in this land,
and it has not passed over me senseless. I am not one of those who can
go through misfortune untouched, as a drop of oil can rise through
water. I have taken it all in, felt it all, to the last sting there
was in it; and yet now, when I call to mind the night after he was
crowned, and its rapture of an hour--the strength and the eagerness of
his love: the strength, the eagerness, and the pride of mine--I say it
is good that I have lived. The next morning I saw him with his valiant
men--the men whose heart God had touched; how he set them in order, and
how they followed him--him higher than any of them, from the shoulders
upwards; and I said to myself, he is mine, the king is mine, that body
of his is mine, and I am his.

Tell you all about him? How can I? But I will tell you a little--what
I have told you again and again before--so that you may tell it to your
children, and the name of Saul may never be forgotten.

After he was chosen, the children of Belial said, How shall this man
save us? But he held his peace, for he foresaw what was at hand,
Nahash the Ammonite came up and encamped against Jabesh-gilead; and
when the men of Jabesh-gilead offered to become his slaves if he would
but make a covenant with them, he consented, but upon this condition,
that they should thrust out their right eyes. Such thralls had the
children of Israel become whom Saul had to save, that Nahash dared to
put this upon them in mockery. They sent messengers to Gibeah, where
Saul was--not to him, but to tell the people there; and Saul heard the
message as he drove the herd out of the field after work, for he was
still at his farm, his day not yet having come. When he listened to
the story of the men of Jabesh-gilead, the Spirit of God came upon him;
and he took a yoke of his oxen and hewed them in pieces, and sent them
throughout all the coasts of Israel, saying, Whosoever cometh not after
Saul, and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. The fear of
the Lord fell on the people, such strength was there in Saul's command,
and they came out with one consent. He numbered his men, divided them
into three bands, marched all night from Bezek, fell upon the Ammonites
in the morning watch, and so slaughtered and scattered them that two of
them were not left together. Where now were the men of Belial who had
mocked him? The people cried out that they might be brought forth and
put to death; but Saul, ever noble a