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: De GIRLS
INCIDENTS, ANECDOTES, TRAVELS, ADVENTURES,
BIOGRAPHY, POETRY, r¢, Et¢.
EDITED BY
Kev. Wituian fenry MLpury
Chaplain of the House of Representatives
MANUFACTURED AND PUBLISHED BY
SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY
- PHILADELPHIA, PA.
THE PET DUCK.
INTRODUCTION.
To him who thinks of it truly, the wonder of a book can never cease. That lines of
letters and words, formed by types on sheets of paper, can transfer from one man to
“another, indeed, to thousands, perhaps to generations of men, truth, sentiment, im-
_agination, the wealth of mind and life, enriching the reader without impoverishing the
. author, lifting the one to a height and breadth of vision which the other has gained
only after years of self-denying and painful toil, to make the secrets of the world and of
the soul common property,—this approaches the marvelous, not to say the miraculous.
_ Through the portals of the eye and ear a stranger may enter the brain and so the mind
and heart, take possession of thought and love, enthrone himself as a supreme master
of life, moulding and directing the will, shaping character and conduct, awakening in
us powers hitherto undreamed of, bestowing upon us treasures that shall endure to eter-
nity, and crowning us with the radiant and life-giving sense that we are the heirs of
Immortality, and all this done though the writer himself may have been in the dust a
- thousand years. Cold type may become a sceptre of power such as Alexander, Cesar
or Napoleon never wielded, its authority entering the inmost recesses of the soul, ruling
with a sway that is not questioned, and maintaining its sovereignty over millions from
age to age. Nearly five hundred years ago the most powerful man on earth, at whose
tread the world seemed to tremble, was Tamerlane. His empire stretched from the
Mediterranean to the Ganges. He stood one day, clad in complete steel, battle-axe on
shoulder, near the site of Damascus, which he had destroyed, and reviewed his troops
after they had erected a pyramid composed of seventy thousand skulls. Well did he
merit his title ‘“The Scourge of God.’? Not far from that time a poor German lad was
playing in the streets of Mentz, and his cheek must have turned pale as the report of the
.Tartar’s bloody triumphs floated through Europe. Who could have imagined that the
boy, John Gutenberg, ‘‘when he was come to years,’’ by his invention of metal types
and their use, would wield a weapon more mighty than the sword of the Mogul, and
found an empire of printed books whose reign shall last as long as sun and moon en-
dure, while thirty years ago the last descendant of the ‘‘Great Mogul’? perished inglo-
riously at Delhi, and his name and fame would have been lost from among men but for
XIII
XIV INTRODUCTION.
the printing press first set up on the banks of the Rhine. An egg is laid, and the barn-
yard resounds with cackle; an acorn drops silently into the earth, and a thousand years
after a monarch oak, sprung from it, spreads its branches to the heavens, in which the
fowls of the air make their nests, while generations of men find shelter in their shade.
The children of Europe and America to-day glow, thrill or tremble at the stories told
by Scheherezade, in the ‘‘Arabian Nights,’’ ages ago, to save her life, and all agree
that she was entitled to it, as through many centuries she has been a nursing mother of
the imagination, in the west as well as in the east.
A blind man sang his verses in city after city, and for five hundred years his scholars
continued the chant, when the pen took them from the memory, and the eye received
them as well as the ear. Those verses, called the Iliad and Odyssey, wrought with a
silent, irresistible force in the lives of men, made Attica, Sparta, Ionia what they became,
and crowned the Macedonian Alexander with the diadem of the world. Other books
have come and dispossessed these of their regal power over life and character, but even
at this late day and in this new world they hold sway over the imagination, and all cul-
tured men and women owe an immeasurable debt to Homer.
Nearly three thousand years ago a shepherd boy, ruddy of cheek and fair to look upon,
tuned his harp and voice while watching his flocks. He became a hero, then an outlaw
and afterwards a victorious king, founder of a mighty empire. His land has been des-
olate for centuries and his kingdom remains only as a mournful memory; but the songs
which he sang by the sheepfold at the cave of Adullam, among the rocky wastes of En-
geddi, and in his royal City of the Four Hills, move the souls and tongues of men to-day,
with even a deeper and grander power than when they fell fresh from his lips, and as long
as the heavy-laden and sorrowful need pity and consolation, as long as the soul, struggling
against darkness, sin and terror, asks for cheer, guidance and light, as long as the re-
deemed and exultant heart pours itself in thankfulness and praise, the Psalms of David
can never die.
The adopted son of a princess, bred in the palace, learned in all the wisdom of his
time, for a patriotic deed became a fugitive and a herdsman, and through forty years,
for the most part spent in solitary communion with nature’s sternest and sublimest forms
and in life’s hnmblest duties, was in the end not only the heroic deliverer of his people, —
but the author of five short books, making one, which moulded his people into rock-like.
solidity against which the stormy billows of time have beaten in vain, and which the
changes and chances of the world could not destroy. ‘The Pentateuch—the five books
of Moses—is to-day translated into all languages, and is as priceless and sacred to the
Christian as to the Jew, and not only carries the mind back to the fore-world, but up to
Him who made it, and is a School-master in the Halls of Science, in the Courts of Law
and History, in the Groves of Poetry, by the Fountains of Health, an exhaustless mine
INTRODUCTION. xv
of truth, where millions have worked to their profit, and where millions will continue to
work with yet greater profit till time shall be no more. There is a simple, unpretend-
ing little book which tells the story of a man whose hands grew hard in making tents of
goats’ hair, whose arms and legs bore marks of prison chains, and his body of stones
which had been thrown to kill him, and of cruel rods and scourges with which he was
lashed over and over again. With this book there have come down to us a number of
his letters, and from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul the best and
noblest men and women have gained instruction, inspiration, life.
Four plain, unlettered men composed short biographies of One whom they knew and
loved, telling of his birth, works, deeds, sufferings and death, and those brief records
combined into one have changed the face of the world, telling, as they do, ‘‘of the
holiest among the mighty, the mightiest among the holy, who lifted with his pierced
hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and
still governs the ages.’’
Napoleon, when at St. Helena, once said, ‘‘The Gospel is no mere book, but a living
creature, with a vigor, a power, which conquers all that opposes it. The soul, charmed
with the beauty of the Gospel, is no longer its own; God possesses it entirely. He di-
rects its thoughts and faculties, it is His.’?? Well might Milton say: ‘‘Books are not ab-
solutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them as active as that soul whose
progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction
of that intellect that bred them. Almost as well kill a man as kill a good book; who
kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image, but he who destroys a good book
kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.’? The imperishable
wealth of the world is housed in books, and every man or boy of our race may take
as much of the treasure as he can carry, without the charge of burglary.
The Indian chiefs who visit Washington see many things in the beautiful city which
awaken in them astonishment and delight; but there is one place which they cannot under-
stand—the Congressional Library. Rising story upon story, their alcoves, with their count-
less shelves of books, are an inscrutable mystery to them ; they gape with hollow-eyed won-
der and turn away from the volumes and their readers with ill-concealed disdain. The
savage cannot conceive that those bound pages, on which are inscribed the mystic charac-
ters of print, contain the secrets and the forces which have made the white man’s life what
it is; have built the White House, the Departments, the Capitol, the Navy-Yard and
Arsenal ; that these books which he spurns have taught the pale-face to make a ferry of the
ocean, to bridle the lightning and employ it as a newsboy, to rear these stately piles in
which the civil affairs of sixty millions of people are cared for. Still less can he con-
"ceive that books enable men to turn the stony leaves of nature’s volume, and read thereon
the history of the planet, to explore the heavens and learn from star and sun what they
xVI INTRODUCTION.
are made of and how they move. If you were to tell the red man that books lay bare
the secrets of the human heart, arm it with courage in adversity, hope in the ambush of
despair, and faith that looks through death and sees beyond a city which hath founda-
tions whose builder and maker is God, and that through them we can have even here
the earnest ‘and foretaste of eternal peace and blessedness, his stolid indifference would
express itself in the grin of disbelief and denial. One must have something within him
to which books can speak, or they are of little worth. What they teach and do for us is
the measure of our capacity, the gauge of our development.
Emerson says, ‘‘If we encounter a man of rare intellect we should ask him what
books he read.’? The unread man is a stranger to himself and to the world in which
he lives, ‘‘not half its riches known and yet despised.†‘‘He hath never fed of the
dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk
ink; his intellect is, not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller
parts.â€â€™
“Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and God-like reason
To fust in us unus’d.â€
The child finds the mastery of the alphabet a mountain-steep, and shrinks from climb-
ing ; but as stage after stage of the hard ascent is gained and higher levels are reached,
what delights flow in through the eye to the memory, to fancy, the imagination and the
heart. The pain of the toil is forgotten ; the mechanical becomes spiritual, the sense of
drudgery ceases ; and although immeasurable heights still lift themselves before him at
every stage, the adventurous and industrious youth may behold fairer landscapes, a
widening horizon and brighter stars, to reward him for his labor. ‘‘And all the secret of
the Spring moves in the chambers of the blood.’’ The patient toil of the young man is
rewarded by broader outlooks from higher slopes; not only has he achieved mental
health and vigor, clearer vision, the keen pleasure that comes from the sense of awak-
ened faculties and creative power, but—
‘“‘Many an old philosophy ;
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round him all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.â€
f happened once in New Orleans to see, through the eyes of a friend, a boy lying
prone upon a gallery not far off, his head resting upon one hand, in the other hand a
book. A fierce thunder storm was raging, the rain fell in torrents, the vivid flashes of
lightning and deafening roar of the thunder were almost continuous, but the boy heard
and heeded not; he was in another world, whose enthralling interest and beauty made
him blind and deaf to the terrors of the tempest. Withdrawn from the world around
INTRODUCTION. XVE
him, the book had introduced him into another, where everything was bright and fair,
and for the time it was his home. To lift us out of the rut of custom, to arouse our
faculties and implement them with new powers, to make us forget ourselves, our infirm-
ities and hard lot of. poverty, toil and pain, to purge our eyes that we may behold ‘‘the
like that never was on land or sea,’’ to open our ears that we may listen to the harmony
of harps as they pour forth their seven-fold hallelujahs and hosannas, and make us feel
that we are not of the earth, earthy, but that our true home is in ‘‘an ampler ether, a
diviner air,’’ this is, in part at least, what books may do for us. My dwelling place may
be rude, my fare hard and comforts scant; I may be denied access to the society, picture-
galleries, concerts, theatres, ball-rooms, halls of high debate, for which I crave, but a
few well-chosen books and the habit of reading them aright, will make amends for all
privations. Gibbon said, ‘“My early invincible love of reading I would not exchange _
for the treasures of India.’’ Addison said: ‘‘Reading is to the mind what exercise is to
the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated; by the
other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed.’’
A good reader not only grows familiar with the secrets of land, sea and sky; with the
past and the present, but the best heads and hearts the planet has yet produced grow in
time to be his friends, his intimates, and to him unburden themselves of their confidence.
Not only is his brain enlarged, stored with knowledge, and furnished with power for
higher work on easier terms, but his sympathies are widened and quickened, so that he
can make his own the thoughts, deeds, temper and spirit of the wisest and noblest men
that have appeared in the theatre of time. He drops the narrow and provincial that
were in him, puts off petty prejudices and hatreds, rises to higher planes of judgment so
that he can estimate things at their true value, reversing many a former opinion, learn
that humility is the only way to true exaltation, and that to exchange pride for lowliness
is great gain.
Books used to be so costly that only princes, nobles and other very rich people could own
_ them, and to read them was the privilege of a few; now scarcely any are so poor as to be
denied their royal luxury. I well remember the time, in what was then the far West,
where I was a growing boy, when books were hard to be had, and the reader’s longing
for them was like the hunger and thirst of the traveler in the desert. At the age of
eight or nine years, and after many months of careful hoarding and painful earning, I
managed to get money enough to buy twelve volumes of the “Boys and Girls Library?
published more than fifty years ago, and I doubt if any prince in the world felt as rich
as I did then. The contents of those volumes, read over and over again, gave me such
delight that I cannot put it into words, and that delight abode with me for years.
_ The volume herewith presented to the young people of this country is one which ought
to do for them what those books did for me. The publishers have spared neither pains
XVII INTRODUCTION.
nor expense in their effort to make it as nearly perfect as a book of the kind can be
made. ‘The selection of pieces from many distinguished writers, embracing subjects in |
History, Biography, Travel and Adventure, and added to these, sketches of many men
who have been eminent in business, and of the means by which their success was
achieved, and besides not a few of the choice poems of our language, reflects great credit
upon the judgment and taste of the compilers; and the beautiful illustrations with which
the book so richly abounds give to it increased charm and value. While these hand-
some pages, by their pictures and literary matter, will engage the eye, improve the
taste, quicken the intellect, arouse the fancy and imagination, amusing and entertaining,
and at the same time stirring and inspiring the noblest aspirations of youthful readers,
the utmost care has been taken that not a blush should be brought to the cheek of the most
modest, nor astain left in the memory of the most pure. It is hoped that this book will
be a God-send to hosts of young people throughout this wide country, not only in the
populous sections of our great country, but where books are scarce and libraries cannot
be reached—on the plains of Texas and Dakota, and on the slopes of the Rocky Moun-
tains and the Sierra Nevada—among the mining camps, and on broad ranches—as well
as in new towns and villages springing up as by magic in our new West. Between its
covers are garnered truths, sentiments, imaginings, happy turns of expression, brilliant
word-pictures and inspiring suggestions, that well read and pondered by those for whom
it is especially intended, will bring abundant recompense, and the recollection of them
will ‘‘Flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.’’? Although the vol-
ume has been prepared for young people, those of riper years will find much in it to
attract and benefit them, much that will delight and reward. Coleridge once stopped
at a wayside inn, and picked up in the sitting-room a well-worn copy’ of the Vicar of
Wakefield, and as he looked over its oft-turned pages, exclaimed, ‘‘This is fame.�. In
the trust that the “Selections for Boys and Girls†will gain fame like that, find a
hearty welcome in many homes, and win its way to the admiration and love of
thousands, both old and young, awakening a taste for reading, fixing the habit and
remunerating ali who turn its leaves, it is now sent forth upon its errand.
WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN.
A MODERN HERO.
By Marion HARLAND.
T was a very humble house.
Only a flat of three rooms
on the third floor of a tall
tenement-house in a back
street near the river. A
bedroom, a tiny parlor
and a kitchen, which was
- also an eating-room, made
up the suite.’ The Briggses
did all their daylight living in the last-named apart-
ment. The floor was painted yellow; the walls
were whitewashed; the furniture was homely, sub-
stantial and well-kept.
Everything was shining clean, and both win-
dows were full of plants, many of them in flower.
Mrs. Briggs was fully persuaded in her own mind
that no other woman in the city had such a tale of
daily mercies as herself. Among them were the
southern exposure of those windows and the circum-
stance that a gap in the buildings back of them let
in the sunshine freely. Her nasturtiums blossomed
there all winter; from a pot she had suspended by
strings from the top of the casing, sweet alysseum
flowed downward like a fountain of soft green
waters tipped with white ; scarlet geraniums shot
up rank shoots that had to be pruned into rea-
sonableness, and as to Christmas roses — “ But
there!†the worthy soul would assure her ac-
guaintances, “ ‘hey -do beat everything !’’
This winter the calla was about to bloom. A
kind lady had given the bulb to Mrs. Briggs’s son
— Top, Junior—last year, and there was no telling
the store he set by it.
Topliffe Briggs — alias, Top, Senior — was an
engineer on the great North, East, West and South
Railway. He sat at the tea-table with his wife
and son at five-thirty one cloudy February after-
noon. His next train went out at six-forty-five.
He had run “Her†into the station at four, and
his house was but two blocks away. Mrs. Briggs
could see from those unparalleled kitchen-windows
the bridge by which the track crossed the river
separating the town from the marshes, and could
calculate to a minute when the familiar step would
be heard on the stairs.
“Vou see we live by railroad time,†was her
modest boast. “And my husband always comes
straight home.†She did not emphasize the “ my,â€
knowing in her compassionate heart what other
husbands were prone to lag by the way until they
‘came home late and crookedly.
Top, Senior, was on time to-day. “I ken trust
Her with Bartlett, you see,†he remarked to his
wife. “He won’t leave tel she’s all trig an’ tidy
for the next trip. I wisht I could be as sure 0’
Stokes!â€
Mrs. Briggs looked up inquiringly.
“Stokes is a clever fellow,†pursued Top Senior
regretfully, slicing vigorously into the cold corned
beef, for he was hungry. “Smart as a steel trap,
and onderstan’s his business. I never see a fire
man what hed a better chance o’ risin’ to an in
gineer. He knows Her pretty nigh’s well ez I do
I’ve took real comfort in learning him all I could
But I’m afeerd, sometimes, he’s on a down-grad*
and the brakes don’t work.â€
“Vou mean that he drinks, don’t you, father?’
asked the sharp-eyed boy at his elbow.
“« There, father!†interjected the mother. “ You
might ’a’ known he’d onderstan’, no matter how
you put it!â€
“T ain’t afeered o’ my boy blabbin’!†The
brawny hand stroked the thin light hair of his only
child. An’ I want he should learn to hate the
stuff. It’s the devil’s best drivin’ wheel — liquor is.
I’d ruther lay you with my own han’s ’cross the
rails this very night, an’ drive Her right over you,
than to know that you’d grow up a drunkard.
Never do you forget them words what your father’s
a-sayin’ to you, now, Junior! I mean every one 0’
them !â€
The boy started at the earnestness of the ex-
hortation, winked hard to keep his eyes dry, and
changed the subject. ‘ Hev you noticed my lily
to-day, mother? I guess it'll be wide open by the
time you get in to-night, father.†a
12 A MODERN HERO.
They all turned to look at the tall stem, crowned
by the unfolding calyx. ‘“Junior’s goin’ to be a
master-hand with flowers,†observed the mother.
* He saves me pretty nigh all the trouble o’ takin’
keer of ’em. I’ve been thinkin’ shat might be a
good business for him when he grows up.â€
She was always forecasting his future with more
anxiety than generally enters into maternal hopes
and fears. When but a year old, he had fallen from
the arms of aneighbor who had caught him up from
the floor in a fit of tipsy fondness. The child’s
back and hip were severely injured. He had not
walked a step until he was five years of age, and
would be lame always. He was now twelve—a
dwarf in statue, hump-backed, weazen-faced and
shrill-voiced, unsightly in all eyes but those of his
parents. To them he was a miracle of precocity
and beauty. His mother took in fine ironing to
pay for his private tuition from a public school-
teacher who lived in the neighborhood. He learned
fast and eagerly. His father, at the teacher’s sug-
gestion, subscribed to a circulating library and the
same kind friend selected books for the cripple’s
reading. There was a hundred dollars in the sav-
ings bank, against the name of “ Topliffe Briggs,
Junior,†deposited, dollar by dollar, and represent-
ing countless acts of self-denial on the part of the
industrious couple, and his possible profession was
a favorite theme of family converse.
“ For that matter, there’s lot o’ things a scholard
like him ken do,†rejoined Top, Senior, with affec-
tionate confidence in his heir’s talents and acquire-
ments. “’Tain’t like ’twould be with.a feller like
me whose arms an’ legs is his hull stock in trade.
Why, I min’ seein’ a leetle rat of a man come on
board one time ’scorted by a dozen ’o the biggest
bugs in the city, an’ people a-stretchin’ their necks
out o’ j’int to ketch a look of him. Sech a mealy-
faced, weak-lookin’ atomy he was! But millions 0’
people was a-readin’ that very day a big speech
he’d made in Washin’ton, an’ he’d saved the coun-
try from trouble more ’n oncet. He mought ’a’
been President ef he had chose torun. That’s the
good o†hevin’ a tiptop head-piece.â€
“Tve made up my mind!†said Top, Junior,
with an air. “I’m goin’ tobe aHero! Like Julius
Cesar an’ Alexander an’ William Tell an’ Captain
John Smith, an’ other men I’ve read about. I wish
you would be a Hero, father! It’s ever so much
nicer than runnin’ an engine. Won’t you—please!
You are strong enough and good enough for any-
thing, an’ I’m sure you know a great deal about
things!â€
The blue eyes were bright and wistful, his hand
stole up to the bushy whiskers, ginger-colored from
exposure to the air and boiler-heat.
“ Me, ahero! Haw! haw!†roared the engineer,
letting fall his knife and fork in his merriment.
“ 7’dcuta figger at the head of an army, or speakin’
in Congress, or a-setten’ on a gold throne, wouldn’t
I? No! no! my man! †sobering down suddenly,
into a sort of sad dignity. “Yer father ain’t got
the brains nor the eddication for nothin’ of that
kind! All he ken do is to live clean an’ honest
in the sight o’ the Lord, an’ to run his ingine ’cor-
din’ to the best o’ his lights.â€
“The Lord’s too reasonable to expect more of
you ’n to do your duty in the place where’s He’s put
you,†said the wife gently.
“T hope heis, Mother! Ef he looked for more —
or for any big thing ’s fur as that goes, the chances
are He’d be disapp’inted. I hev plenty o’ time fur
thinkin’ while we’re scootin’ ‘cross the level coun-
try an’ creepin’ up steep grades, an’ I’ve worked it
out to my own satisfaction that somethin’ else I’ve
got to be thankful fur, is that my way in life’s been
marked down so plain. ’Seems if I hed been sot
onto rails pretty much’s She is, an’ ’s long ez I do
my level best on that ’ar line, why, it’s all I en do.
That’s the hull of it! I ain’t no speechifier, you
see, Junior†— with an embarrassed laugh at the
boy’s evident discontent — “T’ll hev to depen’ on
you fur to say it— or maybe, write done ship-shape,
some o’ these notions o’ mine, some day. I’d git
better holt o’ them myself ef I was to hear some-
body what knowed how to put things go over ’em.
Mother! eddication wouldn’t learn no woman how
to make better bread’n yourn. Fact is, there’s
nothin’ ekal to home, an home-vittles an’ home-
folks! With such a livin’ ez I’ve took in, I sha’n’t
need a bite at the Agapolis deepo. We’re half an
hour there, but I hate the very smell o’ them eatin’
houses} An’ please God! I’ll bring Her in at
twelve —sharp!â€
He pulled on his overcoat and felt in the pocket
for his gloves. “ I’m main proud o’ them fellers !â€
he said, fitting one to a hand half the size of a leg
of mutton and not unlike it in shape.
He had said the same thing every time he put them
on since Christmas. They were a holiday gift from
A MODERN HERO. 13
the conductors on the line between the two cities
which was his semi-daily beat.
“ft take a world o’ comfort in them, this freezin’
weather. Fact is, Mother, this world’s been pretty
full o’ comfort, all the way through, for us — a nice
easy grade —ef yer father ai’t a Hero, Junior!
Six-twenty! I mus’ be off! I like to be there in
time to see thet Stokes is on han’ an’ all right. Ef
you don’t min’, Mother, we’ll hev him to dinner nex’
Sunday. I want to-do somethin’ t’wards savin’
Stokes. ’Specially ez he’s on my line!â€
At six-fifty, Top, Junior, from his post at the
calla-window, saw the long line of cars, spaced by
dots of murkey red, the luminous plume of smoke
trailing, comet-wise, above them, slowly pass over
the bridge. It was a cloudy evening and the
marsh-mists swallowed up the blinking windows as
soon as the train gained the other shore. Junior
loved his mother, but his father seemed to take
most of the life and cheer out of the room when he
went. Existence.stagnated for the boy who had
no mates of his own age.
“‘T wish he didn’t hev to run in bad weather and
nights!†he said, fretfully.
“It’s his business, child, an’ your father ain’t
one to dodge his duty.â€
“TJ hate the word!†retorted the petted cripple.
“When I’m a man I’ll be my own master, and
switch Duty off the track.â€
The obnoxious word came up again in the course
of the evening. In reading aloud to his teacher
they happened upon this definition of “a hero,â€
given by one of the characters in the story under
his eyes: ‘‘ One who, in a noble work or enterprise,
does more than his duty.â€
Junior looked up disappointed. “Is zat the
meaning of hero?†he said, intensely chagrined.
“That is one way of stating it. I doubt, myself,
if we can do more than our duty. What do you
think, Mrs. Briggs?†asked the young woman.
She esteemed the honest couple for their sterling
worth and sense, and liked to draw them out.
“A person ken ondertake more, I ’spose. Ef
they don’t carry it through, it’s a sign ‘twas meant
fur them to go jest that fur, an’ no further. ’T
do fur us to be skeery ’bout layin’ holt of the
handle the good Lord puts nighest to us, fur fear
it’s too big a thing fur us tomanage. That’s what
my husband says. An’ if ever a man lived up to
it, he does.â€
won't
_did not fret over the disagreeable weather.
3
Top, Junior, looked sober and mortified. ‘The
heroism of common life does not commend itselt
to the youthful imagination. When his lesson was
finished it was time for him to go tobed. “Wake
me when father comes in!†was the formula with-
out which he never closed his eyes.
His mother never failed to do it, but he wanted
to make sure of it. She put on a lump of ‘coal,
just enough to keep the fire “in,†and sat down to
the weekly mending. At eleven-forty, she would
open the draughts and cook the sausages ready-
laid in the pan on the table. Top, Senior, liked
“something hot and hearty,†after his midnight
.run, and this dispatched, smoked the nightcap pipe
of peace, Junior, rolled in a shawl, on his knee.
The wife’s face and heart were calm with thankful
content as the hours moved on. She was rosy and
plump, with pleasant blue eyes and brown hair, a
wholesome presence at the hearthstone, in her
gown of clean chocolate calico with her linen collar
and scarlet cravat. Top, Senior, had noticed and
praised the new red ribbon. He comprehended
that it was put on to please him and Junior, both
of whom liked to see “ Mother fixed up.†In this
life, they were her all, and she accounted that life
full and rich.
As she sewed, she heard the slow patter of Feb-
ruary rain on the shelf outside of the window, where’
her flowers stood in summer. The great city was
sinking into such half-sleep as it took between
midnight and dawn; the shriek and rush of incom-
ing and outgoing trains grew less frequent. She
Top,
Senior, had often said that such made home and
fire and supper more welcome.
At Junior’s bed-time, he was eighty miles away,
walking up and down the muddy platform of the
principal station of Agapolis, stamping his feet at
each turn in his promenade to restore the circule-
tion. His was a fast Express train, and he stood
during most of the run, on the alert to guard against
accident. There was no more careful engineer on
the road. Fireman and brakeman were off for
supper in or near the station. He slouched as he -
walked, bis hands thrust deep into his pockets ; his
overcoat was heavy and too loose even for his bulky
figure. He had “taken it off the hands†of an
engineer’s widow whose husband was dragged from
under a wrecked train one night last summer.
_ “Mother†used to look grave when Top, Senior,
14 A MODERN HERO,
began to wear it, but she was not a mite notional
— Mother wasn’t, and she was glad now that poor
Mrs, Wilson had the money and he had the beaver-
cloth coat. His face was begrimed with smoke,
his beard clogged with cinders and vapor. A lady,
travelling alone, hesitated visibly before she asked
-a question, looked surprised when he touched his
hat and turned to go half the length of the plattorm
hevin’ thet boy disapp’inted every dayI live. Come
summer, he shell hev a run or two on Her every
week. Mother ’n me hes got to make up to him
for what he loses in not bein’ strong an’ like other
chillren. _Mother— she’s disposed to spile him
jest a leetle. But dear me! what a fustrate fault
that is in awoman! She did look good in that ere
red neck-tie, to-night, an’ she was always pretty.â€
HE HELD Fast!
that he might point out the parlor-car. He observed
-and interpreted hesitation and surprise, and was
good-humoredly amused.
“T s’pose I don’t look much like what Junior
-calls ‘a hero,’ †he meditated with a broader gleam.
“What a cute young one heis! Please God! he’ll
make a better figure in the world ’n his father hes
‘done. IT hope that lily-flower o’ hisn will be open in
the mornin’. ’Seems if I got softer-hearted ’bout
‘The rain was fine and close, like a slanting mist
that pierced the pores, when the Express drew out
of the station, and as it fell, it froze. Stokes
growled that “ the track would be one glare of ice
before they got Her in.†He was inclined to be
surly to-night, an uncommon circumstance with the
young fellow, and after several attempts to enliven
him, Top, Senior, let him alone. He was notin a
talkative mood himself. The tea-table chat ran ia
A MODERN HERO. 15
his head and set him to dreaming and calculating.
In five years Junior would be seventeen —old
~ enough, even for a lad who was “ not strong,†to
, earn his living. If all went well, there ought to be
a hundred and fifty dollars in the bank by then,
~.There might be something in Mother’s idea of
_ setting him up as a florist. And Mother could
help with the flowers.
“Hello! ole feller! look out!â€
Stokes had stumbled over the fuel in the tender,
in replenishing the boiler-fires. He recovered him-
_ self with an oath at the “ slippery rubbish.â€â€ Some-
-thing had upset his temper, but he neither spoke
nor looked like a man who had been drinking.
The teazing, chilling drizzle continued. The head-
_ light of the locomotive glanced sharply from glazed
‘rails and embankments; the long barrel-back of the
~ engine shone as with fresh varnish.
“D’ye know that on a night like this She beats
out the tune 0’ Home, Sweet Home, ’s plain as
ever you heerd a band play it?†said Top, Senior,
cheerily out of the thickening damps. ‘It makes
me see Mother ’n the boy clear’s ken be. It’s a
great thing fur a man to hev a comfortable home,
~ ’n a good woman in it!†:
Stokes burst out vehemently at that: “This is
worse than a dog’s life! We—vyou ’n me — are
no more to them selfish creturs in there†—nodding
backwards at the passenger cars — “then the ingine
that draws ’em. I’m sick o’ freezin’ an’ slavin’
an’ bein’ despised by men no better ’n Ibe! How
“a man of any sperrit ’n’ ambition ken stan’ it fur
_ twenty years as you hev, beats my onderstandin’.â€
He will always remember the pause that pre-
_ faced the reply, and how Top, Senior, patted the
polished lever under his hand as he spoke: “She’s
‘.a pretty respectable cretur, take Her all in all.
- When you ’n I run into the las’ dark deepo that’s
waitin’ fur us at the end, I hope we’ll be able to
_ show’s good stiffikits as hern. Here’s the bridge!
Will be soon home, now.â€
It was a long bridge, built far out to be above
high tides. As they touched it the furnace-door
“flew open. Some said, afterwards, that the door
was not properly secured, others spoke of a “ back-
draught,†others suspected that the fire was over-
- fed. The volume of flame that leaped out licked
_ the very faces of the twomen. They recoiled with
_ a bound and made a simultaneous rush for the air-
' brake in the forward passenger-car to stop the
fe
train and check the backward sweep of the blaze.
The passengers, seeing the flash and hearing the
whistle and shouts of “ Down brakes!†pressed
against the front windows and a dense living mass
blocked the door against which Topliffe Briggs
flung all his weight.
“Git in ef you ken,†he said to the fireman.
“Vl try Her!†He fastened the shaggy great-
coat up to his chin as he faced the pursuing fires,
walked forward to the stand where lapped and
curled the fiercest flames, laid hold of steam-brake
and the lever by which he “drove†the engine.
His fur-lined gauntlets scorched and shrivelled as
he grasped the bar; the fire seized upon his hair
and garments with an exultant roar. He held fast.
He must get the passengers off the floorless bridge
that might ignite at any moment. He must check
the engine as soon as he cleared the last pier, or the
cars would take fire before they could be uncoupled.
He shut his eyes from the maddening heat and
glare, and drove straight on. Not so fast as to
hurry the greedy flames that were doing their worst
upon him, but at a rate that ran them over the
river and upon solid earth as the fuel in the tender
burst into a blaze and the forward car began to
crackle and smoke in the hot draught. At that
point steam and air-brakes did their work in effect-
ing a safe halt.
“The fireman was badly scorched,†reported
the press next day, “ but train and passengers were
saved by the heroism of the engineer.â€â€™
The words flashed along the wires overland and
ocean; were set up in startling type in hundreds of
newspaper offices while he who did not know hero-
ism by name was breathing his last on a mattress
laid on the yellow-painted floor of the room he had
seen so “clear†when the engine-throb and piston-
beat played Home, Sweet Home. The sunshine that
had followed the rain touched the white cheek of
the opened lily before falling on his sightless eyes
and charred right hand.
When they brought him in he knew whose silent
tears dropped so fast upon his face, and the poor
burned lips moved in a husky whisper. The wife
put her ear close to his mouth not to lose his dying
words: —
“ Twas afraid you'd see that we was a-fire. From
the winder. I hope you— didn’t — wake Junior /â€
The boy who had begged his father to be a
hero!
FACING THE WORLD.
(4 Story for Boys.)
By THE AUTHOR oF “JoHN Ha.irax, GENTLEMAN.â€
LAD Iam, mother, the hol-
idaysareover. It’s quite
different going back to
school again when one
goes to be captain —as
I’m sure tobe. Isn’t it
jolly?â€
Mrs. Boyd’s face as she
smiled back at -Donald,
was not exactly “jolly.â€
Still, she did smile; and then there came out the
strong likeness often seen between mother and
son, even when, as in this case, the features were
very dissimilar. Mrs. Boyd was a pretty, delicate
little English woman: and Donald took after his
father, a big, brawny Scotsman, certainly not
pretty, and not always sweet. Poor man! he
had of late years had only too much to make him
sour.
Though she tried to smile and succeeded, the
tears were in Mrs. Boyd’s eyes, and her mouth was
quivering. But she set it tightly together, and
then she looked more than ever like her son, or
rather, her son looked like her.
He was too eager in his delight to notice her
much. “It is jolly, isn’t it, mother? I never
thought I’d get to the top of the school at all, for
I’m not near so clever as some of the fellows, But
now I’ve got my place; and I like it, and I mean
to keep it ; you'll be pleased at that, mother? â€
“I should have been if —if —†Mrs. Boyd tried
to get the words out and failed, closed her eyes as
tight as her mouth for a minute, then opened them
and looked her boy in the face gravely and sadly.
“Tt goes to my heart to tell you—I have been
waiting to say it all morning, but Donald, my dear,
you will never go back to school at all.â€
“Not go back ; when I’m captain! why, you and
father both said that if I got to be that, I should
stop till I was seventeen — and now I’m only fif-
‘wen and a half. O, mother, you don’t mean it!
16
Father couldn’t break hisword! I may go back!’
Mrs. Boyd shook her head sadly, and then ex
plained as briefly and calmly as she could, the
heavy blow which had fallen upon the father, and,
indeed, upon the whole family. Mr. Boyd had
long been troubled with his eyes, about as serious
a trouble as could have befallen a man in his pro-
fession— an accountant —as they call it in Scot-
land. Lately he had made some serious blunders
in his arithmetic, and his eyesight was so weak that
his wife persuaded him to consult a first-rate Edin-
burgh oculist, whose opinion, given only yester-
day, after many days of anxious suspense, was that
in a few months he would become incurably blind,
“ Blind, poor father blind !†Donald put his hand
before his own eyes. He was too big a boy to cry,
or at any rate, to be seen crying, but it was with a
choking voice that he spoke next: “I'll be his
eyes ; I’m old enough.â€
“Ves ; in many ways you are, my son,†said Mrs,
Boyd, who had had a day and a night to face her
sorrow, and knew she must do so calmly. “But
you are not old enough to manage the business;
your father will require to take a partner immedi-
ately, which will reduce our income one half.
Therefore we cannot possibly afford to send you to
school again, The little ones must go, they are
not nearly educated yet, but you are. You will
have to face the world and earn your own living,
as soon as ever youcan. My poor boy!â€
“Don’t call me poor, mother, I’ve got you and
father and the rest. And, as you say, I’ve had a
good education so far. And I’m fifteen and a half,
no, fifteen and three quarters—almost a man.
I’m not afraid.â€
“Nor I,†said his mother, who had waited a full
minute before Donald could find voice to say all
this, and it was at last stammered out awkwardly
and at random. “No; Iam not afraid because
my boy has to earn his bread; I had earned mine
for years as a governess when father married me.
FACING THE WORLD.
I began work before I was sixteen. My son
will. have to do the same, that is all.â€
That day the mother and son spoke no more to-
gether. It was as much as they could do to bear
their trouble, without talking about it, and besides,
“Donald was not a boy to “make a fuss†over
- things.
He could meet sorrow when it came, that
_ is, the little of it he had ever known, but he disliked
speaking of it, and perhaps he was right.
So he just “ made himself scarce †till bedtime,
and never said a word to anybody until his mother
came into the boys’ room to bid them good night,
There were three of them, but all were asleep ex-
cept Donald. As his mother bent down to kiss him,
he put both arms round her neck.
“ Mother, I’m going to begin to-morrow.â€
“ Begin what, my son?â€
“ Facing the world, as you said I must. I can’t
go to school again, so I mean to try and earn my
-own living.â€
\
“ How ?†.
“TI don’t quite know, but I’ll try. There are
several things I could be, a clerk — or even a mes-
sage-boy. I shouldn’t like it, but I’d do anything
‘rather than do nothing.â€
“show it.
Mrs. Boyd sat down on the side of the bed. If
she felt inclined to cry she had too much sense to
She only took firm hold of her boy’s
hand, and waited for him to speak on.
“ve been thinking, mother, I was to have a new
'- suit at Christmas, will you give it now? And let
it be a coat, not a jacket. I’m tall enough — five
feet seven last month, and growing still; I should
look almost a man. Then I would go round to
every office in Edinburgh and ask if they wanted a
‘clerk. I wouldn’t mind taking anything to begin
with. And I can write a decent hand, and I’m not.
bad at figures ; as for my Latin and Greek †—
Here Donald gulped down a sigh, for he was a
capital classic, and it had been suggested that he
should go to Glasgow University and try for “the
Snell†which has sent so many clever young Scots-
men to Balliol College, Oxford, and thence on to
_fame and prosperity. But alas! no college career
was now possible to Donald Boyd. The best he
could hope for was to earn a few shillings a week
as a common clerk. He knew this, and so did his
mother. But they never complained. It was no
fault of theirs, nor of anybody’s. It was just as
they devoutly called it, “The will of God.â€
17
“Your Latin and Greek may come in some
day, my boy,†said Mrs. Boyd cheerfully. ‘Good
work is never lost. In the meantime, your plan is
a good one, and you shall have your new clothes at
once. Then, do as you think best.â€
“All right; good-night, mother,†said Donald,
and in five minutes more was fast asleep.
But, though he was much given to sleeping of
nights — indeed, he never remembered lying awake
for a single hour in his life—during daytime
there never was a more “wide awake†boy than
Donald Boyd. He kept his eyes open to every-
thing, and never let the “golden minute†slip by
him. He never idled about — play he didn’t con-
sider idling (nordoI). And I am bound to confess
that every day until the new clothes came home
was scrupulously spent in cricket, football, and all
the other amusements which he was as good at as
he was at his lessons. He wanted “ to make the
best of his holidays,†he said, knowiug well that
for him holiday time as well as school time was now
‘done, and the work of the world had begun in
earnest.
The clothes came home on Saturday night, aid
he went to church in them on Sunday, to his little
sister’s great admiration. Still greater was their
wonder when, on Monday morning, he appeared in
the same suit, looking “quite a man,†as they
unanimously agreed, and almost before breakfast
was done, started off, not saying a word of where
he was going.
He did not come back till the younger ones were
all away to bed, so there was no one to question
him, which was fortu- 3
nate, for they might
not have got very
smooth answers. His
mother saw this, and
she also forbore. She
was not surprised that
the bright, brave face
of the morning looked
dull and tired, and
that evidently Donald
had no good news of the day to tell her.
“T think I’ll go to bed,’ was all he said.
“Mother, will you give me a ‘piece’ in my pocket
to-morrow? One can walk better when one isn’t
so desperately hungry.
“Yes, my boy.†She kissed him, saw that he
- DONALD EOYD.
18 . FACING THE WORLD.
was warmed and fed — he had evidently been on his
legs the whole day —then sent him off to his bed,
where she soon heard him delightfully snoring,
oblivious of all his cares.
The same thing went on day after day, for seven
days. Sometimes he told his mother what had
happened to him and
where he had been,
sometimes not; what
was the good of tell-
ing? it was always the
same story. Nobody
wanted a boy or a
man, for Donald, trust-
ing to his inches and
his coat, had applied
for man’s work also,
but in vain. Mrs. Boyd was not astonished. She
knew how hard it is to get one’s foot into ever so
small a corner in this busy world, where ten are
always struggling for the place of one. Still, she
also knew that it never does to give in; that one
must leave no stone unturned if one wishes to get
work at all. Also she believed firmly in an axiom
of her youth — “ Nothing is denied to well-directed
labor.†But it must be real hard “labor,†and it
must also be “well directed.†So, though her
heart ached sorely, as only a mother’s can, she
never betrayed it, but each morning sent her boy
away with a cheerful face, and each evening
received him with one, which, if less cheerful, was
not less sympathetic, but she never said a word.
At the week’s end, in fact, on Sunday morning,
_ as they were walking to church, Donald said to her:
“Mother, my new clothes haven’t been of the
slightest good. I’ve been all over Edinburgh, to
every place I could think of — writers’ offices, mer-
chants’ offices, wharves, railway-stations — but it’s
no use. Everybody wants to know where I’ve
been before, and I’ve been nowhere except to
school. I said I was willing to learn, but nobody
will teach me; they say they can’t afford it. It is
like keeping a dog, and barking yourself. Which
is only too true,†added Donald, with a heavy
sigh.
“May be,†said Mrs. Boyd. Yet as she looked
up at her son—she really did look up at him, he
was so tall — she felt that if his honest, intelligent
face and manly bearing did not win something at
last, what was the world coming to? “ My boy,â€
MRS. BOYD.
she said, ‘‘things are very hard for you, but not
harder than for others. I remember once, when I
was only a few years older than you, finding my-
self with only half a crown in my pocket. To be
sure it was a whole half-crown, for I had paid
every half-penny I owed that morning, but I had
no idea where the next half-crown would come
from. However, it did come. I earned two pounds
ten, the very day after that day.â€
“Did you really, mother?†said Donald, his
eyes brightening. “Then I’ll go on. I'll not
‘gang awa back to my mither,’ as that old gentle-
man advised me, who objected to bark himself; a
queer, crabbed old fellow he was too, but he was
the only one who asked my name and address,
The rest of them — well, mother, I’ve stood a good
deal these seven days,†Donald added, gulping
down something between a “fuff†of wrath and a
sob.
“‘T am sure you have, my boy.
“But Tl hold on; only you'll have to get my
boots mended, and meantime, I should like to try
a new dodge. My bicycle, it lies in the washing-
house ; you remember I broke it and you didn’t |
wish it mended, lest I should break something
worse than a wheel, perhaps. It wasn’t worth
while risking my life for mere pleasure, but I want —
my bicycle now for use. If you let me have it
mended, I can go up and down the country for -
fifty miles in search of work —to Falkirk, Linlith- -
gow, or even Glasgow, and I’ll cost you nothing
for travelling expenses. Isn’t that a bright idea,
mother?â€
She had not the heart to say no, or to suggest that
a boy on a bicycle applying for work, was a thing
too novel to be eminently successful. But to get |
work was at once so essential and so hopeless, that
she would not throw any cold water on Donald’s
eagerness and pluck. She ‘hoped too, that, spite -
of the eccentricity of the notion, some shrewd, .
kind-hearted gentleman might have sense enough:.
to see the honest purpose of the poor lad who had »
only himself to depend upon. For his father had
now fallen into a state of. depression which made
all application to him for either advice or help.’
worse than useless. And as both he and Mrs. Boyd |
had been solitary orphans when they were married,
there were no near relatives of any kind to come '
to the rescue. Donald knew, and his mother knew
too, that he must shift for himself, to sink or swim. |
â€
So, after two days’ rest which he much needed,
the boy went off again “on his own hook,†and
~ his bicycle, which was a degree better than his
legs, he said, as it saves shoe-leather. Also, he
was able to come home pretty regularly at the same
hour, which was a great relief to his mother. But
_he came home nearly as tired as ever, and with a
despondent look which deepened every day. Evi-
dently it was just the same story; no work to be
had; or if there was work, it was struggled for by
a score of fellows, with age, character, and experi-
ence to back them, and Donald had none of: the
three. But he had one quality, the root of all suc-
cess in the end, dogged perseverance.
There is a saying, that we British gain our vic-
tories, not because we are never beaten, but be-
cause we never will see that we are beaten, and so
go on fighting till we win. “Never say die,†was
Donald’s word to his mother night after night.
But she knew that those who never say die, some-
times do die, quite quietly, and she watched with a
sore heart, her boy growing thinner and more worn,
even though brown as a berry with constant ex-
posure all day long to wind and weather, for it was
now less autumn than winter.
After a fortnight, Mrs. Boyd made up her mind
that this could not go on any longer, and said so.
“Very well,†Donald answered, accepting her
decision as he had been in the habit of doing all
his life.—Mrs. Boyd’s children knew very well
that whatever her will was, it was sure to be a just
and wise will, herself being the last person she
ever thought of. — “ Yes, I’ll give in, if you think
I ought, for it’s only wearing out myself and my
clothes to no good. Only let me have one day
more and I’ll go as far as ever I can,. perhaps to
Dunfermline, or even Glasgow.â€
She would not forbid, and once more she started
him off with a cheerful face in the twilight of the
wet October morning, and sat all day long in the
empty house —for the younger ones were now all
going to school again — thinking sorrowfully of
her eldest, whose merry school days were done for-
ever.
In the dusk of the afternoon a card was brought
up to her, with the message that an old gentleman
was waiting below, wishing to see her.
A shudder ran through the poor mother, who,
like many another mother, hated bicycles, and
never had an easy mind when Donald was away
FACING THE WORLD, 19
on his. The stranger’s first word was anything
but reassuring,
“Beg pardon, ma’am, but is your name Boyd,
and have you a son called Donald, who went out
on a bicycle this morning?â€
“Yes, yes! Has anything happened?
quick !â€
“I’m not aware, ma’am, that anything has hap-
pened,†said the old gentleman. - “I saw the lad
at light this morning. He seemed to be managing
his machine uncommonly well. I met him at the
foot of a hill near Edinburgh Castle. He had got
off and was walking; so he saw me, and took off
his cap. I like respect, especially in a young fel-
low towards an old one.â€
“Did he know you, for I have not that pleasure?â€
said Mrs. Boyd, polite, though puzzled. For the
old man did not look quite like a gentleman, and
spoke with the strong accent of an uneducated
person, yet he had a. kindly expression, and
seemed honest and well-meaning, though decidedly
“canny.â€
“T cannot say he knew me, but he remembered
me, which was civil of him. And then I minded
the lad as the one that had come to me for work -
a week or two ago, and I took his name and
address. That’s your son’s writing?†he jumbled
Tell me
EDINBURGH CASTLE.
out and showed a scrap of paper. “ It’s dona fide,
isn’t it?
“ And he really is in search of work? He hasn’t
run away from home, or been turned out by his
father for misconduct, or anything of that sort? He
isn’t a scamp, or a ne’er-do-weel?â€
“‘T hope he doesn’t look like it,’ said Mrs.
Boyd, proudly.
20 FACING THE WORLD.
“No, ma’am ; you're right, he doesn’t. He car-
ries his character in his face which, maybe. is bet-
ter than in his pocket. It was that which made
me ask his name and address, though I could do
nothing for him.â€
“Then you were the gentleman who told him
you couldn’t keep a
dog and bark your-
self?†said Mrs.
Boyd, amused, and
just a shade hopeful.
“Precisely. Nor
can I. It would have
been cool impudence
in alad to come and
ask to be taught his
work first and then
paid for it, if he
hadn’t been so very much in earnest that I was
rather sorry for him. I’m inclined to believe, from
the talk I had with him atthe foot of the brae to-day,
that he is a young dog that would bark with uncom-
mon little teaching. Material, ma’am, is what we
want. I don’t care for its being raw material, if it’s
only of the right sort. I’ve made up my mind to
try your boy.â€
“Thank God!â€
“What did you say, ma’am ?
pardon.â€
MR. BETHUNE.
But —I beg your
For he saw Mrs. Boyd had quite broken down. .
In truth, the strain had been so long and so great
that this sudden relief was quite too much for her.
She sobbed heartily.
“T ought to beg your pardon,†she said at last,
“for being so foolish, but we have had hard times
of late.â€
And then, in a few simple words, she told Don-
ald’s whole story.
The old man listened to it in silence. Some-
times he nodded his head, or beat his chin on his
stout stick as he sat; but he made no comment
whatever, except a brief “ Thank you, ma’am.â€
“Now to business,†continued he, taking out
his watch ; “for I’m due at dinner ; and I always
keep my appointments, even with myself. I hope
your Donald is a punctual lad?†,
“Yes. He promised to be back by dark, and I
am sure he will be. Could you not wait?â€
“No. I never wait for anybody; but I keep no-
body waiting for me. I’m Bethune & Co., Leith
Merchants — practically, old John Bethune, who
began life as a message-boy, and has done pretty
well, considering.â€
He had, as Mrs. Boyd was well aware. Bethune
& Co. was a name so well known that she could
hardly believe in her boy’s good luck in getting
into that house in any capacity whatever.
“So all is settled,†said Mr. Bethune, rising.
