the railroad train, after the departure of the luckless Thomas, they
had ample time to bemoan the annoyance of the boys left to the cold
comfort of a night on Sachem Hill, and the distress of all the parents
when the condition of things became known.
"I'm awfully glad we knew enough to cut and run," exclaimed Phipps
Benton, hugging himself in his cosey car-corner, "at least that _you_
knew enough," he corrected himself honestly; "that last skate cost
those chaps something. Won't Pa Bangs give it to Wilfred though!"
He couldn't help the shrug of delight as this thought seized him.
Wilfred, to state it mildly, was not a boy to be loved dearly, and
circumstances now seemed likely to make him anything but an object of
envy.
"For shame!" cried St. George hotly, "we've just been there, and he's
treated us well."
Phipps flushed all over his brown little face, and looked out of the
window into the gathering night. St. George jumped out of his seat,
and walked rapidly and unsteadily down the aisle to shake off some of
his excitement. That he was going home to his mother all right, warm
and safe to a capital supper such as only she knew how to get up for a
hungry boy, tired and cold after a long winter-day frolic, made it all
the worse that other boys who had so little while ago been the larger
part of his laughing, noisy troop, should be at this very minute,
shivering, half-starved and cross, at their wits' end how to pass the
night. He could almost see Bridget setting on the supper things, smell
the delicious coffee permeating the house, and hear his mother say,
"Come, it is almost time for my boy to be here, you better begin to mix
your cake-batter," and his mouth almost watered as he thought of the
toothsome, smoking hot cakes that would before long be piled upon his
plate.
But suddenly he stopped. No cakes for him that night--perhaps not
even coffee. Who would tell those parents of the fifteen or so boys
stranded on Sachem Hill why they were not to come bounding into their
several homes on the arrival of the six o'clock train in the B. and A.
Depot? George Edward and Phipps must do all those errands before they
could hope to enjoy any supper that night.
_Whew!_ He drew himself up with a long breath, turned and rushed back
to his seat.
"See here," he cried, throwing himself down, "you can take all the
places nearest to your house--and I'll do the same."
Phipps turned and regarded him with a stare.
"To tell the fathers and mothers," explained St. George with a nod, "no
other way, you see, why the chaps don't get home."
"Good gracious!" cried Phipps explosively, "I never thought of that. We
can't! We're as hungry as beavers."
"We must." St. George laughed gayly, now that the struggle was over,
and indulged in a smart pinch on his companion's shoulder. "Wake up,
old fellow."
"You let me be," cried Phipps crossly, shaking him off, "and you get
out with your 'musts.' I don't know any, I can tell you, and as for
going around to tell a lot of people what's none of my business, you
won't see me doing it. I'm going home myself."
"Who will do it then?" demanded St. George just as sharply.
"Don't know," said Phipps doggedly, "only I know I won't, that's all."
He returned the look his companion gave him with another no pleasanter,
and every whit as determined.
"And you mean to let those fathers and mothers go all night without
knowing where in creation the chaps are?" cried the other boy in the
seat, every feature ablaze with indignation. "Say?"
"They should have come along; it's their own fault they got left."
"But the fathers and mothers aren't to blame," insisted St. George
vehemently. "Yours would go most crazy if you didn't turn up at the
right time."
Phipps, however, was not to allow his feelings to be worked upon
in this way. He now found himself very cold, decidedly hungry, and
violently cross, and, giving St. George a push, he declared, "I tell
you I won't do a single thing, nor take a single step. I can't hardly
move, and I shall go straight home."
"Of course," said St. George, brightening up, and relaxing a bit, "so
shall I, to tell my folks."
"I shall _stay_ there," said Phipps obstinately. With that he turned
again to the window.
"Do!" burst out St. George in high scorn, "and save your stingy, mean,
little pinched-up carcass!"
"Boys," said an old gentleman back of them, leaning forward to bring
his stern face over into the excitement, "I should think if you must
fight, you could find some other place a little more appropriate than a
crowded rail-car."
St. George brought his flushed face over against that of the old
gentleman, and sprang to his feet, reaching for the skates dangling
from the rack overhead, while he shivered all over with anger and
mortification. Phipps did not turn his head.
The old gentleman seeing that his shaft had struck home, wounding at
least one individual, put himself back in his own seat, well pleased,
and St. George summarily retreated to the rear of the car, full of
reflections the farthest removed from agreeable ones.
