Page 142 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

The tickle multitude is split into opposite factions. Then it is th.i!
1 jrcmost, before all the rest, followed by a great crowd, Laocoon
t .igerly runs down from the heights of die citadel, and cries from afar:
“■ M y btiplo® citizens, bow hus such wild fren/.y seized y o u ? D o
\ : l i believe th<it the enemy have sailed away ? Or g o you think that
Li jy Grecian gifts are free from fraud? Is such your knowledge
0 Ulysses? Kit her the Aelneans are concealed hi this frame; or it is
n engine: wrought against our wu.ls, intended to spy into our houses
ai\,i come dov.‘:i upon our city from above; or there is some hidden
dei/tit Trust, not the horie, yt T robins! Whatever it is, I fe;>_r the
Greeks, ever, when ‘bey bring gifts.1
Lo, some Dardan shepherds meanwhile carac, dragging k> the king
with loud should, u youth whose hands were bound behind his back;
who, though they knew him not, bad put himself in their way as they
approached him, in order to work out his craft, and open Troy to
the Greeks, or submit to certain death. At length he made this
speech:
J 1 certainly will declare to you, O Kiny, the whole truth, whafever
be the consequence 7 will not deny T am by birth a Greek, and if
fortune, the wicked goddess has fashioned Sinon to misery, she shall
not fashion him to falsehood and deceit. After the death of my father
through the malice of Ulysses, I dragged on my days in obscurity and
sadness, and vowed that if ever I returned a conqueror to Ar^ui;,
1 would be li-s avenger, From this time began my downfall, The
Greeks often wished to leave Troy, but the in element fury of the sea
kept them on land, and the wild winds alarmed them in the act of
starting. In our bewilderment, we sent to inquire of the oracle,
Phceb'js, and this terrible response was brought back : ‘ By blood, you
must seek the power to return, and the sacrifice demands an Arrive
life.’ At last, forced by the loud outcries of Ithacus, he broke silence
a il d d oo me d ms to the a 1 tar. Th e d read fu I d ay h a d c oi ue, I ;; natc bed
myself from death and broke my bonds, and now I have no hope of
seeing again my fatherland, nor the children I love, and the parent
1 king to see, at whose hands, perhaps, they will even require satisfae-