“Let him come to me on Monday morning, and
I'll see what he is fit for. He’ll have to start at
the very bottom — sweep the office, perhaps — I
did it myself once —and I'll give him —let me
see — ten shillings a week to begin with.â€
““*To begin with,’†repeated Mrs. Boyd, gently
but firmly ; “but he will soon be worth more, I
am sure of that.â€
“Very well. When I see what stuff he is made
of, he shall have a rise. But I never do things at
haphazard ; and it’s easier going up than coming
down. I’m not a benevolent man, Mrs. Boyd, and
you need not think it. But I’ve fought the world
pretty hard myself, and I like to help those that
are fighting it. Good evening. Isn’t that your
son coming round the corner? Well, he’s back ex-
act to his time, at any rate. Tell him I hope he
will be as punctual on Monday morning. Good
evening, ma’am.â€
Now, if this were an imaginary story, I might
wind it up by a delightful denxoument of Mr.
Bethune’s turning out an old friend of the family,
or developing into a new one, and taking such a
fancy to Donald that he immediately gave him a
clerkship with a large salary, and the promise of a
partnership on coming of age, or this worthy gen-
tleman should be an eccentric old bachelor who
immediately adopted that wonderful boy and be-
friended the whole Boyd family. _ sg
But neither of these things, nor anything else re-
markable, happened in the real story, which, as it
is literally true, though told with certain necessary
disguises, I prefer to keep to as closely as I can.
Such astonishing bits of “ luck†do not happen in
real life, or happen so rarely that one inclines, at
last, to believe very little in either good or ill for-
tune, as a matter of chance. There is always
something at the back of it which furnishes a key
to the whole. Practically, a man’s lot is of his
own making. He may fail, for a while undeserv-
edly, or he may succeed undeservedly, but, in the
FACING THE WORLD. ‘a at
long run, time brings its revenges and its rewards.
As it did to Donald Boyd. He has not been
taken into the house of Bethune & Co., as a part-
mer; and it was long before he became even a
clerk —at least with anything like a high salary.
For Mr. Bethune, so far from being an old bach-
elor, had a large family to provide for, and was
bringing up several of his sons to his own busi-
ness, so there was little room for a stranger. But
a young man who deserves to find room generally
does find it, or make it. And though Donald
started at the lowest rung of the ladder, he may
climb to the top yet.
He had “a fair field, and no favor.†Indeed,
he neither wished nor asked favor. He determined
to stand on his own feet from the first. He had
hard work and few holidays, made mistakes, found
them out and corrected them, got sharp words and
bore them, learnt his own weak points and — not
so easily — his strong ones, Still he did learn
them; for, unless you can trust yourself, be sure
nobody else will trust you. 3
This was Donald’s great point. We was trusted.
People soon found out that they might trust him;
that he always told the truth, and never pretended
to do more than he could do; but that what he could
do, they might depend upon his doing, punctually,
accurately, carefully, and never leaving off till it
was done. Therefore, though others might be
quicker, sharper, more “up to things †than he,
there was no one so reliable, and it soon got to be
a proverb in the office of Bethune & Co. —and
other offices, too — “If you wish a thing done, go
to Boyd.â€
I am bound to say this, for I am painting no im-
aginary portrait, but describing an individual who
really exists, and who may be met any day walking
about Edinburgh, though his name is not Donald
Boyd, and there is no such firm as Bethune & Co.
But the house he does belong to values the young
fellow so highly that there is little dovbt he will
rise in it, and rise in every way, probably to the
very top of the tree, and tell his children and
grandchildren the story which, in its main features,
I have recorded here, of how he first began facing
the world.
SORRY LITTLE KITTY MAKES AN EXPLANATION.
to
ty
THE
LIGHTS
OF PARIS. 23
BAe hGt eS: OF WPoAtRCESs
By IsapEL SMITHSON.
-
HREE hundred and sixty years
ago there were no lights in the
streets of Paris. People who
wanted to go out in the evening
were obliged to have servants
walking before them with
torches. Those who could not afford
this carried their own lights, while the
very poor people groped along, feeling
their way by the walls and fences.
In times of war, however, it was the
law for every citizen to put a lighted
candle in his window, and a pail of
water on his doorstep; the light, to keep
away robbers, and the water to be used
in case of fire. What
should we think nowadays,
of a large city with neither
police nor firemen !
The people of Paris did
not. obey this law very
strictly ; and there is still
kept among the state
papers an old, old letter,
dated 1525, from Louisa,
the Queen-mother, in
which she announced to
Parliament that her son,
King Francis the First, had been taken prisoner, and
had lost eight thousand of his soldiers. This news
filled all France with grief and confusion, and Parlia-
ment, fearing riots in the capital, gave strict orders
that all the people should light their window candles
and keep in readiness their pails of water.
Thirty-three years afterwards, at about the time of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s first coming to America, a law
was passed in Paris that on account of the increasing
numbers of “ thieves, robbers and forcers of doors,â€
a good light should be kept burning at the corner of
every street, from ten o’clock at night until four in
the morning, “and where the street is so long
that the said light can not be seen from one end to
the other, there shall be another light placed in the
middle of the said street.†This law was proclaimed
throughout the city with a flourish of trumpets, but
we should have thought the lamp-posts very strange
affairs; for they were merely wooden poles with a
horizontal bar on the top of each, from which hung
an iron pot containing resin and burning tow. It was
much like the light that fishermen carry on thei
masts. Of course this made a great deal of smoke
and a strong smell of tar; but the people did not ,
mind that, for now they could at least see their way
about the streets at night.
In 1876, when Henry the Third was king, civil
war snuffed out the hanging lights of Paris; for in
24
the confusion of political
quarrels, the street lan-
terns were entirely neg-
lected, and History tells
us what sort of place
Paris was at that time
and what horrible deeds
were committed at night
under cover of the dark-
ness of the streets. In
the reign of the next
king, Henry the Fourth,
and during the civil war
of the Fronde, when the
people refused to obey
their young king, it was
no better. The city was
totally unlighted, and at
night the streets were
thronged with robbers
who hid in the dark cor-
ners watching their
chance to rush out and
rob the passers; and what
made things worse, the
streets were almost entirely without pavements, so
that while a person was busy picking his way through
>
TAH LIGATS OF PARTS,
THE PAIL OF WATER REQUIRED BY LAW.
TO KEEP AWAY ROBBERS.
these freebooters, robbed
of his money and jewels,
and perhaps even murdered.
At last an Italian abbot
named Landati Caraffa
thought of a plan for help-
ing the Parisians out of
their troubles, and at the
same time making himself
rich. He organized a com-
pany-of light-bearers to guide people through the
streets at night, for which they charged five sous
the mud, he was very apt to be pounced on by one of + (cents) for a quarter of an hour. Each carried an
HE COULD AFFORD IT.
HIS OWN TORCH-BEARER,.
THE VERY POOR GROPED ALONG.
THE LIGATS OF PARTS. 25
cil lamp which gave as much light as six large candles, carry out in a city which had no street lamps, which
and wore in his belt a sand-glass of a quarter of an had never been swept, and which was, besides,
hour. When one of these light-bearers was engaged swarming with thieves. But La Reynié set to work
he would, after receiving his money,
flight his lamp, turn down his glass
- and sct off, and the only drawback
~ to the usefulness of these walking
“ lamp-posts was the fact that no one
: could answer for their honesty, more
» than one of them having been known
. to overpower and rob his employer
on reaching a lonely street. Still,
- for want of a better, this plan con-
- tinued to be carried out, even until
~ the beginning of the present cen-
“tury.
_ ‘The*person who succeeded best
in lighting Paris was also the founder
of the French police force, Nicholas
-de la Reynié. In 1667, he was
made Lieutenant-General of police,
.and Louis the Fourteenth gave
TREACHEROUS LIGHT-BEARERS.
vigorously; had the mud and dirt carted away,
formed a large body of. night watchmen, and ordered
that candles protected by glass should be hung by
cords from the first story of the houses. It was not
thought necessary, however, to have these lights used
during the summer months, and it was soon discoy-
ered that thieves and pickpockets began their work
again as soon as the warm weather returned, so that
scarcely a night passed without the dismal, desperate
cry, “ Help! help!†being heard in the streets.
Then the people clamored to have the lights kept
burning the whole year round ; and after a great deal
of delay it was decided that the city should be lighted
from the twentieth of October to the thirty-first of
March, which was a gain of forty days, or rather of
forty nights.
The people were very much pleased with this
arrangement, and Madame de Sévigné, who lived in
Paris at that time, said in a letter to her daughter:
“We supped yesterday at Mme. Contange’s, where
S595 GIT Moe CRIDR RO OOP AOU CARED we met Mme. Scarron, and about midnight we came
home very gayly without being the least afraid of rob-
“him for his watchword these three nouns: C/ean/i- bers — thanks to the lights in the streets.â€
_ ness, Light, Safety; a very difficult programme to At the end of the seventeenth century, there were
Hee eet
Fe rr eg ee
-26
_
in Paris six thousand five hundred of these street
lights, consuming more than a thousand pounds of
candles every night. Each lantern was ornamented
with the figure of a cock, the emblem of watchful-
ness; and just at nightfall a man went through the
streets ringing a bell; at this signal the people were
obliged to untie the lantern cords that were fastened
to their houses, let down the lanterns, and light the
candles, which were left burning till two in the morning.
During the terrible winter of 1709, when France
was afflicted with famine as well as war, there were
THE LIGHTS OF
PARTS,
Paris to the death-bed of his royal great-grandfather,
The glaziers, therefore, were set to work at once
to get the lanterns ready. Unfortunately, four years
after this a violent hurricane passed over Paris,
breaking all the panes of glass in the lanterns, and
even bending and twisting the iron rods.
In 1766 the first street lamps appeared. A cotton
wick steeped in oil was used instead of a candle, and
a reflector was added to increase the light. All the
candle-lanterns were taken away, and these oil lamps
put in their places, and the light was so much more
A WELL-LIGHTED STREET. — 1560-80.
no lights in Paris, for the starved cattle died in such
numbers that there was not enough tallow to make
candles.
Six years later, however, on the night of the twenty-
seventh of August, King Louis the Fourteenth was
taken so ill that every one knew he would soon die, and
his son-in-law, the Duke of Orleans, sent an order that
the street lights should be put in their places at once,
to be in readiness in case the little Dauphin (after-
wards Louis the Fifteenth) should have to go through
HOTEL DE CLUNY.
bright and steady that the people thought the highest
point in street lighting had been reached, and every
one laughed at the old lanterns, as we of to-day laugh
at their oil-lamps, and as ovr children will, no doubt,
make fun of our gas-lights.
These oil lamps were used the entire year except
at the time of the full moon, when they were always
left unlighted, even though the moon were entirely
clouded over! This foolish custom, however, was
soon done away with.
THE LIGHTS OF PARIS.
iis SIMCIL RCE AU 119. 1h Mute
Foe Tes tach
12 OMT ig
TIE acy
THE TORCH-BEARERS STILL ES-
CORTED PEOPLE HOME.
A French writer tells us
that Queen Marie Antoinette
and her brother-in-law, the
Count d’Artois, used often
to go at night from Versail-
les to Paris to attend balls
and theatres, and so the road
between the palaces was al-
ways kept lighted until the
royal coach had _ passed.
Five leagues and a half —
more than thirteen miles of
street-lights !| ‘The illumina-
tion of the “ royal progress
was thought by the people
a very brilliant spectacle.
Aa
8 eae gp meen mit we
vot atin
2
But neither lanterns nor lamps
could interfere with the Abbot
Caraffa’s torch-bearers; they still
waited at the doors of houses
where balls were taking place,
stood at the entrance of theatres,
or went about the streets carrying
their torches and crying out:
“ Who wants a light?†They were
always on hand in time to call the
watchman in case of alarm of fire
or thieves; they would run for a
carriage, escort people home, and
sometimes would even go up-stairs
with belated persons and light the
candles in their rooms! An old
picture shows us some torch-bearers
walking in front of two young pea-
ple who look as if they were not
giving much thought to robbers.
During the French Revolution,
no attention whatever was paid to
the lighting of the city, but yet the
street-lamp played its part —a her-
rible one — in the fearful tragedy
of that time. The fatal cry “A fe
THE TIME OF OIL LAMPS. — MAKING MERRY QVER THE OLD CANDLE-LANTERNS.
28 THE LIGHTS OF PARTS.
t ‘anterne/â€" (To the lantern!) wes heard nightly in
, ie dark streets of Paris, and then a savage, howling
mob would come tearing along, dragging some terri-
fied creature who a few minutes later would be swing-
ing lifeless from the iron bar of the street lantern.
Foulon, who was a friend to the king, was the first
one of hundreds who perished in this way during the
Reign of Terror.
In 1787 the Argand burner was invented by Aimé
Argand, a native of Switzerland. He made a lamp
because they got entangled in the catafalque.
Twice were royal funerals interrupted on this way ;
on the twenty-first of January, 1815, the bodies of the
unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth, and Marie Antoi-
nette, his wife, were taken from the cemetery of La
Madeleine, to the church of St. Denis, and as no
one had thought to remove the street lamps, the top
of the funeral-car caught in the cords of a lantern,
and it took a long time to disentangle them. <
In December, 1840, when the body of Napoleon
GASLIGHT, LATE AFTERNOON IN THE RAINY SEASON.
4m which a flat wick of twisted cotton was placed
between two tubes, and in the centre the air was able
to circulate freely, while a glass chimney aided the
draught and prevented the wick from smoking.
This invention was made perfect in 1821, by a
lamp-manufacturer named Vivien, and these burners
were used all over Paris until the ‘ntroduction of gas,
eight years afterwards. The lanips were hung over
the gutters, which in those days ran down the middle
of the street, and the lamps had to be taken down
when a funeral procession passed underneath,
PORTE SL. MARTIN.
the Great was carried to the Church of the Invalides.
great care had been taken to remove the lamps in
those streets where the procession was to pass; bui
after the grand ceremony was over and the empty
funeral car was returning by a shorter way to the
undertaker’s, it was stopped by a lamp, and had to
be left in the street till the next day.
Some years before this, the discovery of gaslight
was made by a Frenchman named Phillippe Le Bon,
a very clever engineer.
It was already known that hydrogen-gas would
Oe ee
THE LIGHTS OF
LARLS. — 29
THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
burn easily, but Le Bon was the first one to show
how it could be used for lighting.
When he was thirty-one years old, he tried the
experiment of burning some wood, and causing the
smoke to pass through water, and he found that this
would produce a pure gas which when lighted made
a bright flame and an intense heat. He called his
gas-machine a Zhermo-lampeo, and invited the people
to come and witness his experiment.
The new gas was considered very wonderful, but
was not put to use until long after the death of its
discoverer.
A German named Winsor, took up Le Bon’s idea,
ARC DU CARRCOUSEL.
and on the last day of the year, 1829, the first gas-
light appeared in Paris. This was in the Rue de la
Paix; six months later, the Rue Vivienne was lighted,
and then one by one the old oil lamps were taken
down, and before very long Paris contained eight
thousand gas-lights.
In the French capital, however, electricity is, of
course, fast taking the place of gas. It is so much
brighter and so much cheaper that of course in
time, perhaps when the children of to-day are men
and women, all streets and theatres, possibly even
private dwellings, will be brilliantly illuminated by
the silvery moon-like radiance of electric light.
DOROTHY.
DOROTHY.
By Emity A. BRADDOCK,
H! it was a sight fearsome, fit to curdle the blood of: the stoutest——
That little craft caught in the teeth of the hungry, mad-foaming breakers
That craunched it, and tore it, and broke it, now on the jagged rocks flinging,
Then catching it. back, as tigers sport with their prey then devour it;
And the six men up in the rigging, clinging, and praying, and shuddering,
As one would shudder that looked down into his own grave open !
All the fisher-folk were away, six leagues away, to the northward,
Where the night before they had sailed, fast locked by the south gale in harbor;
Only on the sands there were three old men, peering and moaning:
“Ah! if we were young as we once were, who knows but that we might save them?â€
And the women were wringing their hands, with quavering, shrill cries, pitiful.
Among them, poised on her bare feet, like a bird pluming for flying
Over the foam, her brown hair out on the wind streaming and tossing,
Her cheeks flushing and paling, but her eyes clear, stood lass Dorothy.
Straight, strong-limbed and sunbrowned was she, modest, withal, and winsome.
“Will the vessel break up in an hour? If I thowt so lang she would hing there,
I’d awa’ for the lifeboat,†cried she. ‘ Nay, nay, lass,†answered old Donald,
“Could you gang the four miles, you could na cross the burn swollen to bursting.â€
“Tl awa’,†spake Dorothy, nothing more; and swiftly she darted.
DOROTHY.
Off to the moor, as from the strained bow the arrow goes leaping,
For a mile the fierce gale she battled; then down to the sands forced to scramble
Where the huge waves were rolling, and through the hollow rocks booming their thunder,
Sped on, through the foam plashing knee-deep, ever fighting for footing,
Till she came to the burn white with wrath, as if with the mad sea leaguing
In vengeance against the foe who, for its prey, with it would wrestle.
What though her heart sank? in she plunged — for, O, the men that were drowning!
Waist-deep, then overhead sinking, seized by a swirling eddy,
Struggling up to her feet, on pressing again, till once more on the moorland,
She breasted the gale, flinging to it the wet garments that hindered.
So reached she at last the house where lived the coxswain of the lifeboat,
And sank at the threshold, swooning, but gasping with wan lips: “ The schooner —
On the letch — norrad!†Well knew the coxswain the need that had sent her.
“Look after the lass, gude wife !†he shouted, and ran for the lifeboat.
The blessed lifeboat! how it shot out into the surges, bounding
Away and away — around the Point —close up to the wreck, undaunted !
And lo! the six men dropped into it, saved, as solemnly joyful
As if into heaven they had come, out of death, with its chrism on their foreheads.
Only a simple lass still is Dorothy, never dreaming
That she has done aught heroic. Yet, sometimes, o’ nights, when the stormwind
Is out, she smiles as she lays her head on its rude straw pillow,
To think of the six men, somewhere safe, living and loving,
Because she dared through the gale and the foam to run for the lifeboat.
31
4 MAN'S A MAN FOR A’ THAT.
A MAN’S A MAN FOR A’ THAT,
By Rosert Burns.
S there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a’ that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Our toils obscure, and a’ that;
The rank is but the guinea-stamp ;
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden gray, and a’ that ;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, and a’ that;
The honest man, though e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca‘d a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that ;
For a’ that, and a’ that,
His rib and star, and a’ that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a’ that.
A prince can mak a belted kinght,
-A marquis, duke, and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that !
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their dignities, and a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,
Are higher ranks than a’ that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
May bear the gree, and a’ that;
For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that;
That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
— from Burns’ Poems.
ak
> THAT,
FOR A
MAN
A
tr)
rs
THE WEAVER OF BRUGES.
THE WEAVER OF BRUGES,
By M. M. P. Dinsmoor.
THE YOUNG STORK GREW APACE, AND FROM
THE LOOM’S HIGH BEAMS LOOKED DOWN .,
HE strange old streets of Bruges town
Lay white with dust and summer sun,
The tinkling goat bells slowly passed
At milking-time, ere day was done.
An ancient weaver, at his loom,
With trembling hands his shuttle plied,
While roses grew beneath his touch,
And lovely hues were multiplied.
The slant sun, through the open door,
Fell bright, and reddened warp and woof,
When with acry of pain a little bird,
A nestling stork, from off the roof,
Sore wounded, fluttered in and sat
Upon the old man’s outstretched hand;
“ Dear Lord,†he murmured, under breath,
“ Hast thou sent me this little friend ?â€
And to his lonely heart he pressed
The little one, and vowed no harm
Should reach it there; so, day by day,
Caressed and sheltered by his arm,
The young stork grew apace, and from
The loom’s high beams looked down with eyes
Of silent love upon his ancient friend,
As two lone ones might sympathize.
At last the loom was hushed: no more
The deftly handled shuttle flew ;
No more the westering sunlight fell
Where blushing silken roses grew.
And through the streets of Bruges town
By strange hands cared for, to his last
And lonely rest, "neath darkening skies,
The ancient weaver slowly passed ;
LONGFELLOW [N WESTMINSTE R. 2
30
Then strange sight met the gaze of all: And ere the trampling feet had left
A great white stork, with wing-beats slow, The new-made mound, dropt slowly down,
Too sad to leave the friend he loved, And clasped the grave in his white wings
With drooping head, flew circling low, His pure breast on the earth so brown,
Nor food, nor drink, could lure him thence,
Sunrise nor fading sunsets red ;
When little children came to see,
The great white stork — was dead.
LONGFELLOW IN WESTMINSTER*#
wedge
HILD! when you pace with hushed delight
The cloistral aisles across the sea,
Whose ashes old of monk and knight
Renew the legends heavenly-bright
That charmed you from your mother’s knee ;
And steal along the Abbey’s nave,
With war’s superbest trophies set,
To some lorn minstrel’s narrow grave,
Who more unto his century gave
Than Tudor or Plantagenet;
Scorn not the carven names august,
Where England strews memorial flowers,
But circled by her precious dust,
Salute, a-thrill with pride and trust,
Your own dear poet, child of ours!
He stands among her mightiest ;
We craved it not, yet be it so.
If his sweet art were least, or best,
Is judged hereafter. For the rest
Speak fondly, that the world may know :=—=
Not any with God’s gift of song
Served men with purer ministries ;
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.—From photograph of the bust, by Not one of all this laurelled throng
Thomas Brock, A. R. A., now in Westminster Abbey. Held half the light he shed so long
From that high, sunny heart of his!
36
WASHINGTON, LITTLE BRINGTON,
en <=
ENG.
THE WASHINGTONS’ ENGLISH HOME.
By Rose G. KINGSLEY.
WAY in the centre of Northamptonshire,
among great solemn woods and heavy clay
pastures, lies a stately park round a noble house.
On the hill above sits an ancient brown sandstone
church, brooding like an old hen over her chick-
ens — the yellow-brown sandstone cottages of the
village. And a mile beyond the church, in a smal-
ler village, a low sandstone house stands by the
roadside, with thatched roof, and high gable-ends,
and stone mullioned windows, and an inscription
carved over the door.
The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Constructa. 1606.
The Park is Althorp Park, Lord Spencer’s splen-
did home. The church is Brington Church; and
it contains monuments which should stir every
American heart. For in the sandstone house at
Little Brington lived the ancestor of George Wash-
ington; and he lies buried in Brington Church with
his wife and several of his children and kinsfclk.
Yes! In that low sandstone house—now a
cottage — Mr. Lawrence Washington, son and heir
of Robert Washington of Sulgrave in Northamp-
tonshire, lived and died. And it was his second
son, John, who emigrated in 1657 to Virginia, there
to found the family of the illustrious first Presi-
dent of the United States.
The Washingtons who were originally a Lanca-
shire family, had been settled in Northampton-
shire for several generations ; first in the town of
CHILDREN’S PICNIC.
THE WASHINGTONS’
Northampton; then at Sulgrave; and when their
fortunes declined—in consequence, some say, of
the ill luck which always came to those who held
church property, and the manor of Sulgrave had
belonged to St. Andrew’s Monastery at North-
-ampton—and they were obliged to leave Sul-
grave, Lawrence Washington settled at Little
Brington, near his friend and kinsman Sir Robert
Spencer. Some suppose that Lawrence Wash-
ington built the house at Little Brington, and
placed the inscription over the door in token of
his many sorrows and trials — the loss of fortune
_and home, for he was forced to sell Sulgrave in
1610, and the deaths of his wife and several
children. Be that as it may, he lived at Little
Brington for some years before his death in 1616.
He was honorably buried in the church at Great
Brington. And his sons William, John, and Law-
rence, were constant guests at Althorp Park, hard
by. In the curious steward’s books which were
“RN
VS
v
GREAT BRINGTON CHURCH.—BURIAL PLACE OF THE WASH-
INGTONS.
found some few years ago in an iron-bound chest
at Althorp, and give every item of expenditure in
the household from 1623 to 1645, the names of the
Washingtons occur continually, among the quaint-
ENGLISH HOME. 37
est entries which give one a very clear idea of the
way a great house was managed in those days.
Here are a few examples from the yellow old
housekeeping pages :
1623.
June 21. Lump sugar into the nursery, 3 li. 00-02-09
Sir John Washington and Sir William
Washington, staying in the house,
lobsters given to Mr. Curtis. 4. 00-06-00
Dec.6. To Legg for the carriage of a doe to
my Lord Archbishop. 00-05-00
Collar of Brawne sent to Mr. Wash-
ington.
1624.
July 3. Sent to my Ladie Washington, Puetts
6. (Peewits). Quailes 3. Hearne 1.
Sturgeon. 1 rand. g
Oct.30. For 12 li. of currants fora great cake. 00-04-co
For butter for a cake, 6 li. 00-02-03
This was the christening cake for “ Mistress Katherine
Spencer,†who was baptized Nov.14. Sir John Washington
and Mr. Curtis being among the guests.
These are only a few out of many mentions of
the brothers whose horses are noted constantly as
being provided with “oates†and so forth. ‘The
friendship between the two families of Washing-
tons and Spencers was maintained until the out-
break of the Civil War. Young Mordaunt, Sir
John Washington’s eldest son, frequently came
with his father to the house that seems to have
been ever open to them, and where Mistress Lucy
Washington, Sir John’s younger sister was house-
keeper, a post which in those days was often filled
by gentlewomen of good family. It was only in
1641 that these friendly visits ceased — brought to
anend some suppose by political differences, which
at that time were only too apt to sever all ties of
friendship and even of family. Sir John is lost
sight of during the Civil War, though there is no
doubt that he espoused the King’s side against
Oliver Cromwell; and, according to Washington
Irving and other authorities, he and his brother
Lawrence were mixed up in the royalist conspi-
racy of 1656, and found it more safe and conven-
ient to seek a home in the New World the next
year, with very many others of their defeated
party.
For some years before his emigration, Sir John
Washington, a widower, with three sons Mordaunt,
John, and Philip, had lived at his manor of South
38 THE WASHINGTONS’
Cave, near Hullin Yorkshire. And this explains
why we are usually told that the great Washing-
ton’s ancestors came from the north of England.
So they did—just at last. But their true home
for more than a hundred years had been the noble
county of Northampton. Lawrence Washington
was born and died in the county, his children
were born there too, and Sir John the emigrant
married a Northamptonshire lady, Dame Mary
Curtis, of Islip, and her tomb is in Islip Church
to this day. So that the midlands may justly
claim the honor of having sent forth a son of their
soil, to help im the making of the Breas American
people.
A few years ago circumstances took me to Bring-
ton Rectory; and day after day I wandered across
to the grand old church and sat for several hours
at a time, sketching the beautiful tombs of the
many noble Spencers who since 1599 have been
buried there.
(Before that date they were buried at Worm-
leighton, their great house in Warwickshire.)
There lies Sir Robert, whose friendship in-
duced Lawrence Washington to settle at Bring-
ton, and there, too, lies William his son, Baron
Spencer of Wormleighton, John Washington’s
friend.
There too is the heart of his son and suc-
cessor the gallant Henry Spencer, who was
made Earl of Sunderland by King Charles on the
blood-stained battlefield of Edgehill, within sight
of his house of Wormleighton, and who fell at
Newbury by Falkland’s side. And there is his
uncle, Edward Spencer, the Puritan — Cromwell’s
friend; whose influence with the Protector saved
Brington Church and. those splendid tombs from
destruction at the hands of the Roundhead sol-
diers. How often have I blessed Edward Spen-
cer’s memory when I looked at those exquisite
monuments all fresh and whole, with their grand
recumbent figures, and their carved and painted
and gilded canopies — and thought of the broken
fingers, the mutilated noses, the disfigured armour
and inscriptions in too many of our English
churches.
But unique and magnificent though the monu-
ments be in the Spencer Chapel, what riveted my
attention was a great slab of stone in the pave-
ment of the aisle. It is cracked right across the
middle, but is otherwise uninjured. It bears a
ENGLISH HOME.
coat of arms, on one half of which are two stripes.
with three stars above them; on the other half
three chalices; and beneath runs an inscription
setting forth that
BORE nHASHINGTON S06)
Be eime CUTER-OF WILLA
(7 EV TLER: OF TEES-IN-THL: COUNTIO- i
Veet "WASH ineTon “SONNE & HEIR OB
OF SYSSEXE ESQVIEH-WHOHADISSY.
RY-HER-8:SONNE & 9 DAVGHTERS’
WHICH LAWRENCE DECESSED THE 13
OF DESEMBER-AS DNi+1616
p “Hov THAT BY CHANG-OR-cHoIC
OF THIS*HASTSICHT a
|“ KNOW-LIFE-TO-DEATH: RESIGNS
| AS:DAY-TONIGHT gy.
‘ Ee is SE ONANE
“REVIVES -THE-DAYE , ~~
"> So-cHRIST-SHALL- Vs ZZ
Y. THOVCH TYANED SRE OU
Whe
This was the father of the emigrant Sir John, ,
and those three stars, those two stripes, that were
carried over the ocean to the new home in Vir-
ginia, must have had some connection I think, with
a certain flag that floats very proudly —as it has
reason to do — on thousands of ships that sail that
very ocean—on thousands of flagstaffs through-
out the length and breadth of the American con-
tinent. There are several other Washington tombs
at Brington all with their stars and stripes in
some form or other. But I think you will agree
with me that Lawrence, the last English ances-
THE WASHINGTONS’ ENGLISH HOME, 39
tor of the maker of a mighty nation, is by far the
most interesting member of the family to us nowa-
days. I wonder what he would have thought as
he sat in the “house-place†of his newly built
home at Little Brington, had any one prophesied
to him that his son John’s descendant was destined
to rule the greatest republic of the modern world.
The old Washington house — till recently a farm-
house, and now a well-to-do labourer’s cottage —
with flowers peeping out of the stone-mullioned
windows, and sparrows building and chattering in
the thatched eaves, and children filling their pitch-
ers at the village pump under the great yew tree
across the road, looks curiously settled and unad-
IN SIR JOHN WASHINGTON’S DAY.
venturous, and unaware of the great destinies of
its children. ;
And now that we have waded through this old
bit of history, let us see what sort of a land the
Washingtons lived in.
Northamptonshire is a country of big parks, big
woods, big fields, big fences, big trees. The great,
long-fleeced sheep, that fatten by hundreds in the
rank grass pastures, look like mammoths after the
neat, black-faced “ south-dewns †of Hampshire
and Sussex. The huge white-faced Hereford cat-
tle stare over the hedges like “ Bulls of Bashan,â€
or walk in a long line after us across a field, while
our fox-terrier who they are following, takes refuge
under our feet much to our discomfort. There
are few rivers: but wide brooks run through the
bottom-lands, cutting deep channels through the
heavy clay. The land swells up every mile or so
into bleak, rolling ridges like vast green waves
that foam here and there into a crest of
woodland; and it sinks again into damp
valleys, where wreaths of white mist hang
even on summer days. So that one is
for ever going up or down-hill, though
there is not a hill to be called a hill in
the whole county. Sandstone villages,
with some of the finest churches in Eng-
land are built along the crest of the
ridges in one long straggling street:
and the high pitch of the thatched roofs
with their tall chimneys at each end, and
the soft olive-green and yellow brown of
the stone they are built of, give them
a most picturesque appearance. But
though the woods are carpeted in spring
with primroses—and the pastures are
alive with sweet yellow cowslips, and
scores of nightingales sing in the spin-
neys, yet the country is sad to my mind.
It is all grave and solemn. It never
laughs. and smiles in the sunshine, like
the southern and western counties —
like some parts even of our beautiful
Warwickshire. The people too have
less of the kindliness and courtesy of
manner that one finds in the South:
but often carry their “love of inde-
pendence †as they call it, to the verge
of rudeness. Yet, after all, it is a fine
and stately land; and oh! what a hunting county.
What gallops with the famous Pytchley Pack
across those wide grass fields— what splendid
riding over those deep brooks, and great “ Bul-
finches� — as the hawthorn edges are called—a
40
wall of thoms six feet through and fifteen feet high
—that only the finest, heaviest horses can face.
Then what splendid homes there are — great parks
whose owners have been settled there for hundreds
of years, each with its separate bit of history that
has helped in the making of
England. And chief among
them all is Althorp. Come
with me and let me tell you
of my first walk from Bring-
ton to Althorp Park, where
John Washington was so often
a welcome guest; and let me
show you the very same trees
that he may have climbed
birds’-nesting with young Wil-
liam Spencer, his contempo-
rary and playfellow; and let
us walk through the same
glades where Philip Curtis,
another of the Althorp guests,
may have wandered with fair
Mistress Amy Washington,
John’s sister, whom he mar-
ried in 1620, a year or two
after the marriage of his sis-
ter Mary to John Washing-
ton.
Outside the rectory garden
gates the sun was casting long shadows across the
‘*Gravel Walk,†a noble avenue of elms, sadly shat-
tered by the October hurricane of the year before:
but still grand enough to satisfy any one who had not
known their former glory. Far away to the left
across the Valley, Holmby* House of famous
memory, gleamed golden-white on a ridge on in-
tense purple. Everything was bathed in tender
brilliant sunshine, and the air was fresh, clear,
and invigorating, as we neared the high park wall
of olive-green sandstone. A little postern gate
let us into the park, and turning to the left along
the avenue of gigantic elms which runs the whole
way round it inside the wall, we soon reached the
heronry, cut off from the park by tall iron deer-
fencing.
The scene was strangely familiar to me.— Surely
* Now spelt Holdenby, It was here that King Charles the First was
kept ina kind of honourable confinement in 1647, by the Parliamentary
Commissioners.
THE WASHINGTONS’
IN SIR JOHN WASHINGTON’S DAY.— CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS.
o
ENGLISH HOME.
I must have seen it all before.— But no! that was
impossible as I had never set foot in Northampton-
shire in my life until now. I stood staring and
puzzled. Then it all rushed across me. The
giant stems of the oaks and Spanish chestnut,
glistening pale against a dark background of fir
and spruce, were for all the world like the end of
a clearing in Canada, or Western New York. I
had seen the same thing hundreds of times: but
here there were no huge stumps left in the clear-
ing —no lumberer’s log hut — but smooth green
turf and trim gravel walks, and long settled peace
and plenty all about.
But now the silence was broken by strange
sounds overhead — clanking and‘ rattling as of
chains smitten together, with wild hoarse cries.
The trees above us were bare and broken. Some
blight seemed to have fallen on them, and stripped
the bark, and torn the small branches. I looked
again, and in the blasted trees I saw huge birds
moving to and fro, and piling broken twigs into
rough untidy heaps. We were in the midst of the
heronry; and the herons were building their
nests; while.the noise of clanking chains was made
by their long bills clappering together with a strange
THE WASHINGTONS’
metallic sound, as they flapped backwards and
forwards quarrelling over the possession of some
favorite fork
E> in the trees
that they
are gradu-
\ ally destroy-
ing. John
Washington
must have
often seen
the ancestors of those great gray birds; for in
the Althorp Steward’s Books that I have al-
ready quoted mention is constantly made of the
“hearnes.â€
ENGLISH HOME, 4I
One day “Creatonâ€â€™ gets three shillings for
climbing nine herons’ nests. A day after “ four-
teen hearnesâ€
are sent to
Wormleighton ;
young ones 1
suppose that
Creaton took out of the nests.
In one week some years later,
twenty-five herons’ nests are
climbed. ‘‘Hearnes†are sent
as presents to Lady Washington and the neigh-
_bors, and so forth. But I shall have more to tel}
you about the herons before I let you go, so let us
leave them screaming and quarrelling and push
on into the park.
At length another avenue, with one fallen
giant elm lying across it — measuring eighty feet
from where it split off some thirty feet from the
ground —led us down towards the house. And
then a gate in the deer-fence let us into the garden
and arboretum, with rows of ancient
trees marking its confines. ‘The
emerald turf was studded with thou-
sands of gay little winter aconites
lifting their yellow heads to the sun
H out of their petticoats of close green
leaves, and countless snowdrops
ringing their dainty white bells,
looking like downy patches of new-
fallen snow on the grass. Among
the beautiful groups of rare aud
aay) curious trees we wandered on till
we caine to the “ Oval†—an oval
pond, some three hundred yards
long — covered with tiny dabchicks,
and busy coots and moor hens
who perpetually chased each other through the -
water on to the island in the middle, and disap-
peared among the scarlet fringe of dogwood, to
emerge on the other side ready for a’ fresh chase
and frolic. Stately swans basked in the sunshine
on the water, or stretched their long necks and
shook their white wings on shore. Up from the
water sloped banks of smooth-shaven turf; and
some fifty feet back from the pond rose an encir-
cling line of huge single trees, any one of which was’
a study in itself, and in whose tall tops jackdaws
kept up an incessant chatter over their housebuild-
ing and love-making.
Ww
42 THE
Althorp House lay away to our right — the great
white house with its priceless books — the finest
private library in Europe it is said —and its price-
less pictures,— portraits by every famous painter
for four hundred years — besides Italian and
Flemish paintings, some of which, thanks to their
owner’s generosity, may be seen every winter in the
Loan Exhibitions at South Kensington or Burling-
ton House. But we had no time to explore the
treasures of Althorp House on that early spring
afternoon ; so we turned up past the dairy — filled
throughout with pots and pans of Dresden china —
and reached the limits of the garden.
The gate in the deer-fence was locked: but we
WASHINGTONS’
ENGLISH HOME.
look and one ear cocked up and the other down,
and a couple of Teckels — long-backed, bandy-
legged, satin-coated, black-and-tan German turn-
spits, with delicate heads like miniature blood-
hounds, and sad pathetic eyes — poured out upon
us an avalanche of heads, tails, legs and barks.
But their bark is worse than their bite; and they
are soon begging to share the delicious tea and bread
and butter with which we are regaled. The head
keeper Mr. C , is past ninety; and his father,
who was head keeper before him, died when he
was past ninety; and his son who will be head
keeper when the dear old man is gone to his rest,
has every right to live to the same ripe old age;
STREET IN LITTLE BRINGTON.
made for another which brought us out close to the
head keeper’s house. It is a beautiful old sand-
stone building of the sixteenth century ; and as we
knocked at the massive oak door, studded with
nails and clamped with iron, an inscription on the
stone lintel, rudely carved with a knife, caught my
eye:
THOMAS PADGET
KEEPER
1672.
A chorus of dogs answered our knock; and as the
door opened, a splendid Skye terrier with knowing
for his mother also came of a long-lived family.
Her brother, who died quite recently, served in the
American War of Independence.
But what a picture the old man is, in his well-
made shooting coat with innumerable pockets, and
his tight snuff-colored breeches, and top boots —
and what a perfect gentleman he is, with courtly,
highbred manners that this schoolboard-taught
generation may strive and struggle after, but never
attain, in spite of all their boasted civilization.
He has lived among the great of the world; but
he knows his place, and keeps it too. And though
his grandchildren are barristers and clergymen he
LITTLE BRINGTON, ENG.—AT THE VILLAGE PUMP.
saa
44 THE WASHINGTONS' ENGLISH HOME.
is “My Lord’s head keeper,†and proud he is of
his position.
The hounds came past on Saturday, his grand-
daughter said ; and though he had been ailing for
a day or two, the old man ordered his horse, and
escorted the Empress of Austria across the Park.
“Ves,†he said, “I saw them all.— There was
Lord , be came and spoke to me, and I asked
how his son was — nice boy he was —used to be
often at Althorp. He said he was in Ireland.
And Squire B come and spoke to me—Ah
yes! they all know me. Last time the Prince of
Wales was here, he came up to see me — but I was
out.â€
And the fine cheery old face lights up at the
remembrance of all these little attentions. I told
him I had never seen a heronry before, and he
beamed again.
“Ah! now,†he said, “I am pleased they’ve
gone back there! At one time I was afraid as
they’d all go away. They took to building in a
little spinney close down here in Holdenby fields:
but I wasn’t going to stand that—soI took a man
er two, and pulled every one of their nests right
down; and then they went back to the old place.
I was glad, for they’ve built there for between two
hundred and three hundred years.â€
He told us that the herons go out at night in
long lines, two and two, and rob the fish ponds and
the shallows for miles round — standing motionless
under the hedges waiting for the favorable hour to
begin, like a regiment of soldiers: and before
morning they came home with their pouches
crammed with fish and
deer under the great trees feeding up to the sunset ;
and overhead stream up countless thousands of
rooks and their attendant jackdaws. Away to
the west, from out of the eye of the setting sun,
they come, seemingly an interminable line ever
growing and increasing; and then when they
settle down in the trees on the knolls above the
house, what a sea of sound their voices make, till
night falls and quiets
eels. One he said
‘brought home an eel
hook and well besides
the eel, and got himself
hooked up in the trees
by it, and would have
starved to death had not
the keepers climbed up
and released him.
But now the sun is
getting low, and we turn
homewards across the
Park, past the herds of
END OF A LANE IN BRINGTON.
them.
Up the avenue the
church tower over the
Washington graves
glows against the bright
evening sky: and as we
near home childien’s
voices playing round the
old Market Cross by
the Rectory gates, rise
shrill and clear, and we
are once more in the
work-a-day world.
SONGS OF PRAISES. ee
cn
SONGS OF PRAISES.
By Mrs, A. D. T. WHITNEY.
N a dried old mow, that was once, alas!
A living glory of waving grass,
A cricket made merry one winter’s day,
And answered me this, in a wondrous way,
When I cried, half sharply, “ Thou poor old thing!
How canst thou sit in the dark and sing,
While for all thy pleasure of youth thou starv-
est?â€
— “I’m the voice of praise that came in with the
harvest !â€
1 went away to the silent wood, °
And down in the deep, brown solitude,
Where notlaing blossomed, and nothing stirred,
Up rose the note of a little bird,
‘Why carollest thou in the death of the year,
Where nobody travelleth by to hear?â€
— “I sing to God, though there be no comer,
Praise for the past, and the promise of summer!â€
I stopped by the brook that, overglassed
With icy sheathing, seemed prisoned fast ;
Yet there whispered up a continual song,
From the life underneath that urged along,
“© blind little brook, that canst not know
Whither thou runnest, why chantest so?â€
— “I don’t know what I may find or be,
But I’m praising for this: I am going to see!â€
(eee eRSO: Ur BAG OnE.
By GrEorGE FOSTER BARNES,
LACED in the broad
light of our practical
times, the history of
those old days when
the Troubadours
flourished seems like
a story, or, as Na-
poleon would have
said, “a fable agreed
upon.â€
The Troubadours
were men who made
the composition and
recitation of poetry
a profession. Many
of them were actors,
and mimics, and jug-
glers, and the pro-
fession was at one time a very lucrative one, its
members frequently retiring from business loaded
with gold and valuable goods given them by the
weakthy people whom they had amused. An old
song relates how one of them was paid from the
king’s own long purse with much gold and “ white
monie.â€
To be a Troubadour then, was to be a juggler,
a poet, a musician, a master of dancing, a conjurer,
a wrestler, a performer of sleight-of-hand, a boxer,
and a trainer of animals. Their variety of accom-
plishments is indicated by the figures on the front
of a chapel in France, erected by their united
contributions. It was consecrated in September,
1335. One of the figures represented a Trouba-~
dour, one a minstrel, and one'a juggler, “each
with his various instruments.†Like others occu-
pied in a trade or profession at that time and
since, they bound themselves .into one great soci-
ety, or “trade union ;†and we are told that they
had aking — It is certain that they often travelled
in companies from place to place in search of
BEFORE THE CASTLE
GATES AT NIGHTFALL.
aN
ust
THE TROUBADOURS.
employment , and often in midwinter they ap-
peared before the castle gates at nightfall, a group
of crimson, and violet, and velvet-black, relieved
against the shadowed snow.
The richer class of Troubadours did not travel
at this season. They remained at home during
47
well pounded. It is related of one that while
returning from a visit to a certain lord, having
reached a deep and dangerous forest, he was sud-
denly set upon by thieves who haunted these gloomy
shades. They took from him his horse, his
money, and even his clothing, and were about to
THE TROUBADOUR SINGING TO THE THIEVES.
the winter and composed, or learned new verses,
and thus prepared themselves for a fresh cam-
paign; and with the first upspringing of the grass
they came forth like song birds, flocking joyously
from city to city, from castle to castle, with their
flutes and rebecs, their wonderful stories of Ar-
thur’s Round Table, of wild horses of the forest
bearing fair maidens lashed to their backs forever,
of towers dragon-guarded.
The life of the wandering Troubadour must
needs have been one of romance and adventure.
Not infrequently did he picture to the life in his
lyric some well-known character of the day and
the neighborhood ; and it followed that if the hero
of the song or recital was of a revengeful nature,
the Troubadour was frequently waylaid and
kill him, when the captive Troubadour begged to
be allowed to sing one more song before he died.
Obtaining consent, he began to sing most melodi-
ously in praise of thievery and of these particular
thieves, whom he so delighted with his sweet
compliments and admiration that they “ returned
him his horse, his money, and everything they
had taken from him!â€
But there were often pleasanter scenes “ under
the greenwood tree.†Picture to yourself a com-
pany of the merry singers, in fantastic array,
halted beneath the broad and protecting boughs.
Can you not hear the jest go round, the free
laugh ring out, and echoing in the old woodland, as
these Troubadours, those human songsters, revel in
the joy of their out-of-door life, and breathing the
48 THE TROUBADOURS.
healthful airs of the forest? What is the world
of war and loss, burning castles and tumbling
thrones, to them? What but so much material for
moving, thrilling song ?
These roving minstrels were often of great
secret service to armies in time of war, for they
could travel where others could not, and many
were the momentous missions they undertook. The
Troubadour was always free to go and come,
a welcome guest, a jolly good fellow. The camp
fires might be burning, armies moving from base
to base, but amid the tramp of marching men
and the shifting of military posts he was secure
in his privilege as a neutral person. Asa
song, the turning of three somersaults, or a new
jest was sufficient password to hostile camps,
it naturally followed that he should.often be
employed as a spy or messenger, penetrating
outer lines, and into castles whose gates were .
closed by armed men. Imagine him spirit-
edly reciting some heroic tale to a group of
rough and iron-clad warriors — restless soldiers
of tortune, who listen to him with savage in-
terest, clinking their swords as an accompani-
ment to his song. While they make jokes at
his expense they house and feed him. They
reward him with curious trinkets taken in bat-
tle, a quaint ring, or ancient bracelet, a gem-
crusted drinking-cup, which serves to swell
his possessions. But the cunning Trouba-
dour takes the number of theirspears. He
spies the secret gates
where the men go in
and out at night bear-
ing supplies of pro-
visions and arms. He
learns the plans for to-
morrow’s foraging. In
short, a song, a simple
story, a few amusing
tricks, secretly turns
the tide of battle, set-
tles the fate of kings
and queens.
Among the many
unhappy queens of
merry England, Elea-
nora of Aquitaine stands in her place. Her
reign was full of trouble and misfortune, although
Henry the Second was a most peace-loving king of
his time. Referring to her ambitious and captive
son, Richard Coeur de Lion, who, by the way, was
a Troubadour, she describes herself in one of her
letters to the Pope: “ Eveanora, by the wrath of
God, Queen of England,â€
Well, the turbulence of her reign was often due
to the war songs of Troubadours; for if ever
it occurred that her impetuous sons were inclined
to a season of peace, the Troubadours always
broke into their retirement with passionate and
boastful sezsons which urged them to revolt and
ey
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.
battle. As the Marseilaise has resounded in the
streets of Paris in our time, inspiring men and
women with feelings of enthusiasm and reckless
THE TROUBADOTRS. 49
valor, so certain subtle recitations of the minstrels
roused the insurgent sons of Eleanora to rebellion
and deeds of blood. The peace of a kingdom, the
ties of kindred, the affairs of state, were over-
turned by a mere song. Chief of these political
France, and Spain, exciting passion, distrust, and
hatred among high and low. So skilful was
he in creating discord and manipulating intrigue,
that Dante fittingly assigned him a place in the
Inferno. Eleanora herself was the granddaughter
IN THE REIGN OF ELEANOR OF PROVENCE.
Troubadours, and a personal friend of these war-
like sons of Eleanora, was the Baron Bertrand
de Bosn. This French nobleman was a_ born
revolutionist, impetuous, violent, and his verses
on the lips of Troubadours, penetrated England,
of one of the earliest Troubadours, whose works
have reached down to our day; and many of the
songs of that day are addressed to her. One
of her Troubadour train, after a life of devotion to
poetry and romance, became a monk and ended
50 THE TROUBADOURS,
his days amid the sober scenes and subduing
influences of an abbey in the Limousin.
Retiring from the world into the bosom of the
Church, seems to have been a favorite closing act
among the Troubadours, Many of them did so from
ignoble or selfish motives, but some were actuated
by religious convictions, no doubt. Great ladies,
also, whose beauty had been made famous by the
Troubadours, frequently sought in the end, peace-
ful nunneries from which they never came forth
again.
Many of the productions of the Troubadours con-
tained from fifteen to twenty thousand verses, and
therefore required much time in the delivery, es-
pecially as they were accompanied by music.
When one performer became weary another
took his place, and thus continued the linked
sweetness to an almost
endless length. The
Troubadour was a reformer
of manners and the creator
of many pleasing offices,
some of which exist to
this day. For instance:
In the reign of Eleanor
of Provence, queen of
England, we have our first
glimpse of a poet-laureate ;
and the office since be-
come so glorious with
song, undoubtedly sprungâ€
out of the literary tastes
of the Provencal queen,
who was herself a singer,
and had been surrounded
in her youth by Trouba-
dours and minstrels. But
this kindly harboring of
Troubadours came near
being the death of the king,
her husband; for one night a gentleman known
as “a mad poet†was so well used in the hall
that he got into high spirits and amused the royal
household by “joculating for their entertainment,
and singing some choice minstrelsy.†But he
seems all the while to have had another end in
view, for at a convenient moment he crept into
the king’s bedchamber armed with a very sharp
knife which he plunged into the royal couch. For-
tunately the king was not there, and although the
&
mad poet called loudly for Henry, demanding that
he show himself and be killed, the search was in
vain. The poor poet had to pay for this attempt,
being executed at Coventry.
