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PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS;

THE SEQUEL TO

THE WILLOW LANE BUDGET.

With llustrations.

BY UNCLE FRANK,

AUTHOR OF THE “QUEER OLD MILLER,’ ETC,



NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 145 NASSAU STREET.
1852.



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for

In the
the Southern District ot New York.

a

Bi state
Cc, W. BENEDICT,

SreREOTYPER AND PRINTER,
201 William st., N. Y-



CONTENTS.



PAGE
WHAT I AM GOING TO DO, ° : ° é 7
A GLANCE AT PARSON DALEY, ; ‘ , “* 16
DOCTOR WINDMAN AND HIS DOSES, . ‘ ° - ee
HUNTING HENS’ NESTS, . ; : ‘ ° : 63
CLIMBING THE PEACH TREE, . ° ° ° i
THE BALL FAMILY, 5 . ° ; e 96
CHIPS OF THE OLD BLOCK, . ; ; j . 108
THE DROWNED GIRL, ; ‘ e ‘ ° ‘ 113

THE YOUNG TRUTH-TELLER, i ‘ ‘ ‘ wee



Vl CONTENTS.

THE NEW. SKATES, ‘ ° ° ° ‘ ; 140
LAUGHING BILL, . : ‘ ° ° ° ° » 159
UNCLE FRANK'S LEAVE-TAKING, . ° ° ° 173

TT

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE DROWNED GIRL, -. -~— * : Frontispiece
VIGNETTE TITLE-PAGE, ‘ : ° . ‘ 1
A PEEP AT WILLOW LANE, . ° ° ara 13
PARSON DALEY AND THE LITTLE GIRL, ; ‘ ; 26
HUNTING HENS’ NESTS, . ‘ ° . . . 65
JOE AND HIS VICTIM, . ; ‘ ‘ . . 108
AMANDA AT HER KNITTING WORK, > ag 119

“OH, DANIEL! FORGIVE ME ms . ; ° . 156



A PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

CHAPTER I.
WHAT I AM GOING TO DO.

I suppose that my friends, the boys
and girls, for whom I make this book,
would like to know at the outset, what
sort of a thing I have got for them, and
how I came to make it. I will tell
them, in as few words as possible.

Not long ago, I spun some yarns, and
wove them together, and sent them off
to the little folks about the country, with



8 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

this label on them: “4 Budget of
Willow Lane Stories.’”’ I had quite a
liking for these stories myself. <‘ That’s
natural enough, Uncle Frank’’—so I
fancy I hear you say—‘‘ because you
made them; and people are apt to like
what they make.’ Yes, I know that
well enough; and perhaps that is one
reason why I took so kindly to these
stories. But that was not the only rea-
son. It was not the chief reason, I
think. Willow Lane was the place
where I was born, and where I spent
the merriest days of my life.

I said I liked these stories, and that
I liked them because they had so much



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 9

to do with the bright, and green, and
joyous days of my childhood. But
when I sent the budget out, to be open-
ed and read, I own I was in doubt
whether my friends would be pleased
with the budget or not. But they were
pleased with it. They liked it. I sus-
pect that the very neat and tasteful dress
in which the book appeared, had some-
thing to do with their liking it. It was
beautifully printed, and the pictures in
it were very fine. So that it is due to
Uncle Frank’s publisher, Mr. Scribner,
as much, perhaps, as to Uncle Frank
himself, that the budget was so well
thought of.



10 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Let that be as it may, however—the
stories about matters and things in Wil-
low Lane were read so eagerly, that I
made up my mind to set my thinking
factory agoing again, and to spin and
weave some more yarns from the same
kind of stuff.

‘What! another entire budget, Uncle
Frank ?”’

Yes, another budget.

‘¢But I have not opened the first one
yet.”

Haven’t you? Well, you can attend
to that some other time. It will not
make any difference which book you
read first. If you do not read the other



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 11

at all—though I hope you will read it
sometime or other—you can understand
this one just as well. The stories in the
first budget are not so woven into the
stories in the second budget, that you
will find it necessary to get hold of the
thread at the very beginning, and to
keep a tight hold of it till you get to the
end. You can do so or not, just as you
like, or just as you find it convenient.
Let me see. What label shall I put
upon the new budget? I have thought
of calling it ‘4 Peep at our Neighbors.”
I guess that name will be just the thing.
While I am peeping at those neighbors,
however, you will not expect me to peep



12 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

at nothing else. We must take some
notice of things as well as of people.
We cannot very well avoid doing 80, if
we would; and I do not think it would
be best to do so, if we could. I am
more anxious to weave together a bundle
of stories which will please you, and
which will have something in them of
real value to you, than I am to select
just such facts and incidents, and only
such, as will fit the name I give them.
So you must not shake your head, if
it seems to you that I do, once in a
while, get away a few paces from the
text I have taken. Ministers do not
always stick very closely to their texts,

































































































































































































































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PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 15

you know. They wander a little some-
times. I mean to take the same liberty.
Some boys and girls, when they read
the title of this book, may think, at first,
before they read any of the stories, that
Uncle Frank has turned tattler. But
there is no tattling in the book; nothing
of the kind. What I am going to do,
or what I am going to try to do, may
be expressed in a very few words, and I
design to give you a little picture—a sort
of daguerreotype miniature—of every-
day life in our neighborhood at Willow
Lane.



CHAPTER II.
A GLANCE AT PARSON DALEY.

Our minister was one of the most de-
voted and exemplary men it has ever
been my lot to know. Everybody loved
Parson Daley. It was not so easy, per-
haps, to get acquainted with ministers
when I was a little boy, as it -is now.
There was something about them, which
inspired us little folks with great reve-
rence, amounting, at times, almost to



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 17

terror. ‘Their very dress had something
of the awful about it to us.

I have often heard my father tell what
a time he used to have, in the days of
his boyhood, when he met the minister
who then preached in the old _ brick
meeting-house. That was a little while
after the revolutionary war; and as long
ago. as that time the children must have
been almost frightened, when they came
across a real, live minister out of the
pulpit, and had to look him in the face,
and speak to him. My father said that
when he was in the street, and saw the
minister, though ever so far off, coming
right toward him, jogging along leisurely



18 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

upon the back of his white mare, with
his short clothes on, and his knee
buckles so finely polished, he began to
make preparations for his bow. His hat
was off ina moment. He stopped still,
as if he had been petrified, and waited
for the great man to come up. When
the meeting took place, the bow was got
off as if the life of the bower depended
on the character of his bow.

There was not quite so much venera-
tion for the minister when I was a boy,
though there was much more than there
is now. Now there may be too little—
then there might have been too much.

Parson Daley was not an old man, at



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 19

the time I am writing of. Still he
was an old-fashioned man—so we boys
thought. He wore short clothes and
knee buckles; and his hair hung down
behind, and was sometimes fastened in
a cue.

When he walked out, there was not a
boy or girl in the street, that he did not
stop to speak to. There was some stiff-
ness about him—something which always
seemed to me to warn me against coming
too near him, until I was spoken to, and
until he held out his hand toward me, as
king Ahasuerus held out the golden scep-
tre toward Esther. But I do not think
he really courted such outward respect as



= PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

everybody paid him. He received it—
expected it—would have been displeased
at the absence of it—because it was cus-
tomary for the flock to render it to the
shepherd. But when the ceremony of
receiving him was gone through with—
when you had got through the crust of
ministerial dignity, if I may say so,
which covered the person of the min-
ister from head to foot, and seemed to
render him almost too sacred to be used
except on Sundays, fast days, and
thanksgiving days—when you got into
the heart of the: man, you saw at a
glance that he was one of the last per-
sons in the wide world to be afraid of.



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 21

How often, when he reined his old
sorrel horse up to our house, and hitched
her to the fence near the door, and came
in, slowly and gravely, with an air so
dignified, have I wished I might ;haye
leave to get into the farthest corner of,)
the garret, and to remain there among:
the rats and cobwebs, until that..great.
man should remount his little pacers :and:;
how often, too, after I, had spoken: to; my :
good pastor, and ,he had ‘spoken: to me,;:
and kindly patted::me on myhead, and;
told me some nice..story, with a goody
moral tacked to the end: of :it,: haves;E:
wished, whenoi his; hat, abdosayiine must go, that; he»



22 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

would stay until sundown, at which time
it was customary to post me and my
brother off to the trundle bed.

It was a great day when Parson Daley
visited the district school. Then we all
had our Sunday clothes on, and did our
very best. Then the schoolmaster made
us read, and spell, and recite our lessons,
and parse, and do long sums out of Da-
boll’s arithmetic, to show the minister
what a bright set of boys and girls we
were. ‘T'hen—my heart throbs now,
when I think of it—then the minister
asked us questions in geography and
grammar, with his own mouth. When
we had gone through with all the rest of



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 23

the exercises, the minister got the
Primer, and heard us say all the West-
minster catechism, from the ‘‘chief end
of man” to the last of those very long
answers, over which I had to rack my
poor little brains so much.

He never left the school without giv-
ing us some psalm or hymn to learn, and
telling us that he would hear us say it
when he came to see us again. Many
of the hymns I learned at that time, and
by that dear man’s request, are as fresh
in my mind at this moment, as if I-had
committed them to memory but an hour
ago.

I have said that Parson Daley always



24 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

stopped to speak to the children he met
when he was walking out. I remember
hearing Mary Frasier tell how kind and
good-natured he was to her, one day,
when she was quite small.

She was going to one of the neigh-
bor’s—this was Mary’s story—with a
pitcher in her hand, after something for
her mother, when she met Mr. Daley.

«‘Good morning, my dear,” said the
minister, with a sweet smile shining
from his face. ‘Good morning, Mary.
How do you do? and how are they all
at home 2”’ ;

Mary said she was almost afraid to
speak to him, at first; but she supposed



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PARSON DALY AND THE LITTLE GIRL.

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PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 27

she must have taken courage when she
looked up and saw the sunshine in his
face; for she soon found herself talking
with the minister as fast as if he had
been one of her own playmates. ‘Oh,
dear !”? said she, ‘“how sorry I was,
when he took my hand, and said ‘ good

9

bye.’ I am not sure but I cried. I felt
sad enough to cry, I know. Again and
again, even after the dear man had got
a great distance from the place where he
met me, I turned around to take another
-look at him, before he was quite out of
sight.”

And that reminds me of another story
I have heard about him. A little girl—



28 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

I don’t remember her name—met Mr.
Daley, as she was going to school.

He did not stop, but he spoke to her,
and said, ‘ How do you do, little dear 2”
or something of the sort. [I suppose he
was in a hurry. He was always in a
hurry, when he was on his way to the
post office, and very likely he was going
to the post office then.

The little girl was not satisfied with so
short a conference with her minister.
She wanted to hear him talk longer.

*“* Mr. Daley,” she said, faintly.

He stopped, and turned around.
‘“* Well, my dear 2”

‘“‘I—is the meeting—I mean—when



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 29

do the children have another meeting ?”’
She alluded to Mr. Daley’s custom of
meeting the children once in a while, at
the school house, on Saturday afternoon,
at which time he made a point to get
acquainted with them, and sang hymns
with them, and talked kindly with them.

‘‘ Next week,’’ said the minister,
kindly, and passed on.

_ Another girl, who was also going to
school, and was only a little way behind,
heard all that was said.

““Why, you knew when the meeting
was going to be,’’ said she, “as well as
Mr. Daley did. He told us last Sunday,
in the pulpit.”



30 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘
‘Well, what did you ask him for 2”

‘* Because I wanted to hear him talk
to me.”

That was the honest truth. She
wanted to hear him talk to her. It
did her good to hear the sound of his
voice. And she spoke the mind of
many a child in our neighborhood, I
doubt not.

Mr. Daley could do well one very de-
sirable thing which so many ministers
are unable to do at all, and so many
others can do but poorly. He could
talk to the children of his parish in their
own language.



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 31

Why is it—if I may stop a moment
here, to drop a hint where it may possi-
bly be picked up by some one in the
ministerial office—why is it that such
multitudes of our best clergymen fail
utterly in this department? Why is it,
that though it can almost be said of them
that they “speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, and have the gift of
prophecy, and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge,”’ they are dumb, or
might as well be dumb, when they at-
tempt to address the little lambs of their
flock? If they don’t understand the
language of children, why don’t they
study it? ‘They don’t understand the



32 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

language of children !”? Why don’t they
drill themselves in the use of it, then,
day in and day out, if it is necessary ?
Why they can speak Latin and Greek ;
aye, and Hebrew and Arabic, for ought
I know. But when they get up to talk
to an audience of bright-eyed boys and
girls, they are as dull, and dry, and
prosy, and tedious, as if they had eaten
one of their old dusty folio volumes for
breakfast. There are words enough in
the English tongue which the little folks
can understand, and there are ways
enough of putting them together, so
that the ideas one wants to express—or
ce:tainly the ideas to which he ought to



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 30

confine himself—are as plain as A B C,
to the young mind. Why don’t such
men learn these words, if they never
have learned them, and learn the mode
of stringing them together for their
young hearers ?

‘But the faculty of interesting chil-
dren is natural to some people. Nature
don’t give it to everybody. It doesn’t
come natural to me.”

Nonsense. Neither does your Latin
come natural to you, nor your Greek,
nor your Hebrew. I don’t believe you
was born with either of these languages
flowing very glibly from your tongue,

The fact is, you must come down—not
3



34 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

descend, but come down—to the dear
young lambs of your flock. See what
interests them. Watch their counte-
hances, at the domestic hearth, while
you are trying the effect upon them of
different topics and different modes of
presenting these topics. Break your
sentences to pieces. Cut them up.
Lay aside your words of Latin and
Greek derivation. « «You can’t do it ?”
Yes, you can. “It’s an art.” Very
well, learn the art. Make yourself per-
fect in it. Don’t be afraid that you will
spoil your style for other uses. If you
should mix up a great deal more Anglo-
Saxon in your sermons than you now do,



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 35

it would not hurt them. They would be
the better for it.

But, a little urchin who has been look-
ing over my shoulder, for the last ten or
fifteen minutes, pulls the sleeve of my
gown, and asks me if it is not almost
time for Uncle Frank to go back to
‘‘Our Neighbors,” and see about Parson
Daley and the Willow Lane youngsters.
The little fellow’s hint isa good one. I
must not throw it away because it came
from the brain of a child.

I was saying that Parson Daley could
talk well to children in their own lan-
guage. He could make things very
plain to their minds. He did not try



36 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

to teach them everything. But what he
did try to do, he did, and did well. I
don’t remember ever hearing him dis-
course to us about the “ determination
of the will,’’ much less of « volition.”? I
am quite sure he never tried to enlighten
us in the mysteries of «innate ideas,” or
the ‘vicarious nature of Christ’s sacri-
fice,” or ‘retributive justice,” or the
‘* divine essence.”

What could we have understood of
these things, if he had talked about them
until he made himself hoarse 2 Why
should children be expected to under-
stand such things, any better than they
could the * differential and integral cal-



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 37

culus,”’ or the ‘‘ precession of the equi-

~ noxes ?”’

I will give you a specimen of the kind
of things our minister talked about to the
younger members of his flock, and the
kind of words and sentences he used.

One morning, as he was taking an
early walk, he happened to pass by
Doctor Osborne’s garden. He looked
over the fence, and there he saw the
Doctor’s three boys, George, Henry and
Frank, very busily engaged weeding
the flower beds. The little gardeners
stupped work when they saw him
coming, and went to the garden gate
to meet him.



38 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘‘Good morning, my children,‘ said
Mr. Daley.

‘¢Good morning, Mr. Daley,‘* said
each of the boys; and they invited him
to come into the garden, and see the
flowers.

The good man was very much at home
among all the people in his parish. So
he opened the gate, and went into the
garden. He was delighted with the
flowers, especially with some white lilies
which had just opened; and Henry
broke off a cluster of them, and gave
them to him. He remarked, as he took
them, that ‘‘even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these.”



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 39

Mr. Daley told them how good and
kind God was, in making these beautiful
flowers, and in teaching them to bloom
all around us. He told them that every-
body ought to love the Creator, for all
the gifts he bestows upon us. Then he
asked them, what was God’s greatest
gift tomen. They told him, it was the
gift of his Son, who came into the world
to die for his enemies. And he con-
versed with them a good deal about
Jesus Christ.

Then something like this dialogue oc-
curred between them :

F. I wonder if there are any flowers
in heaven, — mother is now. Mr.



40 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Daley, if God is so good, I do not see
why he took dear mother away from us.
I shall never be so happy again as I
was before they put her into the grave
yonder.

D. My dear child, your mother has
gone to heaven, has she not ?

F. I hope so, sir.

D. Well, then, she is happier than
she was before ?

F. Oh yes, sir.

D. Then you don’t think God was
unkind to her, do you?

F. No, sir.

D. Was he unkind to you ?

F. It seems as if he was.



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 41

D. My dear child, did you love your
mother while she was living ?

F. Yes, sir, very much. We all
loved her.

D. Why did you love her?

H. Because she was so good.

F. And because she was so ‘kind to
us. |

D. She was a very good mother. I
knew her very well. No wonder you
loved her. But was she not sometimes
unkind to you ?

Aux. No, sir.

D. Did she not punish you once in a
while ?

G. Yes, sir. But it was only when



42 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

we had done wrong. She did not pun-
ish us if we were good children.

