More of More-hall, O thou rascal, Would I had seen thee never; With the thing at thy foot thou hast prick'd my throat, And I'm quite undone for ever. Murder, murder, the dragon cried, Alack, alack, for grief; Had you but miss'd that place, you could Have done me no mischief. Then his head he shaked, trembled and quaked, First on one knee, then on back tumbled he; shoul-der (shól-der) Hèr-cu-les, the most famous of knight (nít) which was immortal, Her- Lèr-na, a district in Greece. Greeks, after ten years' siege, a huge horse of wood, and filling its belly with armed men, sent it into the city as a peace-offering to one of the deities worshipped by the Trojans. Then they pretended that they were going to give up the siege and return home. The present was accepted, and at night the armed men came out of the horse, and opened the gates of the city, which thus fell into the hands of the Greeks. seventy. This number is given at random. The exact num ber is nowhere mentioned. Virgil names nine men. "down," and voro, "I eat greedily." peer-less, without peer or equal. "porcupine," a small ani- by the tale, by the reckoning or de-vour', eat up. Lat. de, quoth, said. CRUSOE MAKING EARTHENWARE. I HAD long studied to make, by some means or other, some earthen vessels, which, indeed, I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any clay, I might make some pots that might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the preparing corn, meal, &c., which was the thing I was doing, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars, to hold what should be put into them. It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in, and how many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were dried; and, in a word, how, after having laboured hard to find the clay-to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home and work it I could not make above two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars) in about two months' labour. However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently up, and set them down. again in two great wicker-baskets, which I had made. on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw; and these two pots, being to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal, when the corn was bruised. Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any things my hand turned to; and the heat of the sun baked them quite hard. But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire-which none of these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself, that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn broken. This set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn some pots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as the potters burn in, or of glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I placed three large pipkins, and two or three pots, in a pile, one upon another, and placed my firewood all round it with a great heap of embers under them. I plied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside, and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all. When I saw them clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till I found one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run; for the sand which was mixed with the clay melted by the violence of the heat, and would have run into glass if I had gone on; so I slacked my fire gradually till the pots began to abate of the red colour; and, watching them all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the morning I had three very good (I will not say handsome) pipkins, and two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired, and one of them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand. After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use; but I must needs say as to the shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, when I had no way of making them but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would make pies that never learned to raise paste. No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one on the fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth, though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to make it as good as I would have had it be. DEFOE. mis-shápen mis-càr-ry lá-boured hást-i-ly èm-bers straw (stro) S weight (wat) de-sign (de-zín) kiln (kèl) awk-ward (ōk-wörd) li-quid, fluid, capable of flowing, like water. Lat. liquidus, from liqueo, "I melt." kiln (kil), large stove or oven. gràd-u-al-ly, by degrees, step by step. From Lat. gradus, a step. a-báte, lessen, grow less. Lat. ex ex-pèr-i-ment, trial. |