For many years the Troubadours continued
to sing at ancient windows and in lordly halls,
But their numbers gradually grew less, until few
were left of all that happy profession. As times
grew more peaceful, and pleasa ter occupations
increased, the romance of chivalry, the wild leg-
endry of feudal courts and fields waned in inter-
est for the people, until only an occasional stroller
was seen no more in princely dress, slowly travel-
ling along some lonely road in quest of such
warmth or comfort as a charitable or inquisitive
person might give him by listening to his worn-out
songs. Instead of receiving a cloak of cloth of sil-
THE LAST MINSTREL,
ver inwoven with gold as a reward, he was content
with a bed of straw. There is much pathos in
those lines of Walter Scott which describe the last
minstrel as forsaken by all except an orphan boy
The bigots of the iron time
Had called his harmless art a crime.
A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to doors
And tuned to please a peasant’s ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.
AN ARAPAHOE BABY CARRIAGE.
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL, FOR, INDIAN PUPPIES.
By MarGarReET SIDNEY.
ENTURIES of wrong
often right themselves
to longer blind the eyes
of “the powers that be.â€
And poetic justice is sat-
isfied when retribution
is meted out from the
long garnering of silent
abuses. Sometimes we
can afford to wait for these slow processes in
the which Justice comes tardily to herself. In our
backward glance over our dealings as new-comers
with our Indian brethren, the owners of our boasted
possession — this goodly land, we exclaim: “ Why
was Justice so slow to take the sword herself?â€
That will do for the past. Having awaked and
‘turned our faces toward the light, we only ask
now, “What can we do for the Indian to requite
him?â€
It is some comfort to know that much has been
done for him. That into the seething turmoil of
many political problems, and the almost over-
whelming mass of matter, great and small, that
by the refusal of scalesâ€
clogs the Congressional wheels, has penetrated the
thin blade of a “This do; for the Lord requireth
it at thy hand.â€
So now the Indian stands at our right hand,.
not so much as a suppliant, but a brother demand-
ing his rights; and having awaked to our duty, we
gladly, yet with considerable perplexity as to the
how, cast about in our minds what and how to re-.
quite.
Brave men have worked at the problem long,
Women as brave, have struggled on and prayed.
Their work stands before us all as monuments of
wonder in the face of everything but despair.
“The Carlisle School for the education of Indian
youth†is one of these huge endeavors success-
fully wrought out. For the young people and
the family, this volume gives space to a de-
scription, with authentic pictures, of its inception,
its working force, its methods and plans, that
by this study of what has been done, what is still
being achieved, and what the future is to bring,
we may all come somewhat more understandingly
to a clearer idea of the claims of the Indian upom
us. 5 I
How did the school begin? In 1875, some
Indian prisoners were sent for various misdemean-
CAPT. R. H. PRATT.
ors from the Indian Territory as prisoners to
Florida. By order of General Sheridan, the War
Department placed R. H. Pratt,
ist Lieutenant Tenth U. S.
Cavalry over them as superin- ©
tendent. They located in the
sleepy Spanish town St. Augus-
tine. Lieutenant Pratt, with
the Christian energy that all
of us who know him recognize
‘as one grand element of his
success in this chosen life-work,
immediately set to work with
a zeal unparalleled, on this
most difficult problem, “How
furnish mental knowledge and
industrial training at one and
the same time, to these down- ©
trodden creatures ? â€
A record of this part of the
work would be intensely inter-
-esting; how he enlisted the sympathy and aid
of several ladies wintering in St. Augustine,
52 THE CARLIISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS.
who volunteered to help teach the Indians;
how he seized the meagre opportunities afforded
to train them industrially, by setting them to
pick oranges, grub the land, to boat pine logs
and construct out of them log huts, that they
might learn how to replace their skin tepes; how
every chance to teach them practical methods of
self-support was most eagerly grasped. But the
space is short, and Carlisle beckonsus on. Suffice
it to say that a marked success was his, resulting
in the sending to General Armstrong, at Hampton
Institute, first seventeen pupils, then fifty-two more,
including girls. Then Lieutenant Pratt proposed
to the Interior and War Departments to undertake
the education of two hundred and fifty to three
hundred children at the old military Barracks at
Carlisle, Pa., which was accepted.
This was the beginning of the Carlisle School
which opened on the first of November, 1879, with
one hundred and forty-seven students.
Now, then, what and where were “ the Old Bar-
racks?â€
The Old Barracks were first erected and occupied
as a prison for the Hessian troops captured by
Washington at Trenton in 1776. The old Guard
House built at the time by these Hessian prison-
ers still remains. Other buildings, in the shape
of those now standing, were erected during the
Florida War, 1835-36, remaining until 1863, when
THE DINING-ROOM.
they were burnt by Fitz Hugh Lee, who then
shelled the town of Carlisle. In 1864-65 they
THE GLUTTON.
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS.
were rebuilt by the Government, and occupied
till 1872 as a training school for cavalry, when
they were left unoccupied until the opening of
the Indian school in 1879. For many years
before the war they were occupied as a training
school and depot for instructing soldiers in the art
ot war, whose principal duty was to fight Indians !
(Poetic Justice takes grim satisfaction in this over-
turning of the Old Barracks.) The buildings stand
to the west of the town of Carlisle, occupying the
sides of a square used for parade ground, etc.,
one being occupied by the superintendent and his
53
ness the workings of the Carlisle School. The
the day was raw and chill, but our reception was of
sunniest and most cheering description. As our
party of fifty-four drew up in carriages, barges,
stages, and various kinds of vehicles pressed into
duty for the occasion, before the door, the whole
atmosphere, eloquent with its old historic mem-
ories, seemed to ring with new life, and we forgot
cold, and snow, and sleet, and stepped in, glad as
birds at harbinger of spring. Truly springtime of ~
hope and promise is budding for the poor Indian,
thought we. After paying our greeting to the
INDIAN GIRLS FROM TEN TRIBES.— GIRLS’ QUARTERS AND PAVILION BAND STAND.
staff, another by teachers and female pupils’ dor-
mitories, a third as dormitory for the boys.
Other buildings have been either converted from
old ones or newly built to meet the needs for
chapel, infirmary, refectory, schoolhouse, gymna-
sium, trade-schools, etc. So much for the buildings.
One portion of one of the large number only can
be given here, with an interesting group of girls
seated on the lawn.
It was on a cold, snowy day in March, 1883,
that, responsive to an invitation from Secretary
Teller, my husband and I joined the Congressional
party of Senators and Members going with their
wives, daughters and a few invited guests, to wit-
superintendent and his wife, and those of the in-
structors who were at leisure, everything was
delightfully informal, and we were allowed free
range to observe, criticise, and admire. Bright-
faced, earnest-eyed young creatures met us on
every hand; girls with a sweet, ladylike demeanor,
boys respectful, quiet and manly. I scanned them
closely, to catch the stolidity and habitual dulness
of the down-trodden Indian, but except in very
rare cases, found only a hopefulness, and a look
ing forth of soul, to meet my gaze. It seemed to-
say to me, “ Wait! we will yet awake and repay all
that is being done for us.â€
There was a most delightful lunch served by
54
the deft hands of a corps of Indian girls. Then
we began the much more delightful tour of inspec-
tion.
The dining-room looked very bright and cheer-
ful as we passed in, with its neat table appoint-
ments, and tidy, white-aproned young girls as
waitresses. What a revelation to all womanly
instincts is this one room with its duties apper-
taining, to a mind running wild on the plains, and
knowing nothing of the sweet home-y-ness of
daily life.
As the children come from the plains into the
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS.
the knowledge they long for can never be theirs.
The presence of their loved leader is with them,
sustaining and reassuring. How can they be
afraid?
No child comes unwillingly to Carlisle. The
only difficulty to contend with in the whole matter
is the inadequate means to bring the large num-
ber, ready and waiting, into the civilization that
instruction by competent teachers alone can supply.
When the appropriation is what it should be, so
that an education lies within the reach of every
Indian child, our consciences will be somewhat
NAVAJOS IN NATIVE DRESS,
mew atmosphere of school and family life, the
world seems suddenly to assume limitless possibil-
ities of terror. They huddle on the lawns in their
blankets, bone necklaces, skin moccasons and other
toggery of their native life, going to Mother Nature
for comfort in, and explanation of, this new extrem-
ity. A house to their eyes seems to beckon into
such a region of confinement, that for the first few
wild moments, life on the boundless plain, chasing
animals about as civilized as themselves, appears
the only delightful thing on earth.
The group here represented, is a quiet, self-con-
trolled one, evidently realizing that by each one
must be sturdy acceptance of offered good, else
freer of burdens concerning them. For only by
an education im the best sense of the word, meaning
that introduction into knowledge of practical influ-
ence in home training, practical experience in all
manual trades, tilling of the land, etc, and practi-
cal rooting and grounding in at least rudimentary
mental acquirements, till they are like edged tools,
simple it may be, but ready for action, can the
Indian be converted from his low savage condi-
tion, and we be released from the care of him.
To become self-supporting is the first advance
that nation or individual makes toward civilization.
Hence any working at the problem of the Indian
question of to-day, in any other way than the first
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS. 55
simple proposition, that man, as a reasonable being
must work if he would live, is both sentimental
and useless. Methods of work must then be laid
before the subject for civilization; and avenues
toward trades of all sorts, freely opened as to any
ether specimen of humanity in our land, with a right
to practice such wherever he please, and the most of
our part in the matter will have been accomplished.
The Indian will take care of himself. We shall
hear very little of the terrible atmosphere now
clinging to him. To thoughtful minds who have
most broadly and conscientiously grasped the
situation, the “terrible classes� now swarming in
communistic secret strongholds throughout our
great city-centres, are infinitely more to be dreaded
than the educated Indian,
Here are some of the faces of “our boys and
girls,†as they lovingly call them at Carlisle. Most
of them have probably been but a few months
surrounded by the atmosphere of happy home and
school life; many probably first entering in the
abject state of terror before described; now in
greater terror at the prospect of being recalled
to their reservations when school-life ends. They
do not look very dangerous, do they? Ah! could
you see and talk with them, and watch the bright
expression, the earnest purpose, the pathetic grati-
tude, it might enlighten you a bit, and thereby
cause a wholesome revolution in your pet theory
on the subject.
The bakery at Carlisle affords a most interest-
THE INDIAN BAKERS,
ing practical refutation of the statement that the
Indian is incapable of using knowledge to any
benefit to his fellows. Whoever can turn out such
good bread as we saw with our own eyes, and
“OUR BOYS AND GIRLS,â€
tasted and enjoyed with our own mouths, is a
real benefactor to the human race. It shamed
much that we put on our family
tables as the best result of Dinah’s
or Norah’s kitchen administration.
It was so pure and white and
sweet — well-baked and conscien-
tiously kneaded ; truly a most im-
portant proof of the Indian’s
adaptability to domestic duties.
Does it not make you want some
to see it in the picture?
An Arapahoe boy has charge
of the bakery; and assisted by a
Sioux and a Pawnee, bakes nearly
two barrels of flour into the loaves,
as you see in accompanying cut,
every forenoon of the week, with
the exception of Sunday. After-
noons these boys spend in the schoolroom.
Mental discipline and manual labor are given
56
their proper places at Carlisle. No encroachments
on the other’s rights is allowed either, by the wise ad-
ministration at the head of affairs there. The chil-
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS.
tact that brings out the best in the Indian charac
ter, constantly used by the man who is working
out the daily problem of their elevation. Edgar
Fire Thunder, a bright, in-
teresting boy, was making us
a speech of welcome, and also
describing his entrance into,
and life at the school. All
was going on well; guests were
pleased with his sturdy, self-
possessed manner, and inter-
ested inhis manly words. Sud-
denly poor Edgar, like many
another in similar position,
found that the graceful wind-
ing-up of his speech had treach-
erously forsaken him. All his
pleasing unconsciousness was
gone, leaving a mild kind of
stage fright. How we sym-
THE TIN SHOP,
dren are taught what they will use when going out
from the school. In all cases, the training is done
patiently, systematically, sensibly and thoroughly.
It is a happy, busy place, where the individuality
of each child is brought out healthfully ; his or her
bent of mind carefully studied, and its wants pro-
vided for. If a boy shows a taste for wagon-
making, he is allowed to follow it, and not thrust
into the tin shop, where, like many another boy
obliged to pursue a given calling against his will,
he might turn out stupid and spoil a very genius
for producing wagons.
The wagon shop at Carlisle has twelve appren-
tices constantly employed making wagons for the
Indian service; sending them into nearly every
Territory, even to Washington Territory and Ore-
gon. Captain Pratt writes me: “ During my recent
trip to the West, I saw quite a number of our
wagons in use by the Government and the Indians,
and rode nearly two hundred miles in one.†[We
know the good Captain enjoyed that ride more than
the pleasure afforded by the most luxuriously
appointed car on the whole Pacific route !]
Speaking of the thoroughness of the training
given at Carlisle, one little incident which deeply
interested us all, will serve as fitting illustration ;
also giving some faint idea of the kind, delicate
pathized with the poor fellow,
and hung on his forlorn
efforts to recover the cue,
Captain Pratt stood patiently waiting at the side
of the room for the lad to recover himself ; and as
Edgar became at last still and hopeless, like a
stranded thing on the tide of endeavor, there broke
out such a kind, cheery voice, that it touched
every heart.
“Edgar works in
the blacksmith’s
shop,†the voice
said; “now if he
will go to the
shop, and put on
his working suit,
the Secretary,
Senators and par-
ty will meet him
there to see him.
weld an axle in
one heat.â€
The boy’s face
fairly glowed.
Chagrin and
hopeless depres- POH NAVAIG.
sion forsook him, x
and he lifted up his head with restored manliness,
and strode out, again his sturdy little self. I
never saw such a kindly thing more delicately
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS. 57
done, and I know I express the feelings of the
company, when I say, that to us all it was a spon-
taneous proof of the
spirit of Carlisle
School. It is only
proper to add that the
party did respond to
the invitation, Senator
Logan saying after-
ward that he was sure
the boy could do that,
for he had seen him.
The tin shop gives
work to fourteen ap-
prentices. It is a
most interesting de-
partment. The arti-
cles are strong and
well-made, and of
varied description.
My tiny coffee-pot will
often, as I make the
“fireside cup o’ coffee
for two,†take us back to the day at Carlisle, and
brighten the evening talk in the firelight.
Last year, from the tin shop, were sent out over
fifteen thousand articles, also seven tons of stove-
pipe; all despatched to the agencies for the use of
the Indians. No finer buckets, coffee-boilers
and pans, I presume, are made than those turned
out by some of the Indian boys.
The carpenter shop has twelve apprentices,
and has charge of the general repairs and con-
struction of new buildings at the school. Under
supervision of the carpenter, the large hospital
building was built by Indian boys.
The hospital and care of the sick is under the
charge of Doctor O. G. Given, of Washington,
Iowa, an intelligent, Christian man, with genial,
large-hearted benevolence expressed in every fea-
ture. When pupils are taken sick, they are at
once separated from their fellows and placed in
the hospital. ’
The shoe shop is constantly kept busy in manu-
facturing and repairing boots and shoes for the
four hundred and thirty-three pupils of the school.
The harness shop turns out a very large propor-
tion of the harness required by the Indian depart-
ment for the use of agencies and Indians.
The sewing department was a most interesting
MANUELITO CHOW.
feature, particularly to us matrons, who walked
around among the girls, inspecting the neatly
mended clothing, and the piles of new garments.
All of the girls’ clothing, and the boys’ underwear,
are manufactured mostly by the Indian girls, under
the instruction of Mrs. Worthington.
The laundry, with its methodical appliances and
nice arrangement, also detained us some time, to
examine closely the various sorts of work executed
by the strong, tidy Indian girls, who take hold of
this kind of work with an alacrity that shows
they are waking up to the truth of the statement,
“ Cleanliness is next to godliness.â€
Each mechanical branch is under the super-
3
WHITE BUFFALO (CHEYENNE).
intendence of a practical workman; the instruc-
tion, therefore, is not at all vague, and mterely
theoretical, but thoroughly practical in every detail.
Carlisle School has also a fine farm of one hun-
dred and fifty-seven acres, worked by the vupils
oi
under the training of Mr. Amos Miller, an experi-
enced farmer. The crops raised here compare
Mecainne ee
OSAGE BOYS.
favorably with those of the best neighboring farms.
About one half of the pupils are placed out dur-
ing the summer vacation in the families of farmers,
where they learn, by practical experience, the details
of agriculture and civilized life. This feature of
the school life has been productive of the best
results.
I wish that space would allow me to quote from
the letters in the Aforning Star, the paper pub-
lished by the Indian boysat Carlisle. These letters
are written by pupils living in different families
through the long summer vacation, that they may
learn to put their knowledge in domestic and farm
matters to the proof, while they are in positions to
acquire, through association with practical teach-
ers, many valuable additions to their store of
knowledge. They are graphic, ambitious, and of
excellent spirit, often funny, from the marked
individuality of the writer, and the violent strug-
8 THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS.
gle to get the best of the English language. But
not even one of the letters may be crowded in,
for magazine limits must be banded with the stern
fiat of necessity, and this article already is swell-
ing toward its uttermost bound.
The exercise, drilling and mental discipline of
the various school departments afforded us intense
pleasure. Particularly as we noticed a marked
absence of that disagreeable feature of most school
exhibitions —the “show system.†It was not
with any desire to parade knowledge that pupils
exhibited on the platform and before the black-
board what they knew. It was the conscientious
wish to show their methods of study; to display
to the guests the workings of the different minds
to be disciplined. Often impromptu questions and
IRON, NORTHERN ARAPAHCâ„¢
diversions to the train of reasoning would be pre-
sented to the pupil, to disclose the trend of his or
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS,
her mind, and to ascertain if the knowledge were
real or only superficial. The first thing with these
teachers seemed to be to make the pupil grasp the
idea, and work at it until it was understood. In
all cases this appeared to be thoroughly striven
for before the second step should be taken. I
attribute to this sensible, conscientious care, the
well-grounding in the rudiments of knowledge that
the Carlisle children are receiving. And the Insti-
tution is to be congratulated in the possession of
such acompetent, painstaking and devoted instruc-
tor as Miss Carrie M. Semple. She was educated
at the Western Female College, Cincinnati; for
years connected with the work of instructing the
Freedmen of the South at Fiske University, also
superintendent of the public schools at St. Augus-
tine, Florida.
I wish I could give space to mention individu-
ally the different teachers of this department of
the school life—the intellectual training. I en-
joyed conversation with many of them, and caught
never-to-be-forgotten glimpses of their devotion and
adaptation to the cause. But the length of list
forbids.
There are at present at Carlisle School four
hundred and thirty-three pupils, one hundred and
sixty of whom are girls, representing thirty-six
tribes.
We will glance at some of these pupils in their
native dress. Here is White Buffalo, a youth of
eighteen years of age, with naturally gray hair,
Tom Navajo, Iron, Northern Arapahoe, and Man-
uelito Chow, son of the former great chief of the
Navajos, Manuelito.
The group of boys given represents six Osage
Indians. All of them have good, clear faces, while
the little fellow down in lower left corner might be
“our boy†in some cultivated home-circle, as far
as bright, lovable appearance goes.
Susie is the sole representative of her tribe, the
Delawares or Leni, who were parties to the cele-
brated treaty with William Penn. They have
been bought out, fought out, and driven out, from
one point to another as the Anglo-Saxon forced
his way across the country, until at present there
remains a mere handful in the southern part of
the Indian Territory. Susie is an exceptionally
bright child, with a sweet voice, and is a member
of the school choir. The doll (which certainly
seems possessed with ambition to be a model of
59
deportment) was a gift through that good friend to
the school, Miss Susan Longstreth, of Philadel-
phia.
Some two weeks after my return to Boston, I
was very much touched by the reception of a pack-
age of sketches which some of the Carlisle pupils
had executed for me. Out of a generous number,
I am compelled to select but three. So I give
Otto Zotom’s idea of a battle with United States
troops. Otto, of course, had his patriotic duty to
his own tribe to perform, yet he is very generous
SUSIE AND HER DOLL.
to his white brethren. The hills seem to trouble
him somewhat, his rules on perspective not being
so thoroughly acquired during his few months’ so-
journ at the school as to be wholly at his com-
mand. Yet he gets over it very well, and shows an
original dash and force, born of his extremity.
It is a singular fact that the Indian children un-
der education and the influence of family life are
very averse to fighting. In their reachings after
civilization, there is a recoil from the revenge,
brutality and love of conquest attendant upon war.
In their letters, in their talk, in their spirit, more
60
than all, is exhibited a desire to live and learn in
peace with all. Their thirst is for knowledge.
IN PURSUIT OF U. S. TROOPS.
This Otto Zotom, a
young Kiowa, is a very
bright, promising boy.
He was sent to Carlisle
by his brother, now a
deacon in the Episcopal
Church, and a missionary
in the Indian country,
but formerly a prisoner
under the care of Captain
Pratt, at Fort Marion
(San Marco), Florida.
A study of horses, by
Otto, is interesting as
showing the development of ideas as regards pose
and proportions of equine anatomy, as they arise
naturally to the self-tutored mind of an Indian
boy, while his portrayal of an engagement with
a buffalo enlists our sympathies for the poor “ King
of the Plains.†Otto in his extreme generosity
wishes every one engaged in the encounter to en-
joy a shot that tells ; so that the glory of the whole
thing is most satisfying. The young artist has a
true love for his pencil, and such a painstaking in-
dustry that the world may yet hear from the
Indian boy at Carlisle. All success to him —
young Otto Zotom !
In closing this meagre account of Carlisle School
and its workings, so different from what I long to
give, I can only express the earnest wish that
every reader of this volume could visit and
THE CARLISLE SCHOOL FOR INDIAN PUPILS.
see the institution for themselves. If ever yous
wanderings call you in the vicinity of the quiet
town, grasp the opportunity, I beg of you. You
will never regret it. You may be sure of a cordial
welcome, a capital chance to inspect and criticise,
and you will come away enlightened on many
points. Such visits are worth hundreds of maga-
zine articles and countless letters from enthusiastic
friends. “Seeing zs believing,†now as it has ever
been.
I am glad to announce that the Fair under the
auspices of Mrs. J. Huntington Wolcott and her
corps of young ladies in Boston has netted for
Carlisle the grand sum of two thousand dollars.
On the strength of it, Captain Pratt writes me that
he expects to undertake the care of five boys and
five girls from the Pueblo village of Isleta, N. M.
2, Think of it! Ten chil-
i dren rescued by these
noble, womanly efforts,
from savage degradation
to grow up into good
citizenship.
How many other fairs
can be held? 1f we can-
not raise two thousand
dollars to educate ten, we
may gather in two hun-
dred dollars; and who
can estimate the influence
of one Indan child af
HORSES IN MOTION.
AN INDIAN BOY’S DRAWINGS. — A BUFFALO HUNT.
Carlisle? The hearts of his tribe go with him, and
are awakened to gratitude, and the cementing of
“WON'T TAKE A BAF.†ey
friendly ties with our Government. Wars will be The years speed us on, taking many opportunities
avoided; peace and good-will toward those who for good in their relentless grasp. Shall we resign
¥ecognize in their children faculties capable of this idly ?—the effort to aid in the bringing up of
cultivation toward the best and truest things, will the Indian children and youth toward the light a
be the inevitable result. loving Creator designed for all?
“WON’T TAKE A BAFF,â€
By MARGARET EYTINGE.
O the brook in the green meadow dancing,
The tree-shaded, grass-bordered brook,
For a bath in its cool, limpid water,
Old Dinah the baby boy took.
She drew off his cunning wee stockings,
Unbuttoned each dainty pink shoe,
Untied the white slip and small apron,
And loosened the petticoats, too.
And while Master Blue Eyes undressing,
She told him in quaintest of words
Of the showers that came to the flowers,
Of the rills that were baths for the birds,
And she said, “Dis yere sweetest of babies,
W’en he’s washed, jess as hansum ’1l be
As any red, yaller or blue bird :
Dat ebber singed up in a tree.
‘An’ sweeter den rosies an’ lilies,
Or wiolets eder, I guess—â€
When away flew the mischievous darling,
In the scantiest kind of a dress.
“Don’t care if the birdies an’ fowers,â€
He shouted, with clear, ringing laugh,
“Wash ’eir hands an’ 'eir faces forebber
An’ ebber, me won’t take a baffâ€â€™
62
MR. ANY-TIME THE SPANIARD.
MR. ANY-TIME THE SPANIARD.
By H. H.
HAVE a friend whose reply generally is, when
you ask him to doa thing: “Oh, yes, that can
be done any time.â€
He is not in the least unwilling to do things. He
is not obstinate about admitting that the things ought
to be done, but his first instinctive impulse in regard
to almost everything in life is to put it off a little.
If you remonstrate with him, he has a most exas-
perating proverb on his tongue’s end, and he is
never tired of quoting it: “There is luck in leisure.â€
Do what you will, you can’t make him see that this
proverb is aimed at people who hurry unwisely; not
:n the least at people who are simply prompt. As if
headlong haste and quiet, energetic promptitude were
sn the least like each other.
We call Mr. Any-Time the Spaniard, because it is
well known that the Spaniard’s rule of life is, ‘‘ Never
do to-day that which can be put off till to-morrow.â€
Even into the form of a historical proverb, the record
of this national trait of the Spanish people had crys-
tallized many years ago. Even the Spanish people
themselves say sarcastically, “‘Succors of Spain: late
or never.â€
But says Mr. Any-Time, ‘“‘ What is the use of being
in such a hurry? Oh, do be quiet, can’t you! Let’s
take a little comfort ;’’ and then he settles back in
his chair and looks at you with such a twinkle in his
eyes that you half forgive him for his laziness. That
is one thing to be said for lazy people. They are al-
most always good-natured.
Then we preach a little sermon to him, and the
sermon has four heads; four good reasons why we
ought to do things promptly.
Firstly, we say to him, “ How dost thou know, O
lazy Spaniard, that thou canst do this thing at any
other time than the present? Many things may pre-
vent — sickness, thine own or thy friends’— business,
forgetfulness, weather, climate ; there is no counting
up all the things which happen, and which hinder our
doing the things we have planned to do, but have put
off doing.â€
Secondly, “There is another truth, O lazy Mr.
Any-Time, each day, each hour, each minute, has its
own thing to be done —its own duty. If one singie
thing is put off, that thing will have to be crowded
into the day, or the hour, or the minute which be-
longed to something else; and then neither thing will
be well done.
Thirdly, “If it caz be done now; that alone is
reason enough for doing it now; that alone is
enough to prove that now. is the natural time,
the proper time for it. Everything has its own natu-
ral time to be done, just as flowers have their natural
time to blossom, and fruits have their natural time to
ripe and fall. F
Just suppose for a minute that such things should
get into the way of saying, “ Any time!†That the
grains should say, “ Oh, we can get ripe any day,â€
and should go on, putting it off and putting it off all
through July and August, and September, and Ooto-
ber; for when people once begin to put off, there
is no knowing what will stop them — until, all of a
sudden, some day a sharp frost should: come and
kill every grass-blade throughout the country. What
would we do for hay, then, I wonder! Why, half
the poor horses and cows would starve, and all because
the lazy grains said they could get ripe “ any time.â€
Suppose strawberries or apples should take it into
their heads to say the same thing. Wouldn’t we get
out of patience going, day after day, looking for some
ripe enough to eat? And wouldn’t the summer be
gone before they knew it? and all the time be wasted
that the vines and the trees had spent putting out
their leaves and blossoms, which had not come to
fruit? And wouldn’t the whole world and every-
body’s plan of living be thrown into confusion if
such things were to happen?
Luckily no such thing is possible in this orderly
earth, which God has made with a fixed time for
everything ; even for the blossoming of the tiniest little
flower, and for the ripening of the smallest berry that
was ever seen. Nobody ever heard the words “any
timeâ€â€™ from anything in this world except human
beings.
Fourthly, we say to our dear Spaniard, “ Things
which are put off are very likely never to be done at
MR. ANY-TIME THE SPANIARD. 63
all. The chances are that they will be at last for-
gotten, overlooked, crowded out.
“ Any time†is no time; just as “ anybody’s workâ€
is nobody’s work, and never gets attended to, or if it
is done at all, isn’t half done.
And after we have preached through our little ser-
mon with its four heads, then we sum it all up, and
add that the best of all reasons for never saying a
thing can be done “ any time†is that, besides being
a shiftless and lazy phrase, it is a disgraceful one.
It is the badge of a thief ; the name and badge of the
worst thief that there is in the world; a thief that
never has been caught yet, and never will be; a thief
that is older than the Wandering Jew, and has been
robbing everybody ever since the world began; a
thief that scorns to steal money or goods which
money could buy; a thief that steals only one thing,
but that the most precious thing that was ever made.
It is the custom to have photographs taken of all
the notorious thiefs that are caught ; these photographs
are kept in books at the headquarters of the police,
in the great cities, and when any suspicious character
is arrested the police officers look in this book to
see if his face is among the photographs there. Many
a thief has been caught in this way when he supposed
that he was safe.
Now most of you have had a sort of photograph
of this dangerous and dreadful thief I have been
describing. But you will never guess till I tell you
where it is. It is in your writing-book, under the
letter P.
You had to write out the description of him se
many times that you all know it by heart.
“Procrastination is the thief of time.†When you
wrote that sentence over and over, you did not think
very much about it, did you? When we are young it
always seems to us as if there were so much time in
the world, it couldn’t be a very great matter if a thief
did steal some of it. But I wish I could find any
words strong enough to make you believe that long
before you are old you will feel quite differently. You
will see that there isn’t going to be half time enough
to do what you want to do; not half time enough to
learn what you want to learn; to see what you
want to see. No, not if you live to be a hundred,
not half time enough; most of all, not half time
enough to love all the dear people you love. Long
before you are old, you will feel this; and then, if
you are wise, you will come to have so great a hatred
of this master thief that you will never use — or, if
you can help it, let anybody you know use, that
favorite by-word of his, ‘ any time.â€
CHIEF OF HIS TRIBE.
ni ieee ihe
es
San
IN THE SUGAR ORCHARD,
A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.
By AMANDA B. Harris.
I there not a fascination about that word
“camp?†The very mention of it is enough
to set one wild to be off somewhere. It suggests
the freedom of all out-of-doors, which so many of
us grown folks, and all children who have the real
child nature, so often long for and delight in.
To go, as Charles Kingsley says, and “be a
savage†for awhile! To go as the trappers and
hunters go, only there should be no traps and no
guns among our belongings! To doas the explor-
ers and surveyors and naturalists do; sleep o’nights
out under the sky, and =
live on food not cooked
over civilized fires, or
aceording to the rou-
_ tine in civilized homes
under roofs in houses
over kitchen stoves!
' Would not it be rapture
now and then to try the
way of Daniel Boone
_ and of Frémont among
_ the Rocky Mountains,
of Wilson, the ornith-
ologist, and Audubon
and his wife? Or the
- modern pastoral life of
the young men who
tend the cattle and
_ sheep on the mountain
pastures of Montana and the Texan
plains? I cannot remember the time
when I did not envy the boys who used
to go off sugaring to a certain camp
under the maples a mile and a half off
on the hill. It was a privilege exclus-
ively belonging to boys; and it always appeared as
if boots had something to do with it—those stiff,
tall, thick-soled boots of theirs which came about
up to their knees, made to order by the shoemaker,
out of calf-skin or cow-hide, and by him warranted
water-tight, provided they were kept well greased,
which matter was faithfully attended to by the
wearers, who used semi-weekly to smear them with
melted tallow and rub it in till the leather would
shed water like a duck’s back. What advantages
in wearing such boots! Boys could go through
the slush and slumping drifts; but the travelling
was too bad for girls. Boys could go across lots
and climb over walls, and wade. “ Besides,†it
was no place for girls —they could eat maple
sugar at home. “Besides,†it was too far. ‘ Be-
sides,†they would get “all tanned up.†“ Be-
sides,†the boys were going to stay all night. That
ended it. Now, as for staying
all night, why that was the thing
we greatly desired to do. Oh,
just to sit in the fire-lit camp and
see the shadows come and go,
and the blaze waver and fail and
IN THEIR FOREFATHERS’ WAY.
then roll up in a great wave of brightness; and ts
know that we were off in the night; to forget every-
thing we were used to, and live in the new strange
world; and look off and see the phantoms of trees,
and the cold, glistening, frosty mist down in the val-
ley, and the solemn mountains standing back against
the sky; to hear the voices of the night, not like
65
66 A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.
summer ones, for katy-did and grasshopper and
cricket were all gone to the Land of Light, if there
is one for insects, or were swathed in their shrouds,
or hidden away, or had returned to the dust from
which they came; but there were birds, and pen-
sive small voices
would come out of
the dark, a startled
squirrel would rustle
the dead leaves, and
rabbits are known
to walk abroad be-
tween midnight and
cock-crowing; the
river rumbled like
distant thunder
away off somewhere
where echo pro-
longed the sound;
brooks under the
crust tinkled and
gurgled, and whiles,
as the Scotch say,
the ice would crack.
Voices of the night, lonesome and mystic—the
air was full of them to one who had ears to hear.
We imagined it all, like Annie Keary, who begun
her stories with “ Let us suppose,†and how, before
it was dark we would gather dry sticks and cones
and the kind of fallen pine-boughs that will snap
when you step on them—and then the people who
owned the camp would let us tend the fire, and it
would roar and send out sparks—and no doubt
smoke some, right into our eyes, and drop white
ashes on us, and burn our faces and holes in our
garments. Perhaps, too, they would let us have a
kettle or an old dinner-pot of our own — unques-
tionably they could hunt one out from some of
those dark corners overhead where there were
boards laid across for a storage place; and we
would have some partly boiled syrup put in, and
it would come to candy— flavored a little bit with
smoke and the burning on, and mixed a little with
hemlock leaflets and the crumbling ‘relics of
scorched pine needles.
We should probably find out all about sugar-
making, too, about maple-trees, and wood-craft;
and we would make our host tell us stories, Indian
stories just scary enough to thrill us and make us
afraid to look behind us if a stick crackled outside,
THE SAP-BUCKETS,
and about the early settlers, and then those neigh.
borhood stories which the shrewd country people
can tell so well, real character delineations full of
genuine human nature about some odd geniuses
such as Mrs. Stowe delights to “write up.â€
That struck us as a charming idea of sugar camp
life. We ought to have been born back three or
four generations ago, when the sugar-makers did
things in a way more primitive, as the Indians
taught them; for it was from the Indians that our
ancestors learned to tap the maple-trees in spring
and boil the sap down. There were not such
limitations to the knowledge of the red men as
many persons think. It is doubtful if there was
much concerning the qualities of trees and plants
that they did not know. To be sure they had
plenty of time, the forest all around them, and
nothing else to do except fight.
Very soon after the Pilgrims landed, some of
Massassoit’s people entertained the white strangers
with “sweet bread,†made of Indian corn, perhaps
first parched, and then ground — whether the sweet-
ness was that of corn meal alone, or from some other
source, we are left to conjecture. Lately we have
been told by a popular author that the Indians
used to cook “little doughnuts of meal by drop-
ping them into maple syrup,†which is a hint for
modern cooks to work out to more esthetic results.
The aborigines had no iron utensils, so they used
earthen pots of a rude shape, which they set over
the fire, and boiled the sap out in the open air.
For collecting it they had wooden troughs, fash-
ioned from a log by being burnt out or gouged
out with a hard shell. Other wooden vessels were
hollowed in the same way; and they had, besides
these, pails, or buckets, made from great sheets
of birch bark.
It is to be hoped that the Indians who were
friendly, taught the newcomers the secret of the
maple-trees very soon; for in that olden time
when broths and bean-porridge and messes con-
coted from pumpkins made so much of the fare,
when there was no coffee used, and tea only as the
rarest luxury, what a treat it must have been to
have had maple syrup! A writer who knows,
says that “the sap of all the New England maples
and birches, and lindens, and hickories, and wal-
nuts, is watery and sweet and contains crystal-
lized sugar.†It seems also that under modern
improvements there can be sugar made from
A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP. 67
eight different kinds of common field corn; but
they did not know that it could be extracted from
even the one kind they raised in the clearings, and
they could not have spared the corn if they had
known.
They made the most, however, of what they
had. About ten years after the Pilgrims came,
somebody composed what was called a “ Forefath-
er’s Song;†wretched rhymes, telling of wretched
fare, but supposed to show us how they lived :
Instead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies,
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies;
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone.
LA)
THE SAP-YOKE,
If barley be wanting to make into malt,
We must be contented and think it no fault;
For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
From pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips,
Then four lines are wanting, which I will trust
and hope were about something more toothsome
than parsnips and pumpkins, namely, maple syrup
— for next these two lines come in:
Now, while some are going, let others be coming,
For while liquor’s a-boiling, it must have a-scumming.
Which is what the syrup needs,
Poor rhymes; and poor forefathers and fore-
mothers, if they had no better food!
The settlers tapped the trees in a way that was
no better than murder to those magnificent sugar
maples of the primeval forest. The process was
called “boxing;†that is, cutting a deep gash to
let the sap run out. A piece of sumach with a
hole bored through the pith was the spout. The
troughs to receive the sap were like a pig’s trough.
The trunk of a white ash was sawed into proper
lengths, and then split in halves, and then dug out
with a gouge or a chisel, driven in by hand beetles.
An expert woodman, as an old historian says, could
make thirty or forty of theseinaday. Big troughs
out of mammoth logs were hewn out for reservoirs
into which to empty the contents of the small ones.
The men and boys went around with pails attached
to a sap-yoke over their shoulders, to collect the sap.
If the snow was deep they wore “ rackets,†or snow-
shoes, such as we see preserved as relics in muse-
ums, a sort of kite-shaped frame woven across
with leather thongs or basket stuff.
The sap was boiled out-of-doors right in the
“sugar bush†as they called it. Two crotched
sticks were driven into the ground, perhaps eight
feet apart, and a strong pole known as the
“lug-pole,†was laid across them, a big side log
placed against each stick on the inside, and be-
tween these the fire was built, usually of fallen
limbs, and green ones which were gathered
from the forest around. Great potash kettles
were used, or smaller ones when those were not
to be had; and when the sap was nearly thick-
ened to syrup a piece of fat pork, or even tallow,
was put in to keep it from boiling over. At the
last it was strained through a flannel sieve and
hung up in bags to drain. The women, and chil-
dren who were old enough, helped, working with
handkerchiefs tied over their heads ;- and altogether
it was a wild and picturesque scene.
Sometimes the pleasant sugar-making season had
a sudden tragic ending when Indians swooped
68 A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.
down on the little frontier settlements, as hap-
pened once in the neighborhood of one called
_ “Number 4.†A certain good Deacon Adams
started on a bright frosty April morning to make
sugar ona hill a mile from the cluster of cabins. It
SSS
ASS
ANS NING
LN
} =~
hy 6) fi WW
Ne oh Ke
HOUSE.
was in the time of
the old French
War when French
and Indians
joined together
against the Eng-
lish ; and a party
of them came down from Canada to this nook in
the wilderness. The unsuspecting man, as he was
trudging up the hill, was surrounded by seventy of
them and tied to a tree while they went off and
seized the next man they met, and the miller whose
mills they burned; then with those captives and
two hunters whom they took as they went along,
set off for Canada. It was the hapless deacon’s
last sugaring, for though he was afterwards ex-
changed, he died on the way home.
There is a pathetic story in the old records of a
child lost from the sugar bush who never came
back and was never heard of after. The father
had a “boiling place,†at some distance from his
cabin, and his little boys, one six years old and
the other four, were fond of spending the day om
there with him. Young as they were they could be
trusted, for those children living in the wilderness
were shrewd and sharp-witted, used to hardship
and on the lookout for danger; and, one day
when he was obliged to go to the cabin for
something, he felt safe in charging them to
stay by the fire till he came back. But the
elder one, happening to find a favorite spoon
which had been lost there, was so overjoyed
that he set out at once to follow his father,
saying to the little one, “I will go up to the
house and show the spoon to father,†and
from that moment was never seen again,
though all the settlers for miles around
turned out and searched the wilderness day
and night, day and night as long as there was
a possibility of finding him.
A hundred years ago there was a growth of
grand rock maples in this part of New England,
and some of the farmers at the foot of the moun-
tain (Kearsarge) used to go up on snowshoes,
with kettles and tools on their backs, and
stay and tap the trees and make sugar. That
was camp-life indeed. ‘There were bears and
foxes in the woods and dens of the rocks,
and the solitude was awful. Far up the
lonely mountain side, with miles of wilderness
between them and the little hamlets they had left,
whose lights they could see twinkle and then go
out as they sat under the roof of pine boughs and
watched the kettles through the night; but the
sugar-making came at a season too early for any
other work, and in those hard times “ boughten â€
sugar was dear and hard to get. ‘There were trees
there then that were three feet through.
The rock maple is the beautiful tree of the
rugged New Hampshire hills, the natural growth
of rocky soil, as much as the firs and tiny white
birches upon the mountain tops, the pine on the
sandy lands, the elms on the meadows, the wil-
lows by the water. It will live two hundred years;
and it is such a wonderful thing for seeding itself
that we should find ourselves surrounded by a
wilderness in a few years if all the little maples
were let live.
Somebody fond of gathering statistics says that
in some of the little hill towns before trees were
cut down so, many families used to make half a
ton of sugar; Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.
Western Massachusetts, Ohio and Michigan, seem
to be the favored regions, and there ought to be
rock maples enough there to supply all their peo-
ple with sugar. There would be if all farmers did
as well proportionately as some who manufactured
in one season six thousand pounds of “stirred
sugar†from seventeen hundred trees, and all
this besides the molasses which drained from it.
Some makers refine it to the degree of loaf
sugar till it is as white and crystal-like as a crust
of snow. One man who described his way, said,
as they all do, that the first thing was to have
every bucket and spout and “carrier†and pan
and kettle as sweet and clean as could be. They
think it well to have covers to the sap-buckets, so
that no leaves or anything shall fall in. They boil
as soon as they can after the sap comes from the
trees, keep the boiling sap well skimmed and
clarify it with the whites of eggs or new milk
69
It was news to us that sap things never rust.
When the season is over, all the buckets are
scalded with water, then rinsed with sap, dried,
and put away in the sap-house ; the same is done
by the iron pans used for boiling; they receive a
final washing with the sweet fluid and come out
fresh and clean the following spring. The buckets
are of pine, though people are beginning to use
tin ones holding ten and eighteen quarts, and
there is also a tin spout with a hook instead of the
wooden one.
But that immaculate whiteness is of no special
consequence unless one wishes to take a premium
at a State Fair. We can all be satisfied with the
“wax’?—that delicious stage when we begin to
try the hot liquid on a piece of snow crust, and
keep tasting and trying, and trying and tasting
till we pronounce it perfect; sweetness and flavor
can no farther go; the aroma of the woods con-
COLLECTING THE SAP.
stirred in; this makes a curd and all the impuri-
ties of the syrup rise with it. The whiteness is
obtained by repeating the process of stirring and
Straining,
It is stir, stir, and strain, strain,
Let it settle, and do it again.
densed in substance transparent as amber. When
it is ready to “sugar off,†one man says the test is
to let fall a little from the point of a knife into
cold water; if done, it will settle at the bottom “in
a round flat drop.â€
Did you know that they sometimes feed bees with
maple syrup before the flowers come ? Think of it!
70
Honey evolved from maple sugar by the mystic bee
agency! What estheticism, what refinement, what
luxury! And do not the bees and other insects
sip at the sap bucket? The average boy does;
and the old inhabitants make “sap coffee†and
“sap beer.†You have noticed how the shade
trees all along a village street will suddenly, on a
bright March morning, appear decorated with tin
kettles at the end of pine spouts; and the tinkle,
tinkle of little rivulets is heard as the generous
It was not
trees yield their stored-up sweetness.
complimentary to the children of a certain place
that last year all the trees had the spouts inserted
and the pails and kettles hanging at a height which
could only be reached by a ladder, and the ladder
was not there.
Maple sugar time has no definite limits. Some-
times it begins in February, sometimes in March,
or not till April when the “run†is a very short
one. There is amystery about the agencies which
make the sap start. The wood-pecker who probes
the bark may listen at the hole he has made and
hear something about it; the woodchuck burrowed
at the roots may be conscious when there is a stir
A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.
within there; if there are dryads living in the trees
and gnomes under them, they are sure to know.
But the wisest woodsman cannot answer some of
your questions. He will tell you that sap is
sweeter from a tree which stands by itself; that itis
thinner near surface water, and darker as you bore
farther in; but why it is more abundant some years
than others, and just how climatic changes affect
the flow, or the time, or flavor, he cannot say.
The genuine sugar camp of old, without a roof
over your head, the fire fed by sticks gathered up,
SC
a piece of fat pork hung above the kettle to keep
it from boiling over, and all the gypsyish sort of
life, has quite gone by, or pretty nearly.
You will find many a sugar place such as we
did on that misty twilight of last April, when the
travelling was neither wheeling nor sleighing; and
the horses worrying through drifts that came to the
wheel-hubs and then plunging into soft mud —that
is the kind in sugar-time — took us in safety at
last to the door of a rambling farmhouse. The
sugar orchard covered the side hill away beyond.
To reach it we floundered and slipped and slumped
along the winding country road till we came where
THE MYSTERY OF SPRING. 71
the bars had been taken down and the worn path
showed that an ox team had passed that way many
times. It was the thing to do to follow it, now up,
now down, over hummocks and bowlders and dip-
ping into the snowy hollows, till we were within
the sylvan precincts, inhaling the woodsy smells,
and the odor of green things down in the root.
The sugar house was as cosey as Thoreau’s hut
at Walden; a regular hut in the woods, with its
two windows looking into the trees, a little lean-to
for the firewood, and the door where one could
sit and see the sights and hear the voices I had
dreamed about as children dream. The rugged
tree boles showed gray as far as the eye could
reach, and the phantom look of leafless boughs’
was overhead; the hills, the far valley, the moun-
tains, were all the same with a difference; snow-
banks, wet hollows, lush moss and partridge ber-
ries; it was in the woods, and of the woods ; rural,
far-off, fascinating.
Just then the foreground was occupied by the
ox-sled; still holding, bound to it by chains, the
barrel which had been drawn about under the
trees to receive the sap from the buckets which
now hung by their leathern loops empty and silent,
for the sap was not running.
The interior was a place for a boy to read Roé-
inson Crusoe in, or the old tales of Homer, while
he waited and watched, and sat up all night to
tend the fire, or to get one’s first taste of the
Midsummer Night's Dream ; a place to tell stories
in with one’s comrades, or play fox-and-geese on
the rude board that hung on the wall, or to solve
problems and guess riddles, and get a firelight
education of a kind not set down in school books,
all sorts, odds and ends of wholesome learning,
with a good deal of nonsense of the right kind.
There is not a little of the work-a-day about the
experience of the sugar-makers out under the
maples, but a poetic and picnic side, too, that one
cannot afford to miss. And I mean to hold stoutly
by my statement in the beginning; and say that
that lone sugar house with its sylvan outlook and
its primitive inlook with its various properties,
and all we were made welcome to and free of, is
a delightful place to go to.
THE MYSTERY OF SPRING.
By Mrs, Mary B. Dopes.
OME, come, come, little Tiny,
Come, little doggie! We
Will “interview†all the blossoms
Down-dropt from the apple-tree ;
We'll hie to the grove and question
Fresh grasses under the swing,
And learn if we can, dear Tiny,
Just what is the joy called Spring.
Come, come, come, little Tiny;
Golden it is, I know:
Gold is the air around us,
The crocus is gold below;]
Red as the golden sunset
Is robin’s breast, on the wing —
But, come, come, come, little Tiny,
This isn’t the half of Spring,
Spring’s more than beautiful, Tiny;
Fragrant it is— for, see,
We catch the breath of the violets
However hidden they be;
And buds o’erhead in the greenwood
The sweetest of spices fling -—
Yet color and sweets. together
Are still but a part of Spring.
Then come, come, come, little Tiny,
Let’s hear what you have to tell
Learned of the years you’ve scampered
Over the hiil and dell —
What! Only a dark for answer?
Now, Tiny, that isn’t the thing
Will help unravel the riddle
Of wonderful, wonderful Spring.
72
A LITTLE
Yes, Tiny, there’s something better
Than form and scent and hue,
In the grass with its emerald glory;
In the air’s cerulean blue;
In the glow of the sweet arbutus;
In the daisy’s perfect mould : —
All these are delightful, Tiny,
But the secret’s still untold.
WITCH.
Oh, Tiny, you’7 never know it—
For the mystery lies in this:
Just the fact of such warm uprising
From winter’s chill abyss,
And the joy of our heart’s upspringing
Whenever the Spring is born,
Because it repeats the story
Of the blessed Easter-morn !
A LITTLE
WITCH.
: By Creita THAXTER.
MARGARET.
OFTLY sweeps the April storm,
Floods of rain and breezes warm,
Drowsy flowers at last are waking,
Through the dark earth gently breakihies ;
Though they have not blossomed yet,
Here to seek them through the wet ,
Merrily comes Margaret.
Nothing recks she of the flood,
Nothing finds she, flower or bud,
But she seems herself a flower
In the tumult of the shower ;
While across the field she trips,
O’er bright eyes and ruddy lips
Fast the sparkling water slips.
Gay and daring little witch!
