CHAPTER VI.

Produced by Marcia Brooks, David Edwards and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at

http://www.pgdpcanada.net (This file was produced from

images generously made available by The Internet

Archive/American Libraries.)

OUR YOUNG FOLKS.

_An Illustrated Magazine_

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.

VOL. I. FEBRUARY, 1865. NO. II.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND

FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

DAVID MATSON.

Who of my young friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden,"

so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet? It is the story of

a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little

daughter. He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained several

years, when he was discovered, and taken off by a passing vessel. Coming

back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old

playmate,--a good man, rich and honored, and with whom she was living

happily. The poor man, unwilling to cause her pain and perplexity,

resolved not to make himself known to her, and lived and died alone. The

poem has reminded me of a very similar story of my own New England

neighborhood, which I have often heard, and which I will try to tell,

not in poetry, like Alfred Tennyson's, but in my own poor prose. I can

assure my readers that in its main particulars it is a true tale.

One bright summer morning, more than threescore years ago, David Matson,

with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood on the

bank of the river near their dwelling. They were waiting there for

Pelatiah Curtis to come round the Point with his wherry, and take the

husband and father to the Port, a few miles below. The Lively Turtle was

about to sail on a voyage to Spain, and David was to go in her as mate.

They stood there in the level morning sunshine talking cheerfully; but

had you been near enough, you could have seen tears in Anna Matson's

blue eyes, for she loved her husband, and knew there was always danger

on the sea. And David's bluff, cheery voice trembled a little now and

then, for the honest sailor loved his snug home on the Merrimack, with

the dear wife and her pretty boys. But presently the wherry came

alongside, and David was just stepping into it, when he turned back to

kiss his wife and children once more.

"In with you, man," said Pelatiah Curtis. "There's no time for kissing

and such fooleries when the tide serves."

And so they parted. Anna and the boys went back to their home, and David

to the Port, whence he sailed off in the Lively Turtle. And months

passed, autumn followed the summer, and winter the autumn, and then

spring came, and anon it was summer on the river-side, and he did not

come back. And another year passed, and then the old sailors and

fishermen shook their heads solemnly, and said that the Lively Turtle

was a lost ship, and would never come back to port. And poor Anna had

her bombazine gown dyed black, and her straw bonnet trimmed in mourning

ribbons, and thenceforth she was known only as the Widow Matson.

And how was it all this time with David himself?

Now you must know that the Mohammedan people of Algiers and Tripoli, and

Mogadore and Sallee, on the Barbary coast, had for a long time been in

the habit of fitting out galleys and armed boats to seize upon the

merchant-vessels of Christian nations, and make slaves of their crews

and passengers, just as men calling themselves Christians in America

were sending vessels to Africa to catch black slaves for their

plantations. The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these

roving sea-robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the

market-place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest.

When a boy he had learned the trade of a ship-carpenter with his father

on the Merrimack; and now he was set at work in the dock-yards. His

master, who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him. He had daily

his three loaves of bread, and when his clothing was worn out, its place

was supplied by the coarse cloth of wool and camel's hair woven by the

Berber women. Three hours before sunset he was released from work, and

Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sabbath, was a day of entire rest. Once

a year, at the season called Ramadan, he was left at leisure for a whole

week. So time went on,--days, weeks, months, and years. His dark hair

became gray. He still dreamed of his old home on the Merrimack, and of

his good Anna and the boys. He wondered whether they yet lived, what

they thought of him, and what they were doing. The hope of ever seeing

them again grew fainter and fainter, and at last nearly died out; and he

resigned himself to his fate as a slave for life.

But one day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his

own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the

ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives. The stranger

was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to

procure the liberation of slaves belonging to that government. He took

the men by the hand as they came up, and told them they were free. As

you might expect, the poor fellows were very grateful; some laughed,

some wept for joy, some shouted and sang, and threw up their caps, while

others, with David Matson among them, knelt down on the chips, and

thanked God for the great deliverance.

"This is a very affecting scene," said the Commissioner, wiping his

eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my Columbiad";--and drawing

out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe to

Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic.

David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity, by odd jobs

and work on holidays. He got a passage to Malaga, where he bought a nice

shawl for his wife and a watch for each of his boys. He then went to the

quay, where an American ship was lying just ready to sail for Boston.

Almost the first man he saw on board was Pelatiah Curtis, who had rowed

him down to the port seven years before. He found that his old neighbor

did not know him, so changed was he with his long beard and Moorish

dress, whereupon, without telling his name, he began to put questions

about his old home, and finally asked him if he knew a Mrs. Matson.

"I rather think I do," said Pelatiah; "she's my wife."

"Your wife!" cried the other. "She is mine before God and man. I am

David Matson, and she is the mother of my children."

"And mine too!" said Pelatiah. "I left her with a baby in her arms. If

you are David Matson, your right to her is outlawed; at any rate she is

mine, and I am not the man to give her up."

"God is great!" said poor David Matson, unconsciously repeating the

familiar words of Moslem submission. "His will be done. I loved her, but

I shall never see her again. Give these, with my blessing, to the good

woman and the boys," and he handed over, with a sigh, the little bundle

containing the gifts for his wife and children.

He shook hands with his rival. "Pelatiah," he said, looking back as he

left the ship, "be kind to Anna and my boys."

"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the sailor in a careless tone. He watched the

poor man passing slowly up the narrow street until out of sight. "It's a

hard case for old David," he said, helping himself to a fresh cud of

tobacco, "but I'm glad I've seen the last of him."

When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the story of her husband

and laid his gifts in her lap. She did not shriek nor faint, for she was

a healthy woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself and

wept bitterly. She lived many years after, but could never be persuaded

to wear the pretty shawl which the husband of her youth had sent as his

farewell gift. There is, however, a tradition that, in accordance with

her dying wish, it was wrapped about her poor old shoulders in the

coffin, and buried with her.

The little old bull's-eye watch, which is still in the possession of one

of her grandchildren, is now all that remains to tell of David

Matson,--the lost man.

_John G. Whittier._

[Illustration]

THE SANDPIPER.

Across the lonely beach we flit,

One little sandpiper and I,

And fast I gather, bit by bit,

The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry.

The wild waves reach their hands for it,

The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,

As up and down the beach we flit,

One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds

Scud, black and swift, across the sky:

Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds

Stand out the white light-houses high.

Almost as far as eye can reach

I see the close-reefed vessels fly,

As fast we flit along the beach,

One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,

Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;

He starts not at my fitful song,

Nor flash of fluttering drapery.

He has no thought of any wrong,

He scans me with a fearless eye;

Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,

The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,

When the loosed storm breaks furiously?

My drift-wood fire will burn so bright!

To what warm shelter canst thou fly?

I do not fear for thee, though wroth

The tempest rushes through the sky;

For are we not God's children both,

Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

_C. T._

THE PORTRAIT.

They were a family that had long outlived their grandeur,--the

Fotheringtons. And though the last generation had been kept alive with

traditions of it, the present one knew those traditions only as vague

dreams that might or might not be true, and which, either way, had

nothing at all to do with their absolute want of bread and butter, other

than as having fostered past pride they had hindered honest labor. Of

all those great colonial possessions, nothing remained to them but the

rambling old house and its well-worn hereditaments; and though various

parts even of the old mansion itself had been sold and moved away, still

much more room remained than was needed by the mother and her five

children,--the mother, whose woful condition had brought her to an utter

contempt of the ancestral Fotheringtons, the children, who yet preserved

a certain happiness in the midst of their poverty in remembering that at

their great-grandfather's wedding a hundred guests were entertained for

a week in the house after princely fashion. Not that the Fotheringtons

of to-day did not present a decent appearance;--gowns were turned, and

ribbons were pressed, and laces were darned till there was nothing left

of them; nobody knew exactly how poor they were, which perhaps made it

all the harder. The eldest daughters had been quite comfortably educated

before everything was gone; the elder son had pushed his own way through

college with but small debt, and was now studying his profession at

home, finding much reason for unhappiness, and vexed out of patience by

little Sarah's troublesome tongue and fingers, and young Tommy's musical

fancy, which occasioned him opportunity of exercising his lungs and his

shrill little voice all day long and sometimes half the night. It was

hard work for poor Frederick Fotherington to try and bury himself in the

dismal profundities of his law-books, and the quirks and catches of

their citations, when little Sarah had been planted at one end of the

great, lumbering cradle in which the first Fotherington might have been

rocked,--planted there to be entertained by Tommy, who, inserting

himself at the other end, with a hand on either side, loudly rocked the

great ark quite across the room from one end to the other, piping

meanwhile, like a boatswain's whistle, an interminable ballad of the

Fair Rosamond that his sister Margaret had taught him, without ever

dreaming of the evil use to which it would be put, and piping the more

noisily the more he guessed at Frederick's annoyance. Of the two

remaining children, Margaret taught school all day, being a visiting

governess in two families; Helen stayed at home and did the house-work

and the sewing, for the mother had been an invalid ever since her

husband's death and the birth of little Sarah, something over two years

ago.

