He puts him on a coat of mail
Consisting of a fish's scale,

That when his foe should him assail
No point should be prevailing.
His rapier was a hornet's sting
It was a very dangerous thing
For if it chanced to hurt the king,
It would be long in healing.

His helmet was a beetle's head,
Most horrible and full of dread,
Which able was to strike one dead

Yet did it well become him.
And for a plume a horse's hair,
Which, being tossèd in the air,

Had force to strike his foe with fear
And turn his weapon from him.

Himself he on an earwig set;

Yet scarce he on his back could get,
So oft and high he did curvet

Ere he himself could settle.

He made him turn and stop and bound,

To gallop and to trot the round;

He scarce could stand on any ground,
He was so full of mettle.

nec'ro man cy, magic; enchantment. | lim'ning, painting; illuminating. mor'tised, with beams fitted one into ra'pi er, sword.

the other.

let'ting, hindering (an old word).

ear'wig, a small insect.

cur'vet, to leap; bound.

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631) was a noted English poet.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

YOUNG readers are sometimes surprised to find that, while George Washington is always called the Father of his Country, Thomas Jefferson, the third President, is mentioned in books of history as the man who more than any one else formed its institutions and ways. This is easily explained.

Washington was first and chiefly a soldier, and had served with European soldiers. He liked formal ways, dignified uniforms, and even highsounding titles. He thought that the President of the United States should be addressed as "Your Mightiness." He was driven to the Capitol in a sixhorse coach with outriders. It was a great change from this way of doing things when Thomas Jefferson rode to the Capitol alone on horseback, dismounted, hitched his horse to a post, and then walked up the steps to be inaugurated as President of the United States.

Let us see how he came to be there. Jefferson was born at Shadwell, Virginia, afterward called Monticello, on April 2, 1783. He was the son of a rich planter, and he had the advantage over his fellow-statesmen of a better education in early life. He was not obliged to earn money, like Washington by surveying, or like Franklin by printing,

or like Adams by teaching a country school. He entered William and Mary College in Virginia, and he studied early the Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian languages. He was especially fond of mathematics; he enjoyed music and played the violin.

When Jefferson was twenty-two, he owned a library which had cost him more than one thousand dollars. This library was burned in his house at Shadwell; but later he went on purchasing books and had a large collection. At the time of his marriage, which occurred when he was twenty-nine years old, he owned nearly two thousand acres of land and forty or fifty slaves; and the widow whom he married owned one hundred and thirty-five slaves and forty thousand acres of land, inherited from her father.

Jefferson was bred a lawyer, and he went early into public life, taking an active part in all the excitement which preceded the American Revolution. His most important service in this connection. was the framing of the Declaration of Independence, which prepared the way for making a few scattered colonies into a nation. Jefferson was also one of the men sent to Europe to arrange terms of peace for the new government, so that its liberty might be secured. He was made Vice-President of the United States under President Adams, who succeeded Washington; and in 1801 he became

President himself, and held the office for eight years.

This brings us to the time when he rode on horseback to the Capitol at Washington, to be inaugurated President, just as any Virginia farmer might ride to mill, instead of going in the style that Washington had adopted. It was now twelve years since Washington became President, and it is likely that Jefferson thought that Washington had gone a little too far in the direction of show and style. All that was well enough, he may have thought, when it was desirable to show the European nations that we could do such things with proper dignity.

In the same way Jefferson refused to have his birthday publicly celebrated, as those of Washington and Adams had been, and would not even let it be known when his birthday came. He would not have weekly receptions, as Washington had done, but opened his doors to all comers on New Year's Day and on the Fourth of July.

It is very likely that the President carried all this simplicity too far. He narrowly escaped getting into serious trouble with the foreign ambassadors because he would not allow them to be treated with any special attention at public dinners. No man

would come to a table," he said to the British minister, "where he was to be marked with inferiority to any one else." The British minister wrote home that it was "almost intolerable" that the President