How the color, deep and rich,
Mantles in her cheek’s sweet curve §
Mark the pretty mouth’s reserve:
Ah, but smiles are hidden there!
Like a torch her golden hair
Flares above her forehead fair,
Slender shape of pliant grace
Crowned with such a charming face &
Not a single flower is out,
But that’s naught to mourn about;
She the loveliest blossom is,
All a-bloom with light and bliss,
For the sun and rain to kiss,
LWO HUNTERS.
73
TWO HUNTERS.
(Anecdote of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy.)
By Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt.
HEY met in the heat of a Southern sun.
And how did they look? Oh, I fancy one
Was a picturesque peasant, such as you may
See in a lover’s part, at the play.
THEY MET IN A LONESOME PLACE.
This hunter was nothing at all, you see,
And the other was — everything! But he
Was none too handsome, let us suppose,
Although his face out-reddened the rose.
These two Italians met, as I said,
In a lonesome place where a hare lay dead.
“It is mine — I shot it,†one stormily cried;
“It is mine —I shotit,†the other replied.
So the beautiful youth went home that night
With his black eyes blacker yet from the fight,
“ Now,†the genial gentleman said “ it is mine —
And†(this to himself) “by the right divine.â€
At morning a carriage was sent to bring
The wondering peasant before the king.
“Do you know me, sir?†“I'd the honor to fight
With your Majesty, as I fear, last night.â€
“ And J saw by the shot, when the hare was dressed,
That it was not mine — forgive me the rest:
There’s enough for us both — and it was not mine; ,
Come in, I beg you, with me and dine.â€
74 BINGEN ON THE RAINE.
BINGEN ON THE RHINE.
By CarRoLinE E. S. Norton.
SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Al
A giers,
‘There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth
of woman’s tears ; f
But a comrade stood beside him while his life-blood
ebbed away,
And bent with pitying glances to hear what he might
say.
The dying soldier faltered, and he took that com-
rade’s hand,
And he said, “I never more shall see my own, my
native land;
Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends
of mine,
For I was born at Bingen, at Bingen on the Rhine.
“Tell my brothers and companions when they meet
and crowd around
To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard
ground,
That we fought the battle bravely, and when the day
was done,
Full many a corse lay ghastly pale beneath the set-
ting sun ;
And, ’mid the dead and dying, were some grown old
in wars,
The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of
many scars ;
And some were young, and suddenly beheld life’s
morn decline,
And one had come from Bingen, fair Bingen on the
Rhine.
“Tell my mother that her other son shall comfort
her old age;
For I was still a truant bird, that thought his home a
cage.
For my father was a soldier, and even as a child
My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles
fierce and wild;
And when he died and left us to divide his scanty
hoard
I let them take whate’er they would, but I kept my
father’s sword ;
And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light
used to shine
On the cottage wall at Bingen, calm Bingen on the
Rhine.
“Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with
drooping head
When the troops come marching home again with
glad and gallant tread,
But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and
steadfast eye,
For her brother was a soldier, too, and not afraid to
die ;
And if a comrade seek her love, I ask her in my
name, ;
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame,
And to hang the old sword in his place, my father’s
sword and mine;
For the honor of old Bingen, dear Bingen on the
Rhine.
“There’s another, not a sister, in the happy days
gone by
You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled
in her eye;
Too innocent for coquetry, to fond for idle scorning,
O, friend! I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes
heaviest mourning.
Tell her the last night of my life (for ere the moon
be risen
My body will be out of pain, my soul be out of
prison ),
I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sun-
light shine,
On the vine-clad hills of Bingen, fair Bingen on the
Rhine.
â€
MY SISTER NOT TO WEEP FOR ME.
TELL
be
wn
IN
76
“I saw the blue Rhine sweep along, I heard, or
seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing in chorus sweet
and clear;
And down the pleasant river and up the slanting hill,
The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening
calm and still ;
And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed,
with friendly telk
Down many a path beloved of yore, and well remem-
bered walk,
And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly, in mine,
But we'll meet no more at Bingen, loved Bingen on
the Rhine.â€
TWO PERSIAN SCHOOLBOYS.
His trembling voice grew faint and poate his grasp
was childish weak,
His eyes put on a dying look, he sighed, aa ceased
to speak ;
His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life
had fled—
The soldier of the Legion in a foreign land is dead ;
And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she
looked down
- On the red sand of the battle-field with bloody corses
strown ;
Yet calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light
seemed to shine,
As it shone on distant Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine.
— From Mrs. Norton's Poems.
TWO. PERS EAN “SG OOL BOY'S:
By Mary J. SarFrorp,
mAKE, Otanes, wake,
the Magi are sing-
ing the morning hymn
to Mithras. Quick, or
we shall be late at the
exercises, and father
promised,if we did well,
we should go to the
chase with him to-day.â€
“And perhaps shoot a lion. What a feather in our
caps that would be! Is it pleasant?â€
Smerdis pulled open the shutters that closed the
windows, and the first rays of the sun sparkled on
the trees and fountains of a beautiful garden beyond
whose lofty walls appeared the dwellings and towers
of a mighty city. Already the low roar of its traffic
reached them while hurrying on their clothes to join
their companions in the spacious grounds where they
were trained in wrestling, throwing blocks of wood at
each other to acquire agility in dodging the missiles,
the skilful use of the bow, and various other exercises
for the development of bodily strength and grace.
A few minutes later the two brothers, Smerdis and
Otanes, with scores of other lads, ranging in age from
seven to fourteen years, were assembled in a vast
playground, surrotnded on all sides by a lofty wall.
The playground of a large boarding-school ?
It almost might be called so, but the pupils of this
boarding-school were educated free of expense to
their parents, and it received only the sons of the high-
est nobles intheland. This playground was attached
to the palace of Darius, King of Persia, who reigned
twenty-four hundred years ago, and these chosen boys.
had been taken from their homes, as they reached the
age of six years, to be reared “at his gate,†as the
language of the country expressed it.
Otanes and Smerdis were sons of one of the highest
officers of the court, the “ear of the king,†or, as he
would now be called, the Minister of Police. Hand-
some little fellows of eleven and twelve, with blue
eyes, fair complexions, and curling yellow locks, their
long training in all sorts of physical exercises had
made them stronger and hardier than most lads of
their age in our time. Though reared in a palace, at
one of the most splendid courts the world has ever
seen, the boys were expected to endure the hardships.
of the poorest laborer’s children. Instead of the gold
and silver bedsteads used by the nobles, they were
obliged to sleep on the floor; if the court was at
Babylon, they were forced to make long marches under
the burning sun of Asia, and if, to escape the intense:
heat, the king removed to his summer palaces at.
TWO PERSIAN SCHOOLBOYS.
Ecbatana and Pasargade, situated in the mountain-
ous regions of Persia, where it was often bitterly cold,
the boys were ordered to bathe in the icy water of the
rivers flowing from the heights. In place of the
dainty dishes and sweetmeats for which Persian cooks
were famous, they were allowed nothing but bread
water, and a little meat; sometimes to accustom them
to hardship they were deprived entirely of food for a
day, or even longer.
On this morning the exercises seemed specially long
to the two brothers, full of anticipations of pleasure ;
but finally the last block of wood was hurled, the last
77
chase, were already mounted, among them the father
of the two lads, who greeted them affectionately as
they respectfully approached and kissed his hand.
“Make haste, boys, your horses are ready. Take
only bows and shields—the swords and lances.
will be in your way; you must not try to deal with
larger game than you can manage with your arrows.â€
“May we not carry daggers in our belts too,
father?†cried Otanes eagerly. “They can’t be in
our way, and if we should meet a lion â€â€™ —
A laugh from the group of nobles interrupted him.
“Your son seeks large game, Intaphernes !’’exclaimed
THE BOYS HURRIED
arrow shot, the last wrestling match ended, and the
boys, bearing a sealed roll of papyrus, containing a
leave of absence for one day, hurried off towards
home.
Their father’s palace stood at no great distance
from the royal residence, on-the long, wide street
extending straight to the city gates, and like the houses
of all the Persian nobles, was surrounded by a beau-
tiful walled garden called a paradise, laid out with
flower-beds of roses, poppies, oleanders, ornamental
plants, adorned with fountains, and shaded by lofty
trees. :
The hunting party was nearly ready to start, and
the courtyard was thronged. Servants rushed to and
fro bearing shields, swords, lances, bows and lassos,
for a hunter was always equipped with bow and
arrows, two lances, a sword and a shield. Others
held in leash the dogs to be used in starting the game.
The enormous preserves in the neighborhood of
Babylon were well-stocked with animals, including
stags, wild boars, and afew lions. Several noblemen
cladin the plain hunting costume always worn in the
OFF TOWARD HOME,
a handsome officer. ‘‘ He must have better weapons.
than a bow and dagger, if†—
The rest of the sentence was drowned by the noise
in the courtyard, but as the party rode towards the
gate Intaphernes looked back: “Yes, take the dag-
gers, it can do no harm. Keep with Candaules.â€
The old slave, a gray-haired, but muscular man,
with several other attendants, joined the lads, and
the long train passed out into the street and to-
ward the city gates. Otanes hastily whispered his
brother : “Keep close by me, Smerdis; if only we
catch sight of a lion, we’ll show what we can do with
bows and arrows.
The sun was now several hours high, and the streets,
lined with tall brick houses, were crowded with people
—artisans, slaves, soldiers, nobles and citizens, the
latter clad in white linen shirts, gay woollen tunics.
and short cloaks. Two-wheeled wooden vehicles,
drawn by horses decked with bells and tassels, litters.
containing veiled women borne by slaves, and now
and then, the superb gilded carriage, hung with silk
curtains, of some royal princess passed along. Here
78
and there a heavily laden camel moved slowly by, and
the next instant a soldier of the king’s bodyguard
dashed past in his superb uniform —a gold cuirass,
purple surcoat, and high Persian cap, the gold scab-
bard of his sword and the gold apple on his lance-tip
' flashing in the sun.
High above the topmost roofs of even the lofty
towers on the walls rose the great sanctuary of the
Magi,* the immense Temple of Bel, visible in all
quarters of the city, and seen for miles from every
part of the flat plain on which Babylon stood. The
huge staircase wound like a serpent round and round
the outside of the building to the highest story, which
‘contained the sanctuary itself and also the observatory
whence the priests studied the stars.
Otanes and Smerdis, chatting eagerly together, rode
‘on as fast as the crowd would permit, and soon reached
one of the gates in the huge walls that defended the
city. These walls, seventy-five feet high, and wide
enough to allow two chariots to drive abreast, were
strengthened by two hundred and fifty towers, except
‘on one side, where deep marshes extended to their
base. Beyond these marshes lay the hunting-grounds,
and the party, turning to the left, rode for a time over
a smooth highway, between broad tracts of land sown
with wheat, barley andsesame. Slender palm-trees cov-
ered with clusters of golden dates were seen in every
direction, and the sunbeams shimmered on the canals
and ditches which conducted water from the Eu-
phrates to all parts of the fields.
Otanes’ horse suddenly shied violently as a rider,
mounted on a fleet steed, and carrying a large pouch,
‘dashed by like the wind.
“One of the Augari bearing letters to the next sta-
tion!†exclaimed Smerdis. “See how he skims
along. Hi! If I were not to be one of the king’s
bodyguard, I’d try for an Augar’s place. How he
goes! He’s almost out of sight already.â€
“Flow far apart are the stations?†asked Otanes,
“Eighteen miles. And when he gets there, he’ll
just toss the letter bag to the next man, who is sitting
on a fresh horse waiting for it, and away he’7/ go like
lightning. That’s the way the news is carried to the
‘very end of the empire of our lord the King.â€
“Must be fine fun,†replied Otanes. “But see,
there’s the gate of the hunting-park. Now for the
lion,†he added gayly.
“May Ormuzdf save you from meeting one, my
“FThe Magi were the Persian priests.
+ The principal god of the Persians,
«
TWO PERSIAN SCHOOLBOYS.
young master,†said the old servant Candaules.
“Luckily it’s broad daylight, and they are more apt
to come from their lairs after dark. Better begin
with smaller game and leave the lion and wild boars
to your father.â€
“Not if we catch sight of them,†cried Otanes,
settling his shield more firmly on his arm, and urging
his horse to a quicker pace, for the head of the long
train of attendants had already disappeared amid the
dark cypress-trees of the hunting park. The immense
enclosure stretching from the edge of the morasses
that bordered the walls of Babylon far into the coun-
try, soon echoed with the shouts of the attendants
beating the coverts for game, the baying of the dogs,
the hiss of lances and whir of arrows. Bright-hued
birds, roused by the tumult, flew wildly hither and
thither, now and then the superb plumage of a bird
of paradise flashing like a jewel among the dense
foliage of cypress and nut-trees.
Hour after hour sped swiftly away; the party had
dispersed in different directions, following the course
of the game; the sun was sinking. low, and the slaves
were bringing; the slaughtered birds and beasts to the
wagons used to convey them home.
stag was among the spoil, and a fierce wild boar, after
a long struggle, had fallen under a thrust from
Intaphernes’s lance.
The shrill blast of the Median trumpet sounded
thrice, to give the first of the three signals for the
scattered hunters to meet at the appointed place, near
the entrance of the park, and the two young brothers
who, attended by Candaules and half a dozen slaves,
had ridden far into the shady recesses of the woods,
reluctantly turned their horses’ heads. No thought
of disobeying the summons entered their minds —
Persian boys were taught that next to truth and cour-
age, obedience was the highest virtue, and rarely was
a command transgressed.
They had had a good day’s sport; few arrows
remained in their quivers, and the attendants carried
bunches of gay plumaged birds and several small
animals, among them a pretty little fawn. “ Let’s go
nearer the marshes; there are not so many trees, and
we can ride faster,†said Otanes as the trumpet-call
was repeated, and the little party turned in that direc-
tion, moving more swiftly as they passed out upon
the strip of open ground between the thicket and the
marshes. The sun was just setting. The last crimson‘
rays, shimmering on the pools of water standing here
and there in the morasses, cast reflections on the
TWO PERSIAN SCHOOLBOYS. 79
tall reeds and rushes bordering their margins.
Suddenly a pretty spotted fawn darted in front of
the group, and crossing the open ground, vanished
amid a thick clump of reeds. “ What a nice pet the
little creature would make for our sister Hadassah!â€
cried Otanes eagerly. “See! it has hidden among
the reeds; we might take it alive. Go with Candaules
and the slaves, Smerdis, and form a half-circle beyond
the clump. When you’re ready, whistle, and I’ll ride
straight down and drive it towards you; you can easily
catch it then. We are so near the entrance of the
park now that we shall have plenty of time; the third
signal hasn’t sounded yet.â€
Smerdis instantly agreed to the plan. The horses
were fastened to some trees, and the men cautiously
from his saddle, while the horse, free from its rider,
dashed, snorting with terror, towards the park entrance.
“A lion! A lion!†shrieked the trembling slaves,
but Smerdis, drawing his dagger, ran towards the
place where his brother had fallen, passing close by
the body of the fawn which lay among the reeds with
its head crushed by a blow from the lion’s paw.
Candaules followed close at the lad’s heels.
Parting the thick growth of stalks, they saw, only
a few paces off, Otanes, covered with blood, lying
motionless on the ground, and beside him the dead
body of a half-grown lion, the boy’s arrow buried in
one eye, while the blood still streamed from a lance-
wound in the animal’s side.
Smerdis, weeping, threw himself beside his brother,
THE HUNTING PARTY WERE NEARLY READY TO START.
made a wide circuit, passed the bed of reeds, and
concealed themselves behind the tall rushes beyond.
A low whistle gave Otanes the signal to drive out the
fawn.
Smerdis and the slaves saw the lad straighten him-
self in the saddle, and with a shout, dash at full speed
towards the spot where the fawn had vanished. He
had almost reached it when the stiff stalks shook
violently, and a loud roar made them all spring to
their feet. They saw the brave boy check his horse
and fit an arrow to the string, but as he drew the
bow, there was a stronger rustle among the reeds; a
tawny object flashed through the air, striking Otanes
and at the same moment Intaphernes, with several
nobles and attendants, attracted by the cries, dashed
up to the spot. The father, springing from the sad-
dle, bent, and laid his hand on the boy’s heart.
“Tt is beating still, and strongly too!†he exclaimed.
“Throw water in his face! perhaps†—
Without finishing the sentence, he carefully exam-
ined the motionless form. ‘“Ormuzd be praised!
He has no wound ; the blood has flowed from the lion.
See, Prexaspes, there is a lance-head sticking in its
side. I believe it’s the very beast you wounded early
in the day.â€
The officer whose laugh had so vexed Otanes,
80 TWO PERSIAN SCHOOLBOYS.
stooped over the dead lion and looked at the broken
shaft. ,
“« Ay, it’s my weapon; the beast probably made its
way to the morass for water; but, by Mithras!* the
lad’s arrow killed the brute ; the barb passed through
the eyeball into the brain.â€
“Yes, my lord,†cried old Candaules eagerly,
“and doubtless it was only the weight of the animal,
which, striking my young master as it made its spring,
~—
* The Persian god of the sun.
hurled him from the saddle and stunned him. See?
he is opening his eyes. Otanes, Otanes, you’ve killed
the lion!â€
The boy’s eyelids fluttered, then slowly rose, his
eyes wandered over the group, and at last rested on
the dead lion. The old slave’s words had evidently
reached his ear, for with a faint smile he glanced
archly at Prexaspes, and raising himself on one elbow,
said:
“You see, my lord — even with a bow and dagger!â€
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY, aes
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD*
The Child ts father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety,
THE CHILD.
ro I.
There was atime when meadow, grove, and stream, The Rainbow comes and goes,
The earth, and every common sight, And lovely is the Rose,
To me did seem The Moon doth with delight :
Apparelled in celestial light, Look round her when the heavens are bare,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. Waters on a starry night
It is not now as it hath been of yore; — Are beautiful and fair ;
Turn wheresoe’er I may, The sunshine is a glorious birth ;
By night or day, ; But yet I know, where’er I go,
The things which I have seen I now can see no That there hath passed away a glory from the
more. earth.
—,
* From Poems by William Wordsworth.
APPARELED IN CELESTIAL LIGHT.
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 83
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
—_———
HI.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
—
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday ; ~
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou
happy Shepherd-boy }
AND THE BABE LEAPS UP ON HIS MOTHER’S ARM.
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 85
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CAILDHOOD
Iv. On every side,
g In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Ve blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
Ye to each other make, I see And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm: —
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
My heart is at your festival, — But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
My head hath its coronal, A single Field which I have looked upon,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel —I feel it all. Both of them speak of something that is gone:
O evil day! if I were sullen The Pansy at my feet
While Earth herself is adorning, Doth the same tale repeat:
This sweet May-morning, Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
And the Children are culling Where is it now, the glory and the dream *
86 INTIMATIONS
INTIMATIONS OF
OF IMMORTALITY.
IMMORTALITY
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Vv.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
VI.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
VII.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size !
See, where ’mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes,
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art {
A weding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral,
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song,
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part ;
Filling from time to time his “ humorous stage *
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage,
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 87
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
VIII.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul’s immensity ;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal mind, —
Mighty prophet! Seer blest !
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master-o’er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by ;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life !
IX.
O joy ! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive !
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed -
For that which is most worthy to be Mest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hopes still fluttering in his breast :
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise ;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never ;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor Man nor Boy, :
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermere.
QR
BEHOLD THE CHILD AMONG HIS NEW-BORN BLISS§S,
A SIX YEARS’ DARLING OF A PIGMY SIZE!
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.
89
INTIMATIONS OF
IMMORTALITY.
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
x.
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound !
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower ;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering ;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Xr
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forbode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels
fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are
won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
eZ
LEE DIES Eh Seg
THOU LITTLE CHILD, YET GLORIOUS IN THE MIGHT
OF HEAVEN-BORN FREEDOM ON THY BEING’S HEIGHT,
THE THOUGHT OF OUR PAST YEARS IN ME DOTH
BREED PERPETUAL BENEDICTION . ....
gi
es ati?
THE BROOK.
By ALFRED TENNYSON.
COME from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles,
With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
Q2
Pome
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers ;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows ;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars,
In brambly wildernesses ;
I linger by my shingly bars ;
I loiter round my cresses ;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
— from Tennyson’s Poems.
I MOVE THE SWEET FORGET-ME-NOTS
THAT GROW FOR HAPPY LOVERS,
94 HOW THEY BROUGAT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT
@n Agt ex
By ROBERT BROWNING.
SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris and he:
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three:
“Good speed!†cried the watch as the gate-bolts
undrew, j
« Speed!†echoed the wall to us galloping through.
‘Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace —
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our
place; :
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
’T was moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom a great yellow star came out to see ;
At Diiffeld ’twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-
chime —
So Joris broke silence with “Yet there is time!â€
At Aerschot up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past;
And IJ saw my stout galloper Roland at last
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray;
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent
back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track,
And one eye’s black intelligence — ever that glance
‘O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance;
And the thick heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay
spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her;
We'll remember at Aix� —for one heard the quick
wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering
knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh ;
*Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like
chaff ;
Till over by Delhem a dome-spire sprung white,
And “Gallop,†gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!
“ How they'll greet us!’ — and all in a moment his
roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone,
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her
fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.
Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without
peer —
Clapped my hands, laughed and sung, any noise, bad
or good,
Till at length into Aix, Roland galloped and stood.
And all I remember is friends flocking round,
As I sate with his head twixt my knees on the
ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which ( the burgesses voted by common consent )
Was no more than his due who brought good news
from Ghent.
~—from Browning's Poans.
â€
SUDDEN THE SUN.
ERSCHOT WP LEAPED OF A
AT A
96 RING OUT, WILD BELLS.
ae
REN GOUT Wel) Bee ele Ss
By ALFRED TENNYSON.
s ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
“The flying cloud, the frosty light :
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
* Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my. mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in:
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life, .
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
— From “ in Memovrtawâ€
RING OUT THE FALSE, RING IN THE TRUE,
97
O MAY
I JOIN, THE CHOLER
INVISIBLE!
By Gerorce ELIorT.
MAY I join the choir invisible
Of these immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the nights like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven :
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor, anxious penitence is quick dissolved ;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air ;
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better — saw rather
A wortheir image for the sanctuary
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love—
That better self shall live to human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever.
This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow.
May I reach
That purest heaven, —be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the swee* presenve of a good diffused,
And in diffusion even more intense !
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
— From The Legend of Tubal and Other Poms.
“MAY I REACH THAT PUREST HEAVEN!â€
Pe
HE COULDN'T SAY NO.
LE© 0.0 DIN eo AW = NO:
By M.
———
IT was sad and it was strange!
He just was full of knowledge,
His studies swept the whole broad range
Of High School and of College;
He read in Greek and Latin too,
Loud Sanscrit he could utter,
But one small thing he couldn’t do
That comes as pat to me and you
As eating bread and butter :
He couldn’t say “ No!†He couldn’t say “No!â€
I’m sorry to say it was really so!
He’d diddle, and dawdle, and stutter, but oh!
When it came to the point he could never say
ce No!â€
Geometry he knew by rote,
Like any Harvard Proctor;
He'd sing a fugue out, note by note;
Knew Physics like a Doctor;
He spoke in German and in French;
Knew each Botanic table;
But one small word that you'll agree
Comes pat enough to you and me,
To speak he was not able:
For he couldn’t say “ No!†He couldn’t say “ No!â€
’Tis dreadful, of course, but ’twas really so.
He’d diddle, and dawdle, and stutter, but oh!
When it came to the point he could never say “ No!â€
And he could fence, and swim, and float,
And use the gloves with ease too,
Could play base ball, and row a boat,
And hang on a trapeze too;
His temper was beyond rebuke,
And nothing made him lose it;
His strength was something quite superb,
But what’s the use of having nerve
If one can never use it ?
He couldn’t say “No!†Hecouldn’t say “No!â€
Tf one asked him to come, if one asked him to go,
He’d diddle, and dawdle, and stutter, but oh!
When it came to the point he could never say
cc No ! â€
. B,
When he was but a little lad,
In life’s small ways progressing,
He fell into this habit bad
Of always acquiescing ;
*T was such an amiable trait,
To friend as well as stranger,
That half unconsciously at last
The custom held him hard and fast
Before he knew the danger,
And he couldn’t say “ No!†He couldn’t say *No!*
To his prospects you see ‘twas a terrible blow.
He’d diddle, and dawdle, and stutter, but oh!
When it came to the point he could never say “ Notâ€
And so for all his weary days
The best of chances failed him;
He lived in strange and troublous ways
And never knew what ailed him;
He’d go to skate when ice was thin;
He’d join in deeds unlawful,
He’d lend his name to worthless notes,
He’d speculate in stocks and oats;
’*T was positively awful,
For he couldn’t say “No!†He couldn’t say “No!â€
He would veer like a weather-cock turning so slow;
He’d diddle, and dawdle, and stutter, but oh!
When it came to the point he could never say
“No!â€
Then boys and girls who hear my song,
Pray heed its theme alarming:
Be good, be wise, be kind, be strong —
These traits are always charming,
But all your learning, all your skill
With well-trained brain and muscle,
Might just as well be left alone,
If you can’t cultivate backbone
To help you in life’s tussle,
And learn to say “No!†Yes, learn to say “No!â€
Or you'll fall from the heights to the rapids below!
You may waver, and falter, and tremble, but oh!
When your conscience requires it, be sure and
shout “No |â€
A HEAVY LOAD.
To EDA HDC
“+ I HE-OVEN:
ate, and how they cooked it, in
the very new New England of ahundred
years ago? Or have you supposed that,
like Mother Goose’s old woman, they
“lived upon nothing but victuals and drink?â€
They certainly did; but with smaller variety in
material and fewer utensils, their food necessarily
differed widely from ours, and many very delicious
old-fashioned dishes are now almost forgotten.
The whole country was new then, and Vermont
was farther inland, practically, than the remotest
corner of Arizona is now; and the food of each
family was almost wholly produced on the farm upon
which they lived, so that the sturdy, determined set-
tlers were independent of foreign lands.
I have often heard Madame Thankful Whitney’s
cooking spokem of, and some of her receipts have
passed down to me, but I suppose the dear old peo-
ple who. told them to me, would think the same
dishes if cooked in modern stoves and ranges, lacked
a peculiar appetizing flavor which is imparted only
from the brick oven, the bake-kettle, or the fireplace,
or more probably from Madame Whitney’s skilful
handling and compounding ; it certainly did require
more skill to cook well then than now.
The very earliest settlers in Vermont used gener-
ally to come in small companies, all men, bringing
with them little beside a change of clothing, a gun,
BID you ever wonder what they
& THE FIREPLACE cjg
es eae
ES SRES IRs
an axe, and a small supply of flour and salt. There
would, perhaps, be two horses belonging to a party
of five or six, and on these they bound the more un-
wieldy articles; the rest they strapped upon their
own backs. When they found a favorable location,
they built a cabin of bark and bushes, selected and
staked out their farms, and each immediately began
to clear his own.
They could shoot game enough for their meat
supply, and the handiest one of their number was
deputed to make unleavened, bread as often as
occasion required; and they did their cooking in a
little fireplace in, or near, the cabin.
Week after week they chopped down the great
primeval trees; when a sufficient quantity hal been
felled in any one of the lots, they all worked together
to pile the brush and logs for burning. The huge
fires were a wild and splendid sight, especially at
night, and frightened the wolves to safe distances
for some time. After the burning, if it was in season,
they immediately sowed wheat, bought at the nearest
settlement, and patiently hoed it in. The land was
too rough for use of plow and harrow, therefore as
fast as the wheat was scattered the ground was mel-
lowed and the seed covered by means of a hand hoe.
IOI
102 OLD-TIME
It sprung up quickly, and produced an abundant
crop.
After the wheat was sown, they built substantial
log cabins on their farms in the midst of theclearing.
“Didn’t they leave a single tree to shade their houses?â€
some one wonders. No; they were too wise to do
that. The first blast of wind might have blown them
over and perhaps crushed their little cabins. Forest
trees do not send out their roots widely and bracingly,
like those which grow in open land, and they do
not stand stoutly alone. The cabins completed, the
clearings were left in the care of one man, while the
rest went back to the home State for their families.
It was not safe to leave the wheat fields unwatched ;
and with all the care, very likely the bears got half
of the crops.
The food for the family during the first year was
principally wild game and wheat. The pigs and
sheep and calves which they had laboriously driven
from the old homes were altogether too precious to
be killed until they were sure of others. They often
COOKERY.
“improved †farm; that is, a small clearing had been
made upon it a few years before, and an unfinished
framed house built, also a log stable. I think, around
which had been stacked the wild hay cut in the clear-
ing. Oh, how they shivered in that unfinished house
that first winter, though Mr. Whitney kept his ham-
mers and saws flying—ceiling and battening the
cracks; for he was a notable carpenter. It is said
“ pride will keep one warm,†but their pride in their
“board house†was not sufficient to keep them half
as warm as their neighbors were in their snug, cosey
log cabins. Did you never live inalog house?) Then
I wish you could for just one winter; you wouid
never pity the early settlers again, simply on the score
of their houses. They were, perhaps, a trifle too
dark in the day time, since the logs could not be cut
through too often for window space; but they were
very warm. The settlers, to be sure, built framed
houses as soon as possible, both because they could
be made more roomy and because they liked to build
“for good.†A log house was erected for temporary
THE VERY EARLIEST SETTLERS.
boiled their wheat, and corn too after they began to
raise it, whole, or else cracked it in a mortar; for the
prist-mill might be twenty or thirty miles away, and of
course they went to it as seldom as possible.
But Mr. Whitney brought his family to an
accommodation without foundation stones; conse-
quently sagged, sunk, and leaned, and seldom lasted
many years. Madame Whitney’s house, like all of
that date, had an immense chimney—larger than
her bedroom, with small fireplaces in the “square
OLD-TIME
rooms,†and one—high, deep and wide—in the
kitchen. A heavy crane swung in this kitchen fire-
place, on which she could hang four or five cocking-
At the left was the brick
oven, four feet deep and two feet high, arched over
with brick. The brick or stone floor of this oven
was about four feet higher than the kitchen floor, and
under it was a long pit for ashes.
A large portion of the great Whitney farm still
bristled with stumps and roots; but some corn was
pots and kettles at a time.
raised even the first year. Potatoes, which after-
ward formed such an important crop, were little used,
a barrel of them being considered an ample supply
for winter. They were raised in the garden with
other vegetables and in similar quantities. Baked or
boiled potatoes for every-day fare, as we regularly
use them, were unknown; they were mostly used
in “ boiled victuals,†a farm-house dinner still much
esteemed by families who keep to the old ways.
Madame Whitney’s preparations for a boiled din-
ner began before breakfast, when she put a great
piece of salt beef in the pot over the fire. This pot
was a fat thing, small at the top, to keep the smoke
away from the cover, and it held two or three pail-
fuls. A piece of pork and a quantity of “garden
COOKERY. 103
sauce’’—beets, cabbage, turnips, carrots and pota-
toes—followed the beef at the appropriate time, and,
best of all, a pudding. No boiled dinner was com-
plete without its pudding, which was put into the
pot at exactly nine o'clock, dinner being always
served at noon. The pudding was a simple batter
of new milk and Indian meal, made thin and boiled
in a linen bag. To insure lightness the water in the
pot must be boiling briskly when the pudding was
put in, and never stop for an instant. ‘This item of
care-taking attended to, when the bag was turned
off, the pudding was always found to be “light asa
cork,†and, with cream and maple-sugar, was very
toothsome ; and all the more highly prized that they
did not have dessert with every dinner. After the
vegetables and meats and pudding had been taken
up, crusts of brown bread which had been saved for
this purpose, were put into the pot and boiled a few
minutes, then skimmed out—a brewis with nameless
. garden flavors —to accompany the dinner.
A good deal of time was required for the prepara-
tion of a boiled dinner, but the shrewd lady saw at
least four meals in the pot when she swung forth
the crane. She served it warm for the first dinner,
cold for supper, with brown bread and a salad of
chopped mustard leaves if it was summer time. In
the morning she made a hash of the remaining meats
and vegetables; and for the next day’s dinner there
was a soup compounded of the fragments, the pot
broth, and a pint of beans —I must admit that this
was not so popular a dinner as the first.
Many beans were raised, the stumps being very
convenient to dry them on. They were baked and
stewed, but oftenest of all were made into bean
porridge. This was a rich, thick soup, cooked slowly
fora long time. It was made with seasoning of beef
bones, if obtainable, but oftener a few slices of salt
pork were fried in the pot, two or three quarts
of water poured upon
them, and added to this
was a pint or more of
beans previously soaked
A SUBSTANTIAL LOG CABIN.
104 OLD-TIME
over night in cold water. It was additionally sea-
soned with salt and small bits of ‘pepper-pods, and
was a staple article of diet, being made as often as
took kindly to
repeated warmings over, and was a popular dish with
the children, brown bread or wheaten being crum-
bled liberally into the steaming bowl.
Plenty of wheat was produced as I have told you,
and ryealso. Itwas all threshed with hand flails. I
always think when I see a threshing-machine that
the poetry of farm-life is almost gone. A good.
once a week, summer and winter;
thresher was very easy, leisurely and rythmical in
his movements; he brought his flail around with a
graceful swing very different from the might-and-
main blow which pictures often suggest. Two men
were accustomed to thresh on one floor, When one
flail went up the other came down; and though it
jooked like easy work, it was not.
When the grain had been threshed and partially
cleaned from chaff, it was stored in the chamber in
hollow logs from which the bark had been stripped,
and the decayed wood on the inside scraped or
burned out. These primitive barrels were cut in sec-
tions about four feet long, set up on end, and served
' the many purposes. for which we use barrels.
COOKERY.
When
flour or meal was needed, Mr. Whitney brought
forth his “fan,†put a few quarts of grain upon it,
and by a dexterous sleight tossed the grainup a few
inches, catching it on the fan when it came down, to
toss it up again. The grain and chaff soon began
mysteriously to separate, the chaff toward the front
and the grain to the back of the fan. At intervals
the chaff and dirt were brushed off and the process
renewed and repeated until the grain was perfectly
clean and ready for the bag. ‘The filled bags were
ro ft
sy
We ey YY
SOWING WHEAT.
piled upon the back of a horse which Cytus led or
rode to mill.
Baking-day was the great day of the week. Mad.
ame Whitney was up betimes ; Cyrus was summoned,
and was expected to split a great pile of short oven-
wood before breakfast; and it was Sally’s duty
during the same time to have sifted the meal and
flour: three sievefuls of rye and three of cornmeal
into the bread-trough, a box as large as a baby cra-
dle, and strongly dovetailed together. The modern
mind fails to understand why these bread-troughs
were made so large; but it is a fact that they seldom
held less than two bushels. At each end of the
OLD-TIME
trough near the top, was a slot to hold the “ meal-
stick,†and along this stick little Sally slid the sieve
to and fro, to and fro, to sift the meal. She next
sifted a quantity of flour into the wheat tray —a
IOs
vo
COOKERY.
I say, because the broom was often dipped in 2 pail
of water to wash away the ashes.
Pots of beans and an Indian pudding were set in
while the oven was yet too hot for bread. The rye~
THE SALT MORTAR.
heavy home-made wooden receptacle holding but
little less than the trough. After breakfast Madame
rolled her sleeves to her shoulders, tied on a clean
linen apron, and with a pan of milk and water and a
bowl of fresh yeast, began to compound the brown
bread. I regret to say that it is my belief that she
called this bread “ryninjun†when it was done.
It was no light task to mix five or six large loaves,
since it must be made stiff enough to bake without
pans on the bottom of the oven, When thoroughly
mixed she heaped it in one end of the trough and
set it near the fire to rise. Then she mixed the
wheaten dough and set the tray over the trough.
The oven was heated by building a fire of finely
split wood in it. This fire was kept up an hour or
two; but old ladies used to say they “could tell
when ‘an oven was hot by the looks.’’ When it
was at white heat, the coals were spread over the
oven to heat the bottom; and when this stone floor
reached the right degree, the coals and ashes were
scraped out, and a birch broom, from which the
string had been cut to let the splinters stand in all
directions, was used to sweep or mop it clean— mop,
and-Indian and the wheat dough having become
light, they were gently formed into loaves, well
sprinkled with dry meal, and slid into the oven from
the blade of a long-handled wooden shovel — the
brown bread first, and when the oven was a little
cooler, the wheat bread. The heat was measured by
the hand; ‘if the cook could hold her hand in the
oven while she counted twenty, she put in her brown
bread; when she could count forty the white bread
followed.
There was then room for two or three pies in the
mouth of the oven. Fruit pies could seldom be made;
berries, to be sure, soon sprang up in the clearings,
and wild grapes grew near some of the streams ;
but the Whitney family and their neighbors had
to wait years for apples and the other tree-fruits.
Think how large a place fruit, raw and cooked,
occupies in all our meals and culinary calculations,
and you will wonder how our foremothers managed
to live without it! When wild cherries were ripe
Madame Whitney used sometimes to make pies of
them, of both bird cherries and the bush cherry called
chokecherries. These cherry pies required long bak-
106 OLD-TIME
ing; and, if the crusts were growing too brown, she
covered them with large green leaves. She could not
use yesterday’s daily paper, since yesterday had brought
her no such thing. I doubt if she ever saw one. In
spring she made pies of sorrel. On baking days
the children were sent to gather a quantity of fresh
young green sorrel leaves—the old leaves were
tough and bitter. After covering a plate with paste
she piled it high with the carefully washed and
picked sorrel, put on plenty of maple sugar, and
covered it with paste. Sometimes she scalded the
leaves slightly: then she could judge better of the
quantity to put in. Should you try to make sorrel
pies, girls, remember sorrel takes as much sugar as
rhubarb. America had not then become a “pie-
eating nation,’ but Madame Whitney made more
than her neighbors, especially when pumpkins came.
Oh, the pumpkin! [I don’t know what our pioneers
would have done without it. It was easily raised
and much used. They put it into brown bread to
give it a sweet taste; they ate it simply stewed; they
cut it in long strips and dried it over the fire, or
stewed it and dried it in the oven after the bread had
been drawn out; they made pies of it, and some-
times they even made from it an
inferior kind of syrup. ‘ Didn't they
of
OG,
We
pe
Â¥:
ap
cz
oe (
¢ {i
COOKERY.
buckets, iron spouts and great reservoirs, and all the
modern appliances which are locked in his father’s
sugar-house.
Oh, yes; there were plenty of maple-trees, but
nothing else. Before sugar could be made, Cyrus
and his father must work many a long evening chop-
ping and burning out troughs to be used in place of
buckets. They also made spouts by burning out the
pith of some soft-hearted wood with a hot spindle.
They tapped the trees by boring with a large auger,
or else cut in them a long diagonal gash with an
axe, turning out a chip on the lower end to conduct
the sap, in place of a spout. Either method would
be considered gross cruelty to the tree by a modern
sugar-maker. Many families had only their dinner-
pot or a small wash-kettle to boil down sap in; but
Madame Whitney had saved from the sale of the
saltpetre works an immense kettle, and brought it all
the way to Vermont. Mr. Whitney hung this old
saltpetre-kettle by means of a large chain, to a stout,
well-braced pole, slung the great dinner-pot beside
ar
.
Dey,
yey
nen
» Zz \ wa: i ¢ hi
yt Wy Ya
Wy hk
dy aly alia v
ea
ty Lhe
L a ‘|G 4 y !
bile je yo ay EE
a vy?
BN Eger ae WG? | ONY
a Shot | ice 4 |
t. : 7 A
oS PY yah
TOO PRECIOUS TO BE KILLED,
have sugar enough ?†some farmer’s boy asks, “with
the town half covered with maple-trees?†And I
suppose he sees heaters and evaporators and tin
it, tapped the trees, and then left the boys to make
the year’s supply of sugar. Merry times they had
too, though all the sap was gathered by hand. Ben
OLD-TIME
and Cyrus had sap-yokes which they wore on their
shoulders to lighten the task of carrying the pails,
and sometimes too, they wore snow-shoes as they
trudged about over the crusty snow from tree to tree
through the tall, silent forest. The sap they gath-
ered was stored in a long trough from which the
kettles were filled. It was little John’s business to
ro a a A SE
Ny ey
al Ars
a!
COOKERY. 107
some of the neighbors’ boys would come over to pass
the evening, perhaps staying to “sugar off.†After
supper of toasted brown bread and roast squirrel,
they would lie down on the fragrant green floor and
tell stories of bears and wolves and panthers, the
scenes of which were so near, both in time and space,
that poor little John’s hair often stood on end, and.
he could plainly see fierce
eyes glaring from every bush
on the way home, until he
almost ‘‘ wished the old cat-
amount had him and done
with it.†Sometimes they
told Indian stories, even
more frightful than those
of wild beasts ; for the fear
of the red man had not yet
passed away from the set-
tlements. But they gener-
ally forgot the terror each:
had in turn awakened, when
the important moment ar
Ns rived of testing the slowly
TER Sy
oo
4 we Ay
OY
4 8s
DRYING BEANS.
keep the fires, and skim
the syrup as it boiled.
There was little time to
play, but what there was
was improved. They
climbed trees, shot game,
broiled bits of salt pork
over the fire for their
luncheon, and ate the froth
which danced on the top
of the kettles —it
tained all the impurities
of the sap, but no matter:
con-
“ Anything sweet in the mouth
can sweeten
All this bitter world for a boy.â€
Sometimes they had to boil at night, and an ecrie
and a merry time both, they had then. The sap was
gathered before dark, and they repaired to the bush
house before the fire, going out occasionally to fill up
the kettles. A thick mat of odorous hemlock boughs
covered the floor of the house, and the great fire
shining in made it very light and warm. Generally
AT LEAST FOUR MEALS IN THE POT.
bubbling syrup to see whether it would “ grain,â€
trying it upon pieces of broken crockery, and waxing
other spoonfuls on the snow for immediate consump-
tion while they waited for the test-portions to cool.
How delicious were the cold sheets of waxen sweet
that they peeled from the snow in yellow-brown rolls,
rivalling even the saucers of warm sugar. That toe
108
‘vas a good opportunity to manufacture maple sugar
These were made by pouring out the yolk
3885.
und white
of an egg
through a
small open-
ing in one
end of the
shell, and
then pouring
an warm sug-
ar, and leav-
ing it to grow
solid, the
shell to be
removed at
pleasure.
The Whit-
ney children
sasually pro-
vided them-
selves with
a dozen or
more apiece of these sugar eggs; and for purposes of barter
among themselves and neighbors’ young folks these sweets
were more powerful than coin of the realm.
The first pail of sap gathered Ben was sure to carry home
for sap porridge.
one third, added twice as much new milk as there was syrup,
and thickened it with flour until about as thick as good
cream.
This was dipped boiling hot upon a quantity
of hard bread-crusts, and made a good supper —at
OLD-TIME COOKERY.
least for Cyrus, Ben, Sally and John. Nothing
was wasted in Madame Whitney’s house. Even
the crusts of bread
were all saved, and
served up in various
palatable ways.
When they could
get the promise of
some Pop Robin ev-
ery boy in the house
was happy. Jam go-
ing to tell you just
how that was made,
and some of Mari-
on Harland’s WIDE
AwakE cooks
perhaps try to make
it and see how they
like this dish of their
great-great grand-par-
will
BAKING DAY.
Madame Whitney boiled this down about
O° 6 Rerrie
meet GEA
Liked
‘
“=a 4%
Shee
5 S00N SPRANG LIP IN THE
ka ipiy tb, GE
Pe ay
af,
FOE: A
EF AND Eg
—— ce
SEIS
WZ ip y
ERG Nab
VID
ents. Well, Madame Whitney boiled the sap and
added the milk, as she did for sap porridge. Ther
OLD-TIME
when it boiled she put in her “robins.†To make
these she took one egg for each cup of sweet milk,
and stirred in flour till it was a stiff batter; but I
think if you
should put in
as much cream
of tartar and
soda as you do
in making bis-
cuits, your rob-
ins will be
more likely to
be light—if
they are heavy
your dinner is
spoiled. The
batter should
be as stiff as
you can stir
With a spoon; and as soon as the sweet porridge
boils you are to drop in bits, or “robins,†about as
large as an acorn. Drop them just where the boiling
makes a free space in the pot, and don’t let the boil-
ing cease for a moment. Cover the pot, and let it
THE BAKE-KETTLE,
COOKERY. 104
boil a few moments after the last robin isin. A little
salt should be put both into the robins and the por-
ridge, the salt taste being quite distinct in the
robins. ‘
Salt was one of the anxieties and trials of the
housekeeper; it required two bushels of wheat to
buy one bushel: of salt, and the exchange had to be
made several miles away. It was coarse sali when
bought; all the fine salt used for butter and cooking
was pounded in a mortar — the Whitney boys hated
the salt mortar worse than they did the churn.
The first maple syrup brought in demanded “ flap-
jacks†for its full enjoyment. These were baked in
a frying-pan, with a handle three cr four feet long,
and cook, who was perhaps the good deacon himself,
held the pan over the fire, while the mass of batter
was baking; when well done on the under side he
shook the pan lightly till the cake would slip upon
it; then, with a skilful toss, he /apped the cake over,
still holding the pan over the fire — this made flap-
jacks of the cakes, 1 suppose, for they were what
we call griddle-cakes or pancakes. But Madame
Whitney’s pancakes were different; they were made
much like the dumplings in Pop Robin, and dropped
by spoonfuls into hissing lard. No one could stand
over the blazing fire to do’this, so a parcel of coals
was drawn out on the hearth, and in them was set a
a long-legged
spider con-
taining the
lard. All iron-
ware was then
made
long legs to
stand in beds
of coals. A
‘short-cake â€
was baked in
a spider over
the coals until
the bottom
was done, then
‘turned up be-
fore the fire till
the top cooked
and browned. Biscuits were baked in a bake-kettle
—a kettle holding ten or twelve quarts, with a heavy
cast-iron cover, which was surrounded by a deep rim
The kettle was put on the hearth over a bed of live
coals, the dough laid in, either with or without a
with
ile
his
ZS,
iy
Y Legge],
Cid
L1Io
baking plate, the cover put on, and coals piled upon
it. When the coals began to die, they were easily
renewed from the fireplace. The bake-kettle was
prized for ah emergency, as it was so readily got in
baking order, while the heating of the brick oven
was an affair of time and preparation.
When the settlements were new, the cows ranging
the woods got little nourishing food and gave little
milk. As fast as possible, trees were girdled or felled
to give more grass space, and better pasturage and
milk soon came to form a very important article of
diet. Plain, but substantial breakfasts and dinners
of solid food were always provided; but in mos
houses the suppers, not teas, were of milk with bread
or hominy, mush, or hulled corn, or boiled wheat
eaten from wooden bowls or pewter porringers.
But whatever the meal chanced to be, any neigh-
bor or friend who happened to call was asked to “‘sit
by,†and made welcome to a share. Everybody was
hospitable and benevolent, and all were as generous
in caring for others as they were shrewd in looking
QUESTIONS.
out for themselves. If any man was sick, his neigh-
bors did his planting or harvesting, taking good care
to have it done in season. Besides, in clearing land
and erecting buildings every man even those in most
prosperous circumstances was forced sooner or later
to ask help. No one willingly refused an invitation
to a log-piling, raising, or other “ bee.†These were
the housewife’s great days. If her townsmen took
pleasure in coming to help her husband, she took
both pleasure and pride in giving them a good din-
ner when the work was done. As soon as the invita-
tions to a bee were out, the girls and matrons in the
vicinity dropped in one by one, with offers of
assistance in the house, cooking utensils and the use
of the oven. The day of the bee as well as the day
before, was as busy a one in doors as out. A row of
pots hung bubbling on the crane, the great oven was
heated again and again, and, if it was a very great
occasion, pots of beans and pudding were sent to
other houses to bake—but at another time I will
tell you the full story of “ an old-fashioned bee.â€
ODES kon Ss:
By KatE LAWRENCE.
AN you put the spider’s web back in its place, that once has been swept away?
Can you put the apple again on the bough, which fell at our feet to-day ?
Can you put the lily-cup back on the stem, and cause it to live and grow?
Can you mend tke butterfly’s broken wing, that you crushed with a hasty blow ?
Can you put the bloom again on the grape, or the grape again on the vine?
Can you put the dewdrops back on the flowers, and make them sparkle and shine?
Can you put the petals back on the rose?
If you could, would it smell as sweet ?
Can you put the flour again in the husk, and show me the ripened wheat ?
Can you put the kernel back in the nut, or the broken egg in its shell ?
Can you put the honey back in the comb, and cover with wax each cell ?
Can you put the perfume back in the vase, when once it has sped away ?
Can you put the corn-silk back on the corn, or the down on the catkins — say ?
You think that my questions are trifling, dear?
Let me ask you another one:
Can a hasty word ever be unsaid, or a deed unkind, undone?
OUR
RGYAL NEIGHBORS AT SANDRINGHAM.
By Mrs. RayMonp BLATHWAYTE,
Die=4| DARE say all American
boys and girls very well
know Sandringham to be
the name of the house
in which the Prince of
Wales lives when he is
quite at home. I have
the good fortune to live
within a few miles of the
estate, and we often drive there, especially when
we have any visitor staying with us whose heart,
like ours, is cram-full of loyalty, as we had last
November. The Prince and Princess are always
at home at that time, and remain to spend Christ-
mas. They had, as usual, been entertaining the
people of the county with dancing and festivity.
It was the morning after the ball, and there was
to be a grand meet of the hunt at Hillington, and
we decided to drive to see the royal party leave the
hall.