This family had yet a trifle remaining of their mother's small dowry,

invested, as it had been by their father, in certain bridge-stock, which

paid dividends of exactly one per cent. This gave the two children

molasses on their bread; the elders ate their bread without it. They had

a cow, that fed in the paddock,--a cow lineally descended from a famous

Puritan cow of the Fotherington breed,--and from her milk once a

fortnight Helen contrived to scrape together butter enough for her

mother's morning slice of toast. They completed the inventory of their

wealth by mention of an old horse, which every day Frederick harnessed

into an antique chaise, in order that he might take his mother for an

airing.

Meantime, Helen, left with the two children alone in the house, would

scrub, and scour, and cook, and sew, and sing songs, and tell

stories,--stories of the good cheer of other days that once this barren

house afforded, half of which she believed, and many of which she made

up. Thus gradually left so much to herself and her fancies, while the

others either detested their origin or laughed at it, Miss Helen had

persuaded herself into a conviction that it was all a very fine thing,

and was sure that they had by no means come to the end of such a tether,

and that some day or other something was to turn up on it. There were

the customary legends of every rich family for her to choose from; she

might take that of the day when, after General Fotherington's funeral,

the guests, returning from the grave, found the old gentleman there

before them, storming up and down in a great pother opposite the

portrait of his wife, long dead and gone, trying to shake the panel on

which it was painted from its setting in the carved wood of the wall, so

that half the world believed that the worthy, having failed to find his

departed spouse in the spirit-land, had indignantly returned to loosen

her ghost from the painting in which some cunning artist had imprisoned

it, and the other half declared that certain deeds and records had been

concealed between the panel and the chimney-bricks, which the General

wished to dislodge; but, as no one knew of any deed or record missing,

the matter had slipped by. Or, if Miss Helen's conjecture wearied on

that, she might take the rumor concerning a Revolutionary Fotherington,

who, being a noted Tory, had seen fit both to eat his cake and have it,

and had accordingly buried a great pot of golden Spanish pieces in the

garden, and marked the spot with the young slip of a St. Michael's

pear-tree. There stood the old St. Michael's at this day, a dead trunk,

having long since ceased to bear either fruit or blossom or leaf; and

many a time had Helen persuaded Margaret and Frederick to take hoe and

shovel and go with her to dig round the roots of the old St. Michael's.

Once, after the first digging, the ancient tree surprised them by

bursting into a cloud of blossoms, and bearing a crop of golden, juicy

pears; but that was the last sign of life it ever gave, and all the gold

they ever found. There, too, had been the wide, dark-eaved garrets full

of moth-devoured relics of splendor; who knew what might be lying hidden

in those vast hair-covered chests? They were there no longer now; for

once, in an access of angry irreverence, Margaret had had them all

dragged down, and had sold their contents to the rag-man, and had made

by her speculation cloaks for themselves and a shawl for Frederick,--in

the days when gentlemen condescended to lend to their stiff costume the

graceful dignity of a dropping fold or two. But what treasures of

parchment might not have been quilted into any one of those old brocaded

petticoats? and who knew the unrevealed wealth of that trunk of yellowed

papers, that had brought only the sum of ten dollars in the rag-man's

scales? More than once Helen had started at the rap at the door, half

expecting an announcement that such and such a document had been found

among that heap of trumpery, thought to have been worthless as yellow

autumn leaves, which would install them as the possessors of such and

such domain,--raps which usually brought nothing but a shoe-bill, or a

demand for the price of the previous winter's coal. All these idle

day-dreams Helen wisely kept to herself and Tommy; for there was not

another member of the family whom they would not have aggravated out of

endurance.

It was one day drawing on towards twilight in the latter part of

November,--an afternoon of the mild, sweet weather that always comes at

that season, and always seems an accident. Frederick had driven his

mother out for her airing, and whether they had been beguiled by the

soft air into going too far, or had met with some accident or delay,

they had not yet returned. Margaret would have worried, had she herself

yet come in from her classes; as for Helen, who would have looked with a

sanguine eye at her own shroud, she was sure no harm could happen while

Frederick had the reins. So she busied herself in giving things as

cheerful an aspect as possible when everybody should have reached home.

But, in the first place, there were no coals. Helen had caught a pain in

her side picking up the very last with her fingers. Nevertheless, she

had put a bright face upon it, and, after threatening to set fire to the

house and run away by the light of it, had decided that it would be

better still to set fire to it and remain and be warmed by it, while

Margaret declared they would never know what luck was again till they

had made soap from the ashes. All that, however, had put nothing into

the coal-bin.

Yesterday, Helen had received five dollars for transferring a piece of

embroidery for a wealthy acquaintance. She had hesitated about accepting

it; it would be the first Fotherington that ever took wages,--Margaret's

pay was salary; but conscience put down pride, and she gave thanks, and

shut her purse,--and perhaps it broke the spell. In such a household one

would have thought there would of course be no question what to do with

it. On the contrary, it was a grave question. Should Tommy have a hat

and Sarah a hood? should the mother have a shawl? should it buy a

quarter of a ton of coal? And there was the lyceum! Now, in the town

where they lived, not to attend the lyceum was not to be in society;

last winter they had managed to effect one season-ticket, and the girls

had gone alternately, in a neighbor's company; this winter Frederick was

at home, and two tickets were desirable.

"Let us buy three tickets to the lyceum now," said Margaret.

"Same money would buy three turkeys," answered Helen, "and we're close

on Thanksgiving and Christmas."

"Yes, Nelly," cried Tommy, who was thoroughly tired of bread and

molasses, "buy the turkeys."

"Be quiet, child," said the mother; "you can't go to the lyceum, you

know; so don't be selfish."

"Well, which would be best," meditated Margaret, who had a way of

spending other people's money as well as her own,--"turkeys or tickets?"

"The turkeys will feast the whole family, the tickets only us three,"

said Helen.

"And then our bonnets are so shabby," said Margaret.

"Buy the turkeys, mother," pleaded Tommy, piteously.

"Hush now, Tommy! You've no voice in the debate," declared Margaret.

"You're not a member of the Lyceum Society."

"But I'm a member of the Turkey Society," urged Tommy, as a finishing

argument.

The result of the conference was, that, as Frederick's shoes were fast

approaching the character of sandals with leathern thongs, they were

surreptitiously subtracted from his bedside at night, and their place

filled by a pair of stout boots, which would carry him well into the

winter. That was yesterday. Meanwhile, to-day, no coals; no kindlings,

if there had been; last year's bill due, and dunned for; winter upon

their heels; the night growing chilly. Helen wrapped a cloak round

little Sarah, and gave her her precious black rosary to play with, and

bade Tommy take excellent care of her, and for reward he need recite

only half his usual spelling-lesson when she came back. Then she ran up

the hill behind the house,--she had reached that pass that she did not

care whether the neighbors saw or not,--and fell to gathering sticks.

Once the spot had been a wood-lot, now long since dispeopled of its

dryads; a young sapling or two had sprung up in place of the old growth,

and boughs and twigs were blown there in the storms. Helen came down

with her arms full, and trailing a couple of great branches behind her.

These, at the back door, she broke up, reserving larger pieces for the

parlor blaze, and the small bits for a good kitchen fire; and, that

done, decided to catch a couple of her choice chickens, and decapitate

them, although she shut her eyes and cut her own thumb in the course of

the procedure; these chickens, which were her special property, had been

reserved by her for some occasion, and when would there be a better than

Frederick and her mother returning from so late and unconscionable a

jaunt, and doubtless shivering with the cold? This accomplished, and

the savory stew simmering over the stove, Helen washed her hands, that

had nearly lost their patrician shape and whiteness, took off her apron,

and withdrew to the parlor. There she found that Master Tommy had, some

time since, left little Sarah to her own devices, and she had forthwith

broken the string, and scattered the beads of the rosary in every

direction upon the floor, while he stood breathing upon a distant

window-pane, and drawing pictures with his finger-tip on the groundwork

thus effected, humming the while one of his favorite tunes to himself.

