Black Prince

“ But a still more instructive lesson, and one which appears more generally, may be drawn from the conduct of the Black Prince, whose story has just been told. He comes among us rude and ignorant with no just ideas of religion, and after having been accustomed for twenty three years to indulge all his passions without any restraint. No sooner, however, is Christianity placed before him, than he is struck with its truth and beauty, and embraces it with a child-like simplicity. ”

“ I drew a long breath.
“—the Black Prince!” I exclaimed. “Why, you can’t do that. There is not a leader alive who can cope with him in the field.”
A slow smile came over his face.
“Within a week, there will be fifteen thousand men on their way down this valley,” he replied. “The Black Prince is far off towards the west. He is as ignorant of this preparation as a child.”
“But he’ll learn of it?” I said.
My captor shook his head.
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“He’ll be struck with the suddenness of a thunderbolt. We’re going to cut him off at Poitiers—when he starts back to his headquarters at Bordeaux.” ”

“ It is difficult in these modern days to realize how young were some amongst those who took part in the great battles of the past. The Black Prince, as he was afterwards called from the sombre hue of the armour he wore, was not yet fifteen when the Battle of Crecy was fought; and when the King had summoned his bold subjects to follow him to the war, he had called upon all knights and gentlemen between the ages of sixteen and twenty to join themselves to him for this campaign in France. Lads who would now be reckoned as mere schoolboys were then doughty warriors winning their spurs in battle ”

“ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“The fellow who took him is lying back there somewhere in the woods.”
“And you’re not a highwayman, nor a thief, nor a scrivener after all?”
“Tut, tut!” he replied. “I told you once before that you should never judge a man by his clothes. I’m a simple servant of the greatest fighter in France—the Black Prince there. Come,” he said touching me on the arm. ”

“ The people, who loved him for the sake of his good and brave father, the Black Prince, were very peaceable and quiet in the beginning of his reign. But his uncles, who were clever men, and wanted to be powerful, did not agree very well with one another. ”

“ There was something at the back of his head that prompted him to doubt us, so with no more ado I burst forth, “Look here,” I began. “We are on our way to find the Black Prince. We have traveled a long distance and have been beset by enemies. We have been nearly killed half a dozen times. We’re in a strange country and need a word of advice. Maybe we ought to have a guide. Can’t you see that your friends are our friends?” I pointed to the dagger in his hands. ”

“ On the morning before the wedding I saddled Black Prince myself, and took him out for a farewell ride. I would sooner say farewell to a man than a horse any day! The Black Prince had been my chief companion at Devereux, and a very faithful one too. ”

“ Paul, Minnesota.
I have two little eight-year-old sisters, named Lucy and Eleanor, but we call them Dove and Bly. And I have a little brother of six years. When Young People comes, it is given first to the one who has behaved the best during the past week.
Can you tell me how the Black Prince died? I have looked in several histories, but none of them state the manner of his death.
C. C. B. H.
There was nothing remarkable about the death of the Black Prince. ”

“ As long as they could win fame for themselves, and get enough money for their wars and their luxuries, they cared very little for the well-being of the people. In the Black Prince’s court at Bordeaux, the pride and magnificence and neglect of the needs of the people which were the weakness of chivalry showed themselves most clearly.
The Black Prince was a noble host; he made every one around him happy. Eighty knights and four times as many squires feasted every day at his table. The princess never showed herself except surrounded by many ladies and fair maidens. ”

“ The man tossed his head to one side and uttered a little painful laugh.
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“The Black Prince of England,” he went on as though he would brush my objection aside, “has left Bordeaux. He is ranging along the western coast of France. There is no one to oppose him. Not a soldier of the King is within a hundred leagues. He is toppling over one castle after the other——Suppose,” he said closing one eye and looking at me cunningly, “the King of France were to rush towards the west to destroy him? ”

“ Nobody’s affair now. Chaps who did it didn’t clearly know.... What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for Housemaid’s Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting, and was the Black Prince—you know the Black Prince—was he enameled or painted, or what? I think myself, black-leaded—very likely—like pipe-clay—but did they use blacking so early? ”

“ His face was drawn as tight as a drum and covered with dirt and sweat. In his hand he held the knife which I had first seen in the grasp of his foe.
“He drew me out into the woods,” he explained. “He was the toughest man I ever met.”
Then I bethought me of Pierre and the old landlord.
“They will escape!” I cried. “They will go and bring others of their kind. They’ll——”
The archer waved his hand.
“Let them go,” he said. “Let them bring twenty. There are a dozen of my followers already on the way here——”
“Are you of the party of the Black Prince?” ”

“ His horse had galloped off in fright and his mace lay on the ground.
“I am not done yet!” he cried and he took his weapon in his hand. “I will fight you till the end.”
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It was only an idle boast. The Black Prince threw his leg over his horse and dropped lightly to the road. De Marsac with the fury of a madman whirled his mace about his head. He caught the Prince a heavy blow on the shoulder which would have knocked an average man kicking to the earth. The Prince stiffened himself to receive the shock, then, when it was spent, he knotted his mailed fist. ”

“ I remember, on my arrival in Port-au-Prince in 1863, having a conversation with a young mulatto lady, no longer in the freshness of youth, on the subject of intermarriage; and having faintly indicated that I thought she had been unwise in refusing the hand of one of the best-mannered, best-educated, and richest [Pg 138] blacks in the country, I received a reply which completely surprised me, “Sir, you insult me to imagine I would marry a black. No, I will never marry any one but a white.” ”