It was a brilliant frosty morning, and off we rat-
tled through the little village and out into the open
country, gay with autumnal coloring, the sea glit-
tering and sparkling in the far off distance. We
tushed, up hill and down dale, through villages
that woke up to see us pass, and along great com-
mons grand in their noble solitude, then up a pretty
little wooded steep, and there the Park lay before
us in all its English beauty. Here are the Nor-
wich gates, handsome iron structures, presented
to the Prince of Wales by the inhabitants of the
ancient cathedral city. There is the long avenue
of noble oaks and beeches; and then the house
itself—a plain and somewhat homely-looking build-
ing.
A soldierly looking policeman is standing at the
gates. Uncle Raymond, who is driving, jumps
down and accosts him : “ Has the Prince gone yet ?â€
“No, sir, you’re in plenty of time. You had
better go round to Cook’s Lodge, and drive slowly
up the hill; you’re sure to see him pass.â€
We drive on again. Everything savors of roy-
alty. Prince of Wales’ feathers meet the eye at every
turn; even the very carts bear his name upon them
as they pass. And nowwe take positionon the hill.
A quarter of an hour goes slowly by, and yet we
see and hear nothing. :
“Is it possible,†cries Uncle Raymond taking out
his watch, “that we have had our drive for nothing ?
Here is a man, I’ll ask him.†F
The laborer civilly informs us that the Prince is
snipe-shooting at Wolverton, and, touching his hat,
passes on.
We groan audibly. A gentleman in hunting ces-
tume, but on foot, appears in the distance. As he
approaches Uncle Raymond questionshim: “ Does
the Prince go hunting to-day?â€
“Ves; he does go hunting to-day.â€
“Will he pass this way?â€
“He will pass this way; you cannot possibly
miss him.â€
Presently carts and wagonettes go by; and then
a string of the royal hunters step proudly past us.
Then two or three red coats appear, more wagon-
ettes, more strings of hunters, more red-coats, all
looking as“ fresh as paint and as cheerful as par-
rots.†And then comes a pause. We are alone
once more. But soon a gentleman rides slowly out
of the gates, immediately followed by a laughing
cavalcade.
It is the Prince!
He on the gray horse, at the head of the caval-
cade, comes slowly up the hill.
Uncle Raymond stands bareheaded at the pony’s
head. “The Prince’s eye is upon us and, noting
Uncle Raymond’s bare head, he lifts his hat, bows
graciously and gallops rapidly forward. He looked
very handsome in his red coat, every inch the Prince
of Wales, and England’s future King.
Then there is more waiting until an open car-
riage, drawn by four horses with postilions, turns
the corner. Two gentlemen are on the box, then
two ladies, then a lady and gentleman. The Prin-
cess is on the second seat, and on our side. As
she passes, looking pale, but very sweet and pretty,
she, too, bows in the most charming manner. Then
ITI
Le?
- she also passes out of sight.
the Prince and Princess.
We took another visitor to Sandringham when
the family were away. I remember that we visited
the little rural church, across the park to which the
Princess used to steal so often on those dull winter
days more than twelve years ago, when it was be-
lieved the Prince lay dying, and all England waited
in suspense the issues of life or death. Just with-
out the east window, in the mossy green of the
churchyard, there is a little grave with simple mar-
ble cross and low iron railing. Here lies the
little Prince who only lived through one short day,
the third son of the royal pair, Alexander John
Charles Albert. Scarcely a stone’s throw from this
is the grave of the favorite young groom, Charles
Blagg, who died of the same illness that seized the
Prince in that memorable winter of ’71. A stone
cross marks the spot, and on the reverse of the
cross is engraved by the Prince’s special command:
The one was taken and the other left.’ This is one
of the many little incidents which prove to us Eng-
lish people that our Prince possesses a warm heart.
He who could be touched by the death of a ser-
vant, and acknowledge that God’s Providence alone
had preserved him from sharing the same fate,
must be possessed of deep and tender feelings. In
the chancel of the little church, erected by the
Prince’s order to the memory of his sister the
Princess Alice, is another tablet inscribed by him:
“« This monument is erected by her devoted and sorrow-
ing brother Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.â€
We left the churchyard to enter the park and
grounds surrounding the hall. There is much of in-
terest tobeseen. Although no portion of the house is
ever shown, by favor we were allowed to go into the
Princess’ little tea-room adjoining her dairy; an
exquisite little room decorated with gifts from her
personal friends in the shape of pictures, painted
panels, plaques etc. etc. Here she frequently enter-
tains her especial friends at afternoon tea, part of
the meal being a large home-baked loaf, for which
the Princess always stipulates, and from which she
cuts slices for her guests with her own hands.
The big, cool dairy is perfect in its arrangement,
and the cream from those large white pans is sim-
ply delicious. This is one of the homely tastes
that so endears the Princess to us, because it shows
that amidst all the grandeur by which she is nec-
essarily surrounded, she still preserves her fond-
Our guest had seen
OUR ROYAL NEIGHBORS AT SANDRINGHAM.
ness for simple pleasures and for housewifely ways.
Here in these green lanes and-woods she fre-
quently puts aside the accessories of royalty. A
few years ago, she and some of her children had
enjoyed a considerable ramble, and were exces-
sively fatigued, when opportunely an old man passed
them driving a sand-cart. ‘The Princess instantly
accosted him, asking him to give them a lift. He,
addressing her as ‘“‘my good lady,’’ bade her and
the children “jump up.†This they did, im-
mensely enjoying the ‘lark.’ They chatted pleas-
antly as they jogged along (for our Norfolk va
lH. Re
H., LOUISE OF WALES.
borers are singularly shrewd and intelligent, and
always ready to respond when talked to), until they
came to the big iron gates where the ways divide.
The man then asked the “good lady†where he
should set them down,
She said he might drive straight on. Now
“straight on†meant through those big Norwich
gates which admit you into the approach to the
hall. ‘The man hesitated. The Princess insisted ;
and moreover she made him drive up to the very
door where kings and dukes and all imaginable
grandees are received. I wonder whose surprise
OUR ROVAL NEIGHBORS AT SANDRINGHAM.
was the greater, that of the driver of the sand-
cart, or that of the Princess’ attendants when she
alighted at her own door from this novel equipage!
Only a few months ago the Princess, before leav-
ing Sandringham, went to take a farewell gift of
photographs to one of the people on the estate,
A new maid-servant opened the door to her.
“Ts Mr. So-and-So at home?†asked the Princess,
“No, Miss,†said the girl, ‘‘ but he won’t be long;
will you come in and wait a bit?â€
“Tell him,†said the laughing Princess, as she
handed over the packet, “that the Princess of
Wales brought these for his acceptance.â€
The Princess herself repeated this story to the
gentleman of the house, who quickly responded:
“No stranger would ever take your Royal High-
ness to be the mother of those fine young men,â€
referring to the Princes.
But to return to Sandringham. We wandered
down by the lake, and went into a beautiful little
cave which the water enters and forms a deep, still,
dark pool, such a contrast to the sunlit lake out-
side, over the surface of which some lovely swans
and water fowl were gliding. We walked on the
broad long terrace, and saw Prince Eddy (who is
now at Sandringham with a tutor, studying), play-
ing at tennis in the court with the Vicar and his
wife, and some friends. Then we went through the
stables, and saw the tiny pony that was made such
a pet of by the royal children that it used to follow
them up and down stairs. We were shown also, a
little old-fashioned pony-chaise, never used now,
which the Prince of Wales first drove out in as a tiny
boy. Next we went to the kennels to see the dogs;
fine fellows they are, with big loving eyes, and
nice smooth foreheads. Then on to the bears; there
are two, named Charlie and Polly. They went
through their little performance obediently, climb-
ing a pole and catching the biscuits we threw to
them, sometimes with their mouths, sometimes with
their paws. Next came the monkeys.
By this time we began to feel that we had done
our duty right loyally; so Uncle Raymond went
back to the “model farm†where he had left the
pony. He was put into the shafts by a dear old
farm laborer who told Uncle Raymond how he
often went round the farm with the Prince, and that
they were frequently alone together for hours, and
the Prince always talking freely. He said he went
part of the way to India with the Prince on board
TEs
the Serapis, to take some cattle to the King of
Greece ; he spoke of the kindness to King George,
and of how he used often tocome and talk to him.
When he left, the king gave him a portrait of him-
self and of all his family. He was sent to Den:
mark once, too, to take some cattle from the Prince
to his kingly father-in-law, and met with plenty of
kindness.
Of course, we who constantly live in the neigh-
borhood of Sandringham hear, and speak, and
think much of our royal neighbors. We see them
apart from the trappings of royalty, we meet them
riding and driving about the pleasant country lanes
and we hear of them fulfilling —as they delight to
—the homely duties of Squire and Squiress. The
Prince is a model landlord, and the Princess in
her home is a bright example of what a woman
should be as mistress, wife, and mother. Only the
other day I heard of her entering one of the cot-
tages where lay a poor man who had met with an
accident, laden with salves and old linen. She ex-
amined his wound, and then dressed and bandaged
it with her own hands so skilfully that the parish
doctor thought another medical man had been
called in to attend his patient, and refused to con-
tinue to treat him himself. Whereupon the Princess,
with a sly laugh doubtless, for she has a very keen
sense of humor, sent another doctor to the sufferer.
To the old cottagers the Prince has always
seemed more like a country Squire than England’s
future king; they do not realize his position apart
from Sandringham. His pleasant bonhomie, his
generosity, his kind-heartedness have endeared him
to them. As the plain but familiar equipage goes
by, the labourer looks up from his toil in the fields
to murmur “ The Prince, God bless him!â€
A favorite resort of the royal pair in the early
days of their married life was a little sea-side vil-
lage about nine miles distant from Sandringham,
which has since given its name to a popular sum-
mer resort close by. Here is a wide sea-beach.
with level stretches of brown-ribbed sand, low sand
hills, and cliffs whereon a lighthouse stands. One
of the keepers of that Light was a garrulous old
man with whom it was pleasant to linger for a chat,
as one rested on the bench under the white wall
which skirted the Lighthouse garden, on some
bright sunshiny morning, with the grand panorama
of sea and sky, and the low line of the distant
Lincolnshire coast, spread out before one. Just in
IT4
such a way I have often rested and talked to him,
or listened while he told me how he had many a
time seen the young royal pair upon the sands be-
low, at play like a couple of children, pushing each
other into the water, or drenching each other with
the salt sea spray. They used to drive from Sand-
ringham with as few attendants as possible, put up
their carriage and horses at a little old-fashioned
inn near the shore, and walk down to the beach.
The landlord of this inn is (for he still lives) an ec-
centric character, come of an old gypsy family es-
tablished for more than five centuries in the village,
during which time every now and then the gypsy
blood would break out and some one member of
the family would take to roving. The old man him-
self did so in his young days. Curiously enough
his surname is Wales, and one day he said to the
Prince, “ Your Royal Highness must surely be re-
lated to me, for my name is Wales.†The Prince
was mightily amused with the old man’s joke, and
showed his appreciation of it by repeating it often.
These little excursions generally included a pic-
nic lunch, either on the beach, or in the park which
forms a part of the estate of the lord of the manor,
who was then an absentee, representing the British
government at Washington. An invariable feature
of these picnics was the boiling of a pot-ful of
potatoes over a gypsy fire. On this the Princess
always insisted. On one of these occasions an old
woman familiarly known in the village as “ granny,â€
whose birth was lost in the mist of antiquity be-
cause, as she herself told me, “her mother never
wrote it down,†danced before their royal high-
nesses, and was rewarded with a shower of small
coins. The sum of poor old “ granny’s †years is
told now, and she is gone home, and changes of
various kinds have put an end to these rural pic-
nics on the beach. Only now and again, generally
when they are down for the Easter recess, the Prince
and Princess visit the shore with their children ;
.and the Princess may be seen in her high water-
boots, walking leisurely through the thin edge of
the water as it creeps up and along the shore. Per-
haps, who can tell, the scene reminds them of those
merry days of old, and they tell over again to
make the royal children laugh, some remembered
incident, perhaps of old granny’s dance, or the
landlord’s relationship.
They are easily moved to smiles and laughter,
these happy, healthy children in whom the spirit
. ful of mischief.
OUR ROYAL NEIGHBORS AT SANDRINGHAM.
of fun and enjoyment seems to be re-kindled with
added force. Prince George is the mainspring of
all the frolic and fun that goes on at Sandringham,
at Christmas and other times. He is a good speci-
‘men of English boyhood, strong, active, and brim-
His elder brother, known here by
his pet home name “ Prince Eddy,†is more thought-
ful and studious, though now and again Prince
George’s spirit seems to infect him. With both,
Mr. Beck, the agent, is a great favorite. I am
almost ashamed to tell how they bestowed upon
him the soubriquet of “ Old Satan� — wherefore, I
THE PRINCESSES, VICTORIA AND MAUD, OF WALES.
cannot imagine, for nothing more anti-Satanic
than his jovial, weather-bronzed face can be con-
ceived. They used to delight in waylaying him
with snow-balls, and in making him the subject of
all sorts of pranks. And yet they have a care for
his comfort, for at luncheon Prince George has
heaped his plate up with dainties, thinking he cared
for, and yet could not get them at home! And
they have a regard for his appearance too, advis-
ing him as to the kind of collars he should wear,
and on one occasion Prince George went so far as
OUR ROYAL NEIGHBORS AT SANDRINGHAM.
to re-tie his necktie for him. When the two Princes
returned from their travels, which all the world
has read of, they brought “ Old Satan †a couple of
ostrich’s eggs from Jerusalem, which Prince George
declared he had actually seen laid! The eggs, duly
mounted on appropriate stands, occupy a promi-
nent position in the pretty drawing-room of the
agent’s house. This house is a sort of common
ground to our royal neighbors. Standing in the
quaint entrance hall with its mistress, it is easy to
conjure up some of the many pictures of royal in-
vasions as she describes them. First, the Princess
and her dogs enter on some windy November day
amidst a splash of rain, and a whirl of dry leaves.
Then, some of the chifdren come clamouring for
“Beck,†suppressing the nickname in the presence
of their mother. Or the Prince rides up to the door
with the same demand. From the frequent calls
upon him, one would imagine that nothing could
be done successfully unless Beck is to the fore.
And then those Christmases at Sandringham! In
November they entertain the county at a succession
of balls for gentry, tenants, and servants. The
old hall is ablaze with lights, long processions of
carriages roll down the avenue, merry music sounds,
and all is mirth—to the royal party at any rate,
though many a young and awkward little country
débutante may shiver and shake in her shoes at the
thought of entering the awful presence of royalty.
Not so her elders, however, for to this end have
they schemed and contrived, and burned with envy
of more fortunate neighbors who, for a succession
of seasons have had the entree of Sandringham.
But the height of their ambition is attained at last,
the magic bidding has been given and here they
are, shivering amidst their furs, for the snow lies
white without the carriage windows (the first snow
of the season generally falls on the night of the
Sandringham ball), but what matter cold and fatigue
since this night will set the seal to their social po-
sition.
Christmas at Sandringham is essentially a home
Christmas, a celebration of the great and univer-
sal children’s day, for, and with the royal children.
There are always Christmas-Tree parties, and
dances, and theatricals, at some of which little
friends of my own are accustomed to meet the three
young Princesses. ‘“ And what do they say to
you?†TI asked one of them, with great gravity.
Ils
“‘O, they just ask the same questions that other
children do, only more of them. They want to
know what we do at school, what lessons we have
to learn, what we have to eat, and all that sort of
thing, you know. But they seem most curious about
school, because they cannot quite imagine what ‘go-
ing to school, is like.’â€
But when Christmas night settles down over the
great heath which lies all around and about Sand-
ringham, and darkness clouds the distant sea:
when there is an icy edge to the keen air, and the
stars shine out with extra brightness ; when there
is warmth on every hearth in all the model cot-
tages, and only the churches stand dark and still
in the cold winter night, how redly the lights gleam
behind all the windows of the Hall! Every one out-
side has been cared for, many a happy Christmas
has been made secure, and now the Prince and
Princess keep theirs lightheartedly with their chil-
dren and guests. The two tall striplings — for they
are almost young men now— Prince Eddy, and
Prince George, rush forward in friendly rivalry to
secure the honor of conducting their mother to din-
ner. ‘They are almost like lovers — those two tall
youths —so passionately are they devoted to the
beautiful and young-looking ‘‘ Sea-King’s Daughter
from over the sea.†Neither being first, and neither
winning preference, the Princess goes gayly to the
dining-hall between them. After them comes the
Prince with his bonny group of daughters; the por-
traits given here of the young princesses are from
home photographs. There has been a distribu-
tion of gifts at the breakfast table in the morning,
and you may be sure that “Old Satan†had re-
ceived his usual summons up to the Hall to get
something very especial. And after dinner comes
the frolic. Snap-dragon has been one of the favor-
ite amusements, but so serious did it like to prove
one year that I do not believe it still continues in
favor. Some of the burning spirit fell upon the
dress of the Princess who might have been badly
burnt but for the presence of mind of Sir Dykin
Probyn, who promptly extinguished it.
So time passes with our royal neighbors, and the
years rollon. God grant that many more have yet
to pass before they will be called upon to give up
their cosey home at Sandringham to enter upon the
greater splendour of the Throne.
agg
i
Ree Sarre ors SEES
2)
“TELL ME, MY LITTLE MAN,’’ SAID HE, ‘‘WHERE YOU SAW THE BRITISH UNIFORM.’
116
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A HERO.
(A Story of the American Revolution.)
By Mrs, Frances A. HUMPHREY
HEY were sitting by the great blazing wood-
fire. It was July, but there was an east wind
and the night was chilly. Besides, Mrs. Heath had
a piece of fresh pork to roast. Squire Blake had
“killed†the day before—that was the term used
to signify the slaughter of any domestic animal for
food —and had distributed the “fresh†to various
families in town, and Mrs. Heath wanted hers for
the early breakfast. Meat was the only thing to be
had in plenty — meat and berries. Wheat and corn,
and vegetables even, were scarce. There had been
a long winter, and then, too, every family had sent
early in the season all they could possibly spare to
the Continental army. As to sugar and tea and
molasses, it was many a day since they had had
even the taste of them.
The piece of pork was suspended from the ceiling
by a stout string, and slowly revolved before the fire,
Dorothy or Arthur giving it a fresh start when it
showed signs of stopping. There was a settle at
right angles with the fireplace, and here the little
cooks sat, Dorothy in the corner nearest the fire,
and Arthur curled up on the floor at her feet, where
he could look up the chimney and see the moon,
almost at the full, drifting through the sky. At
the opposite corner sat Abram, the hired man and
faithful keeper of the family in the absence of its
head, at work on an axe helve, while Bathsheba,
r “Basha,†as she was briefly and affectionately
called, was spinning in one corner of the room just
within range of the firelight.
There was no other light — the firelight being suffi-
cient for their needs—and it was necessary to
economize in candles, for any day a raid from the
royal army might take away both cattle and sheep,
and then where would the tallow come: from for
the annual fall candle-making? There was a rumor
— Abram had brought it home that very day — that
the royal army were advancing, and red coats might
make their appearance in Hartland at any time.
Arthur and Dorothy were talking about it, as they
turned the roasting fork.
“Wish I was a man,†said Arthur, glancing
towards his mother, who was sitting in a low splint
chair knitting stockings for her boy’s winter wear.
“T’d like to shoot a red coat.â€
“OQ Arty!†exclaimed Dorothy reproachfully;
“you're always thinking of shooting! Now / should
like to nurse a sick soldier and wait upon him.
‘Poor soldiers! it was dreadful what papa wrote to
mamma about them.â€
“Would you nurse a red coat?†asked Arthur,
indignantly. 117
118
“Yes,†said Dorothy. ‘Though of course I
should rather, a great deal rather, nurse one of
our own soldiers. But Arty,†continued the little
elder sister, “papa says if we must fight, why, we
must fight bravely, but that we can be brave without
fighting.â€.
“Well, I mean to be a hero, and heroes always
fight. King Arthur fought. Papa said so. He and
his knights fought for the Sangreal, and liberty
is our Sangreal. I’m glad my name is Arthur,
anyhow, for Arthur means noble and high,†he said,
lifting his bright boyish face with its steadfast blue
eyes, and glancing again towards his mother. She
gave an answering smile.
“T hope my boy will always be noble and high
in thought and deed. But, as papa said, to be a
hero one does not need to fight, at least, not to
fight men. We can fight bad tempers and bad
thoughts and cowardly impulses. They who fight
these things successfully are the truest heroes, my
boy.â€
“Ah, but mamma, didn’t I hear you tell grand-
mamma how you were proud of your hero. That’s
what. you called papa when General Montgomery
wrote to you, with his ower hand, how he drove
back the enemy at the head of his men, while the
balls were flying and the cannons roaring and
flashing; and when his horse was shot under him
how he struggled out and cheered on his men, on
foot, and the bullets whizzed and the men fell all
around him, and he wasn’t hurt and’ — Here the
boy stopped abruptly and sprang impulsively forward,
for his mother’s cheek had suddenly grown pale.
“True grit!†remarked Abram to Basha, in an
undertone, as she paused in her walk to and fro
by the spinning-wheel to join a broken thread.
“But there never was a coward yet, man or woman,
’mong the Heaths, an’ I’ve known ’em off an’
on these seventy year. Now there was ole Gin-
eral Heath,†he continued, holding up the axe
helve and viewing it critically with one eye shut,
“he was a marster hand for fightin’. Fit the Injuns
*s though he liked it. That gun up there was his’n.â€
“Tell us about the ‘sassy one,’†said Arthur,
turning at the word gun.
“Youngster, ’f ve told yer that story once, I’ve
told yer fifty times,†said Abram.
“Tell it again,†said the boy eagerly.
take down the gun, too.â€
Abram got up as briskly as his seventy years
“* And
A HERO. x
and his rheumatism would permit, and took down
the gun from above the mantel-piece,
large one,
“Not quite so tall as the old Gineral himself,â€
said Abram, “but a purty near to it. This gun is
*bout seven feet, an’ yer gran’ther was seven feet
two—a powerful built man. Wall, the Injuns had
been mighty obstreperous ‘long ’bout that time,
burnin’ the Widder Brown’s house and her an’ her
baby a-hidin’ in a holler tree near by, an’ carryin’
off critters an’ hosses, an’ that day yer gran’ther
was after ’em with a posse o’ men, an’ what did
that pesky Injun do but git up on a rocka quarter
o’ a mile off an’ jestickerlate in an outrigerus
manner, like a sarcy boy, an’ yer gran’ther, he took
aim and fired, an’ that impident Injun jest tumbled
over with a yell; his last, mind ye, and good enough
for him!â€
“T like to hear about old gran’ther,†said Arthur.
As Abram was restoring the gun to its place
upon the hooks, a sound was heard at the side
door—a sound as of a heavy body falling against
it, which startled them all. The dog Cesar rose,
and going to the door which opened into the side
entry, sniffed along the crack above the threshold.
Apparently satisfied, he barked softly, and rising on
his hind legs lifted the latch and sprang into the
entry. Abram followed with Basha. As he lifted
the latch of the outer door—the string had been
drawn in early, as was the custom in those troublous
times — and swung it back, the light from the fire fell
upon the figure of a man lying across the doorstone.
“Sakes alive!†exclaimed Abram, drawing back.
But at a word from the mistress, they lifted the
man and brought him in and laid him down on the
braided woollen mat before the fire. Then for a
moment there was silence, for he wore the dress
of a British soldier, and his right arm was bandaged.
He had fainted from loss of blood, apparently —per-
haps from hunger. Basha loosened his coat at the
throat, and tried to force a drop or two of “spiritsâ€
into his mouth, while Mrs. Heath rubbed his hands.
“He ain’t dead,†said Basha, in a grim tone, “and
mind you, we'll see trouble from this.†Basha
was an arrant rebel, and hated the very sight of
a red coat. “What are you doin’ here,†she con-
tinued, addressing him, “killin? honest folks, when
you'd better ’ve staid cross seas in yer own country?â€
“Basha!†said Mrs. Heath reprovingly, “he is
helpless.â€
It was a very
A HERO.
But Basha as she unwound the tight bandage
from the shattered arm, kept muttering to herself
like a rising tempest, until at length the man having
come quite to himself, detected her feeling, and with
great effort said, “I am ofa British soldier.â€
“Then what to goodness have you got on their
uniform for?†queried Basha.
_ Little by little the pitiful story was told. He was
an American soldier who had been doing duty as
a spy in the British camp. Up to the very last
day of his stay he had not been suspected; but
trying to get away he was suspected, challenged,
and fired at. The shot passed through his arm.
He was certain his pursuers had followed him till
night, and they would be likely to continue the
search the next day, and he begged Mrs. Heath
to secrete him for a day or two, if possible.
“T wouldn’t mind being shot, marm,†he said,
“but you know they’ll hang me if they get me. Of
course I risked it when I went into their camp,
but it’s none the pleasanter for all that.â€
Now in the old Heath house there was a secret
chamber, built in the side of the chimney. Most
of those old colonial houses had enormous chimneys,
that took up, sometimes, a quarter of the ground
occupied by the house, so it was not a difficult thing
to enclose a small space with slight danger of its
existence being detected. This chimney chamber
in the Heath house was little more than a closet
eight feet by four. It was entered from the north
chamber, Abram’s room, through a narrow sliding
panel that looked exactly like the rest of the wall,
which was of cedar boards, An inch-wide shaft
running up the side of the chimney ventilated the
closet, and it was lighted by a window consisting
of three small panes of glass carefully concealed
under the projecting roof. In a sunny day one
could see to read there easily.
A small cot-bed was now carried into this room,
and up there, after his wound had been dressed
by Basha, who, like many old-time women, was
skilful in dressing wounds and learned in the prop-
erttes of herbs and roots, and he had been fed
and bathed, the soldier was taken; and a very
grateful man he was as he settled himself upon
the comfortable bed and looked up with a smiling
“thank you,†into Basha’s face, which was no longer
grim and forbidding.
All this time no special notice had been taken
of Dorothy and Arthur, They had followed about
I19
to watch the bathing, feeding and tending, and when
Mrs..Heath turned to leave the secret chamber, she
found them behind her, staring in with very wide-
open eyes indeed; for, if you can believe it, they
never before had even heard of, much less seen,
this lovely little secret chamber. It was never
deemed wise in colonial families to talk about these
hiding-places, which sometimes served so good a
purpose, and I doubt if many adults in the town
of Hartland knew of this secret chamber in the
Heath house.
The panel was closed, and Abram was left to
care for the wounded soldier through the night. It
was nine o’clock, the colonial hour for going to
bed, and long past the children’s hour, and Dotty
and Arthur in their prayers by their mother’s knee,
put up a petition for the safety of the stranger.
“ Would they hang him if they could get him,
mamma?†asked Arty.
“Certainly,†she replied. “It is one of the rules
of warfare. A spy is always hung.â€
In the morning, from nine to eleven, Mrs. Heath
always devoted to the children’s lessons. Arthur,
who was eleven, was a good Latin scholar. He
was reading Cesar’s Commentaries, and he liked it
—that is, he liked the story part. He found some
of it pretty tough reading, and I need not tell you
boys who have read Czesar, what parts those were.
They had English readings from the Sfecfator, and
from Bishop Leighton’s works, books which you
know but little about. Dotty had a daily lesson in
botany, and very pleasant hours those school hours
were.
After dinner, at twelve, they had the afternoon
for play. That afternoon, the day after the soldier
came, they went berrying. They did this almost
every day during berry time, so as to -have what
they liked better than anything for supper—berries
and milk. Occasionally they had huckleberry “slap-
jacks,†also a favorite dish, for breakfast; not often,
however, as flour was scarce.
They went for berries down the road known as
South Lane, a lonely place, but where berries grew
plentifully. Their mother had cautioned them not
to talk ‘about the occurrence of the night before,
as some one might overhear, and so, though they
talked about their play and their studies, about papa
and his soldiers, they said nothing about ¢he soldier.
They had nearly filled their baskets, when a growl
from Cesar startled them, and turning, they saw two
120
horsemen who had stopped near by, one of whom
was just springing from his horse. They were in
British uniform, and the children at once were sure
what they wanted.
“QO Arty, Arty!†whispered Dorothy.
come, and we musin’t tell.â€
The man advanced with a smile meant to be
pleasant, but which was in reality so sinister that
the children shrank with a sensation of fear.
“How are you, my little man? Picking berries,
eh? And where do you live?†he asked.
“With mamma,†answered Arthur promptly.
“And who is mamma? What is her name?â€
“Mrs. Heath,†said Arty.
“And don’t you live with papa too?
papa?†the man asked.
Arthur hesitated an instant, and then out it came,
and proudly too. “In the Continental army, sirâ€
“Ho! ho! and so we are a little rebel, are
we?†laughed the man. “And who am I? Do
you know?â€
“Ves, sir; a British soldier.â€
“How do you know that?â€
“Because you wear their uniform, sir?â€
“You cannot have seen many British soldiers
here,†said the man. ‘Did you ever see the British
uniform before?â€
“Yes, sir,†replied Arty.
“And where did you see it?†he asked, glancing
sharply at Arthur and then at Dorothy. Upon the
face of the latter was a look of dismay, for she had
foreseen the drift of the man’s questions and the
trap into which Arty had fallen. He, too, saw it,
now he was iv. The only British uniform he had
ever seen was that worn by the American spy. For
a brief moment he was tempted to tell a lie. Then
he said firmly, “I cannot tell you, sir.â€
“Cannot! Does that mean will not?†said the
man threateningly. Then he put his hand into
his pocket and took out a bright gold sovereign,
which he held before Arthur.
“Come, now, my little man, tell me where you
saw the British soldier’s uniform, and you shall have
this gold piece.†;
But all the noble impulses of the boy’s nature
inherited and strengthened by his mother’s teach-
ings, revolted at this attempt to bribe him. His
eyes flashed. He looked the man full in the face.
*T will not!†said he.
“Come, come!†cried out the man on horseback.
“ They’ve
Where is
A HERO.
“Don’t palter any longer with the little rebel. We'll
find a way to make him tell. Up with him!â€
In an instant the man had swung Arthur into his
saddle, and leaping up: behind him, struck spurs to
his horse and dashed away. Cesar, who had been
sniffing about, suspicious, but uncertain, attempted
to leap upon the horseman in the rear, but he,
drawing his pistol from his saddle, fired, and Cesar
dropped helpless.
The horsemen quickly vanished, and for a moment
Dorothy stood pale and speechless. Then she knelt
down by Cesar, examined his wound—he was shot
in the leg —and bound it up with her handkerchief,
just as she saw Basha do the night before, and then
putting her arms around his neck she kissed him.
“Be patient, dear old Cesar, and Abram shall come
for you?â€
Covered with dust, her frock stained with Cesar’s
blood, a pitiful sight indeed was Dorothy as she
burst into the kitchen where Basha was preparing
supper.
“© mamma, they’ve carried off Arty and shot
Ceesar, those dreadful, dreadful British !â€â€™
Between her sobs she told the whole fearful story
to the two women—fearful, I say, for Mrs. Heath
knew too well the reputed character of the British
soldiery, not to fear the worst if her boy should per-
sist in refusing to tell where he had seen the British
soldier’s uniform. But even in her distress she was
conscious of a proud faith that he would not betray
his trust.
As to Basha, who shall describe her horror and
indignation? “The wretches! ain’t they content to
murder our men and burn our -houses, that they
must take our innercent little boys?†and she struck
the spit into the chicken she was preparing for
supper vindictively, as though thus she should like
to treat the whole British army. ‘‘The dear little
cretur! what’ll he do to-night without his mamma,
and him never away from her a night in his blessed
life. ’Pears to me the Lord’s forgot the Colo-
nies. O dearie, dearie me!†utterly overcome she
dropped into a chair, and throwing her homespun
check apron over her head, she gave way to such
a fit of weeping as astonished and perplexed Abram,
one of whose principle articles of faith it was that
Basha couldn’t shed a tear, even if she tried, “mor’n
if she’s made o’ cast iron.â€
It indeed looked hopeless.
after these men and rescue Arthur?
Who was to follow
There was
A HERO.
hardly any one left in town but old men, women
and children.
Mrs. Heath thought of this as she soothed Dor-
othy, coaxed her to eat a little supper,.and then sat
by her side until she fell asleep. She sat by the
fire while the embers died out, or walked up and
‘own the long, lonely kitchen, wrestling, like Jacob,
in prayer, for her boy, until long after midnight.
And now let us follow Arthur’s fortunes. The
men galloped hard and long over hills, through
valleys and woods, so far away it seemed to the
little fellow he could never possibly see mamma
or Dorothy again. At last they drew up at a large
white house, ev‘uently the headquarters of the offi-
cers, and Arthur was put at once into a dark closet
and there left. He was tired and dreadfully hungry,
so hungry that he could think of hardly anything
else. He heard the rattling of china and glasses,
and knew they were at supper. By and by a servant
came and took him into the supper room. His eyes
were so dazzled at first by the change from the dark
closet to the well-lighted room, that he could scarcely
see. But when the daze cleared he found himself
standing near the head of the table, where sat a
stout man with a red face, a fierce mustache, and
an evil pair of eyes.
He looked at Arthur a moment. Then he poured
out a glass of wine and pushed it towards him:
“Drink !â€
But Arthur did not touch the glass.
“Drink, I say,†he repeated impatiently.
you hear?â€
“IT have promised mamma never to drink wine,â€
was the low response.
It seemed to poor Arthur as though everything had
combined against him. It was bad enough to have
io say no to the question about the uniform, and
now here was something else that would make the
men still more angry with him. But the officer did
not push his command; he simply thrust the glass
one side and said, “Now, my boy, we’re going to
get that American spy and hang him. You know
where he is and you’ve got to tell us, or it will be
the worse for you. Do you want to see your mother
again?â€
Arthur did not answer.
answered just then.
throat. Cry?
silence.
“Obstinate little pig! speak!’ thundered the offi-
“ce Do
He could not have
A big bunch came into his
Not before these men. So he kept
.was, feared, and that was—rats!
I2I
cer, bringing his great brawny fist down upon the
table with a blow that set the glasses dancing,
“Will you tell me where that spy is?â€
“No, sir,†came in very low, but very firm tones.
I will not tell you the dreadful words of that officer,
as he turned to his servant with the command, “Put
him down cellar, and we’ll see to him in the morning.
They’re all alike, men, women and children. Rebel-
lion in the very blood. The only way to finish it is
to spill it without mercy.â€
Now there was one thing that Arthur, brave as he
Left on a heap
of dry straw, he began to wonder if there were rats
there. Presently he was sure he heard something
move, but he was quickly reassured by the touch
of soft, warm fur on his hand, and the sound of
a melodious “pur-r.†The friendly kitty, glad of
a companion, curled herself by his side. What
comfort she brought to the lonely little fellow!
He lay down beside her, and saying his Our Father,
and Now J lay me, was soon in a profound sleep, the
purring little kitty nestling close.
The sounds of revelry in the rooms above did not
disturb him. The boisterous songs and laughter,
the stamping of many feet, continued far into the
night. At last they ceased; and when everything
had been for a long time silent, the door leading
to the cellar was softly opened and a lady came
down the stairway. I have often wished that I
might paint her as she looked coming down those
stairs. Arthur was afterwards my great-grandfather,
you know, and he told me this story when I was a
young girl in my teens. He told me how lovely
this lady was.
Her gown was of some rich stuff that shimmered
in the light of the candle she carried, and rustled
musically as she walked. There was a flash of
jewels at her throat and on her hands. She had
wrapped a crimson mantle about her head and
shoulders. Her eyes were like stars on a summer's
night, sparkling with a veiled radiance, and as she
stood and looked down upon the sleeping boy, a
smile, sweet, but full of a profound sadness, played
upon her lips. Then a determined look came into her
bright eyes.
He stirred in his sleep, laughed out, said “mamma,â€
and then opened his eyes. She stooped and touched
his lips with her finger. “Hush! Speak only in a
whisper. Eat this, and then I will take you to your
mother.â€
122
After he had eaten, she wrapped a cloak about
him, and together they stole up and out past the
sleeping, drunken sentinel, to the stables. She lead
out a white horse, her own horse, Arthur was sure,
for the creature caressed her with his head, and as
she saddled him she talked to him in low tones,
sweet, musical words of some foreign tongue. The
handsome horse seemed to understand the necessity
of silence, for he did not even whinny to the touch
of his mistress’ hand, and trod daintily and noise-
lessly as she led him to the mounting block, his small
ears pricking forward and backward, as though know-
ing the need of watchful listening.
Leaping to the saddle and stooping, she lifted
Arthur in front of her, and with a word they were
off. A slow walk at first, and then a rapid canter.
Arthur never forgot that long night ride with the
beautiful ladyon the white horse, over the country
_ flooded with the brilliancy of the full moon. Once
or twice she asked if he was cold, as she drew the
cloak more closely about him, and sometimes she
would murmur softly to herself words in that silvery,
foreign tongue. As they drew near Hartland, she
asked him to point out his father’s house, and when
they were quite near, only a little distance off, she
stopped the horse.
“T leave you here, you brave, darling boy,†she -
said. ‘Kiss me once, and then jump down. And
don’t forget me.â€
Arthur threw his arms around her neck and kissed
her, first on one cheek and then on the other, and
looking up into the beautiful face with its starry eyes,
said:
4 HERO.
“T will never, never forget you, for you are the
loveliest lady I ever saw except—except mamma.â€
She laughed a pleased laugh, like a child, then
took a ring from her hand and put it upon one of
Arthur’s fingers, Her hand was so slender it fitted
his chubby little hand very well.
“Keep this,†she said, “and by and by give it
to some lady good and true, like mamma.â€
“Will you be punished?†he said, keeping her
hand. She laughed again, with a proud, daring toss
of her dainty head, and rode away.
Arthur watched her out of sight, and then turned
towards home, Mrs. Heath was still keeping her
lonely watch, when the latch of the outer door was
softly lifted—nobody had the heart to take in the
string with Arty outside—the inner door swung
noiselessly back, and a blithe voice said, ‘‘ Mamma!
mamma! here I am, and I didn’t tell!â€
All that day, and the next, and the next, the Heath
household were in momentary expectation of the com-
ing of the red coats to search for the spy. Dorothy
and Arthur, and sometimes Abram, did picket duty
to give seasonable warning of their approach. But
they never came. In a few days news was brought
that the British forces, on the very morning after
Arthur’s return, had made a rapid retreat before an
advance of the Federal troops, and never again was
a red coat seen in Hartland. The spy got well in
great peace and comfort under Basha’s nursing, and
went back again to do service in the Continental
army, and Dotty used to say, “You did learn, didn’t
you, Arty, how a person, even a little boy, can be a
hero without fighting, just as mamma said?â€
AUDACITY.
JENNY OF SWAN'S.
12%,
A SATURDAY MORNING SORROW.
JENNY OF SWAN’S.,
(4 True Story.)
By ANNIE SawyvER Downs,
R. HOLDEN’S house at Seal Harbor does not
look much like an ordinary New England
poor-house, although to that use the selectmen of Tri-
mountain devote it. Usually the few paupers are
old and feeble people, but the day Mrs. Jordan
and her husband walked up the narrow path which
led from the landing where they had left their
boat, besides the old people there were several
children who, in country speech, were “to be bound
out.â€
Boys and girls between the ages of nine and
twelve were hanging about the doors, and looking
eagerly or stolidly, according to their dispositions,
at the Jordans, and a number of other couples whe
arrived about the same time. One little girl attracted
Mrs. Jordan’s notice. She was neither as pretty
nor as bright-looking as some of the others, and
Mr. Jordan did not see anything to fancy about her.
But Mrs. Jordan said she had a good steady
eye, a sweet voice, and to her tender heart, most
irresistible attraction of all; looked ill, and was even
a little deformed, through a curvature of the spine.
So if Charles, as she called her husband, wanted
her to take any little girl, it must be that one.
“But, mother,†expostulated the puzzled Charles,
“she is not strong, she cannot help you any, and.
124
instead of looking after things when Willy and I
are off fishing, will only make one more for you
to run after! Why not take that great red-cheeked
girl who looks so good-natured and energetic?†_
Still, as Mrs. Holden put it, “Mrs. Jordan would
not be said by her husband,†and soon brought
him round to her way of thinking. The girl’s name
was Janet Graham, and she was an orphan, her father
having been lost at sea, and her mother dying of
consumption not long after. The poor-house had
been her home for several years, and all the Hol-
dens liked her “first best,†their oldest boy declared.
Questioned by the still doubtful Mr. Jordan why
they liked her and what she could do in particular,
he was unable to specify, beyond tending babies
and rowing a boat, at both of which accomplishments
he declared “she was a beatum.†The conversation
was interrupted by Mrs. Jordan, who, holding Jenny
by the hand, informed her husband that the wind
was all going down, and if he did not hurry and
cast off, he would have to row them the whole
way home. As home was twelve miles distant, on
Swan’s Island, we do not wonder he stopped no
longer to inquire about Jenny’s good qualities,
He owned the whole island, and most capital
sheep pasturage he had there, as well as a farm
and several fish houses; and here he had lived
with his wife and nephew, Willy, for many years.
There was no other dwelling-house upon Swan’s,
and although besides Willy and himself there were
generally other men whom he employed in the
family, no woman ever came to bear Mrs. Jordan
company for any length of time. As she was Eng-
lish, she had no kith or kin this side the sea, and
although cheerful, even merry, yet frequently longed
for a little girl to go about with her as Willy did
with Charles, and now she had her.
In spite of Mrs. Jordan’s predictions, the wind
did not go down, and in good time they landed
safely at Swan’s Island. Willy was at the rough
pier to receive them, and to tell Jenny how glad
he was to see her; but after his aunt and she had
started up the hill toward the house, he looked
questioningly to his uncle.
“No,†returned Mr. Jordan, “she ain’t no beauty,
and she won’t never set no rivers on fire; but she
does took stiddy, and your aunt was set on her.â€
Swan’s Island would perhaps have seemed lone-
some te most children, but Jenny never found it so.
As she crossed the threshold of the kitchen door,
JENNY OF SWAN'S.
she felt herself at home, and with loving interest
and earnestness threw herself into the life around
her.
They gave her a room of her own, under the
eaves of the low, unpainted, one-story house, and
she begged Mrs. Jordan to teach her how to keep
it dainty and nice, like all the rest of the quaint little
home. She had learned to read and write at Seal
Harbor, and as Willy always went off the island
winters to attend school, he taught her from the
day she came.
Mrs. Jordan knew all about sewing and cooking,
and having been a lady’s maid in the old country,
was acquainted with many little devices for improv-
ing Jenny’s rough skin, and beautifying her lustreless
hair. She was a good Christian woman besides,
and every Sunday the family gathered, and one or
another read the prayers and lessons her church
ordered for the day. Mr. Jordan soon found his
heart going out lovingly to the child, and, taking
her with him frequently to the sea side of the
island, where the gray gulls built their nests and
reared their young, was surprised at her intelligence
and touched by her affection for his wife. The sim-
ple, regular life, good food and wise care, improved
her health so much that in the course of three or
four years the strangers who came in summer to
visit the lonely island with its savage cliffs, its count-
less sea birds, and its one happy family, never thought
of her as being deformed, and even old friends, who
JENNY’S HOME.
knew her when she first lived with Mrs. Jordan,
could hardly believe their eyes when they looked
at the erect, red-cheeked maiden who walked like
a young Diana round the rocky shore, or jumped
JENNY OF SWAN’ S.,
from bowlder to bowlder in search of rare eggs, or
still rarer ferns and lichens.
Business was always good with Mr. Jordan. He
and Willy put by money every summer, and in winter
the latter left them for four or five months to go to
school, and when he returned bringing new books,
papers, and all sorts of bright gossip, they would
not have exchanged their island for Windsor Castle.
But even the beautiful island, and the life more ideal
than any other I have ever known, could not entirely
escape care and sorrow.
Last winter Mr. Jordan was sick with sciatica,
125
lambs who came into the world only the night
before wouldn’t get a chill; and above all, why the
gulls screamed so much louder than usual. - Hark!
surely that was not the scream of a gull. That was
a human voice shouting “ Help, help!†She rushed
toward the north shore hatless, coatless, with her
long hair, which her violent motion loosened, stream-
ing in the wind.
As she passed the house, Mrs. Jordan with a face
like that of a dead woman, looked out of the door
and pointed to the cove. Once more she heard
that agonized cry, and then the truth broke upon
JENNY GOES TO THE RESCUE.
and for many weeks unable to move. He sent to
the mainland and hired a man to come and look
after the cattle and sheep, but this man was not
Willy, by any means, and Mrs. Jordan and Jenny
were unusually happy when April came, and Willy
was home again.
The first day of May Jenny ran to the well for
water. The wind was blowing very fresh, and as she
pulled up the bucket she noticed how very rough
the water was on all sides of the island. She
wondered, half idly, if her own little boat down
at the north cove was securely moored; if the young
her. It was Willy; and gaining the height of land
at this moment she saw, quite a long distance out,
his overturned boat. At the same instant she heard
Mr. Jordan shouting through his speaking trumpet
from the bedroom window, “Hold on, Willy, Jenny
is coming!†Poor Mr. Jordan, so disabled was he
that it was only after repeated attempts, and in spite
of the severest pain, that he got to the window;
and he had not, as he afterwards owned, the faintest
hope that the girl, in that sea, could get her boat
off, much less out, in time to save Willy, whom he
could see, although she could not, struggling in the
126
water. But Jenny had no misgivings. “Yes; Iam
coming, Willy, hold on!†she shouted. But to her
dismay her own little boat, with its slender oars
which she could use as deftly as she could a sewing-
machine, was adrift, and worse than that, Willy had
taken the oars belonging to the old dory, still at its
moorings, to go out in his boat to which upside down
she could now see him clinging. No oars were left
but the heavy ones used in the great sail boat. She
had no time wherein to think how much more diffi-
cult her task would be on account of these facts,
but quick as a flash unshipped the old dory and
pushed off with the big oars. So high ran the
waves, and so terribly was the wind blowing, that
both Mr. and Mrs. Jordan, who were watching her,
thought the boat would fill, and thus they would
lose both their children. But she was as cool as
-if she had been merely out for a pleasure row,
and managed her clumsy craft so adroitly that she
took in very little water, although she was drenched
to the skin by the flying spray. Once only, she told
them afterward, she nearly gave out. A mountain-
ous wave threatened instant destruction, and she
lost sight of Willy, whom, from the moment of start-
ing, she had kept in sight. The great, unwieldy
oars seemed to mock her utmost strength, and she
did not know but she was fainting, perhaps even
dying. ;
But it was only a second, and she said, “I heard
this ringing in my ears: They did everything for
you, now you save Willy.â€
And she did save him. His last conscious moment
was spent in getting into her boat, where he lay like
one dead, unable to help her in what was almost
THE CRITIC.
as dangerous as getting out—getting back. Fortu-
nately, the hired man, who had been shooting on.
the sea side of the island, appeared in time to assist
her in making a landing and in carrying Willy to
the house. It was half a day before he was able
to speak, but they knew the first time he opened
his eyes, that he was fully aware who saved him.
After a while he told them that going out to take
up his lobster pots, he piled so many on his boat
that their weight, combined with the rough sea, over-
turned it.
Like many seafaring people, he could not swim
a stroke, and if the lobster pots had not been
anchored by what is called a “kedger,†which he
had not pulled up, he would have given himself
up for lost. But the boat was so entangled with
the lobster pots that the kedger kept it from drifting
at once out of reach, and he held on.
When they asked him if he thought Jenny would
reach him in time, he said, “I hadn’t a doubt but
she would.â€
He had a rheumatic fever, spite of all his courage,
and they had to send to the mainland for a physician.
They told him the story, and we think he must have
written the Humane Society, for one day when Jenny
went to Seal Harbor for the mail, she -was amazed
beyond words as a nice little box was handed her
by her old friend, the Holden boy, which contained
the beautiful silver medal the Society bestows for
such acts of noble self-forgetfulness. Jenny likes
to look at the medal, but says, “Of course I do
not deserve it, for I never could have looked my
aunt Mary Jordan in the face, if I had not saved
Willy.â€
PAE CREEL IC,
By JaNeT MILLER.
E were “practising scales†in the parlor,
And the air was wild with our din,
When, happening to glance at the window,
A robin was looking in,
His wee head turned sideways with wonder,
As he listened in mute surprise;
For how those children could blunder
In scales, he couldn’t surmise.
Ah! robin, don’t judge in a hurry,
Though your scales are quite without flaws;
Don’t you think you would be in a flurry,
If you were obliged to use claws?
THE BOY BISHOP. . 127
i. ‘ : 2S ———— OR =
MUSH !†SAID THE KING. — ae a - -
THE BOY BISHOP.
By Cextia THAXTER.
—
| USH!†said the king Suddenly swept the lovely sounds
To the restless hounds at his royal knee, As from some heavenly choir.
“Thor and Woden, quiet be!
While I hear the bishop sing!†Said the king, “ Well done!
Now, by my faith, a voice so pure,
O fair to see So fresh, melodious, high and sure,
Was the young boy bishop, all robed in silk, J have not heard, my son !â€â€™
Cheeks red as roses, brow white as milk,
So beautiful was he! And as he said,
From his finger he drew the ruby rare:
O, loud he sang! “ Keep thou this sparkling ring to weag,
His clear voice, sweet as a golden flute, And these coins of gold so red.
Leaped from his lips while the king stood mute,
And the whole air thrilled and rang. “Proud shalt thou be
Till thou art old and canst no more sing,
Like a tuneful lyre Remembering thou did’st charm the king,
Over the monarch and over the hounds Who will remember thee!â€
HEROINES
WORDSWORTH’S LUCY.
