tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">201

XXII Giuseppe Garibaldi 216 XXIII Abraham Lincoln 223 XXIV Grace Darling 236 XXV Florence Nightingale 241 XXVI Father Damien 248 XXVII Catherine Breshkovsky 254 XXVIII Theodore Roosevelt 262 XXIX Edith Cavell 272 XXX King Albert of Belgium 278 XXXI Maria Botchkareva 286         HEROES OF FICTION         XXXII William Tell 297 XXXIII Don Quixote 304

---

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Jeanne d'Arc drew the arrow from her breast with the courage of a veteran"	Frontispiece
	FACING PAGE
"King Arthur grasped the magic sword that none but the bravest might hold"	36
"Robin Hood's band made merry by killing the King's deer"	68
"'I have not yet begun to fight,' shouted Paul Jones"	188
"The cannon balls fired by Molly Pitcher fell squarely in the British lines"	196
"Don Quixote suffered nobody to draw water from the well"	276

---

A TREASURY OF HEROES AND HEROINES

 

CHAPTER I

BUDDHA

About five hundred years before the birth of Christ a mighty king reigned in India over the land of the Sakyas, from which the snowy tops of the Himalaya Mountains could be seen. His name was Suddhodana and he had two wives called Maya and Pajapati; but for a long time they bore him no children, and the King despaired of having an heir to his throne. Then Queen Maya bore a son and after he was born, the legends tell us, she had a dream in which she saw a great multitude of people bowing to her in worship. Wise men were summoned to interpret the dream, and they told her that the King's son, so golden in color and so well formed, was destined for greatness as surely as rivers ran to the sea—that he would become either a mighty conqueror who would subdue all the people of the earth, or a holy saint, a "Buddha" (the word for one enlightened) who would have more power over the minds of men than the mightiest conqueror could gain over their bodies.

All this was confirmed in the minds of the wise men on account of the wonderful portents that took place at the birth of the child: flowers bloomed in barren places and springs gushed from dry rock on the day when the Prince was born. He was named by the King, "Siddartha,"—a word meaning one who always succeeds in what he undertakes—and because of the portents at his birth the King himself bowed down to his own son and did him homage.

Now the King desired greatly that the first of the two prophecies should come to pass. He wished the Prince to be a conqueror, not a Buddha, and extend the power of the Sakyas by the sword through every part of the world. And he did everything in his power to bring this end about and to weaken the possibility that his son should ever be a holy man.

When the child was still very young a further prophecy was made to the King—namely that the Prince would only become a Buddha after he had seen four common sights which for him would be four omens—an old man, a sick man, a dead man and a holy man in the yellow robe of a beggar. Then and then only, said the prophecy, the Prince would leave his country; furthermore, if he remained at home for a certain length of time he would never leave at all, but would turn all his attention to the art of war, and his armies would sweep over the face of the earth like a devouring flame.

The King summoned his counsellors. He commanded them to make sure that no sick men or old men, no funeral escorts or beggars should ever be allowed on the streets of the city when the Prince was passing.