Here he was in a quarrel, and just a moment before he had been giving
advice how to spare the feelings of others, and he couldn't control his
own, but must anger Phipps with whom he had never had the least falling
out. _Faugh!_ He was so disgusted with himself, he would have thanked
any one who would take him one side, and give him that castigation
he felt he so richly deserved. And there were the eyes of all the
passengers in the car directed to him, as if he were a person whose
movements were singular, to say the least, and would bear watching.
Half of them had heard the old gentleman's sharp, ringing rebuke even
if they had not been listeners to the quarrel itself, and the other
half were now, he felt, staring at him and whispering over him as he
stood pretending to look out of the door, while their eyes seemed
burning holes into his jacket.
It was interminable, that hour before they could reach the B. and A.
Depot, and the only relief he experienced was in pulling out his watch
every five moments to see what time it was.
At last, in the train swept to the depot. St. George looked back
quickly, intending to rush back, bestow a thwack on Phipps' back, say
he was sorry, and make up. But the throng was great and a woman with a
baby asked him to help her off the car, so by the time he got free most
of the passengers had filed out and were hurrying along the platform.
St. George caught a flying glimpse of the boy he sought, some little
distance ahead, and he bounded after him.
"Phipps," he cried, darting in and out between the people, and dodging
an expressman with a barrow, "wait, old chap."
St. George was positive that his call was heard, but the boy in front
now gathered up his skates to a tighter clasp and broke into a run.
St. George chased him so long as he saw the least chance of gaining on
him, then suddenly pulled up.
"All right," he gasped, "if you want it that way, you may have it. I
don't care."
A WAIF FROM THE SKIES.
IN throwing out ballast or any small article from a balloon, a certain
degree of caution is requisite, as a bottle or any similar object falls
with such velocity that were it to strike the roof of a cottage, it
would go right through it. We are told that Gray-Lussac, in an ascent
in 1804, threw out a common deal chair from a height of twenty-three
thousand feet. It fell beside a country girl, who was tending some
sheep in a field, and, as the balloon was invisible, she concluded, and
so did wiser heads than hers, that the chair must have fallen straight
down from heaven.
No one was skeptical enough to deny it, for there was the chair, or
rather its remains. The most the incredulous could venture to do was to
criticise the coarse workmanship of the miraculous seat, and they were
busy carping and fault-finding with the celestial upholstery, when an
account of M. Gray-Lussac's voyage was published, and extinguished at
once the discussion and the miracle.--_Chambers' Journal._
"THE HUMPY THING."
[Illustration]
"I never would have made a camel, that's certain," remarked a wise (?)
lad, after taking a slight look at the ungainly beast.
"Probably not," answered his wiser father. "You would have put the same
material into pop-guns or ponies."
"But see what an ugly thing he is; not a handsome feature about him,"
still urged the boy.
"Handsome is that handsome does," came back to him.
"Look at those abominable humps on his back. Why must he be disfigured
in that way?"
"Does a trunk disfigure a traveller?" quietly asked the father.
"But what has that ill-looking hump to do with a trunk, I'd like to
know?" continued his questioner.
[Illustration: GENERAL GORDON'S CAMEL.]
"There are many more things you ought to 'like to know.' That
ill-looking hump is his trunk, which his master sees is well packed
with--fat--before he starts on the long journey over the deserts where
he can't be sure of any grass or shrubs for days and days. But there
is that trunk full on his back from which the camel picnics on the
weary way."
"Oh! you don't say he carries water there too!"
"No; but near by, in another trunk or bottle. He has an extra supply
in his stomach. Those 'clumsy' feet are _beautifully_ formed for
travelling the desert. Scientific folks might have studied for ages
without discovering and patenting such a marvel of a desert foot.
"You see no beauty in his eyelashes and queer nose, but you would,
after a day in the burning sun or flying sand of the desert. Why, my
boy, there's no beast like him for use in his own land.
"Just see him, knelt there for his load of one thousand or fifteen
hundred pounds, and objecting as plainly as a camel can, when a little
too much is put upon him. Then rising up and moving on his way in such
dignified patience, on and on, hour after hour, seventy-five or one
hundred miles a day. Know of a horse that could do that, my boy?
"He is justly called the 'Ship of the Desert.'"
"'Ugly beast,' indeed!" repeated his father. "Think you Gordon called
him so?"
