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Footnote 11: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.] By CHARLES F. HORNE (1496-1560) Three or four hundred years ago the little country of Denmark was of much greater importance than it is to-day. It had the mightiest navy in the world, and its rule over the seas was undisputed. Its appearance on the map was also very different then, for it not only extended over much of the German territory now surrounding it, but also held all Norway as a province. Sweden, too, though often rebelling, and being punished with terrible cruelty, was, up to the year 1523, a dependency of the Danish crown. Naturally the Danes rather looked down on the conquered Swedes, and made them the subject of many rude jests and taunts. There was in the beginning of the sixteenth century at the great Danish university at Upsala a Swedish boy, who with the rest of his countrymen must have suffered many such insults. His proud, brave, little heart rebelled against this treatment; and one day, when his teacher had driven him beyond endurance with his severe punishments and bitter sneers, the boy snatched out his little sword and plunged it straight through the master's book. "I will teach you something, too," he cried; "teach you that the Swedes are no cowards, for some day I will gather them together and treat every Dane in Sweden as I do your book." Then he rushed out of the school, never to return. [Illustration: Gustavus Vasa.] Many lads have, in some moment of passion made big boasts of what they would do "some day." Few ever made so tremendous a vaunt; fewer still ever so completely fulfilled their threats; and, perhaps, no one ever struggled so patiently, so nobly, nor against such tremendous obstacles before the goal was reached, as did this angry little Swede, known to history as Gustavus Vasa. He was born in 1496, and was the oldest son of Sir Eric Johansson, governor of a little group of islands in the Gulf of Bothnia. Returning home after his precipitate flight from school, Gustavus grew up under the eye of his stalwart father, who trained him to be not only a strong and a shrewd man, but also a good one. Sent at the age of eighteen to the court of Svante Sture, the regent governing Sweden, he threw himself eagerly into the great war for freedom which his countrymen had begun under that mighty leader. This struggle was so far successful that four years later King Christian, of Denmark, utterly defeated on land and with his fleet in
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