This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
[Picture: Look what a fine morning it is . . . Insects, Birds, & Animals,
are all enjoying existence]
MARY
WOLLSTONECRAFT’S
ORIGINAL
STORIES
WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
WILLIAM BLAKE
* * * * *
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
E. V. LUCAS
* * * * *
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
1906
* * * * *
OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
The germ of the _Original Stories_ was, I imagine, a suggestion (in the
manner of publishers) from Mary Wollstonecraft’s employer, Johnson of St.
Paul’s Churchyard, that something more or less in the manner of Mrs.
Trimmer’s _History of the Robins_, the great nursery success of 1786,
might be a profitable speculation. For I doubt if the production of a
book for children would ever have occurred spontaneously to an author so
much more interested in the status of women and other adult matters.
However, the idea being given her, she quickly wrote the book—in 1787 or
1788—carrying out in it to a far higher power, in Mrs. Mason, the
self-confidence and rectitude of Mrs. Trimmer’s leading lady, Mrs.
Benson, who in her turn had been preceded by that other flawless
instructor of youth, Mr. Barlow. None of these exemplars could do wrong;
but the Mrs. Mason whom we meet in the following pages far transcends the
others in conscious merit. Mrs. Benson in the _History of the Robins_
(with the author of which Mary Wollstonecraft was on friendly terms) was
sufficiently like the Protagonist of the Old Testament to be, when among
Mrs. Wilson’s bees, ‘excessively pleased with the ingenuity and industry
with which these insects collect their honey and wax, form their cells,
and deposit their store’; but Mrs. Mason, as we shall see, went still
farther.
It has to be remembered that the _Original Stories_ were written when the
author was twenty-nine, five years before she met Gilbert Imlay and six
years before her daughter Fanny Imlay was born. I mention this fact
because it seems to me to be very significant. I feel that had the book
been written after Fanny’s birth, or even after the Imlay infatuation, it
would have been somewhat different: not perhaps more entertaining,
because its author had none of that imaginative sympathy with the young
which would direct her pen in the direction of pure pleasure for them;
but more human, more kindly, better. One can have indeed little doubt as
to this after reading those curious first lessons for an infant which
came from Mary Wollstonecraft’s pen in or about 1795, (printed in volume
two of the _Posthumous Works_, 1798), and which give evidence of so much
more tenderness and reasonableness (and at the same time want of Reason,
which may have been Godwin’s God but will never stand in that relation
either to English men or English children) than the monitress of the
_Original Stories_, the impeccable Mrs. Mason, ever suggests. I know of
no early instance where a mother talks down to an infant more prettily:
continually descending herself to its level, yet never with any of Mrs.
Mason’s arrogance and superiority. Not indeed that this poor mother,
with her impulsive warm heart wounded, and most of her illusions gone,
and few kindly eyes resting upon her, could ever have compassed much of
Mrs. Mason’s prosperous self-satisfaction and authority had she wished
to; for in the seven years between the composition of the _Original
Stories_ and the lessons for the minute Fanny Imlay, she had lived an
emotional lifetime, and suffering much, pitied much.
In Lesson X, which I quote, although it says nothing of charity or
kindness, a vastly more human spirit is found than in any of Mrs. Mason’s
homilies on our duty to the afflicted:—
See how much taller you are than William. In four years you have
learned to eat, to walk, to talk. Why do you smile? You can do much
more, you think: you can wash your hands and face. Very well. I
should never kiss a dirty face. And you can comb your head with the
pretty comb you always put by in your own drawer. To be sure, you do
all this to be ready to take a walk with me. You would be obliged to
stay at home, if you could not comb your own hair. Betty is busy
getting the dinner ready, and only brushes William’s hair, because he
cannot do it for himself.
Betty is making an apple-pye. You love an apple-pye; but I do not
bid you make one. Your hands are not strong enough to mix the butter
and flour together; and you must not try to pare the apples, because
you cannot manage a great knife.
Never touch the large knives: they are very sharp, and you might cut
your finger to the bone. You are a little girl, and ought to have a
little knife. When you are as tall as I am, you shall have a knife
as large as mine; and when you are as strong as I am, and have
learned to manage it, you will not hurt yourself.
