Part 23

When Napoleon saw that he was beaten, he signed a paper saying that he would give up and leave France. And so he did, sailing away to a little island called Elba, just off the coast of Italy, not far from the island where he was born.

[Illustration: Napoleon at St. Helena.]

But Napoleon on the island of Elba got an idea that all was not lost and that he might return to France and get back his power again. So all of a sudden, to the surprise of France and the rest of the world, he landed on the coast of France. The French Government at Paris sent an army of his old soldiers against him with orders to meet him and bring him to Paris in an iron cage. But when his old soldiers met their old general they went over to his side, and so with them he marched on to Paris. The English and German armies were north of France and preparing to fight. Napoleon quickly got together an army and went forth to meet them. At a little town called Waterloo, Napoleon fought his last battle, for there he was utterly beaten by an English general named Wellington. This was the Year 1815. We still speak and probably always will speak of any great defeat as “Waterloo.”

There is a peculiar sentence which reads backward the same as forward. It is what Napoleon might have said after all was over. It is:

ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA

After Napoleon was beaten at Waterloo, the English took him away and put him on a little island far off in the ocean where he could not possibly escape. It was a lonely spot named St. Helena after the mother of Constantine. Here he lived for six years before he died.

Napoleon was probably the greatest general that ever lived, but that does not mean that he was the greatest man. Some say he was the worst, for just to make himself great, he killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought destruction and ruin to the whole of Europe wherever he fought his battles.

This brings us up into the nineteenth century, for Napoleon died in 1821. How long ago is that?

74

From Pan and His Pipes to the Phonograph

Frogs croak; Cats me-ow; Dogs bark; Sheep bleat; Cows moo; Lions roar; Hyenas laugh; But only birds and people _sing_. All other animals simply make noises. But people can do what birds cannot. They can also make music out of _things_.

Have you ever made a cigar-box fiddle or a pin piano or musical glasses?

In the long-ago story-book times Apollo took a pair of cow-horns and fastened between them seven strings made from the cow’s skin. This was called a lyre. These strings he picked with his fingers or with a quill, making a little tinkling sound that could hardly have been very beautiful. Yet Apollo’s son Orpheus is said to have learned from his father to play so beautifully on the lyre that the birds and wild beasts and even trees and rocks gathered round to hear him.

Pan, the god of the woods, who had goat’s horns and ears and legs and feet, tied together several whistles of different lengths and played on these as you might on a mouth-organ. This instrument was called Pan’s pipes.

The lyre and Pan’s pipes were the two earliest musical instruments. The first was a stringed instrument; the second a wind instrument. The long strings and long pipes made low notes; the short strings and short pipes made high tones.

From Apollo’s lyre we get the piano with its many, many strings. Did you ever look at the inside of a piano and see the many strings of different lengths? They are, however, not picked as the strings of a lyre or harp are picked, but hammered by little felt-covered blocks as you touch the keys.

From Pan’s pipes we get the great church organ with its pipes like giant whistles. You don’t, of course, blow the pipes with your mouth as you do a whistle. The pipes are so big you must blow them with a machine like a tire-pump, and you do this as you touch the keys.

We know what the instruments in olden times were like, but we don’t know what the music that people made was really like; there were no phonographs to bottle up the sounds and, when uncorked a thousand years later, to pour forth the old notes once again. The music went off into thin air and was lost.

It was not until about the Year 1000 A.D. that music could even be written down. Before then all music was played “by ear,” for there was no written music. A Benedictine monk named Guy, or, in Italian, Guido, thought of a way to write down musical notes, and he named the notes do, re, mi, fa, and so on. These were the first letters of the words of a hymn to St. John which the monks sang like the scale.

Another Italian is sometimes called the “father of modern music.” His name is Palestrina, and he died about 1600. He set the church service to music, and the pope ordered all churches to follow it, but the people didn’t like his music very much; that is, it was not what we call “popular.”

It was not until a hundred years later--that is, about 1700--that the first great musician lived who wrote music that was really popular, that the people loved, and that we still love to-day.

He was a German named Handel. His father was a barber, a dentist, and doctor, and he wanted his boy to become a great lawyer. But the only thing the boy liked was music.

