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And yet, perhaps, if we fairly take into account how the seeking after personal advancement and conspicuous work festers the soul, and how the flower of heart's-ease grows, as Bunyan's shepherd-boy found out, in the lowly valley, these exhortations to a quiet performance of lowly duties and a contented filling of lowly spheres, may seem touched with a higher wisdom than is to be found in the arenas where men trample over each other in their pursuit of a fame 'which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. What a peaceful world it would be, and what peaceful souls they would have, if Christian people really adopted as their own these two simple maxims.
There is the picture of the shepherd-boy, to which must be added the exquisite psalm which later traditions put in his mouth; the victory over the giant; the most pathetic story of the moody and wayward Saul the power of music over his melancholy, the alternations of jealous rage and compunction; the friendship with Jonathan, more tender and pure than the friendships Plato pictures; the dramatic fortunes of the outlaw; the family tragedies full of crime and horror; the dark story of Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom; the passion of fatherhood in fullest intensity, with the agonized prayers for the sick child and the heartbroken lament over Absalom; the group of valiant captains and their chivalrous exploits; the risk of life to bring to their homesick chief a drink from the well of Bethlehem; the story of Bathsheba and Uriah lust, treachery, and murder; the prophet's rebuke; the years declining under heavy shadows.
Antony had been unable to continue the conflict when parted from me. Now he sat in front of the cabin with his head resting on his hands, staring at the planks of the deck like one distraught. He, he Antony! The bravest horseman, the terror of the foe, let his arms fall like a shepherd-boy whose sheep are stolen by the wolves.
A SHEPHERD-BOY, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, "Wolf! Wolf!" and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last.
Sweet sounds were always in his ears, his heart was ever singing, for the shepherd-boy was a poet. At times he would turn around sharply, thinking he had heard some one calling. One day he was quite startled. "David, David," he thought he heard a voice calling, "thou shalt be King of Israel."
The duke, hearing that it was his own daughter that was to be brought in this strange way, asked Orlando if he believed the shepherd-boy could really do what he had promised; and while Orlando was answering that he knew not what to think, Ganymede entered and asked the duke, if he brought his daughter, whether he would consent to her marriage with Orlando.
All was silent around nothing heard but the shepherd-boy playing his horn; the sound coming from the distant mountains into the wooded valley where we sat, first shrill, then softening into a simple irregular note. My friend asked me what I thought the instrument was.
Jean Cayrol, a native of Cantal, had been brought up amid the wild mountains of Auvergne. His father was a small farmer in the neighborhood of Saint-Flour, scraping a miserable pittance from the ground for the maintenance of his family. From the age of eight years Cayrol had been a shepherd-boy. Alone in the quiet and remote country, the child had given way to ambitious dreams.
There is nothing that demonstrates this more clearly, as there is nothing, in my judgment, more touching and picturesque in all poetry, than that passage in the eleventh book of the "Odyssey," where the shade of Achilles tells Ulysses that he would rather be the poorest shepherd-boy on a Grecian hill than king over the unsubstantial shades of Hades.
The Montaignac chasseurs were climbing the steep foot-path slowly, but surely. Chupin walked in advance, urging them on with voice, gesture and example. An imprudent word from the little shepherd-boy, whom M. Lacheneur had questioned, had decided the fugitive's fate.
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