You can trundle a hoop, you say; and jump over a stick. O, I
forgot!—and march like men in the red coats, when papa plays a pretty
tune on the fiddle.
Even a very little of the tender spirit that this lesson breathes, even a
very little of its sense of play, would have leavened the _Original
Stories_ into a more wholesome consistency. As it stands, that book is
one of the most perfect examples of the success with which, a century or
more ago, any ingratiating quality could be kept out of a work for the
young. According to William Godwin, his unhappy wife had always a pretty
and endearing way with children. Yet of pretty and endearing ways, as of
humour, I take him to have been a bad judge; for I do not think that any
woman possessing enough sympathy to attach children to her as he, in one
of the most curious biographies in the language, assures us that she had,
could have suppressed the gift so completely in her first book for young
minds. And the Mrs. Masonic character of her own Preface supports my
view.
I do not wish to suggest that previous to 1787 Mary Wollstonecraft had
been a stranger to suffering. Far from it. Her life had known little
joy. Her father’s excesses, her mother’s grief and poverty, her sister’s
misfortunes, her own homelessness, and, to crown all, the death of her
close friend Frances Blood, must have dimmed if not obliterated most of
her happy impulses. But it is one thing to suffer bereavement and to be
anxious about the troubles of others near and dear; and it is quite
another to suffer oneself by loving, even to a point of personal
disaster, and then losing both that love and the friendliness (such as it
was) of the world. Imlay’s desertion and the birth of Fanny were real
things beside which a drunken father, unhappy sisters, and a dead friend
were mere trifles.
This little book is to my mind chiefly interesting for two reasons apart
from its original purpose—for the light it throws on the attitude of the
nursery authors of that day towards children, and for the character of
Mrs. Mason, a type of the dominant British character, in petticoats, here
for the first time (so far as my reading goes) set on paper.
I have no information regarding the success of the _Original Stories_ in
their day, and such spirited efforts as are now made to obtain them by
collectors are, we know, due rather to Blake than to Mary Wollstonecraft;
but any measure of popularity that they may have enjoyed illustrates the
awful state of slavery in which the children of the seventeen-nineties
must have subsisted. It is indeed wonderful to me to think that only a
poor hundred years ago such hard and arid presentations of adult
perfection and infantile incapacity should have been considered, even by
capable writers, all that the intelligence of children needed or their
tender inexperience deserved. I do not deny that children are not to-day
too much considered: indeed, I think that they are: I think there is now
an unfortunate tendency to provide them with literature in such variety
as to anticipate, and possibly supplant, the most valuable natural
workings of their minds in almost every direction; but such activity at
any rate indicates a desire on the part of the writers of these books to
understand their readers, whereas I can detect none in the _Original
Stories_ or in hundreds of kindred works of that day. _Sandford and
Merton_ and Mrs. Trimmer’s book stand apart: there is much humanity and
imaginative sympathy in both; but with the majority of nursery authors,
to fling down a collection of homilies was sufficient.
The odd thing is that every one was equally thoughtless: it is not merely
that Mary Wollstonecraft should consider such an intellectual stone as
Chapter XV worth preparing for poor little fellow creatures that needed
bread; but that her publisher Johnson should consider it the kind of
thing to send forth, and that, with artists capable of dramatic interest
available, he should hand the commission to illustrate it to William
Blake, who, exquisitely charming as were his drawings for his own
_Songs_, was as yet in no sense of the word an ingratiating illustrator
of narratives of real life for young eyes. And there still remains the
parent or friend who, picking up the book in a shop, considered it the
kind of thing to strike a bliss into the soul of Master Henry or Miss
Susan as a birthday present. It is all, at this date, so incredible, so
shortsighted, so cruel, one could almost say. No one seems to have tried
at all: the idea of wooing a child was not in the air—certainly Mary
Wollstonecraft had none of it.
Who it was that first discerned the child to be a thing of joy, a
character apart worth coming to without patronage, a flower, a fairy, I
cannot say. But Blake, in his writings, had much to do with the
discovery, and Wordsworth perhaps more. Certain, however, is it that
Mary Wollstonecraft, even if she had glimmerings of this truth, had no
more; and those she suppressed when the pen was in her hand.
