when she saw it. Mary went back home, glad that her papa had understood
how she loved her dolls, and glad to find that not one of her beloved
children was missing.
XVI.
JAKY TOLBERT’S PLAYMATES.
“Well, Johnnie, where are you going this morning?” asked Mrs. Jones as
her little boy started towards the gate.
“I’m goin’ over to Jaky’s, mamma; you know I must go over to Jaky’s
every day.”
“What do you find at Jaky’s to make you so anxious to go over there
every day almost before you are out of bed good?”
“Oh, mamma, Jaky has the nicest playmates over to his house you ’most
ever saw.”
“Who else goes over to Jaky’s besides you?” asked Mrs. Jones.
“Jaky don’t have no reg’lar visitor but me,” said Johnnie proudly. “Me
an’ Jaky is the whole thing.”
“Well, you are saying a good deal for yourself when you say that Jaky
has the nicest playmates in the world—don’t you think so?”
[Illustration: “I’M GOING OVER TO JAKY’S, MAMMA.”]
“I didn’t mean me,” explained Johnnie. “Jaky’s playmates ain’t folks at
all. Jaky’s playmates is animals—just animals, but I do believe that
they have got as much sense as some folks I know.”
“What kind of animals?” asked Mrs. Jones, becoming interested.
Then Johnnie went on to explain. He said:
“Jaky’s got chickens and dogs and cats and birds. He’s got names for all
of ’em, and they all know their names and they just run to Jaky when he
calls them. The chickens and birds, too, will just walk right up and eat
out of Jaky’s hand. And his trained dogs and cats are just the funniest
things I ever saw. His little dog, Trip, can carry a gun and obey the
commands, “Carry arms!” “Present arms!” “Parade rest!” just like a
little soldier. One time at a fair he saw trained dogs and horses,
elephants, and even lions. Then he decided that he would train some
animals himself. And, mamma, he has done well. Why, he’s got a cat that
can spell some words. Jaky printed some letters of the alphabet on
separate cards, and he’s got a cat that will pick out the right ones
every time. One of his little dogs can play the fiddle. It may seem
strange, but he certainly can do it. He can hold the fiddle, and draw
the bow across it just the right way, and he can play a little tune.
Jaky calls it a dog tune, and I think he ought to know.
“You just ought to see Jaky’s chickens—he’s got six of ’em. He calls
them and they all come running. Then he holds out his arm, and calls
them by name, and they will jump up on his little arm, one after the
other, and will sit there until Jaky tells them to jump down. And Jaky
is so kind to his two birds that they won’t fly away when he lets them
out of their cages for a little while. He can take them up in his arms
and pat them gently, and then he puts them down, and they will lie still
right by Jaky until Jaky calls them by name and tells them to go into
the house—that is, I mean, into their cages.
“By the way, mama, I forgot to tell you. Jaky is getting up an animal
show, and he says that I am to be his manager. He’s going to print the
cards to-day. He’s going to call his circus, “JAKY TOLBERT’S GREAT
ANIMAL SHOW—THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH,” and he’s going to make me the
manager of his circus. Won’t that be fine? You’ll come and see it—won’t
you? We’re going to charge only one cent for you to come in. Oh, it’s
going to be great, and I don’t want you to miss it.”
“To be sure, I’ll come,” said Mrs. Jones. “Tell Jaky I’m glad to hear
about how much he loves the dumb animals—every manly boy ought to love
and protect them.”
“I tell you,” said Johnnie, as he hurried out of the gate, “Jaky will
fight anybody who hallooes at one of his pets or mistreats one in the
least. He’s just as kind to them as he can be. Don’t you forget the
show. It’ll come off next week.”
XVII.
A VALENTINE PARTY.
It was one week from St. Valentine’s Day, and the Berry children had
already provided a number of the tokens, comic and otherwise, which they
meant to send to their friends. Jack produced a grotesque and awfully
exaggerated caricature of a withered, stoop-shouldered old woman, with
some cruel lines of doggerel printed beneath it.
“I’m going to send this to old Mrs. Gray,” said Jack, as he exhibited
the comic picture.
