the people's champion, and from the Captain of a troop and the General of an army the determined farmer of the fens took the helm and steered his country through reefs and breakers, until, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the commonwealth of England became the first power in Europe, unconquerable on the land, invincible on the sea.

Step by step Cromwell rose to power. Against his own desire he rose, the one strong man in England. And, as he advanced, his family rose with him into notice and position. One by one the older boys died. Robert, a promising lad of seventeen, died at Felsted School; Oliver, the second son, named for his father and a Captain in the cavalry, died just before the great victory of Marston Moor, and Richard Cromwell thus became the eldest living son, heir to the estates, successor in power, but never heir to the fame that his mighty father attained.

For there was in "lazy Dick" nothing of his father's masterful manner or genius in leadership, nothing of the display and vast hospitality that made famous his ancestor, known as "the Golden Knight of Hinchinbrook," nothing of the dash and daring that marked his more remote ancestor, "Diamond Dick," who unhorsed all his rivals at a tournament, and so defended the king's colors that the pleased monarch, bluff King Henry the Eighth, called the victorious champion his "diamond."

We are not even certain that Richard Cromwell fought in the wars against the King, as did his brother Oliver and Henry. We cannot find that he desired either the position or prominence that his father's rise to greatness gave him. Richard Cromwell cared only to live and die a quiet, inoffensive, lazy country squire. At any other time in the history of the world he might easily have lived unknown, unhonored, and unsung. It was his father's fame that brought him into notice; it was because he had neither the will, the inclination, nor the ability to take up his father's work, and carry it forward for the greatness and glory of England, that to-day the world holds in such slight esteem this quiet son of Cromwell.

We should not blame people for not doing what they cannot do. It may be, indeed, that "lazy Dick" was not shiftless, though he was lazy, nor a numbskull simply because he was not great. Richard Cromwell liked to take things easy; he hated to be bothered; he liked to keep out of trouble, and was willing to let the world wag as it would so long as he had a comfortable home and nothing particular to do.

There is nothing really bad in this; but boys and men of that stamp, you know, never help the world along. And I am afraid that "lazy Dick," notwithstanding all his opportunities and the high position to which he was finally advanced, never did anything to help the world along. If a good thing came in his way he took it, enjoyed it if he could, and got out of it if it proved troublesome and laborious.

When he was twenty his father tried to make him a lawyer; but he soon dropped that profession. He offered him a command in the army, but Dick seems never to have accepted it. When he was twenty-three he married a nice girl in Hampshire. Oliver Cromwell loved her dearly, but he and her father had their hands full trying to make Dick "toe the mark."

RICHARD PREFERRED HUNTING TO POLITICS.

Whenever he could, Richard Cromwell would slip away from the work his father wished him to do and go out hunting, or have a good time with other rich do-nothings at his Hampshire farm. He disliked the almost kingly court of his father at Whitehall Palace, and though sent to Parliament, he did little and said less. And when he was made one of his father's chief advisers—a privy councillor—his counsels amounted to nothing, and his position was simply what politicians call a sinecure.

When, at last, his great father's life went out, and England was left without a head, Richard Cromwell was named as his successor, and made Lord Protector. Lazy Dick became King of England, without the title, but with more of power than many a King before and after him possessed.

But he had neither the skill nor the sense to hold what the people had given him. I doubt if he cared either for the place or the power. And they were his but a short time. Dissatisfaction broke into revolt. The nation was divided. The King came to his own again. Charles the Second was placed upon the throne from which his father had been hurled, and Richard Cromwell, without a word of protest, without striking a blow for his power, stepped quietly down from the Lord Protector's chair his father had set up, and slipped back into private life, too weak to be defended by his friends, too insignificant to be persecuted by his foes.

He lived to be an old, old man, and died at eighty-six amid his rose-gardens at Cheshunt, near London, unhonored and disregarded by the England his father had liberated, but which the son was too weak to uphold as a free commonwealth.

We must not be too bard on "lazy Dick." He had not a spark of greatness in him, and should not be blamed for failing to maintain his father's glory. It is a hard thing for a small son to live up to the fame of a great father. And yet the world does not take lack of ability into account. Richard Cromwell to-day has no place in the world's esteem. His name lives because he was his father's son; because he was a failure where his father had been a success; and because his life was so sad and stupid a sequel to the people's stand for liberty in the days made glorious in English history by the might and power, the grandeur and manliness, the strength and patriotism of England's greatest man—Oliver Cromwell, great father of a small son.

ITS MEANING.

(Tommy loq.)

Upon the quiet river,
Enamelled and serene,
Great flakes of oil are floating
In blue and pink and green.

"They look like maps all colored
In my geography,
Blue China, and green Ireland,
And pink Algiers I see.

"And still I think the meaning
Of all this oil I've found;
It's this—a school of sardines
Right here is swimming round."

R. K. M.

THE WATERMELON TIDE.

BY EARLE TRACY.

The great still tide that comes from the Gulf when no one is expecting it reached up through the marshes one summer night, and spread itself over the banks of the bayou, and found numberless things in places of safety, and when it was ready to go out again it took them along.

Among its discoveries was a schooner-load of watermelons, about which Captain Lazare and the boss of the big farm had disagreed so radically that the melons had been left in a pile on the landing to wait for other transport. The tide charged itself with them, and when morning broke they were on their way to New Orleans.

Bascom had been tossing in his sleep as the little Mystery did when the tide went in one direction along Potosi Channel and the wind went in the other. With the first glimmer of light he was up and down at the beach.

"Me, but it's been high," he gasped, coming up from his first plunge and leaning back in the water as if it were a steamer-chair. "It would be beautiful to run out with in the Mystery—an' me goin' to pick figs all day in them dumb ole trees! I wish the canning factory would