I might remark here that the circumstance that Blake’s drawings for
Salzmann’s _Elements of Morality_, which Mary Wollstonecraft translated
in 1791, also for Johnson, are more interesting and dramatic, is due to
the fact that he merely adapted the work of the German artist. Blake was
uniformly below himself in this kind of employment. Only in the rapt
freedoms of the angelic harper in his hut, in the picture opposite page
56 of the present work, does he approach his true genius; while in his
conception of Mrs. Mason I have no confidence. Not slim and willowy and
pensive was she in my mental picture of her: I figure a matron of sterner
stuff and solider build.
But having said this against the _Original Stories_, I have said all, for
as the casket enshrining Mrs. Mason its value remains unassailable.
It was well for Mrs. Mason that Mary Wollstonecraft set her on paper in
1788. Had she waited until the _Vindication of the Rights of Women_ was
written in 1792 (and dedicated to Talleyrand), had she waited until
little Fanny Imlay was born into a stony world, Mrs. Mason would never
have been. Because it is the likes of Mrs. Mason that keep the rights of
women, as Mary Wollstonecraft saw them, in the background, and demand the
production of marriage lines. Mrs. Mason would have been the first to
regret the unwomanliness of the publication both of the book and of the
baby. The Preface to this book suggests that Mary Wollstonecraft was at
that time, before she had loved and lost and suffered, something of a
Mrs. Mason herself; but Mrs. Mason remained Masonic to the end, whereas
poor Mary’s heart and mind were always in conflict. She may have loved
pure Reason, but she loved Gilbert Imlay too. And this Mrs. Mason never
did.
Mrs. Mason never nods. Her tact, her mental reaction, her confidence,
her sense of duty and knowledge of duty, are alike marvellous. When the
higher mercy compels her to end a wounded lark’s misery by putting her
foot on its head, she ‘turns her own the other way’. At the close of a
walk during which her charges have been ‘rational’, she shakes hands with
them. Her highest praise to Mary, after the fruit-picking incident on
page 40, is to call her ‘my friend’; ‘and she deserved the name,’ adds
the lady, ‘for she was no longer a child.’ No child could be her friend.
One wonders what she made of the beautiful words ‘Suffer the little
children to come unto Me . . . for of such is the kingdom of Heaven’; but
of course she did not know them: her Testament was obviously the Old.
Yet we have, as it happens, a comment on Christ’s remark, in her
statement on page 8, made in one of her recurring monologues on
superiority and inferiority, that it is ‘only to animals that children
_can_ do good’. Mrs. Mason’s expression of alarm and dismay on hearing
the words ‘A little child shall lead them’ could be drawn adequately, one
feels, only by Mary Wollstonecraft’s friend Fuseli.
‘I govern my servants and you,’ said Mrs. Mason, ‘by attending strictly
to truth, and this observance keeping my head clear and my heart pure, I
am ever ready to pray to the Author of Good, the Fountain of truth.’ She
never paid unmeaning compliments, (and here it is interesting to compare
the second paragraph of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Preface, where she plays at
being a Mrs. Mason too), or permitted any word to drop from her tongue
that her heart did not dictate. Hence she allowed Mrs. Trimmer’s
_History of the Robins_ to be lent to a little girl, only on condition
that the little girl should be made to understand that birds cannot
really talk. She had in her garden, although large, only one bed of
tulips, because the tulip flaunts, whereas the rose, of which she had a
profusion, is modest. That God made both does not seem to have troubled
her. She thought that the poor who were willing to work ‘had a right to
the comforts of life’. During a thunderstorm she walked with the same
security as when the sun enlivened the prospect, since her love of virtue
had overcome her fear of death. She was weaned from the world, ‘but not
disgusted.’ When she visited those who have been reduced from their
original place in society by misfortunes, she made such alterations in
her dress as would suggest ceremony, lest too much familiarity should
appear like disrespect. She forbade Caroline to cry when in pain,
because the Most High was educating her for eternity. She thought that
all diseases were sent to children by the Almighty to teach them patience
and fortitude. She never sought bargains, wishing every one to receive
the just value for their goods; and when her two charges at last left
her, to return to their father, she dismissed them with the words, ‘You
are now candidates for my friendship, and on your advancement in virtue
my regard will in future depend.’