"Gordon? Who did you say?"
"General Gordon. That brave, grand man who went to Khartoom to save
the garrison and people there from falling into the hands of the false
prophet?
"It almost seems as if the noble camel that carried him hundreds of
miles on the way, knew what General Gordon was going for; he just
hurried right on without a word of complaint, till he could not move a
step further; then another gladly took his place and pushed on day and
night till Charles James Gordon passed through the gates and the city
shouted for joy.
"Now can't you see some beauty in this beast?"
C. M. L.
SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN.
M.--MITFORD, MARY RUSSEL.
"OUR village!" Do you suppose you could write a book about your
village? Could you find enough matters of interest to make one book?
And yet Miss Mitford wrote five with that title. She wrote about the
houses and the people, the shops, the children, about life in an
English country village, and delightful reading her sketches are. She
wrote as no one had ever before written, and perhaps I might say that
no one since has ever written such charming bits of description of
rural life.
She wrote other books, _Atherton, and Other Tales_, _Country Stories_,
and then she wrote such delightful letters to her friends. You will
find some of these in her _Life and Correspondence_. She was the
daughter of wealthy parents, who later in life became poor. So that
from a life of luxury our gifted author was reduced to poverty.
The latter part of her life must have contrasted painfully with the
days of her childhood, yet she kept through all her trials her sweet
serenity of mind, her habit of making the best of everything. She is
described as a short, stout woman, with a face shining with quiet
happiness and unselfishness. The appreciation with which her sketches
were received gave her much pleasure, and the fact that her writings
were re-printed in America afforded her the greatest gratification,
while it was a surprise to her.
She was a delightful person to meet socially, having charming ways and
a soft, sweet voice. She died in a wee bit of a house, in 1855, at the
age of sixty-eight.
Do you ask why I have chosen to place Miss Mitford in our list of
Remarkable Women? To begin with, she was the first to discover and
set before us in prose writing the beauty in every-day things. She
had written poems and tried her hand at writing tragedy, but with
indifferent success, and at length when poverty stared her in the face
she took up the then new line of writing and tried with grand success
to show to the world the beauty there is in common things. Then all
through her long life with its sad changes she kept that wonderful
serenity of mind, and that happy faculty of living above the vexations
of life. Many a woman when forced by growing poverty to move from place
to place, each time going to a poorer home, would have grown faint and
weary of life, and given up in despair.
[Illustration: MISS MITFORD.]
If we cultivate the habit of making the best of everything, we shall be
the better prepared to meet the vicissitudes of life.
FAYE HUNTINGTON.
[Illustration: ROUND THE FAMILY LAMP]
I SHOULD suggest, dear Pansies, for this lovely month of May, a little
evening festival. Winter is over with its long, delightfully cosey
evenings. Spring is nearly done, with its shorter evenings, and now
we are fairly launched into the flower months--when all life seems an
holiday, and every moment that is possible is to be passed out of doors.
To get ready for my little proposed festival, everybody must go
a-Maying. With baskets, and fern cases, let the children, papa and
mamma, nursey, aunt Grace, uncle Fred, and indeed every one who will
drop books and work, and go off to the woods for the wild treasures
that are playing hide-and-seek there. We do not want on this lovely May
festival, any flowers but wild ones that have grown silently all winter
under the snow, waiting for us. Their reign is short indeed. We will
give them one evening all to themselves before we turn to June with her
wealth of roses, and all other sweet and glowing blossoms.
Let us gather them all--the hepaticas, the anemones, darling little
forget-me-nots, violets, Solomon's seal, and--but the name is
legion--and the varieties multiply as we dig and prowl in the damp
moss, and explore behind rocks and in crannies. Put them all in the
baskets and cases, surrounded by their own moss to keep them green, not
forgetting to bring as many roots as possible, cover all with lovely
vines, and come home, flowers in the baskets, and flowers in your
cheeks.
Amy and Ruth have been very busy. No one exactly knew why they got up
so early in the morning. No one but the cook, and she promised not to
tell. But in the cake-box is a toothsome collection of sugar wafers,
ready to be put on the flower-crowned table, and the two little girls
have every little while that pleasant "woodsy morning," as Ruth called
it, flown at each other in the secret places, when resting from their
flower-digging, and something like this might have been heard, if
there had been ears to hear. But there were none, only those of the
squirrels, and they looked wise, and determined not to tell. "Oh, I
_hope_ they will be good."