HE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
— Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
1790.
OR, EE seOETS.
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
.What love I bore to thee.
*Tis past, the melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire ;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.
1799-
WORDSWORTH’S LUCY.
129
MOTHER AND POET,
MOTHER AND POET,
(Turin — After news from Gaeta, 1861.)
By ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
EAD! one of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me/
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art for a woman, men said,
But “is woman, zis, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
Forever instead.
What art can woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art és she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you
pressed,
And J proud by that test.
What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her
throat
Cling, strangle a little!. To sew by degrees,
And ’broider the long clothes and neat little coat!
To dream and to dote.
J made them
To teach them ... It stings there.
indeed
Speak plain the word ‘country.’ I taught them,
no doubt,
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
J prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant turned out.
And when their eyes flashed, oh, my beautiful eyes!
I exulted! nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise,
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then
one kneels ! “
— God! how the house feels.
At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be
spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel bough.
Then was triumph at Turin. ‘Ancona was free!’
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet
While they cheered in the street.
I bore it—friends soothed me: my grief looked sub-
lime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us
strained
To the height he had gained.
And letters still came — shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand. I was not to faint,
One loved me for two . . . would be with me ere long,
And ‘ Viva Italia’ Ze died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.
My Nanni would add, ‘he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls .
imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
' And how ’twas impossible, quite dispossessed, —
To live on for the rest.’
» Was
On which, without pause, up the telegraph line,
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta — Sho?.
Tell his mother. Ah, ah! ‘his,’ ‘their’ mother: not
‘mine.’
No voice says ‘my mother’ again to me.
You think Guido forgot?
What!
DEAD! ONE OF THEM SHOT BY THE SEA IN THE EAST,
AND ONE OF THEM SHOT IN THE WEST BY THE SEA
MOTHER
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affection, conceive not of woe?
ithink not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
_ The Above and Below.
O Christ of the seven wounds, who look’dst through
the dark
To the face of thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christ’s, die with eyes turned
away,
And no last word to say!
Both boys dead! but that’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always
keep one.
*Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall,
And when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?
Ah! ah! ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then ?
When the fair, wicked queen sits no more at her
sport
‘Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When your guns of Cavalli, with final retort,
Have cut the game short, —
AND POET.
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all_Heaven for its white,
green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my dead,)
What then? .Do not mock me!
bells low!
And burn your lights faintly.
there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow.
My Italy’s there — with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair.
Ah, ring your
Ady country is
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn,
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at
length
Into wail such as this! and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
Dead! one of them shot by the sea in the west!
And one of them shot in the east by the sea!
Both! both my boys! If, in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me /
VW WWE
et oN RANEY i; o +
a My Li a My KN
LN
is
}
BREAKFAST TIME.
AUTUMN GOLD. ; I
WHO SEE ALL THINGS
LOVING THOUGHT,
AUTUMN GOLD.
By CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH.
N Autumn when the winds are high,
And white clouds drive across the sky,
Or when with rains the woods are wet,
And trees pay earth their annual debt,
With what a wealth of falling gold
In splendid heaps the account is told!
Each leaf of bronze and yellow tint
A coin fresh-stamped in Nature’s mint,
With royal superscription shines
Beyond the graver’s tame designs.
\
What gold from mines in Earth’s abyss
So genuine, fresh and pure as this?
What forms so beautiful as those
The goldsmiths of the forest chose?
What dyer’s art could ever hit
Yolors so choicely exquisite ?
What regal stamp of Emperors old
Match the fine tracery of this gold?
Yet here ungrudging Nature heaps
The treasures of the forest deeps
In piles upon the lap of Earth
As though regardless of their worth,
And thoughtless idlers from the town
Shuffle aside and trample down
Colors and forms more precious far
Than e’er in Orient bazaar
The jealous jeweller has hid
Beneath his costly coffer’s lid.
Scarceness one half their value makes:
Beauty that Nature gives and takes
Year after year, to our dull eyes,
Is wealth we slowly learn to prize,
And they alone its worth are taught
Who see all things with loving thought.
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA
Amand Is far.
NCE upon a time (last summer, in fact) we (which means two
of us) set out to see wind-mills.
You remember how Don Quixote, when he started to seek adven-
tures, “discovered thirty or forty wind-mills all together on the
plain,†and thinking them giants with arms two or three leagues
long, began to fight them, when a breeze of wind “springing up
drove the sails against him,†and sent him and his steed, Rosinante,
into the air; and how Sancho Panza intimated that the knight had
wind-mills inhisownhead. You will, perhaps, think we were in the
same condition. But artists must be reckoned in with us in that
case, for, as every one knows, these picturesque structures have been
favorite subjects with them time out of mind—those ancient ones
which stand here and there on lonesome heights in Spain, and be-
yond all, the miles of them on the flats of Holland.
Of all the world, Holland is the wind-mill country; as one draws
near the shore there come in sight “wind-mills, cows, sheep, Dutch-
men, churches, steeples and little red-tiled houses,†but mostly
wind-mills. At Rotterdam, at Dordrecht; one finds them in North
Holland and in Friesland; sees them from the
Zuyder Zee, from every canal; but above all at Zaan-
dam, where they thrash the air, as one of the artists
says, and “grind every sort of thing that can be
ground, and when they don’t do that they saw wood
and pump water,†and “all the rich people are wind-
millers;†there are about four miles of them in all,
“as far into the dim distance †as the eye can reach,
so that “if any one desires to see Holland from its
A ROTTERDAM VISTA,
A WIND-MILL
wind-milly side,†let him go to Zaandam and be
surfeited forever after.â€
Who invented them, whose idea it was to make
the wind a miller to grind meal or a servant to
pump water, no man knows, though it is said in
one place that they may be traced to Holland,
where their use was to remove the water from the
marshes ; and in another, that it was the East, in
PILGRIMAGE. 135
The wind roared, and the rains fell.
The poor white man came and sat under our tree.
He has no mother to bring him milk,
No wife to grind his corn,
Let us pity the white man, no mother has he.
No matter where the wind-mill originated, the
hand-mill was before it, in the East, and almost
everywhere.
Even the Roman soldiers carried
“BUT ABOVE ALL AT ZAANDAM.â€
a sandy region where there were no water brooks,
and as John Ridd says in Lorna Doone, “ folk
made bread with wind.â€
But there is another side to that last statement,
because the Orientals ground their grain between
two stones, and the women didit. It was one of the
sounds of home-life—that grinding. It always
makes one think of the careful, busy, frugal mis-
tress, the bread-maker, the loaf-giver. Who of you
that has ever read the travels of Mungo Park in
Africa can forget the pathetic little story of that
lone stranger, benighted, weary, sick, among in-
hospitable people, preparing to pass the night in
a tree for safety, when the native woman took him
to her hut and gave him food and a mat to sleep
on; and as he lay there, he heard her maidens
sing these plaintive lines which they improvised
on the spot:
little mills along with them and ground their own
corn to make their own bread, which they baked
in pan-cakes on a flat plate over the fire — which
was indeed a primitive way of doing things fora
people so great and grand. Froissart tells time
and again how the armies of France and England
among their incumbrances had hand-mills of some
kind.
The Scotch had something they called the
“knockin’-stane,†by means of which they “un-
hulled†and broke up their oats and barley, with
a “knockin’-mell†or mallet. The “mell†was of
a solid kind of wood, the mortar of close-grained
stone, and so big that one has been seen in some
old Scottish house in use for a pig’s trough, or
turned bottom upwards for a seat. The cottagers
kept it near the door, to be at hand when they
‘wanted barley for broth; too handy, in fact, ready
136 A WIND-MILL
for anybody to stumble over, as lazy Davy did,
according to the auld ditty:
Davy Doits, the king o’ loits,
Fell o’er the mortar-stane.
When a’ rest got butter an’ bread,
Davy Doits got nane.
When I read about a “guern†in stories of old
England, I can see such a hand-mill as people
used for grinding grain and something else that
was of quite as much importance to those ancient
beer-drinkers— malt. There was even in London
a church named St. Michael-a-Quern, because in
the market-place near was one of these mills. It
was a round’ stone of the size of a half-bushel
measure ; another stone fitted into it having a hole
PILGRIMAGE
the little church behind the building of the Essex
Institute.
No doubt, as they came direct from Holland,
they soon built a wind-mill like those in that coun-
try; and the grinding was called “beating out the
corn.†One thing which they did not have, either
in England or Holland, was Indian corn; but they
learned to value it, after many straits, “ more than
silver.â€
It was almost the first thing they found, and
before they arrived at Plymouth. The dZaylower
anchored first in Cape Cod Harbor, sailing around
the northeastern point (Race Point), where the
elbow sticks out into the sea, and coming within
the safe, comfortable, sheltering arm where Prov-
incetown is. It was then and there that the
IN HOLLAND.
through which the grain was dropped, and an iron
ring on the edge to pull it out, through which was
placed a stick to move it around when grinding.
Possibly the Pilgrims brought over some kind
of hand-mill; but if so, the records at Plymouth,
which give inventories of estates will show. There
is a queer one preserved among other relics at
Salem, which anybody can see who cares to, in
“A WIND-MILL VILLAGE.â€
women went ashore and washed the clothes, had
the first New England washing-day, on Monday,
too, which Mrs. Preston made such a spirited
ballad about.
Then Miles Standish and a few other men with
some biscuit and Holland cheese in their pockets,
set off to explore; and seeing a heap of sand, dug
inte it, and found < cellar lined with berk, and
A WIND-MILL
about four bushels of corn, yellow, red and blue,
the first they had ever set eyes on. And they took
it after much deliberation — it was really stealing
— having resolved to pay the Indians the first op-
portunity, which, I am glad to say, they did.
The poor colonists had times when it was hard
to get anything to eat, and but for corn and learn-
ing from the savages how to cook it, they would
have starved. They bought hogsheads of it from
them one season, which the squaws brought down
in canoes; and friendly Squanto and Massassoit
entertained the leaders with mazéum, made of the
meal mixed with water, which they called wokehike,
and introduced them to the knowledge of samp,
“THE ONE OLD MILL THAT IS LEFT.â€
AT NANTUCKET.
hominy, suppaiwn and succotash — the last made of
whole kernels boiled with beans, but the others all
et pounded or cracked corn, for which they had
PILGRIMAGE. 137
large mortars hollowed out of hard-wood logs.
The white men improved upon the aboriginal
method and fashioned nice mortars; and great
PHILIP’S SAMP BOWL.
Collection.)
KING (From the Mass. Hist. Society
was the thumping with pestles of wood or stone
along that line of houses where Leyden street is,
till times were favorable for a wind-mill to be built.
Hundreds of those styles of mortars, either of iron,
or wood, or stone, may now be found in old houses
or in museums scattered about New England. In
a bric-a-brac store at Nantucket they show one
made of lignum-vite, which looks as if it might
bear constant use for two hundred years to come.
Mrs. Austen says in her Mantucket Scraps that
“the women got tired of grinding samp†in those
and hand-mills; and that some man thought the
matter over, and then went to bed and dreamed it
over, and dreamed out a wind-mill, and went to
work and built one.
There used to be three there, back of the town,
on the Mill hills, as they were called, high up,
waving their great arms so that they could be seen
quite a ways out to sea. In the Revolutionary
times, the islanders hit upon the happy plan of
using the mills to telegraph to the ships in the
harbor if British cruisers were around. A set of
signals was fixed upon and the vanes were made
to indicate how matters stood.
A woman, who told us about one, said she was
sorry enough when it was gone, for she and her
schoolmates used to play around there; “and we
used to go up there when I was a girl,†she said,
“to get corn to parch. We never heard of pop-
corn then. It was the common yellow corn. We
used to beg it, we schoolgirls, and carry it home
and put it in a frying-pan over the fire, and when
there was one white one we were so pleased; and
one girl had that, and then another would have
the next one.â€
138 A
She was not certain, she said, “whether that
story was true about a little girl getting hold of
one of the sails one day, and the mill beginning
rrr
i (eae
CEM
“THAT WAS AT WEST FALMOUTH.â€
to go, and she
hanging on,
and being car-
ried away up ~
in the air and
round and
round before
it came down
again; but Ive
caught hold
and come pret-
ty near that
myself, if I had not let myself drop ; and I’ve been
knocked over by the sail when it begun to go;
and one time there was acow feeding on the grass,
and she was knocked so badly that they had to
kill her.â€
The one old mill that is left is upon a green
hill, a cool, delightful, breezy place, and there is an
ancient Portuguese with rings in his ears, Juan Sil-
ver, who keeps it, and shows it to visitors. One
day, when we took our morning walk up that way,
the door stood wide open, and he was to be seen
at a window up in the tower, where he was explain-
ing things to some summer boarders, but as we
came into sight, he spied us, came down with a
hippity-hop, and reached out and pulled the door
to quicker than I can write it.
Looking up in amazement we saw the heaton
of this ungracious act, for there was a little board
onthe outer wall which bore this inscription, all in
WIND-MILL
PILGRIMAGE.
primitive capitals, and periods, and small. figures;
Now, as we had already been seeing the inside
ADMITTANCE,
5 CENTS.
OPEN, FROM 9 A.M. TO
6 P.M. COME ONE. COME.
ALL.
of wind-mills to our heart’s content from basement
to tower, this did not disturb us in the least; and
s0 we sat down on the grass and enjoyed the land-
scape. There lay the crowded town of Nantucket,
yonder the moors where heath grows and so many
wild flowers, there the rim of sea.
Meanwhile we had to hear what was going on
over our heads between a roguish visitor and the
Portuguese who would keep putting out his head
with the crisp, wiry hair and the great rings in his
ears; and we
could hear his
jabbering, and
“ya, ya,†and
his cackle of a
laugh at the
young
who tried so
hard to get
him to set the
mill to going,
man
There was a stiff breeze, but do it he would not.
“Why,†said the other, “you'll be mouldy here
in a week. Come, fetch on your sails, and set the
A WIND-MILL
thing a-going. Well, then, if you won't, I’ll tell
you what. Carpet the place, and put up a rack
full of newspapers and things to sell, and send out
the town crier to tell, and get the people in. O,
And the little Portu-
yow’re a jolly old keeper!â€
guese would cackle
again iike a piece of
wheezy machinery, “ ya
“ya / â€
This one was built
about a hundred and
forty years ago — the
date is there, cut into
the stone doorstep after
an ancient and useful
fashion; and it is of
solid “oak that grew in
the Dead Horse Valley
over there,†though it is
questionable if an oak-
tree is now growing any-
where around; and it is
battered and worn, and
eaten, and scrawled over with visitors’ names.
They tell that during the Revolution, a British
man-of-war fired a cannon ball which went through
it, and nearly hit the miller, giving him a terrible
scare ; but legends are apt to gathér, as moss does,
about those antique buildings.
At any rate, it has stood a good
deal of some kind of bombard-
ment; maybe of the kind which
that same John Ridd tells of, when
he went out with his father’s match-
lock gun which he could hardly
carry to his shoulders, to practice
shooting: “Perhaps for a boy there
is nothing better than a good wind-
mill to shoot at, as I have seen in
the Low Countries, but we have no
wind-mills upon the great moor-
AT MONTMARTRE,
THE OLD MILL AT NEWPORT, R. I.
PILGRIMAGE. 139
lands, yet here and there a barn door. . . there
is a fair chance of hitting the door if you lay your
cheek to the barrel and try not to be afraid.â€
It was “down on the Cape†that we saw one of
the mills in operation, and were shown all about
it. Such a rude, strong
door with a wooden
latch that must have
been two feet long, such
winding stairs, such
heavy beams, such a
tower and look-out, such
a mealy, odd, pictur-
esque, never-to-be-for-
gotten place! We were
even given leave to
bring away as_ relics
for an antiquarian so-
ciety, two or three of
the crumbling, mossy
shingles that had been
sunning on its sides
nearly a hundred years.
The owner showed us how he managed, how he
hooked the canvas sails to the great vanes, and
told us that the long stick of timber outside,
clamped with iron, and with a big wheel at the
end was “the tail,†and how
they changed it about for the
wind; and as we listened the
vanes went round and round,
and the corn in the hopper came
out meal,
All the region round had al-
ways come there for meal, and
when the wind was right the
sound of the grinding did not
cease even when the sun went
down. Strangers from a part of
the country where there are no
wind-mills came to wonder at
=a
SOME FOREIGN WIND-MILLS! THE MILL AT SAN SOUCI; AT ROTTERDAM; ON THE ELBE; MILL AT DORDRECHT,
PARIS.
i40
tt and artists to sketch. Two girls, sitting on a
rock under the shade of the fence, were attempt-
ing it then.
But of all the stories, nothing pleased me so
much as about “the fe-aks.†Away up towards
the tower, as we noticed from without, were holes
bored through the timber, as if this one had indeed
served some John Ridd for a mark; but from some-
thing that carried a ball bigger than his father’s
old matchlock wouldadmit. And when we climbed
the mealy stair and wondered aloud at the holes
bored smooth through the timbers, the miller said
it was “the Zeaks did it:†wood-peckers, red-
headed ones, that in this way made themselves
refuges from winter and the storm. A hard way
it seemed; a queer bit of bird calculation, a labo-
rious provision for time of need; an unnecessary
piece of work one would think; “but they do it,â€
he said, “and round here we call them e-aks.â€
That was at West Falmouth; further along at
Falmouth itself is another; over at Pocasset still
HEROINES OF
THE POETS.
another; away near the Highland Light on the
back side of the Cape one looms up; in a word
wind-mills are not hard to find in that historic
region of New England; and if we have not one
as fanciful as that of Sans Souci or of Mont-
martre, or those on the Elbe, which our artist has
pictured, have we not the quaint “round towerâ€
at Newport which might have been a wind-mill
but was not or rather it is a disputed question
concerning which much has been written ; see what
Longfellow says about it in his introduction to
“The Skeleton in Armor.â€
You know, perhaps, how fond he was of such
subjects, and how, about the time he wrote his
poem “ The Wind-mill,†he said to a visitor, “ The
Germans love to write of such homely topics, and
I love them for it,†and he went across the room
and pulled down German books from the shelf and
read about all sorts and kinds of mills, saw-mills,
grist-mills, wind-mills ; for he too loved the homely,
the quaint, the picturesque wherever found.
HEROINES OF
KEAT’S MADELINE.
CASEMENT high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings;
And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
4 shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens
and kings.
NVI RES,
THE. POETS.
Full on this casement shone the wintr: moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair
breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and
boon ;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven :— Porphyro grew faint :
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from morta!
taint.
From“ The Eve of St. Agnes.â€
KEAT’S MADELINE.
FAI
OSLO,
By F. L. STEALEY.
N the lofty mountain that
faced the captain’s cabin,
the frost had already
made an insidious ap-
proach, and the slender
thickets of quaking ash
that marked the course
of each tiny torrent, now
, stood out in resplendent
hues and shone afar off like gay ribbons running
through the dark-green pines. Gorgeously, too,
with scarlet, crimson and gold, gleamed the lower
spurs, where the oak-brush grew in dense masses
and bore beneath a blaze of color, a goodly har-
vest of acorns, now ripe and loosened in their
cups.
It was where one of these spurs joined the pa-
rent mountain, where the oak-brush grew thickest
and, as a consequence, the acorns were most abun-
‘dant, that the captain, well-versed in woodcraft
mysteries, had built his bear trap. For two days
he had been engaged upon it and now, as the even-
ing drew on, he sat contemplating it with satisfac-
tion, as a work finished and perfected.
From his station there, on the breast of the lofty
‘mountain, the captain could scan many an acre of
sombre pine forest with pleasant little parks inter-
persed, and here and there long slopes brown
with bunch grass. He was the lord of this wild
domain. And yet his sway there was not undis-
puted. Behind an intervening spur to the west-
ward ran an old Indian trail long travelled by the
Southern Utes in their migrations north for trad-
ing and hunting purposes. And even now, a light
smoke wafted upward on the evening air, told of a
band encamped on the trail on their homeward
journey to the Southwest.
The captain needed not this visual token of
their proximity. He had been aware of it for sev-
eral days. Their calls at his cabin in the lonely
little park below, had been frequent, and they had
been specially solicitous of his coffee, his sugar, his
Discuit and other delicacies, insomuch that once or
142
twice during his absence these ingenuous children
of Nature had, with primitive simplicity, entered his
cabin and helped themselves without leave or stint.
However, as he knew their stay would be short,
the captain bore these neighborly attentions with
mild forbearance. It was guests more graceless
than these who had roused his wrath.
From their secret haunts far back towards the
Snowy Range, the bears had come down to feast
upon the ripened acorns, and so doing, had scented
the captain’s bacon and sugar afar off and had
prowled by night about the cabin. Nay, more,
three days before, the captain, having gone hur-
riedly away and left the door loosely fastened, upon
his return had found allin confusion. Many of his
eatables had vanished, his flour sack was ripped
open and, unkindest cut of all, his beloved books
lay scattered about. At the first indignant glance,
the captain had cried out, “Utes again!†But on
looking around he saw a tell-tale trail left by floury
bear paws. :
Hence this bear trap.
It was but a strong log pen floored with rough-
hewn slabs and fitted with a ponderous movable
lid made of other slabs pinned on stout cross
pieces. But satisfied with his handiwork the cap-
tain now arose and prying up one end of the lid
with a lever, set the trigger and baited it with a
huge piece of bacon. He then piled a great quan-
tity of rock upon the already heavy lid to further
guard against the escape of any bear so unfor-
tunate as to enter, and shouldering his axe and rifle
walked homewards.
Whatever vengeful visions of captive bears he was
indulging in, were, however, wholly dispelled as he
drew near the cabin. Before the door stood the
Ute chief accompanied by two squaws. ‘“ How!â€
said the chieftain, with a conciliating smile, laying
one hand on his breast of bronze and extending the
other as the captain approached.
“ How!’ returned the captain bluffly, disdaining
the hand with a recollection of sundry petty thefts.
“Has the great captain seen a pappoose about
OSLITO.
his wigwam?†asked the chief, nowise abashed, in
Spanish —a language which many of the Southern
Utes speak as fluently as their own.
The great captain had expected a request for a
biscuit; he, therefore, was naturally surprised at be-
ing asked fora baby. With an effort he mustered
together his Spanish phrases and managed to reply
that he had seen no pappoose.
“Me pappoose lost,†said one of the squaws
brokenly. And there was so much distress in her
voice that the captain, forgetting instantly all about
the slight depredations of his dusky neighbors, vol-
143
was down. Hastily he approached, bent over, and
peeped in. And certainly in the whole of his ad-
venturous life the captain was never more taken by
surprise ; for there, crouched in one corner, was that
precious Indian infant.
Yes, true it was, that all those massive timbers,
all that ponderous mass of rock, had only availed
to capture one very small Ute pappoose. At the
thought of it, the builder of the trap was astounded.
He laughed aloud at the absurdity. In silence he
threw off rock and lid and seated himself on the
edge of the open trap. Captor and captive then
“WHAT ARE YOU CALLED, LITTLE ONE?†ASKED THE CAPTAIN.
unteered to aid them in their search for the miss-
ing child.
All that night, for it was by this time nearly dark,
the hills flared with pine torches and resounded
with the shrill cries of the squaws, the whoops of
the warriors, the shouts of the captain; but the
search was fruitless,
This adventure drove the bear-trap from its build-
er’s mind, and it was two days before it occurred -
to him to go there in quest of captive bears.
Coming in view of it he immediately saw the lid
gazed at each other with gravity. The errant in-
fant’s attire consisted of a calico shirt of gaudy
hues, a pair of little moccasons, much frayed, anda
red flannel string. This last was tied about his
straggling hair, which fell over his forehead like the
shaggy mane of a dronco cglt and veiled, but could
not obscure, the brightness of his black eyes.
He did not cry; in fact, this small stoic never
even whimpered, but he held the bacon, or what re-
mained of it, clasped tightly to his breast and gazed
at his captor in silence. Glancing at the bacon,
144
the captain saw it all. Hunger had induced this
wee wanderer to enter the trap, and in detaching
the bait, he had sprung the trigger and was caught.
“What are you called, little one?†asked the
captain at length, in a reassuring voice, speaking
Spanish very slowly and distinctly.
“QOsito,†replied the wanderer in a small piping
voice, but with the dignity of a warrior.
“Tittle Bear!†the captain repeated, and burst
into a hearty laugh, immediately checked, how-
ever, by the thought that now he had caught him,
what was he to do with him? The first thing, evi-
dently, was to feed him.
So he conducted him to the cabin and there, ob-
serving the celerity with which the lumps of sugar
vanished, he saw at once that Little Bear was most
aptly named. Then, sometimes leading, and some-
times carrying him, for Osito was very small, he set
out for the Ute encampment.
Their approach was the signal fora mighty shout.
Warriors,squaws and the younger confréres of Osito,
crowded about them. A few words from the cap-
tain explained all, and Osito himself, clinging to his
mother was borne away in triumph— the hero of
the hour. Yet, no—the captain was that I be-
lieve. For as he stood in their midst with a very
pleased look on his sunburnt face, the chief quiet-
ing the hubbub with a wave of his hand, advanced
and stood before him. “The great captain has a
good heart,†he said in tones of conviction. “‘ What
can his Ute friends do to show their gratitude ? â€
“ Nothing,†said the captain looking more pleased
than ever.
OSITO.
‘The captain has been troubled by the bears.
Would it please him if they were all driven back to
their dens in the great mountains towards the set-
ting sun?â€
‘It would,†said the captain; ‘‘canit be done?â€
“Ttcan. It shall,†said the chief with emphasis.
“To-morrow let the captain keep his eyes open, and
as the sun sinks behind the mountain tops he shall
see the bears follow also.â€
The chief kept his word. The next day the up-
roar on the hills was terrific. Frightened out of their
wits, the bears forsook the acorn fields and fled
ingloriously to their secret haunts in the mountains
to the westward.
In joy thereof the captain gave a great farewell
feast to his red allies. It was spread under the
pines in front of his cabin and every delicacy of the
season was there, from bear steaks to beaver tails.
The banquet was drawing to a close, and compli-
mentary speeches ’twixt host and guests were in
order, when a procession of the squaws was seen
approaching from the encampment. They drew
near and headed for the captain in solemn silence.
As they passed, each laid some gift at his feet —
fringed leggings, beaded moccasons, bear-skins, coy-
ote skins, beaver pelts and soft robes of the moun-
tain lion’s hide — until the pile reached to the cap-
tain’s shoulders. Last of all came Osito’s mother
and crowned the heap with a beautiful little brown
bear-skin. It was faneifully adorned with blue rib-
bons, and in the centre of the tanned side, there
were drawn, in red pigment, the outlines of a very
stolid and stoical-looking pappoose.
CAMP HAMNPERFORD,
145
CAMP HAMPERFORD.
By Mrs. Harriet A. CHEEVER.
HE mail was due at five o’clock P.
m. in the border town of Parrisville ;
so it was not strange that half the
male population of the place turned out a little
before that time on Tuesdays and Fridays, and
congregated about the little building used as a post-
office. :
Joe Fanshaw was rarely late, but on his power-
ful great iron-gray horse would dash gayly up to
the door of the office, fling down his heavy leathern
bag, and dismount, answering good-naturedly the
waiting crowd.
It was a thriving little village, this Parrisville,
and many of its inhabitants were getting into quite
comfortable circumstances, sending their stock and
grain East in summer, and their furs and skins in
winter.
Their relations with the Indians of the neigh-
boring forests had been chiefly friendly. It is true,
a marauding band had occasionally appeared, mak-
ing some mischief and disturbance, but the decided
and united action of citizens in dealing with such
visitors had usually brought about a speedy dis-
appearance.
One midsummer afternoon just after haying, three
boys of about fourteen or fifteen were standing near
the post-office, while a fourth, a little fellow, was
sitting on the broad low steps.
Joe Fanshaw had been and gone, the mail had
been distributed, but many still lingered, discuss-
ing the news in papers and letters.
All at once a strange figure was noticed emerg-
ing from the woods at a little distance; grotesque
enough of itself, it was splendidly mounted on a
snow-white pony elegantly equipped, the saddle of
wampum skilfully embroidered.
“ Halloo,†shouted Phil Hamlin, one of the larger
boys, “here comes old Nomantic on one of those
magnificent white ponies! How would ¢a# suit you,
Davy boy?â€
He turned as he spoke to the child on the steps,
with a glance at the crutches beside him, It was a
very longing, pitiful look which Phil cast at his lame
little brother; but the latter replied cheerfully
enough : ‘
“Wish we could buy that little white beauty, Phil.
We'll see what the letter from uncle Philip says when
we get home.â€
Horses were scarce among these settlers. Oxen
were stronger for labor, and could both draw and
plough, and any superfluous property was not thought
of. .
By this time Nomantic had approached the group
before the office door, and at once began trying te
sell the beautiful animal with its richly-wrought
saddle. The Indian was chief of a tribe whose wig-
wams were three miles away in the forest from which
the tawny tradesman had just emerged. He, as well
as many of his tribe, squaws included, used often to
visit Parrisville, trading off baskets, game, fish; and
once in a great while, one of the more prominent
146
men, or perhaps the chief himself, as in the present
instance, would come to offer for sale some fine and
well-broken pony sent to their camp by Indians of
the distant prairie. There were but two ponies in
town, however, as the purchasers of the rare little
horses usually sent them East, selling at a great profit.
But this evening Nomantic seemed doomed to
disappointment. It seemed to make no difference
that his queenly young daughter of whom the savage
father was exceedingly proud, had herself wrought
the saddle; no one wanted to buy, as he proposed no
barter, only cash.
“Supposing I ask what he’ll take,†said Phil
Hamlin, looking at Tom Perkins.
“Do,†replied Harry Ford; “only remember
you'll have to cut him short if you do, or he’ll hang
on like a midsummer night’s dream.â€
It took some time to make the wary old chief fix a
price. He grunted a good deal about the positive
necessity of disposing of the pony. They were going
to break camp soon, and go farther West; “too
much Pale Face here.†After which he offered the
animal for “one hundred dollars.â€
A shout of derision followed this offer, whereupon
he immediately came down to seventy-five ; but the
significant manner in which the boys turned their
backs upon him and whistled, brought him down to
fifty. But there he stopped. Then he plead as only
an old Indian can plead.
“Wouldn’t good Pale Face buy of poor Indian?
Little squaw’s own hands work saddle — pretty sad-
die. Pray buy of poor Indian!â€
Regretfully enough the boys insisted they couldn’t
buy that evening. Nevertheless he followed Phil
’ and Davy Hamlin to their father’s stable, and to the
very house door, all the time imploring, ‘‘ Please buy
of poor Indian!â€
Not until the boys entered and closed the door,
did the importunities cease. Then as the old chief
turned back and re-mounted the pony, the boys softly
stepped out and watched the graceful creature canter
away, and as horse and rider again entered the
woods, Phil turned just in time to see two great glis-
tening drops in Davy’s eyes as he stood leaning on
his crutches.
“Come, Davy,†said the great boy tenderly, “ let’s
go in and see what uncle Philip writes.â€
The letter said nothing of money; however, later
in the evening when the boys recounted the incident,
Phil added in his bluff way:
CAMP HAMPERLFORD.
“Be a grand thing to mount Davy in that style,
wouldn’t it, father? â€
“Indeed it would,†replied Mr. Hamlin, “and I
heartily wish I could; it might really strengthen him;
but we still have need of great prudence. Your
uncle Philip writes that money is very hard in Bos-
ton, and I suppose you might as well ask for a coach-
and-four, my son,†he added slowly, “as for fifty
dollars.â€
For three successive days Nomantic appeared with
the snow-white pony, and each time stopped at Mr.
Hamlin’s stable door, but not once did he offer the
pony with its wrought wampum saddle, for less than
“fifty dollar,†insisting that the saddle was ‘so
much worth,†chiefly it would seem from being the
work of the skilful fingers of his darling child.
No one yet had possessed even a trinket from the
handsome maiden. She was occasionally allowed to
accompany her father on his trading excursions to
the village, where her clear olive cheeks, starry eyes
and graceful figure, attracted great attention ; but she
was far too choice a treasure to old Nomantic to be
allowed to trade or chatter with the Pale Faces.
As we have said, the haying was over, and it was
just that “meantime†between haying and harvest-
ing, when it was most convenient to spare the boys
for a few days’ frolic. Oncea year the Parrisville boys
were allowed to camp for a few days in the woods,
with only one restriction: they must not go wo far
from home.
The Parrisville boys greatly enjoyed this annual
“ pow-wow.†The three friends, Phil Hamlin, Tom
Perkins and Harry Ford, usually clubbed together,
and their camp was sportively named for each, taking
the first syllable of the last names; consequently,
“Camp Hamperford.â€
There was only one drawback to Phil Hamlin’s
perfect happiness on these occasions—the wistful
face of little lame Davy when they started off. He
would gladly have taken him, but the child was deli-
cate, and the nights were likely to be chill in the
forest even in summer, and the camp-fires were not
always sufficient to keep out a dampness harmless
enough to a rugged fellow, but dangerous to a fragile,
rheumatic boy.
They had decided this time to camp in a lovely
spot some three miles distant, and all they could
talk about for several days previous was the charming
sport in anticipation.
Now we must diverge here to sav that every coun-
CAMP HAMPERFORD.
try store has its pet loafer, the inactive being who
can tell the best story, and is always ready with his
little joke, and that Parrisville was no exception.
Go when you might, there in a chair by the door in
summer, or by the stove in winter, lounged Sam
Crofts, an oracle to the small boys who never tired
of his high-flown stories or time-worn jokes. This
Crofts had always evinced a fondness for the delicate
little Davy Hamlin, partly perhaps on account of his
lameness, and partly because of the chlid’s satisfac-
tion in listening to his stories.
On this occasion as the boys went jubilantly to
and from the store, making small, but to them im-
mensely important purchases, Sam had all sorts of
jovial advice to give, together with sundry warnings,
all of which went into one ear and straightway out
of the other with the older lads. But the afternoon
before they were to start, as Davy was about finish-
ing an errand, Sam spoke to him with great apparent
solemnity, while he slyly winked at some of the by-
standers :
“ Have the boys bought their ginger yet? Never
oughter go inter the woods without plenty 0’ ginger.
Bad sign to go inter the woods without ginger; very
bad sign!â€
“Don’t believe they have,†said Davy thoughtfully.
“Then you better remind ’em,†said Sam ear-
nestly, adding with a knowing twist of his empty
head, “ wouldn’t let a boy o’ mine go inter a forest
without his ginger, any more’n I’d let_him go without
his gun; unluckiest thing that could be done. And
they better fix it all ready to take too,†added the
mischievous fellow.
Now the dearest object on earth next his mother,
to Davy Hamlin, was his brother Phil. The two
boys were the only children of the family, and their
attachment to each other was something beauti-
ful, Davy looking up to-fifteen-year-old Phil as the
very embodiment of everything grand and noble in
boyhood, while Phil looked upon delicate little Davy
as something to be most tenderly cared for and con-
sidered on all occasions. “The precious little mor-
sel!†he once called him.
So it followed that what the crafty Sam Crofts had
said made a deep impression on Davy’s mind, and
he resolved that his dear brother should not go to the
woods lacking anything it would be unlucky to be
without. Such a superstitious idea would have been
foolish in a stronger or older boy, but eight-year-old
Davy was frail and nervous, and took alarm easily,
147
That night at supper Davy announced his anxiety.
“Say, Phil! Sam Crofts says you musn’t go out
camping without your ginger! He says it is unlucky.â€
For reply, Phil threw back his head and laughee
knowingly, while his father remarked gravely :
“T think Sam would be luckier if he was less partic-
ular about taking his ginger.â€
But Davy didn’t understand at all what Sam Crofts
had meant by “‘ ginger,†and his father did not care te
enlighten him, when he saw his innocent ‘ignorance.
Meantime Davy resolved firmly that his careless
brother should not depart without a bottle of the lucky
tonic, and moreover that he would follow out Sam’s
advice carefully, and prepare it ready for use. Ac-
cordingly after supper he quietly searched about for
a large bottle with a firm, strong cork; then going as
quietly to his mother’s medicine closet, he looked
for the bottle marked “Jamaica Ginger,†which to
his delight he found nearly full. Pouring most of
its contents into the empty bottle, he proceeded to
fill it with water ; then he managed to obtain a good
quantity of sugar from the bowl. He shook the mix-
ture long and vigorously, then tasted, and found it
didn’t quite flay his tongue; in fact he thought it
really quite palatable after it ceased to burn. His next
visit was to his mother’s room for three pins; then
creeping down to the front hall, he placed the bottle
in the large deep breast pocket of Phil’s ulster —of
course he would take his ulster—securely pinning
it across. He argued that Phil wouldn’t notice
any extra weight about his coat, as all its pockets
were well stuffed, in the excitement of getting off, yet
would probably detect it later.
The next day was all that could be desired of fine
weather, but Davy’s soft, large blue eyes, as usual, were
full of tears as he watched the trio start off, though
he managed to conceal them until they had gone.
And he was greatly relieved when Phil, sure enough,
slung his ulster over his arm, only-remarking:
“This always was the heaviest old coat !â€
They took with them two well-trained dogs; Phil’s
own, a splendid retriever named “Sampson†in consid-
eration of his unusual strength, and for short, called
Samp. The other belonged to Mr. Ford, and was
loaned Harry for the occasion. He was a powerful
bull-mastiff, “ Watch,†by name, These dogs were
the best of friends; so it was eminently proper they
should go in comipany as guards and fellow sportsmen
of the three fine boys setting out for a midsummer’s
frolic.
MOTIONLESS FIGURE OF NOMANTI
EW YARDS OFF STOOD THE
A F
148
CAMP HAMPERFORD.
They reached the camping ground a little before
noon, having taken the two miles and a half very
leisurely, with frequent halts; for the weather was
warm, the beauty of the old forest beguiling, and the
little hand wagon heavy to draw.
Soon after their arrival, as Phil was hanging his
ulster on a peg driven into one of the tent poles, he
exclaimed :
“Bless me, this old coat was never so heavy be-
fore!†and just then something or other in one of
the pockets settled with a bounce. “I do believe
some one has been stuffing some everlastingly heavy
thing in one of these pockets a-purpose!†he ex-
claimed, and began anexamination. After extracting
sundry pins which confined a great round object in
the breast pocket, he produced the bottle marked
carefully in Davy’s queer little hand, “Jamaica
Ginger.â€
“Oh ho!†roared Phil; “if Davy hasn’t suc-
ceeded in tucking some ginger off on to me after
all;†then he added, his voice full of fondness, “the
dear little idiot!†After his laugh, in the bustle and
hurry which followed, he placed the bottle back in
the same pocket, and went on with the work of “ fix-
ing up.â€
We cannot stop to tell what merry sports were
enjoyed during the three days of this outing; but the
weather was charming throughout, the moon was at
her highest and fullest, the game abundant, and the
good nature and overflowing spirits of the boys
unchecked by any untoward event. There was a
hunt every morning, and a feast every afternoon.
The late evenings were spent in strolling about near
camp and story-telling, and the vigorous exercise and
keen enjoyment had added heightened color to the
bronzed cheeks of the happy campers.
At length the last night, the fourth, of their wild
woods’ sport had arrived. Next day they must
“pull up stakes†and start for home; but they had
made the most of this last day. Rising at dawn and
taking the guns and dogs, sufficient game and wild
fowl had been secured to provide a last grand feast,
and also leave quite a little “show†to take home.
The moon was riding high in the heavens, and
Watch was lazily crunching a bone outside the open
tent, when Phil went out for one last look about. He
was somewhat troubled because Samp was missing,
In vain he whistled and called. The rogue had
stolen off; but probably not far— might return any
moment. At all events, Phil was too sleepy to wait
149
up for him. They were not unguarded either; for
woe betide the luckless intruder who dared Watch’s
mighty grip!
Silence reigned throughout the forest save for the
whispering of the leaves overhead, the twittering ot
some uneasy birds, the occasional hoot of an owl, or
the flapping wings of a nighthawk.
It was past midnight, although it seemed as if he
had been sleeping but a few moments, when Phil be- 3
came conscious of a cold nose rubbing against his
cheek, and of a whining, coaxing, urgent appeal —
Samp. Samp had returned. He half-opened his
eyes, spoke impatiently :
“Down, Samp! quiet, old fellow! behave your-
self!â€
But Samp would neither “down,†“quiet,†nor “be-
have.†Finding Phil was waking, he pulled eagerly
at the hem of his pants, whining and crying in an
unaccountable manner. In vain Phil scolded and
soothed by turns. The dog persisted. At length
Phil sat upright, rubbed his eyes, and said softly and
kindly: “Well, now, old fellow, what’s up? What
ails you?â€
During all this time the other boys had not stirred,
and Tom Perkins drowned all sounds anyway, by a
most tremendous snoring. But Samp, now that he
felt Phil was broad awake, grew more excited than
ever, taking long leaps and bounds outside the tent,
then crawling back along the ground, almost voicing
his entreaties to Phil to “come!â€
“Well, Samp,†said the boy at last, “you surely
never would behave in this way for nothing, and I
don’t believe you're the boy to coax me into any dan-
ger. I don’t much believe you are, Sampson Hamlin.
Oh, ’'m coming,†he added, patting him; “just wait
one moment, do!â€
He took his gun, hung a pistol in his belt, then feel-
ing a decided chilliness in the air, muttered:
“Guess I'll don my ulster. Whew!†he added,
drawing it on, “this heavy coat feels good! I declare
it does!â€
Then he paused and reflected. Should he wake the
. others ?
“What for?†was his next thought. ‘Of course I
sha’n’t go far, and I’m well protected, armed as I am,
and with Samp along; besides there’s nothing to; be
afraid of.â€
Fear was an element almost wanting in the charac-
ter of a border boy, and neither Phil nor his compan-
ions formed exceptions to the general rule.
I50
Just then he glanced at Samp standing mutely re-
garding him with such a human look in his pleading
eyes, and he could but smile as to another boy.
“Come, old trusty!†he said. ‘I’m ready for
you!â€
With impatient, eager bounds, the dog led the way
farther into the woods. Phil followed at a brisk,
steady pace. He had tramped about half a mile when
Samp, leaping forward, then back, as if to make sure
his master would follow, turned aside into a little
glen thickly surrounded by trees. At a glance, Phil
saw a long dark object lying along the ground, the
head raised, but the entire form motionless. For an
instant his fingers closed over the revolver at his side
as he whistled softly to Samp; then he advanced, and,
entering the glen, saw by the clear moonlight that it
was the figure of a woman which lay there alone in
the still, deep forest. As Samp licked her white
cheek, he thought he heard a soft moan.
The next instant Phil was kneeling beside a dying
’ girl, whom he now saw plainly was no other than the
cherished daughter of Nomantic, the old Indian chief.
He knew at once that according to traditional cus-
tom of the Indians, the girl had been left there to
die. Yes, he understood the fact at once. She had
sickened in the morning, and as her sufferings grew
more intense, the chief had consulted a doctor at the
village, a Pale Face. But the physician not caring to
visit the camp, had written a prescription, and the
medicine had done no good, and towards night it had
become apparent that there was no more hope for her.
So. with loud cries and moans from the women, and
bitter grief on the father’s part, he had, according to
the tribal custom, borne her in his strong arms to this
sheltered spot, piled high a pillow of summer leaves,
and withdrawn from a sight he had no strength or
courage to witness.
Phil’s young heart had never known before any
such great solemn ache as this. He wished he had
waked the other boys. He thought of sending Samp
back for them. But then, what could they do?
“ Ginger blue!†he ejaculated. ‘“ What can a fel-
low do in such a case as this? I wonder†—for at
the instant of his boyish exclamation the remembrance
of Davy's bottle of ginger flashed across his mind,
and clapping his hand to his breast pocket, there it
was, sure enough.
“Probably it won’t do much good,†he soliloquized,
“but I guess I’ll try it.â€
Raising her heavy head carefully, he poured a little
CAMP HAMPERFORD.
of the liquid into the girl’s mouth. There was a con
traction of the brow, a struggle, and it was swallowed.
Phil waited a few moments, then repeated the
action.
“Well, you haven’t killed her yet,†he said to him-
self in an encouraging tone; and just then she moaned,
Phil fancied, and not as feebly as before. He laid
her head softly back, waited several moments, then
again raising her gently, administered at intervals
several swallows until a decidedly good dose of the
hot mixture had been taken; and this time, to his un-
speakable gratification, as he laid the pretty head
back on its leafy pillow, the great black eyes opened
languidly and looked into his face.
“Going to live, I do believe,†thought the boy.
“Bless that little goose of a Davy and his ginger!
Wish the little chap could see how his ‘lucky stuff’ is
working now.â€
Glancing up at the moon, he was surprised to find he
must have been absent from camp a full hour, but he
could not think of leaving his deserted patient. Poor
child of the forest !
A great restful feeling of relief was creeping over
Phil, moreover, unmistakably the young girl was re-
viving. She probably was to live. The eyes had
opened wider now, and at last they fixed on his face.
“ Do you feel better?†asked Phil, bending towards
her, and smiling half shyly.
She moved her lips, and made what sounded like
a little affirmative moan.
“A little more of Davy’s lucky ginger,†thought
Phil; and this time, although taken with some diffi-
culty, it was evidently taken intelligently. In the
course of another half-hour the girl could move her
head and hands, and after a while Phil helped her
to sit up, resting against a tree, while he rubbed
her hands and bathed her forehead — with ginger.
He was all unconscious, however, that at this time
two piercing eyes, keen as a hawk’s, far-seeing as an
eagle’s, were watching his movements. Even the
sagacious Sampson had failed to prick a silken ear
at the stealthy advance through the thicket of the
_dusky form creeping along like a panther on all-
fours.
But suddenly now Sampson sat upright, every
nerve alert and quivering. Turning quickly, Phil
saw but a few paces off, the tall, erect figure of a
plumed and painted savage. The form was that
of Nomantic, but the features, even at that neat
distance, were indistinguishable.
CAMP HAMPERFORD.
Just here they made a striking picture in the moon-
light of the grand old forest. Phil had sprung to
his feet, and was standing close to the Indian maiden’s
side, one end of his gun resting on the ground, yet
‘firmly. held in both hands. Sampson crouched
“couchant,†ready for a deadly spring at a half-
instant’s notice — aye, and what a spring it would
have been — while a few yards off stood the motion-
less figure of Nomantic.
But the scene remained
moment; for. suddenly from the Indian girl herself
came a cry half of joy, half of pain; and in another
moment she was clasped in her own father’s arms.
He had thought that all must by this time be
over; and unable longer to control his bitter grief
and longing, had stolen out to see if his darling
young princess were indeed dead, and waiting to be
made ready for her burial.
No words could express his astonishment, when,
on nearing the spot, he saw her not only still alive,
but reviving.
Lifting her as though she were a child, and grunt-
ing forth some strange sounds meant for thanks to
Phil, who with rare presence of .mind handed him
the bottle containing what remained of Davy’s lucky
“ginger,†he strode with his daughter back to the
camping grounds but a short distance away.
But as the sturdy old Indian started away, the
pretty creature turned her face towards Phil with a
look in her starry eyes he never quite forgot. Touch-
ing her pale lips with her slender finger-tips, she
waved her own sweet thanks, and _half-bashfully
Phil smiled and waved back a sort of “by-by.â€
“When half-way back Phil met the entire Camp
Hamperford, turned out “to rescue him,†as Harry
Ford remarked. They explained that a dismal howl
from Watch had awakened them, and then they dis-
covered his “nowhereness.†It was a long and
exciting story to which the boys listened; but there
was still an hour or two left before sunrise, and the
camp again slept soundly.
Home was reached safely that afternoon. There
were exciting tales to be told that evening in the
three households; anid it would have done any one
good to have witnessed Davy’s unbounded satisfac-
tion at the part he had played in fhe event of the
trip.
It was on the third morning after the arrival home,
that Mr. Hamlin awoke Phil at an early hour, telling
him a message had been sent him during the night,
in tableau but for a-
I51
and he must arise and attend to the matter at once,
adding that Mike was somewhere in the garden, and
would tell him about it.
There was something mysterious about his father’s
manner, and on expressing the opinion to Davy
during his hurried dressing, Davy said yes, he thought
so too.
Phil hurried down-stairs, burst out of the back
door, bounded like a squirrel through the garden to
find Mike, when lo and behold! there at the stable
door, firmly fastened and secured, patiently stood a
lovely snow-white pony, with wampum saddle curiously
embroidered, and bridled and stirruped in style en-
chanting.
Going up to the graceful creature Phil saw that
an enormous piece of yellowish white paper had
been folded and pinned to the saddle. Taking it
down he read with considerable difficulty, what some
more enlightened “Red Face†had been coaxed or
hired to prepare, for the “ undersigned†could
neither read nor write:
“We brake camp terday and speed the far West.
With forrests full of thanks we send him poney to
kind Pale Face, and Star Eyes work um saddle. May
Great Spirrit spred loving wings over deer yung Pale
Face. We take with us him gift of good fire warter,
and saved the loved yung squar.
“CHIEF Nomantic >< [his mark.]
“Star Eyes = [her mark.†]
Back sped Phil to the house, his face radiant and
his eyes aflame. He rushed over the stairs and into
his room just as the little crippled brother had
finished the slow task of dressing.
“Oh, you duck of a Davy,†he cried, “what do
you think now! Why, that blessed old Injine, Noman-
tic, you know—the old chief, you know—has sent us
that darling little white saddle and wampum pony —
why, what the mischief am I saying! he has sent us
that dear little white pony, wampum saddle, and all
the fixin’s! You needn’t say you don’t believe it now,
it’s true as this world, and there’s a great big lump in
my throat most choking me too!†for great fifteen-
year-old Phil was actually almost sobbing with delight
and excitement.
