not according to the precepts which I have given you, not now for the first time, the warmth of your professions will be of no avail."

"We will do our best," said Crito. would you have us bury you?"

"But in what way

"In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you." Then he turned to us, and added with a smile: "I can not make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who has been talking; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body,--and he asks how he shall bury me. And, though I have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison, I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed -these words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, as I perceive, no effect upon Crito. And therefore, I want you to be surety for me now, that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried. I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial, 'Thus we lay out Socrates,' or 'Thus we follow him to the grave, or bury him!' for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer, then, my dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best."

Soon the jailer entered and stood by him, saying: "To

you, Socrates, whom I know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me when, in obedience to the authorities, I bid them drink the poison—indeed I am sure that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are aware, and not I, are the guilty cause. And so, And so, fare you well, and try to bear lightly what must needs be; you know my errand." Then, bursting into tears, he turned away and went out. Socrates looked at him and said: "I return your good wishes and will do as you bid." Then turning to us, he said, "How charming the man is; since I have been in prison he has always been coming to see me, and at times he would talk to me, and was as good as could be to me, and now see how generously he sorrows for me. must do as he says, Crito; let the cup be brought."

But we

The jailer handed the cup to Socrates, who, in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, as his manner was, took the cup and said: "What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not?" The man answered: "We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough." "I understand," he said; "yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world-may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me." Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully

he drank off the poison. Hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now, when we saw him drinking, and saw, too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed, and at that moment Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness. "What is this strange outcry?" he said. "I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience." When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about, and then he lay on his back. He was beginning to grow cold, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)--he said: "Crito, I owe a cock to Esculapius; will you remember to pay the debt?" "The debt shall be paid," said Crito; "is there anything else?" There was no answer to this question.

Such was the end of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, justest and best of all the men whom I have ever known.

From Benjamin Jowett's Translation of "The Phædrus." Adapted.

THE REVENGE

A BALLAD OF THE FLEET

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

"That man must be a poet," instantly said the master of Trinity Hall, at Cambridge, the great English University, when Alfred Ten

nyson entered it as a student. And Tennyson's son tells us that from his earliest years his father felt that he was to be a poet and earnestly prepared himself to be worthy of his calling. In a country of "quiet villages, large fields, gray hillsides and noble, tall-towered churches," Tennyson was born in his father's rectory in 1809. All of the Tennysons were poets, and Alfred, when only eight years old, covered his slate with verses. The graces of gentle nurture surrounded the twelve children. The mother was especially lovely in person and character, tender of heart, a lover of nature, and through her Tennyson early became "wise in wingéd things." Winter nights by the fire, Tennyson told his still younger brothers and sisters tales of chivalry. By daylight he was a knight and jousted in tournaments, or acted in some old play. The day Byron died he carved the words "Byron's dead" on a sandstone rock and felt "the whole world darkened." He was then fourteen. At Cambridge, his class included a number of men afterward prominent in literature or affairs. When one of them, Arthur Hallam, died, Tennyson expressed his grief in In Memoriam, one of the most beautiful elegies ever written. He succeeded Wordsworth as poet laureate of England in 1850. In 1884 he was made