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would avail him now. All that he had to trust to was his immense
physical strength, and what was that when measured against
thousands?
He saw the dangerous surging movement in the sea of heads, and knew
only too well what it betokened. With a frightful yell of mingled
hatred and execration, the seething human mass bore down upon him!
His own followers and friends did what they could for him, but that
was very little. His case was desperate. Desperation, however,
inspires some people with an almost superhuman energy. Life was
sweet, and that day he fought for his life. The very shouting and
hooting of the mob, the roar of the angry multitude, which might
well have filled even a brave man with panic, stimulated him,
strengthened him to resist to the uttermost.
He fought like a lion, forcing his way through the furious crowd,
attacked in the most brutal way on every side, yet ever struggling
on if only by inches. Never once did his steadfastness waver,
never for a single instant did his spirit sink. His unfailing
presence of mind enabled him to get through what would have been
impossible to most men, his great height and strength stood him in
good stead, while the meanness and the injustice of the attack, the
immense odds against which he was fighting nerved him for the
struggle.
It was more like a hideous nightmare than a piece of actual life,
those fierce tiger faces swarming around, that roar of vindictive
anger, that frightful crushing, that hail storm of savage blows!
But, whether life or nightmare, it must be gone through with. In
the thick of the fight a line of Goethe came to his mind, one of
his favorite mottoes; Make good thy standing place and move the
world.
And even then he half smiled to himself at the forlornness of the
hope that he should ever need a standing place again.
With renewed vigor he fought his way on, and with a sort of glow of
triumph and newborn hope had almost seen his way to a place of
comparative safety, when a fearful blow hopelessly maimed him.
With a vain struggle to save himself he fell to the earth a vision
of fierce faces, green leaves, and blue sky flashed before his
eyes, an inward vision of Erica, a moment's agony, and then the
surging crowd closed over him, and he knew no more.
Sorrow and wrong are pangs of a new birth;
All we who suffer bleed for one another;
No life may live alone, but all in all;
We lie within the tomb of our dead selves,
Waiting till One command us to arise. Hon. Boden Noel.
Knowing that Erica would have a very anxious afternoon, Charles

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