"Now, Tommy," said Helen, "I'll hear your lesson."

"No, you won't," sang Tommy to his tune.

"Why not?"

"'Cause I can't say it."

"Then we'll learn it together. F-a-t-h, what does that spell?"

"Don't know," said Tommy, his finger in his mouth.

"See now if you can't remember," urged Helen, giving him each letter

phonetically.

"Don't want to know," said Tommy.

Here, little Sarah, who had heard the lesson many times, informed him

what the desired syllable ought to be, and inferred the rest herself.

Whereupon Helen proceeded to the next word. But there Tommy proved

obdurate, not only didn't know, and didn't want to know, but refused to

hear, and presented such a fearful example to his younger sister, that

his elder one had no resource but to transfer the cloak from Sarah to

Tommy, and to shut him up in the dark closet. That done, she laid the

sticks together in the grate, that was never made for sticks, and blew

up a nice blaze, that warmed and lighted all the damp and dark old room;

and, taking little Sarah in her arms, rocked and sung her away to sleep.

It was a dismal room, and had been long deserted,--possibly owing to its

former dreariness, and possibly to the report of its haunted space and

shadow; for over the chimney-piece was the panel with the pale, proud

face of old General Fotherington's dead wife painted on it, which every

midnight he was once believed to return and visit. But when other parts

of the house had fallen into hopeless disrepair, Helen had taken Tommy's

little hatchet, and had felled the lofty lilac-hedge that obscured all

the southern windows of the room, had cleaned the old paint, made good

use of a bucket of white-wash, reset the broken glass herself, and then

moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more

homelike appearance than it had worn for half a century. If the truth

were known, Helen's chief fancy for the room, shaky and insecure as both

floor and ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there

above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,--for she

had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her

shiftless father, when put to his trumps, had sold to adorn the halls of

some upstart with forefathers.

"Tommy," said she softly, when little Sarah slept, "can you tell me what

w-a-t-e-r spells?"

"No," said the stolid Tommy.

"Is it dark in there, Tommy?" asked she, half relenting, and yet half

wishing to excite his fears enough to conquer his obduracy.

"I don't know," answered Tommy, quite willing to converse, "I've got my

eyes shut."

"Very well," said Helen, and went on with her low lullaby, which Tommy

stoutly, but ineffectually, attempted to join. The wind was beginning to

rise and clatter at the casements, and sing its own tune round the

gable-corner; the dark had quite fallen, and the room was gloomy and

vivid by turns with the fitful flashes of the firelight.

"Nelly," said Tommy, wheedlingly, and shaking the lock of the closet, "I

wish you'd give me some. I'm real sirsty."

"Some what?" asked Helen, very willing to compromise.

"Some w-a-t-e-r. I'm so sirsty."

"Pronounce it, Tommy, and you shall come out and have some."

"I don't know how to," was the atrocious answer.

"And some chicken-broth as well as some water, if you'll only tell me

what those five letters spell."

But there was nothing but silence in reply from Tommy, and Helen resumed

her song.

"It's real damp in here," said Tommy pretty soon, beginning to cough

furiously. "I'm getting a stiff neck."

"You have one already," said Helen; and, laying little Sarah down, she

went to put on her apron, to attend to her stew, to bring in the cloth

and the tray of dishes, and to spread the supper-table in the warm

room,--set out near the fire, the worn white linen, the sparse silver,

the rare and gay old china, of which they used every day what would have

decked out a modern drawing-room, all clean and glittering as if viands

were various and plentiful as color and sparkle. That all done, again

Cinderella sat down before the fire.

"'Elen!" said Tommy then in a muffled tone, having given the door

another premonitory shake, and as if his darkness induced metaphysics,

"how many yesterdays have there been and how many to-morrows are there

going to be?"

"I'll tell you, Tommy, when you tell me what those letters spell." And

again in response there was silence on the part of the closet, broken by

occasional kicks that shook the door, and even caused the old panel to

stir in its worm-eaten setting of oaken wainscot. As Helen looked up

after the silence that followed Tommy's demonstration, while the panel

yet slightly stirred, it seemed to her that a shiver ran over the lady

painted there; she remembered the ghost-stories, it made a shiver run

over her herself. She rose and went to look out of the window and see if

there were no sign of the chaise,--it was hardly time for Margaret yet.

Then she returned, and her fascinated eyes caught again the eyes of the

old Colonial Governor's lady, that lady who was her mother many

generations removed. It was a pale face painted there, as if the painter

had seen it only by moonlight,--dark eyes in which the lustre lay with

an effect of restless, searching radiance, and the delicate aquiline

nose and thin and haughty lip spoke of a woman capable of acting a

secret in her day, and keeping it long after, Helen thought. Whenever

she caught the eye of that portrait,--and so curiously well was it

painted, that she never looked at it without catching the eye,--the lady

shadowed there seemed to return a glance of defiance, and her lip wore a

curve of triumph. She kept one hand clasped over her crimson vest

embroidered with its golden tangles and purfles; perhaps in the other

her secret hung hidden out of sight. Now, in the dancing firelight, the

ruby that lay on the dame's forehead seemed to flicker like a live jewel

in Helen's eyes; as the flame rose, her breast heaved too, a color

rested on the pale cheek; as it fell, Helen fancied that she sighed;

with all the quick lightning and darkening of the crackling fire the

glance of the eyes shifted to and fro, the shadows round the mouth

wavered; now they lowered, and now they smiled, and now the parted lips

seemed just about to speak.

[Illustration]

Helen started to her feet in a tremble: no wonder Tommy hated to stay in

the closet; she sprung to let him out. And just then the old horse

stopped at the gate, with the sound of Frederick's voice. Helen forgot

Tommy, flung open the door to Frederick, and ran out to the gate as he

appeared coming in with his mother in his arms, and laid her on the

sofa. Helen only stayed to lead the old horse into the barn, and

directly afterward was blowing up the blaze in the parlor, and calling

the delinquents to account. They had driven into Orton Wood, Frederick

said, and there the chaise broke down; and it being in an open space, he

had kindled a great fire to keep his mother warm, while he tied the

springs up as he might, which it took a weary while to do, and he had

brought home a chaiseful of fagots that nobody owned, and was cherishing

visions of future predatory excursions in the same direction.

Immediately as he said it, wheeling his mother's sofa up to the hearth

and rubbing his hands before it, a little occurrence took place that

rendered his invaluable chaiseful of fagots of a moment ago the mere

chips of this one, for it had changed the earth under all their feet.

Margaret was just coming in at the door; Master Tommy, hearing the

incoming and voices and confusion, and desiring to make a part of it,

called out from his den, "'Elen! let me out, let me out, I say. W-a-wa,

t-e-r, water. You know the Docker said I needed plenty of fresh air.

'Elen! let me out,--the Docker said I was a pecoolar child and needed

pecoolar treatment!" And before any one could reach him, the belligerent

boy gave the old door such an astonishing series of kicks and thrusts,

that the lock broke from its mouldering frame; the worn floor shook and

creaked; a bit of the plastering dropped from above; the door and Tommy

fell out together; and the old portrait of the pale proud lady started,

and trembled, and pitched downward, caught and split from end to end

upon the handle of the great steel poker. And suddenly, with a wild

exclamation of inextinguishable certainty and exultation, Helen held up

her apron to catch what came rattling and ringing and racing and

jingling, as they tumbled down together into it, and danced a measure

over the floor with the naughty nuns of the broken rosary-beads that

they surprised in their mad escape from the bondage of a hundred years.

The pale and languid mother started up, resting eagerly on her elbow;

Margaret fell upon the floor, catching up the guineas and doubloons as

if she were crazy, and kissing them in a transport; Tommy began to

discover what his pockets were made for, straightway. Meanwhile

Frederick sprung upon a chair and went to pulling out the thready

remnants of the decaying bags in which the gold had been enclosed; Helen

still held her apron up, thanking fortune it was so large; and little

Sarah, waking, began to creep down and toddle along to hold her apron

too, crowing and capering at the strange scene, the glitter, and the

joy. At last there were no more,--there was only the memorandum on a bit

of parchment, telling the story of the sealing of the bags by the old

Tory ancestor in troublous times, and their destined concealment behind

his wife's portrait.