D. That may be. But did she not
hurt you and make you cry sometimes ?

G. Yes, sir, sometimes she did.

D. And did she not mean to do it ?

G. I suppose she did.

D. Well, was that kind in her, to
make her children feel bad and cry ?

G. Yes, sir. She did not do it be-
cause she loved to see us cry, but she
wanted to make us better.

D. Well, is it not possible that God
took your mother from you to make you
better ?

H. Perhaps so; but I should not



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. A3

think he would take that way to make
us better.

D. Why not?

H. Because it made us very unhappy.

F. I lie awake nights now, when I
think how she was taken away from us.

G. I shouldn’t think God would wish
to make us cry.

D. But did not your mother make you
cry ?

F. She did so, to make us better chil-
dren. I don’t see how God can do us
any good, in taking away those we love.

D. What is the great business of life ?

F. To prepare to die, and to be with
God in heaven.



44 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

D. To be sure it is. Well, if you
were perfectly happy here; and your
friends did not die, do you think you
that you would care much about God
and about heaven ?

F. Perhaps not.

D. Does not heaven seem a much
more pleasant place since your mother
died ?

Auu. Yes, sir.

D. Does this world seem as pleasant
as it did before?

H. No, sir; it never will again.

D. Well, can you not see how this
sorrow may do you some good, then?
The Bible says, ‘‘Set your affections on



PEEP aT OUR NEIGHBORS. 45

things above, and not on things on the
earth ;” and if anything that God does
tends to make us love heavenly things
more, I am sure it ought to make us
better, and in the end happier, too.

F. I never thought of that before.

H. Nor I.

G. Well, I am sure I never did. I
see now how God is kind to us all the
time.

D. Certainly he is. Don’t you re-
member that the Bible says, ‘* Whom
the Lord loveth, he chasteneth 2”

H. I see it all now.

Then the good minister, after express-
ing a desire that the children would all



46 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

love God, and endeavor to please him,
bade them good morning, and went on
with his walk.





CHAPTER Ill.
DOCTOR WINDMAN AND HIS DOSES.

I sHALL not attempt to describe our
doctor to you, and for this reason, if for
no other, that he was a perfect nonde-
script. The most that I shall attempt in
the way of a description, will be just to
give you a bird’s-eye glance at him ; and
while I have my hand in, I will tell you
something of the way in which he cured

us when we were sick.



48 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Doctor Windman seemed always to
have his head as full of learning as his
saddle-bags were of medicines. He was
in the constant habit of using, even on
the most common occasions, the longest
and most out-of-the-way words, and of
tying them together into the hardest and
most fantastic knots. A perfect volcano
of Latin and Greek would issue from his
mouth at times.

A most extraordinary person was this
Doctor Windman. He was small, so far
as his physical structure—borrowing, for
the occasion, a couple of words from the
doctor—was concerned. But his mind!
to the youngsters in Willow Lane it ap-



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 49

peared to have no bounds. To them it
“floated large o’er many a rood,” like
the arch fiend in Milton’s ‘“ Paradise
Lost; and in the rather one-sided
vision of these juvenile observers, it
seemed to have no bottom, any more
than the fabled deep hole in the middle
of the mill pond.

I have seen all the boys and girls in
school, when he passed by the school
house, during the recess at noon, stop in
the midst of their play, and gaze at the
doctor, as if he were something a little
more than human, until he was fairly out
of sight. Nor would they resume their
sports, they _— so spell-bound by his



50 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

learning, even then, but kept looking
toward the spot where he had disappear-
ed from view.

“¢ And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all he knew.”

I should judge that disease, at the
time and in the neighborhood of which
I am speaking, was considered as a sort of
a demon, that must be cast out of a poor
man at all hazards. ‘The doctor went
to work at his patient, as a priest of a
darker age would go to work at one sup-
posed to be possessed of a devil. To
get at the monster, and drive him out, it
was often necessary, in their view of the
case, to torment the patient with the



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 51

cannonading of a whole regiment of
bottles, quite as much as he was tor-
mented by the disease. Their aim was
to get rid of the enemy—to get rid of
him at any rate. If they could turn out
the evil spirit of disease so as not to
turn out the spirit of the man at*the
same time, all the better. But they
considered themselves bound to storm the
strong-holds of the disease, and to drive
drive him out, at all events. Our doctor
seldom entered anybody’s house but his
own, unless disease had gone in at the
door, and he was summoned to turn him
out, when he made his appearance, in the
shortest possible space of time, with his



52 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

saddle-bags stuffed with all sorts of me-
dicines, the very thought of any of which
would bring on a turn of nausea, were I
to name it to you.

He was a very good man in a sick
room. That is—for this statement must
be taken with a trifling limitation—he
was patient, kind, watchful, a capital
nurse, and alwayson the alert to see
that the disease did not get the upper
hand of his patient. As to the way he
dosed and drugged the folks, that is an-
other thing. The least that can be said
of the quality and quantity of his reme-
dies, is that they were not such as the
homeopathic doctors would have ap-



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 53

proved, if there had been such doctors
in Willow Lane. To my certain know-
ledge, Doctor Windman did not deal in |
the “high dilutions,’ when he practiced
upon me for the whooping cough and
maladies of that class and order.

O what oceans of rhubarb, and mag-
nesia, and glauber salts, and senna, were
distributed to the invalids of Willow
Lane, in the course of a year! But our
doctor was, perhaps, not more generous in
dealing out nauseous doses than his bro-
ther physicians were. It was the fashion
to punish a poor follow so severely for get-
ting sick, that he would be pretty sure not
to get sick again if he could help it.



54 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Now I don’t profess to know much
about the theory of disease, or the best
way to get it out of a man, when it gets
into him. I belong to no particular
school. It would puzzle me, possibly,
to tell to which of the numerous pathies
of the present age I most incline. But I
must say, with all proper respect for
science, that we Willow Lane folks were
most unmercifully overdosed. Why,
when one of us was taken with ever so
slight an ailment, and the doctor was
sent for, the chances were that before we
got out of his hands, he tried the con-
tents of half the vials in his saddle-bags
on us, to say nothing of the blood which



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 55

flowed from our veins at the tap of his
lancet.

We children got in the habit of dislik-
ing the doctor, on account of the medi-
cines he gave us and our friends. In
spite of all our judgment, we could not
help looking upon him as a most cruel
and unfeeling man, with all his learning.
We did not love him. We stood in as
much fear of him, almost, as we did of
that ideal bear whose portrait appeared
in Webster’s spelling book, and whose
aspect, grim at the best, was rendered a
shade or two more frightful by the art—

or rather the want of art—exhibited by

the engraver.
4



56 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Doctor Windman did not deserve our
dislike, though. There was scarcely a
more clever man—lI use this adjective in
the Willow Lane sense—in the neighbor-
hood. He meant well, certainly. Still,
I could not bear the sight of him. I
remembered too well that affair of the
measles; or if I had forgotten that, I
retained too distinct a recollection of the
vile compounds he made for my little
sister when she had the canker-rash.
And all the children had much the same
notions about him that had crept into my
head. We did not like him at all. It .
was on this account that when we heard
of a certain odd and rather serious acci-



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 57

dent that had happened to him and his
medicine bag, a universal titter went
through our ranks. :

I must tell you about that accident.

The doctor was visiting a sick girl.
The girl -was not very much unwell.
There was some trouble about her throat.
She had taken a little cold, I believe.
The pulse having been learnedly and
solemnly felt, the tongue carefully and
mysteriously examined, and the whole
catalogue of questions used in such cases
gravely and leisurely put, the doctor was
beginning to rummage his saddle-bags
for the necessary medicines. He had
the heavily-loaded magazine on his knee.



58 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘*Miadam,”’ he said to the mother of the
child, ‘‘ this is a very complicated affec-
tion. The mucous membrane which
lines the interior of the epiglottis—”’

Just at this point a pinch of snuff was
taken, and the sentence which the doc-
tor had commenced, which I have no
doubt would have been extremely lu-
minous, if it had been completed, was
left awhile quite obscured in a fog-bank ;
for it was the practice of the good doc-
tor to take his time when he went
through the process of snuff-taking.

It was one of the hottest days of sum-
mer. The doors of the house had all
been thrown open, to admit of the freest



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 59

possible circulation of air. Even the
cellar door, near which the doctor sat,
with his saddle-bags on his knee, stood
wide open. The snuff-taking operation
was drawing toaclose. The great red
bandanna handkerchief, with diamond-
shaped spots of dingy white, had been
withdrawn from its place of deposit,
and was doing important service, when a
huge turkey stalked into the room, and
marched fiercely up to the doctor.

The saucy fellow! he ought to have
been served up at the Thanksgiving that
occurred the previous autumn. Whata
pity he was spared. He had formed a
habit, it afterward appeared in evidence,



60 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

of showing his dislike of any red color,
by rushing boldly up to any one who
happened to have any red about him.
He never harmed anybody. He gobbled
lustily, and threatened to do all sorts of
malicious things; but that was the end
of the matter.

The doctor, however, not being ac-
quainted with the true state of the case,
and being terribly scared by the turkey’s
sudden attack, got up in a hurry, with
the intention of making a retreat. He
started for the cellar door, thinking, it
was presumed, that if he could once get
into the cellar, and have the door closed
after him, his life would be saved.



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 61

He succeeded in reaching the cellar
stairway. But he had no sooner set his
foot on the top stair (which was slippery
at the time, owing to some soft soap
having been spilled upon it) than he
slipped, and fell headlong, with his
whole assortment of bottles, to the cellar
floor.

Strange enough, he was not very badly
- hurt;-but the damage done to the con-
tents of the magazine was immense.
Such a smashing of small bottles was
never known before in those parts, and
has never, to my knowledge, been
known since.

I don’t know that a vote of thanks to



62 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

that ill-natured turkey was ever proposed
among the boys and girls in Willow
Lane; but, such was our defective
standard of judgment, that I am certain
the vote would have been unanimous, if
it had been proposed.



CHAPTER IV.
HUNTING HENS’ NESTS.

THERE was no task so pleasant to me,
while I lived on a farm, as hunting hens’
nests. Feeding the chickens, and taking
care of the cosset lambs, gave me almost
as much pleasure, but not quite, I think.
There was something exciting about the
business of exploring the barn, the wood
house, and the entire premises, in fact,
and being rewarded, after a noisy out-



64 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

burst of cackling, by a whole hatful of
eggs.

In these explorations, I was generally
attended by my brother, only a little
younger than myself, who relished the
sport quite as much as I did myself.
There is a story of rather a tragic na-
ture connected with one of these hunting
excursions, which I have a mind to tell
you. There is a little bit of wisdom
wrapped up in the tale, which, when the
tale is unfolded, I hope you will find and
profit by. Isay I hope you will profit
by it; for, after all, what is wisdom
worth, even if you should get your head
as full of it as Solomon’s was, if you do






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HUNTING HENS



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 67

not make some use of it? Not much, I
am sure. Dogs and cats, rats and mice,
squirrels and rabbits, geese and ducks—
all these animals, though they do not get
hold of so much knowledge as we have,
generally use what little knowledge they
do get. They make the most of it.
When they have learned a good lesson,
they remember it. It is not necessary,
in most cases, to keep teaching the same
lesson, over and over again, to the same
dog, for instance, after he has once got it
by heart. Even the goose, whom we
are in the habit of calling a very stupid
creature, when she has learned a lesson,
generally keeps it in mind, and practices



68 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

it. I knew of a whole flock of geese
once, who got as drunk as fools, eating
cherries that had been soaked in rum.
But nobody could ever make a single
goose in that flock eat such things after
that. They had been drunk once.
That was sufficient for them. What a
pity that all the members of the human
family did not profit by what they learn,
as these geese did by their knowledge.

But I am getting off on this “ wild
goose chase” too far, and I must come
straight back to the story.

The interior of our barn—and I am
not sure but the same could be said of all
the barns in our neighborhood—had on



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 69

each side of the wide open space, called
the ‘barn floor,’ two high beams, run-
ning horizontally, the whole length of
the building. These beams were some
twenty feet, perhaps, from the floor.
When the hay was all in, the mows on
each side of the barn floor reached as
high as these great beams, though, as the
hay was generally taken away during the
winter, of course the distance from the |
hay mow to the beams increased. In
the middle of the winter, I recollect, it
always seemed a great feat to jump from
the high beam to the mow, as Peter, my
father’s hired man, used sometimes to
do, for the amusement, he said, of the



TO PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘little shavers.”? Some loose pieces of
timber were placed on the high beams,
in the fall of the year, reaching across
the barn floor, from one beam to the
other. These timbers formed a tempo-
rary scaffold, on which they placed
bundles of rye and oats, before they
were threshed.

You will readily see that this scaffold
was not a safe place for boys. Besides
the danger of sliding off, there was also
danger that the timbers would spread
apart, so as to let a person through. We
boys were cautioned, again and again, of
the danger of that scaffold, and forbidden
to go there on any account whatever.



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. Wl

While hunting for hens’ nests in the
barn, it used, nevertheless, to seem a
great pity to me, that we could not pur-
sue our researches on that forbidden
ground. «What a host of eggs there
must be on the scaffold,” I thought.

One day, when we were not so suc-
cessful in our hunting excursion as usual,
a very meagre collection of eggs having
resulted from a search of a couple of
hours, my thoughts were drawn so
strongly toward the scaffold, that I could
hardly turn them in any other direction.

“I wonder how many eggs there are
on the scaffold?’ I inquired of my
brother.



“

72 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘‘T guess about a hatful,’? was the
answer.

“A hatful!’? I exclaimed; ‘pooh!
more likely half a bushel.”” I was
rather a sanguine boy.

«But there’s no use talking about
the scaffold,’” my brother said. «We
couldn’t go there, you know, if the
whole scaffold was covered with eggs.”

I thought otherwise. ‘I don’t be-
lieve the folks know what lots of eggs
there are among those bundles of rye,”’ I
said.

‘¢ But,” said my brother, I shouldn’t
wonder if they knew one thing about
that scaffold, better than we do.”’



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 13

‘¢ What’s that ?” I asked.

‘They know that it is rather a dan-
gerous place,”’ was the reply.

** But Peter goes there,”’ said I.

‘‘ Peter is a man,” said my brother.

At that remark I remember I laughed.
I laughed to think that Peter could per-
form any feat in the way of climbing,
which I dared not attempt. Boys have
often great confidence in themselves.
As they grow older, and gradually draw
nearer the period of manhood, they are
apt to think less and less of themselves.
My confidence in myself, on this occa-
sion, was not courage. It was not hero-
ism. It me nothing of the kind. It

«



14 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

was something for which I deserved a
great deal more censure than praise.

I finally reasoned my brother into the
conclusion that, on the whole, it was best
to climb up to the scaffold; or, rather, I
talked to him till he had used up all his
arguments, for I hardly think he was
altogether convinced that I was right.
We arranged everything in our own
minds, so that our parents would never
know that we had climbed the scaffold.
They would wonder, we knew, where
we got such a large quantity of eggs.
But we were going to deal out our infor-
mation as physcians of a certain school
deal out medicines to their patients—in



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 15

very small doses. That matter was all
arranged.

The next step was to mount the lad-
der. It was thought best, by all means,
to take up two hats. One hat, we
thought, Would be hardly sufficient to
hold all the eggs. So up I started,
holding on tight to the rounds of the
ladder with both hands, and as tight to
the brims of both hats with my teeth.

In spite of myself, somehow or other,
I felt my courage oozing out of my fin-
gers and toes, as I went up the ladder.
I trembled a little, I guess. But I went
on. I had no notion of being scared out
of an expedition which promised a peck



16 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

of hens’ eggs, at the least, and possibly
half a bushel.

Yes, I went on. But when I got to
the top of the ladder, which rested on
the great beam, I began to think that
our Peter was a brave fellow, and that
the feat 1 had undertaken was probably
the greatest on record. I hesitated, and
then climbed, as boldly as I could, in
the circumstances, upon the great beam,
from which I stepped to the scaffold.

I looked down. Oh, how high that
scaffold seemed! What a distance to
the barn floor! From the moment my —
eye fell upon the place where my
brother was standing, fear took the en-



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 7

tire control of me, and knocked every
other thought and idea out of my head.
The hats—so I was told afterward,
though I could not have been sensible
of it at the time—fell to the floor, at the
moment that I turned to look down-
ward.

My memory of what took place after
I stepped upon the scaffold, is very con-
fused and misty. I remember looking
down. I remember, too, that I felt
sick ; that everything began to go round
and round, and that I~went round and
round with everything; that sometimes I
was on the floor, sometimes-on the mow,
sometimes on the scaffold, and sometimes



18 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

among the wasps’ nests, where the raf-
ters came together; that I wondered
how the barn came to tumble over, and
how it came to stand up again, and how
the bundles of rye could stay on the scaf-
fold, and why I could stay on myselfi—
and



It was very hazy after that, very hazy
indeed.

The next thing I remember now, the
next thing I remembered then, was that
I was lying on a bed, and a strange-look-
ing man, with a strange-looking pen-
knife, was sitting close to me and pinch-
ing my wrist. I don’t know exactly
how a cat in a strange garret feels. I



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 19

don’t know that anybody knows, though
it is a very common thing to hear people
talk about feeling ‘‘as queer as a cat in
a strange garret.”” J don’t pretend to
determine the precise nature of the sen-
sations that fill Puss’ bosom, when she
suddenly finds herself in an upper apart-
ment where she has never been before.
But I can say, and I will say, that if she
is any more bewildered at such a time
than I was when I saw Doctor Wind-
man—for it turned out that it was the
doctor—sitting there with his lancet in
one hand, and my wrist in the other,—if
she is any more bewildered than I was,
I pity her.