In those days there were no pianos. There was a little instrument with strings which was played by touching keys. This was called a clavichord. Sometimes it had legs like a table. Sometimes it had no legs and was just laid on a table.

[Illustration: Handel is found in the attic.]

Handel, though only six years old, got hold of one of these instruments, and, without any one finding out about it, he had it put up in his room in the attic of his house. After every one had gone to bed at night he would practise on this clavichord until late, when he was supposed to be in bed. One night his family heard sounds up under the roof. Wondering what it could be, they took a lantern, and, quietly climbing the attic stairs, they suddenly opened the door, and there sat little Handel in his night-clothes on a chair with his feet reaching only half-way to the floor, playing on the clavichord.

After that Handel’s father saw it was no use trying to make his son a lawyer. So he got teachers for him, and before long the boy amazed the world with his playing. He went to England, lived there, became an Englishman, and when he died the English people buried him in Westminster Abbey, a church in which famous Englishmen were buried.

Handel “set the Bible to music.” These songs with the Bible words to be sung by a chorus of voices were called _oratorios_, and one of these oratorios named “The Messiah” is sung almost everywhere at Christmas-time.

Living at the same time with Handel was another German musician named Bach. Bach played divinely on the organ as Handel did on the clavichord and wrote some of the finest music for the organ that ever has been written. Strange that both Handel and Bach went blind in their old age, but to them it was sound, not sight, that counted most. Here is another good subject for an argument: would you rather be deaf or blind?

Almost all musical geniuses have been musical wonders when they were still babies. They have been great musicians even before learning to read and write.

One such genius was born just before Handel died. He was an Austrian named Mozart.

Mozart when only four years old played the piano wonderfully. He also wrote music--composing, it is called--for others to play.

Mozart’s father and sister played very well, so the three went on a concert tour. Mozart, the boy wonder, played before the empress, and everywhere he went he was treated like a prince, petted and praised and given parties and presents.

Then he grew up and married, and ever after he had the hardest kind of a time trying to make a living. He composed all sorts of things, plays with music called operas, and symphonies, which are written for whole orchestras to play; but he made so little money that when he died he had to be buried where they put people who were too poor to have a grave for themselves alone. People afterward thought it a shame that such a great composer should have no monument over his grave, but then it was too late to find where he was buried. A monument was put up, but to this day no one knows where Mozart’s body lies.

A German named Beethoven had read the stories of the boy wonder, Mozart, and he thought he, too, would like to have a boy wonder to play before kings and queens. So when his son Louis was only five years old he kept the boy practising long hours at the piano until he became so tired that the tears ran down his cheeks. But Louis Beethoven, or Ludwig, as he was called in German, finally came to be one of the greatest musicians that have ever lived. He could sit at the piano and make up the most beautiful music as he went along--improvise, as it is called--but he was never satisfied with it when written down. Time and time again he would scratch out and rewrite his music until it had been rewritten often a dozen times.

But Beethoven’s hearing began to grow dull. He was worried that he might lose it entirely--a terrible thing to happen to any one, but to one whose hearing was his fortune nothing could be worse. And at last he did become deaf. This loss of his hearing made Beethoven hopelessly sad and bad-tempered, cross with everything and everybody. Nevertheless, he didn’t give up; he kept on composing just the same, even after he could no longer hear what he had written.

Another great and unusual German musician named Wagner lived until 1883. Though he practised all his life, he never could play very well. But he composed the most wonderful operas that have ever been written, and he wrote not only the music but the words, too. He took old myths and fairy-tales and made them into plays to be sung to music. At first some people made fun of his music, for it seemed to them so noisy and “slam-bangy” and without tune. But people now make fun of those “some people” who don’t like it!

I have told you in other places of painters and poets, of architects and wise men, of kings and heroes, of wars and troubles. I have put this story of music of all ages in one chapter which I have tucked in here between the acts, to give you a rest for a moment from wars and rumors of wars.

When I was a boy I never heard any great musicians play. Now you and I can turn on the phonograph any time and hear the music of Palestrina or Mozart, of Beethoven or Wagner, of dozens of other masters, played or sung to us whenever we wish; the greatest musicians become our slaves. No caliph in the “Arabian Nights” could command such service to his pleasure!

