, she studied the work of a Swiss who was trying to found a new society for nursing and caring for the sick and wounded soldiers of all nations. Because it had a red cross on a white ground for badge and flag, it was named the Red Cross Society. When war broke out between France and Prussia, Clara Barton became known as the Angel of the Battlefields of France. After her return to the United States, she began to organize the American Red Cross Society, which has since become the greatest power in the world for the relief of suffering. Wherever there was a calamity or a pestilence, the great forest fire in Michigan, the earthquake at Charleston, South Carolina, yellow fever in Florida, the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania, the Turkish massacres in Armenia. There, Clara Barton, though now an old woman, was always the first to come and the last to go. Though she was 77 in the year of the war with Spain, she was active in sharing the hardships of the American soldiers in Cuba, nursing Roosevelt's rough riders, along with the rest of the sick and wounded at the front. Though she lived to be over 90, honored and beloved by millions for her constant labors of love and mercy, Clara Barton did not live to see in the World War the most wonderful carrying out of all her plans for soldiers on the field and in the hospital. The beautiful woman known as the World Mother, pictured on the poster, displayed to raise money and supplies for the Red Cross work in America, might well have been the portrait of Clara Barton, for no woman in all history has done more to relieve and heal the sufferings of mankind. The millions upon millions of men, women and children, now numbered in the membership of the American Red Cross Society, by giving, knitting, rolling bandages, or buying Red Cross stamps and Christmas seals, are carrying on the work begun by the frail, sickly, bashful little girl, whose yearning heart and busy hands gave her the name of the angel of the battlefield. End of chapter 60. Chapter 61 of Hero Tales from History. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Wayne Cook. Hero Tales from History by Smith Burnham, Henry W. Longfellow, the American Children's Poet. Living in Portland, Maine, a town of rare beauty, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could hardly have helped being a poet, even if he had tried. He was born in a big, square, three-story house close to the edge of Casco Bay, one of the largest and loveliest harbors in the world. Portland stands on several wooded hills overlooking the bay, which is said to contain 365 small islands, one for every day in the year. On the blue water, the green islands sparkle like emeralds on a shining sea of sapphire. From the highest point on Great Diamond, one of the larger islands in the harbor, little Henry could see sometimes, as the sun was setting behind the hills of Portland, the hazy blue and pink outlines of the white mountains, more than a hundred miles away. Any boy with eyes and heart to take in the deep meaning of it all would have wanted to be a poet. Henry's inner nature throbbed in response to the beauties of nature without, and because he had the gift of putting his feelings into words, he was a poet long before he, or those around him, realized it. Like the boy Benjamin Franklin and the boy George Washington, who lived about a hundred years before him, the Longfellow boy had the best chances to hear the sailors who came into port to tell their tales of the sea, of pirates and hare-breath adventures. Henry's grandfather, his mother's father, was bluff old General Peleg Wadsworth, a hero of the Revolutionary War. He could tell stories of the struggle for independence that would have fired the soul of any boy. In the war of 1812, when the little Longfellow lad was only five, a company of American soldiers was stationed in the fort at Portland to defend the town against attacks from British warships. Young as Henry was, he understood what all the excitement meant. When he was in his seventh year, he heard the booming of the cannon in the great sea battle between American Enterprise and the British schooner Boxer. Both commanders were killed and buried on one of the hills of Portland. There was a sensation when the Enterprise told the Boxer into port as a prize of war. In the poem, My Lost Youth, nearly 50 years after the battle, Longfellow wrote, I remember the sea fight far away, how it thundered over the tide, and the dead captains as they lay in their graves or looking the tranquil bay where they, in battle, died. Out near High Remain where the Wadsworth family lived, there was a little lake known as Lovell's Pond. On one of his visits to his grandfathers, Young Henry heard the story of a battle which had taken place there during the French and Indian War. When he was 13, he wrote four stanzas which he named the Battle of Lovell's Pond. Signing it, Henry, he left it at the office of the Portland Gazette, telling only his sister what he had done. A writer has told a story of the way Henry's first published poem was received. In the morning, how slowly the father unfolded the damp sheet, and how carefully he'd