ou want, this morning, to take up the
reading?"

"I had as well, I suppose."

"If you go to Edinburgh--if you do as your father wishes and apply
yourself to the law--you will need to read well and to speak well. You
do not do badly, but not well enough. So, let's begin!" He put out his
hand and drew from the bookshelf a volume bearing the title, _The
Treasury of Orators_. "Try what you please."

Alexander took the book and moved to the unoccupied window. Here he
half sat, half stood, the morning light flowing in upon him. He opened
the volume and read, with a questioning inflection, the title beneath
his eyes, "'The Cranes of Ibycus'?"

"Yes," assented Strickland. "That is a short, graphic thing."

Alexander read:

"Ibycus, who sang of love, material and divine, in Rhegium
and in Samos, would wander forth in the world and make his
lyre sound now by the sea and now in the mountain.
Wheresoever he went he was clad in the favor of all who
loved song. He became a wandering minstrel-poet. The
shepherd loved him, and the fisher; the trader and the
mechanic sighed when he sang; the soldier and the king felt
him at their hearts. The old returned in their thoughts to
youth, young men and maidens trembled in heavenly sound and
light. You would think that all the world loved Ibycus.

"Corinth, the jeweled city, planned her chariot-races and
her festival of song. The strong, the star-eyed young men,
traveled to Corinth from mainland and from island, and those
inner athletes and starry ones, the poets, traveled. Great
feasting was to be in Corinth, and contests of strength and
flights of song, and in the theater, representation of gods
and men. Ibycus, the wandering poet, would go to Corinth,
there perhaps to receive a crown.

"Ibycus, loved of all who love song, traveled alone, but not
alone. Yet shepherds, or women with their pitchers at the
spring, saw but a poet with a staff and a lyre. Now he was
found upon the highroad, and now the country paths drew him,
and the solemn woods where men most easily find God. And so
he approached Corinth.

"The day was calm and bright, with a lofty, blue, and
stainless sky. The heart of Ibycus grew warm, and there
seemed a brighter light within the light cast by the sun.
Flower and plant and tree and all living things seemed to
him to be g