The great fault of Mrs. Mason is that she had none. One seems to
understand why her own children and husband died so quickly.
Since I have read this little book a new kind of nightmare has come into
my slumbers: I dream that I am walking with Mrs. Mason. The greatness
and goodness of Mrs. Mason surround me, dominate me, suffocate me. With
head erect, vigilant eye, and a smile of assurance and tolerance on her
massive features, she sails on and on, holding my neatly-gloved hand,
discoursing ever of the infinite mercy of God, the infinite paltriness of
myself, and the infinite success of Mrs. Mason. I think that Mrs.
Mason’s most terrible characteristic to me (who have never been quite
sure of anything) is the readiness with which her decisions spring
fully-armed from her brain. She knows not only everything, but herself
too: she has no doubts. Here she joins hands with so much that is most
triumphant in the British character. The Briton also is without doubts.
He marches forward. He is right. It is when I contemplate him in this
mood—and Mrs. Mason too—that I most wonder who my ancestors can have
been.
The awful reality of Mrs. Mason proves that Mary Wollstonecraft, had she
known her own power and kept her mental serenity, might have been a great
novelist. Mrs. Mason was the first and strongest British Matron. She
came before Mrs. Proudie, and also, it is interesting to note, before Sir
Willoughby Patterne. But she was, I fear, an accident; for there is
nothing like her in our author’s one experiment in adult fiction, _The
Wrongs of Woman_.
E. V. LUCAS.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Look what a fine morning it is.—Insects, Birds, _Frontispiece_
and Animals, are all enjoying existence.
Indeed we are very happy! _to face page_ 36
Be calm, my child, remember that you must do all _to face page_ 46
the good you can the present day
Trying to trace the sound, I discovered a little _to face page_ 56
hut, rudely built
Economy and Self-denial are necessary, in every _to face page_ 86
station, to enable us to be generous
[Picture: Facsimile of the title page of the 1791 edition]
PREFACE
These conversations and tales are accommodated to the present state of
society; which obliges the author to attempt to cure those faults by
reason, which might never to have taken root in the infant mind. Good
habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of
reason; but, as this task requires more judgment than generally falls to
the lot of parents, substitutes must be sought for, and medicines given,
when regimen would have answered the purpose much better. I believe
those who examine their own minds, will readily agree with me, that
reason, with difficulty, conquers settled habits, even when it is arrived
at some degree of maturity: why then do we suffer children to be bound
with fetters, which their half-formed faculties cannot break.
In writing the following work, I aim at perspicuity and simplicity of
style; and try to avoid those unmeaning compliments, which slip from the
tongue, but have not the least connexion with the affections that should
warm the heart, and animate the conduct. By this false politeness,
sincerity is sacrificed, and truth violated; and thus artificial manners
are necessarily taught. For true politeness is a polish, not a varnish;
and should rather be acquired by observation than admonition. And we may
remark, by way of illustration, that men do not attempt to polish
precious stones, till age and air have given them that degree of
solidity, which will enable them to bear the necessary friction, without
destroying the main substance.
The way to render instruction most useful cannot always be adopted;
knowledge should be gradually imparted, and flow more from example than
teaching: example directly addresses the senses, the first inlets to the
heart; and the improvement of those instruments of the understanding is
the object education should have constantly in view, and over which we
have most power. But to wish that parents would, themselves, mould the
ductile passions, is a chimerical wish, for the present generation have
their own passions to combat with, and fastidious pleasures to pursue,
neglecting those pointed out by nature: we must therefore pour premature
knowledge into the succeeding one; and, teaching virtue, explain the
nature of vice. Cruel necessity!
The Conversations are intended to assist the teacher as well as the
pupil; and this will obviate an objection which some may start, that the
sentiments are not quite on a level with the capacity of a child. Every
child requires a different mode of treatment; but a writer can only
choose one, and that must be modified by those who are actually engaged
with young people in their studies.