80 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

And my head ached, too. How hap-
pened that? And my arm was lame.
What did that mean? Had I hurt it?
I tried to turn over in the bed. I
couldn’t do anything of the kind. I
_ seemed to have been put into a barrel
and pounded, as Amanda Lounsbury
pounded the clothes, in the process of
washing. What did all this mean ?

I found out what it all meant—not im-
mediately, but after a while. I found
out that I had fallen from the scaffold
down to the floor; that I was badly hurt
by the fall; that my brother had alarmed
the folks in the house; that they had
carried me into the kitchen, and made up



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 81

a bed for me there; that Doctor Wind-
man had been sent for; that he had
come and bled me; that everybody was
alarmed ; that the doctor had not said
much, but that he looked as if he was a
good deal worried about me—alas! I
knew that; I saw that look—and had
shaken his head when my father asked
him how badly I was hurt; that Peter
had gone to Northville for another doc-
tor; and, in short, that I was likely to
have a pretty severe time of it.

I leave you to judge how I felt, when
I learned all this. The pain in my head
and limbs was not all the pain I suffer-
ed—no, not by a good deal. There was



§2 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

something in my breast which seemed to
say: ‘** This is what you get by disobe-
dience. You deserve it all, and more.”

Oh, how that thought tortured me!
--It was a long time—I do not remem-
ber how long, but it seemed an age,
and I believe it was some two or three
months—before I could walk in the door
yard; and for some time after that, I
had to hobble about, like an old horse
who has got the spring halt.

From the day of that unfortunate fall,
until I became almost as large as Peter,
the territory in which I hunted for hens’
nests never embraced the high scaffold.



CHAPTER X.
CLIMBING THE PEACH TREE.

My friend Laura was in my room a
day or two after I had written the story
of my sad adventure in the barn at Wil-
low Lane; and she took up the manu-
script which was lying on my table, and
read it.

‘‘How much this story makes me
think of a little incident in my own ex-
rience,” said she. And then she told



84 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS,

me how, when she was a little girl, there
was a peach tree near the school house ;
that the man who owned the tree al-
lowed the children to pick up the
peaches that dropped on the ground,
but that he did not permit them to climb
the tree, or to knock off any of the
peaches; that the good school mistress
told the children what the rules were,
but that the mischievous Laura disobeyed
them, and paid, as children are so apt to
do, very dearly for her disobedience.

‘s Laura,” I said, “‘let me have the
story for my book.”

‘‘Why, you have got one of your own
very nearly like it,” said she.

-
..
ge »



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 85

‘True,’ I replied, «but my story is
for the boys. I’m afraid some of the
girls who read my book, will not learn |
the lesson there is in it, but will shift it
off upon the boys.”

« But,” said Laura, “my story has
nothing to do with Willow Lane, or any
of the Willow Lane people.”

‘sNever mind that,” said I; ‘you
write the story, and I’ll settle the rest
with the boys and girls.”

Well, Laura consented, for fear the
girls would not profit enough by my
story, to write down this little incident
in her experience. So she seated her-
self at my table, and in the course of an



86 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

hour she surprised me not a little . by
reading her tale in verse. Here it is.
Read it, girls, and learn the lesson which
it teaches :

THE MAIDEN’S WARNING.

Oh list, ye maidens, one and all,
Take warning by:my luckless fall ;
Take warning from this aching head,
And from this slow and limping tread.

Take warning from my gown all rent,
And from my locks in tangles blent ;
Take warning from these tearful eyes,
And from these sad repentant sighs.

Oh, hearken always to the rule ;
Dare not to slight the law of school,



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 87

Else, oft, like me, you’ll shun the light,
When caught in such a woful plight.

This morn, when first my feet took way,
To spend at school the pleasant day,
How smoothly combed my chestnut hair !
How shone my dress with Betty’s care !

My apron and my kerchief too,

Were trim as could be found on you ;
Yet now you scarce can smiles restrain,
To see them almost torn in twain.

Command how oft dear teacher laid

“‘ Ne’er climb the tree, a single maid ;”
Unhappy, I first gave offence—

Mark well the direful consequence.

As ’neath a peach tree tall I stood,
And mused upon the fruit so good,
One fairer than the rest I spied,
With ruddy cheeks upon its side.



88

PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘Tt shall be mine,”’ methought ; but, oh !
The branch was high, my stature low ;
"Twas formed above my humble reach,
The much desired, the downy peach.

‘“‘ But let me bring it here ;”’ and quick
I threw up many a stone and stick ;
Which now and then, as they came down,
Would glance upon my luckless crown.

All vain, unharmed by stone or wood,

The tempting fruit in glory stood ;

*¢ Tll scale the tree ; the branch I’ll clasp ;
No more shall it elude my grasp.”

“‘ Forbear,”’ cried Conscience, in mine ear,
‘“‘ Forbear, you’ll danger see,”’ cried Fear:
I heeded not, but took in count

The easiest way thereon to mount.

Gaining by little or no toil,
The branch which held the tempting spoil,



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 89

*T was surely mine! as ’twere a gem,
I reached to pluck it from the stem.

Yet now a serious ill forbode ;

My foothold trembled ’neath its load—
The tottering branchlet broke and fell—
My saddened mien the rest can tell.

Oh list ye maidens, one and all;
Take warning from my luckless fall ;
Beware, and break not e’en one rule,
That helps to form the code of school.

6



CHAPTER VI.
THE BALL FAMILY.

Capratn Bax was a notorious charac-
ter among us, and his family were noto-
rious, too. We will have a peep at
them, if you please. The captain lived
on the hill—not the hill on which the
school house stood, recollect, but the
high one on the other side of the great
brook. I believe it went by the name
of Breakneck Hill, among the older



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 91

people, because it was so frightfully
steep.

You will think that all the folks in
Willow Lane had their names spliced
with some sort of title or other. And
you will think pretty nearly right. I
can hardly remember one full grown
man that had not some handle to his
name. How some of themen came by
the title they were so generally known
by, is much more than I can tell, and
probably more than anybody can tell.
Jonathan Ball, however, had a good right
to his title. He was the commander-
in-chief of the Willow Lane militia,
and led that valiant band on training



92 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

days. That is to say, he led those
soldiers as well as anybody could lead
them. They were a little awkward, and
not under perfect discipline.

Shall I tell you an anecdote, just here, .
of one of Captain Ball’s desperate efforts
in drilling his soldiers? The « Penny-
royal Guard’”—so the company was
known out of Willow Lane, in that sec-
tion of the country—were drawn up on
the green, in front of the old brick
meeting house, and there were a good
many people looking on. Captain Ball
was a little proud of his company, and
he wanted they should do their very
best at this time. « Willow Lane ex-



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 93

pects every man to do his duty to-day,”
he said.

_ “Form a line!” he roared out. That
was not quite so easy a matter. They
got into a perfect hard knot, at last; and
it was a great deal more than the captain,
with the aid of all his corporals, could do
to get the knot untied. Poor man! he
was humbled and vexed; and again he
thundered, as if his military honor was
all staked on that one last order, « Form
a line! every man form a line !

If you will promise me one thing, I
will let you into a Secret, little friend.
Promise that you will try to profit by the
lessons you learn from this Sketch of the



94. PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Ball Family, and I will tell you just
what Captain Ball’s faults were; for
he had faults, and they were such as
everybody ought to try hard to keep
clear of. )

He was not a bad man. He never
took to drinking, as I am sorry to say too
many of the farmers in Willow Lane did.
He was temperate. There was not a
better neighbor in the place than Jona-
than Ball. His great faults were that he
was fazy, and that he did not stick to
one thing. Now, though I am not sure
that he ever would have made a very
good militia captain, at the best, if he had
tried ever so hard and go long, yet he



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 95

would have done much better, if he had
taken pains to drill himself before he
undertook to drill his men.

He was a farmer. He had a pretty
good farm, for Willow Lane. But he
was always behind hand in his work.
He did not get to ploughing in the
spring, until most of his neighbors had
done. To be sure, he had excuses for
his delay, a plenty of them. He was
never in want of excuses. When he
came to harvest his corn, and rye, and
potatoes, of course he found that his
crops had not turned out so well as they
would have done, if his affairs had been
managed correctly. The fact is, he was



96 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

always unfortunate. Let him attempt to
do what he might, he had «bad luck,”
to use his own words, though I do not
like them, and never did.

I have known the captain in haying
time, when the Weather was very hot,
sit under a tree in the meadow, and
smoke a pipe for more than half an hour,
when there was a thunder shower coming
on, and he must have known that it was
quite as much as he and his men could do
to get the hay raked up before the rain
began to pour down, even if they had all
worked like beavers every moment of
the time.

He was almost—not quite, T confess—



PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 97

as lazy as the man I heard of down east.
That man was very fond of fishing. He
liked the sport, but was too lazy to pull
the fish out of the water. So he used to
go down to the water, with his horse and
wagon; and when he got to the place
where the large black fish lived, he
would back up his wagon as near as he
could to the water’s edge, and throw
over his line. When the black fish took
hold of his hook, he would whip up, and
let his horse draw the fish out of the
water.

Captain Ball never did that. At least,
I never heard of his doing it. But I will
tell you what he did do once. Mr.


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P THE DROWNED GIRL. 113
a7

Â¥,
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS;

THE SEQUEL TO

THE WILLOW LANE BUDGET.

With llustrations.

BY UNCLE FRANK,

AUTHOR OF THE “QUEER OLD MILLER,’ ETC,



NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 145 NASSAU STREET.
1852.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for

In the
the Southern District ot New York.

a

Bi state
Cc, W. BENEDICT,

SreREOTYPER AND PRINTER,
201 William st., N. Y-
CONTENTS.



PAGE
WHAT I AM GOING TO DO, ° : ° é 7
A GLANCE AT PARSON DALEY, ; ‘ , “* 16
DOCTOR WINDMAN AND HIS DOSES, . ‘ ° - ee
HUNTING HENS’ NESTS, . ; : ‘ ° : 63
CLIMBING THE PEACH TREE, . ° ° ° i
THE BALL FAMILY, 5 . ° ; e 96
CHIPS OF THE OLD BLOCK, . ; ; j . 108
THE DROWNED GIRL, ; ‘ e ‘ ° ‘ 113

THE YOUNG TRUTH-TELLER, i ‘ ‘ ‘ wee
Vl CONTENTS.

THE NEW. SKATES, ‘ ° ° ° ‘ ; 140
LAUGHING BILL, . : ‘ ° ° ° ° » 159
UNCLE FRANK'S LEAVE-TAKING, . ° ° ° 173

TT

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE DROWNED GIRL, -. -~— * : Frontispiece
VIGNETTE TITLE-PAGE, ‘ : ° . ‘ 1
A PEEP AT WILLOW LANE, . ° ° ara 13
PARSON DALEY AND THE LITTLE GIRL, ; ‘ ; 26
HUNTING HENS’ NESTS, . ‘ ° . . . 65
JOE AND HIS VICTIM, . ; ‘ ‘ . . 108
AMANDA AT HER KNITTING WORK, > ag 119

“OH, DANIEL! FORGIVE ME ms . ; ° . 156
A PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

CHAPTER I.
WHAT I AM GOING TO DO.

I suppose that my friends, the boys
and girls, for whom I make this book,
would like to know at the outset, what
sort of a thing I have got for them, and
how I came to make it. I will tell
them, in as few words as possible.

Not long ago, I spun some yarns, and
wove them together, and sent them off
to the little folks about the country, with
8 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

this label on them: “4 Budget of
Willow Lane Stories.’”’ I had quite a
liking for these stories myself. <‘ That’s
natural enough, Uncle Frank’’—so I
fancy I hear you say—‘‘ because you
made them; and people are apt to like
what they make.’ Yes, I know that
well enough; and perhaps that is one
reason why I took so kindly to these
stories. But that was not the only rea-
son. It was not the chief reason, I
think. Willow Lane was the place
where I was born, and where I spent
the merriest days of my life.

I said I liked these stories, and that
I liked them because they had so much
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 9

to do with the bright, and green, and
joyous days of my childhood. But
when I sent the budget out, to be open-
ed and read, I own I was in doubt
whether my friends would be pleased
with the budget or not. But they were
pleased with it. They liked it. I sus-
pect that the very neat and tasteful dress
in which the book appeared, had some-
thing to do with their liking it. It was
beautifully printed, and the pictures in
it were very fine. So that it is due to
Uncle Frank’s publisher, Mr. Scribner,
as much, perhaps, as to Uncle Frank
himself, that the budget was so well
thought of.
10 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Let that be as it may, however—the
stories about matters and things in Wil-
low Lane were read so eagerly, that I
made up my mind to set my thinking
factory agoing again, and to spin and
weave some more yarns from the same
kind of stuff.

‘What! another entire budget, Uncle
Frank ?”’

Yes, another budget.

‘¢But I have not opened the first one
yet.”

Haven’t you? Well, you can attend
to that some other time. It will not
make any difference which book you
read first. If you do not read the other
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 11

at all—though I hope you will read it
sometime or other—you can understand
this one just as well. The stories in the
first budget are not so woven into the
stories in the second budget, that you
will find it necessary to get hold of the
thread at the very beginning, and to
keep a tight hold of it till you get to the
end. You can do so or not, just as you
like, or just as you find it convenient.
Let me see. What label shall I put
upon the new budget? I have thought
of calling it ‘4 Peep at our Neighbors.”
I guess that name will be just the thing.
While I am peeping at those neighbors,
however, you will not expect me to peep
12 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

at nothing else. We must take some
notice of things as well as of people.
We cannot very well avoid doing 80, if
we would; and I do not think it would
be best to do so, if we could. I am
more anxious to weave together a bundle
of stories which will please you, and
which will have something in them of
real value to you, than I am to select
just such facts and incidents, and only
such, as will fit the name I give them.
So you must not shake your head, if
it seems to you that I do, once in a
while, get away a few paces from the
text I have taken. Ministers do not
always stick very closely to their texts,






























































































































































































































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Vie ase
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P ; A PEEP AT WILLOW LANE, 13

s *
‘-- 8 © ple att ovr seicHBoRs. #*-

wy ‘wething clse. We must take sume~
petice of things as well as oof nawple.
‘We cannot very well . void doiag ao, if
gwe would ; oa I do ; ot thine «@ would
be best te eee so, if coud. . b am>
more anxiews to weave other a bundle

: of stories wrtiieh ith * ae -you, and
hich: wes heer Seen dig jm then of

geal weber fe FOR ee i win te select
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‘ie ae

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i # o- uot away % haenti aces mae the
| { pada Gaia hone



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PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 15

you know. They wander a little some-
times. I mean to take the same liberty.
Some boys and girls, when they read
the title of this book, may think, at first,
before they read any of the stories, that
Uncle Frank has turned tattler. But
there is no tattling in the book; nothing
of the kind. What I am going to do,
or what I am going to try to do, may
be expressed in a very few words, and I
design to give you a little picture—a sort
of daguerreotype miniature—of every-
day life in our neighborhood at Willow
Lane.
CHAPTER II.
A GLANCE AT PARSON DALEY.

Our minister was one of the most de-
voted and exemplary men it has ever
been my lot to know. Everybody loved
Parson Daley. It was not so easy, per-
haps, to get acquainted with ministers
when I was a little boy, as it -is now.
There was something about them, which
inspired us little folks with great reve-
rence, amounting, at times, almost to
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 17

terror. ‘Their very dress had something
of the awful about it to us.

I have often heard my father tell what
a time he used to have, in the days of
his boyhood, when he met the minister
who then preached in the old _ brick
meeting-house. That was a little while
after the revolutionary war; and as long
ago. as that time the children must have
been almost frightened, when they came
across a real, live minister out of the
pulpit, and had to look him in the face,
and speak to him. My father said that
when he was in the street, and saw the
minister, though ever so far off, coming
right toward him, jogging along leisurely
18 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

upon the back of his white mare, with
his short clothes on, and his knee
buckles so finely polished, he began to
make preparations for his bow. His hat
was off ina moment. He stopped still,
as if he had been petrified, and waited
for the great man to come up. When
the meeting took place, the bow was got
off as if the life of the bower depended
on the character of his bow.

There was not quite so much venera-
tion for the minister when I was a boy,
though there was much more than there
is now. Now there may be too little—
then there might have been too much.

Parson Daley was not an old man, at
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 19

the time I am writing of. Still he
was an old-fashioned man—so we boys
thought. He wore short clothes and
knee buckles; and his hair hung down
behind, and was sometimes fastened in
a cue.

When he walked out, there was not a
boy or girl in the street, that he did not
stop to speak to. There was some stiff-
ness about him—something which always
seemed to me to warn me against coming
too near him, until I was spoken to, and
until he held out his hand toward me, as
king Ahasuerus held out the golden scep-
tre toward Esther. But I do not think
he really courted such outward respect as
= PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

everybody paid him. He received it—
expected it—would have been displeased
at the absence of it—because it was cus-
tomary for the flock to render it to the
shepherd. But when the ceremony of
receiving him was gone through with—
when you had got through the crust of
ministerial dignity, if I may say so,
which covered the person of the min-
ister from head to foot, and seemed to
render him almost too sacred to be used
except on Sundays, fast days, and
thanksgiving days—when you got into
the heart of the: man, you saw at a
glance that he was one of the last per-
sons in the wide world to be afraid of.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 21

How often, when he reined his old
sorrel horse up to our house, and hitched
her to the fence near the door, and came
in, slowly and gravely, with an air so
dignified, have I wished I might ;haye
leave to get into the farthest corner of,)
the garret, and to remain there among:
the rats and cobwebs, until that..great.
man should remount his little pacers :and:;
how often, too, after I, had spoken: to; my :
good pastor, and ,he had ‘spoken: to me,;:
and kindly patted::me on myhead, and;
told me some nice..story, with a goody
moral tacked to the end: of :it,: haves;E:
wished, whenoi his; hat, abdosayiine must go, that; he»
22 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

would stay until sundown, at which time
it was customary to post me and my
brother off to the trundle bed.

