had at an earlier day. Tournaments or jousts were the big public
entertainments, and you will find a famous description of one by Sir
Walter Scott in Ivanhoe, in the volume "Stories that Never Grow Old,"
the tournament of Ashby-de-la-Zouche. In it you will find a clear
description of how the field of contest was laid out, of the
magnificent pavilions decorated with flags, and the galleries spread
with carpets and tapestries for the ladies.

The same qualities that made a manful fighter then, make one now: to
speak the truth, to perform a promise to the utmost, to reverence all
women, to be constant in love, to despise luxury, to be simple and
modest and gentle in heart, to help the weak and take no unfair
advantage of an inferior. This was the ideal of the age, and chivalry
is the word that expresses that ideal. In all our reading we shall
perhaps find no more glowing example of it as something real, than in
the speech of Sir Jean de Vienne, governor of the besieged town of
Calais who, when called upon by King Edward III of England to
surrender unconditionally, replied:--

"We are but a small number of knights and squires, who have loyally
served our lord and master as you would have done, and have suffered
much ill and disquiet, but we will endure far more than any man has
done in such a post, before we consent that the smallest boy in the
town shall fare worse than ourselves."

And this story you can find in the volume "Tales of Courage and
Heroism," entitled "The Noble Burghers of Calais."

WILLIAM PATTEN.