Footnote 11: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CHARLES F. HORNE

(1496-1560)

Three or four hundred years ago the little country of Denmark was of
much greater importance than it is to-day. It had the mightiest navy in
the world, and its rule over the seas was undisputed. Its appearance on
the map was also very different then, for it not only extended over much
of the German territory now surrounding it, but also held all Norway as
a province. Sweden, too, though often rebelling, and being punished with
terrible cruelty, was, up to the year 1523, a dependency of the Danish
crown.

Naturally the Danes rather looked down on the conquered Swedes, and made
them the subject of many rude jests and taunts. There was in the
beginning of the sixteenth century at the great Danish university at
Upsala a Swedish boy, who with the rest of his countrymen must have
suffered many such insults. His proud, brave, little heart rebelled
against this treatment; and one day, when his teacher had driven him
beyond endurance with his severe punishments and bitter sneers, the boy
snatched out his little sword and plunged it straight through the
master's book. "I will teach you something, too," he cried; "teach you
that the Swedes are no cowards, for some day I will gather them together
and treat every Dane in Sweden as I do your book." Then he rushed out of
the school, never to return.

[Illustration: Gustavus Vasa.]

Many lads have, in some moment of passion made big boasts of what they
would do "some day." Few ever made so tremendous a vaunt; fewer still
ever so completely fulfilled their threats; and, perhaps, no one ever
struggled so patiently, so nobly, nor against such tremendous obstacles
before the goal was reached, as did this angry little Swede, known to
history as Gustavus Vasa. He was born in 1496, and was the oldest son of
Sir Eric Johansson, governor of a little group of islands in the Gulf of
Bothnia. Returning home after his precipitate flight from school,
Gustavus grew up under the eye of his stalwart father, who trained him
to be not only a strong and a shrewd man, but also a good one.

Sent at the age of eighteen to the court of Svante Sture, the regent
governing Sweden, he threw himself eagerly into the great war for
freedom which his countrymen had begun under that mighty leader. This
struggle was so far successful that four years later King Christian, of
Denmark, utterly defeated on land and with his fleet in