Nearly all the children laughed, and said that the picture and the words
beneath it would just suit the old woman. Mrs. Gray was an old and
poverty-stricken widow woman, and many of the children of the little
village took delight in playing tricks on her on Hallowe’en and
Valentine nights. In this way, the children, especially the boys, had
made her life so miserable that the old woman often said that she hated
even the sight of a boy. In the midst of the merriment over the proposed
venture of Jack Berry, it was Lillie Berry who spoke up, saying,——
[Illustration: OLD MRS. GRAY.]
“Jack, I tell you what I think. I think we ought to give Mrs. Gray a
genuine surprise next week. She has had so many ups and downs in this
life, I really believe that we can give her a little pleasure if we give
her a true—true surprise. Of course, all the boys and girls will be
invited to join in, but it is not going to be like a regular party, but
something like the ‘surprise’ parties or donation parties that we
sometimes give the preacher; we’ll just put the things on the doorstep
and run, the way we do with valentines, you know. What do you say to
that, Jack? And what do the rest of you think?”
Very quickly the Berry children agreed with what Lillie had said, and
immediately they set about planning for the valentine party.
The night of February fourteenth was clear, cold and moonless. Across
the fields in the darkness, a throng of merry young children, with a
wagon or two (little goat wagons) piled high with baskets and bundles
and wood, slipped silently toward the little house where old Mrs. Gray
sat shivering over her scanty fire. A sudden knock at the door aroused
Mrs. Gray from her musing. She hobbled painfully to the door. Opening
it, she saw by the light of the tallow candle a basket of rosy apples
and another of potatoes. Nothing else was in sight.
A second knock followed almost as soon as the door had closed on the two
baskets which were hurriedly drawn inside. This time a can of kerosene
oil held a lonely vigil on the doorstep.
“I haven’t had a drop in my lamp for two weeks,” Jack heard the old lady
say, as she peered out eagerly into the darkness before closing the
door.
As she was busy filling her lamp, she was interrupted by a third knock,
which resulted in a basket filled with groceries in parcels in all
shapes and sizes. Great tears stood in Mrs. Gray’s eyes, and a great
lump arose in her throat.
At last knock number four revealed the real Saint Valentine—a group of
laughing boys and girls, every one of whom carried an armful either of
pine or oak wood for the stove.
“Where shall we put it?” asked Jack Berry, as eager now to help as he
had been the week before to tease. Mrs. Gray was rubbing her eyes, and
wondering if she could possibly be awake and in her right mind.
“Wish you many happy returns of Valentine’s Day!” said Lillie Berry, as
she slipped into the withered hand a small purse containing the
valentine money of the boys and girls; and before the bewildered woman
could say more than a fervent “God bless you,” her guests had melted
away in the darkness, and she was left to weep tears of thankfulness
among her new possessions.
XVIII.
“NO MONEY DOWN.”
Boys and girls, I suppose you are quite familiar with what is known as
buying things on the instalment plan. You have seen people in your own
neighborhood—perhaps in your own homes—buy things that way. Chairs,
tables, bed-steads, rugs, pictures, things for the kitchen and things to
wear, and many other things are bought that way. Most people think they
are getting a great bargain when they are able to buy things by paying a
small amount in cash as the first payment—say fifty cents or a
dollar—and then pay the balance in small weekly or monthly payments. And
especially do some of our mothers and fathers think that they are
getting a great bargain, if they are able to buy things they want for
“no money down” and so much a week. In such matters, my dear boys and
girls, your parents are making a terrible mistake and are setting you a
wrong example. They lose sight of the fact, when they fall into the
habit of buying anything and everything on the instalment plan or on the
“no money down” plan, that a day of reckoning is sure to come; that the
time comes when they must pay for everything that they have been led
into buying. Thoughtful people—wise people—prefer to pay “money down”
when they buy anything; and this habit of paying as they go helps them
in at least two ways. First, it saves money in their pockets, and,
secondly, it keeps them from running in debt.
Children, these men who come to your homes with great packs on their
backs always charge you double for whatever they may sell you on the “no
money down” plan—no matter what it is! That is why they are willing to
make the terms so “easy,” as they say. In the end they profit by their
schemes, and nobody else does profit by their schemes except these
peddlers. You ought to avoid them as you would a wild beast. You do not
know now, boys and girls, what a terrible thing debt is. I honestly hope
that you may never know, and if you will take the advice of older and
wiser persons I am sure you will always be free from the bondage of
debt.
