bout the record--the day for such scenes had gone
by, and its spirit had departed from the nation. The boy had his sport
and his honestly earned applause; but when it was all over the old
chivalry returned to the grave, never to appear again.

Henry himself only too soon, alas! sunk into that grave also. The
closing years of his life leave many a pleasing trace of kindness, and
justice, and earnestness. The boy was no mere boisterous schoolboy. He
pondered and prepared himself for what he thought was his path in life;
he foresaw its responsibilities, and he faced its duties, and set
himself like a man to bear his part as a true king should.

It was not to be. Suddenly his health failed him--the tall boy had
overgrown his strength before he knew it. Heedless of fatigue and
exposure, he pursued his vigorous exercises, and what had been his life
became his death. A cold taken during a game of tennis, when he was in
his eighteenth year, developed into a fever, and for days he lay between
life and death. The nation waited with strange anxiety for the issue,
and a cloud seemed to fall over the length and breadth of the land.

Then he became worse.

"My sword and armour!" he cried; "I must be gone!" and after that the
brave boy died.

The people mourned him as their own son; and years after, when England
was plunged deep in the miseries and horrors of civil war, many there
were who cried in their distress,--

"If but our Henry had lived, all this had not been!"

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

THE TROUBLES OF A DAWDLER.

I was born a dawdler. As an infant, if report speaks truly, I dawdled
over my food, over my toilet, and over my slumbers. Nothing (so I am
told) could prevail on me to stick steadily to my bottle till it was
done; but I must needs break off a dozen times in the course of a single
meal to stare about me, to play with the strings of my nurse's cap, to
speculate on the sunbeams that came in at the window; and even when I
did bring myself to make the effort, I took such an unconscionable time
to consume a spoonful that the next meal was wellnigh due before I had
made an end of a first.

As to dressing me in the morning, it took a good two hours. Not that I
rebelled and went on strike over the business, but it was really too
much of an effort to commit first one foot and then the other for the
reception of my socks, and when that operation was accomplished a long
interval always elapsed before I cou