That night when Joe Fanshaw dashed up to the
post-office, he informed half of Parrisville that the
Indians of Nomantic’s tribe had decamped—started
for the far West.
CAMP HAMPERFORD.
152
The story of Phil’s forest adventure got out, as such
stories will; but the friends kept their own counsel
concerning some of the facts of the case. And little
Davy, whose lameness was caused partly by physical
weakness, began improving immediately on beginning
his invigorating rides on Star Eyes’ pony. Tom Per-
kins and Harry Ford enjoyed long rambles with her
too, to say nothing of Phil, her happy master.
For some reason or other, that great gossip, Sam
Grofts, never could get any one to give him the true
facts of the mysterious presentation, although on
every possible occasion he would ask Davy half-know-
ingly —to delude him into confidence if possible—
and half-curiously :
“Say now, Davy, what made you name the pony
‘Ginger ’?â€
But the sly little Davy only perks his head on one
side, half-shuts his eyes, and replies :
“Oh, ‘always lucky to have ginger around,’ you
know, Mr. Crofts!â€
a
LITTLE BROWN THRUSHES.—LITTLE CHRISTEL.
153
LITTLE BROWN THRUSHES..
Mrs. WHITON-STONE,
{TTLE brown thrushes at sunrise in summer
After the May-flowers have faded away,
Warble to show unto every new-comer
How to hush stars, yet to waken the Day:
Singing first, lullabies, then, jubilates,
Watching the blue sky where every bird’s heart is;
Then, as lamenting the day’s fading light,
Down through the twilight, when wearied with
flight,
Singing divinely, they breathe out, “ good-night!â€
Little brown thrushes with birds yellow-breasted
Bright as the sunshine that June roses bring
Climb up and carol o’er hills silver-crested
Just as the bluebirds do in the spring,
Seeing the bees and the butterflies ranging,
Pointed-winged swallows their sharp shadows
changing ;
But while some sunset is flooding the sky,
Up through the glory the brown thrushes fly,
Singing divinely, “ good-night and good-by!â€
Pee a ly Rel oaliek ley,
By Mrs. Mary E. BRADLEY.
RAULEIN, the young schoolmistress, to her
pupils said one day,
“Next week at Pfingster holiday King Ludwig rides
this way ;
And you will be wise, my little ones, to work with
a will at your tasks,
That so you may answer fearlessly whatever ques-
tion he asks.
It would be a shame too dreadful if the king should
have it to tell
That Hansel missed in his figures, and Peterkin
could not spell!â€
“Oho! that never shall happen,†cried Hansel. and
Peterkin too,
“We'll show King Ludwig when he comes, what
the boys in this school can do.â€
“ And we,†said Gretchen and Bertha, and all the
fair little maids
Who stood in a row before her, with their hair in
flaxen braids,
“We will pay such good attention to every word
you say
That you shall not be ashamed of us when King
Ludwig rides this way.â€
She smiled, the young schoolmistress, to see that
they loved her so,
And with patient care she taught them the things
it was good to know.
Day after day she drilled them till the great day
came at last,
When the heralds going before him blew out their
sounding blast ;
And with music, and flying banners, and the clat-
ter of horses’ feet,
The king and his troops of soldiers rode down the
village street.
Oh the hearts of the eager children beat fast with
joy and fear,
And Fraulein trembled and grew pale, as the cav
alcade drew near;
But she blushed with pride and pleasure when the
lessons came to be heard,
For in all the flock of her boys and girls not one of
them missed a word.
And King Ludwig turned to the teacher with a
smile and a gracious look ;
“Tt is plain,†said he, “that your scholars have
carefully conned their book.
|
i
He
i
“FOR THE KING IN HIS ARMS HAD CAUGHT HER,â€
154
LITTLE CHRISTEL,
“ But now let us ask some questions to see if they
understand ;â€â€™
And he showed to one of the little maids an orange
in his hand.
It was Christel, the youngest sister of the mistress
fair and kind —
A child with a face like a lily, and as lovely and
pure a mind.
“What kingdom does this belong to?†as he
called her to his knee;
And at once —“ The vegetable,†she answered
- quietly.
* Good,†said the monarch kindly ; and showed her
a piece of gold;
“Now tell me what this belongs to, the pretty coin
that I hold?â€
She touched it with careful finger, for gold was a
metal rare,
And then —“ The mineral kingdom !â€â€ she answered
with confident air,
“Well done for the little madchen!†And good
King Ludwig smiled
At Fraulein and her sister, the teacher and the
child.
“Now answer me one more question :†—with a
twinkle of fun in his eye —
“What kingdom do 7 belong to?†For he thought
she would make reply,
* The animal ;â€â€™ and he meant to ask with a frown,
if that was the thing
For a little child like her to say to her lord and
master, the king?
He knew not the artless wisdom that would set his
wit at naught, :
And the little Christel guessed nothing at all of
what was in his thought.
155
But her glance shot up at the question, and the
brightness in her face,
Like a sunbeam on a lily, seemed to shine all over
the place.
“What kingdom do you belong to?†her innocent
lips repeat ;
“Why surely, the kingdom of Heaven!†rings out
the answer sweet.
And then for a breathless moment a sudden silence
fell,
And you might have heard the fall of a leaf as they
looked at little Christel.
But it only lasted a moment, then rose as sudden
a shout —
“Well done, well done for little Christel!†and
the bravos rang about.
For the king in his arms had caught her, to her
wondering, shy surprise,
And over and over he kissed her, with a mist of
tears in his eyes.
“ May the blessing of God,†he murmured, “ forever
rest on thy head!
Henceforth, by his grace, my life shall prove the
truth of what thou hast said.â€
He gave her the yellow orange, and the golden
coin for her own,
And the school had a royal feast that day whose
like they had never known.
To Fraulein, the gentle mistress, he spoke such
words of cheer
That they lightened her anxious labor for many
and many a year.
And because in his heart was hidden the memory
of this thing,
The Lord had a better servant, the Lord had a
wiser king?
A SCULPTURED MADONNA.
156
HEROINES OF THE POETS.
HEROINES OF THE POETS.
COLERIDGE’S GENEVIEVE,
FT in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene,
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve !
She leaned against the armed man,
The statue of the armed knight 5
And stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene’er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.
I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story —~
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.
COLERIDGE’S GENEVIEVE,
157
158
LTO A SEYVLARK.
TO A SKYLARK,
By Percy ByssHe SHELLEY,
AIL to thee, blithe spirit —
Bird thou never wert —
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire ;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight ;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill de-
light —
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over-
flowed.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow-clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody: —
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the
view:
Like a rose embowered
_ In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd
thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,—
All that ever was,
Joyous and clear and fresh,— thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt, :
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt —
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
TO A SKYLARK.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain ?
What: fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of
pain ?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne’er knew loves had satiety.
Waking or asleep
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
. Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal
stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
159
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught ;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddes:
thought.
Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come neat
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
_ Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground !
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From thy lips would flow
The world should listen then-as I am listening no -
— Zrom Shelley's Poems.
ee
THOU ART UNSEEN, BUT YET I HEAR THY SHRILL DELIGHT,
160
A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
&
I61
A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
iy By Amanpa B. Harris.
HE thing that was expected of me
one day was to find the picturesque
and romantic side there is to such practical kind of
business as the making of paper—to tell that, and
make the plain facts of the case more attractive. It
looked zoo practical, and I was hopeless, but the
mummies decided it.
What had the mummies to do with it? Just this,
that some of the cloudy, obscurish sort of blue-gray
paper that has been in use was once Egyptian cloth.
I have a very positive impression that blue is the pre-
vailing color worn by the common people in some
of the Eastern countries; it certainly is in China, a
dull blue; and if I mistake not, the Jewish women of
old wore it; and the Egyptians, not only in former
times, but they wear it still.
At any rate, that dingiest, dreariest of blues was
the color of a peculiar kind of cloth, which it gives
you a creepy sort of feeling to touch; woven long,
tong ago on the quaint Egyptian looms; worn first—
who knows ?—and at last wound and wound about
the mummies before they were laid away in their
niches of silence. All the Egyptian dead of by-gone
ages were embalmed and swathed in cloth, whether
they were rich or poor. For the former class the kind of
linen called yssuzs was used, as microscopic examina-
tion has proved. For the poorer it was a coarser,
cheaper stuff, looking like hard, firm cotton (Ihave a
piece of it here); and on some mummies there were
“ not less than forty thicknesses of cloth ;†sometimes
more than thirty pounds of bandages on one person.
So that there was opportunity for securing an immense
amount of material for paper, if anybody chose to
engage in such abominable business.
What sacrilegious, unnatural traffic that was—
unswathing those forms, and sending shiploads of
blue cerements across the ocean as merchandise!
But then, we must bear in mind that, religiously as
the old Egyptians preserved their dead, the modern
ones have always been ready to offer mummies for
sale as curiosities. When we remember this, we
shall feel less surprise that they should sell the
wrappings too!
They were all fumigated at some of those far Med-
iterranean ports, packed in bales and shipped; on
whose responsibility it would be useless to inquire.
162
And even some of them, queerly enough, came to this
little town named for Benjamin Franklin, up among’
the New Hampshire hills. What wonder that the
little girls who used to play under the machinery in
their father’s mill, looked on at the unlading of this
strange merchandise with solemn faces! They had
_seen many curious things in that great rag-room;
strange flotsam and jetsam had come thither; and
they had listened to stories of curious findings, but
there had been nothing so strange as this. There
was something really awesome in it.
Still to their
WROUGHT BY NUNS IN ITALIAN CONVENTS.
young imaginations the mummy cloths brought visions
of the sleepy Nile and the Pyramids, and palm-trees
under the hot haze of an Egyptian noon; old Cairo
and the Sphinx, the Pharaohs and Cleopatra seemed
not so far away either in space or time: and that old
world and the Orient were for the moment almost as
real as the rambling village where they lived, with its
white houses and brick mills, and the cool green mead-
ows where the Pemigewasset and the Winnepesaukee
—lovely rivers ! — met and formed the Merrimack.
That was years ago; and the paper was called
“ granite,†from the blue-gray stone of thatname. In
these times it would probably be “momie†paper,
and very stylish.
As you will infer, the special mill I am writing
about (which is now engaged in the manufacture of
such paper as newspapers are printed on) then made
letter paper. The imprint was one well known all over
ae
"i zh
ma
A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
the country ; and the stamp, which may now be recog-'
nized in many a bundle of old letters and documents,
was a bird holding a letter in its bill. Besides the
white and the granite there was a blue kind; and
about this there is a scrap of history too, At that
time, thirty-five or forty years ago, there was a great
deal of blue calico worn —we call the same thing
“print.†Dark indigo blue calico, sprinkled with
little stars or dots in white, or criss-crossed, as some:
body called them, or some small pattern. The style
has re-appeared, as you all know. A good, service-
able color our mothers found it for every-
day wear; and there was so much of it, that
when it came to the rag-room at the mill, it
was sorted out by itself, and went to make
a clear blue grade of letter paper.
There was a bit of Italy came in the same
way as Egypt did to this northern town;
bales of white rags from Leghorn ; and they
were all linen. What exquisite, firm paper
they should have made! It was strong,
stocky linen, and some of the cast-off gar-
ments were in fashion somewhat like a
frock; and so rich was the embroidery on
them, that ladies saved specimens as curios-
' ities. The work was rich and strange;
Hy e > not like anything ever seen in this part
WHEN THE CHURCH RECORDS WERE MISSED.
of the world. One could only conjecture about who
wrought it; perhaps nuns in the Italian convents;
perhaps noble dames and maidens made a pleasant
pastime of it with their needles, as we do now with
A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
Kensington stitch.
work were not worn by peasants.
Other bales there were from certain places where
BARTERING OLD RAGS FOR NEW TIN.
the contents, whether of waste paper or cloth, had
been cut into small pieces, that the character of the
writing or printing and the style of the garment
might not be betrayed; and all the rags were scrup-
ulously clean, having been washed be-
fore they were packed.
As for the rest, the rag-pickers in
the city streets were working in their
way in the long line of processes
towards what was one day to be reams
and piles of fine letter paper ; and the
tin-pedlers’ carts were going about
Certainly such fabric and such
163
It was in “war times†that the books and manu
scripts and tons of newspapers and pamphlets, began
to pour in.
Formerly paper stock, as this kind was
“MET, AND FORMED THE MERRIMACK.â€
called, had been of but little value, only about
half a cent a pound, for the reason that the man-
ufacturers knew of no way by which the ink
could be taken out; the printing or writing
would show through, so that books and papers
had to be made into wrapping paper. But
as soon as some genius found out how to do,
the price went up so high that most of the old
garrets were despoiled of the hoarded accumulations
of years. The greater part of the school books went
that way. Volumes which the older generations had
treasured, a younger generation sold, and things
were lost
which can
never be re-
placed. Rare
pamphlets
came to this
mill, and
books in cost-
ly bindings,
two hundred
years old,
The church
records of a
certain im-
portant town
turned up in
one of the
bundles. Some things were rescued by antiqua-
SCRAP-BOOK TREASURES.
rians, who moiled and toiled amidst these tons
OLD LACES.
from town to town the same
as now, and the good wives
stood by the shining, clattering load and haggled and
examined the wares, and bartered old rags for new tin.
of printed matter, in search of some scarce vol-
ume. And those girls who used to ride on the loads
of bales when they were small, now that they were
older came daintily picking their way and rummaged
for poetry to put in their scrap-books,
Strange findings and experiences there used to ba
164 A DAY
Bundles of family letters, of priceless value to tne
genealogist ; private journals, held very sacred by
the ones who poured their hearts out on the pages,
went mercilessly into the boiling tanks, to re-appear
‘perhaps in the very morning journal whose columns
some of us were scanning for the latest news from
the seat of war. Rejected manuscripts were among
the contents of the tin-pedlers’ bags; telling stories
of disappointment not written in the text, but des-
tined, possibly, for a better use in their new shape,
after going through the paper-mill, than if the editor
WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
employer of stealing a diamond ear-drop which was
atterwards found among the paper-rags. “ Once,â€
said one of the women who worked at sorting rags,
“my girl found five dollars, right there, a bill, and we
used to find gold rings and such things. Now it is
different.â€
The reason why it is different now is that a great
deal of the paper is made of the waste from cotton
factories. ‘The time of mummy wrappings and Italian
fine needlework was in the past; and it was a pro-
saic region of stuff of to-day into which we stepped
SORTING.
had found them “available.†Sometimes there was
the evidence of somebody’s dishonesty, in pieces of
harness, heavy buckles and straps, which had been
hidden in a bundle of rags to make it weigh more.
Several times there was a sealed letter of importance,
even containing money, the loss of which from the
post-office or failure to reach the address had caused
business troubles and anxieties for years; and jewelry
would be found, on account of which, perhaps, some
poor seamstress had been made to suffer. You will
remember how one was once accused by her rich
from the sidewalk on our first day at the mill. We
began at the beginning — with the rag room — which
was then cluttered with the material above men-
tioned ; waste from a mill, and everything that had
been swept up with it, pieces of bobbins and quills,
iron, wood, and rubbish in general.
The first thing was to submit it to a tearing
and whirling process in a revolving machine called
a “duster,†where a cylinder set with spikes like
harrow teeth, gave the incongruous mass a vigorous
shaking up, during which the wood ard metal and
A DAY
stone came rattling out like a hailstorm on the floor,
while the rags fell over into the room beyond. There
they were gathered up and carried into the sorting
room. Seventeen women were at work on them with
their heads done up in colored handkerchiefs. One
of them told me she had worked there twenty years,
and turning to the daughter of her former employer,
Te tictatites
she spoke of the date of his death, and said, “TI
remember it just as well as when I buried my six
children. He was a good friend to the poor.â€
Each had seven barrels into which she sorted the
stuff: chips into one; old paper into another, for
brown paper;-and so on. Nothing usable is lost.
Each has a sort of table with sides like a box,
on which the rags are sorted; the bottom of it is
a sieve with large meshes to let the dust through, and
fastened to one side of some is a piece of scythe —a
dangerous, ugly-looking blade, across which they
draw any piece which has buttons or hooks, to cut
them off. The scene in this room is made to look
picturesque under the artists’ hands, but it is anything
but that to the senses of the women.
After this the rags are pitched into a cutter which
cuts them fine, and then another more fine; and
they pass the ordeal of a second revolving machine,
which sets the dust a-flying, and empties them into
another room; and of the debris at so late a stage of
WITH RAGS,
TATTERS & CO. 165
winnowing as this, and after so much sorting, there
‘is taken away every night from twelve to twenty-four
bushels. As this cataract of cotton goes flying over
into the room for it, it occasionally takes fire. Some-
times a match, in spite of all restrictions, as been
dropped into the waste by somebody, somewhere ;
and if it has escaped the keen eyes of the sorters
(and a wicked little match can keep out of sight), it
is quite sure to strike fire now.
Next comes the preparation for cleansing with
lime water. The rags are pitched and crammed
down a crater or tunnel in the floor; and if I heard
aright, a man goes down into that dark, vile-smelling
pit, among them, and stows them away. The pit
proves, on going down-stairs, to be an immense iron
cylinder, like a gigantic barrel, more than the height
of a man in diameter, and three times that length.
There were two of them up in air, called “rotary
bleachersâ€; they hold nearly a ton each, and every
night at five o’clock are filled: the lime water is put
in, and there they boil all night. When the rags are
done, workmen come with strong, long-handled imple-
ments and hook them out. Mountains of these
sopping, cooked rags loomed up in the cave-like
place ; and the floor was sloppy and slippery.
Before we went again to the upper regions we took
a look at the furnaces, Those semi-subterranean
166
regions might have been the workshop of the Cyclops.
Away in there I fancied them forging the strange,
cruel-looking iron things that the men were using,
and those ponderous iron doors which shut from sight
the fires seven times heated. ‘They were like the
doors of ovens, that might have been a bakery for
Titans; and in the cavernous depths hidden by the
knobbed and massive doors, who could say but their
baked meats were sissling and browning?
Meanwhile, the odor was not of flesh or fowl,
plum pudding or good wheaten loaf; but a mingling
of cotton factory, machine oil and lime water, tem-
pered by the chloride of lime and alum, which gave a
chemical flavor and taste to the universal atmosphere.
When we left that place where the fires never go
out, as one might almost say, for the machinery of the
mill never stops until midnight Saturday, we ascended
to the bleaching room. Up to it the lime-cleansed
rags are conveyed in little cars, the
full ones: going up through a
trap door by a broad band,
and the empty ones coming
down by a narrow one.
A
i Saving Sucks
‘
There several tanks, huge enough to be bath tubs
for those same giants, are ready to receive them, and
men stand waiting with horrible tongs to clutch and
toss them in. Those tongs are like instruments of
torture; they must have been invented in the days of
the Spanish Inquisition.
Gattingeedfashs
4A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CoO.
In each vat is a washing engine, which keeps a
stream of clean water all the time running through
that mess which is like a cauldron of witches’ soup ;
washing, washing, while the foul water goes pouring
out through a great pipe, and is carried off into the
river below. A screen of fine wire keeps the stock
from washing away ; and in out of sight is machinery
that grinds the rags, and there are sets of knives and
zigzag knives which tear them without hurting the
fibre; and there they are ground and dismembered
and tormented for five hours or less, according to
their state of soil and oiliness when they are put in.
Then the water is let off, a curious little trap which
catches the buttons that have managed to accompany
the rags so far on the way to being paper, is opened,
the buttons scraped down towards their final place of
deposit in the river, and the chloride of lime and
alum are next inorder. We happened to be
on the spot just after these things were put
in, and we were standing near and intently
looking down into the tub or vat or tank
(either name is well enough, though I am
pretty sure the men said “ tubâ€), when of a
sudden the whole company of us set to
crying and laughing together, and had to
3 Wysag
retreat, the fumes were so overpowering, and the
faces of all the workmen were one broad grin at the
sight.
After the bleaching powders are in, the whole
mass begins to churn into foam, and is kept churning
and churning for three quarters of an hour, and the
A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
alum shines like a silver crust on the top of the
drifts. The air is full of the keen steam of it, which
makes your nose tingle, and you have a general
sense of a grand purifying day. - By this time,
between lime water, chloride of lime and alum (and
sometimes oil of vitriol), besides perpetual water and
ceaseless rinsings, the paper pulp is white as snow.
Odor or color could not survive such heroic treat-
167
ultramarine ; and occasionally if an order comes to
that effect, something which gives a reddish cast. In
other mills various kinds of dye are used. But
before the tinting, there must be a final thorough
rinsing to remove the chloride and alum, which
would, as the man said, “kill the color.†So in a
final set of tubs, the much vexed and beaten pulp is
put through another running water course of treat-
ment,
Moreover, it has been nothing but winnowing
and grinding and pounding and squeezing from first
to last. Through it all the fibre has remained intact.
The first set of knives, and the next set too, were dull
blades, which rent rather than cut. As it comes out
of the bleaching tubs and is piled in snowy heaps on
the little cars, it looks like cotton batting wrung out
of water, wrung into bits. If you take a wad of it in
your hand and pull it apart, you will find a good deal
of tenacity to it. If it had been cut and chopped, as
seemed to be the case, the paper would be brittle.
It looks pure white, but if it was given no tint the
paper would naturally be of a yellowish cast. So it
is blued as a laundress blues her clothes. They use
ment, then a man dishes in the blue fiuid, and its
lovely whiteness is gone.
There also comes in another element in this last
room before it begins to take the form of paper. ‘The
mill at present makes paper for newspapers ; and for
these more or less wood pulp is used; and it is in
this room that it is incorporated with the -rag pulp.
The kinds of wood are spruce and poplar ; the former
is the stronger of the two, the latter is whiter. It
is prepared in another mill (about which more
pretty soon), and brought here in large sheets ready
for use. The quantity of wood pulp added depends
upon the order. Say the Boston Journal, which has
its paper manufactured here, wants so many pounds
168
of wood to the hundred. It has only to furnish a
sample, and the order is filled accordingly. A man
tears one of these sheets into fragments and throws
them into the tub of pulp. The suction draws them
swiftly within the power of the machine which will
soon reduce them to a mush, and incorporate them
thoroughly with the other, but not before they have
passed again before our eyes looking like a munifi-
cent dessert of floating island —pale goldy-colored
islands on a frothy white sea.
And now the protracted ordeal is nearly at an end,
and the thin mush, which is a great deal of water
thickened with what is to be paper, is conveyed to
another long room, by means of a complex errange-
ment of bands and wheels, of whirling and sliding
things, the very sight of which dazes the senses of
one who does not understand machinery, and is
afraid of it, too. Some way it is to be seen in that
other room, where it is shaken as in a sieve; and
strained as in an endless milk strainer; and pressed,
and compelled into a narrow passage-way where
absorption takes place; it seems to be going over a
dam (or under one), and along a glassy-looking road-
way like a flume; it is now in sight, and now it
is not; now it looks substanceless, but before you
know how it can have happened, it is going first over
one hot cylinder, and then over another, and if you
follow on you soon come to an endless web of paper
being wound almost smoking hot on a huge roller.
All this our guide, who had conducted us through
the buildings, tried to make us understand —that the
sifting and the straining and the constant stream of
water were to sift out, strain out, and wash out the
last remnants of sand: that the solid rubber bands
running along each side were to regulate the edges
of the paper; and why this thing and that thing
were there. But nothing else was so clear to us as
that it was hot as a fiery furnace and sopping wet,
scarlet wheels were revolving, and a dangerous hum
and whiz were in the air as they went round, and the
A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.
prudent way was to get out of it as quickly as possible.
Finally it is reeled and measured off, sheathed
in strong coverings, labelled, expressed to printing
offices whence it re-appears in your morning Journal,
or your monthly Wipe Awake. But, after all, the
poetic and beautiful element of the thing isin another
mill which is not a paper mill at all, but the one
where the wood pulp is prepared, and a tributary to
it, and distinctively named the “pulp mill.†To that
we went. ‘They were working the spruce that day.
The place, with its piles of logs, and spout high in
air, down which they were slid to the dumping-
ground, suggested a saw mill. In the interior, logs
of spruce, fresh enough from the forest to be full
of the fragrant rosin, were ready in four-foot piles.
These were swiftly sawed into short pieces, by two
men —one who fed and one who held the wood
against the dazzling, dangerous, whirling steel; at
another machine the bark was taken off; at a third a
man held the section of log while a guillotine—a
deadly, horrible iron thing — came down with terrible
certainty and cleft it in billets as he offered it.
These were tossed into machines where were lying
in ambush grindstones of tremendous power; and
when next you saw, what a moment before was a
segment of a tree was cream-colored pulp. Then, it
was put through another process, and lo! thick
blankets a yard square, exquisite in color, luxurious,
ready to be carried over to the paper mill.
The sap of the tree was still in them; the texture
of wood, to which so many summer winds and rains,
and so much sunshine had been tributary. The pale
buff of the lovely fibre was there unchanged. The
compression and transformation had not spoiled that
aroma of the woods. I brought away one of the
cream-tinted, spruce-flavored sheets, inhaling the
lingering balsam. It called up pictures of lone
clearings in the wilderness; of the forest primeval;
of wild deer and moose. I dreamed of Katahdin and
the Adirondacks.
THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SIERRAS.
169
THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SIERRAS.
By Joaquin MILLER.
HEIR mother had died crossing the plains, and
their father had had a leg broken by a wagon
wheel passing over it as they descended the Sierras,
and he was for a long time after reaching the mines
miserable, lame and poor.
The eldest boy, Jim Keene, as I remember him,
was a bright little fellow, but wild as an Indian and
full of mischief. The next eldest child, Madge, was a
girl of ten, her father’s favorite, and she was wild
enough too. The youngest was Stumps, Poor, timid,
starved Little Stumps! I never knew his real name.
But he was the baby, and hardly yet out of petticoats.
And he was very short in the legs, very short in the body,
very short in the arms and neck ; and so he was called
Stumps because he looked it. In fact he seemed to
have stopped growing entirely. Oh, you don’t know
how hard the old Plains were on everybody, when we
crossed them in ox-wagons, and it took more than
half a year to make the journey. The little children,
those that did not die, turned brown like the Indians,
in that long, dreadful journey of seven months, and
stopped growing for a time.
For the first month or two after reaching the
Sierras, old Mr. Keene limped about among the
mines trying to learn the mystery of finding gold, and
the art of digging. But at last, having grown strong
enough, he went to work for wages, to get bread for
his half-wild little ones, for they were destitute in-
deed.
Things seemed to move on well, then. Madge cooked
the simple meals, and Little Stumps clung to her dress
with his little pinched brown hand wherever she
went, while Jim whooped it over the hills and chased
jack-rabbits as if he were a greyhound. He would
climb trees, too, like asquirrel. And, oh !— it was de-
plorable — but how he could swear!
At length some of the miners, seeing the boy must
come to some bad end if not taken care of, put
their heads and their pockets together and sent the
children to school. This school was a mile away
over the beautiful brown hills, a long, pleasant walk
under the green California oaks.
Well, Jim would take the little tin dinner bucket,
and his slate, and all their books under his arm and
go booming ahead about half a mile in advance, while
Madge with brown Little Stumps clinging to her side
like a burr, would come stepping along the trail under
the oak-trees as fast as she could after him.
But if a jack-rabbit, or a deer, or a fox crossed’
Jim’s path, no matter how late it was, or how the
teacher had threatened him, he would drop books,
lunch, slate and all, and spitting on his hands and
rolling up his sleeves, would bound away after it,
yelling like a wild Indian. And some days, so fasci-
nating was the chase, Jim did not appear at the
schoolhouse at all; and of course Madge and Stumps
played truant too. Sometimes a week together would’
pass and the Keene children would not be seen at
the schoolhouse. Visits from the schoolmaster pro-
duced no lasting effect. The children would come
for a day or two, then be seen no more. The school-
master and their father at last had a serious talk
about the matter.
“What caz I do with him?†said Mr. Keene.
“You'll have to put him to work,†said the school-
master. “Set him to hunting nuggets instead of
bird’s-nests. I guess what the boy wants is some
honest means of using his strength, He’s a good
boy, Mr. Keene; don’t despair of him. Jim would be
proud to be an ‘honest miner.’ Jim’s a good boy,
Mr. Keene.â€
“Well, then, thank you, Schoolmaster,†said Mr.
Keene. ‘ Jim’s agood boy; and Madge is good, Mr.
Schoolmaster; and poor starved and stunted mother-
less Little Stumps, he is good as gold, Mr. School-
master. And I want to be a mother to ‘em — I want
to be father and mother to ’em all, Mr. Schoolmaster.
And I'l] follow. your advice, I’ll put ’em all to work
a-huntin’ for gold.â€
The next day away up on the hillside under a
pleasant oak, where the air was sweet and cool, and
the ground soft and dotted over with flowers, the
tender-hearted old man that wanted to be “father
and mother both,†‘‘locatedâ€â€™ a claim. The flowers
were kept fresh by a little stream of waste water from
the ditch that girded the brow of the hill above.
170
Here he set a sluice-box and put his three little min-
ers at work with pick, pan.and shovel. There he
left them and limped back to his own place in the
mine below. :
And how they did work! And how pleasant it
was here under the broad boughs of the oak, with the
water rippling through the sluice on the soft, loose
soil which they shoveled into the long sluice-box.
They could see the mule-trains going and coming,
and the clouds of dust far below which told them
the stage was whirling up the valley. But Jim kept
THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SIERRAS.
day after day, now up to his waist in the pit.
One Saturday evening the old man limped up the
hillside to help the young miners “ clean up.’
He sat down at the head of the sluice-box and
gave directions how they should turn off the most of
the water, wash down the “ toilings â€â€™ very low, lift up
the “ riffle,’ brush down the “ apron,†and finally set
the pan in the lower end of the “ sluice-toil †and pour
in the quicksilver to gather up and hold the gold.
“What for you put your hand in de water for,
papa?†queried Little Stumps, who had left off his
“COLOR! TWO COLORS! THREH, FOUR, FIVE —A DOZEN!â€
Steadily on at his work day after day. Even though
jack-rabbits and squirrels appeared on the very scene,
he would not leave till, like the rest of the honest
miners, he could shoulder his pick and pan and go
down home with the setting sun.
Sometimes the men who had tried to keep the
children at school, would come that way, and with
a sly smile, talk very wisely about whether or not
the new miners would “strike it†under the cool
oak among the flowers on the hill. But Jim never
stopped to talk much. He dug and wrestled away,
work, which consisted mainly of pulling flowers and
putting them in the sluice-box to see them float away.
He was sitting by his father’s side, and he looked up
in his face as he spoke.
“Hush, child,†said the old man softly, as he again
dipped his thumb and finger in his vest pocket as
if about to take snuff. But he did not take snuff.
Again his hand was reached down to the rippling
water at the head of the sluice-box. And this time
curious but obedient Little Stumps was silent.
Suddenly there was a shout, such a shout from Jim
THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SITERRAS.
as the hills had not heard since he was a schoolboy.
He had found the “color.†“Two colors! three,
four, five —a dozen!†The boy shouted like a
Modoc, threw down the brush and scraper, and kissed
his little sister over and over, and cried as he did so;
then he whispered softly to her as he again took up
his brush and scraper, that it was “for papa; all for
poor papa; that he did not care for himself, but he
did want to help poor, tired, and crippled papa.â€
But papa did not seem to be excited so very much.
The little miners were now continually wild with
excitement. They were up and at work Monday
morning at dawn. The men who were in the father’s
tender secret, congratulated the children heartily and
made them presents of several small nuggets to add
to their little horde.
In this way they kept steadily at work for half the
summer. All the gold was given to papa to keep.
Papa weighed it each week, and I suppose secretly
congratulated himself that he was getting back about
as much as he put in.
Before quite the end of the third month, Jim
struck a thin bed of blue gravel. The miners who
had been happily chuckling and laughing among
themselves to think how they had managed to keep
Jim out of mischief, began to look at each other and
wonder how in the world blue gravel ever got up there
on the hill. Andina few days more there was a well-
defined bed of blue gravel, too; and not one of the
miners could make it out.
One Saturday evening shortly after, as the old man
weighed their gold he caught his breath, started, and
stood up straight; straighter than he had stood
since he crossed the Plains. Then he hastily left the
cabin. He went up the hill to the children’s claim
almost without limping. Then he took a pencil and
an old piece of a letter, and wrote out a notice and
tacked it up on the big oak-tree, claiming those
mining claims according to miners’ law, for the three
children. A couple of miners laughed as they went
by in the twilight, to see what he was doing; and he
laughed with them. But as he limped on down the
hill he smiled.
That night as they sat at supper, he told the chil-
dren that as they had been such faithful and indus-
trious miners, he was going to give them each a
present, besides a little gold to spend as they pleased.
So he went up to the store and bought Jim a red
shirt, long black and bright gum boots, a broad-brim-
med hat, and a belt. He also bought each of the
Lox
other children some pretty trappings, and gave each
a dollar’s worth of gold dust. Madge and Stumps
handed their gold back to “ poor papa.†But Jim was
crazy with excitement. He put on his new clothes
and went forth to spend his dollar. And what do
you suppose le bought? I hesitate to tell you. But
what he bought was a pipe and a paper of tobacco!
That red shirt, that belt and broad-brimmed hat,
together with the shiny top boots, had been too much
for Jim’s balance. How could a man —he spoke of
himself as a man now — how could a man be an
“honest miner†and nat smoke a pipe?
And now with his manly clothes and his manly
pipe he was to be so happy! He had all that went
to make up “the honest miner.†True, he did not
let his father know about the pipe. He hid it under
his pillow at night. He meant to have his first smoke
at the sluice-box, as a miner should.
Monday morning he was up with the sun and
ready for his work. His father, who worked down the
Gulch, had already gone before the children had
finished their breakfast. So now Jim filled his bran.
new pipe very leisurely; and with as much calm
unconcern as if he had been smoking for forty years,
he stopped to scratch a match on the door as he went
out. ;
From under his broad hat he saw his little sister
watching him, and he fairly swelled with importance
as Stumps looked up at him with childish wonder,
Leaving Madge to wash the few tin dishes and fol-
low as she could with Little Stumps, he started on up
the hill, pipe in mouth.
He met several miners, but he puffed away like a
tug-boat against the tide, and went on. His bright
new boots whetted and creaked together, the warm
wind lifted the broad brim of his somérero, and his
bright new red shirt was really beautiful, with the
green grass and oaks for a background — and so this
brave young man climbed the hill to his mine. Ah,
he was so happy !
Suddenly, as he approached the claim, his knees
began to smite together, and he felt so weak he could
hardly drag one foot after the other. He threw down
his pick ; he began to tremble and spin around. The
world seemed to be turning over and over, and he
trying in vain to hold on to it. He jerked the pipe
from his teeth, and throwing it down on the bank, he
tumbled down too, and clutching at the grass with
both hands tried hard, oh! so hard, to hold the world
from slipping from under him.
i72
“O, Jim, you are white as snow,†cried Madge as
she came up.
“White as ’er sunshine, an’ blue, an’ green too,
sisser. Look at brurrer ‘all colors,’†piped Little
Stumps pitifully.
‘OQ, Jim, Jim — brother Jim, what is the matter?â€
sobbed Madge.
“ Sunstroke,†murmured the young man, smilling
grimly, like a true Californian. “No; it is not sun-
HE TOOK THE LIMP YOUNG MINER IN HIS ARMS.
stroke, it’s —it’s cholera,†he added in dismay over
his falsehood.
Poor boy! he was sorry for this second lie too.
He fairly groaned in agony of body and soul.
THE LITTLE GOLD MINERS OF THE SIERRAS.
Oh, how he did hate that pipe! How he did want
to get up and jump on it and smash it into a thousand
pieces! But he could not get up or turn around or
move at all without betraying his unmanly secret.
A couple of miners came up, but Jim feebly begged
them to go.
“ Sunstroke,†whispered the sister.
“No; tolera,†piped poor Little Stumps.
“Get out! Leave me!†groaned the young red-
shirted miner of the Sierras.
The biggest of the two miners bent over him a
moment.
“Yas; it’s both,†he muttered. ‘“ Cholera-nicotine-
fantum!†Then he looked at his partner and
winked wickedly. Without a word, he took the limp
young miner up in his arms and bore him down the
hill to his father’s cabin, while Stumps and Madge
ran along at either side, and tenderly and all the
time kept asking what was good for “ cholera.â€
The other old “honest miner†lingered behind to
pick up the baleful pipe which he knew was some-
where there; and when the little party was far
enough down the hill, he took it up and buried it in
his own capacious pocket with a half-sorrowful laugh.
“ Poor little miner,†he sighed.
“ Don’t ever swear any more, Windy,†pleaded the
boy to the miner who had carried him down the hill,
as he leaned over him, “and don’t never lie. Iam
going to die, Windy, and I should like to be good.
Windy, it azz’¢ sunstroke, it's� —
“Hush yer mouth,†growled Windy.
what ’tis! We've left it on the hill.â€
The boy turned his face to the wall. ‘The convic-
tion was strong upon him that he was going to die.
The world spun round now very, very fast indeed.
Finally, half-rising in bed, he called Little Stumps to
his side :
“Stumps, dear, good Little Stumps, if I die don’t
you never, never try for to smoke, for that’s what’s
the matter with me. No, Stumps — dear little brother
Stumps—don’t you never try for to go the whole of
the ‘honest miner,’ for it can’t be did by a boy!
We’re nothing but boys, you and I, Stumps — Little
Stumps.â€
He sank back in bed and Little Stumps and his
sister cried and cried, and kissed him and kissed him,
The miners who had gathered around loved him
now, every one, for daring to tell the truth and take
the shame of his folly so bravely.
“I’m going to die, Windy,†groaned the boy.
“T know
THE QUEEN OF TOLOO.
Windy could stand no more of it. He took Jim’s
hand with a cheery laugh. ‘‘ Git well in half an hour,â€
said he, “‘ now that you’ve out with the truth.â€
And so he did. By the time his father came home
he was sitting up; and he ate breakfast the next
morning as if nothing had happened. But he never
tried to smoke any more as long ashe lived. And he
never lied, and he never swore any more.
173
Oh, no! this Jim that I have been telling you of is
“Moral Jim,†of the Sierras. The mine? Oh! I
almost forgot. Well, that blue dirt was the old bed of
the stream, and it was ten times richer than where the
miners were all at work below. Struck it! I should.
say so! Ask any of the old Sierras miners about
“The Children’s Claim,†if you want to hear just how
rich they struck it.
THE QUEEN OF TOLOO.
By Ciara J. DenTon.
THE Queen of Toloo
Made a frightful ado ;
They ran to see what was the matter:
Her cup was upset,
No milk could she get,
And that was the cause of the clatter.
There were looks of dismay,
But her maiden so gay
Flew down to the kitchen instanter,
And brought up some more,
Which she quickly did pour
From the mouth of the silver decanter.
But the Queen of Toloo
Cried, ‘That will not do,
I tell you I want back the other!â€
Now what could they do
With this Queen of Toloo?
They sent her right in to her mother!
OUR EVERSLEY DOGS—DANDY, SWHLEP, VICTOR.
DOGS=—DAN DY, SW ebPy ViCrt Oe:
By Rose KINGSLEY.
NCE upon
a time
when I
was a lit-
tle girl I
remem-
ber sit-
) 2 ting beside my
= GF tather upon the box
@ ofa travelling carri-
age, on our way home
from a happy visit by
the banks of the beau-
tiful Thames. The
horses trotted stead-
ily onwards. The postil-
lion in his black velvet cap
and light-blue jacket, bobbed up and
down to the cadence of their measured
oe steps; mile after mile of black fir-trees
/ rising out of beds of purple heather, slip-
ped behind us, and between our feet, se-
cured by a strong chain, lay a long-backed, short-
legged, wiry-haired yellow puppy.
That was Dandy.
Presently the firtrees and sandy heaths melted
into ploughed fields and hedgerows. We came to the
crest of a long hill, and below us, between wide-
stretching, heather-clad moors known as Finchamp-
stead Ridges and Hartfordbridge Flats, lay a sunny
ereen vale. Down into the vale we trotted, through
copses full of nightingales; over the little Blackwater
River, where otters barked in the crumbling banks,
and kingfishers darted out—a flash of sapphire and
emerald—from some sheltering alder; past the
smooth-shaven village green where men and boys
were playing cricket after their days’ work; past
thatched cottages, each with its garden bright with
flowers; past bits of common where the cottagers fed
their geese, and their donkeys browsed on the
prickly golden-flowered gorse; up the church lane
from whose banks in spring we children filled our
hands with sweet-scented white violets that hid their
modest heads among the grass beneath the tall elm-
trees. Then we came to a farmhouse with its barns
and rick yards; and beyond it we saw a square red
brick church tower, and beyond the church tower lay
a low old bay-windowed red brick house covered with
roses and creepers and guarded by three huge Scotch
fir-trees rising from the green lawn —and we were
at home: for this was Eversley Rectory, and here
Dandy was to live.
But before I introduce you to Dandy himself, I
must tell you a little about his family history; for he
was no common cur, picked up out of the streets, and
he must be treated with proper respect, as befits a
dog of ancient pedigree.
He was one of that renowned breed of terriers that
Sir Walter Scott made famous in “ Guy Mannering,â€
of “auld Pepper and auld Mustard, and young Pep-
per and young Mustard, and little Pepper and little
Mustard,†who, as their gallant old owner said, “fear
naething that ever cam’ wi’ a hairy skin on’t.†‘The
first Dandie Dinmont terriers belonged to Mr. James
Davidson, of Hindlee, on the edge of the Teviotdale
Mountains, and their master was the original of the
delicious character of the brave old border farmer,
Dandie Dinmont of Charlie’s-hope. From these
fearless ancestors sprang a long line of fearless de-
scendants. They are something like a skye terrier,
but heavier and stronger, with shorter hair; and in
color are either “ pepper,†a bluish-gray, or “‘ mus-
tard,†or reddish-brown. They are noted for courage,
sagacity, strength and faithfulness; and among all
that famous family never was there a wiser, a better,
or a finer dog than our dear friend Dandy; for a
friend he soon became. We loved him as one of
the family, and he rejoiced in our joys and grieved
and sympathized in our sorrows.
In a few months after his arrival Dandy had grown
to his full size. He was a long, low dog, with very
short, strong, crootrd legs, big paws that turned out
like a turnspits’ a road head with plenty of room
for his brain, powesful jaws and teeth, soft drooping
ears, and tender, steadfast brown eyes which expressed
every thought in his heart as plainly as if he had had
OUR EVERSLEY DOGS—DANDY, SWEEP, VICTOR.
the gift of speech, the only human attribute that was
denied him. He was immensely strong; and though
perfectly sweet-tempered to every human being who
did no evil, he soon developed a taste for fighting
other dogs which, I am ashamed to say, was a great
source of delight to us naughty children. For if in
our walks we met a strange dog that looked as if it
would like to make a meal upon us, Dandy was bris-
tling all over in a minute. Then the big dog—for
Dandy would never notice dogs smaller than him-
self—would take a turn round the low yellow dog,
growling with contempt. Then came a sudden snarl —
a flash of white teeth, and the big bully was lying
in the dust, while Dandy, unhurt, stood calmly survey-
ing his prostrate foe who had been seized by the leg
and rolled over just when he expected to make an
easy end of our precious defender.
One day I remember a little carter-boy coming
down to the Rectory in some excitement :
“Oh, please ‘um, you’d better go up on Brick Hill,
that there dog of yourn’s been a fightin’, and ’eve
got two dogs down and he standin’ on ’em.â€
And sure enough there stood Dandy, bristling and
triumphant, with his fore feet planted on a huge
sheep dog and a greyhound belonging to a neighbor-
ing farmer, who lay not daring to move head or tail.
How he managed it we never could tell, for each of
his adversaries was twice as big as he was: but any
dog having once felt Dandy’s teeth was sure to sub-
mit to his rule for the rest of his life.
No children are perfect; and so Dandy’s early
days could not be expected to pass without some
youthful misdemeanors. ‘The most serious of these,
and one which he bitterly repented for many years to
come, occurred on a Sunday. We were all away from
home, so a strange clergyman was engaged to come
over to Eversley for the day to do the duty, and a
nice beefsteak had been prepared for his dinner
between services. But when the cook went to the
larder to get her beefsteak and dress it, it was no-
where to be found. Then she bethought her of
Dandy, who had come in a little while before with his
nose and paws covered with earth, as if he had been
burying some treasure. Search was made, Dandy
was watched, and at length he was tracked to a hiding-
place in the garden, and there were the melancholy,
earthy, half-eaten remains of the poor clergyman’s
Dandy was beaten for about the first and
but he was also scolded, and
For years
dinner.
Jast time in his life :
that hurt him far more than any beating.
/ nean,
175
after one had only to say, “Dandy, who stole the
beefsteaks? †and his tail would go between his legs.
his brown eyes fill with tears, and he would slink
away with a look of the most bitter remorse and
abject misery. ;
When Dandy had been with us for a year or two,
we were obliged, on account of my mother’s health, to
leave Eversley for a couple of years, and go to the
milder climate of Devonshire. Our first point was
Torquay ; and here we children first learnt the delight
of life on the seashore. Our whole time was spent
in searching the rocks of Livermead for rare sea-
beasts, and the sands of Paignton for shells and
sea weeds, which we brought home and kept alive in
large glass vivariums. Dandy was our constant com-
panion; and while we with our father were hunting
for the lovely living flowers of the rock pools, Dandy
was enjoying himself quite as much hunting for rab-
bits along the cliffs and sand hills. One day we had
CHARLES KINGSLEY
been on Paignton Sands, and came home laden with
a precious prize—the great “ red-legged cockle,â€
that strange mollusk that at certain times appears in
vast quantities in Torquay, and is not found anywhere
else till you get down at the coasts of the Mediterra-
Dandy, however, did not come home with us;
but we took little thought of his absence, feeling sure
he was busily engaged in some rabbit-hole, and would
175
follow as when he had come to the end of his task.
sut evening came, and ao Dandy. JI can see the
table in the window with lamp upon it, and the great
yellow cockle shells hopping and clattering about in
the glass pans of salt water, each on their red coral
EVERSLEY RECTORY.
leg like a scarlet capsicum. But even cockles, rare
and strange as they were, could not console us, and
we were very miserable.
Presently, late in the evening, came a knock at the
door, and when it was opened there stood a coast-
guard man in his sailor dress, and in his arms, limp
and still, lay Dandy. Oh the misery of that sight!
how we cried! He seemed if not dead, at least
dying; unable to move, yet still smiling with his
loving, faithful eyes at his beloved master. He had
fallen over a cliff while hunting his rabbits or trying
to find us, and the good coastguard, on his rounds
to keep the coast safe from smugglers, had found
aim lying apparently dead, and knowing us and our
love for the dog, had carried him all the way to
Livermead in his arms.
But Dandy was not to die yet. He was nursed
and tended like a sick child. After some while he
began to mend; and by the time we left Torquay
and drove across Dartmore to Bideford, on the north
coast of Devon, Dandy was as well as ever, and dug
out scores of rabbits on Northam Burrows, among
the rest-harrow and lady-fingers, while the Atlantic
waves roared upon the pebble-ridge hard by; and
made himself the terror of a]! evil doers, whether
OUR EVERSLEY DOGS—DANDY, SWEEP, VICTOR.
dogs or men, at Bideford; and was pursued wher
ever he went by an excited but respectful crowd of
little boys, who screamed to each other in shrill,
west-county voices, to “ come and look at the young
lion.â€
Time went by. We were once more in our dear
home at Eversley, and Dandy rejoiced like us to settle
down after his travels. It was a happy life that we
led. Above the Rectory, between the green fields
and the brown moors, lies the Mount, a little bit of
primeval forest untouched by the hand of man since
the Norman Conquest, and here most of our young
days were spent. There was a huge hollow oak,
into whose branches we climbed by a few rough
steps; and perched aloft in the green shade we
learnt our lessons and played unspeakable games,
in which the whole. Mount became peopled with
imaginary friends and enemies, and we had won-
derful adventures and escapes, slew monsters, and
visited the fairies, within the limit of one acre of
wood. Here we gathered the blue wild hyacinth, or
the starry wood anemone ; we crept softly under the
holly trees and watched the quivering brown throat
of the nightingale, as, with head aloft, he poured
forth a torrent of tremulous song; we listened to the
little wood-wren in the tree-top, and in the forks of
the gorse-stems we found the tiny dormice clewed
up in their nests. And this was Dandy’s kingdom
Every rabbit-burrow he knew by heart; and deep
was his joy when, in the holidays, our man George
would come with gun and spade and ferrets for a
day’s rabbiting with my brothers. In an incredibly
short time he would be nearly buried in a rabbit
hole, digging the sand away with his strong fore-
paws, and sending it flying behind him with his hind
feet. .
But though Dandy loved us and loved hunting, he
loved his master best of all. Never was he so happy
as whet. he was trotting after my father in his long
walks over the parish to see the sick and poor. Over
the wide desolate moors he followed his footsteps,
along the narrow tracks in the heather. He knew
every cottage, and would lie motionless for any
length of time by some sick woman’s bedside, while
his master read and prayed with her. Or on the days
my father had a “Cottage Lecture,†a little service
for some old folks who were too feeble to get to
church, Dandy was sure to be there, never moving,
or disturbing even the cat by the turf fire while the
service went on. He sometimes came to church
himself, but there he behaved with his wonted dis-
cretion.