It was a great day when Parson Daley
visited the district school. Then we all
had our Sunday clothes on, and did our
very best. Then the schoolmaster made
us read, and spell, and recite our lessons,
and parse, and do long sums out of Da-
boll’s arithmetic, to show the minister
what a bright set of boys and girls we
were. ‘T'hen—my heart throbs now,
when I think of it—then the minister
asked us questions in geography and
grammar, with his own mouth. When
we had gone through with all the rest of
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 23

the exercises, the minister got the
Primer, and heard us say all the West-
minster catechism, from the ‘‘chief end
of man” to the last of those very long
answers, over which I had to rack my
poor little brains so much.

He never left the school without giv-
ing us some psalm or hymn to learn, and
telling us that he would hear us say it
when he came to see us again. Many
of the hymns I learned at that time, and
by that dear man’s request, are as fresh
in my mind at this moment, as if I-had
committed them to memory but an hour
ago.

I have said that Parson Daley always
24 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

stopped to speak to the children he met
when he was walking out. I remember
hearing Mary Frasier tell how kind and
good-natured he was to her, one day,
when she was quite small.

She was going to one of the neigh-
bor’s—this was Mary’s story—with a
pitcher in her hand, after something for
her mother, when she met Mr. Daley.

«‘Good morning, my dear,” said the
minister, with a sweet smile shining
from his face. ‘Good morning, Mary.
How do you do? and how are they all
at home 2”’ ;

Mary said she was almost afraid to
speak to him, at first; but she supposed
a
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26

PARSON DALY AND THE LITTLE GIRL.

P


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an
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 27

she must have taken courage when she
looked up and saw the sunshine in his
face; for she soon found herself talking
with the minister as fast as if he had
been one of her own playmates. ‘Oh,
dear !”? said she, ‘“how sorry I was,
when he took my hand, and said ‘ good

9

bye.’ I am not sure but I cried. I felt
sad enough to cry, I know. Again and
again, even after the dear man had got
a great distance from the place where he
met me, I turned around to take another
-look at him, before he was quite out of
sight.”

And that reminds me of another story
I have heard about him. A little girl—
28 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

I don’t remember her name—met Mr.
Daley, as she was going to school.

He did not stop, but he spoke to her,
and said, ‘ How do you do, little dear 2”
or something of the sort. [I suppose he
was in a hurry. He was always in a
hurry, when he was on his way to the
post office, and very likely he was going
to the post office then.

The little girl was not satisfied with so
short a conference with her minister.
She wanted to hear him talk longer.

*“* Mr. Daley,” she said, faintly.

He stopped, and turned around.
‘“* Well, my dear 2”

‘“‘I—is the meeting—I mean—when
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 29

do the children have another meeting ?”’
She alluded to Mr. Daley’s custom of
meeting the children once in a while, at
the school house, on Saturday afternoon,
at which time he made a point to get
acquainted with them, and sang hymns
with them, and talked kindly with them.

‘‘ Next week,’’ said the minister,
kindly, and passed on.

_ Another girl, who was also going to
school, and was only a little way behind,
heard all that was said.

““Why, you knew when the meeting
was going to be,’’ said she, “as well as
Mr. Daley did. He told us last Sunday,
in the pulpit.”
30 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘
‘Well, what did you ask him for 2”

‘* Because I wanted to hear him talk
to me.”

That was the honest truth. She
wanted to hear him talk to her. It
did her good to hear the sound of his
voice. And she spoke the mind of
many a child in our neighborhood, I
doubt not.

Mr. Daley could do well one very de-
sirable thing which so many ministers
are unable to do at all, and so many
others can do but poorly. He could
talk to the children of his parish in their
own language.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 31

Why is it—if I may stop a moment
here, to drop a hint where it may possi-
bly be picked up by some one in the
ministerial office—why is it that such
multitudes of our best clergymen fail
utterly in this department? Why is it,
that though it can almost be said of them
that they “speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, and have the gift of
prophecy, and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge,”’ they are dumb, or
might as well be dumb, when they at-
tempt to address the little lambs of their
flock? If they don’t understand the
language of children, why don’t they
study it? ‘They don’t understand the
32 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

language of children !”? Why don’t they
drill themselves in the use of it, then,
day in and day out, if it is necessary ?
Why they can speak Latin and Greek ;
aye, and Hebrew and Arabic, for ought
I know. But when they get up to talk
to an audience of bright-eyed boys and
girls, they are as dull, and dry, and
prosy, and tedious, as if they had eaten
one of their old dusty folio volumes for
breakfast. There are words enough in
the English tongue which the little folks
can understand, and there are ways
enough of putting them together, so
that the ideas one wants to express—or
ce:tainly the ideas to which he ought to
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 30

confine himself—are as plain as A B C,
to the young mind. Why don’t such
men learn these words, if they never
have learned them, and learn the mode
of stringing them together for their
young hearers ?

‘But the faculty of interesting chil-
dren is natural to some people. Nature
don’t give it to everybody. It doesn’t
come natural to me.”

Nonsense. Neither does your Latin
come natural to you, nor your Greek,
nor your Hebrew. I don’t believe you
was born with either of these languages
flowing very glibly from your tongue,

The fact is, you must come down—not
3
34 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

descend, but come down—to the dear
young lambs of your flock. See what
interests them. Watch their counte-
hances, at the domestic hearth, while
you are trying the effect upon them of
different topics and different modes of
presenting these topics. Break your
sentences to pieces. Cut them up.
Lay aside your words of Latin and
Greek derivation. « «You can’t do it ?”
Yes, you can. “It’s an art.” Very
well, learn the art. Make yourself per-
fect in it. Don’t be afraid that you will
spoil your style for other uses. If you
should mix up a great deal more Anglo-
Saxon in your sermons than you now do,
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 35

it would not hurt them. They would be
the better for it.

But, a little urchin who has been look-
ing over my shoulder, for the last ten or
fifteen minutes, pulls the sleeve of my
gown, and asks me if it is not almost
time for Uncle Frank to go back to
‘‘Our Neighbors,” and see about Parson
Daley and the Willow Lane youngsters.
The little fellow’s hint isa good one. I
must not throw it away because it came
from the brain of a child.

I was saying that Parson Daley could
talk well to children in their own lan-
guage. He could make things very
plain to their minds. He did not try
36 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

to teach them everything. But what he
did try to do, he did, and did well. I
don’t remember ever hearing him dis-
course to us about the “ determination
of the will,’’ much less of « volition.”? I
am quite sure he never tried to enlighten
us in the mysteries of «innate ideas,” or
the ‘vicarious nature of Christ’s sacri-
fice,” or ‘retributive justice,” or the
‘* divine essence.”

What could we have understood of
these things, if he had talked about them
until he made himself hoarse 2 Why
should children be expected to under-
stand such things, any better than they
could the * differential and integral cal-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 37

culus,”’ or the ‘‘ precession of the equi-

~ noxes ?”’

I will give you a specimen of the kind
of things our minister talked about to the
younger members of his flock, and the
kind of words and sentences he used.

One morning, as he was taking an
early walk, he happened to pass by
Doctor Osborne’s garden. He looked
over the fence, and there he saw the
Doctor’s three boys, George, Henry and
Frank, very busily engaged weeding
the flower beds. The little gardeners
stupped work when they saw him
coming, and went to the garden gate
to meet him.
38 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘‘Good morning, my children,‘ said
Mr. Daley.

‘¢Good morning, Mr. Daley,‘* said
each of the boys; and they invited him
to come into the garden, and see the
flowers.

The good man was very much at home
among all the people in his parish. So
he opened the gate, and went into the
garden. He was delighted with the
flowers, especially with some white lilies
which had just opened; and Henry
broke off a cluster of them, and gave
them to him. He remarked, as he took
them, that ‘‘even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 39

Mr. Daley told them how good and
kind God was, in making these beautiful
flowers, and in teaching them to bloom
all around us. He told them that every-
body ought to love the Creator, for all
the gifts he bestows upon us. Then he
asked them, what was God’s greatest
gift tomen. They told him, it was the
gift of his Son, who came into the world
to die for his enemies. And he con-
versed with them a good deal about
Jesus Christ.

Then something like this dialogue oc-
curred between them :

F. I wonder if there are any flowers
in heaven, — mother is now. Mr.
40 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Daley, if God is so good, I do not see
why he took dear mother away from us.
I shall never be so happy again as I
was before they put her into the grave
yonder.

D. My dear child, your mother has
gone to heaven, has she not ?

F. I hope so, sir.

D. Well, then, she is happier than
she was before ?

F. Oh yes, sir.

D. Then you don’t think God was
unkind to her, do you?

F. No, sir.

D. Was he unkind to you ?

F. It seems as if he was.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 41

D. My dear child, did you love your
mother while she was living ?

F. Yes, sir, very much. We all
loved her.

D. Why did you love her?

H. Because she was so good.

F. And because she was so ‘kind to
us. |

D. She was a very good mother. I
knew her very well. No wonder you
loved her. But was she not sometimes
unkind to you ?

Aux. No, sir.

D. Did she not punish you once in a
while ?

G. Yes, sir. But it was only when
42 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

we had done wrong. She did not pun-
ish us if we were good children.

D. That may be. But did she not
hurt you and make you cry sometimes ?

G. Yes, sir, sometimes she did.

D. And did she not mean to do it ?

G. I suppose she did.

D. Well, was that kind in her, to
make her children feel bad and cry ?

G. Yes, sir. She did not do it be-
cause she loved to see us cry, but she
wanted to make us better.

D. Well, is it not possible that God
took your mother from you to make you
better ?

H. Perhaps so; but I should not
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. A3

think he would take that way to make
us better.

D. Why not?

H. Because it made us very unhappy.

F. I lie awake nights now, when I
think how she was taken away from us.

G. I shouldn’t think God would wish
to make us cry.

D. But did not your mother make you
cry ?

F. She did so, to make us better chil-
dren. I don’t see how God can do us
any good, in taking away those we love.

D. What is the great business of life ?

F. To prepare to die, and to be with
God in heaven.
44 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

D. To be sure it is. Well, if you
were perfectly happy here; and your
friends did not die, do you think you
that you would care much about God
and about heaven ?

F. Perhaps not.

D. Does not heaven seem a much
more pleasant place since your mother
died ?

Auu. Yes, sir.

D. Does this world seem as pleasant
as it did before?

H. No, sir; it never will again.

D. Well, can you not see how this
sorrow may do you some good, then?
The Bible says, ‘‘Set your affections on
PEEP aT OUR NEIGHBORS. 45

things above, and not on things on the
earth ;” and if anything that God does
tends to make us love heavenly things
more, I am sure it ought to make us
better, and in the end happier, too.

F. I never thought of that before.

H. Nor I.

G. Well, I am sure I never did. I
see now how God is kind to us all the
time.

D. Certainly he is. Don’t you re-
member that the Bible says, ‘* Whom
the Lord loveth, he chasteneth 2”

H. I see it all now.

Then the good minister, after express-
ing a desire that the children would all
46 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

love God, and endeavor to please him,
bade them good morning, and went on
with his walk.


CHAPTER Ill.
DOCTOR WINDMAN AND HIS DOSES.

I sHALL not attempt to describe our
doctor to you, and for this reason, if for
no other, that he was a perfect nonde-
script. The most that I shall attempt in
the way of a description, will be just to
give you a bird’s-eye glance at him ; and
while I have my hand in, I will tell you
something of the way in which he cured

us when we were sick.
48 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Doctor Windman seemed always to
have his head as full of learning as his
saddle-bags were of medicines. He was
in the constant habit of using, even on
the most common occasions, the longest
and most out-of-the-way words, and of
tying them together into the hardest and
most fantastic knots. A perfect volcano
of Latin and Greek would issue from his
mouth at times.

A most extraordinary person was this
Doctor Windman. He was small, so far
as his physical structure—borrowing, for
the occasion, a couple of words from the
doctor—was concerned. But his mind!
to the youngsters in Willow Lane it ap-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 49

peared to have no bounds. To them it
“floated large o’er many a rood,” like
the arch fiend in Milton’s ‘“ Paradise
Lost; and in the rather one-sided
vision of these juvenile observers, it
seemed to have no bottom, any more
than the fabled deep hole in the middle
of the mill pond.

I have seen all the boys and girls in
school, when he passed by the school
house, during the recess at noon, stop in
the midst of their play, and gaze at the
doctor, as if he were something a little
more than human, until he was fairly out
of sight. Nor would they resume their
sports, they _— so spell-bound by his
50 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

learning, even then, but kept looking
toward the spot where he had disappear-
ed from view.

“¢ And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all he knew.”

I should judge that disease, at the
time and in the neighborhood of which
I am speaking, was considered as a sort of
a demon, that must be cast out of a poor
man at all hazards. ‘The doctor went
to work at his patient, as a priest of a
darker age would go to work at one sup-
posed to be possessed of a devil. To
get at the monster, and drive him out, it
was often necessary, in their view of the
case, to torment the patient with the
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 51

cannonading of a whole regiment of
bottles, quite as much as he was tor-
mented by the disease. Their aim was
to get rid of the enemy—to get rid of
him at any rate. If they could turn out
the evil spirit of disease so as not to
turn out the spirit of the man at*the
same time, all the better. But they
considered themselves bound to storm the
strong-holds of the disease, and to drive
drive him out, at all events. Our doctor
seldom entered anybody’s house but his
own, unless disease had gone in at the
door, and he was summoned to turn him
out, when he made his appearance, in the
shortest possible space of time, with his
52 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

saddle-bags stuffed with all sorts of me-
dicines, the very thought of any of which
would bring on a turn of nausea, were I
to name it to you.

He was a very good man in a sick
room. That is—for this statement must
be taken with a trifling limitation—he
was patient, kind, watchful, a capital
nurse, and alwayson the alert to see
that the disease did not get the upper
hand of his patient. As to the way he
dosed and drugged the folks, that is an-
other thing. The least that can be said
of the quality and quantity of his reme-
dies, is that they were not such as the
homeopathic doctors would have ap-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 53

proved, if there had been such doctors
in Willow Lane. To my certain know-
ledge, Doctor Windman did not deal in |
the “high dilutions,’ when he practiced
upon me for the whooping cough and
maladies of that class and order.

O what oceans of rhubarb, and mag-
nesia, and glauber salts, and senna, were
distributed to the invalids of Willow
Lane, in the course of a year! But our
doctor was, perhaps, not more generous in
dealing out nauseous doses than his bro-
ther physicians were. It was the fashion
to punish a poor follow so severely for get-
ting sick, that he would be pretty sure not
to get sick again if he could help it.
54 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Now I don’t profess to know much
about the theory of disease, or the best
way to get it out of a man, when it gets
into him. I belong to no particular
school. It would puzzle me, possibly,
to tell to which of the numerous pathies
of the present age I most incline. But I
must say, with all proper respect for
science, that we Willow Lane folks were
most unmercifully overdosed. Why,
when one of us was taken with ever so
slight an ailment, and the doctor was
sent for, the chances were that before we
got out of his hands, he tried the con-
tents of half the vials in his saddle-bags
on us, to say nothing of the blood which
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 55

flowed from our veins at the tap of his
lancet.

We children got in the habit of dislik-
ing the doctor, on account of the medi-
cines he gave us and our friends. In
spite of all our judgment, we could not
help looking upon him as a most cruel
and unfeeling man, with all his learning.
We did not love him. We stood in as
much fear of him, almost, as we did of
that ideal bear whose portrait appeared
in Webster’s spelling book, and whose
aspect, grim at the best, was rendered a
shade or two more frightful by the art—

or rather the want of art—exhibited by

the engraver.
4
56 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Doctor Windman did not deserve our
dislike, though. There was scarcely a
more clever man—lI use this adjective in
the Willow Lane sense—in the neighbor-
hood. He meant well, certainly. Still,
I could not bear the sight of him. I
remembered too well that affair of the
measles; or if I had forgotten that, I
retained too distinct a recollection of the
vile compounds he made for my little
sister when she had the canker-rash.
And all the children had much the same
notions about him that had crept into my
head. We did not like him at all. It .
was on this account that when we heard
of a certain odd and rather serious acci-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 57

dent that had happened to him and his
medicine bag, a universal titter went
through our ranks. :

I must tell you about that accident.

The doctor was visiting a sick girl.
The girl -was not very much unwell.
There was some trouble about her throat.
She had taken a little cold, I believe.
The pulse having been learnedly and
solemnly felt, the tongue carefully and
mysteriously examined, and the whole
catalogue of questions used in such cases
gravely and leisurely put, the doctor was
beginning to rummage his saddle-bags
for the necessary medicines. He had
the heavily-loaded magazine on his knee.
58 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘*Miadam,”’ he said to the mother of the
child, ‘‘ this is a very complicated affec-
tion. The mucous membrane which
lines the interior of the epiglottis—”’

Just at this point a pinch of snuff was
taken, and the sentence which the doc-
tor had commenced, which I have no
doubt would have been extremely lu-
minous, if it had been completed, was
left awhile quite obscured in a fog-bank ;
for it was the practice of the good doc-
tor to take his time when he went
through the process of snuff-taking.

