in the history of England,
and poor Emma wept many a hot and bitter tear as she yielded one jewel
after another to the pawnbroker in order to buy off the coarse and
hateful Danes.

If Ethelred were to know how he is regarded by the historian who pens
these lines, he would kick the foot-board out of his casket, and bite
himself severely in four places.

To add to his foul history, happening to have a few inoffensive Danes on
hand, on the 13th of November, the festival of St. Brice, 1002, he gave
it out that he would massacre these people, among them the sister of the
Danish king, a noble woman who had become a Christian (only it is to be
hoped a better one), and married an English earl. He had them all
butchered.

[Illustration: ETHELRED WEDS EMMA.]

In 1003, Sweyn, with revenge in his heart, began a war of extermination
or subjugation, and never yielded till he was, in fact, king of England,
while the royal intellectual polyp, known as Ethelred the Unwholesome,
fled to Normandy, in the 1013th year Anno Domini.

But in less than six weeks the Danish king died, leaving the sceptre,
with the price-mark still upon it, to Canute, his son, and Ethelred was
invited back, with an understanding that he should not abuse his
privileges as king, and that, although it was a life job during good
behavior, the privilege of beheading him from time to time was and is
vested in the people; and even to-day there is not a crowned head on the
continent of Europe that does not recognize this great truth,--viz.,
that God alone, speaking through the united voices of the common people,
declares the rulings of the Supreme Court of the Universe.

On the old autograph albums of the world is still written in the dark
corners of empires, "_the king can do no wrong_." But where education is
not repressed, and where that Christianity which is built on love and
charity is taught, there can be but one King who does no wrong.

Ethelred was succeeded by Edmund, called "the Ironside." He fought
bravely, and drove the Danes, under Canute, back to their own shores.
But they got restless in Denmark, where there was very little going on,
and returned to England in large numbers.

Ethelred died in London, 1016 A.D., before Canute reached him. He was
called by Dunstan "Ethelred the Unready," and had a faculty for erring
more promptly than any previous king.

Having returned cheerily from Ethelred's rather tardy funeral, the
people took oath, some of