"Here are more thousands of dollars than you have fingers and toes,

little Cinderella!" cried Frederick. "You can afford to wear glass

slippers for the rest of your life! It is all your godmother's doings,

and she was a fine old English gentlewoman, who acted wisely and for the

benefit of posterity. Never say I disbelieved in my ancestors!"

"O yes," said Helen, "all very fine now. For my part, I was sure of it

long ago!"

"I sha'n't dare to close an eye to-night for fear of burglars!" cried

Margaret. "That I sha'n't!"

"Now mother, mother dear," exclaimed Helen, coming and taking her

mother's thin hand and plunging it deep down among the sliding coins

that were tearing down her strong apron with their weight, "'tis almost

as much as I can carry! Tommy may go to school now, and you can have the

Doctor and get well, and what can't we, what sha'n't we have! Margaret

needn't teach any more,--we can have the house made over, we can keep a

girl,--and gold at 240!--O, I think I shall lose my wits!" And down it

would all have gone upon the floor but for Frederick.

"Don't, Nelly," said he, "we shall want them,--the guineas I mean, of

course not the wits. What use have they been to us all these years,

except to make gowns out of cobwebs and dinners out of dew? Now let us

count our wealth, and then--"

"No," said Nelly, "my stew will be good for nothing if we wait, and

mother is famished. We're comfortable, we know; if we're rich, we can

find it out after supper. I wish I hadn't killed my cropple-crowns. Now

Tommy, Tommy Fotherington, you never need spell water again as long as

you live, for it was that blessed word that put Tommy in the closet,

that kicked the door, that shook the house, that loosened the panel,

that poured out the guineas, that made the starving Fotheringtons a

richer and happier family than ever sat round the old Tory Governor's

table!"

_Harriet E. Prescott._

FARMING FOR BOYS.

No. II.

(_Continued from page 66._)

Tony King was particularly struck with the improvement in the

coffee-mill, for his knuckles had received a full share of the general

skinning; and when the job was done, turning to the old man, he said,

"O, Uncle Benny, won't you teach me to do such things before you do all

the odd jobs about the farm?"

"Never fear that all the odd jobs about any farm, and especially such a

one as this, are going to be done in a hurry," he replied, laying his

hand gently on Tony's head. "If the owner of a farm, I don't care how

small it may be, would only take time to go over his premises, to

examine his fences, his gates, his barn-yard, his stables, his pig-pen,

his fields, his ditches, his wagons, his harness, his tools, indeed,

whatever he owns, he would find more odd jobs to be done than he has any

idea of. Why, my boy, all farming is made up of odd jobs. When Mr.

Spangler gets through with planting potatoes, don't he say, 'Well, that

job's done.' Didn't I hear you say yesterday, when you had hauled out

the last load of manure from the barn-yard,--it was pretty wet and muddy

at the bottom, you remember,--'There's a dirty job done!' And so it is,

Tony, with everything about a farm,--it is all jobbing; and as long as

one continues to farm, so long will there be jobs to do. The great point

is to finish each one up exactly at the time when it ought to be done."

"But that was not what I meant, Uncle Benny," said Tony. "I meant such

jobs as you do with your tools."

"Well," replied the old man, "it is pretty much the same thing there. A

farmer going out to hunt up such jobs as you speak of will find

directly, that, if he has no tool-chest on hand, his first business will

be to get one. Do you see the split in that board? Whoever drove that

nail should have had a gimlet to bore a hole; but having none, he has

spoiled the looks of his whole job. So it is with everything when a

farmer undertakes any work without proper tools. Spoiling it is quite as

bad as letting it alone.

"You see, Tony," he continued, "that a good job can't be done with bad

tools,--that split shows it. No doubt the man who made it excused

himself by saying that he was never intended for a mechanic. But that

was a poor excuse for being without a gimlet. Every man or boy has some

mechanical ability, and exercising that ability, with first-rate tools,

will generally make him a good workman. Now as to what odd jobs a farmer

will find to do. He steps out into the garden, and finds a post of his

grape-arbor rotted off, and the whole trellis out of shape. It should be

propped up immediately. If he have hot-beds, ten to one there are two or

three panes out, and if they are not put in at once, the next hard frost

will destroy all his plants. There is a fruit-tree covered with

caterpillars' nests, another with cocoons, containing what will some day

be butterflies, then eggs, then worms. The barn-yard gate has a broken

hinge, the barn-door has lost its latch, the wheelbarrow wants a nail or

two to keep the tire from dropping off, and there is the best hoe with a

broken handle. So it goes, let him look where he may.

"Now come out into the yard," continued the old man, "and let us see

what jobs there are yet to do."

He led the way to the wood-shed. There was an axe with only half a

handle; Tony knew it well, for he had chopped many a stick with the

crippled tool. Uncle Benny pointed to it with the screw-driver that he

still carried in his hand, but said nothing, as he observed that Tony

seemed confounded at being so immediately brought face to face with what

he knew should have been done six months before. Turning round, but not

moving a step, he again pointed with his screw-driver to the wooden

gutter which once caught the rain-water from the shed-roof and

discharged it into a hogshead near by. The brackets from one end of the

gutter had rotted off, and it hung down on the pig-pen fence,

discharging into the pen instead of into the hogshead. The latter had

lost its lower hoops; they were rusting on the ground, fairly grown over

with grass. The old man pointed at each in turn; and, looking into

Tony's face, found that he had crammed his hands into his pockets, and

was beginning to smile, but said nothing. Just turning about, he again

pointed to where a board had fallen from the farther end of the shed,

leaving an opening into the pig-pen beyond. While both were looking at

the open place, three well-grown pigs, hearing somebody in the shed,

rose upon their hinder feet, and thrust their muddy faces into view,

thinking that something good was coming. The old man continued silent,

looked at the pigs, and then at Tony. Tony was evidently confused, and

worked his hands about in his pockets, but never looked into the old

man's face. It was almost too much for him.

"Come," said Uncle Benny, "let us try another place," and as they were

moving off, Tony stumbled over a new iron-bound maul, which lay on the

ground, the handle having been broken short off in its socket.

"How the jobs turn up!" observed Uncle Benny. "How many have we here?"

"I should say about five," replied Tony.

"Yes," added the old man, "and all within sight of each other."

As they approached the hog-pen, they encountered a strong smell, and

there was a prodigious running and tumbling among the animals. They

looked over the shabby fence that formed the pen.

"Any jobs here, Tony?" inquired Uncle Benny.

Tony made no answer, but looked round to see if the old man kept his

screw-driver, half hoping that, if he found anything to point at, he

would have nothing to point with. But raising the tool, he poised it in

the direction of the feeding-trough. Tony could not avert his eyes, but,

directing them toward the spot at which the old man pointed, he

discovered a hole in the bottom of the trough, through which nearly half

of every feeding must have leaked out into the ground underneath. He had

never noticed it until now.

"There's another job for you, Tony," he said. "There's not only neglect,

but waste. The more hogs a man keeps in this way, the more money he will

lose. Look at the condition of this pen,--all mud, not a dry spot for

the pigs to fly to. Even the sheds under which they are to sleep are

three inches deep in slush. Don't you see that broken gutter from the

wood-shed delivers the rain right into their sleeping-place, and you

know what rains we have had lately? Ah, Tony," continued the old man,

"pigs can't thrive that are kept in this condition. They want a dry

place; they must have it, or they will get sick, and a sick pig is about

the poorest stock a farmer can have. Water or mud is well enough for

them to wallow in occasionally, but not mud all the time."

"But I thought pigs did best when they had plenty of dirt about them,

they like it so," replied Tony.

"You are mistaken, Tony," rejoined Uncle Benny. "A pig is by nature a

cleanly animal; it is only the way in which some people keep him that

makes him a filthy one. Give him the means to keep himself clean, and he

will be clean always,--a dry shed with dry litter to sleep in, and a pen

where he can keep out of the mud when he wants to, and he will never be

dirty, while what he eats will stick to his ribs. These pigs can't grow

in this condition. Then look at the waste of manure! Why, there are

those thirty odd loads of corn-stalks, and a great pile of sweet-potato

vines, that Mr. Spangler has in the field, all which he says he is going

to burn out of his way, as soon as they get dry enough. They should be

brought here and put in this mud and water, to absorb the liquid manure

that is now soaking into the ground, or evaporating before the sun. This

liquor is the best part of the manure, its heart and life; for nothing

can be called food for plants until it is brought into a liquid

condition. I never saw greater waste than this. Then there is that deep

bed of muck, not three hundred yards off,--not a load of it ready to

come here. Besides, if the corn-stalks and potato-vines were tumbled in,

they would make the whole pen dry, keep the hogs clean, and enable them

to grow. But I suppose Mr. Spangler thinks it too much trouble to do

these little things.