It was one of the hottest days of sum-
mer. The doors of the house had all
been thrown open, to admit of the freest
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 59

possible circulation of air. Even the
cellar door, near which the doctor sat,
with his saddle-bags on his knee, stood
wide open. The snuff-taking operation
was drawing toaclose. The great red
bandanna handkerchief, with diamond-
shaped spots of dingy white, had been
withdrawn from its place of deposit,
and was doing important service, when a
huge turkey stalked into the room, and
marched fiercely up to the doctor.

The saucy fellow! he ought to have
been served up at the Thanksgiving that
occurred the previous autumn. Whata
pity he was spared. He had formed a
habit, it afterward appeared in evidence,
60 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

of showing his dislike of any red color,
by rushing boldly up to any one who
happened to have any red about him.
He never harmed anybody. He gobbled
lustily, and threatened to do all sorts of
malicious things; but that was the end
of the matter.

The doctor, however, not being ac-
quainted with the true state of the case,
and being terribly scared by the turkey’s
sudden attack, got up in a hurry, with
the intention of making a retreat. He
started for the cellar door, thinking, it
was presumed, that if he could once get
into the cellar, and have the door closed
after him, his life would be saved.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 61

He succeeded in reaching the cellar
stairway. But he had no sooner set his
foot on the top stair (which was slippery
at the time, owing to some soft soap
having been spilled upon it) than he
slipped, and fell headlong, with his
whole assortment of bottles, to the cellar
floor.

Strange enough, he was not very badly
- hurt;-but the damage done to the con-
tents of the magazine was immense.
Such a smashing of small bottles was
never known before in those parts, and
has never, to my knowledge, been
known since.

I don’t know that a vote of thanks to
62 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

that ill-natured turkey was ever proposed
among the boys and girls in Willow
Lane; but, such was our defective
standard of judgment, that I am certain
the vote would have been unanimous, if
it had been proposed.
CHAPTER IV.
HUNTING HENS’ NESTS.

THERE was no task so pleasant to me,
while I lived on a farm, as hunting hens’
nests. Feeding the chickens, and taking
care of the cosset lambs, gave me almost
as much pleasure, but not quite, I think.
There was something exciting about the
business of exploring the barn, the wood
house, and the entire premises, in fact,
and being rewarded, after a noisy out-
64 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

burst of cackling, by a whole hatful of
eggs.

In these explorations, I was generally
attended by my brother, only a little
younger than myself, who relished the
sport quite as much as I did myself.
There is a story of rather a tragic na-
ture connected with one of these hunting
excursions, which I have a mind to tell
you. There is a little bit of wisdom
wrapped up in the tale, which, when the
tale is unfolded, I hope you will find and
profit by. Isay I hope you will profit
by it; for, after all, what is wisdom
worth, even if you should get your head
as full of it as Solomon’s was, if you do



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NESTS.

HUNTING HENS
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 67

not make some use of it? Not much, I
am sure. Dogs and cats, rats and mice,
squirrels and rabbits, geese and ducks—
all these animals, though they do not get
hold of so much knowledge as we have,
generally use what little knowledge they
do get. They make the most of it.
When they have learned a good lesson,
they remember it. It is not necessary,
in most cases, to keep teaching the same
lesson, over and over again, to the same
dog, for instance, after he has once got it
by heart. Even the goose, whom we
are in the habit of calling a very stupid
creature, when she has learned a lesson,
generally keeps it in mind, and practices
68 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

it. I knew of a whole flock of geese
once, who got as drunk as fools, eating
cherries that had been soaked in rum.
But nobody could ever make a single
goose in that flock eat such things after
that. They had been drunk once.
That was sufficient for them. What a
pity that all the members of the human
family did not profit by what they learn,
as these geese did by their knowledge.

But I am getting off on this “ wild
goose chase” too far, and I must come
straight back to the story.

The interior of our barn—and I am
not sure but the same could be said of all
the barns in our neighborhood—had on
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 69

each side of the wide open space, called
the ‘barn floor,’ two high beams, run-
ning horizontally, the whole length of
the building. These beams were some
twenty feet, perhaps, from the floor.
When the hay was all in, the mows on
each side of the barn floor reached as
high as these great beams, though, as the
hay was generally taken away during the
winter, of course the distance from the |
hay mow to the beams increased. In
the middle of the winter, I recollect, it
always seemed a great feat to jump from
the high beam to the mow, as Peter, my
father’s hired man, used sometimes to
do, for the amusement, he said, of the
TO PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘little shavers.”? Some loose pieces of
timber were placed on the high beams,
in the fall of the year, reaching across
the barn floor, from one beam to the
other. These timbers formed a tempo-
rary scaffold, on which they placed
bundles of rye and oats, before they
were threshed.

You will readily see that this scaffold
was not a safe place for boys. Besides
the danger of sliding off, there was also
danger that the timbers would spread
apart, so as to let a person through. We
boys were cautioned, again and again, of
the danger of that scaffold, and forbidden
to go there on any account whatever.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. Wl

While hunting for hens’ nests in the
barn, it used, nevertheless, to seem a
great pity to me, that we could not pur-
sue our researches on that forbidden
ground. «What a host of eggs there
must be on the scaffold,” I thought.

One day, when we were not so suc-
cessful in our hunting excursion as usual,
a very meagre collection of eggs having
resulted from a search of a couple of
hours, my thoughts were drawn so
strongly toward the scaffold, that I could
hardly turn them in any other direction.

“I wonder how many eggs there are
on the scaffold?’ I inquired of my
brother.
“

72 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘‘T guess about a hatful,’? was the
answer.

“A hatful!’? I exclaimed; ‘pooh!
more likely half a bushel.”” I was
rather a sanguine boy.

«But there’s no use talking about
the scaffold,’” my brother said. «We
couldn’t go there, you know, if the
whole scaffold was covered with eggs.”

I thought otherwise. ‘I don’t be-
lieve the folks know what lots of eggs
there are among those bundles of rye,”’ I
said.

‘¢ But,” said my brother, I shouldn’t
wonder if they knew one thing about
that scaffold, better than we do.”’
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 13

‘¢ What’s that ?” I asked.

‘They know that it is rather a dan-
gerous place,”’ was the reply.

** But Peter goes there,”’ said I.

‘‘ Peter is a man,” said my brother.

At that remark I remember I laughed.
I laughed to think that Peter could per-
form any feat in the way of climbing,
which I dared not attempt. Boys have
often great confidence in themselves.
As they grow older, and gradually draw
nearer the period of manhood, they are
apt to think less and less of themselves.
My confidence in myself, on this occa-
sion, was not courage. It was not hero-
ism. It me nothing of the kind. It

«
14 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

was something for which I deserved a
great deal more censure than praise.

I finally reasoned my brother into the
conclusion that, on the whole, it was best
to climb up to the scaffold; or, rather, I
talked to him till he had used up all his
arguments, for I hardly think he was
altogether convinced that I was right.
We arranged everything in our own
minds, so that our parents would never
know that we had climbed the scaffold.
They would wonder, we knew, where
we got such a large quantity of eggs.
But we were going to deal out our infor-
mation as physcians of a certain school
deal out medicines to their patients—in
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 15

very small doses. That matter was all
arranged.

The next step was to mount the lad-
der. It was thought best, by all means,
to take up two hats. One hat, we
thought, Would be hardly sufficient to
hold all the eggs. So up I started,
holding on tight to the rounds of the
ladder with both hands, and as tight to
the brims of both hats with my teeth.

In spite of myself, somehow or other,
I felt my courage oozing out of my fin-
gers and toes, as I went up the ladder.
I trembled a little, I guess. But I went
on. I had no notion of being scared out
of an expedition which promised a peck
16 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

of hens’ eggs, at the least, and possibly
half a bushel.

Yes, I went on. But when I got to
the top of the ladder, which rested on
the great beam, I began to think that
our Peter was a brave fellow, and that
the feat 1 had undertaken was probably
the greatest on record. I hesitated, and
then climbed, as boldly as I could, in
the circumstances, upon the great beam,
from which I stepped to the scaffold.

I looked down. Oh, how high that
scaffold seemed! What a distance to
the barn floor! From the moment my —
eye fell upon the place where my
brother was standing, fear took the en-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 7

tire control of me, and knocked every
other thought and idea out of my head.
The hats—so I was told afterward,
though I could not have been sensible
of it at the time—fell to the floor, at the
moment that I turned to look down-
ward.

My memory of what took place after
I stepped upon the scaffold, is very con-
fused and misty. I remember looking
down. I remember, too, that I felt
sick ; that everything began to go round
and round, and that I~went round and
round with everything; that sometimes I
was on the floor, sometimes-on the mow,
sometimes on the scaffold, and sometimes
18 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

among the wasps’ nests, where the raf-
ters came together; that I wondered
how the barn came to tumble over, and
how it came to stand up again, and how
the bundles of rye could stay on the scaf-
fold, and why I could stay on myselfi—
and



It was very hazy after that, very hazy
indeed.

The next thing I remember now, the
next thing I remembered then, was that
I was lying on a bed, and a strange-look-
ing man, with a strange-looking pen-
knife, was sitting close to me and pinch-
ing my wrist. I don’t know exactly
how a cat in a strange garret feels. I
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 19

don’t know that anybody knows, though
it is a very common thing to hear people
talk about feeling ‘‘as queer as a cat in
a strange garret.”” J don’t pretend to
determine the precise nature of the sen-
sations that fill Puss’ bosom, when she
suddenly finds herself in an upper apart-
ment where she has never been before.
But I can say, and I will say, that if she
is any more bewildered at such a time
than I was when I saw Doctor Wind-
man—for it turned out that it was the
doctor—sitting there with his lancet in
one hand, and my wrist in the other,—if
she is any more bewildered than I was,
I pity her.
80 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

And my head ached, too. How hap-
pened that? And my arm was lame.
What did that mean? Had I hurt it?
I tried to turn over in the bed. I
couldn’t do anything of the kind. I
_ seemed to have been put into a barrel
and pounded, as Amanda Lounsbury
pounded the clothes, in the process of
washing. What did all this mean ?

I found out what it all meant—not im-
mediately, but after a while. I found
out that I had fallen from the scaffold
down to the floor; that I was badly hurt
by the fall; that my brother had alarmed
the folks in the house; that they had
carried me into the kitchen, and made up
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 81

a bed for me there; that Doctor Wind-
man had been sent for; that he had
come and bled me; that everybody was
alarmed ; that the doctor had not said
much, but that he looked as if he was a
good deal worried about me—alas! I
knew that; I saw that look—and had
shaken his head when my father asked
him how badly I was hurt; that Peter
had gone to Northville for another doc-
tor; and, in short, that I was likely to
have a pretty severe time of it.

I leave you to judge how I felt, when
I learned all this. The pain in my head
and limbs was not all the pain I suffer-
ed—no, not by a good deal. There was
§2 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

something in my breast which seemed to
say: ‘** This is what you get by disobe-
dience. You deserve it all, and more.”

Oh, how that thought tortured me!
--It was a long time—I do not remem-
ber how long, but it seemed an age,
and I believe it was some two or three
months—before I could walk in the door
yard; and for some time after that, I
had to hobble about, like an old horse
who has got the spring halt.

From the day of that unfortunate fall,
until I became almost as large as Peter,
the territory in which I hunted for hens’
nests never embraced the high scaffold.
CHAPTER X.
CLIMBING THE PEACH TREE.

My friend Laura was in my room a
day or two after I had written the story
of my sad adventure in the barn at Wil-
low Lane; and she took up the manu-
script which was lying on my table, and
read it.

‘‘How much this story makes me
think of a little incident in my own ex-
rience,” said she. And then she told
84 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS,

me how, when she was a little girl, there
was a peach tree near the school house ;
that the man who owned the tree al-
lowed the children to pick up the
peaches that dropped on the ground,
but that he did not permit them to climb
the tree, or to knock off any of the
peaches; that the good school mistress
told the children what the rules were,
but that the mischievous Laura disobeyed
them, and paid, as children are so apt to
do, very dearly for her disobedience.

‘s Laura,” I said, “‘let me have the
story for my book.”

‘‘Why, you have got one of your own
very nearly like it,” said she.

-
..
ge »
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 85

‘True,’ I replied, «but my story is
for the boys. I’m afraid some of the
girls who read my book, will not learn |
the lesson there is in it, but will shift it
off upon the boys.”

« But,” said Laura, “my story has
nothing to do with Willow Lane, or any
of the Willow Lane people.”

‘sNever mind that,” said I; ‘you
write the story, and I’ll settle the rest
with the boys and girls.”

Well, Laura consented, for fear the
girls would not profit enough by my
story, to write down this little incident
in her experience. So she seated her-
self at my table, and in the course of an
86 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

hour she surprised me not a little . by
reading her tale in verse. Here it is.
Read it, girls, and learn the lesson which
it teaches :

THE MAIDEN’S WARNING.

Oh list, ye maidens, one and all,
Take warning by:my luckless fall ;
Take warning from this aching head,
And from this slow and limping tread.

Take warning from my gown all rent,
And from my locks in tangles blent ;
Take warning from these tearful eyes,
And from these sad repentant sighs.

Oh, hearken always to the rule ;
Dare not to slight the law of school,
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 87

Else, oft, like me, you’ll shun the light,
When caught in such a woful plight.

This morn, when first my feet took way,
To spend at school the pleasant day,
How smoothly combed my chestnut hair !
How shone my dress with Betty’s care !

My apron and my kerchief too,

Were trim as could be found on you ;
Yet now you scarce can smiles restrain,
To see them almost torn in twain.

Command how oft dear teacher laid

“‘ Ne’er climb the tree, a single maid ;”
Unhappy, I first gave offence—

Mark well the direful consequence.

As ’neath a peach tree tall I stood,
And mused upon the fruit so good,
One fairer than the rest I spied,
With ruddy cheeks upon its side.
88

PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

‘Tt shall be mine,”’ methought ; but, oh !
The branch was high, my stature low ;
"Twas formed above my humble reach,
The much desired, the downy peach.

‘“‘ But let me bring it here ;”’ and quick
I threw up many a stone and stick ;
Which now and then, as they came down,
Would glance upon my luckless crown.

All vain, unharmed by stone or wood,

The tempting fruit in glory stood ;

*¢ Tll scale the tree ; the branch I’ll clasp ;
No more shall it elude my grasp.”

“‘ Forbear,”’ cried Conscience, in mine ear,
‘“‘ Forbear, you’ll danger see,”’ cried Fear:
I heeded not, but took in count

The easiest way thereon to mount.

Gaining by little or no toil,
The branch which held the tempting spoil,
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 89

*T was surely mine! as ’twere a gem,
I reached to pluck it from the stem.

Yet now a serious ill forbode ;

My foothold trembled ’neath its load—
The tottering branchlet broke and fell—
My saddened mien the rest can tell.

Oh list ye maidens, one and all;
Take warning from my luckless fall ;
Beware, and break not e’en one rule,
That helps to form the code of school.

6
CHAPTER VI.
THE BALL FAMILY.

Capratn Bax was a notorious charac-
ter among us, and his family were noto-
rious, too. We will have a peep at
them, if you please. The captain lived
on the hill—not the hill on which the
school house stood, recollect, but the
high one on the other side of the great
brook. I believe it went by the name
of Breakneck Hill, among the older
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 91

people, because it was so frightfully
steep.

You will think that all the folks in
Willow Lane had their names spliced
with some sort of title or other. And
you will think pretty nearly right. I
can hardly remember one full grown
man that had not some handle to his
name. How some of themen came by
the title they were so generally known
by, is much more than I can tell, and
probably more than anybody can tell.
Jonathan Ball, however, had a good right
to his title. He was the commander-
in-chief of the Willow Lane militia,
and led that valiant band on training
92 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

days. That is to say, he led those
soldiers as well as anybody could lead
them. They were a little awkward, and
not under perfect discipline.

Shall I tell you an anecdote, just here, .
of one of Captain Ball’s desperate efforts
in drilling his soldiers? The « Penny-
royal Guard’”—so the company was
known out of Willow Lane, in that sec-
tion of the country—were drawn up on
the green, in front of the old brick
meeting house, and there were a good
many people looking on. Captain Ball
was a little proud of his company, and
he wanted they should do their very
best at this time. « Willow Lane ex-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 93

pects every man to do his duty to-day,”
he said.

_ “Form a line!” he roared out. That
was not quite so easy a matter. They
got into a perfect hard knot, at last; and
it was a great deal more than the captain,
with the aid of all his corporals, could do
to get the knot untied. Poor man! he
was humbled and vexed; and again he
thundered, as if his military honor was
all staked on that one last order, « Form
a line! every man form a line !

If you will promise me one thing, I
will let you into a Secret, little friend.
Promise that you will try to profit by the
lessons you learn from this Sketch of the
94. PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Ball Family, and I will tell you just
what Captain Ball’s faults were; for
he had faults, and they were such as
everybody ought to try hard to keep
clear of. )

He was not a bad man. He never
took to drinking, as I am sorry to say too
many of the farmers in Willow Lane did.
He was temperate. There was not a
better neighbor in the place than Jona-
than Ball. His great faults were that he
was fazy, and that he did not stick to
one thing. Now, though I am not sure
that he ever would have made a very
good militia captain, at the best, if he had
tried ever so hard and go long, yet he
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 95

would have done much better, if he had
taken pains to drill himself before he
undertook to drill his men.