"Our new receipt. Just think, if they shouldn't like them!"
Bob has a secret too. Why can't boys as well as girls have one, pray
tell. That is, no one but papa knows it, but then papa has a fashion
without ever asking, of being informed of his boy's movements.
Bob's twenty-five cents hoarded for two weeks, went into the grocer's
till only yesterday, and Bob has twelve bright yellow lemons instead,
waiting as patiently as lemons will, to be sacrificed to a thirsty
group who stand around the same flower-crowned table. Bob's papa is to
give the sugar, and moreover he has promised to tie on another apron
and help the boy make the loveliest lemonade on that very same night.
So Bob and his papa must of necessity go off together on this "woodsy
morning" to hunt for flowers, for there is danger if they staid with
the large group that they would let the whole thing out. Oh, what fun,
to have papa to one's self and a secret!
Now then, after your invitations to two or three neighbors, and a
little friend or two who hasn't many pleasures of her own, are given
out for this evening, and your wood-treasures are ready, and you have
had a good lunch and are all bathed and rested, you have nothing to
do but to arrange your table with banks of moss, flowers and vines,
get uncle Fred who is to give the little talk on "Plants and their
Habits," to settle his microscope and specimens just where he wants
them in the evening, Mary puts out the music on the piano-rack that
she has promised to play, the two secrets are out, because there are
the trays laden with sugar wafers, and two bright-faced, white-capped
young girls, one with blue ribbons and the other with pink, to pass
them around, and there's the lemonade table in the corner, with a big
pail covered with green moss, a little well sweep to which is fastened
the Baby's tiny pail for a bucket, and Bob stands back of it all with
a beaming face ready to serve you to glassesfull from the "old oaken
bucket."
Oh, it is rare fun, this dainty May festival--the best part after all
being the "Plant talk," and the wonders to which the company, young
and old, are brought to see through the microscope. Each small spear
of green has its delicate meaning--each blossom its tender message.
Nothing has been lost there so long under the snow, and the good Giver
tells anew to these awakened minds, his story of creative love. Dear
children, I hope you will have in each family a "May festival," and my
most loving wish is that it may be a happy, bright, and joyous one.
MARGARET SIDNEY.
JACK-IN-THE-BOX.
YOU want a story, another story,
One you have never heard before?
Stories don't come when you call them, always;
I do not know any more.
"Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Goldilocks,"
"Bright Prince Charming," "Reynard the Fox,"
And now you ask for a "spandy-new" one,
About your Jack-In-The-Box!
Poor little Jack-In-The-Box, who never
Can open his door himself;
Whose house is so small that it almost pinches,
With neither cupboard nor shelf.
Dark, beside, with a varnishy smell,
Enough to keep him from feeling well,
And a crick in his back that must surely hurt him,
If he could only tell!
Now, let's pretend; when he first was finished,
This rosy-cheeked little Jack,
He stood up straight, with his hands beside him,
And never a crick in his back.
Oh, what a beautiful world of toys!
Little doll-girls and little doll-boys;
Drums and trumpets, and everything lovely
For making a splendid noise!
Ah, but wait--he is not quite finished;
Poor little rosy Jack!
A knife, some glue, some muslin, some paper--
_Now_ there's a crick in his back!
Oh, but the hot glue made him smart;
How near the sharp knife went to his heart;
And for five dreadful, dreadful minutes,
His head and feet were apart!
Now for the box--it is very pretty,
Painted a charming red.
In he goes, his feet are fastened;
Down comes the lid on his head!
Oh, he knew he was going to smother!
He'd have called mamma if he'd owned a mother,
But he'd nobody nearer than distant cousins,
Neither sister nor brother.
Frantic his struggles for fifteen minutes,
But it seemed, the more he tried,
The tighter his house grew; then his courage
Failed; and he cried and cried.
Then he heard laughter, soft and low;
His door flew up, and he heard an "Oh!"
And a dear little face was bent above him--
Your little face, you know.
Over and over the darkness caught him,
The lid came down on him tight;
But he soon found out that after the darkness
Always would come the light.
He was a hero! Up he went
Whenever the lid rose; not content
With merely rising, he came up smiling,
Though all of his strength was spent.
That was the story. Grave and silent
Sat my small Goldilocks,
Looking down with a tender pity,
At brave Jack-In-The-Box.
