of obscure tribes living here and there in ignorant, local isolation.  One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots.  The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people—­the working classes—­the backbone of the nation, so to speak—­was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times.  The only virtue, in his estimation, was a strong arm—­a large army to murder and destroy property.  And the life of the historian must needs reflect that of the people.  There is no doubt that in a great majority they were of a cruel, murderous nature.  We get rare glimpses, however (at intervals of sometimes hundreds of years), of the doings, manners, and customs, likes and dislikes of the common people, that we can rely upon as authentic; the rest is poetry and legend, and, although typical, are relations of incidents that did not really occur.

There is no doubt that, although it has been withheld, there was a great deal of virtue, which blushed and bloomed unseen, amid all this blood and war.

As though by accident the historian who immortalized Joan of Arc has let slip a few words in connection with this heroine’s early life that are more valuable to us than page upon page of some of our so-called history.  “Jeanne d’Arc was the child of a laborer of Domremy, a little village on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne.  Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domremy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees and sang songs to the good people who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins.  Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call.  But at home men saw nothing in her but ’a good girl,’ simple and pleasant in her way, spinning and sewing by her mother’s side while the other girls went to the fields—­tender to the poor and sick.”

This is a little domestic scene of the year A.D. 1425, and how homelike and real and familiar it all is.  What a sweet peace spot, among all the bloodshed and horror that was going on throughout France at that time.

Joan of Arc is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters in all history.  She was born at Domremy, France, in 1412, and was executed in 1431.  Before she had reached twenty this girl had practically freed France from the English, or at least put the country upon such a footing that a few years accomplished its freedom.