"Now, Tony," he continued, "you can't do anything profitable or useful

in this world without some trouble; and as you are to be a farmer, the

sooner you learn this lesson, the more easily you will get along. But

who is to do that job of putting a stopper over this hole in the trough,

you or I?"

"I'll do it to-morrow, Uncle Benny," replied Tony.

"To-morrow? To-morrow won't do for me. A job that needs doing as badly

as this, should be done at once; it's one thing less to think of, don't

you know that? Besides, didn't you want to do some jobs?" rejoined Uncle

Benny.

Tony had never been accustomed to this way of hurrying up things; but he

felt himself fairly cornered. He didn't care much about the dirt in the

trough; it was the unusual promptness of the demand that staggered him.

"Run to the house and ask Mrs. Spangler to give you an old tin cup or

kettle,--anything to make a patch big enough to cover this hole," said

Uncle Benny; "and bring that hammer and a dozen lath-nails you'll find

in my tool-chest."

Tony did as he was directed, and brought back a quart mug with a small

hole in the bottom, which a single drop of solder would have made tight

as ever.

"I guess the swill is worth more to the hogs than even a new mug would

be, Tony," said Uncle Benny, holding up the mug to the sun, to see how

small a defect had condemned it. Then, knocking out the bottom, and

straightening it with his hammer on the post, he told Tony to step over

the fence into the trough. It was not a very nice place to get into, but

over he went, and, the nails and hammer being handed to him, he covered

the hole with the tin, put in the nails round the edge, hammered the

edge flat, and in ten minutes all was done.

"There, Tony, is a six months' leak stopped in ten minutes. Nothing like

the present time,--will you remember that? Never put off till to-morrow

what can be done to-day. Now run back with the hammer and these two

nails, and put this remnant of the tin cup in my chest; you'll want it

for something one of these days. Always save the pieces, Tony."

Tony was really surprised, not only how easily, but how quickly, the

repair had been made. Moreover, he felt gratified at being the

mechanic; it was the first time he had been allowed to handle any of

Uncle Benny's nice assortment of tools, and he liked the old man better

than ever. But who is there that does not himself feel inwardly

gratified at conferring a new pleasure on a child? Such little

contributions to juvenile happiness are neither barren of fruit nor

unproductive of grateful returns. They cost nothing, yet they have rich

rewards in the memory of the young. They make beautiful and lasting

impressions. The gentle heart that makes a child happy will never be

forgotten. No matter how small the gift may be, a kind word, a little

toy, even a flower, will sometimes touch a chord within the heart, whose

soft vibrations will continue so long as memory lasts.

This survey of Mr. Spangler's premises was continued by Uncle Benny and

Tony until the latter began to change his opinion about the former doing

up the odd jobs so thoroughly that none would be left for him. He saw

there was enough for both of them. The old man pointed out a great many

that he had never even noticed; but when his attention was called to

them, he saw the necessity of having them done. Indeed, he had a notion

that everything about the place wanted fixing up. Besides, Uncle Benny

took pains to explain the reasons why such and such things were

required, answering the boy's numerous questions, and imparting to him a

knowledge of farm wants and farm processes, of which no one had ever

spoken to him.

The fact was, Uncle Benny was one of the few men we meet with,

especially on a farm, who think the boys ought to have a chance. His

opinion was, that farmers seldom educate their children properly for the

duties they know they will some day be called on to perform,--that is,

they don't reason with them, and explain to the boy's understanding the

merit or necessity of an operation. His idea was, that too many boys on

a farm were merely allowed to grow up. They were fed, clothed, sent to

school, then put to work, but not properly taught how and why the work

should be done. Hence, when they came to set up for themselves, they had

a multitude of things to learn which they ought to have learned from a

father.

He used to say, that boys do only what they see the men do,--that all

they learned was by imitation. They had no opportunity allowed them

while at home of testing their own resources and energies by some little

independent farming operation of their own. When at school, the teacher

drills them thoroughly; when at home, they receive no such close

training. The teacher gives the boy a sum to do, and lets him work it

out of his own resources. But a farmer rarely gives a boy the use of a

half-acre of land, on which he may raise corn or cabbages or roots for

himself, though knowing that the boy could plant and cultivate it if he

were allowed a chance, and that such a privilege would be likely to

develop his energies, and show of what stuff he was made. The notion was

too common that a boy was all work, and had no ambition,--whatever work

was in him must be got out of him, just as if he had been a horse or an

ox. It was known that at some time he must take care of himself, yet he

was not properly taught how to do so. The stimulant of letting him have

a small piece of ground for his own profit was too rarely held out to

him. No one knew what such a privilege might do for an energetic boy. If

he failed the first year, he would be likely to know the cause of

failure, and avoid it in the future. If he succeeded, he would feel an

honest pride,--the very kind of pride which every father should

encourage in his child. And that success would stimulate him to try

again and do still better. Both failure and success would be very likely

to set him to reading about what others had done in the same line,--how

they had prospered,--and thus a fund of knowledge would be acquired for

him to draw upon whenever he set up for himself.

As before mentioned, Mr. Spangler made a strange departure from his rule

of plenty of work for everybody, by quitting home on a wet day and going

to the tavern rendezvous, to hear what the neighbors had to say, leaving

no work marked out for his "hands" to do in his absence. These wet days

were therefore holidays for the boys. All three were pretty good

readers; and so they usually borrowed a book from Uncle Benny, and went,

on such occasions, into the barn, and lay down on the hay to read. Uncle

Benny recommended to them that one should read aloud to the others, so

as to improve his voice, and enable each to set the other right, if a

mistake were made. When the weather became too cold for these readings

in the barn, they went into the kitchen, there being no other room in

the house in which a fire was kept up.

One November morning there came on a heavy rain that lasted all day,

with an east wind so cold as to make the barn a very uncomfortable

reading-room, so the boys adjourned to the kitchen, and huddled around

the stove. But as the rain drove all the rest of the family into the

house, there was so great an assembly in what was, at the best of times,

a very small room, that Mrs. Spangler became quite irritable at having

so many in her way. She was that day trying out lard, and wanted the

stove all to herself. In her ill-humor at being so crowded up, she

managed to let the lard burn; and at this she became so vexed that she

told Tony, with Joe and Bill, to go out,--she couldn't have them in her

way any longer.

They accordingly went back to the barn, and lay down in the hay,

covering themselves with a couple of horse-blankets. These were not very

nice things for one to have so close to his nose, as they smelt

prodigiously strong of the horses; but farmers' boys are used to such

perfumes, and they kept the little fellows so warm that they were quite

glad to escape the crowd and discomfort of the kitchen. These became at

last so great, that even Uncle Benny, seeing that he was not wanted

there just then, got up and went over to the barn also. There he found

Tony reading aloud from a newspaper that had been left at the house by a

pedler a few days before. Tony was reading about the election, and how

much one set of our people were rejoicing over the result.

As Uncle Benny came into the barn, Tony called out, "Uncle Benny, the

President's elected,--did you know it?"

"O yes, I knew it,--but what President do you mean?" responded Uncle

Benny.

"Why, President Lincoln. He was a poor boy like me, you know."

"But can you tell me, boys," asked Uncle Benny, "who will be President

in the year 1900?"

"Dear me, Uncle Benny," replied Tony, "how should we know?"

"Well, I can tell," responded the old man.

The boys were a good deal surprised at hearing these words, and at once

sat up in the hay.

"Who is he?" demanded Tony.

"Well," replied Uncle Benny, "he is a boy of about your age, say fifteen

or sixteen years old."

"Does he live about here?" inquired Bill, the youngest of the party.

"Well, I can't say as to that," answered the old man, "but he lives

somewhere on a farm. He is a steady, thoughtful boy, fond of reading,

and has no bad habits; he never swears, or tells a lie, or disobeys his

parents."

"Do you think he is as poor as we are, Uncle Benny?" said Joe.

