286

HEROES OF FICTION

XXXII WILLIAM TELL 297

XXXIII DON QUIXOTE 304

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Jeanne d'Arc drew the arrow from her breast with the
courage of a veteran" _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

"King Arthur grasped the magic sword that none but the bravest
might hold" 36

"Robin Hood's band made merry by killing the King's deer" 68

"'I have not yet begun to fight,' shouted Paul Jones" 188

"The cannon balls fired by Molly Pitcher fell squarely in the
British lines" 196

"Don Quixote suffered nobody to draw water from the well" 276

A TREASURY OF HEROES AND HEROINES

CHAPTER I

BUDDHA

About five hundred years before the birth of Christ a mighty king
reigned in India over the land of the Sakyas, from which the snowy tops
of the Himalaya Mountains could be seen. His name was Suddhodana and he
had two wives called Maya and Pajapati; but for a long time they bore
him no children, and the King despaired of having an heir to his
throne. Then Queen Maya bore a son and after he was born, the legends
tell us, she had a dream in which she saw a great multitude of people
bowing to her in worship. Wise men were summoned to interpret the
dream, and they told her that the King's son, so golden in color and so
well formed, was destined for greatness as surely as rivers ran to the
sea--that he would become either a mighty conqueror who would subdue
all the people of the earth, or a holy saint, a "Buddha" (the word for
one enlightened) who would have more power over the minds of men than
the mightiest conqueror could gain over their bodies.

All this was confirmed in the minds of the wise men on account of the
wonderful portents that took place at the birth of the child: flowers
bloomed in barren places and springs gushed from dry rock on the day
when the Prince was born. He was named by the King, "Siddartha,"--a
word meaning one who always succeeds in what he undertakes--and because
of the portents at his birth the King himself bowed down to his own son
and did him homage.

Now the King desired greatly that the first of the two prophecies
should come to pass. He wished the Prince to be a conqueror, not a
Bu