tion; I was consulted with confidence, and the love of praise
fastened on my heart.

"I still wished to see distant countries; listened with rapture to the
relations of travelers, and resolved some time to ask my dismission, that
I might feast my soul with novelty; but my presence was always necessary,
and the stream of business hurried me along. Sometimes, I was afraid lest
I should be charged with ingratitude; but I still proposed to travel, and
therefore would not confine myself by marriage.

"In my fiftieth year, I began to suspect that the time of my traveling was
past; and thought it best to lay hold on the felicity yet in my power, and
indulge myself in domestic pleasures. But, at fifty, no man easily finds a
woman beautiful as the houries, and wise as Zobeide. I inquired and
rejected, consulted and deliberated, till the sixty-second year made me
ashamed of wishing to marry. I had now nothing left but retirement; and
for retirement I never found a time, till disease forced me from public
employment.

"Such was my scheme, and such has been its consequence. With an insatiable
thirst for knowledge, I trifled away the years of improvement; with a
restless desire of seeing different countries, I have always resided in
the same city; with the highest expectation of connubial felicity, I have
lived unmarried; and with an unalterable resolution of contemplative
retirement, I am going to die within the walls of Bagdad."

Notes.--Bag dad'--A large city of Asiatic Turkey, on the river Tigris.

In the ninth century, it was the greatest center of Moslem power and
learning.

Zobeide (Zo-bad').--A lady of Bagdad, whose story is given in the "Three
Calendars" of the "Arabian Nights."

In this selection the form of an allegory is used to express a general
truth.

VIII. THE BRAVE OLD OAK. (81)

Henry Fothergill Chorley, 1808-1872. He is known chiefly as a musical
critic and author; for thirty-eight years he was connected with the
"London Athenaeum." His books are mostly novels.
###

A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
Here's health and renown to his broad green crown,
And his fifty arms so strong.
There's fear in his frown, when the sun goes down,
And the fire in the west fades out;
And he showeth his might on a wild midnight,
When the storms through his branches shout.

In the days of old, when the spring with cold
Had brightened his branches gray,
Throug