d around him, and were
hypocritically friendly at first; but it was soon observed that they
were arming themselves. The commander asked Kariopoo, the chief he had
selected, to go with him, and he made no objection. The captain had
ordered the marines to be drawn up on the shore, and leading his
prisoner by the hand he approached the boat, the natives opening a
passage for him.

The chief's family and friends interposed to save him, declaring that he
would be killed if he went on board of the ship. The captain
expostulated with them and the tumult increased. The lieutenant of
marines wanted to fire, but Cook refused the pet mission. The tumult
soon became a battle, and then he ordered his men to fire. As he was
trying to save his party he was struck with a club, which partially
stunned him, and then he was stabbed in the back of the neck by an iron
dagger. He fell into shallow water, and the savages threw themselves
upon him. A struggle ensued, and he was hauled on the beach by his foes,
where they stabbed him in turn in their barbarous rage. His body lay on
the beach, and it might have been recovered, but it was not. Only a
portion of his remains were obtained, and they were buried at sea.

Thus perished Captain James Cook, and all England mourned him.

[Signature: William S. Adams.]

JOHN HOWARD[15]

[Footnote 15: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By HARRIET G. WALKER

(1726-1790)

[Illustration: John Howard.]

John Howard was born in Hackney, Middlesex County, England, September 2,
1726. The only existing record of this fact is the inscription upon his
monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, London. His parentage came through a
somewhat obscure family, his father being sometimes mentioned as an
upholsterer and sometimes as a merchant of moderate means. Of his mother
we know only her name--Chomley--and that she died when her second child,
and only son, was an infant. The father was a strict, sturdy, honest,
severe Puritan, the marks of whose character ever remained on the
character of the son.

The motherless boy seems to have passed unnoticed through the weary days
of a sickly childhood, and the usual martyrdom of the "dullest boy in
the school," under first one tutor and then another, to his sixteenth
year, when he left school and books, as he afterward testifies, "not
thoroughly knowing any one thing." How much does any boy or girl
thoroughly know of any one thing at sixteen? Surely not enou