The tendency of the reasoning obviously tends to fix principles of truth
and humanity on a solid and simple foundation; and to make religion an
active, invigorating director of the affections, and not a mere attention
to forms. Systems of Theology may be complicated, but when the character
of the Supreme Being is displayed, and He is recognised as the Universal
Father, the Author and Centre of Good, a child may be led to comprehend
that dignity and happiness must arise from imitating Him; and this
conviction should be twisted into—and be the foundation of every
inculcated duty.
At any rate, the Tales, which were written to illustrate the moral, may
recall it, when the mind has gained sufficient strength to discuss the
argument from which it was deduced.
INTRODUCTION
Mary and Caroline, though the children of wealthy parents were, in their
infancy, left entirely to the management of servants, or people equally
ignorant. Their mother died suddenly, and their father, who found them
very troublesome at home, placed them under the tuition of a woman of
tenderness and discernment, a near relation, who was induced to take on
herself the important charge through motives of compassion.
They were shamefully ignorant, considering that Mary had been fourteen,
and Caroline twelve years in the world. If they had been merely
ignorant, the task would not have appeared so arduous; but they had
caught every prejudice that the vulgar casually instill. In order to
eradicate these prejudices, and substitute good habits instead of those
they had carelessly contracted, Mrs. Mason never suffered them to be out
of her sight. They were allowed to ask questions on all occasions, a
method she would not have adopted, had she educated them from the first,
according to the suggestions of her own reason, to which experience had
given its sanction.
They had tolerable capacities; but Mary had a turn for ridicule, and
Caroline was vain of her person. She was, indeed, very handsome, and the
inconsiderate encomiums that had, in her presence, been lavished on her
beauty made her, even at that early age, affected.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
_The Treatment of Animals.—The Ant.—The Bee.—Goodness.—The 1
Lark’s Nest.—The Asses_
CHAPTER II
_The Treatment of Animals.—The Difference between them and 6
Man.—The Parental Affection of a Dog.—Brutality punished_
CHAPTER III
_The Treatment of Animals.—The Story of crazy Robin.—The 10
Man confined in the Bastille_
CHAPTER IV
_Anger.—History of Jane Fretful_ 14
CHAPTER V
_Lying.—Honour.—Truth.—Small Duties.—History of Lady Sly 18
and Mrs. Trueman_
CHAPTER VI
_Anger.—Folly produces Self-contempt_, _and the Neglect of 25
others_
CHAPTER VII
_Virtue the Soul of Beauty.—The Tulip and the Rose.—The 27
Nightingale.—External Ornaments.—Characters_
CHAPTER VIII
_Summer Evening’s Amusement.—The Arrival of a Family of 31
Haymakers.—Ridicule of personal Defects censured.—A
Storm.—The Fear of Death.—The Cottage of Honest Jack_,
_the shipwrecked Sailor.—The History of Jack_, _and his
faithful Dog Pompey_
CHAPTER IX
_The Inconveniences of immoderate Indulgence_ 37
CHAPTER X
_The Danger of Delay.—Description of a Mansion-house in 40
Ruins.—History of Charles Townley_
CHAPTER XI
_Dress.—A Character.—Remarks on Mrs. Trueman’s Manner of 47
Dressing.—Trifling Omissions undermine Affection_
CHAPTER XII
_Behaviour to Servants.—True Dignity of Character_ 50
CHAPTER XIII
_Employment.—Idleness produces Misery.—The Cultivation of 53
the Fancy raises us above the Vulgar_, _extends our
Happiness_, _and leads to Virtue_
CHAPTER XIV
_Innocent Amusements.—Description of a Welch 55
Castle.—History of a Welch Harper.—A tyrannical
Landlord.—Family Pride_
CHAPTER XV
_Prayer.—A Moon-light Scene.—Resignation_ 60
CHAPTER XVI
_The Benefits arising from Devotion.—The History of the 64
Village School-mistress.—Fatal Effects of Inattention to
Expense_, _in the History of Mr. Lofty_
CHAPTER XVII
_The Benefits arising from Devotion.—The History of the 67
Village School-mistress concluded_
CHAPTER XVIII
_A Visit to the School-mistress.—True and False Pride_ 69
CHAPTER XIX
_Charity.—The History of Peggy and her Family.—The 71
Sailor’s Widow_
CHAPTER XX
_Visit to Mrs. Trueman.—The Use of Accomplishments.—Virtue 74
the Soul of all_
CHAPTER XXI
_The Benefit of bodily Pain.—Fortitude the Basis of 77
Virtue.—The Folly of Irresolution_
CHAPTER XXII
_Journey to London_ 79
CHAPTER XXIII
_Charity.—Shopping.—The distressed Stationer.—Mischievous 81
Consequences of delaying Payment_
CHAPTER XXIV
_Visit to a Poor Family in London.—Idleness the Parent of 84
Vice.—Prodigality and Generosity incompatible.—The
Pleasures of Benevolence.—True and false Motives for
Saving_
CHAPTER XXV
_Mrs. Mason’s farewell Advice to her Pupils.—Observations 86
on Letter-writing_
MORAL CONVERSATIONS AND STORIES
CHAPTER I
The treatment of animals.—The ant.—The bee.—Goodness.—The lark’s
nest.—The asses.