"Most likely he is," responded the old man. "His parents must be in

moderate circumstances. But poverty is no disgrace, Joe. On the

contrary, there is much in poverty to be thankful for, as there is

nothing that so certainly proves what stuff a boy is made of, as being

born poor, and from that point working his way up to a position in

society, as well as to wealth."

"But do poor boys ever work their way up?" inquired Tony.

"Ay, many times indeed," said Uncle Benny. "But a lazy, idle boy can do

no such thing,--he only makes a lazy man. Boys that grow up in idleness

become vagabonds. It is from these that all our thieves and paupers

come. Men who are successful have always been industrious. Many of the

great men in all countries were born poorer than either of you, for they

had neither money nor friends. President Lincoln, when he was of your

age, was hardly able to read, and had no such chance for schooling as

you have had. President Van Buren was so poor, when a boy, that he was

obliged to study his books by the light of pine knots which he gathered

in the woods. President Lincoln for a long time split rails at

twenty-five cents a hundred. But see how they got up in the world."

"But I thought the Presidents were all lawyers," said Tony.

"Well, suppose they were," replied Uncle Benny; "they were boys first. I

tell you that every poor boy in this country has a great prospect before

him, if he will only improve it as these men improved theirs. Everything

depends on himself, on his own industry, sobriety, and honesty. They

can't all be Presidents, but if they should all happen to try for being

one, they will be very likely to reach a high mark. Most of the rich men

of our country began without a dollar. You have as fair a chance of

becoming rich or distinguished as many of them have had. You must always

aim high."

"But how are we to make a beginning?" demanded Joe.

"I'll tell you," replied Uncle Benny. But at that moment a loud blast

from the tin horn summoned them to dinner. They all thought it the

sweetest music they had heard that day, and hurried off to the house.

_Author of "Ten Acres Enough."_

(_To be continued._)

SNOW-FANCIES.

O snow! flying hither

And hurrying thither,

Here, there, through the air,--you never care whither,--

Do you see me here sitting,

A-knitting, a-knitting,

And wishing myself with you breezily flitting,

Like any wild elf?

Mother sits there a-rocking,

And watches my stocking;

Well, I know I am slow, and she thinks it is shocking:

While Lizzie and Sally,

They twit me, and rally,--

My thoughts, half asleep, chase your flakes to the valley,

A drowsy white heap.

Dear Sally and Lizzie,

My sisters so busy,

In and out, all about, you make my head dizzy;

You hasten, you flutter,

You spin, you churn butter,

You sew the long seams; while I cannot utter

One word of my dreams.

Lo! light as a feather,

The merry flakes gather

In rifts and in drifts, glad enough of cold weather;

Gay throngs interlacing,

On the slant roofs embracing,

They slip and they fall! down, down they are racing,

I after them all!

One large flake advances;

'Tis a white steed that prances;

At the bits as he flits, how he foams, like my fancies!

Up softly I sidle

From where I sit idle,--

I snatch, as it flies, at the gossamer bridle,--

I'm mounted, I rise!

Away we are bounding,

No hoof-note resounding,

Still as light is our flight through the armies surrounding;

No murmur, no rustling,

Though millions are jostling;

A host is in camp, but you heard neither bustling

Nor bugle, nor tramp.

Yet the truce-flag is lifted;

Unfurled it lies drifted

Over hill, over rill, where its snow could be sifted;

And now I'm returning

To parley concerning

The beautiful cause that awakened my yearning,--

The trouble that was.

Ho! ho! a swift fairy,--

A pearl-shallop airy!

I am caught, quick as thought! fleece-muffled and hairy,

Her grim boatman tightens

His grasp, till it frightens

Me, half, as we sail to the east where it brightens,

On waves of the gale.

White, dimpled, and winning,

The fairy sits spinning,

From her hair, floating fair, coils of cable beginning,

Her shallop to tether

In stress of bleak weather,

While the boatman and I, wrapped in ermine together,

Drift on through the sky.

Stay! the boat is upsetting!

My fairy, forgetting

Her coil and her toil, to escape from a wetting

Has now the one notion:

Below boils the ocean!

I scream,--I am heard,--up, in arrowy motion,

I'm borne by a bird,--

A gray eagle!--over

The seas flies the rover;

And I ride as his guide, a new world to discover.

He bears me on, steady,

Through whirlwind and eddy;

I cling to his neck, and he ever is ready

To pause at my beck.

White doves through the ether

Come flocking together.

How they crowd to me, proud if I smooth one soft feather!

O what is the matter?

They startle,--they scatter!

On the wet window-pane hear my eagle's claws clatter!--

The snow's turned to rain!

Tears, why will you glitter?

My sisters they titter,

And there from her chair mother calls, "What a knitter!"

My ball pussy twitches,--

I've dropped twenty stitches,--

My needles all rust,--they will earn me no riches;

Alas if they must!

_Lucy Larcom._

THE BABY OF THE REGIMENT.

[Illustration]

We were in our winter camp on Port Royal Island, South Carolina. It was

a lovely November morning, soft and spring-like; the mocking-birds were

singing, and the cotton-fields still white with fleecy pods. Morning

drill was over, the men were cleaning their guns and singing very

happily; the officers were in their tents, reading still more happily

their letters just arrived from home. Suddenly I heard a knock at my

tent-door, and the latch clicked. It was the only latch in camp, and I

was very proud of it, and the officers always clicked it as loudly as

possible, in order to gratify my feelings. The door opened, and the

Quartermaster thrust in the most beaming face I ever saw.

"Colonel," said he, "there are great news for the regiment. My wife and

baby are coming by the next steamer!"

"Baby!" said I, in amazement. "Q. M., you are beside yourself." (We

always called the Quartermaster Q. M. for shortness.) "There was a pass

sent to your wife, but nothing was ever said about a baby. Baby indeed!"

"But the baby was included in the pass," replied the triumphant

father-of-a-family. "You don't suppose my wife would come down here

without her baby. Besides, the pass itself permits her to bring

necessary baggage, and is not a baby six months old necessary baggage?"

"But, my dear fellow," said I, rather anxiously, "how can you make the

dear little darling comfortable in a tent, amidst these rigors of a

South Carolina winter, when it is uncomfortably hot for drill at noon,

and ice forms by your bedside at night?"

"Trust me for that," said the delighted papa, and went off whistling. I

could hear him telling the same news to three others, at least, before

he got to his own tent.

That day the preparations began, and soon his abode was a wonder of

comfort. There were posts and rafters, and a raised floor, and a great

chimney, and a door with hinges,--every luxury except a latch, and that

he could not have, for mine was the last that could be purchased. One of

the regimental carpenters was employed to make a cradle, and another to

make a bedstead high enough for the cradle to go under. Then there must

be a bit of red carpet beside the bedstead, and thus the progress of

splendor went on. The wife of one of the colored sergeants was engaged

to act as nursery-maid. She was a very respectable young woman; the only

objection to her being that she smoked a pipe. But we thought that

perhaps Baby might not dislike tobacco; and if she did, she would have

excellent opportunities to break the pipe in pieces.

In due time the steamer arrived, and Baby and her mother were among the

passengers. The little thing was soon settled in her new cradle, and

slept in it as if she had never known any other. The sergeant's wife

soon had her on exhibition through the neighborhood, and from that time

forward she was quite a little queen among us. She had sweet blue eyes

and pretty brown hair, with round, dimpled cheeks, and that perfect

dignity which is so beautiful in a baby. She hardly ever cried, and was

not at all timid. She would go to anybody, and yet did not encourage any

romping from any but the most intimate friends. She always wore a warm

long-sleeved scarlet cloak with a hood, and in this costume was carried,

or "toted," as the colored soldiers said, all about the camp. At

"guard-mounting" in the morning, when the men who are to go on

guard-duty for the day are drawn up to be inspected, Baby was always

there, to help inspect them. She did not say much, but she eyed them

very closely, and seemed fully to appreciate their bright buttons. Then

the Officer-of-the-Day, who appears at guard-mounting with his sword and

sash, and comes afterwards to the Colonel's tent for orders, would come

and speak to Baby on his way, and receive her orders first. When the

time came for drill, she was usually present to watch the troops; and

when the drum beat for dinner, she liked to see the long row of men in

each company march up to the cook-house, in single file, each with tin

cup and plate. During the day, in pleasant weather, she might be seen in

her nurse's arms, about the company streets, the centre of an admiring

circle, her scarlet costume looking very pretty amidst the shining black

cheeks and neat blue uniforms of the soldiers. At "dress-parade," just

before sunset, she was always an attendant. As I stood before the

regiment, I could see the little spot of red out of the corner of my

eye, at one end of the long line of men; and I looked with so much

interest for her small person, that, instead of saying at the proper

time, "Attention, Battalion! Shoulder arms!"--it is a wonder that I did

not say, "Shoulder babies!"