"Thank you, auntie," was all she said.
But I found that night, when she'd gone to bed,
Jack's box in the grate, and Jack on her pillow,
Close to the golden head.
M. VANDERGRIFT, _in Youth's Companion_.
[Illustration: CYPRESS GROVES OF CHAPULTEPEC (MEXICO) TIME OF
MAXIMILIAN.]
_Volume 13, Number 30._ Copyright, 1886, by D. LOTHROP & CO.
_May 29, 1886._
THE PANSY.
[Illustration: "I CAN'T GIVE LULU JANE TO GRANDMA," SAID PATTY.]
PATTY PLUMMER'S TRIAL.
PATTY PLUMMER awoke one lovely August morning with a delightful feeling
that something nice was going to happen that day. The sun was shining
in on the rough board walls of her little chamber, and she could see
the bits of broken china and glass glitter in her playhouse--a corner
of the room outside. Then she thought of her dream! Patty laughed aloud
as she dressed herself, at the thought of her old broken dolly Lulu
Jane chasing her round the house, and squeezing through a tiny crack
when she tried to shut her in the sitting-room!
"Aha! I just know why I dreamed that! I know what makes me so happy!"
and she danced round in her stocking feet, singing her gayest song,
quite forgetful of the old saying,
Sing before eating
And you'll cry before sleeping!
"Oh! I do hope she'll bring it to-day," Patty cried as she put on her
slippers and ran out to her play-house, where in a parlor gorgeous with
yellow paper carpet and green pasteboard chairs, stood an old accordion
as a doll's piano, with a gayly-dressed rag lady sitting before it on
a velvet-covered spool, and a fine gentleman by her side in blue paper
trousers and black silk jacket.
Now the "she" of Patty's remarks was her clever cousin Charlotte who
had taken home the "it"--no other than broken-headed, torn-to-pieces
old Lulu Jane herself--to make therefrom, as she declared to Patty the
day before, "the finest rag doll she ever saw!"
"I do b'leeve she'll bring it home this very afternoon," happy Patty
kept saying to herself, as she flew out of doors after breakfast and
worship was over. Everything seemed lovelier than ever this one fair
morning. The little rock-basin filled by water trickling down from
a higher one, which Charlotte had named "the fountain," seemed the
most wonderful thing that ever was; the hollyhocks and lady-delights
fairly smiled as she bent over the flower mound to admire them--all was
cheerful and gay.
How Patty loved to go over by herself the events of a pleasant play-day
with Charlotte! There was the little stone oven place with a mock fire
of sticks, where they had played at boiling a pudding made of mud and
tied in a rag, while the pot was a hollow ribbon block from old Miss
Simpkins' store! there hung the swing her father had made between two
ash-trees for her and her cousin. She climbed on the notched board and
swayed to and fro, every now and then looking up the pasture hill to
see if Charlotte was coming down the path from uncle Nathan's.
By and by she gave a joyful shout. An old-fashioned, two-seated
carriage was coming up the long grassy lane from the big gate opening
into the street. Mother Plummer ran to the door with flowery hands to
see Patty's Grandmother Pratt getting out of the carriage. Such goodies
as grandma always brought from Mill Village when she came to see the
Plummers! This time the driver, uncle Dave, lifted out a huge basket
of big fresh blackberries and a large newly caught salmon. Patty was
not forgotten; grandma never came without something for her little
namesake. The last time she brought Patty a pretty plaid gingham; this
time the gift was a gay Indian basket full of tiny pats of yellow
butter, covered with cool, broad rhubarb leaves.
"O, this is the goodest day that ever I did see!" warbled Patty to
the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, as she followed the dear
plump old lady into the house. The summer day was as perfect as a day
could be. Inside the house everything was sunshiny and cheerful too;
and Patty opened her glad heart to take in the pleasure of all things
to the uttermost. Grandmother sat in the arm-chair swaying the huge
palm-leaf fan as she loosened the ribbon cap strings at her fat white
throat, and Patty sat on a cricket beside her in perfect content. They
were going to have such a lovely dinner! Tempting pink salmon, mealy
new potatoes, blackberries with cream and sugar, and a dainty pie which
Patty's eyes spied through the half-open pantry door. A dainty turnover
beside it too, on purpose for Patty! Never thought of clouds or showers
came into her heart as she sat there softly stroking grandma's gown of
silver gray.