Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans | Page 9

But they gave him a good beating. These Indians were from Can-a-da. They took their pris-on-ers to their own village. When they were coming home, they shouted to let the people know that they had prisoners.
[Illustration: Stark running the Gauntlet]
The young Indian war-ri-ors stood in two rows in the village. Each prisoner had to run between these two rows of Indians. As he passed, every one of the Indians hit him as hard as he could with a stick, or a club, or a stone.
The young man who was with Stark was badly hurt in running between these lines. But John Stark knew the Indians. He knew that they liked a brave man.
When it came his turn to run, he snatched a club from one of the Indians. With this club he fought his way down the lines. He hit hard, now on this side, and now on that. The young Indians got out of his way. The old Indians who were looking on sat and laughed at the others. They said that Stark was a brave man.
One day the Indians gave him a hoe and told him to hoe corn. He knew that the Indian war-ri-ors would not work. They think it a shame for a man to work. Their work is left for slaves and women. So Stark pre-tend-ed that he did not know how to hoe. He dug up the corn instead of the weeds. Then he threw the hoe into the river. He said, "That is work for slaves and women."
Then the Indians were pleased with him. They called him the young chief.
After a while some white men paid the Indians a hundred and three dollars to let Stark go home. They charged more for him than for the other man, because they thought that he must be a young chief. Stark went hunting again. He had to get some furs to pay back the money the men had paid the Indians for him. He took good care that the Indians should not catch him again.
He af-ter-wards became a great fighter against the Indians. He had learned their ways while he was among them. He knew better how to fight them than almost any-body else.
In the Rev-o-lu-tion he was a gen-er-al. He fought the British at Ben-ning-ton, and won a great vic-to-ry.

A GREAT GOOD MAN.
Some men are great soldiers. Some are great law-makers. Some men write great books. Some men make great in-ven-tions. Some men are great speakers.
Now you are going to read about a man that was great in none of these things. He was not a soldier. He was not a great speaker. He was never rich. He was a poor school-teacher. He never held any office.
And yet he was a great man. He was great for his goodness.
He was born in France. But most of his life was passed in Phil-a-del-phi-a before the Rev-o-lu-tion.
He was twenty-five years old when he became a school-teacher. He thought that he could do more good in teaching than in any other way.
School-masters in his time were not like our teachers. Children were treated like little animals. In old times the school-master was a little king. He walked and talked as if he knew every-thing. He wanted all the children to be afraid of him.
But Ben-e-zet was not that kind of man. He was very gentle. He treated the children more kindly than their fathers and mothers did. Nobody in this country had ever seen a teacher like him.
He built a play-room for the children of his school. He used to take them to this room during school time for a little a-muse-ment. He man-aged each child as he found best. Some he could persuade to be good. Some he shamed into being good. But this was very dif-fer-ent from the cruel beatings that other teachers of that time gave their pupils.
Of course the children came to love him very much. After they grew to be men and women, they kept their love for the good little schoolmaster. As long as they lived they listened to his advice.
There were no good school-books in his time. He wrote some little books to make learning easier to his pupils. He taught them many things not in their books. He taught them to be kind to brutes, and gentle with one another. He taught them to be noble. He made them despise every kind of meanness.
He was a great teacher. That is better than being a great soldier.
Ben-e-zet was a good man in many ways. He was the friend of all poor people. Once he found a poor man suf-fer-ing with cold for want of a coat. He took off his own coat in the street and put it on the poor man, and then went home in his shirt sleeves.
In