Our little lady was very impartial, and distributed her kind looks to

everybody. She had not the slightest prejudice against color, and did

not care in the least whether her particular friends were black or

white. Her especial favorites, I think, were the little drummer-boys,

who were not my favorites by any means, for they were a roguish set of

little scamps, and gave more trouble than all the grown men in the

regiment. I think Annie liked them because they were small, and made a

noise, and had red caps like her hood, and red facings on their jackets,

and also because they occasionally stood on their heads for her

amusement. After dress-parade the whole drum-corps would march to the

great flag-staff, and wait till just sunset-time, when they would beat

on their drums what is called "the retreat," and then the flag would be

hauled down,--a great festival for Annie. Sometimes the Sergeant-Major

would wrap her in the great folds of the flag, after it was taken down,

and she would peep out very prettily from amidst the stars and stripes,

like a little new-born Goddess of Liberty.

[Illustration]

About once a month, some inspecting officer was sent to the camp by the

general in command, to see to the condition of everything in the

regiment, from bayonets to buttons. It was usually a long and tiresome

process, and, when everything else was done, I used to tell the officer

that I had one thing more for him to inspect, which was peculiar to our

regiment. Then I would send for Baby to be exhibited, and I never saw an

inspecting officer, old or young, who did not look pleased at the

sudden appearance of the little, fresh, smiling creature,--a flower in

the midst of war. And Annie in her turn would look at them, with the

true baby dignity in her face,--that deep, earnest look which babies

often have, and which people think so wonderful when Raphael paints it,

although they might often see just the same expression in the faces of

their own darlings at home.

Meanwhile Annie seemed to like the camp style of housekeeping very much.

Her father's tent was double, and he used the front apartment for his

office, and the inner room for parlor and bedroom; while the nurse had a

separate tent and wash-room behind all. I remember that, the first time

I went there in the evening, it was to borrow some writing-paper; and

while Baby's mother was hunting for it in the front tent, I heard a

great cooing and murmuring in the inner room. I asked if Annie was still

awake, and her mother told me to go in and see. Pushing aside the canvas

door, I entered. No sign of anybody was to be seen; but a variety of

soft little happy noises seemed to come from some unseen corner. Mrs. C.

came quietly in, pulled away the counterpane of her own bed, and drew

out the rough cradle where lay the little damsel, perfectly happy, and

wider awake than anything but a baby possibly can be. She looked as if

the seclusion of a dozen family bedsteads would not be enough to

discourage her spirits, and I saw that camp life was likely to suit her

very well.

A tent can be kept very warm, for it is merely a house with a thinner

wall than usual; and I do not think that Baby felt the cold much more

than if she had been at home that winter. The great trouble is, that a

tent-chimney, not being built very high, is apt to smoke when the wind

is in a certain direction; and when that happens, it is hardly possible

to stay inside. So we used to build the chimneys of some tents on the

east side, and those of others on the west, and thus some of the tents

were always comfortable. I have seen Baby's mother running in a hard

rain, with little Red-Riding-Hood in her arms, to take refuge with the

Adjutant's wife, when every other abode was full of smoke; and I must

admit that there were one or two windy days that season, when nobody

could really keep warm, and Annie had to remain ignominiously in her

cradle, with as many clothes on as possible, for almost the whole time.

The Quartermaster's tent was very attractive to us in the evening. I

remember that once, on passing near it after nightfall, I heard our

Major's fine voice singing Methodist hymns within, and Mrs. C.'s sweet

tones chiming in. So I peeped through the outer door. The fire was

burning very pleasantly in the inner tent, and the scrap of new red

carpet made the floor look quite magnificent. The Major sat on a box,

our surgeon on a stool; "Q. M." and his wife, and the Adjutant's wife,

and one of the captains, were all sitting on the bed, singing as well as

they knew how; and the baby was under the bed. Baby had retired for the

night, was overshadowed, suppressed, sat upon; the singing went on, and

the little thing had wandered away into her own land of dreams, nearer

to heaven, perhaps, than any pitch their voices could attain. I went in,

and joined the party. Presently the music stopped, and another officer

was sent for, to sing some particular song. At this pause the invisible

innocent waked a little, and began to cluck and coo.

"It's the kitten," exclaimed somebody.

"It's my baby!" exclaimed Mrs. C. triumphantly, in that tone of

unfailing personal pride which belongs to young mothers.

The people all got up from the bed for a moment, while Annie was pulled

from beneath, wide awake and placid as usual; and she sat in one lap or

another during the rest of the concert, sometimes winking at the candle,

but usually listening to the songs, with a calm and critical expression,

as if she could make as much noise as any of them, whenever she saw fit

to try. Not a sound did she make, however, except one little soft

sneeze, which led to an immediate flood-tide of red shawl, covering

every part of her but the forehead. After a little while, I hinted that

the concert had better be ended, because I knew from observation that

the small damsel had carefully watched a regimental inspection and a

brigade drill on that day, and that an interval of repose was certainly

necessary.

Annie did not long remain the only baby in camp. One day, on going out

to the stables to look at a horse, I heard a sound of baby-talk,

addressed by some man to a child near by, and, looking round the corner

of a tent, I saw that one of the hostlers had something black and round,

lying on the sloping side of a tent, with which he was playing very

eagerly. It proved to be his little baby, a plump little shiny thing,

younger than Annie; and I never saw a merrier picture than the happy

father frolicking with his child, while the mother stood quietly by.

This was Baby Number Two, and she stayed in camp several weeks, the two

little innocents meeting each other every day, in the placid

indifference that belonged to their years; both were happy little

healthy things, and it never seemed to cross their minds that there was

any difference in their complexions. As I said before, Annie was not

troubled by any prejudice in regard to color, nor do I suppose that the

other little maiden was.

Annie enjoyed the tent-life very much; but when we were sent out on

picket soon after, she enjoyed it still more. When a regiment is on

picket, the main camp is usually much smaller, because most of the

companies are scattered about at outposts, and but few are left at

head-quarters. Our head-quarters were at a deserted plantation house,

with one large parlor, a dining-room, and a few bedrooms. Baby's father

and mother had a room up stairs, with a stove whose pipe went straight

out at the window. This was quite comfortable, though half the windows

were broken, and there was no glass and no glazier to mend them. The

windows of the large parlor were in much the same condition, though we

had an immense fireplace, where we had a bright fire whenever it was

cold, and always in the evening. The walls of this room were very dirty,

and it took our ladies several days to cover all the unsightly places

with wreaths and hangings of evergreen. In this performance Baby took an

active, or rather a passive part. Her duties consisted in sitting in a

great nest of evergreen, pulling and fingering the fragrant leaves, and

occasionally giving a little cry of glee when she had accomplished some

piece of decided mischief.

There was less entertainment to be found in the camp itself at this

time; but the household at head-quarters was larger than Baby had been

accustomed to. We had a great deal of company, moreover, and she had

quite a gay life of it. She usually made her appearance in the large

parlor soon after breakfast; and to dance her for a few moments in our

arms was one of the first daily duties of each one. Then the morning

reports began to arrive from the different outposts,--a mounted officer

or courier coming in from each place, dismounting at the door, and

clattering in with jingling arms and spurs, each a new excitement for

Annie. She usually got some attention from any officer who came,

receiving with her wonted dignity any daring kiss or pinch of the cheek.

When the messengers had ceased to be interesting, there were always the

horses to look at, held or tethered under the trees beside the sunny

piazza. After the various couriers had been received, other messengers

would be despatched to the town, seven miles away, and Baby had all the

excitement of their mounting and departure. Her father was often one of

the riders, and would sometimes seize Annie for a good-by kiss, place

her on the saddle before him, gallop her round the house once or twice,

and then give her back to her nurse's arms again. She was perfectly

fearless, and such boisterous attentions never frightened her, nor did

they ever interfere with her sweet, infantine self-possession.