“ On the war being renewed in 1369, he was attacked near Lusignan, when with a detached force, and made prisoner by the French, to the grief of the Black Prince, who had a high esteem for him (ib.) On the release of the Duchess of Bourbon he was exchanged (1370) and rejoined the Black Prince at Limoges. ”

“ Making a wide detour they sneaked through the woods almost noiselessly. The dead leaves, fallen during the preceding winter, had softened long ago and were rapidly settling into the thick mold that covered the damp earth. Sneaking up on the farthest sentinel from the rear, Prince was almost upon him before the startled negro challenged “Halt! Weh oonuh gwine? Gimme de passwu’d!”
“Raccoon,” Prince responded.
“Oonuh cyan’ go t’ru ’puntop dat wu’d.” ”

“ Being asked why he would not extend his forgiveness to one who took away the character of the people of his country, he answered,—"If a man should try to kill me, or should sell my family for slaves, he would do an injury to as many as he might kill or sell, but if any one takes away the character of black people that man injuries black people all over the world; and when he has once taken away their character, there is nothing which he may not do to black people ever after. That man, instance, will beat black men, and say, "O, it is only a black man, why should I not beat him?" ”

“ Out into an open glade, where the sunlight fell upon the long, green grass of midsummer, there bounded a splendid stag—a stag royal, a stag of ten—fit to be the antlered monarch of the king's deer in Longwood. ”

“ London is a dreary-looking city on a Sunday morning, especially on a Sunday morning in November; people seem to know how tedious the hours are going to be, and lie in bed as long as they decently can; the teeming and swarming capital of the world looks as if it had suddenly grown lifeless. When Lionel got up, there was a sort of yellow darkness in the air; hardly a single human being was visible in the Green Park over the way ”

“ Whither, then, Nina? To Castellamare or Sorrento, with their pink and yellow houses, their terraces and gardens, their vine-smothered bowers, or rather to the filmy island out yonder, that seems to move and tremble in the heat? A couple of words in their own tongue suffice to silence the importunate coral-girls; we climb the never-ending steps; behold, a cool and gracious balcony, with windows looking far out over the quivering plain of the sea. ”

“ And when he looked beyond that low green hill, where there were one or two hares hopping about on their ungainly high haunches, and past that great stretch of receding country in which strips of red-and-white villages peeped here and there from the woods, behold! a horizon as of the sea, faint and blue and far, rising and ever rising in various hues and tones, until it was lost in a quivering mist of heat; and he could only guess that there, too, under the glowing sky, some other fair expanse of our beautiful English landscape lay basking in the sunlight and sweet air of the early summer. ”

“ Everybody is tittering over the way you dote on him. Don’t be a fool.’ Well, if either the prince or the princess had been marrying for policy this chatter would have done no harm. But they were marrying for love, and love has nerves. Love lacks that conservative leash that lies in an extraneous motive; and by an absurd chance the dwarf precipitated an actual quarrel, the prince got to flirting with a middle-aged duchess whom he despised, and the princess, in a jealous fit, gave a peevish, mischief-making dowager aunt the opportunity she long had been looking for, and the match was broken off. ”

“ Prince Edward children must go to a private school or none at all; all other Virginia children can go to public schools. Closing Prince Edward's schools bears more heavily on Negro children in Prince Edward County since white children there have accredited private schools which they can attend, while colored children until very recently have had no available private schools, and even the school they now attend is a temporary expedient. ”

“ The first person he beheld at the Garden Club was Octavius Quirk—of course at the supper-table.
"Going to Lady Adela's on the 3d?" said the bilious-looking Quirk, in a gay manner.
"I should want to be asked first," was Lionel's simple rejoinder.
"Ah!" said the other, complacently, "I heard you had not been much there lately. A charming house—most interesting—quite delightful to see people of their station so eagerly devoted to the arts. Music, painting, literature—all the elegancies of life—and all touched with a light and graceful hand. ”

“ They crossed the meadow and entered the churchyard. A perfect silence reigned over the place; they could not hear what was going on within the small building; out here there was no sound save the chirping of the birds and the continuous murmur of the trees. They walked about, looking thoughtfully at the gravestones—many of them bearing names familiar enough to them in bygone years. ”

“ The Negro’s pronounced gift for music is today widely recognized. That gift, brought to America in slave-ships, was nurtured by that mother of woe, human slavery, till out of suffering and toil there sprang a music which speaks to the heart of mankind—the prayer-song of the American Negro. In Africa is rooted the parent stem of that out-flowering of Negro folk-song in other lands. ”

“ For the Negro everywhere discriminated against, segregated and shunned, mobbed and murdered—he it is whose melodies are on all our lips, and whose rhythms impel our marching feet in a ‘war for democracy.’ The irresistible music that wells up from this sunny and unresentful people is hummed and whistled, danced to and marched to, laughed over and wept over, by high and low and rich and poor throughout the land. The downtrodden black man whose patient religious faith has kept his heart still unembittered, is fast becoming the singing voice of all America. ”

“ We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? ”

“ According to his views of human beauty, the blacker a man is the handsomer he is considered, provided that some tinge of red be perceptible. They carry this notion so far, that in sounding the praises of their king, an act at which they are very expert, they mention, as one of his excellences, that he chooses to be black, though, being so powerful a monarch, he might have been white if he had liked. ”