Item.  We shall all, if we live long enough, be deaf, but we need not be meek about it.  I for one am determined to walk up to people and demand what they are saying at the point of the bayonet.  Deafness, if it must be so, but independence at any rate.

And when the fulness of time is come, we alight at Fort-William-Henry Hotel, and all night long through the sentient woods I hear the booming of Johnson’s cannon, the rattle of Dieskau’s guns, and that wild war-whoop, more terrible than all.  Again old Monro watches from his fortress-walls the steadily approaching foe, and looks in vain for help, save to his own brave heart.  I see the light of conquest shining in his foeman’s eye, darkened by no shadow of the fate that waits his coming on a bleak Northern hill; but, generous in the hour of victory, he shall not be less noble in defeat,—­for to generous hearts all generous hearts are friendly, whether they stand face to face or side by side.

Over the woods and the waves, when the morning breaks, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, comes up the sun in his might and crowns himself king.  All the summer day, from morn to dewy eve, we sail over the lakes of Paradise.  Blue waters and blue sky, soft clouds, and green islands, and fair, fruitful shores, sharp-pointed hills, long, gentle slopes and swells, and the lights and shadows of far-stretching woods; and over all the potence of the unseen past, the grand, historic past,—­soft over all the invisible mantle which our fathers flung at their departing,—­the mystic effluence of the spirits that trod these wilds and sailed these waters,—­the courage and the fortitude, the hope that battled against hope, the comprehensive outlook, the sagacious purpose, the resolute will, the unhesitating self-sacrifice, the undaunted devotion which has made this heroic ground:  cast these into your own glowing crucible, O gracious friend, and crystallize for yourself such a gem of days as shall worthily be set forever in your crown of the beatitudes.

* * * * *

THE FLEUR-DE-LIS AT PORT ROYAL.

In the year 1562 a cloud of black and deadly portent was thickening over France.  Surely and swiftly she glided towards the abyss of the religious wars.  None could pierce the future; perhaps none dared to contemplate it:  the wild rage of fanaticism and hate, friend grappling with friend, brother with brother, father with son; altars profaned, hearthstones made desolate; the robes of Justice herself bedrenched with murder.  In the gloom without lay Spain, imminent and terrible.  As on the hill by the field of Dreux, her veteran bands of pikemen, dark masses of organized ferocity, stood biding their time while the battle surged below, then swept downward to the slaughter,—­so did Spain watch and wait to trample and crush the hope of humanity.