alf before.

What followed must be told in a few words. The conqueror did not feel
that his work was finished while Darius remained free. The dethroned
king was flying eastward to Bactria. Alexander pursued him with such
speed that many of his men and animals fell dead on the road. He
overtook him at last, but did not capture him, as the companions of the
Persian king killed him and left only his dead body to the victor's
hands.

For years afterwards Alexander was occupied in war, subduing the eastern
part of the empire, and marching into India, where he conquered all
before him. War, incessant war, was all he cared for. No tribe or nation
he met was able to stand against his army. In all his career he never
met a reverse in the field. He was as daring as Darius had been
cowardly, exposed his life freely, and was more than once seriously
wounded, but recovered quickly from his hurts.

At length, after eleven years of almost incessant war, the conqueror
returned to Babylon, and here, while preparing for new wars in Arabia
and elsewhere, indulged with reckless freedom in that intoxication which
was his principal form of relaxation from warlike schemes and duties. As
a result he was seized with fever, and in a week's time died, just at
the time he had fixed to set out with army and fleet on another great
career of conquest. It was in June, 323 B.C., in his thirty-third year.
He had reigned only twelve years and eight months.

_THE WORLD'S GREATEST ORATOR._

During the days of the decline of Athens, the centre of thought to
Greece, there roamed about the streets of that city a delicate, sickly
lad, so feeble in frame that, at his mother's wish, he kept away from
the gymnasium, lest the severe exercises there required should do him
more harm than good. His delicate clothing and effeminate habits were
derided by his playmates, who nicknamed him Batalus, after, we are told,
a spindle-shanked flute-player. We do not know, however, just what
Batalus means.

As the boy was not fit for vigorous exercise, and never likely to make a
hardy soldier or sailor, it became a question for what he was best
fitted. If the body could not be exercised, the mind might be. At that
time Athens had its famous schools of philosophy and rhetoric, and the
art of oratory was diligently cultivated. It is interesting to know that
outside of Athens Greece produced no orators, if we except Epaminondas
of Thebes. The Boeotians, who dwelt nor