He was a farmer. He had a pretty
good farm, for Willow Lane. But he
was always behind hand in his work.
He did not get to ploughing in the
spring, until most of his neighbors had
done. To be sure, he had excuses for
his delay, a plenty of them. He was
never in want of excuses. When he
came to harvest his corn, and rye, and
potatoes, of course he found that his
crops had not turned out so well as they
would have done, if his affairs had been
managed correctly. The fact is, he was
96 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

always unfortunate. Let him attempt to
do what he might, he had «bad luck,”
to use his own words, though I do not
like them, and never did.

I have known the captain in haying
time, when the Weather was very hot,
sit under a tree in the meadow, and
smoke a pipe for more than half an hour,
when there was a thunder shower coming
on, and he must have known that it was
quite as much as he and his men could do
to get the hay raked up before the rain
began to pour down, even if they had all
worked like beavers every moment of
the time.

He was almost—not quite, T confess—
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 97

as lazy as the man I heard of down east.
That man was very fond of fishing. He
liked the sport, but was too lazy to pull
the fish out of the water. So he used to
go down to the water, with his horse and
wagon; and when he got to the place
where the large black fish lived, he
would back up his wagon as near as he
could to the water’s edge, and throw
over his line. When the black fish took
hold of his hook, he would whip up, and
let his horse draw the fish out of the
water.

Captain Ball never did that. At least,
I never heard of his doing it. But I will
tell you what he did do once. Mr.
98 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Packer—Peter Packer, the man who
rode the pacing mare, and who brought
around the newspaper once a week—was
passing by Captain Ball’s garden one hot
day, and happening to look over the
fence, he saw the captain weeding his
onion bed. And how do you think he
got the weeds up? TI shall have to tell
you; for I don’t believe you would guess
how the thing was done, if you were to
rack your brains about it for twenty
years. He sat in his rocking chair, and
rocked forward to get hold of the weed,
and backward to pull it up. Don’t you
think he ought to have had a patent for
that way of weeding onion beds ?
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 99

Captain Ball built a saw-mill. Every-
body said he did it because he thought
he would have an easy time of it, sitting
still, all day long, and watching the
great logs as they moved slowly toward
the saw. But I don’t know how that
Washi? te ,

When the mill was done, or when he
thought it was done, he got all the Wil-
low Lane men and boys together, to see
him let on the water, and saw the first
log. Well, the water was let on, and
the wheel went round. .But for some
reason or other, the saw would not go.
Tt would not stir an inch. You could
not imagine a more obstinate saw than
100 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

that was. I never heard what was the
matter with the mill. But I remember
well that Captain Ball got sick of it. He
never made another trial to get the saw
agoing, after that day. He was not the
man to stick to anything, especially if
there was any trouble or hard work
about it.

When I last saw that mill—I don’t
mean when I last sawed with it, for
there was never any sawing done there—
when I last saw that mill, it was a per-
fect wreck. It was all tumbling to
pieces. As I stopped a moment to look
at it, and thought of its history, it seems
ed like a monument, put up there to
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 101

warn everybody of the evils of laziness,
and of: the habit of leaving things half
done.

Captain Ball showed his lazy habits on
the Sabbath, as well as on week days.
Almost as soon as he got into the
meeting house—we had no churches in
that part of the country where I was
brought up; houses of worship were all
meeting houses—almost as soon as he got
into the meeting house, and took his
seat, he went to sleep, and he frequently
slept, it seemed to me, through all the
sermon. I never could see what good it
did him to go to meeting at all.

Would you believe it? He frequently
102 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

got fast asleep, when he was standing
up. We always stood up, by the way,
in prayer time. One afternoon, when
the prayer was a little longer than
usual—rather too long, we children
thought—Captain Ball lost his balance,
and over he pitched into the broad aisle.
He came down with a great crash, for he
was a fat, heavy man—lazy folks are apt
to be fat, you know—and there he lay,
as flat as a flounder, on the floor. What
a tittering went round the meeting house,
when the boys found out the meaning of
that noise.

But the joke did not end here. A
good many of the people thought that
PEEP aT OUR NEIGHBORS. 103

the captain had fainted away, or that-he
had been seized witha fit. So two or
three strong men ran up to him, before
he had time to get wide awake, to find
out where he was and what had really
happened, and took him up, and carried
him out into the open air.

Captain Ball never heard the last of
that affair, until he died. It was all the
talk for a while, and everybody in Wil-
low Lane felt at liberty to have a good
laughing spell at the poor man’s expense.
His fall broke up his sleeping in meet-
ing for a time, though I am sorry to say
that he finally got back again to his old
habit.
104 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Captain Ball had no curb to his well.
He was always thinking about doing it,
and making up his mind that he would
do it; but he never set himself about it.
One of the neighbors ventured to hint to
hin that the well was not safe. ‘“* Per-
haps not,” he said, with a yawn, “ but I
have had it so more than fifteen years,
and there haven’t been but two drowned
in it, and one of them was a mere child.”

The well curb was never built in the
captain’s day, I believe.
CHAPTER VII.
CHIPS OF THE OLD BLOCK.

Caprain Batt’s children had very
poor bringing up. I might almost say
they came up themselves.

I never had such a perfect horror of
any one person in my life, as I had of
Joe Ball, the oldest of the boys. I had
some reason to be afraid of him, as you
will see when you learn what he did to
me once. : will tell you how it was.
106 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

I was coming home from the store one
day, where I had been of an errand,
when I came across Joe. He had been
playing ball, and was just going toward
home. I had bought ‘ Robinson Cru-
soe,” I recollect, with some money
which I had got by selling my pet
squirrel, who had become so mischievous
that my father would not let me keep
him any longer. I was walking along
leisurély, reading that book, when Joe
came up to me.

«© Ah, you little imp !”’ said he; ‘I’ve
got you now. I'll give it to you for
that.”

I was not so happy as to know what
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PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 109

that meant; and so I asked him if he
would be so good as to tell me what I
had done to displease him.

‘‘ You pretend not to know, do you 2”
said he. ‘I'll teach you. You'll find
out that you’ve gota pretty hard fellow
to deal with, when you cross my track,
you little tell-tale.”

And he struck me a blow on the side
of my head so hard that it almost stunned
me, and made my head ache all that day
and most of the night.

‘‘'There!”’ he said, “that will teach
you better than to peach on Joe Ball.”

I could not understand in what way I
bad ‘‘ crossed the track’? of Joe Ball. I
110 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

thought I had kept as far away from him
as possible ; I always meant to do so.
Nor did I know what peaching meant.
Until that time, I had, it so happened,
never met the verb to peach. 1 learned,
however, from a word or two which Joe
added, that peaching was playing the
part of the tell-tale. My crime, it ap-
peared, was telling the schoolmaster who
pelted the old school house with spoiled
eggs—a piece of information which cost
Joe the hardest flogging, I suppose, that
he ever got in his life. Now it so hap-
pened that, until Joe Ball got whipped,
I did not know or suspect that he threw
the eggs; nor do I know to this day
* PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 111

who told the schoolmaster. I know that
I did not tell him.

After this adventure with Joe Ball, I
lived in almost as much fear of him as if
he had been a mad dog or a hyena.

It was a very rare thing to see either
Simeon or Randolph—Captain Ball’s
youngest boys, who were not far from
my own age—without holes in their
stockings, and their elbows seemed al-
ways to have a habit of bursting through
the sleeves of their jackets. And they
were all three such ill-natured and quar-
relsome fellows, that all the children in
school disliked them.

The reason they acted so badly, was
112 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. *

that their father had not patience and
energy enough to bring them up properly,
I suppose. I don’t know what other
reason there was for it.


CHAPTER VIII.
THE DROWNED GIRL.

SIMEON was a very passionate boy.
He seemed to have hardly any control
over himself, when he got angry. He
did a terrible thing once, in the heat of
passion. A relative of the Ball family—
a cousin, I believe, of Captain Ball’s chil-
dren—had come on from Boston, and
was staying for a few weeks in Willow
Lane. She had brought a bathing dress —
114 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

with her; and one fine day, she went
over to the pond, with Simeon and his
younger brother, and went in to bathe.
She was rather timid, and Simeon, who
could swim, kept hold of her hand while
she was in the water.

Simeon knew nothing about fear him-
self, and he thought it was very foolish
for his cousin Margaret to be afraid. He
laughed at her, and tried to persuade her
to go farther from the shore, where the
water was deeper. But Margaret re-
fused to go. After trying a long time to
persuade the timid girl to go into the
deep water, he got angry; and in a mo-
ment, before he took time to think of
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 115

what he was doing, he gave her a rude
push, and said, “There! you shall ZO,
whether you want to or not.”

Margaret lost her balance, and fell
where the water was deep. Her pres-
ence of mind was all gone. Else, per-
haps, she could have helped herself so
‘far as not to have sunk under the water.
But as it was, she went down, and it was
a great while before she rose again to
the surface. Of course Simeon seized
her as soon as she rose. He was SOITY
enough then, for what he had done.
But she immediately seized him, as
drowning persons frequently do, when.
they have lost the command of them-
116 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

selves, and she held his hands so fast
that he could not move them. The
water was so deep that he could not
touch the bottom. He was in danger
of drowning himself. Meanwhile, the
poor girl was sinking again. Simeon
struggled with all his might. After a
long time he succeeded in dragging her
to the shore. But she was drowned.
The last spark of life had left.

I shall never forget what a gloom
spread over the whole neighborhood,
when the terrible news was known. No
event of such a nature had ever happen-
ed there before; and for months after
that, tears flowed down. the sunburnt
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 117

cheeks of those warm-hearted farmers,

when the fate of poor Margaret was men-
tioned.


CHAPTER IX.
THE YOUNG TRUTH-TELLER.

I LEARNED many a lesson in truth-
telling, when I was a boy, from Amanda
Redmond. Amanda was a sweet girl.
I loved her, as if she were my own sister.
She was a little my senior in age. But
she never put on any airs on that ac-
count, as some of the older girls did.
She did not assume any superior wisdom.
She did not try to dazzle me with the


AMARA AT IER ENFYTING-WORK.
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AMANDA AT HER. KNITTING-WORK.

119

P,
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 121

learning she had picked up, I scarcely
know how, when and where. But I al-
ways felt, when in her presence, that I
was a mere dunce. It is astonishing
what influence she had over me; though
I presume that as great a portion of it was
due to her pure principles and consistent
life, as to a mind quite above her years.
Amanda’s father was a blacksmith—
the only one in Willow Lane. He shod
all the horses and oxen, put on all the
cart tires, made all the cranes, hooks and
trammels, and in short, did all the blow-
ing and striking in Willow Lane; unless
I except the blowing and striking, which
certainly had not much to do with black-

& *
122 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

smithing, of Mr. Solomon Stark, the
schoolmaster.

Mr. Redmond had several children 5
put among them all, Amanda was my
favorite. How many; many times |
have gone over to Mr. Redmond’s, for
no other purpose in the world, than be-
cause I wanted to have a chat with
Amanda. Though I always found her
busy about something—knitting, oF sew-
ing, oF helping her mother about the
house—I do believe she was always glad
to see me. ‘The kind, true-hearted girl !
I had reason to love her. I knew I
could always depend on what she said.
She never deceived me. Her regard for
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 123

the truth was a proverb in Willow Lane.
I have many a time heard a person say,
‘I don’t believe that that girl (mention-
ing the name) would tell a lie any more
than Amanda Redmond would.” In-
deed, Parson Daley was once heard to
speak of her as the “ truth-teller.”

What an excellent character this is for
a girl to have—the ‘“truth-teller!? [|
tell you what it is, that title is more to
be coveted than that of the queen of
England or the emperor of Russia.

*‘ But what was there so remarkable
about that girl?’ some one inquires.
“Js it such a rare thing for children to

tell the truth? Why, I never did any-
124 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

thing else but tell the truth in all my
life.”’

[T should hope, to be sure; that among
my readers, the number of those who
ever allow themselves to tell a lie, is very
- gmall, indeed. But I am afraid that it is
too common with boys and girls to act
falsehood, when they would not speak it
with their lips for all the world. I have
known some young people dodge about,
for a quarter of an hour, so near a lie, all
the time, that | thought they might al-
most as well have told a round, plump
one, and have done with it.

I have heard of a man who was once

found in a cellar, holding a lighted lamp
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 125

in an open cask of powder. When
asked what he was at, he replied, coolly,
that he was trying to see how near he
could get the blaze to the powder with-
out touching it. I have sometimes
thought, when I have seen people
dodging about between a lie and the
truth, that they were trying an experi-
ment quite as foolish and almost as dan-
gerous as the one which this dunce tried
over the powder barrel.

Now the way in which my friend
Amanda got her character for truth-
telling, was by showing a regard for
truth at all times—by telling the truth in
her actions, as well as in her words.

8
126 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

I remember a debate I had with her
one day about this matter of truth-tell-
ing. She took strong ground against all
those deviations from the bounds of truth,
so commonly regarded as exceedingly
slight and frivolous, which sometimes g0
by the name of white lies. 1 stood up
for the white lies. I did not often ven-
ture to differ with Amanda, much less to
dispute with her. She was my oracle ;
and in most cases I yielded to her opin-
‘on at once. I pinned my faith on her
sleeves, almost as tightly as Uncle
Miah did his on the sleeves of Par-
son Daley. I must tell you an anec-
dote—if you will let me g0 out of my
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 127

way a little—which will show you how
firmly the deacon’s faith was pinned to
the sleeves of our good minister. One
Sunday a strange clergyman preached in
the old brick meeting house. Mr. Daley
was away somewhere. Perhaps he had
exchanged with the strange minister. I
do not remember how that was. Nor do
I remember—I might as well confess it—
what kind of preaching we had that day.
But this I remember distinctly enough,
that one of the neighbors met Uncle
Miah the next day, and asked him how
he liked the minister they had heard the
day before. ‘‘Can’t tell for certain,”
said Uncle Miah; “ haven’t seen Parson
128 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Daley yet.” But I must hurry back to
Amanda and those white lies.

As I was saying, I pinned my faith
pretty tightly to Amanda’s sleeves, and
did not ordinarily unpin it. But this
time, when we had the talk about the
white lies, I set up for myself. I saw
that if she was right, there was a good
deal in my conduct that needed tinker-
ing; and I did not wish to admit that
fora moment. SoI pitched head fore-
most into a perfect ocean of argument.

“Frank,” said she, at the time to
which I allude, ‘‘are you fond of water-
melons ?”

I frankly confessed that I was fond of
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 129

them—‘‘ very fond, indeed.”” There
was no white lie about that statement.

‘* Because,”’ she added, as if I had not
spoken, ‘we have some very fine ones,
and father says you can have one every
day, if you will come over to our house
and get it.”

That made me blush. Would you
like to know why? J’ll tell you. Mr.
Redmond had a patch of watermelons
that year, just back of his blacksmith’s
shop, and I had been persuaded to join a
company of bad boys, one evening, and
to lend a hand in stealing—hooking, re-
garded as rather a milder word, was the
term used by the boys—some of these
130 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

melons. You must not suppose that
stealing fruit was a common thing with
me. It was quite otherwise, I assure
you. I was out of my element that
night. I had yielded to temptation, in
an evil moment, and I had done what I
have been heartily ashamed of as often
as I have thought of it since.

‘¢ And don’t you think,’’ Amanda con-
tinued, ‘‘ that you would feel a great deal
better, if you should eat the melons here,
with a clean plate and knife, than you
would to eat them behind tbe black-
smith’s shop, with a dirty jack-knife,
without any plate at all?”

I did think so, and so I told her.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 131

‘Well, then,’? she went on—and oh,
how those words did prick me; I could
almost feel the old, dirty jack-knife cut-
ting into my flesh—<‘ well, then, I hope
you will not eat any more melons behind
the blacksmith’s shop.”

She said all this kindly, and with a
smile as sweet as ever. But if she had
made a pin-cushion out of my arm, I
don’t believe she would have made me
smart any more severely. But “I must
brave it out,” I thought. «It will not
do to own up to her. I should be dis-
graced forever. She would never speak
to me again. She did not see me hook
the melons. I don’t believe anybody
132 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

saw me. She only guesses I did it.
How does she know? I will not own
it.*?

‘‘T haven’t eaten any melons behind
the blacksmith’s shop,” I said.

‘¢ But Captain Parry says he saw you
there with two or three other bad boys,
and that you was eating watermelons
with them.”

‘‘Well, if Captain Parry says so, he
lies, that’s all.”’

Amanda looked at me, and shook her
head, but made no reply.

I saw in a moment that I had made a
great mistake—that I had dulled, as the
farmers say when they hit a stone in
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 133

mowing—for I knew and_ everybody
knew that there was not a truer or purer
man in Willow Lane than Captain Parry.
He was among the few in those parts
against whom the tongue of slander sel-
dom dared to wag.

There was a pause for a little while.
Amanda knew not what to say next—
and J am sure I did not. She ventured,
at last, timidly and sadly, to hint that she
was afraid I did not speak the truth;
that Captain Parry must have been very
sure he saw me, or he would not have
said so; and that she hoped I would not
tell a lie, because that was as bad as
taking the watermelons, if not worse.
134 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

This softened me some, though not
enough. I confessed that I had hada
hand in stealing the melons, and that I
had done my share in eating them.
There was no merit in the confession,
though; for you see I did not make it
until she had driven me into a cor-
ner where I could not get away.. My
confession was well enough ; but it came
too late. My giving up when I was cor-
nered, was like a man talking about a
surrender, when he is already caught.