75

The Daily Papers of 1854-1865

If you could go up into your grandfather’s attic or the attic of somebody else’s grandfather, or would dig down into some old trunk, you might find some of the newspapers that were printed during the years from 1854 to 1865. Then you might actually read in these daily papers the happenings that I am now going to tell you about. Many people still alive have taken part in some of these events themselves or know those who have. Under the heading, “Foreign News,” you would probably find some of the following things told about:

ENGLISH NEWS. At this time the queen of England was named Victoria. She was much beloved by her people because she had such a kindly nature and Christian spirit. She was more like a mother to her people than like a queen. She ruled for more than half a century, and the time when she ruled is called the Victorian Age.

The English news of 1854 would tell about a war that the English were then fighting with Russia. Russia was a long way off, and so the English had to send their soldiers in boats through the Mediterranean Sea to the end, then past Constantinople in to the Black Sea. There in a little spot of land that jutted out from Russia into the Black Sea most of the fighting was done. This little spot of land was called the Crimea, and the war therefore was called the Crimean War. In this war in that far-off land thousands of English soldiers died from wounds and disease.

Now, there was living in England at the time of this war a lady named Florence Nightingale. She was very tender-hearted and always looking out for and taking care of those that were sick. Even as a little girl she had played that her dolls were sick with headache or a broken leg, and she would bandage the aching head or broken leg and pretend to take care of her sick patient. When her dog was ill she nursed him as carefully as if he were a human being.

Florence Nightingale heard that English soldiers were dying by the thousands in that distant land far away from home and that there were no nurses to take care of the wounded. So she got together a number of ladies, and they went out to the Crimea. Before she arrived almost half the soldiers who were wounded died--fifty soldiers out of a hundred; after she and her nurses came, only two in a hundred died. She went about through the camps and over the battlefields at night carrying a lamp looking for the wounded. The soldiers called her the Lady of the Lamp, and they all loved her.

When at last the war was over and she returned to England, the Government voted to give her a large sum of money for what she had done. She, however, refused the money for herself but took it to found a home for training nurses. Nowadays trained nurses are thought almost as necessary as doctors, and any one who is sick can call in a trained nurse to take care of him, but at that time there were no trained nurses and no one had ever heard of such a thing. Florence Nightingale was the first to start trained nursing, and so she is looked upon almost as a saint by trained nurses.

In one battle in the Crimea a company of soldiers mounted on horseback were given by mistake an order to attack the enemy. Though they knew it meant certain death, they never hesitated but charged, and two-thirds of them were killed or wounded in less than half an hour. Lord Tennyson, the English poet, has told this story in verse which you may know. It is called “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

JAPANESE NEWS. Japan is a group of islands near China. Although I have not told you about it before, it was an old country, settled in its ways even before Rome was founded. In Europe there have been constant changes of kings and rulers and people and countries. But in Japan they have had the same line of kings since before Christ.

Japan wanted no white people in her country, and, with a very few exceptions, she had always kept them out. But in 1854, the same year that England began the Crimean War, an American naval officer named Commodore Perry went to Japan and made an agreement, or treaty, as it is called, by which Japan allowed white people to come in and do business with her people. The Japanese seemed hungry for knowledge, to learn how to do things in the white man’s way. When Perry first went to Japan the Japanese lived the same way they had a thousand years before. They knew nothing of the white man’s inventions or ways of living. But in fifty years’ time they have jumped a thousand years in civilization!

These are some of the things you might read about in those old newspapers. Such news would probably have taken up little space; perhaps they would have been found down at the bottom of a column if the newspaper were American. But if the paper was printed between 1861 and 1864, the greater part of it would be about a war that was going on in our own country at that time. This was a war between our own people, a family quarrel, which we call the Civil War.

Two parts of our country, the North and the South, did not agree on several matters, chief of which was the question whether the South could own slaves. So they went to war with each other. Each side fought for what it believed was right, and thousands upon thousands gave their lives for what they believed. The war lasted for four years, from 1861 to 1865, before it was decided that no one could ever again own slaves in the United States.

