The boat has left a stormy land,

A stormy sea before her,

When, oh! too strong for human hand

The tempest gathered o'er her.

And still they rowed amidst the roar
Of waters fast prevailing.

Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore,
His wrath was changed to wailing.

For sore dismayed, through storm and shade,
His child he did discover:-

One lovely hand she stretched for aid,

And one was round her lover.

"Come back! come back!" he cried in grief,

"Across this stormy water;

And I'll forgive your Highland chief,

My daughter!

oh, my daughter!"

'Twas vain; the loud waves lashed the shore,

Return or aid preventing;

The waters wild went o'er his child,

And he was left lamenting.

WORD STUDY: Lochinvar, Ullin, Grames, Lochgyle; gal

liard, croupe, scaur, heather, wight.

A BALLAD OF PAUL JONES1

'Tis of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and

stars,

And the whistling wind from the west-no'west blew

through the pitch-pine spars;

With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the gale;

On an autumn night we raised the light on the old Head of Kinsale.

It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and strong,

As gayly over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled

along;

With the foaming seas beneath her bow the fiery waves she spread,

And bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cathead.

There was no talk of short'ning sail by him who walked

the poop,

And under the press of her pond'ring jib, the boom bent like a hoop!

And the groaning waterways told the strain that held her stout main tack,

But he only laughed as he glanced aloft at a white and silvery track.

1 An old sea ballad, author unknown.

The mid-tide meets in the Channel waves that flow from shore to shore,

And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Feather

stone to Dunmore,

And that sterling light in the Tusker Rock where the old bell tolls each hour,

And the beacon light that shone so bright was quench'd on Waterford Tower.

What looms upon our starboard bow? What hangs upon the breeze?

'Tis time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Saltees,

For by her ponderous press of sail and by her consorts four

We saw our morning visitor was a British man-of-war.

Up spoke our noble Captain then, as a shot ahead of us passed

"Haul snug your flowing courses! Lay your topsail to the mast!"

Those Englishmen gave three loud hurrahs from the deck of their covered ark,

And we answered back by a solid broadside from the decks of our patriot bark.

"Out booms! out booms!" our skipper cried. "Out booms, and give her sheet !"

And the swiftest keel that was ever launched shot ahead of the British fleet;

And amidst a thundering shower of shot, with stunsails hoisting away,

Down the North Channel Paul Jones did steer just at the break of day.

1

THE STORY OF OUR FLAG1

The history of our flag is of very great interest, and brings to memory many sacred and thrilling associations. The banner of St. Andrew was blue, charged with a white saltier or cross, in the form of the letter X. It was used in Scotland as early as the eleventh century. The banner of St. George was white, charged with a red cross; and it was used in England as early as the first part of the fourteenth century. By a royal proclamation, dated April 22, 1700, the two crosses were joined together upon the same banner.

This ancient banner of England suggested the basis of our own flag. Other flags had been used at different times by our colonial ancestors, but they were not associated with, or made a part of, the "stars and stripes."

It was after Washington had taken command of the Revolutionary army at Cambridge, in 1776, that he unfolded before them the flag of thirteen stripes of 1By Alfred P. Putnam,

alternate red and white, having upon one of its corners the red and white crosses of St. George and St. Andrew on a field of blue. This was the standard which was borne into Boston when it was evacuated by the British troops and was entered by the American army.

Uniting, as it did, the flags of England and America, it showed that the colonists had not yet decided to sever the tie that bound them to the mother country. By that union of flags it was signified that the colonies were still a substantial part of the British Empire, and that they demanded the rights which such a relation implied. On the other hand, the thirteen stripes represented the union of the thirteen colonies; the white stripes indicated the purity of their cause, the red declared their defiance of cruelty and persecution.

On the 14th of June, 1777, it was resolved by Congress, "That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union be thirteen white stars in a blue field." This resolution was made public in September, 1777, and the flag that was first made and used in pursuance of it was that which led the Americans to victory at Saratoga. The stars were arranged in a circle, in order, perhaps, to express the equality of the states.

In 1794, there having been two more new states added to the Union, it was voted that the alternate stripes, as well as the stars, be fifteen in number. The flag thus altered and enlarged was the banner borne