I told her all about that paltry water-
melon affair, and assured her that I was
sorry for the hand I had had init. I
was sorry, you may depend upon that.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 135

I told her, too, that I should never do so
again, and that I hoped she and her
father would forgive me.

‘* But the falsehood 2”? said Amanda,
inquiringly.

‘*Qh, I did not tell any falsehood,” I
replied.

‘“* Why, didn’t you say that you had
not eaten any of the watermelons ?”

* Yes,”

‘But now you own that you did eat
some of them.”

_“T said, at. first, that I didn’t eat any
watermelons. ‘That was true. I didn’t
eat but one.”’ |

“Is it possible that Frank can quibble
136 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

in this way 2”? Amanda said, while a tear
stuod in her eye. “Is it possible? I
should not have believed that of you.”

‘¢Why, what harm is there in that ?”
I asked.

«You might as well ask what harm
there is in telling a lie.”

‘‘ But I did not tell a lie.”’

‘‘Perhaps not. But didn’t you think
that was rather a poor way of telling the
truth ?”’

«No, I’m sure I don’t.”

‘‘Didn’t you try to make me think
that you had not taken any part in
stealing and eating the melons ?”

‘© Yes, but I didn’t tell a lie about it.”’
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 137

‘‘Suppose sister Julia should ask me
this evening if Frank had been over here
to-day, and I should shake my head, and
Julia should believe that you had not
been here; wouldn’t that be telling a
lie 2” |

‘*T don’t know but it would.”

‘* Are you not sure that it would 2”

“Yes, Iam; but I didn’t do anything
like that.’’

‘* You meant to deceive me.”’

‘** But I didn’t shake my head, when
you asked me about the watermelons.’

‘True, but you tried to cheat me by
a quibble, which I think was quite as
near a falsehood as you would have got
ae

138 PEEP AT OUR- NEIGHBORS.

if you had shaken your head. It wasa
great deal too near, at_any rate.”’

s¢ But I didn’t make you think I had
not taken the melons.”

‘‘No thanks to you for that. You
wanted to make me think so, and you
tried hard enough to bring it about.”

I began to feel that I had not much
ground left to stand upon. She saw it—
she could read me, through and through,
at one glance—and she added,

‘¢No, dear Frank, you are wrong, I’m
sure, now, you are wrong. You have
not thought much of the matter before.
You have not looked upon it in this .
light; and I don’t think that you meant
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 1389

to plead for falsehood in any shape.
But I hope you will think it all over
when you go home. Ask yourself—ask
your conscience, whether such liberties
as you have taken with the truth are
right, will you, Frank 2?”

I promised her that I would. I kept
my promise, too; and the more I thought
of what she had said, the more clearly I
saw that I had been trying, though with-
out intending it, to justify falsehood. I
saw, that if such white lies were wel-
comed into good company, a door was
opened to let in all manner of lies, al-
most, that ever Satan invented.
CHAPTER X.
THE NEW SKATES;
oR, “FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES.”

Ciosr by my father’s house resided
Mr. Goodman. My father and he were
on the best of terms. They met almost
every day, to chat a little, and, it may be,
to smoke a friendly pipe together—for
they both loved smoking (though I do
not place that to their credit) as well as
they loved to eat, and I think a little
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 141

better—and to discuss the news far and
near.

Mr. Goodman had a son a very little
younger than myself, whose name was
Daniel. Daniel and I were quite as
good friends as our fathers were. If we
did not see each other every day, a dark
cloud came over our brow; and when
we were obliged to be separated for
several days, owing to one of us having
left home on a visit, the cloud aforesaid
grew darker and thicker, and just as
likely as not the rain fell alittle. We
were uneasy as a fish out of water, if we
were not romping together half the time
when we wore out of school.
142 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

It happened, however—I am sorry
to be obliged to own it; I feel quite
ashamed now, at this distant day, when
I think of it—it happened one afternoon,
that we quarreled. Yes, we quarreled.
We got so angry with each other, that
our little hearts were transformed into
miniature steam-boilers, and our throats
into steam-pipes, and so the words
whizzed out of our mouths red-hot. I
shall not tell you what we said to each
other. JI am not sure that I remember.
[ have tried to forget it, I do assure you,
and perhaps I have succeeded. But
even if I could remember, I would not
tell you. Suffice it to say, that the
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 143

words were about as far from being kind
and good-natured as they could be.

The way in which the quarrel com-
menced was something like this. My
father had bought me a pair of skates,
and Daniel had none. It was in the
winter, and the mill pond was all frozen
over solid, and the skating was fine.
Ah, what capital sport I have had skat-
ing on Mason’s pond. It brings back
the fresh, warm heart of my boyhood
now, only to think of it.

On the afternoon of the unfortunate
affair to which I allude, Daniel and I,
having obtained the consent of our pa-
rents, went over to the pond, to try the
144 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

new skates. There never was a prettier
pair of skates—there never could have
been anything before that went over the
ice so gracefully and so swiftly. So we
thought. It was voted, unanimously—
that last word is a little too long, and
you may split it to pieces, if you like to
put another in its place—by the boys on
the pond at the time, of whom, it must
be confessed, the aforesaid Daniel and
myself comprised something more than
half, that Frank’s skates were finer even
than Charley Hoyt’s; and the school-
master had been heard to say that
Charley’s were the best that had ever
come into Willow Lane. You can easily
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 145

see, reader, what a compliment was paid
to my new skates. ‘The schoolmaster,
in the opinion of us boys, was a perfect
Solomon, and in our way of thinking,
Willow Lane embraced a much greater
share of the habitable globe than our
school atlas, in after days, when we
. studied Morse’s geography, gave it credit
for embracing.

Well, I mounted the skates. Skate
navigation, at first, is not very easy.
Every boy, in his first efforts to skate,
can easily understand how perilous were
some of my earliest attempts to imitate
the feats of the larger boys. I fell some
half a dozen times, and once or twice flat
146 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

upon my back. Did you ever strike the
back part of your head on the ice, my
boy? What a host of stars one sees at
such a time. I saw I don’t know how
many brilliant ones, and indeed, whole
constellations of them, over and over
again, before I learned to skate well.
When, on this occasion, I had amused
myself for half an hour, or more, I
thought I had studied astronomy in this
way about enough for one day, and un-
tied my skates, and allowed Daniel to
put them on his feet. They fitted him
as well as they did me. Our feet were
of very nearly the same size. Daniel’s
fate was not unlike mine. He saw about
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 147

the same number of planets and stars of
the first magnitude—so I should think—
and made something like the same pro-
gress in the mysteries of the skating art.

While my companion was thus en-
gaged, we saw a colored boy, who lived
at my father’s, coming toward the pond,
running at the very top of his speed—
‘‘ full tilt,’ as we boys had it—and what
was more to the point, he had a pair of
skates in his hand. Yes, a pair of skates!
There was absolutely no mistake about
it. How strange !

As soon as the little fellow could get
breath enough to'speak, he told us that
the skates were presented to Master
148 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Daniel ; that my father recollecting,
after the boys had left for the pond, that
Daniel had no skates, went over to the
store and bought a pair for him, so that
he could enjoy the sport as well as I.
‘““As soon as he had bought them,”
Peter went on, “he came into the
kitchen, where I was reading Robinson
Crusoe, and said, ‘Run, Peter, run to
the pond, as fast as you can go, and take
these skates to Daniel.’ So I ran all the
way, sure enough, and I never was so
tired in my life.”” And the fellow panted
for breath, as you have sometimes seen
a great fat man do, when he had walked
up three or four flights of stairs.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 149

Could it be possible? Daniel and I
both were equally surprised. Neither
of us had thought of the possibility of
_ such a state of things. Neither was pre-
pared for it. Daniel waselated. As for
me, it would be difficult to tell how I
felt, though I am quite sure I did not
feel right. When we got over our as-
tonishment a little, so as to be able to
speak, we began to “< compare notes”
together.

[t soon became evident how matters
stood. Daniel’s skates, (so he really
thought them, though it is very doubtful,
were he to see the two pairs together
now, if he could see any difference in
150 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

them worth mentioning,) were hand-
somer than mine. Daniel hinted at this
fact. I hinted as plainly, and perhaps a
little more plainly, that he was mistaken,
if he thought so.

Daniel appealed to Peter. Peter
thought if there was any difference, it
was certainly in favor of Daniel’s skates.
‘There, there,’ said Daniel, «Peter
says my skates are handsomer than
yours ;”” and he laughed, and his black
eyes, I thought, had a roguish twinkle
about them, which meant more than he
dared to speak with his lips. I was
angry. ‘The words I said had but three
letters each, and there were only three
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 151

of the words, but they were bitter
enough. I will not tell you what they
were. I don’t want to disgrace my pen
with them. You can guess what they
were, though. ~

Then came a storm, you may be sure
of it. It lasted some time. There was
a good deal of thunder, as well as some
pretty bright flashes of lightning, in the
course of the storm. How long the quar-
rel would have lasted, if we had remained
together, I don’t know. But it got to
be time to leave for home. We parted—
parted brimful of anger and hate. Oh,
how foolish and wicked! Peter went
home with me; Daniel went alone.
152 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

That night and all the next day, I was
wretched enough. Indeed, I never got
angry with anybody in my life without
being wretched. It is a bad investment,
this getting into a passion, and holding
heat a long time, as a bar of iron does.
f never came across anybody in my
whole life, that said there was any fun in
getting mad. Anger is like a sirocco
wind. There is no good init. It hurts
everything it blows upon. It withers up
all the sweet flowers of the heart.

My father heard of the affair. He did
not say anything to me about it until the
next day. That night, when I kneeled
down with my brother, to say ‘Now I
PEEP aT OUR NEIGHBORS. 153

lay me down to sleep,” and the “ Lord’s
Prayer,” I felt worse than ever. I came
to the words, ‘‘ Forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against
us.”

“‘Stop,” said my father. ‘You ask
the Lord to forgive you, just as you for-
give your playmates. Do you forgive
them? If you cannot forgive them, all
of them, for the wrongs they have done
you, how can you expect your heavenly
Father will forgive you ?”

This touched my heart. I had often
repeated those words before; but I had
never fully understood their meaning.
Oh, what a mine of pure gold the whole
154 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

Bible is, my dear children. How full it
is of just such things as we all need, to
help us along in our journey to the other
world. It is a blessed volume. What
should we do without it? and how
thankful we ought to be that God has
given it to us.

When my father asked me the ques-
tion, I burst into tears. ‘QO, father !’”’ I
said, ‘I am very unhappy. What shall
I do?’ and a deluge of tears ran down
~ my cheeks. :

‘Do ?”’ said my father, ‘* forgive Dan-
iel. Go and tell him you forgive him,
and that you are sorry you have said
anything to injure his feelings.”
















































156

A QUARREL MADE UP.

PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 157

‘J will—I will go to-morrow,” I said.

‘‘ Better to-night,” replied my father.

I hesitated a little; but I got my hat
and mittens, and went over with my
father to Mr. Goodman’s. Daniel, who
felt as unhappy as I did, came into the
room where I was. I ran and.embraced
him. ‘O Daniel! forgive me!” I said.
‘‘T will never do so any more.”

At first he was not quite ready to
make up; but when I told him again
that I was sorry for what I had said, and
asked his forgiveness, and assured him
that if he forgave me, I would never do
SO any more, he was melted. There was
a whole deluge of tears shed on both
158 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

sides, and the difficulty was all over for-
ever.

I went home. I knelt down again to
say the ‘‘ Lord’s Prayer,” and this time I
felt that God smiled upon me when |
asked him to ‘forgive my trespasses.”
CHAPTER XI.
LAUGHING BILL.

THERE was a boy in our neighborhood
who generally went by the name of
“Laughing Bill.” His real name was
William Scott; but he was so seldom
addressed by that name, that I doubt if
half a dozen among all the merry school-
boys in Willow Lane, were aware that
such a person as William Scott ever

lived.
10
160 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

As you may surmise, this urchin was a
laughing character. In fact, he laughed
as if it was a business he had taken up
for life, and one by which he intended
to get his living. If things went on well
with him, he laughed. He laughed, too,
quite as heartily, if they went ill. I
have known him absolutely convulsed
with laughter, while the village school-
master was giving him a sound drubbing
with one of the seasoned hickory sprouts,
which had been laid up for three months
‘n his desk. So you see William Scott
came pretty honestly by the title which
the boys gave him.

He was a kind, good-natured boy.
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 161

Few of our number ever had any quar-
rels with him ; and if any one did so for-
get himself as to commence a battle with
him, just as likely as not Bill would set
his laughing engine in motion, and do
his part of the fighting with that.

He was, on the whole, a pretty good
scholar, though it happened too fre-
quently, I used to think, that he would
come to school with a very bad lesson.
For that, however, he generally managed
to make up pretty soon, probably as early
as the next day, when he would havea
better lesson, perhaps, than any other
boy in school.

As William lived in the immediate
162 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

neighborhood of my father’s house, we
used to be often together. He had no
bad habits; and so my mother, who was
very particular in respect to the com-
pany I kept, did not hesitate to allow us
to be together.

I said that William had no bad habits.
I ought to explain that a little. I mean
that he did not use profane and impure
language, and that he was not what is
called a bad boy. ‘There was one bad
habit about him, although that was of
such a nature that it is hardly proper to
speak of it as a wicked habit. I will tell
you what it was. He could hardly ever
deny a person, when he was asked to do
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 163

anything or to go anywhere. He wasa
great deal too obliging in this respect.

‘‘But that was a good trait in Bill’s
character. I should think it was a good
trait, Uncle Frank.”’

No, that is a great mistake.

‘Why, is it not right to oblige every-
body, as much as possible ?”’

Certainly, when you can oblige every
one without doing wrong. Boys and
girls, and men and women, are often
asked to do something which would be a
great injury to them; and perhaps, if
they yielded, they would disobey God.
In that case, it would be wrong to yield,
you see. William Scott, because he was
164 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

so anxious to please everybody, or for
some other reason, used too often, as he
grew older, to do as he was urged to do,
when by so doing, he was the cause of a
good deal of mischief.

There were in our village, as there
are, I am sorry to say, in too many other
places in different parts of the country,
some young men that indulged in drink-
ing intoxicating liquors. Once in a
while they got together, and drank a
good deal, at which times they did a
great many foolish things, as if they were
trying to see which could act most like a
brute. I believe they sometimes suc-
ceeded in outdoing all the brutes that
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 165

we’ve ever heard of, since the beginning
of the world.

Laughing Bill had scarcely tasted a
drop of liquor when he was fourteen
years of age. His father was pretty
temperate in his habits, and though he
furnished liquor to his hired men in hay-
ing time—for there was only one man in
Willow Lane who believed it possible to
get through haying without New Eng-
land rum, or something of that class and
order—he did not drink much himself,
and never allowed his boys to drink at
all.

But about this time, William was in
company with two or three of the drink-
166 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

ing young men I have alluded to, and
they persuaded him to go to the tavern
with them the next night. He could not
say no. How strange! Why, he must
have known that it would be dangerous
to be in such a place, with that kind of
company, even for one evening. But
perhaps he did not think much about it.
Young people frequently do things which
they are sorry for as long as they live, just
because they did not have their thoughts
about them at the time. They ought to
think, though. What are our thoughts
good for, if we cannot make use of them
when we are tempted to sin ?

William yielded, and went to the
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 167

tavern. He did not mean to drink any-
thing stronger than root beer and lemon-
ade, when he consented to go. He did
not mean to drink anything stronger after
he got to the tavern. But he was urged
to do so—urged hard. He could not
refuse ; it would be unkind to do so, he
thought. His companions would be
offended. |

So he drank. Poor fellow! how little
did he know, when he touched that glass
to his lips—how little did he know what
that act was to cost him. Though he
was disgusted with what he saw and
heard at the tavern, and left it with the
determination never to visit it with such
168 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

company again, he did go there the
second time, with the same company, in
less than three weeks. You see he had
hard work to refuse, because he had
formed the habit of yielding. But he
ought to have refused. If he found it a
hard task, he should have worked harder
at it--he should have set himself more
resolutely about it.

I do not wish to follow this young man
through all the windings of his path for

five or six years. Knowing him so well
* as I did, it would be too painful to pur-
sue his history so minutely, nor is it ne-
cessary to do so. The depraved taste
which he formed for rum and brandy, and
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 169

other liquors of the kind, soon led him
along the highway of intemperance with
fearful rapidity. Do you wonder at it,
my young friend? You need not won-
der at it. Intoxicating liquors set the
whole body and mind on fire. They
drive a person crazy. He loses com-
mand of himself, after a while. He goes
on drinking, though he knows well that
he is going certainly and swiftly to de-
struction.

William was soon a confirmed drunk-
ard ; and oh, what distress he brought on
the once happy family of which he was
a member! Before he was twenty-one
years of age, he was often found, in the
170 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

dead of night, in a state of loathsome
drunkenness.

