the Christmas season.

To these gentler qualities of his nature was joined not a little of the
hardihood of the Scotch heroes whose lives he has celebrated. The same
"high spirit with which, in younger days," he has written, "I used to
enjoy a Tam-o'-Shanter ride through darkness, wind and rain, the boughs
groaning and cracking over my head, the good horse free to the road and
impatient for home, and feeling the weather as little as I did," was
that which bore him bravely through misfortune and gave him the splendid
courage with which in his last years he faced the ruin of his fortune.
With an influence as strong and wholesome as that of his works as a
writer, remains the example of his loyal, industrious life.

THE TOURNAMENT

_By_ SIR WALTER SCOTT

NOTE.--Scott's _Ivanhoe_, from which this account of _The
Tournament_ is taken, belongs to the class of books known as
historical novels. Such a book does not necessarily have as the
center of its plot an historical incident, nor does it necessarily
have an historical character as hero or heroine; it does, however,
introduce historic scenes or historic people, or both. In
_Ivanhoe_, the events of which take place in England in the twelfth
century, during the reign of Richard I, both the king and his
brother John appear, though they are by no means the chief
characters. The great movements known as the Crusades, while they
are frequently mentioned and give a sort of an atmosphere to the
book, do not influence the plot directly.

_Ivanhoe_ does much more, however, than introduce us casually to
Richard and John; it gives us a striking picture of customs and
manners in the twelfth century. The story is not made to halt for
long descriptions, but the events themselves and their settings are
so brought before us that we have much clearer pictures of them
than hours of reading in histories and encyclopedias could give us.
This account of a tournament, for instance, while it lets us see
all the gorgeousness that was a part of such pageants, does not
fail to give us also the cruel, brutal side.

The poor as well as the rich, the vulgar as well as the noble, in the
event of a tournament, which was the grand spectacle of that age, felt
as much interested as the half-starved citizen of Madrid, who has not a
real left to buy provisions for his family, feels in the iss