Oliver's mother sent him a baize or bombazine table-cloth. And this tablecloth did he cut up, prompted by the devil, into stockings, for he was justly proud of his calves, the same having been admired by the co-eds of Cambridge. For all of these things, in after-years, Oliver did pray forgiveness and beseech pardon for such pride of the eye and lust of the flesh, manifest in pedal millinery. A year at Cambridge proved the uselessness of the place, but it was necessary to go there to find this out. The death of his father brought matters to a climax, and Oliver must prepare for very hard times. Then London and a lawyer's office welcomed him. On Thursday, October Twenty-ninth, Sixteen Hundred Eighteen, Cromwell saw a curious sight: it was the fall of the curtain in the fifth act of the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, who introduced tobacco into England, and did several other things, for which the monarchy was, as usual, ungrateful. Raleigh had sought to find an Eldorado for England, and alas! he only found that man must work wherever he is, if he would succeed, and that fields of gold and springs of eternal youth exist only in dreams, where they best belong. It was a cold, gray morning, and Sir Walter was kept standing on the scaffold while the headsman ground his ax, the delay being for the amusement and edification of the Christian friends assembled. "One thing I will never do," said Oliver Cromwell, law-clerk, swart and lusty, in green stockings and other sartor-resartus trifles; "one thing I will never do--and that is, take human life!" Oliver was both tender-hearted and grim. Sir Walter's frame shook in the cold, dank fog, and the sheriff offered to bring a brazier of coals; but the great man proudly drew around him the cloak, now somewhat threadbare, that he had once spread for good Queen Bess to tread upon, and said, "It is the ague I contracted in America--the crowd will think it fear--I will soon be cured of it," and he laid his proud head, gray in the service of his country, calmly on the block, as if to say, "There now, take that, it is all I have left to give you!" * * * * *