One day, in company with one of the
young men who led him astray, he went
‘nto the woods ona hunting excursion.
A bottle of brandy was a part of the out-
ft for this excursion. ‘They both drank
freely—William more freely than his
companion. ‘Toward night, just before
they were thinking of returning home,
William was separated a few rods from
his companion, and for some reason or
other, had climbed a little distance up a
tree which was partly blown down by
the wind, and which overhung the brow
of the hill. Poor man! he had not sufli-
PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 171

cient command of himself to retain his
balance. He fell head foremost from
the tree, before his companion could
reach him, and was almost instantly
killed.

So ended the short career of Laughing
Bill.

Boys, I could preach you a long ser-
mon, with William Scott for a text. I
could talk’ with a great deal of feeling on
that subject, too; for the tears will come
into my eyes, in spite of myself, when I
think of what that young man was, and
when I trace his history in my mind, till
I come to its terrible end. How I loved
that boy; and what sorrow filled my
172 PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS.

young heart, when I saw his fair face
for the last time. Aye, I could preach
long and feelingly on such a text. But
I will not do so. I will let the facts
preach for themselves. 1 will point you
to them for a sermon, as Mark Antony
pointed to the bleeding body of Cesar.
CHAPTER XII.
UNCLE FRANK’S LEAVE-TAKING.

I suppose it is high time that I took
my leave of you, little friends. I am
very fond of young people ; and when I
can get a chance to tell them stories that
will entertain them, and profit them af
the same time, I hardly know where to
bite off the thread. When I get my
story-telling machinery in good running
order, it is really hard work to stop the
A BUDGET OF WILLOW LANE STORIES.

BY UNCLE FRANK.



CONTENTS
OPENING OF THE BudGFT. Our HuUCKLEBERRY PARTIES.
Our First SoHOOLMASTER. Wittow LANE Pic-N16s.
Tyr MoNKEY AND WIS SPELLING CLASS. CAPTURING THE Hornets’ Nest.
TE BONFIRE. A Grew Lost IN THE Woops.
TuE CoLp WATER Boy. Srx Montus AT Unoie Man's
Wiron Woops. CLOSE OF THE BUDGET.
II

ILLUSTRATIONS.
SoLomon STARK AND THR MONKEY. Tre Cop WATER Boy.
ViGNETTE TITLE PAGE. Tre Pro-N1Io.
Visir To THE ToY STORE. Fanny's TEMPTATION.
Tue BONFIRE. Lik on A FARM.
THE MILLER OF OUR VILLAGE,

AND SOME OF HIS TOLLS.

BY UNCLE FRANK.



CONTENTS.
INTR )DUCTION. On “TAKING IT Easy.”
Wuar I Mean BY TOLLS. Fish AND FISHERMEN.
My First TiorsEBACK RIDE. UNCLE JAKE'S NOTIONS ABOUT FiIsH-
A Queer GETTING OVERBOARD. ING.
On Crver DRINKING. “Take CARE.”
SomETHING ABOUT THE Hypo. On Bitine FILEs.

A Tatk Asout LIGHT HovuseEs.



ILLUSTRATIONS.

Tue OLp MILLER AND HIS FRIENDS. PLAYING TRUANT.
Vianetre TITLE PAGE. Ps Tne Eppystone Licut Hovsk®
PRYING INTO THE LETTER. A Pariey witn WICKED Boys.

My First Horsepack Ripe. FisHine in THE MILL-PonD.
A PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS:

A SEQUEL TO THE WILLOW LANE BUDGET.

BY UNCLE FRANK. ;





CONTENTS.
Wuat I am Gorne To Do. CuIps OF THE OLD BLOCK.
A GLANCE AT PARSON DALEY. Turn DrowNED GIRL.
Docror WINDMAN AND His DosEs. Tur YounG Trutu-TELLER.
Huntine Hens’ Nests. Tue New SKATES.
Cimeine THE Peacn TREE Laveuine BILL.
Tue BALL FAMILY. UncLeE FRANK'S LEAVE-TAKING.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Trae DROWNED GIRL. Huntive Hens’ Nests.
Vienerre TitLe Paae. JOE ALL AND HIS VICTIM.
A Prep at WiLtow LANE. AMANDA AT HER Knrrrina- W ork.

Parson DALEY AND THE LITTLE Git. '! “Ox, DanteL! Foraive ME,
%
THE STRAWBERRY GIRL :

OR, HOW TO RISEIN THE WORLD.

BY UNCLE FRANK.





CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION. THatT STRAWBERRY PATOH,
CaAsTLE-BUILDING, A Secret DISCOVERED.
Tur CASTLE-BUILDERS. An UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
Tue FLOWER OF THE FAMILY. CHANGES AT Rose CoTraGeE,
Tne FALL or THE Arr-CASTLES. Amy, AS A GOVERNESS.
Tlorprs AND DISAPPOINTMENTS. An UNLOOKED-FOR ANSWER.
GLIMMERINGS OF SUNSHINE. A Nout ror Mrs, SIMPKINS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.
Amy Rost AND HER BROTHER. «* Wat Monstrous STITCHES.”
VIGNETTE TITLE PAGE, Tur SERENADERS.
Tur EVENING PRAYER. Tre PROFESSOR AND THE GOVERNESS,

WATCHING FOR THE SHIP. Tue CLass IN BoTANY.
THE LITTLE MISCHIEF-MAKER,

AND OTHER STORIES.

BY UNCLE FRANK.



CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. Tue Boy AND THE ROBIN.
Ciara Repwoon's TRICKS. LEADING AND DRIVING.
Ciara AT Tome. Beatine PerorLte Down.
CLARA AT SCHOOL, FATHER SMITH AND THE SKIN-FLINTS.
Tre DruMMING AFFAIR. Aunt SUSAN AND HER SECRET,
My First BARGAIN. Go AHEAD,
TuE PRIsONED Brep. Tue Harpy FAMILy.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Miscnter MAKING. VACATION SPORTS AND PASTIMES.
VIGNETTE TITLE PAGE. Tun Boy AND THE ROBIN,
Tie Miscnier MAKER DISCOVERED, Tnx PrisoneD Birp.

TEARING UP THE LETTER. BEATING DowN THE GLAZICE.
BOYS’ AND GIRLS’ COUNTRY BOOK.

BY UNCLE FRANK.



=
CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION. My GRANDFATHER.
Tue Crry Boy IN THE COUNTRY. DROWNING OUT WOODCHUOKS.
My Sister. Coustn HEten AND HER PONY.
Tue Youne GLEANER. Tux Homesick Boy.
Gerrine CooLep OFF. Tue Wasps’ NEST.
A Biack-SnaAkE STORY. CONCLUSION.

CAPTAIN Parry’s OLD MARE.



ILLUSTRATIONS.
A Peep at Tur Cows AND SHEEP. Tur YounG GLEANER.
Vignerrre TiTLe PAGE. UNCLE JESSE AMONG THE SHEEP.
FEEDING THE CHICKENS. Tn STUDENT AND THE OLD MARE

WINTER SPORTS IN THE COUNTRY. Cousin HELEN AND HER PoneEY.
Charles Scribner's Juvenile Publications.

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH’S WORKS:

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS, with a Memoir, by H. J. Tonna. 1 vol.,

See, . vc ccknncscsnnssyes sesesesevesosees agrrscceccencconcensoceores 50
HELEN FLEETWOOD, ..----eseeeseees 1 vol., 18m0.....-ee sees erereees 50
JUDAH’S LION,.....--seeereeeeerrrseereee® Bid ich covevccoecevoes are
JUDAA CAPTA,...-.eeeereeerecereecreree® BBinccccccccdvcsessvesseocs 50
THE SIEGE OF DERRY,.....--seeeeeeeees Boks ccdeccedqebecsesteose 50
LETTERS FROM TIRELAND,......-+0++++: BO. ccccccoccccccsccccsecess 50
THE ROCKITE,.....---sseeereesecesrercee Ba. ..cacubhcecsudesgeneedes 50
FLORAL BIOGRAPHY,,.....--++ eeeceeeces de... . icocecdnscgessceoeem 50
PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS,......-- ia’. cccepeneanccescenes 50
PASSING THOUGHTS, bs spe ante ne ee ea ael 50
FALSEHOOD AND TRUTH,

" ieiaeie saa SE eueeemeneee ane 50

OSRIC, a Missionary Tale,

CONFORMITY, Pe
THE CONVENT BELL, a Tale, hoc 660d UES 066 006600666008 SA0F NU”

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH’S WORKS, Uniform Edition, 12 vols.,

IZRAM, a Mexican Tale,

ieee i occa beapanemnnueseneraneenmerSePO Sean ers oro, 6 00
do do do in Sheep for Libraries and
AEA Cita ais is sess sss s sve- svn nevendasesnwesty oenemnnnere nn 700

We have received numerous commendatory notices of Charlotte Elizabeth's
Works, from the religious papers of all denominations of Christians in this
country ; and for the benefit of those who have not supplied themselves with
her books, we insert here a few which are believed to be a fair specimen of the
opinion of the Pross.
Charles Scribner's Juvenile Publications.

From the Morning News.

Works oF CHARLOTTE ExizaBeru.—Mrs. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna is one of
the most gifted, popular, and truly instructive writers of the present day. In clear-
ness of thought, variety of topics, richness of imagery, and elegance of expres-
sion, it is scarcely too much to say, that she is the rival of Hannah More, or to
predict that her works will be as extensively and profitably read, as those of the
most delightful female writer of the last generation. All her writings are per-
yaded by justness and purity of sentiment, and the highest reverence for moral-
ity and religion ; and may safely be commended as of the highest interest and
value to every family in the land.

From the Religious Spectator.

If Charlotte Elizabeth were not one of she most attractive and useful writers
of the age, we might perhaps be ready to say that she was in danger of surfeiting
the public appetite, by her numerous productions ; but as it is, we are cons
strained to say the oftener she shows herself as an author the better. Her
works never tire; and we are never even in doubt in respect to their useful
tendency.
From the Albany Argus.

Charlotte Elizabeth’s Works have become so universally known, and are 80
highly and deservedly appreciated in this country, that it has become almost
superfluous to mention them. We doubt exceedingly whether there has been any
female writer since Mrs. Hannah More, whose works are likely to be 80
extensively and so profitably read as hers. She thinks deeply and accurately,
is a great analysist of the human heart, and withal clothes her thoughts in
most appropriate and eloquent language.

From the Journal of Commerce.

These productions constitute a bright relief to the bad and corrupting litera-
ture in which our age is so prolific; full of practical instruction, illustrative of the
beauty of Protestant Christianity, and not the less abounding in entertaining
description and narrative.

THE PEEP OF DAY, or a Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction
the Infant Mind is Capable of Receiving, with verses jllustrative of the
subjects. 1 vol., 48mo, with engravings,..---+++-srrrrrsreeee eee 50
Charles Scribner's J avenile Publications.

LINE UPON LINE, by the Autbor of “ Peep of Day ;” ® second series... .50
PRECEPT UPON PRECEPT, by the Author of “Peep of Day,” ete., third
50

HERE A LITTLE AND THERE A LITTLE, or Scripture Facts, by the

Author of “ Peep of Day,” ete. 1 vol., 18mo, with engravings. 4th
pacveccen 50

This is probably the best and most popular series of juvenile books ever pub-
lished. The publisher refers with the most entire confidence to all parents and
teachers who have introduced these books into their families or schools, who
will testify as to the useful and correct religious instruction which they contain.

*
T. S: ARTHUR’S POPULAR TALES.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, or a Tale for the Rich and Poor, 1 vol.,

ee PASS Sen tis SAORI sen sen ea eae” FANE SOSA NEE 45
RICHES HAVE WINGS. A Tale for the Rich and Poor. 1 vol,
eli 25; Avie <1 betes O OR ROENNN, “OR BPN PRIETO 45
RISING IN THE WORLD. A Tale for the Rich and Poor. 1 vol.
Se 5 de Fad k ve Ua8s odipdedisian odindin Wh Resneemee en ABAO“Qeen* PAA? “ES 45
MAKING HASTE TO BE RICH, or the Temptation and Fall. ivol.,
pS AIDE TS 2 a eee areal Mi 45
DEBTOR AND CREDITOR, a Tale for the Times. i1vol. 1Smo.....- 45
RETIRING FROM BUSINESS. 1 vol., 18m0......e--+eseeerereree’ .. 40
The above bound in uniform volumes in Sheep, for Libraries and District
elite BOR cance conbnsen sven snsd vyeeeney ermeere rN TT 3 00

“Mr. Arthur’s Tales are deservedly popular. His delineations of life come
home ‘to the business, and bosoms of men,’ and are without exaggeration or
unhealthy sentiment.”—Ogdensburg Sentinel.

“They are written in a pleasant style, and inculcate in an interesting manner
maxims of sound sense and morality. We sincerely recommend them to all
parents who wish that their children should be furnished with books fitted both
to please and profit them, for their hours of relaxation.”—Ithaca, Chronicle.
Charles Scribner's Juvenile Publications.

“ Every young man, commencing in life, in duty to himself, ought to read and
ponder well just such books as these; they may steer him clear of many shoals
and quicksands upon which business men are so often stranded.”—Republican.

“ There is valuable, interesting, and profitable matter in these little volumes,
which is well adapted to give the right direction to the minds of the young, and
to make them useful members of society."—-Christian Secretary.

“ We can only add that they are among the best productions of Mr. Arthur's
pen, and worthy of a place in the library of every family. The youthful mind,
particularly, will not only be delighted but instructed, as the author has set
forth with great truthfulness various phases of character met with in life, giving
peculiar charm to those worthy of imitation.”— The Messenger.

THE GAMBLER, a Policeman’s Story, by CHARLES Burpert. 1 vol., 12mo.

THE ELLIOTT FAMILY, or the Trials of New York Seamstresses. By
CHARLES BuRDETT. 1 vol., 12mo, with Portrait of the Author.

“ His stories are mainly founded upon actual occurrences, are well and forci-
bly written, and exert an excellent moral influence.”

«The Gambler is founded upon events in real life, communicated to the
author by an officer connected with the New York police department, and, as
wo are assured, are in all essential points, entirely true..—Buffalo Courier.

“The story is one Of absorbing interest, and its incidents are vividly sketched
while its moral is unexceptionable.”"—Detrott Free Press.

“THE ELLIOTT Famity.—This, like the Author's previous works, is narrative
founded on fact. It evinces & powerful imagination, sympathy easily kindled,
and a remarkable talent at impressive narration. It has a specific object, and it
reaches it successfully."—Albany Argus.

“It is a story of truth, and is related in forcible and touching language.
Those who have hearts should purchase and read it."—Providence Post.

WREATHS OF FRIENDSHIP, a beautiful juvenile gift book. By T. 8.
Arruur and F, C. WoopwoRrTH. 1 vol., 12mo, with engravings.

«“ Tt consists of a variety of short pieces, well fitted to arrest attention, and to
quicken and elevate both the intellectual and moral faculties..—Albany Argus.

“ The stories, some forty in number, without being in themselves childish,
Charles Scribner’s Juvenile Publications.



are happily adapted to the capacities of children, and the fables illustrate faults
and follies that sometimes belong to ‘ Children of larger growth’ than they were
written for."—Newark Daily Advertiser.

“This volume of wreaths is intended for juvenile readers, and will prove
useful and entertaining.”—Rochester Democrat.

“Tt is designed for the entertainment and instruction of the young, ard the
tales and poetry are very appropriate to these objects. They are well told,
and rendered more attractive by being handsomely illustrated with well-
executed wood cuts."—Dollar Newspaper.

FAIRY TALES AND LEGENDS OF MANY N ATIONS, selected and

newly told by C. B. Burkuarpzt, with Original Designs and Illustrations.
1 vol. 12mo.

“The Illustrations of this volume are exquisite. The most delicate taste and
aptness of conception appear in them all. The Tales are also very engaging,
sprightly, graceful, full of incident, and withal remarkably characteristic of the
people from whom they are severally selected.”—W. Y. Evangelist.

.“ This is one of the most varied and comprehensive books of fairy stories ever
published.”—Parlor Gazette,

“Here is another book that contains a world of amusement for juvenile
readers."—Albany Argus.

.
“The stories are written in an agreeable vein, and each conveys some whole-
some, instructive, moral lesson, by which not only the young, but the middle-

aged and old may receive benefit and amusement.”—Auburn Daily Adwver-
tiser.

STORIES FOR SUMMER DAYS AND WINTER NIGHTS.

I. A GRANDMOTHER'S RECOLLECTIONS. By Exxta Ropman,

1 vol.,
16mo., with Illustrations,

“This is a simple narrative of household reminiscences, more pleasing than
many a book of far greater pretensions."—Courier and Enquirer.

“This book is filled with entertaining and instructive matters.” — Chronicle
and Atias,
Charles Scribner's Juvenile Publications.



“It tends to throw a mild and attractive light over home, and to minister
to those gentler feelings, which find its best soil in the quiet and purity of the
sanctuary of childhood.”— Weekly Sun.

“The style of the book is simple, lively, and attractive; it must become one

of the favorites of the day, especially among young readers,”"—Southern Lite-
rary Gazette,

II. BRAGGADOCIO, a book for Boys and Girls. By Mrs. L. C. Tur,
Author of “I will be a Lady,” ete. 1 vol., 16mo, with six tinted Illustra-
tions.

III. GULLIVER JOI; his Three Voyages, being an Account of his Marvel-
lous Adventures in Kailoo, Hydrogenia, and Ejario. By E.serr Perce,
1 vol., 16mo, with six tinted Illustrations.

IV. THE YOUNG EMIGRANTS—Madelaine Tube—the Boy and the
Book—1 vol., 16mo, with Llustrations,
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