SCOTLAND

Oh Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent! Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content! And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent 5 From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved From The Cotter's Saturday Night

isle.

Wallace: a patriotic Scottish leader who tried to free his country from English rule. - Bruce: the Scottish king who defeated the English king at Bannockburn and won independence for his land. -gory: full of blood.-Edward: Edward II of England, the king who was defeated by Bruce.- fa': Scottish for fall.

10

A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE

RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE

RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE (1825-1900), an English novelist and poet, was born at Longworth, Berkshire, England. He was an honor graduate of Exeter College, University of Oxford. His law practice in London did not prevent his writing 5 many books.

His novel, Lorna Doone, from which the following story is taken, did not attract much attention when it first appeared. Subsequently, however, it sprang into sudden fame, and in a comparatively short time ran through thirteen editions.

10 It happened upon a November evening (when I was about fifteen years old and outgrowing my strength very rapidly, my sister Annie being turned thirteen) that the ducks in the court made a terrible quacking, instead of marching off to their pen, one 15 behind another. Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and they all quacked very movingly. They pushed their gold-colored bills here and there (yet dirty, as gold is apt to be), and they jumped 20 on the triangles of their feet, and sounded out of their nostrils; and some of the over-excited ones ran along low on the ground, quacking grievously, with their bills snapping and bending, and the roof of their mouths exhibited.

Annie began to cry "Dilly, dilly, einy, einy, ducksey," according to the burden of a tune they seemed to have accepted as the national ducks' anthem; but instead of being soothed by it they only quacked three times as hard and ran round 5 till we were giddy. And then they shook their tails all together, and looked grave, and went round and round again. Therefore, I knew at once, by the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone wholly amiss in the duck 10 world. Sister Annie perceived it, too, but with a greater quickness; for she counted them like a good duck wife, and could only tell thirteen of them, when she knew there ought to be fourteen.

And so we began to search about, and the ducks 15 ran to lead us aright, having come that far to fetch us; and when we got down to the foot of the courtyard, we found good reason for the urgence and melancholy of the duck birds. Lo! the old white drake, the father of all, a bird of high manners and 20 chivalry, always the last to help himself from the pan of barley meal, and the first to show fight to a dog or cock intruding upon his family, this fine fellow, and a pillar of the state, was now in a sad predicament, yet quacking very stoutly. For the 25 brook, wherewith he had been familiar from his

childhood, and wherein he was wont to quest for water newts, and tadpoles, and caddice worms, and other game, this brook, which afforded him very often scanty space to dabble in, and sometimes 5 starved the cresses, was now coming down in a great brown flood, as if the banks never belonged to it.

There is always a hurdle six feet long and four and a half in depth, swung by a chain at either 10 end from an oak laid across the channel. Now the

torrent came down so vehemently that the chains at full stretch were creaking, and the hurdle, buffeted almost flat, and thatched with the drift stuff, was going seesaw with a sulky splash on the dirty 15 red comb of the waters. But saddest to see was between two bars, who but our venerable mallard jammed in by the joint of his shoulder, speaking aloud as he rose and fell, with his topknot full of water, with his tail washed far away from him, but 20 often compelled to be silent, being ducked very harshly against his will by the choking fall-to of

the hurdle.

For a moment I could not help laughing; because, being borne up high and dry by a tumult of the 25 torrent, he gave me a look from his one little eye

(having lost one in fight with a turkey cock), a

gaze of appealing sorrow, and then a loud quack to second it.

Annie was crying and wringing her hands, and I was about to rush into the water, although I liked not the look of it, but hoped to hold on by the 5 hurdle, when a man on horseback came suddenly round the corner of the great ash hedge on the other side of the stream, and his horse's feet were in the water.

"Ho there!" he cried; "get thee back, boy. The 10 flood will carry thee down like a straw. I will do it for thee, and no trouble."

With that he leaned forward and spoke to his mare, she was just of the tint of a strawberry, a young thing, very beautiful, and she arched 15

up her neck, as misliking the job; yet, trusting him, would attempt it. She entered the flood, with her dainty fore legs sloped further and further in front of her, and her delicate ears pricked forward, and the size of her great eyes increasing; but he 20 kept her straight in the turbid rush by the pressure of his knee on her. Then she looked back and wondered at him, as the force of the torrent grew stronger, but he bade her go on; and on she went, and it foamed up over her shoulders; and she tossed 25 up her lip and scorned it, for now her courage was