write it at the open fire before he began to read it, and how much foreign news there seemed to be in it. At last, Henry and the sister who shared his secret peeped over their parents' shoulder, and the poem was there. They spent most of the day reading it. In the evening, they went to play with the son of George Mellon, and while the judge was sitting by the fire in the twilight with the young folk, and a few older neighbors around him, he said, did you see the piece in today's paper? Very stiff, remarkably stiff. Moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of it. When Henry was 15, his father sent him to Bedouin College in Brunswick, Maine with his older brother Stephen. Though the father was himself a graduate of Harvard, he was a director of this new college in his own state. Henry was graduated at 18, and young though he was, the trustees of the college invited him to come back a few years later as their professor of modern languages. So the young graduate traveled in Europe to gain a speaking knowledge of all the languages he would have to teach. At the age of 22, he became a professor at Bedouin. After five years at his own college, Henry Wasworth Longfellow was chosen professor of modern languages at Harvard. He spent the first year in Europe. The next year, he began his work as a Harvard professor. He boarded the the Craigie mansion, which had been General Washington's headquarters during the first year of the War for Independence 60 years before. Indeed, he slept in the same room occupied by the father of his country as a bedroom. Although he had published several books of poetry, Longfellow's poems did not begin to be popular till A Psalm of Life was published in his 33rd year. This poem made many people talk about him. Ministers preached about it and the lines were set to music. Here's one stands of this famous poem. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us footprints in the sands of time. Then such short poems as Excelsior, The Village Blacksmith, The Rainy Day, The Arrow and the Song, The Day is Done and many others were recited in schools and sung in thousands of homes. Of Longfellow's longer poems, Evangeline and The Courtship of Miles Standish are perhaps the most popular. It is said that more people know the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth through the latter poem than by reading the history of the country. It is a story of the lovely Priscilla and her true lover, John Alden, who came to ask her to marry Miles Standish. That little captain was brave enough to fight with savages, but he shrank from the bright eyes of Priscilla Mullins. John Alden was a true soldier and delivered his captain's message. But Priscilla, knowing his loyal heart, only smiled at him and asked, why don't you speak for yourself, John? And one of the great, great, great grandsons of John Alden and his lovely wife Priscilla was the poet Longfellow. Hiawatha, the poem about the Indian tribes is also a great favorite, especially with the children. This is because of its descriptions of Indian customs and legends. It is the life history of the Indian boy, Hiawatha, from the time when he was a funny little papoose till he had grown to sturdy manhood. When the little Indian boy was old enough, he was sent out on a lone hunt through the wilderness to fit himself to become a true Indian brave. Here is what he did and saw and heard at that time. Fourth into the forest, a straight way all alone walked Hiawatha proudly with his bow and arrows. And the birds sang round to him, more him, do not shoot us, Hiawatha, sang the robin, Opieci, sang the bluebird, the Oweasa, do not shoot us, Hiawatha. Up the oak tree, close behind him, sprang the squirrel, Adjidunamo, in and out among the branches, coughed and chattered from the oak tree, laughed and said between his laughing, do not shoot me, Hiawatha. Some of the Indian tribes of the great Northwest were so delighted with Hiawatha that they voted to make the poet one of their great chiefs. And after Longfellow himself had gone to the happy hunting grounds across the river of death, the Indians went through a formal service making the poet's daughter, Alice, a girl chief. It must have been because he was so fond of children that Longfellow became known as the children's poet. In the hall of quaint old Craigie House, which became the poet's home, stood the stately old clock on the stairs, solemnly ticking forever, never, never, forever. In the early morning, the spacious rooms were made bright with the merry laughter of Longfellow's three little daughters running down to spend an hour with her kindly white-haired poet father. Of this he wrote in a poem named The Children's Hour. From my study I see in the lamplight descending the broad hall stair, grave Alice and laughing Allegra and Edith with golden hair. Longfellow's last poem was about the bells of San Blas, which appeared in print just a few days before he died. The close of this, the last poetry he ever wrote were these three lines. Out of the shadow of night the world rolls into light. It is daybreak everywhere. End of chapter 61. End of Hero Tales From History by Smith Burnham.