| Summary: | Newsletter of the North Dakota School for the Deaf. 2 TSB DilEZOTiL BAS-HSrUKTIEIR. " Look now, what see you? ” " The arrow has missed its mark and sticks in the wall beside the figure. Maleficus draws another arrow and fits it to the bow! ” “ Dive as before," commanded the stranger. “ See! Again; what see you? ” " That arrow also has missed its aim. Maleficus seems much alarmed. The lady trembles and implores him! He says that if again he missed the mark he must die! ” “ Quick, dive under the blessed water! What see you now?” " The arrow has missed its mark, but rebounding from the wall has pierced Maleficus to the heart. The lady mourns! But see! Now she prepares to bury him under the floor ot the room! All is dark, 1 sink, I sink! ” A year later the good knight returned from his pilgrimage. Great were the rejoicings throughout the city, and loud the shouts of joy from the crowds. On the day after his return a banquet was given by the knight; and when the • festivities were at their height, the knight said: “ All my friends greet me, save Maleficus. Where is he?” “ Alas, my lord!" said the lady. “ he disappeared the day you left us." •• Where did he die? ” asked the knight. But the lady scornfully asked how a magician could die. “Then why did you bury him?" cried the knight in a rage. And the whole court arose, and searched the apartments and found the remains of the sorcerer. Then the wicked woman, who tried to cause the death of the knight, and then perfidiously smiled and welcomed him home, when she failed in her endeavor, was carried by the mob to the stake and burned. And thereafter the good knight lived in peace.—Sc/. Kane, the Arctic Explorer. “ It is so grand up here! ” said the boy, as he sat in the starlight on a shaft sixteen feet above the kitchen roof. He was a daring boy, ten years old or thereabout and wherever a cat could go, he would. One night he executed this plan; he and his brother Tom slipped out of bed, and got down upon the kitchen root. Here the elder found his secreted clothes line; then with a stone, which he explained was a “ dipsey,” he threw the rope up to the chimney stack, down which the stone descended; he went into the house and fastened it; then he climbed upon the chimney, of course, at the risk of life, and delivered himself as above. “ Oh, Tom, what a nice place this is! I’ll get down into the flue to my waist, and pull you up too. Just make a loop in the rope, and I’ll haul you in. Don’t be afraid,—it is so grand up here! ” Did this Doy, Elisha Kent Kane, think of that boyish daring and remark when he climbed to high altitudes amid ice and icebergs, and perchance exclaim, —“ It is so grand up here!" The boy had a reckless daring, a pugnacity, an intense activity, an untrammeled spirit, which, under unfavorable moral influences, might have made him one of the most lawless of desperadoes. Once, at school, with a brother two years younger under his care, the master ordered up his protege for punishment. Elisha sprang up: “Don’t whip him, he’s such a little fellow,— whip me." The master understood this as mutiny: “ I'll whip you too, sir." But Elisha made as good a fight as he could, and turned the discipline into a fracas. When he was ten years old, four or five boys climbed upon a roof in his father’s back yard, and shot putty-wads from blow-guns at the girls below. Elisha told them to desist; but they turned their artillery upon him. Before they were aware, he had climbed like a young tiger among them, cuffed each of them, dragged them to the edge of the roof, and made them apologize. “ Come down, Elisha! oh. ’Lisha, come down," wailed his brother. “ No, Tom, they ain’t done apologizing yet," said the boy. Once, when he was twelve years old, a bully insulted him on the wharf. He caught hold of a rope, fixed to a crane, ran backward till he got a momentum, planted his knees in the fellow's face, and leveled him. He seemed to be cut out for daring deeds. He did not care for most of the school studies. Elisha Kent Kane, of a family American for a century, had four stocks in his composition. The Kane is Irish; his mother, Leiper, was Scottish; the Van Rensselaer, low Dutch; and the Gray, English. His great grandfather came from Ireland in 1756, and married Miss Kent, daughter of Rev. Elisha Kent, of Massachusetts Puritan stock, from whom this boy took his name. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 3, 1820; he was the oldest of seven children. His father was a member of the Philadelphia bar, and became Judge Kane in 1845. Young Kane went to the University of Virginia, and was brought home on account of illness. His father tried to get him a naval appointment. Daniel Webster promised him a place on the Chinese embassy; he went with Cushing on his first sea voyage to Madeira, Rio Janeiro, Bombay, the Philippines, —where he descended two hundred feet into the volcano of Tael,—then to China, back by way of Egypt, through Europe. Then came the search for Sir John Franklin, the " Grinnell Expedition." When DeHaven look Kane's measure, he confessed that “ he thought he was not the pattern for the place," Seasick, used up, with a chance to get back, answered firmly, " 1 won't do it." His personal narrative of that expedition show what a world of work he did on that voyage. Then came his own second expedition in 1852, with its activities almost superhuman, its patience and good cheer in that awful Arctic midnight, and its indomitable push into the ice regions, which he has described in his marvelous two volumes which have been called the “ Iliad of the Arctic,”—and which every youth ought to read. Scurvy-smitten, oppressed by hypertrophy of the heart, he sailed to Cuba for relief but died in Havana,sinking rapidly; his death occurring February 16, '857. Exploration will probably never lose its charm. His heroic life of just thirty-seven years, with so much accomplished, will never fade from the memory of America and the world. “ Farewell, illustrious Kane! no blemish stain Or taint ol blood, or fraud, or sordid gain Shall on thy cherished memory remain. But round thy grave the spotless lilies grow; In whiteness rivaling the Arctic snow, The fitting emblem ot thy life below. Thy skies with storms no longer overcast— Thy winter's bitterness forever past— Celestial flowers of an eternal spring Upon thy path their vernal treasures fling, And the morning stars forever sing.” —Success. The dog days are the forty days between July 3 and August u. They were originally styled dog days by the ancients who attributed the great heat of the summer to Sirius, the dog star, which then rose near the sun about July i- ______________ Independence Hall in Philadelphia was built from 1729 to 1834. Baxter wrote the “ Saints’ Everlasting Rest ” at thirty-four. Prior to 1657 tea was sold in England for S50 a pound.
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