Not long ago, I saw two women standing at the window of one of these “no
money down” or “hand-me-down” stores. One said to the other—
“I just believe I’ll get me a new cloak this winter. My cloak didn’t
cost but three dollars, and it is so old and shabby that I am ashamed to
wear it in the street. Look at that beauty over there in the corner.
Only ten dollars and ‘no money down’.”
“Yes;” said her companion, “but I guess the money will have to come down
sometime.”
“Oh, of course; but, you know, I won’t have to pay it all at once. I
could probably get it for fifty cents a week.”
“Well, why don’t you just save the fifty cents a week until you have
enough to pay ‘cash down’ for the cloak, and in that way you would save,
I am sure, three or four dollars; because you can buy that same cloak
for six dollars or seven dollars in cash.”
“Oh,” said the woman, “I’d never save it as I would if I had the cloak
and knew that I just had to pay for it.”
“But, Delia, the cloak would not really be yours until you had paid for
it, and I would feel kind of cheap wearing a cloak that didn’t belong to
me. If I were you I would stick to the old cloak until I could pay the
money down for a new one. That’s what I would do.”
And that is exactly what anybody should do who wants a new cloak. It is
what people should do, no matter what they want. I know a boy fifteen or
sixteen years old who had the courage and the manliness and the honesty
to wear a very shabby old overcoat all of last winter rather than buy
one on the “no money down” plan. It is his plan always to “pay as he
goes,” and be debtor to no one.
I heard the other day of a young fellow who goes two or three blocks out
of his way to avoid passing certain stores because he owes the
proprietors of those stores money that he cannot pay. That boy, I know,
is miserable night and day. Mr. Longfellow, in his “The Village
Blacksmith,” tells us that the honest old blacksmith could look “the
whole world in the face,” because he did not owe anybody anything—he was
out of debt. And boys and girls, if you are level-headed, you will fight
shy of the “no money down” plan. By choosing the “money down” plan, you
will save your self-respect and your good name.
XIX.
TOMMY’S BABY BROTHER.
For several months Deacon Tadpole’s little son, Tommy, had made constant
and repeated reference to the fact that he had no little baby brother or
sister to play with. One day, when he was feeling unusually sad over his
misfortune, he said to his father,——
“Papa, I ain’t got no little baby brother to play with—you might at
least buy me a little pony.”
“Papa can’t buy a pony, son;” said the deacon. “A pony costs too much. I
thought you wanted a little brother or sister.”
“I do,” said Tommy, “but if I can’t get what I want I’m willing to take
what I can get.”
“But, you would rather have a little brother than a pony, wouldn’t you?”
asked Mr. Tadpole.
Tommy thought awhile and then said he thought he would rather have a
little baby brother than to have a pony.
“You see,” he said, “it costs so much to keep a pony, and we would have
to build a stable for him, wouldn’t we, papa?”
“Yes,” answered his father, “and we haven’t got any room in the backyard
for a stable.”
“And we’d have to buy hay, too,” said the child.
“Yes,” said his father.
“Well, I’d rather have the little brother.”
[Illustration: “PAPA, I AINT GOT NO LITTLE BABY BROTHER TO PLAY WITH.”]
So the matter was left in abeyance until a month ago when little Tommy
was told one morning that a little brother had come to him.
He was delighted. He danced around in the hall and made such a racket on
the stairs that the nurse threatened to have him sent away. When he was
permitted to see the baby, Tommy went into ecstasies. He asked a
thousand questions about the little one, and was very anxious to know
why God had taken so long to send him down from heaven. He wanted to
kiss the baby, and cried because they wouldn’t let him hold it in his
arms.
But Tommy’s enthusiasm for the new baby began to wear off in about a
week’s time. It was always, “Sh-sh! Sh-sh! You’ll wake the baby,” or
“Tommy, you must be more quiet!” or “You can’t come in this room, now!”
In fact the little baby brother seemed to be interfering with little
Tommy’s fun to such an extent that he decided to go to his father and
see if some new arrangement could not be made. Tommy found his father in
the library. He ran to Deacon Tadpole and climbed upon his knee, and
said,——
“Papa, I don’t believe I want my little brother any more. I can’t have
any fun with him. I’ll tell you what let’s do. Let’s trade him for a
pony.”