Once when my father was preaching at Northam,
near Bideford, we found on arriving at the church
door that Dandy had followed us, though he gener-
ally knew he was not to come out on Sunday morn-
ing. It was too far to send him home, so we told
him to come in and be quiet. But he knew it was a
strange church, and seemed uneasy lest all should
not go right with his master in such an unknown
place. So when my father went up into the pulpit
for the sermon, Dandy followed him, and calmly
lying down on the top of the high old-fashioned
pulpit steps, looked round on the astonished congre-
gation as much as to say, “If you attempt to annoy
or hurt my master, I am here to defend him,†and
there he watched till the sermon was over.
Years came and went, and we children grew up,
and Dandy grew old — very old for a terrier of his
breed. At last, when he was thirteen years old, he
could hardly do more than crawl off his mat in the
front hall to a sunny corner in the garden, though
still when we said to him, “ Ring your bell, Dandy,â€
he would flap his strong tail against the floor, and
smile in ourfaces. And then came the sad day when
in his ripe old age he peacefully died, and went away
to the happy hunting-grounds to which all good dogs
go. There was not a dry eye in our home that day,
and we all mourned for a true friend. Faithful and
loving was Dandy, self-denying and self-controlled
to a degree that might shame most human beings.
And when he was buried on the lawn under the
great fir-trees where he had spent so many happy
days, his master engraved upon the little stone which
covers his grave:
“ FIDELI FIDELES.â€
The faithful to the faithful.
Before Dandy died another dog came to our home
—an enormous black retriever whose name was
Sweep. His mother, who belonged to a neighbor of
ours, was celebrated for her light mouth. I have
seen her master roll a new-laid egg down a grassy
slope, when she rushed after it, caught it while it was
yet rolling, and brought it uncracked to his feet.
This lightness of mouth our Sweep inherited; and it
was pretty to see him in the stable-yard catch a wee
snow-white kitten by the nape of its neck, and carry it
unhurt wherever we told him. Thekitten delighted in
the feat, and would come rubbing and purring against
OUR EVERSLEY DOGS—DANDY, SWEEP, VICTOR.
Lag
the great black dog to make him doit again. By and
by as the kitten grew into a cat, Sweep found she
was too heavy to take up by her neck without pinch.
ing her too hard with his teeth; so he used to take
her whole head into his capacious mouth, and so
carry her about, much to the horror of any new-
comer, who thought of course he was going to bite
her head right off!
Sweep in his way was as faithful as Dandy; but it
was a curious way, and sometimes rather alarming.
He had been taught in the stable to guard anything
left in his charge against all comers, if one told him
to “mind it.†One day a foolish stable boy told
him to “mind†my youngest brother’s hat, which he
had dropped on the ground. The child wanting his
hat, stooped to pick it up; whereupon Sweep flew at
him and bit him, refusing to give up the hat until the
stable boy in terror at what he had been the cause of,
came to the rescue. Happily the bite proved a slight
matter. But every one was careful after that how
they told Sweep to mind their property.
He was a strange dog, and there were only three
people in the world who might lay a finger on him,
my brother and J, and our man George. If we had
beaten him to death I believe he would have sub-
mitted with perfect good temper. But woe betide
any other rash mortal who raised so much as a straw
to chastise him. Our good neighbor and doctor ~
once was kind enough to come and see Sweep, who
in hunting had hurt his eye with a thorn. The dog
TITRE
or
DANDY ALWAYS PREFERRED A BIG FOE.
was suffering greatly, and I brought him into the
kitchen, and sitting down close to the door got his
head firmly between my knees, and coaxed and com.
forted him till the doctor appeared. He opened the
door beside me, advanced to his patient with sooth-
ing words, and then leaning forward, was about to
178
examine the injured eye. But with a roar like
thunder, up sprang Sweep, tearing himself from my
grasp; the doctor fiew through the door as if he had
SWEEP AND HIS CAT TRICK.
ween shot out of a gun; and Sweep’s eye had to get
well by itself.
Sweep hated tramps, and very few dared visit our
house if they knew he was at home. One day in his
objection to this most objectionable race of people,
he nearly devoured one of my friends. She was a
very pretty young lady, who had the gift of transform-
ing herself by a few touches, a twist of her hair, a
red cloak, and an old bonnet, into one of the most
appallingly hideous old women I ever had the misfor-
tune to see. One evening she dressed up in this
fashion, and knocking at the kitchen door, suddenly
appeared before the astonished servants. Sweep was
more than astonished — he was furious — and with
a terrific growl rushed at the supposed tramp and
would certainly have torn her down had she not had
the wit to jump upon the kitchen table, which gave
George time to recognize her and drag the dog off.
Nevertheless in spite of these shows of temper we
were all devoted to Sweep. He was a grand fellow
and a splendid watch dog. Indeed we thought that
it was because he was such a terror to tramps and
evil doers that he came to a melancholy end. For
one day he seemed il] and out of sorts, and before
evening was dead of poison, which had evidently been
laid down for him somewhere near the house.
But I cannot finish Sweep’s history without speak-
OUR DOGS AT EVERSLEY—DANDY, SWEEP, VICTOR.
ing of his dear friend “ Victor,†our little royal dog,
for he and Sweep were inseparable companions.
Once when my father was dining at Windsor Cas- |
tle, he admired the Queen’s favorite Dachshund,
who never leaves her side ; and the Queen graciously
promised him a puppy as soon as any were ready.
Months went and we heard nothing of the gift.
But the Queen never forgets, and one day my father
received a note from one of the keepers at Windsor:
“DEAR Str.— A fine deakle pup awaits your commands.â€
We laughed over the Englishman’s attempt at
German spelling, but sent the commands; and a
hamper arrived with a little squeaking puppy inside
it. He looked at first like an animated worm with
four legs, he was so long and thin and low. But he
found his way into our hearts in spite of his queer
looks, and became the spoilt child of the house.
These Dachshunds, or Teckels, or German Turn-
spits, are used, as their first name denotes, for
hunting badgers in Germany. They are also use-
ful with wild boars, as they are so low that when the
boar makes a rush at them they can generally slip
under his tusks and seize him by the leg. The Prince
of Wales’s famous dog ‘‘Woodman†has a great scar
all along his side from the tusk of a wild boar in one
of these encounters. The Dachshunds are of three
colors: black and tan, liver colored, and pale chest-
nut. The last are the most valuable, and also,
alas! the most delicate, as we found to our cost; for
our little dog that we named “ Victor,†after his royal
donor, was a beautiful warm chestnut color. His
long body was set upon the crookedest of legs—
elbows turning out and wrists turning in; his height:
when he was full grown was about five inches at the
shoulders; and he was a yard long from the tip of
his nose to the tip of his tail. But his grotesque
appearance was more than made up for by the beauty
of his head. It was like that of a miniature blood-
hound, with fine nose, drooping ears, large pathetic
eyes, and his coat was as smooth as satin.
As I said, he soon became our spoilt child, and
ruled the house. He refused to sleep anywhere save
wrapped in a blanket on a certain low wicker chair
between my sister’s and my beds. If we attempted
fo put him elsewhere not a creature in the house
could sleep for Master Victor’s howls. So at last we
succumbed, and our nights were tolerably tranquil
till about four o’clock in the morning, when I was
always roused bya scramble anda scrimmage. This
OCR DOGS AT EVERSLEY—DAWNDY,
was Victor, who arrived headlong upon my chest,
scratched the bedclothes aside, wermed his soft little
body down my bed till he reached my feet, and lay
there happily till morning, giving a little growl and
sometimes a gentle nip with his small teeth if I moved.
He was a dog of very aristocratic tastes. No
power on earth could make him go down by the back-
stairs; and if the maids ever chanced to persuade
him to come with them to the kitchen, he would leave
them to go down their own way, and running round
by the front staircase, meet them at the kitchen door.
Dachshunds were much less common twelve years
ago than they are now. And when my father’s duties
took us to Chester for three months every summer,
we were almost mobbed by the boys of that dear old
city when we took Victor out walking. His long
back, his crooked legs; and his bright, intelligent head
were sources of never-failing wonder and delight to
the young rogues, who pursued us with jeers and
shouts, of which Victor never took notice.
But it was at Eversley that the little dog was the
happiest. Sometimes he went out ona private rabbit
hunt with his friend Sweep; and we used to see the
litle wriggling yellow body panting after his big
black companion, and imagining he was going to
catch a rabbit that outstripped him in a moment.
But when the dinner-bell—or still more on Sunday,
when the church bells rang—then, indeed, we had a
ludicrous exhibition from the two dogs. Sweep could
not endure the sound of bells, and the moment they
began to ring down went his tail, up went his head,
and round and round the house he flew howling in
the most frightful way. Victor had not the least
natural objection to bells ——at Chester he bore the
whole cathedral chime with perfect composure —
but he felt it right to show his sympathy for Sweep
when he was with him, upon the principle that imita-
SWEHEP, VICTOR.
179
tion is the sincerest flattery. So as soon as the bells
began, out of the house shot Victor; over the lawn,
along the garden paths and through the yard he
followed Sweep in his agonized race, turning where
he turned, stopping where he stopped, and addiny
shrill yelps and howls to his friend’s lamentations.
Poor little Victor; his life was a short one. When
we had had him for nearly two years he fell terribly
ill. And in spite of every care—in spite of his
beloved master sitting up with him for three whole
nights watching and tending the suffering little crea-
ture —he died at last, and
was buried beside Dandy and
his friend Sweep under the
fir-trees.
After that, my father said
he would never have
another pet
SWEEP COULD NOT ENDURE THE SOUND
OF KELLS.
dog ; they cost one too much sorrow. So Victor
was the last of the faithful friends who were so
faithfully loved by their master.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALLI�
iil
iG
a
cit
ae |
AUTUMN LEAVES.
180
THE BABYS REVERY.—THE BRAVES? BO0Y IN TOWN j{8,
Terie BAG Ve So UREA Vegi ye
By Mary E. WILKINS.
N exquisite little maiden
With a head like a golden flower,
She soberly stood at the window
In the still, white twilight hour.
“ And what are you thinking, sweetheart?â€
She was such a little child
She could not answer the question ;
She only dimpled and smiled.
ede:
But I wondered, as she frolicked,
Her mystic revery o’er,
Was she a rose-shade less a child
Than she had been before ?
Was she pausing, as a rose-bud
Seems pausing while it grows?
Had I canght the blooming minute
Of a little human rose?
DimeAN bod! BOY. TN OWEN.
By Mrs. Emity Huntincton Nason.
E lived in the Cumberland Valley,
And his name was Jamie Brown ;
But it changed one day, so the neighbors say,
To the “ Bravest Boy in Town.â€
°Twas the time when the Southern soldiers,
Under Early’s mad command,
O’er the border made their dashing raid
From the north of Maryland.
And Chambersburg unransomed
In smouldering ruins slept,
While up the vale, like a fiery gale,
The Rebel raiders swept.
And a squad of gray-clad horsemen
Came thundering o’er the bridge,
Where peaceful cows in the meadows browse,
At the feet of the great Blue Ridge ;
And on till they reached the village,
That fair in the valley lay,
Defenseless then, for its loyal men,
At the front, were far away.
“ Pillage and spoil and plunder!â€
This was the fearful word
That the Widow Brown, in gazing down
From her latticed window, heard.
*Neath the boughs of the sheltering oak-trea,
The leader bared his head,
As left and right, until out of sight,
His dusty gray-coats sped.
Then he called: “ Halloo! within there!â€
A gentle, fair-haired dame
Across the floor to the open door
In gracious answer came.
“Here! stable my horse, you woman!’ —
The soldier’s tones were rude —
“Then bestir yourself and from yonder shelf
Set out your store of food !â€
For her guest she spread the table;
She motioned him to his place
With a gesture proud ; then the widow bowed,
And gently — asked a grace.
182 BENNY’S
“Tf thine enemy hunger, feed him!
I obey, dear Christ!†she said ;
A creeping blush, with its scarlet flush,
O’er the face of the soldier spread.
Herose: “ You have said it, madam!
Standing within your doors
Is the Rebel foe; but as forth they go
They shall trouble not you nor yours !â€
Alas, for the word of the leader!
Alas, for the soldier’s vow!
When the captain's men rode down the glen,
They carried the widow’s cow.
It was then the fearless Jamie
Sprang up with flashing eyes,
And in spite of tears and his mother’s fears,
On the gray mare, off he flies.
Like a wild young Tam O'Shanter
He plunged with piercing whoop,
O’er field and brook till he overtook
The straggling Rebel troop
Laden with spoil and plunder,
And laughing and shouting still,
As with cattle and sheep they lazily creep
Through the dust o’er the winding hill,
“Oh! the coward crowd!†cried Jamie ;
“There’s Brindle! I’ll teach them now!â€
WIGWwAM.
And with headlong stride, at the captain’s side.
He called for his mother’s cow.
“Who are you, and who is your mother ?>—=
I promised she should not miss ?—
Well! upon my word, have I never heard
’ Of assurance like to this!â€
“Ts your word the word of a soldier?†<=»
And the young lad faced his foes,
As a jeering laugh, in anger half
And half in sport, arose.
But the captain drew his sabre,
And spoke, with lowering brow:
“ Fall back into line! The joke is mine?
_ surrender the widow’s cow!â€
And a capital joke they thought it,
That a barefoot lad of ten
Should demand his due— and get it too —
In the face of forty men.
And the rollicking Rebel raiders
Forgot themselves somehow,
And three cheers brave for the hero gave,
And three for the brindle cow.
He lived in the Cumberland Valley,
And his name was Jamie Brown ;
But it changed that day, so the neighbors say,
To the “ Bravest Boy in Town.â€
BENNY’S WIGWAM.
By Mrs. Mary CATHERINE LER.
OW, Pettikins,†said Benny Briggs, on the first
day of vacation, “come along if you want to
see the old Witch.â€
Pettikins got her little straw hat, and holding
Benny’s hand with a desperate clutch, trotted along
beside him, giving frequent glances at his heroic face
to keep up her courage. Her heart beat hard as
they took their way across to the island. The isla
is really no island at all, but a lonely, lovely port
of Still Harbor, between Benny’s home and Grandnii:
Potter’s, which by means of a smal: inlet and a little
creek, and one watery thing and another, is so nearly
surrounded by water as to feel justified in calling
itself an island. They crossed over the little bridge
BENNY’S WIGWAM.
that took them to this would-be island, and following
an almost imperceptible wood path, came within sight
of the Witch’s hut. It was a deserted, useless, wood-
chopper’s hut, which the mysterious creature whom
the children called a witch had taken possession of
not long before. Here Fanny drew back. “O
Benny, I am afraid,†said she.
““Humph! she can’t hurt you in the daytime,†said
Benny. “She ain’t no different in the daytime from
any other old woman. It’s only nights she is a
witch.â€
Fanny allowed herself to be led a few steps further,
and then drew back again. “O Benny,†said she,
‘“‘there’s her broomstick ! there it is, right outside o’
the door—and O Benny, Benny, there’s her old black
cat!â€
“Wal, what on it, hey? What on it?†creaked a
dreadful voice close behind them. ‘Then, indeed,
Fanny shrieked and tried to run, but Benny’s hand
held her fast. She hid her face against Benny’s arm
and sobbed.
It was the old Witch her very self. She looked at
them out of her glittering eyes — O how she did look
at them!—with her head drooped until her chin
rested on her chest. This seemed to bring the
arrows of her eyes to bear upon the enemy with
greater force and precision.
“There ain’t any law ag’in my having a ca¢ anda
broomstick, is there?â€â€™ she asked in a voice like the
cawing of a crow, bringing her staff down with a
thump at the words “cat†and“ broomstick.†‘What
are you skeered of?â€
“Why, you’re queer, you know,†said Benny des-
perately.
“ Queer, gueer?†piped the Witch; and then she
laughed, or had a dreadful convulsion, Benny couldn’t
tell which, ending in a long, gurgling “ Hoo-o0-00 !â€
on a very high key. ‘ Now, s’pose you tell me what
is ’t makes me queer,†said she, sitting down on a
log and extracting from the rags on her bosom a
pipe, which she prepared to smoke.
“Whew!†whistled Benny, “’twould take me from
now till Christmas; I’d rather you’d tell me.â€
The crone lighted her pipe. The match flaring
upon her wrinkled, copper-colored face and its gaunt
features made her hideous. Poor little Fanny, who
ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder,
and begged to go to her mother. The old woman
puffed away at her pipe, fixing her gaze upon the
children.
‘Got a mother, hey ?†said she.
“Ves�
“ And a father?â€
fe Ves.y
“Um-m-m.â€
She puffed and gazed.
“ You wouldn’t like to see ’em shot?â€
At this Benny stood speechless, and Fanny set up
such a cry to go home that Benny was afraid he
should have to take her away — that is, if the Witch
would let him. He began to consider his chances,
Still the more terrible the old Witch seemed, the
more Benny wanted to see and hear her. He whis-
pered to Fanny:
“ She won't hurt you, Pettikins — she can’¢; I won’t
let her. Hush a minute, and see what I'm going to
say to her!â€
Fanny hushed a little, and Benny fixed an auda:
cious gaze upon the Witch—or a gaze which he
meant should be audacious. “What zs the matter
with you?†said he.
The old woman removed her pipe and sat holding
it with her forefinger lapped over it like a hook.
“ They call it ‘exterminated,’ †said she, pushing
back the broad-brimmed, high-crowned man’s hat that
she wore, and showing her gray, ragged locks. “I’m
exterminated. You don’t know what that is, I s’pose?â€
‘“* Exterminated, ex-/ev-min-ated,†said Benny,
scratching his head, “ why, to — to — drive out —to
—ah — put an end to — to — to — destroy utterly.â€
“T don’t know what your book meaning is. I
didn’t get mine from books. I got it all the way
along — began to get it when I wasn’t much bigger’n
that little gell,†said the Witch, pointing at Fanny with
her pipe. “I didn’t know what it meant when I first
heard it, but I know now. Hoo-00-00-00!â€
“T wish you’d tell us about it,†said Benny. “Teh
us about beginning to learn it when you wa’n’t much
bigger’n Pettikins.â€
“That’s when the colonel said we must move
west’ard,†said the witch, laying her pipe down on
the log, leaning her elbows on her knees, and resting
her bony jaws in the palms of her hands. “ Injuns,
before they’re exterminated, stick to their homes like
other folks.†;
“Vou ain’t an Juju, be you!†gasped Benny,
with a look and tone which expressed volumes of
consternation and disappointment at her utter failure
to come up to his ideal Indian, Why, she wasn’t the
least bit like the pictures! She wasn’t like the mag-
84 BENNY’S
nificent figures he had seen in front of the cigar
stores in New Haven. Where were all her feathers
and things—bher red and yellow tunic, her gorgeous
moccasins, her earrings and noserings and bracelets
and armlets and beads? Why, she was ju-u-u-ust as
ragged and dirty!
All this and more Benny’s tone expressed when he
said: ‘Why, you ain’t an /zjun, be you?â€â€™.
“Well, I was. I ain’t nothing at all now. I ain’t
even a squaw, and they saéd@ they was going to make
a Christian on me. I was a Chetonquin.â€
WIGWAM.
I hid behind a big tree and watched it. When
I saw my father shot I started to go to him and a
shot struck me. See there!†said she, pushing up
her coarse gray locks and showing a deeper, wider
seam than the creases and wrinkles on her face.
“A bullet grazed me hard and I was stunned and
blinded with the blood, and couldn’t run, but my
people had to. They didn’t any on ’em see or know
about me, I s’pose, and I laid there and sorter went
to sleep. Colonel Hammerton took a notion to pick
me up when he rode over the ground he had soaked
THEY ENCOUNTER THE WITCH.
“Oh, yes,†said Benny, looking at her now with
the interest attaching to one who Aad worn the feath-
ers, and beads, and moccasins, and rings. “Well,
what did you do when the colonel told you to go
West?â€
“We had a fight.†“
That was satisfactory to Benny. “ Which whip-
ped?†he asked, with his own native briskness, as if
this, now, was common ground, and he was ready to
talk at his ease.
“Which a’most always whips? It was a hard fight.
with the blood of my people — ground that belonged te
my people,†shrieked the woman, straightening herself
up and shaking her fists in the air.
Benny liked that. Even Fanny gazed at the strange
creature with fascination, And when the Indian’s
excitement abated and she ceased to mutter and chat-
ter to herself and sunk her face into her palms again,
gazing absently on the ground, Fanny pulled Benny’s
sleeve and whispered, ‘ Ask her what he did then,
after he picked her up.â€
“What did he do with you then?†ventured Benny.
BENNY’S
The old woman started, and gazed at them curiously,
as if she had forgotten all about them, and had to re-
cal] them out of the distant past. ‘What did who
do?†said she.
“What did Colonel Hammerton do with you when
he picked you up ?â€
“Oh, I didn’t know who picked me up — thought
twas some of my people, Is’pose. Colonel Hammer-
ton carried me off to the fort, and then took me to
Washington: said he was going to make a Christian
on me. I had to stay in houses — s/eep in houses !—
like being nailed up in a box. Ugh! what a misery
*tis to be like white folks! Hoo-00-00-00-00-00!
You wouldn’t want to know all the racks and miseries
and fights and grinds on it. I guess they got sick
on it themselves, for after I’d tried a many times to
get away from houses, and been brought back, I tried
again and they let me go, and I’ve been a-going ever
since. I asked for my people, and they told me they
was avierminated, every one on’em. Yes, I’ve been
a-going ever since, but I can’t go any more. I hope
they’ll let me stay in these forests ’till the Great
Spirit takes me away to my people. He can’t find
me in the houses, but if I keep out in the forest, I
hope he’ll find me soon. It’s been a weary, long
time.â€
“ Are you two hundred years old?†asked Benny
softly. ‘ That’s what folks say.â€
“Two hunderd ? Hoo-00-00-00! #eahunderd? I’m
zen hundered, if I’m a day,†said the poor old creat-
ure. ‘But don’t be afeard on me —I hope there
won't be anybody afeard on me ere, for then they'd
be driving on me off, or shutting me up again some-
where where the Great Spirit can’t find me. Tell
your people not to be skeered on me—ask ’em to let
me stay here.â€
‘the sad old eyes looked wistfully at Benny, whose
generous heart took up the poor Indian’s cause at
once,
“You can stay here fast enough,†said he. “I
know who these woods belong to— some o’ my rela-
tions. There won’t anybody be afraid of you. Me
’n ’Bijah’ll take care of you.â€
“O, bless you!†said she. “I ¢hought I’d got to the
right place when I got here—it looked like it —it
felt like it. It seemed a’most as if I most expected
to see wigwams. A-h-h-h-h, if I could sleep in a wig-
wam!â€
Benny felt that he could sympathize with her in’
He and the boys had played Indians and
that.
8
WIGWAM. 185
’Bijah had built wigwams for them in the wood, and
he had greatly wished and entreated to be allowed to
sleep all night in one. But he could not guess at the
longing of the aged to go back to the things dear and
familiar to them in childhood; he did not know that
all the old Indian’s days were spent in dreaming of
those things, and that she often wandered all night in
the woods, fancying herself surrounded by the wig-
wams of her people — searching anxiously for that
of her father. Though Benny could understand noth-
ing of the pathetic sadness, he felt a strong desire te
offer consolation and cheer, and he said, “7 can
build wigwams. Me ’n ’Bijah’ll make you a wig-
wam !â€-
But the aged Chetonquin muttered to herself in a
tuneless quaver, and shook her head doubtingly.
“What! She don’t defieve it!†Benny exclaimed
to himself. ‘Don’t believe that Bah can make
wugwams ! We'll show her!â€
And he was so eager to be about it that he took
leave directly of his strange acquaintance, who seemed
lost in reverie, and to have forgotten him entirely.
When Mr. and Mrs. Briggs heard Benny’s story of
.the poor Indian woman, their excellent hearts were
at once filled with compassion for so forlorn a creat+
ure. Mr. Briggs had very radical theories about equa}
mercy and justice for each member of the human
race.
“It isn’t likely,†he often said, “that some have
a right to be in this world and others haven’t;†and
he immediately set himself to illustrate his theories
in the case of the Chetonquin.
Mrs, Briggs said there could be no doubt that she
needed other things besides wigwams, which conjec-
ture was found to be sadly true upon investigation.
An attempt was made to put this last of the Cheton-
quins into more comfortable quarters, but she received
the suggestion with dismay, and prayed so earnestly
to be left on the spot she seemed to think was like
her own native forest, that it was decided to make her
as comfortable as possible there, since it was early
summer and no harm could come from exposure.
When the weather was cold again, she would be glad
to be sheltered elsewhere. So Mr. and Mrs. Briggs,
Grandma Potter and ’Bijah, took care that she needed
nothing, and left her to be happy in her own way.
Her shattered mind, little by little, let go of every-
thing save the memories of her childhood. All the
people of the neighboring region, old and young, came
to understand and respect the sorrows of the poor
186 BENNY’S
creature they had talked of as awitch. But the most
friendly people seemed to disturb her — to break in
-upon her dreams —and children, especially, were not
allowed to visit her.
Benny could not forego, however, the pleasure he
had promised himself, of getting ’Bijah to help him
make a fine wigwam in the woods, and saying to old
Winneenis — as she called herself — “There! what
d’ye call shat? There's a wigwam for ye, ’n me ’n
*Bijah made it, too!â€
Benny might make as many wigwams as he pleased,
Mr. Briggs said, “ but he was not to go near or disturb
old Winneenis.â€
One extremity of the island was in the vicinity of
Grandma Potter's, and Benny passed a good many
days of his vacation at Grandma’s. One day Benny
said to ’Bijah, “Now you can make that wigwam,
can’t you, ’ Bijah? You said you would when the hay
was all in, and it zs all in, ain’t it? Le’s make it
to-day over there in the woods, on the island. The
boys are coming over to-morrow, and I want to have
it done before they get here. Say, will you, ’Bijah ?â€
“Wal, I'd know but I can,†said ‘Bijah.
“T want a zeal one,†said Benny, “life-size, just
like them you saw when you was out there to
Dakota — none o’ your baby-houses.â€â€™
’Bijah went up-stairs into the barn chamber, hum-
ming Zhe Sweet By and By, and Benny accompa-
nied him in doing both. ’Bijah opened an enormous
chest and pulled out a lot of old buffalo and other
robes, the worn-out and moth-eaten accumulation of
years, not to say generations, and sitting down, took
out his jack-knife and ripped the ragged linings ou:
of several that were pretty well divested of their fu,
and making a pile of skins, old horse blankets and
lap rugs, he said, “‘ Now, then, sir, we'll have a wig-
wam fit for old Black Hawk himself.â€
And you may be sure ’Bijah was as good as his
word. He got out old Tom and the wagon, and he
and Benny and the skins and blankets all got in and
drove over to the woods on the island, and there
*Bijah cut poles and made the finest wigwam ever
seen this side of the Rocky Mountains — or the other
side either, for that matter. They spread blankets
on the ground inside, and Benny declared it wanted
nothing but a few Indians and tomahawks and bows
and arrows lying round to make it look just like the
picture in his g’ography.
Benny’s last thought was of his wigwam that night
as he slid off into the delicious sleep that only rosy-
WIGWAM.
cheeked, tired boys know. He dreamed he was the
chief of a powerful tribe, and that he found old Win-
neenis, not old any longer, buta little girl like Fanny,
crying in the forest because she couldn’t find her
way to her people, and that he took her by the hand
and led her home. Her shout of rapture when she
found herself once more with her people, wakened
Benny, and he saw it was morning, and the shout he
had heard instead of being that of little Winneenis,
was grandma's voice calling him to get up. | He was
rather disappointed to find he wasn’t a powerful
chief, but he consoled himself with the thought of
his uncommonly fine wigwam, and hurried down
stairs to see what time it was, for the boys were to
come on the early train, and he meant to go right
over to the woods with them.
He had scarcely finished his breakfast when the
boys arrived, and they all started for the woods in
great glee. On the way, Benny told them the story
of old Winneenis, and the boys were full of wonder,
interest, and curiosity to see her.
Upon reaching the wigwam, they admired its out-
side, agreed that nothing in that style of architecture
could surpass it.
“And now,†said Benny, “see how nice ’tis in-
side,†and he took a peep in himself. “ Why,†whis-
pered he, drawing back, “she’s Aere —she’s here in
the wigwam, sound asleep, and she looks awful glad.
Sh-sh ’— with a warning shake of his finger — “ we
mustn’t disturb her; father said I mustn’t. Le’s go
away and wait till she wakes up.â€
They each took a peep at the old Indian woman
and went away softly.
They remained in sight of the wigwam, exhausting
every device for wearing away the time, and Joe’s
watch was frequently consulted. Time and patience
wore away together.
“ There,†said Charlie, at last, ““we’ve waited long
enough; we ought to wake her up now.â€
“It might make her crazy again to see such a lot
of us, and I—JI don’t like to,†said Benny. “I'll
go ’n ask ’Bijah what to do.â€
They went and brought ’Bijab, who said he should
think likely she wou/d want to sleep a spell, she must
be pretty well beat out, pokin’ around all night,
He’d heard her making them queer noises o’ hern
—something like a hoarse kind o’ Phcebe bird, it
sounded, in the distance.
“T shouldn’t be surprised,†he began, ina low tone,
stooping and peering in at the wigwam; but, contrary
MY ARIZONA CLASS.
to his words, he did look very much surprised indeed.
He stepped into the wigwam and touched the
sleeper gently. Then he shook his head at the boys
and motioned them away, and when he came out,
they understood from his look, that old Winneenis
was dead.
Wandering, as was her wont at night, she had
come upon Benny’s wigwam, standing in the clear
187
moonlight, and to her longing, bewildered mind it
had probably seemed the wigwam of her father.
Who can ever know the joy, the feeling of peace, and
rest, and relief, with which she laid her tired bones
down in it, and fell asleep, a care-free child once
more, and thus passed from its door into the happy
hunting-grounds? And Benny always felt glad the
wigwam had been built.
ON THE WAY TO PRESCOTT. —CAMPED IN THE CACTI.
MY ARIZONA CLASS,
By Mrs. JEessrz Benton FREMONT.
HAVE been asked to tell you, the young readers
of this book something of my work in the
schools of Arizona, but to begin let me disclaim this
important naming of the simple thing it came in my
way to do for the one school of Prescott, the capital
of Arizona. I was in no other town during my stay
there.
Four years make wonderful changes on our fron-
tiers, and now one great railroad crosses it, and con-
nects it with both oceans, and another, more to the
north, is fast approaching the same result; but in
78 there was not a mile of railroad within the Terri-
tory, and it was so isolated by difficulty of travel and
dangers, that with those living there it was the
188 MY
accepted phrase to speak of themselves as ow/side the
‘world, while going to California, or anywhere, was
called “ going side.†Even with government trans-
portation which we had, climate and natural obstacles
had to remain unchanged, while with the ordinary
means, travel was a perfect nightmare of fatigue,
discomforts and some dangers.
From Yuma, where the railway travel ended, the
distance to Prescott was only about two hundred and
GEN, FREMONT, EX-GOV. OF ARIZONA.
thirty miles (what we make in a morning between
New York and Washington ), which the mail stage
made in forty-eight hours—more or less. This
“ mail stage †was an open buckboard with two horses.
Qn this were piled passengers, express matter and
mails, and night or day no stop was made except for
meals and to change horses, and, quite often, to be
robbed. This seemed to be accepted without resist-
ance; few men would not prefer giving up their
money rather than their lives. And to be wounded
was terrible, where not a village or settlement, not
eyen a real farm broke the solitude.
We were eight days on our way, but the experi-
ence that governed all preparations for the little
journey gave us the luxury of comfort for such travel.
We averaged only thirty miles a day, but this was good
travelling for mules which had to make the whole
jistance unchanged and return immediately to Yuma.
And the variation of temperature and air as we rode
ARIZONA CLASS.
from the low level of Yuma, and its one hundred
degrees to one hundred and thirty degrees of heat to
the six thousand feet and keen, thin, cold air of Pres-
cott, told on animals as well as people. There were
camp fires and lots of blankets, and I had a tent and
the cushions of the ambulance, but one does not linger
on such beds.
Each morning we had had tea, everything was
repacked, and our three ambulances ready for the word
to start, which was given at six.
It was a most interesting bit of travel, such as there
can be no need to make again, and I am sure you
would like to hear, and I should like to tell you of it,
but when would we get to school ?
You cannot do justice to this school unless you
realize somewhat what made it so worthy of each
one’s best aid. To you, schools, with all their
belongings — buildings, teachers, scholars —come in
the natural order of things, pretty much as the sea-
sons and their belongings, but here where the weary
work of emigration was followed by settlement in the
midst of warlike Indians, where their nearest town
was Los Angeles, in California, five hundred desert
miles away ; where every necessity for work and com-
fort, from a steam engine to a lemon, had to be hauled
in wagons with mule teams, over these hot and almost
waterless lands—it was against these depressing
influences that the Arizona settlers built up this
really fine public school. Beginning with one room
and six scholars, in five years it had reached its pres-
ent assured and excellent condition.
The building is not a thing of beauty. You would
not hang a picture of it where the eye would be
refreshed by its graceful proportions and the mind
stirred by*classic memories belonging with it, but no
monument of Roman days represents Victory more
truly than does this homely, square-set brick building;
victory won by patient and brave women as well as by
the men whose dangers of emigration and early settle-
ment they shared.
We thought it most admirable that a young com-
munity with many uses for all its money should give
so largely for education. In its solid walls and com-
plete “outfit†(I like that expressive frontier-term)
this school would do honor to any of our larger towns.
We lived near by, and it was a recurring morning
pleasure as the bell rang out from its belfry to look
over towards the fort, and there, with military punctu-
ality, was sure to appear coming over the rolling
ground the four-mule ‘school-ambulance,†with its
MY ARIZONA CLASS,
full load of “the fort children,†who swarmed down
before it fairly drew up at the gate. In the enclosure
the ‘“‘town-children†would be already forming in
line to the beat of a drum —a concession to one of
the older lads who owned and loved his drum—
but the ambulance and the drum gave still more the
idea of an army of progress.
It was the duty of the Governor to inspect the
schools, and we made together the first visit to this
one. A broad hall separated the two very large
rooms for the younger classes— such jolly, bright-
eyed, red-cheeked, clear-voiced little men and women,
Americans, English, German, Mexicans, and mixed
— admirably taught and trained, and with the pleased
willingness to show-off of happy children at home.
The large windows which looked out to beds of
granite mountains and pine-forests, let in sunshine
and life-giving air, and this, with their good models
in teachers, had given them the friendliness of well-
trained children — wearing enough from their num-
bers and tremendous vitality, but wonderfully credit-
able in results. Fs
On the second floor was the upper class. Perhaps
forty young people from fourteen to twenty years of
age. This naturally was the more interesting class,
Here the examinations, especially in mathematics and
in applied physics, won the surprise and admiration of
the Governor. There was one lad who added to his
calculations swift, sure touches of mechanical draw-
ing (sinking shafts and other mining operations), and
though he was but sixteen, he showed in every con-
clusive line and calculation that his subject had a
living interest for him; and the intelligent looks of
many of the girls as they followed him critically
proved their unusual knowledge in these branches,
Although I looked on politely, I comprehended but
dimly. To me sweet little ‘‘ Pet Marjorie’s †despair
over figures is very real-— “seven times seven is the
divil,†she says, “ but seven times nine is more than
flesh can bear.†However, the General knew enough
for two, and when the history review came up he said,
was the authority, and so turned upon me
a battery of doubting, inquiring young eyes. “ Chil-
dren and dogs know who to trust.†These children
paid me the compliment I value sincerely, to take me
into their regard, and from the first we made friends.
The principal explained that history was not a
favorite study with them; that they did not give much
time to it, as it was out of the line of more practical
studies, etc., etc. And one of the elder girls said,
18g,
“We are Americans, and have no connection with
that old world and its dead-and-gone kings and cruel
queens and wars.â€
You see, in place of the delightful, suggestive, ex-
planatory study which history should be made to the
young, they had only been given those old husks amd
dry bones of dates, and battles, and lists of kings,.
and detached moth-eaten old anecdotes called ‘“ Con-
densed History,†to be committed to memory only to-
be at once thrown out of a healthy young mind as
not fitting in anywhere.
But it would be a whole book full if I began to
tell what it might be, what it had been made to me
even in my childhood, by my father, growing with
my growth, and expanding steadily into fresh interest
and comprehension.
It is impossible for young Americans to appreciate:
their own form of government, faulty as its workings.
MRS. JESSIE BENTON FREMONT.
must be often, unless they can know where it differs:
from those of other countries. We have an arrogant
way of claiming as our own certain ideas which are:
the results of long effort in older countries, in which,
though they might need and desire radical changes,,
they had to go on bearing their ills, because any
change meant such disturbance of interests. that to:
reach good evil would have to come first.
We began with a clear field on many of these
greater ideas.
The one change in our institutions which we have:
made has taught us how sore the cost was. Think
190
what obstacles time and usage have made in old
countries, where what we call “ wrongs†and “ abuses â€
are remnants of past days, but now hardened into
barriers which only revolutions can make a breach in.
Something of this I said as I turned over the un-
interesting pages of the “History†given me to
examine them upon.
As I expected, its very incomplete teachings had
left only unfair, vague ideas.
The young girl who had spoken of the past as not
necessary to us, was so bright and clever that she was
worth making explanation to. J asked her why she
considered queens (as such) cruel, and she gave
fluently Catherine of Medici, and the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, and “ Bloody†Mary (poor, unhappy
Mary!) and Catherine of Russia, and — Marie Antoi-
nette — quite as though they did not differ.
I saw at once how I could interest her and make
her feel there were two sides to this, as to all things.
Of course she knew, and believed —for was it not
_printed in a school-book?—that stupid story which
has survived a century, and which is given as justify-
ing the wrath of the suffering poor of Paris. You all
know it.
The Queen asks the cause of some tumult.
“Your Majesty, the people are ungovernable be-
cause they cannot get bread.â€
“What! No bread? Why do they not eat pastry,
then?â€
On this I told them of Marie Antoinette in her
own home, as Wraxall’s and Mozart’s memoirs and
other such dispassionate early sources shew her; a
wholesome, frolicksome young girl, submissive even to
childishness to an unusually firm-natured mother who
trained her and her sisters in womanly and simple
habits; for royal Austrian life always, to-day as in
the day of Maria Theresa, is extraordinarily domestic
and sensible.
At fifteen this young girl was married, or rather
given in exchange to France. She was merely the
seal on a contract, and no more care taken of her
feelings then nor for seven years after she reached
Paris, than if she had been just the wax of a State
seal. It is all painted in that scene on the island in
that river of which one bank was German and one
French, and where she was met by her new attend-
ants, who parted her — forever — from every person
and even everything that had belonged with her Ger-
man life. Not even a garment was left upon her that
had come from her home.
MY ARIZONA CLASS.
But disrobed thoroughly, she was dressed anew in
garments of entirely French make, and taken by
strangers into a country strange and unfriendly to
her.
We who look back can see close to this the last
scene in that life.
Once more the French have taken from her every-
thing that was hers; friends, husband, children ; even
her clothing. And we see the beautiful woman, “the
daughter of the Ceesars,†borrowing a black gown of
woollen, from the jailer’s wife, and making a bit of
muslin into the widow’s cap with which to cover her
hair —still thick and young, but gray from agony;
the Queen of France, the daughter of the Empress of
Austria, sewing and making ready through the night
to go decently covered in the morning to have her
head cut off. The hands Mozart had guided on the
piano, in her happy girl-home, were tied behind her
back, and no way left her to steady herself as she was
jolted in a springless cart over the cobble stones of
old Paris to the guillotine.
Even her enemies admit that she met her impris-
onment, as well as her death, with quiet dignity and
piety.
Of this nothing was told. Nothing was said to
shew that long before her birth the cruel misrule of
France was creating the revolution which made her
one of its victims. But that foolish story was there in
full, when a little knowledge exposes its foolishness.
féte is not pastry, but dough, In Europe, where
bread is so precious that governments regulate the
baker’s business, it is a serious matter to bake bread.
In French and German countries, perhaps in others,
but there I have seen it, the floor of the bake-oven is
lined with a layer of dough, made from inferior flour,
a carpet-dough, to moderate the heat and give to the
loaves a golden, thick and brittle crust. This makes
a coarse, unleavened flour-cake which is always given
away to the very poor, and which has its established
name, ‘‘/a pate du pauvre.â€
The Queen in her German home training must
have know this; her question — if she ever asked it —
would shew knowledge of the care of the poor as well
as knowledge of how bread was baked:
“Is there zothing for the poor; not even the dough
that lines the oven? (pas méme la pite?)â€
Florence Nightingale says that a disappointment in
love does not qualify a girl to become a hospital nurse.
Nor does the marriage ceremony qualify even the
happiest girl to become a good housewife.
MY ARIZONA CLASS.
Queen as she was, Marie Antoinette knew more of
the dairy and of breadmaking than is thought needed
to teach girls in most of our American homes, where
parents would seem to prevent the apprenticeship to
practical life.
This bit of historical justice enlisted that real
chivalry towards women of which our American men
have so much, and made the lads
ready to go a crusade with me
19!
Sometimes that altitude tells against one (we were
over a mile up in the air). Bayard Taylor said the
stranger in Colorado is known by the blood-spots on
his pocket handkerchief, and at certain seasons, most
persons feel this disturbed circulation and faint-
ness increased. But “ my class,†as I liked and they
liked me to call them, were so heartily interested and
through all time — redressing
wrongs even if we did fight wind-
mills, And the girls adopted me
without further doubt.
We went home unexpectedly in-
terested by our morning, to be fol-
lowed by the Principal, who came
bringing the “ request and hope†of
the class, that I would come again
and “tell them more.â€
He combatted my objections,
which were chiefly my unwillingness
to assume to help what was already
excellent in his work, and my
doubt of being of use to indifferent,
perhaps unwilling minds. With my
own set of young people, and their
young friends, I had my long-estab-
lished post of story-teller, and the
history-talks during vacations, when
wet days made out-door amusements
wait, had proved the seed-time of
much after good in some lovely
homes where ‘your way is to be
followed, when my boys are old
enough,†and in delightful grateful
letters to me from far countries
where the traveller “ now a bearded
man,†felt at home from the talks of
past days in the still and beautiful
library.
But Mr. Sherman said that I had
roused a new interest and new per-
ceptions, and that if I would come
it would be a good influence in
many ways. And so it came about that except when
an illness of some weeks prevented, I was there almost
every Friday of the whole term. They arranged to
have the last hour, from two to three, free for me.
And the mutual interest and pleasure of it grew upon
us so much that I Jet nothing interfere.
THE MORNING DRUM-CALL.
so pleased with me for “taking the trouble,†that
when during the wind-season I sometimes reached
them gasping and pale from the short climb of the
hill, they were so concerned, and so unwilling I should
tire myself, that I think some better ideas went in
those broken hours than when I was quite weli.
de
They were always careful to make no noises, and
listened with true politeness. Always I found every-
thing ready, and the agreeable atmosphere of feeling
wanted and welcomed. After a little the boys began
to get themselves up for the Friday hour. Boots
were cleaned and trousers were worn outside of them,
Myself I liked better the intelligent wearing the
trousers tucked in out of the mud, but it was meant
as a courtesy, and so covered a multitude of wrinkles.
Their thick suits of hair were wetted and brushed
flat, another loss of the picturesque, but also well-
meant; then coats over their blue flannel shirts, and
presently Sunday coats and dress entirely, which
meant so much! for many of these lads, and some of
the elder girls as well, earned by work out of school-
hours that which enabled them to stay in the town,
dress themselves, and get the advantage of instruc-
tion.
The girls, of course, had risen at once to a new
opportunity for dress, and blossomed without delay
into frills and ribbons and créfé ’d hair.
Mr. Sherman told me after a little that he found no
punishment so effectual as to deprive them of being
in the class at that Friday hour—so that I had
come to be an influence in aid of order and good
manners.
Soon I marked the specialties of my young people
and fitted myself to them. Sometimes I would chalk
on the blackboard back of the desk a sentence or a
quotation, which would serve as a key-note for the
next Friday, and when any one of them would recog-
nize its leading or application they were charmed to
have succeeded in “ trailing †an idea.
Some photographs and water-colors and souvenirs
of a late journey among interesting places from Den-
mark to Austria, had by chance been brought out
among our baggage. They were very useful now in
giving form to their vague ideas of feudal buildings.
Many of these lads knew what it was to help defend
an impromptu breastwork of wagons against an attack
of Indians, but a tower or moat they had not seen.
Many, coming overland from our border country,
had never seen a great city, or the ocean. To these
I could be in some degree what libraries and picture-
galleries and lectures are so largely to you.
It had been my request that none but the class
should be my hearers, and this wish was generally
respected. 1 wanted (for one reason) that the scholars
should feel sure J did this for them only.
However, some parents came who “thought they
MY ARIZONA CLASS.
should know what was being taught to their children,â€
and some few who were not parents came (once)
because they knew it would not be agreeable to me —
these latter were not Western men— but very soon
I was let alone, opinions ranging from my being
held as “an amiable lunatic for taking so much trou-
ble for nothing,†(!) to the warmest thanks from
parents and from men interested in the growth of
schools.
I had no plan or settled idea beyond the willing-
ness to give pleasure, and help forward inquiring
young minds by sharing with them my own reading.
And, knowing how isolated life in new States must
generally be, I felt it would be a real gain for them
to see in history and historical memoirs and writings
an inexhaustible mine of delightful reading, taken
merely as reading.
The first Friday, when I was formally installed at
the desk of the superintendent, (which he always
resigned to me, going himself ‘‘ among my scholars†)
when I saw all those questioning eyes fixed on me, I
repented me of my rashness. A sudden sense of too
much responsibility clouded over every other percep-
tion. I had no fear but that I could interest them
and amuse them; for that indeed is always easy
enough.
But could I really help them forward? Could I
help them to a resource against loneliness? Could
I make clear to them what was real greatness in indi-
viduals as well as in nations?
There was, however, no retreat. And in I plunged
where their lesson for that day had brought them, to
the beginning of 1500, and the reign of Frances the
First, of France. This was a good place to connect,
as 1492 is our first date, and, as I told them, illustrates
the curious injustice of fate which so often, in-actual
life as in history, makes one to reap_what was sowed
by another; for, as Emerson so pithily puts it,
“Columbus the navigator discovers the continent, but
Americus Vespucius the pickle-dealer puts his name
upon it.â€
Then to keep more to their age, I told them of a
visit I had made one long summer day to the fine old
mountain castle of Bussy Bourbon, near Vichy, in South
France, already an old castle when the mother of
Francis took refuge there after the defeat of Pavia,
and where she remained during his long imprisonment
in Spain. The details of its strong towers and great
moat, with its drawbridge still in use, interested them
greatly; and the description of its gallery of family
Mx
portraits, from Saint Louis through to the last Bourbon
of the old line. Henry the Fifth (Count de Cham-
bord) was an embodiment of what had been to them
merely a list of names. ;
The former universal distrust and reliance on force,
not on right or law, was shown not only by this forti-
fication of a residence, but by the village huddled
under one of its walls for protection. No outlying
life was safe then any more than lately with them-
selves in this Indian country, where the fort on the
hill made safety for their village close by. But while
with us everything worked together to bring in safety
and law, there everything, for centuries, had been
dependent on individual caprice.
We had fancied walking down the straggling, un-
paved village street, and seeing nearer its small,
thick-walled, almost windowless houses—dark, damp,
unventilated nests of fever and rheumatisms, in pain-
ful contrast to the noble space and luxurious comfort of
the castle. One could see why when those ignorant
people began to question this order of things they did
not reason, but destroyed.
A smell of bread-baking drew us to the village
bakery, where we got some, intending to eat and be
refreshed for the long drive back to Vichy. We did
try to eat that bread, the baker-ess was looking on
so doubtingly, but it was impossible. Sour, bitter,
gritty and tough all at once, and made of nothing we
could recognize as flour, yet this forlorn stuff had
been carefully baked on a layer of still coarser mix-
ture, under the yard-long loaves. There was the
pate du pauvre, and there too were the village poor
eagerly waiting to get it; so old, so deformed by
labor and want, so sad a sight that our hearts grew as
heavy as the bread.
I told my class that poverty was a relative word in
our country, and that here in the Western new country,
where every one shares willingly, and each helps as
he can, there is no comprehension of the hopeless
state of the poor of the old world.
But this is off the track from Francis, who might
have been named Prince Fortunatus, for his birth
brought him so much, it seemed as though all the
fairies had combined to endow him. The throne of
France, health, beauty, fair talents and a pleasant
sort of nature which made him liked; his thinking
done for him by his loving and wise mother, Louise
of Savoy, who had much of that common sense and
gallant courage of a later member of her house, Victor
Emanuel, his best feelings warmly met and nourished
ARIZONA CLASS,
193
by the love of his charming, talented sister, Reine
Marguerite des Murguérites, as he fondly named
her, “ Queen Daisy of all Daisies ;†the noble Bayard
his devoted friend — ought not this fortunate youth
to have made some good use of his life? His reign
was gay and brilliant, but what of it lasted? Even
the Field of the Cloth of Gold failed to keep peace
with England.
Close by all this splendor two plain figures come
out upon the historical canvas of that time. One, the
worn and disappointed old mariner, Columbus, his
useful and heroic life wearing away in poverty and long
imprisonment: these were his bitter portion for hav-
ing enriched Spain with a new world. They put onâ€
the Royal Standard —
A Castilla y & Leon
Nuevo mundo dio Colon,
and Columbus himself they put in prison — to their
everlasting shame.
His figure is disappearing. Just coming forward
is a young boy who has neither wealth nor power,
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
whose own parents can do so little for him that he
must leave home and get his food from house to
house by