One fine morning in spring, some time after Mary and Caroline were
settled in their new abode, Mrs. Mason proposed a walk before breakfast,
a custom she wished to teach imperceptibly, by rendering it amusing.
The sun had scarcely dispelled the dew that hung on every blade of grass,
and filled the half-shut flowers; every prospect smiled, and the
freshness of the air conveyed the most pleasing sensations to Mrs.
Mason’s mind; but the children were regardless of the surrounding
beauties, and ran eagerly after some insects to destroy them. Mrs. Mason
silently observed their cruel sports, without appearing to do it; but
stepping suddenly out of the foot-path into the long grass, her buckle
was caught in it, and striving to disentangle herself, she wet her feet;
which the children knew she wished to avoid, as she had been lately sick.
This circumstance roused their attention; and they forgot their amusement
to enquire why she had left the path; and Mary could hardly restrain a
laugh, when she was informed that it was to avoid treading on some snails
that were creeping across the narrow footway. Surely, said Mary, you do
not think there is any harm in killing a snail, or any of those nasty
creatures that crawl on the ground? I hate them, and should scream if
one was to find its way from my clothes to my neck! With great gravity,
Mrs. Mason asked how she dared to kill any thing, unless it were to
prevent its hurting her? Then, resuming a smiling face, she said, Your
education has been neglected, my child; as we walk along attend to what I
say, and make the best answers you can; and do you, Caroline, join in the
conversation.
You have already heard that God created the world, and every inhabitant
of it. He is then called the Father of all creatures; and all are made
to be happy, whom a good and wise God has created. He made those snails
you despise, and caterpillars, and spiders; and when He made them, did
not leave them to perish, but placed them where the food that is most
proper to nourish them is easily found. They do not live long, but He
who is their Father, as well as your’s, directs them to deposit their
eggs on the plants that are fit to support their young, when they are not
able to get food for themselves.—And when such a great and wise Being has
taken care to provide every thing necessary for the meanest creature,
would you dare to kill it, merely because it appears to you ugly? Mary
began to be attentive, and quickly followed Mrs. Mason’s example, who
allowed a caterpillar and a spider to creep on her hand. You find them,
she rejoined, very harmless; but a great number would destroy our
vegetables and fruit; so birds are permitted to eat them, as we feed on
animals; and in spring there are always more than at any other season of
the year, to furnish food for the young broods.—Half convinced, Mary
said, but worms are of little consequence in the world. Yet, replied
Mrs. Mason, God cares for them, and gives them every thing that is
necessary to render their existence comfortable. You are often
troublesome—I am stronger than you—yet I do not kill you.
Observe those ants; they have a little habitation in yonder hillock; they
carry food to it for their young, and sleep very snug in it during the
cold weather. The bees also have comfortable towns, and lay up a store
of honey to support them when the flowers die, and snow covers the
ground: and this forecast is as much the gift of God, as any quality you
possess.