“Oh, we couldn’t do that,” said the deacon.
Tommy was silent for a time. Then he said,——
“Well, I don’t suppose we could find anybody that would want to trade a
pony for him, but don’t you think you could trade him for a goat?”
XX.
KEEPING SCHOOL.
Every boy and girl in America ought to go to school. The public school
is one of the best institutions connected with the life of our nation.
But did you ever hear of a little girl who went to school to herself? I
have, and I want to tell you about it.
We will call her Tootsie.
There was no school house, and no teachers; nothing only just little
Tootsie; not even her dolls; just simply Tootsie sitting all alone on
the couch near the window. That was all there was to this little school,
so far as anybody could see.
But Tootsie said she had a large school, with some sixty pupils.
Sometimes she would say that her scholars had been naughty and that they
would have to stay in at recess; and then again she would say that they
had been promoted to a higher grade; she often talked to her pupils as
if they were real live people, telling them how they should stand and
how they should sit and giving them permission to be excused, and so on.
So you see it seemed in Tootsie’s mind very much more like a real school
than it could to us.
[Illustration: TOOTSIE.]
Every morning, when Tootsie’s sister would start for school, Tootsie
would watch her until she was out of sight, and then she would go and
sit down on the couch. Not having a true-true school book, she would
take her Christmas story books. At first she would only look at the
pictures and try to think what the story about them must be. Then she
would ask mama or grandma, or whoever happened to be nearest, what the
words of the picture-story were. She would then say the words of the
story over to herself, and look at the picture. Next day she would read
over the words of the same story as far as she could remember them, and
when she came to a word that she did not know, up she would jump and go
and ask some one what it was. When she had learned a story herself, she
would then talk to her sixty imaginary scholars about it, showing them
the picture and explaining the story to them just as though the children
were all there before her in her little school room.
In this way Tootsie went through one after another of her story books,
picking out the stories that had pleasing pictures.
But the nice thing of it all was that Tootsie was really learning to
read, and she did get so that she read real well; for she knew just what
she was reading about, and often, when she would find a story that was
funny, she would laugh right out even if she was at school, and then she
would find mama or grandma and read the funny part to them.
Maybe one reason why Tootsie learned so fast was because her school was
just like play to her and not like work. Of course, it is easier to play
than it is to work. But could you think of any better thing to play than
to play keeping school? Why not try it? It helped Tootsie wonderfully,
and I believe it would help many other boys and girls. What do you think
about it?
XXI.
THE SCHOOL OF THE STREET.
Little Joe, ten years old, had followed his business as a newsboy and
bootblack in Smutville for three or four years, and, of course, had
turned out to be a first-class little citizen of the street. He could
curse and swear, and drink and smoke, just the same as any old hardened
sinner.
One day, after Joe had finished one of his daily fights with some other
small boy, a kind-hearted gentleman stepped up to him and said,——
“My little man, do you go to school?”
“Nope,” said Joe.
“Do you go to Sunday-school?”
“Nope.”
“Well,” said the gentleman, “what do you expect to do when you are
grown?”
“I ain’t going to wait till I’m grown—I’m going to be a jockey; that’s
what I’m going to be.”
“How would you like to be bank cashier or president of a great bank?
Wouldn’t you like that better?”
“Yep,” said the boy, “but a poor boy can’t get no job like that—now you
know he couldn’t.”
“Oh, yes; he could if he were to prepare himself for it. But a poor boy,
and no other boy, will ever be a great business man if he is going to
live forever in the street—cursing and swearing and fighting and, it may
be, stealing, and having no higher ambition than to be a jockey.”
[Illustration: LITTLE JOE.]
“Are you a parson?” asked the boy, becoming interested.
“No, but I am interested in little boys. I am the secretary of the Young
Men’s Christian Association and we have a boys’ department. I want you
to join it. I have found out about your habits and your surroundings; I
was told of the death of your mother and father; and I made up my mind
to come and ask you to come over to the Young Men’s Christian
Association and live with us. You may continue to sell your papers and
black boots, but, you see, living with us, you can go to school at
night, and some day you will have a good education—and you might be a
bank cashier.”
Little Joe took this good man’s advice and went to live in the Y. M. C.
