is
unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil! Iago. Come, come; good
wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no
more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love
you.

Cas. I have well approved it, sir,--I, drunk!

Iago. You or any man living may be drunk at a time, man. I'll tell you
what you shall do. Our general's wife is now the general. Confess
yourself freely to her; importune her help to put you in your
place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a
disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more
than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her
husband, entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any
lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger
than it was before.

Cas. You advise me well.

Iago. I protest in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.

Cas. I think it freely, and betimes in the morning, I will beseech
the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me; I am desperate of my
fortunes if they check me here.

Iago. You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant, I must to the watch.

Cas. Good night, honest Iago.
Shakespeare.--Othello, Act ii, Scene iii.

NOTES.--Iago is represented as a crafty, unscrupulous villain. He applies
for the position of lieutenant under Othello, but the latter has already
appointed Cassio--who is honest, but of a weak character--to that
position; he, however, makes Iago his ensign. Then Iago, to revenge
himself for this and other fancied wrongs, enters upon a systematic course
of villainy, part of which is to bring about the intoxication of Cassio,
and his consequent discharge from the lieutenancy.

The Hydra was a fabled monster of Grecian mythology, having nine heads,
one of which was immortal.

Desdemona was the wife of Othello.

XC. STARVED ROCK. (325)

Francis Parkman, 1823-1893, the son of a clergyman of the same name, was
born in Boston, and graduated at Harvard University in 1844. He spent more
than twenty years in a careful study of the early French explorations and
settlements in America; and he published the fruits of his labor in twelve
large volumes. Although troubled with an affection of the eyes, which
sometimes wholly prevented reading or writing, his work was most ca