Do you know the meaning of the word Goodness? I see you are unwilling to
answer. I will tell you. It is, first, to avoid hurting any thing; and
then, to contrive to give as much pleasure as you can. If some insects
are to be destroyed, to preserve my garden from desolation, I have it
done in the quickest way. The domestic animals that I keep, I provide
the best food for, and never suffer them to be tormented; and this
caution arises from two motives:—I wish to make them happy; and, as I
love my fellow-creatures still better than the brute creation, I would
not allow those that I have any influence over, to grow habitually
thoughtless and cruel, till they were unable to relish the greatest
pleasure life affords,—that of resembling God, by doing good.
A lark now began to sing, as it soared aloft. The children watched its
motions, listening to the artless melody. They wondered what it was
thinking of—of its young family, they soon concluded; for it flew over
the hedge, and drawing near, they heard the young ones chirp. Very soon
both the old birds took their flight together, to look for food to
satisfy the craving of the almost fledged young. An idle boy, who had
borrowed a gun, fired at them—they fell; and before he could take up the
wounded pair, he perceived Mrs. Mason; and expecting a very severe
reprimand, ran away. She and the little girls drew near, and found that
one was not much hurt; but that the other, the cock, had one leg broken,
and both its wings shattered; and its little eyes seemed starting out of
their sockets, it was in such exquisite pain. The children turned away
their eyes. Look at it, said Mrs. Mason; do you not see that it suffers
as much, and more than you did when you had the small-pox, when you were
so tenderly nursed. Take up the hen; I will bind her wing together;
perhaps it may heal. As to the cock, though I hate to kill any thing, I
must put him out of pain; to leave him in his present state would be
cruel; and avoiding an unpleasant sensation myself, I should allow the
poor bird to die by inches, and call this treatment tenderness, when it
would be selfishness or weakness. Saying so, she put her foot on the
bird’s head, turning her own another way.
They walked on; when Caroline remarked, that the nestlings, deprived of
their parents, would now perish; and the mother began to flutter in her
hand as they drew near the hedge, though the poor creature could not fly,
yet she tried to do it. The girls, with one voice, begged Mrs. Mason to
let them take the nest, and provide food in a cage, and see if the mother
could not contrive to hop about to feed them. The nest and the old
mother were instantly in Mary’s handkerchief. A little opening was left
to admit the air; and Caroline peeped into it every moment to see how
they looked. I give you leave, said Mrs. Mason, to take those birds,
because an accident has rendered them helpless; if that had not been the
case, they should not have been confined.
They had scarcely reached the next field, when they met another boy with
a nest in his hand, and on a tree near him saw the mother, who,
forgetting her natural timidity, followed the spoiler; and her
intelligible tones of anguish reached the ears of the children, whose
hearts now first felt the emotions of humanity. Caroline called him, and
taking sixpence out of her little purse, offered to give it to him for
the nest, if he would shew her where he had taken it from. The boy
consented, and away ran Caroline to replace it,—crying all the way, how
delighted the old bird will be to find her brood again. The pleasure
that the parent-bird would feel was talked of till they came to a large
common, and heard some young asses, at the door of an hovel, making a
most dreadful noise. Mrs. Mason had ordered the old ones to be confined,
lest the young should suck before the necessary quantity had been saved
for some sick people in her neighbourhood. But after they had given the
usual quantity of milk, the thoughtless boy had left them still in
confinement, and the young in vain implored the food nature designed for
their particular support. Open the hatch, said Mrs. Mason, the mothers
have still enough left to satisfy their young. It was opened, and they
saw them suck.
Now, said she, we will return to breakfast; give me your hands, my little
girls, you have done good this morning, you have acted like rational
creatures. Look, what a fine morning it is. Insects, birds, and
animals, are all enjoying this sweet day. Thank God for permitting you
to see it, and for giving you an understanding which teaches you that you
ought, by doing good, to imitate Him. Other creatures only think of
supporting themselves; but man is allowed to ennoble his nature, by
cultivating his mind and enlarging his heart. He feels disinterested
love; every part of the creation affords an exercise for virtue, and
virtue is ever the truest source of pleasure.