bargained there for purple and silken robes with orange borders, stamped leather jerkins, peacock’s feathers, and the scarlet plumage of flamingos (which they called “phœnix skins”), scents and pearls and spices, almonds and raisins, and monkeys for their wives to play with. Sometimes these merchants were Venetians, but more often they were Syrians or crafty Jews; and Bodo and his fellows laughed loudly over the story of how a Jewish merchant had tricked a certain bishop, who craved for all the latest novelties, by stuffing a mouse with spices and offering it for sale to him, saying that “he had brought this most precious never-before-seen animal from Judea,” and refusing to take less than a whole measure of silver for it. In exchange for their luxuries these merchants took away with them Frisian cloth, which was greatly esteemed, and corn and hunting dogs, and sometimes a piece of fine goldsmith’s work, made in a monastic workshop. And Bodo would hear a hundred dialects and tongues, for men of Saxony and Frisia, Spain and Provence, Rouen and Lombardy, and perhaps an Englishman or two, jostled each other in the little streets; and from time to time there came also an Irish scholar with a manuscript to sell, and the strange, sweet songs of Ireland on his lips: A hedge of trees surrounds me, A blackbird’s lay sings to me; Above my lined booklet The trilling birds chant to me. In a grey mantle from the top of bushes The cuckoo sings: Verily--may the Lord shield me!-- Well do I write under the greenwood. Then there were always jugglers and tumblers, and men with performing bears, and minstrels to wheedle Bodo’s few pence out of his pocket. And it would be a very tired and happy family that trundled home in the cart to bed. For it is not, after all, so dull in the kitchen, and when we have quite finished with the emperor, “Charlemagne and all his peerage,” it is really worth while to spend a few moments with Bodo in his little manse. History is largely made up of Bodos. Eileen Power, _Medieval People_. By permission of and by arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EXPOSITORY NARRATIVE The editors have found these additional selections very useful in teaching expository narrative: Davis, William Stearns. _A Day in Old Athens_, particularly Chapter II, _The First Sights in Athens_ and Chapter XIX, _Country Life around Athens_. Allyn and Bacon. Husband, Joseph. _America at Work._ Houghton Mifflin Company. Husband, Joseph. _A Year in a Coal Mine._ Houghton Mifflin Company. Mills, Enos. _The Story of a Thousand Year Old Pine._ Houghton Mifflin Company. Pound, Arthur. _The Iron Man._ Atlantic Monthly Press. White, Stewart Edward. _How to Go About It_ from _The Mountains_. Doubleday, Page & Company. CHAPTER II