A. building. He did not turn out to be a bank cashier or president, but
what was better, Joe turned out to be a General Secretary of one of the
largest Y. M. C. A.’s among the colored people of this country, and in
that way has been instrumental in saving a great many other boys from
the gutter.
But Joe would never have amounted to anything if he had not been taken
away from the wicked influences of the street, and placed on the road to
higher things. The worst school in this world that any boy can go to is
the school of the street. The school of the street turns out the most
impure, the most dishonest and the most illiterate boys, and those boys
and girls who ever rise to be anything or anybody in the world are the
ones who leave the influences of the street in due time, as Little Joe
did. The street offers most of its work and most of its attractions at
night, as many boys can tell. The life of the street leads to no career
that is worth following. The good careers are made by those whom the
street has not had a chance to spoil, or by those who are taken out of
the streets before they become hopeless cases.
There is no greater error than the common notion that it is a good thing
to let a boy run the streets and become “hard” and “tough” and “have his
wits sharpened” and make “a little man” of himself, as some foolish
people say. A boy learns more downright mischief in one night in the
street than he can unlearn in the home in six months. And so, what will
the teaching of the home, the public school and the Sunday-school amount
to, if we are going to give our boys in their young and tender years the
freedom of the streets? If now and then a street boy—that is to say, a
boy hardened in the ways of the street—does get a good place, in most
cases he will lose it and fall back to the old, free life of the gutter.
The boys who succeed are the boys who get away from, or who are taken
away from, the influences of the street and who are surrounded by better
and more wholesome influences. Those who remain under the influences of
the street become in the course of time members of the great army of
beggars, tramps and criminals. It is a great pity that there should be
so many stories going the rounds which tell about newsboys and messenger
boys and so on rising to be bank clerks and telegraph-operators and so
forth. On the whole, these stories are misleading, and for the reason
that they seem to give the impression to many innocent boys and to many
thoughtless parents that the surest way to give a boy a good start in
life is to send him out into the streets to “rough it” and fight his way
to the front over beer bottles, games of chance, the race-track, and the
pool room, to the accompaniment of vulgar jokes, profane swearing and
evil associates. I repeat: The school of the street is the worst school
in the world, and the sooner boys get out of it the better it will be
for them.
XXII.
THE FOX HUNT.
Uncle Hambright used to pride himself upon his ability to invent amusing
games for the children. Sometimes he found it hard to think of anything
new, but the demands of the children were so insistent and his desire to
please them always was so intense that it often happened that Uncle
Hambright could almost make a way out of no way.
Dinner-time was fast approaching. All the morning, the half-dozen little
children, who were spending the day with Uncle Hambright at the
Sunday-school picnic, had been playing every conceivable sort of game
and had been enjoying every imaginable kind of story told in Uncle Ham’s
inimitable way,—but still the children were not satisfied. “Just one
more story,” or “Just one more game,” or “Give us your best game now for
the last before dinner,”—the children clamored one after another.
“Very well,” said Uncle Ham. “You all wait until I come back, and then
we’ll play fox-hunting.”
Uncle Ham went and told his sister and her husband, the parents of the
little children, to take the dinner-baskets far into the woods to the
place which they had already agreed upon as the spot where the
dinner-table should be spread. Coming back to the children, Uncle Ham
said,——
[Illustration: UNCLE HAMBRIGHT.]
“Now, we are ready. Come close and listen while I explain.”
With anxious hearts and eager faces, and clapping their glad hands, the
children gathered around Uncle Ham.
“Now,” said he, “I have a piece of chalk here in my hand. I am going to
make something like this wherever I go along.” While he was speaking he
made a round ring on the fence close by. He put marks for the ears and
feet and a mark for the tail. Then he continued: “This is the fox. I’m
going to make foxes along the path that I take into the woods—sometimes
these foxes may be on fences, sometimes on trees, sometimes on rocks, or
anywhere I wish to place them. Whenever you find a fox you will know
that you are on the right road, and you must be sure each time to follow
in the direction that the head of the fox points. Then you won’t lose
your way. You must give me a little start, because I must be out of
sight before you all begin the hunt. At the end of the hunt, if you
follow carefully, you will find a large present waiting for each one of
you. You may help yourself to whatever you like, and then we shall all
come back together, because, you know, I will be at the end myself
waiting for you when you come.”