not often used now.

[18.] Terms and tides presage, _i.e._ the schoolmaster could tell when
courts were to be held and when certain tides (times), such as
Whitsuntide or Easter, would come.

[19.] Gauge, measure. The word is applied especially to determining
the capacity of casks and other vessels containing alcoholic liquors.
These had to be carefully measured, so that the government should
receive the specified tax.

[20.] The twelve good rules. Among these are: "Reveal no secrets,"
"Keep no bad company." They can be found in Hales' _Longer English
Poems_, p. 353.

[24.] Participate, share.

[25.] Altama, the Altamaha, a river in Georgia.

[26.] Crouching tigers. It is evident that the poet is indulging his
imagination. The people of Georgia doubtless find this description of
their country amusing if not accurate.

[27.] Torno's cliffs. Perhaps the poet refers to some region near the
river Torneo, or Tornea, which flows into the Gulf of Bothnia.

[28.] Pambamarca's side. Pambamarca is a mountain in Ecuador.

[29.] Labored mole, carefully constructed breakwater.

ROBERT BURNS

1759-1796

Probably the poetry of "Robbie Burns, the Ayrshire Ploughman," is known
to more English-speaking people than that of any other writer--not
excepting even Shakespeare, for many a person who never reads a book is
familiar with _John Anderson_, _My Jo_, _Auld Lang Syne_, and _Bonie
Doon_, though he may not know or care who wrote these famous songs.

The Scotch poet was born at Alloway in Ayrshire, where his father
cultivated a small farm. He was the eldest of seven children. Before
he was eight years old the family removed to Mt. Oliphant, and later to
Lochlea. Here, in 1784, the father died, worn out with incessant toil,
which ended only in disappointment. The family were so poor that
Robert was obliged to work hard even when very young, and at fifteen he
was his father's chief helper. In later years he described his life at
Mt. Oliphant as combining "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the
unceasing moil of a galley slave." But poets are given to
exaggeration, and doubtless the attractive picture of home life which
he afterwards painted in the _Cotter's Saturday Night_ is true in the
main of the life in his father's cottage.

In his father, Burns was most fortunate, for he was a man of strict
integrity, and strong religious faith. The education of his children
was, in his judgment, so important that wh