Some of you who read these pages had grandfathers or great-grandfathers who fought in this war. Some of these fought for the South; some fought for the North. Some of them may have died for the South; some of them may have died for the North.

The President of the United States at this time was a man named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a very poor boy who had been born in a log cabin. He had taught himself to read by the light of a blazing knot of wood at night after his day’s work was done. As he was very poor, he had only a few books, and these he read over and over again. One of these books was the same “Æsop’s Fables” that you read. When Lincoln was a young man, he became a storekeeper. One day he found that he had given a poor woman a smaller package of tea than she had paid for, and so he closed the store and walked many miles to her house in order to return the change. People began to call him Honest Abe after that, for he was always very honest and kind-hearted.

[Illustration: Lincoln visiting camp and shaking hands with the soldiers.]

He studied hard and became a lawyer and at last was elected President of the United States. One day while he was in a theater watching a play he was shot and killed by one of the actors who thought Lincoln had not done right in freeing the slaves.

Lincoln was one of our greatest Presidents. Washington started our country; Lincoln prevented its splitting into two parts, and kept it together as one big united land to grow into the great country it now is.

76

Three New Postage-Stamps

We are getting pretty close to the present time, to “Now.”

Let us look backward a minute to see what had been going on in Europe since the time of Napoleon.

After Napoleon had been sent to Elba, the French had to have another ruler. They wanted their old kings back again. The family name of their old kings was Bourbon. So the French thought they ought to have a Bourbon ruler over them. Accordingly they tried out three Bourbons one after the other, all relatives of their last king, whom they had beheaded.

But all of them proved no good, the French people had given the Bourbon family a good tryout, and so at last they stopped worrying with kings and started another republic.

Now, a republic has a president instead of a king, so that the people had to choose a president; and whom do you suppose they picked out? Why, the nephew of Napoleon. The nephew of Napoleon was named Louis Napoleon. He had planned and plotted again and again to make himself king of France, but again and again he had failed. And now he was elected president! But Louis Napoleon didn’t want to be _only_ president. He wanted to be like his uncle the great Napoleon. He dreamed of being emperor and conquering Europe, and so it was not long after this before he had himself made emperor, and he called himself Napoleon III.[5]

[5] Napoleon I had a young son who might have been Napoleon II if he had lived. The story is, that when Napoleon III was made emperor his name was printed simply with three exclamation marks after it--“Napoleon!!!” and this was by mistake read Napoleon III.

Napoleon III was jealous of the neighboring country of Prussia. She was getting to be too strong, he thought. Prussia had a king at this time named William who was very able himself, and he had an able assistant or prime minister named Bismarck, who was looking for an excuse to fight France. So presently a war was started between the two countries in 1870. Napoleon soon found he had made a bad mistake in picking the war with Prussia. Prussia was not _getting_ too strong; she was already too strong.

Napoleon III was completely beaten by Prussia, and he with a large army had to surrender. Then in disgrace he went to live in England.

The Prussians marched into Paris and made the French agree to pay them a billion dollars. When some of the French towns said they couldn’t pay, Bismarck lined up the leading citizens of the place and told them they would be shot if they didn’t raise the money that was demanded. So France paid, and to the wonder and amazement of everybody she paid this immense sum in two years’ time. But the French and the French children have never forgotten the way they were made to pay and the way they were treated by the Prussians, and so ever since then there has been deadly enmity between these two countries. This war was called the Franco-Prussian War, as it was between France and Prussia.

There were a number of little countries near Prussia. They were called German states. But though their people were related, the countries or states were separate. As a result of this war, Prussia was able to join all these German states together and to make for the first time one big, strong, powerful nation called Germany, feared by other countries on account of her great army of fighting men. William was made emperor of all Germany and called kaiser. He was crowned in the French palace at Versailles that Louis XIV had built.

The French thought the Germans had been able to win this war because they had public schools in which all their children were trained, and because of the way their soldiers were drilled. So France set to work and started public schools everywhere in France and imitated the German way of drilling their army so that they would be ready for them in the next war.

Ever since then France has been a republic with a president and an Assembly chosen by the people.