14 True Nobles and Heroes.

“Day by day the manna fell;
Oh! to learn this lesson well.”

“Very fine indeed,’ says some old grumbler;
“but what have youngsters to do with these
things ? what is the use of filling their heads
with high-flown heroics?” “Use!” say we—
the youngsters will think and resolve, and
the sooner their thoughts are turned into a
right and honourable direction, the greater
the hope that in after years the man will
bring forth the promise of the boy, for is it
not true that “the boy is the father of the
man?” Look at Hannibal,the boy of twelve
years, led by his father to the temple of the
heathen deities : while he grasps the horns of
the altar, with one tiny hand, and sprinkles
a few erains of incense to the heathen gods
with the other, his father makes him swear
that if he lives to be a man, his father’s foes
shall be his foes, and that nothing shall
intervene between him and a lifelong struggle
with them, except it be greater victory and
success than ever were his father’s. The boy
becomes the man, and we do not wonder
that childish thoughts have become life
thoughts with him. As we read of the suc-