After the riding-parties had gone, there was the piazza still for

entertainment, with a sentinel pacing up and down before it; but Annie

did not enjoy the sentinel, though his breastplate and buttons shone

like gold, so much as the hammock which always hung swinging between the

pillars. It was a pretty hammock, with great open meshes; and she

delighted to lie in it, and have the netting closed above her, so that

she could only be seen through the apertures. I can see her now, the

fresh little rosy thing, in her blue and scarlet wrappings, with one

round and dimpled arm thrust forth through the netting, and the other

grasping an armful of blushing roses and fragrant magnolias. She looked

like those pretty little French bas-reliefs of Cupids imprisoned in

baskets, and peeping through. That hammock was a very useful appendage;

it was a couch for us, a cradle for Baby, a nest for the kittens; and we

had, moreover, a little hen, which tried to roost there every night.

When the mornings were colder, and the stove up stairs smoked the wrong

way, Baby was brought down in a very incomplete state of toilet, and

finished her dressing by the great fire. We found her bare shoulders

very becoming, and she was very much interested in her own little pink

toes. After a very slow dressing, she had a still slower breakfast out

of a tin cup of warm milk, of which she generally spilt a good deal, as

she had much to do in watching everybody who came into the room, and

seeing that there was no mischief done. Then she would be placed on the

floor, on our only piece of carpet, and the kittens would be brought in

for her to play with.

We had, at different times, a variety of pets, of whom Annie did not

take much notice. Sometimes we had young partridges, caught by the

little boys in trap-cages. The children called them "Bob and Chloe,"

because the first notes of the male and female sound like those names.

One day I brought home an opossum, with her blind bare little young

clinging to the droll little pouch where their mothers keep them.

Sometimes we had pretty little green lizards, their color darkening or

deepening, like that of chameleons, in light or shade. But the only pets

that took Baby's fancy were the kittens. They perfectly delighted her,

from the first moment she saw them; they were the only things younger

than herself that she had ever beheld, and the only things softer than

themselves that her small hands had grasped. It was astonishing to see

how much the kittens would endure from her. They could scarcely be

touched by any one else without mewing; but when Annie seized one by the

head and the other by the tail, and rubbed them violently together, they

did not make a sound. I suppose that a baby's grasp is really soft, even

if it seems ferocious, and so it gives less pain than one would think.

At any rate, the little animals had the best of it very soon; for they

entirely outstripped Annie in learning to walk, and they could soon

scramble away beyond her reach, while she sat in a sort of dumb despair,

unable to comprehend why anything so much smaller than herself should be

so much nimbler. Meanwhile, the kittens would sit up and look at her

with the most provoking indifference, just out of arm's length, until

some of us would take pity on the young lady, and toss her furry

playthings back to her again. "Little baby," she learned to call them;

and these were the very first words she spoke.

Baby had evidently a natural turn for war, further cultivated by an

intimate knowledge of drills and parades. The nearer she came to actual

conflict, the better she seemed to like it, peaceful as her own little

ways might be. Twice, at least, while she was with us on picket, we had

alarms from the Rebel troops, who would bring down cannon to the

opposite side of the Ferry, about two miles beyond us, and throw shot

and shell over upon our side. Then the officer at the Ferry would think

that there was to be an attack made, and couriers would be sent, riding

to and fro, and the men would all be called to arms in a hurry, and the

ladies at head-quarters would all put on their best bonnets and come

down stairs, and the ambulance (or, as some of the men called it, "the

omelet") would be made ready to carry them to a place of safety before

the expected fight. On such occasions, Baby was in all her glory. She

shouted with delight at being suddenly uncribbed and thrust into her

little scarlet cloak, and brought down stairs, at an utterly unusual and

improper hour, to a piazza with lights and people and horses and general

excitement. She crowed and gurgled and made gestures with her little

fists and screamed out what seemed to be her advice on the military

situation, as freely as if she had been a newspaper editor. Except that

it was rather difficult to understand her precise directions, I do not

know but the whole Rebel force might have been captured through her

plans. And at any rate, I should much rather obey her orders than those

of some generals whom I have known; for she at least meant no harm, and

would lead one into no mischief.

However, at last the danger, such as it was, would be all over, and the

ladies would be induced to go peacefully to bed again; and Annie would

retreat with them to her ignoble cradle, very much disappointed, and

looking vainly back at the more martial scene below. The next morning,

she would seem to have forgotten all about it, and would spill her

bread-and-milk by the fire as if nothing had happened.

I suppose we hardly knew, at the time, how large a part of the sunshine

of our daily lives was contributed by dear little Annie. Yet, when I now

look back on that pleasant Southern home, she seems as essential a part

of it as the mocking-birds or the magnolias, and I cannot convince

myself that in returning to it I should not find her there. But Annie

came back, with the spring, to her Northern birthplace, and then passed

away from this earth before her little feet had fairly learned to tread

its paths; and when I meet her next, it must be in some world where

there is triumph without armies, and where innocence is trained in

scenes of peace. I know, however, that her little life, short as it

seemed, was a blessing to us all, giving a perpetual image of serenity

and sweetness, recalling the lovely atmosphere of far-off homes, and

holding us by unsuspected ties to whatsoever things were pure.

_T. W. Higginson._

THE RED-WINGED GOOSE.

Once upon a time, when the rocks that make the earth were not so gray,

and the beard of the sea-waves not so hoary,--when the stars winked at

each other and said nothing, and the man in the moon thought of getting

married,--once upon a time, I say, there lived on the edge of a

pine-forest in Bohemia a poor peasant named Otto Koenig.

His hut was made of pine-branches, plastered with mud and thatched with

rye-straw; a hole in the top let the smoke out, and a hole in the side

let in father, mother, pigs, chickens, and children, beside a tame

jackdaw, that slept on an old stool by the fireplace, and ate with

Otto's nine children out of a wooden bowl.

Little enough the nine had to share with Meister Hans, as they called

the jackdaw, for they lived on black beans and black rye-bread.

Sometimes a bit of smoked bacon was found in the beans on great

feast-days, and sometimes in summer wild berries helped the dry bread to

savor and sweetness; but oftener the poor pig's-flesh and the red

strawberries were put into a rush basket, covered with great cool

leaves, on top of the eggs that lay so smooth and white below, and Otto

carried them to Prague, when he went there at full moon to sell the

turpentine he gathered in the pine-forest. With the money he got there

he bought serge to clothe the nine children, rancid oil to burn in the

clay lamp that sometimes they lighted in the long winter evenings, or

some coarse pottery for larger vessels than he could hew out of dead

branches with his dull hatchet. But it took all the coin that ever

rattled in his sheep-skin pouch to buy any clothes or enough food for

the nine black-eyed children who ran about in rags, and always wanted

more bread and beans than poor Marthon, their brown, hard-working

mother, had to give them.

At last, one winter there came a dreadful famine in Bohemia. There was

no rye for the fowls, or the bread; it was blasted in the ear during a

wet summer; and that same summer had given so little sunshine to the

fields that no berries ripened; the turnips rotted in the ground, so the

pig had nothing to eat; and between cold and starvation, quite tired of

his wet sty and empty trough, master pig gave a loud squeak one November

day, struggled out of his moist lodgings into a pool of water hard by,

and died. For all that he was eaten up, because the nine children wanted

food, whatever it might be, and the jackdaw scolded loudly for bread,

but got less and less daily.

To be sure, the turpentine ran faster and clearer than ever from the

trees, but then it was worth less to the old Jew who bought it, and the

striped red serge and rancid oil were dearer than ever; so the children

ate their supper by the light of the pine-cones they gathered in the

forest, and went to bed to keep warm, where Mihal, the youngest boy,

told them long stories of the old days in Bohemia, when there were

fierce witches with steeple-crowned hats and flame-colored cloaks, who

were burned to death in the market-place of Prague, and their ashes

scattered on the waters of the Elbe, to find no rest on earth or in the

water,--and legends of gnomes and elves that worked with little swarthy

hands in the mountain mines, and hid their treasures away from human

miners, unless spell and incantation brought them to light, and then the

gnomes would scream and sob in the deep caverns till the miners fled

away for fear.

These stories Mihal had learned from his old grandmother, who died the

year before the famine. She used to sit in the open air knitting, or

spinning with a distaff, and the scarlet yarn that trailed across the

gray jacket and green petticoat glowed in the sun like a thread of

crawling fire, and seemed to keep time to her droning voice, as she

poured story after story into the wide-open ears of the child nestled on

her feet.

But all these pretty tales of Mihal did not keep his eight brothers and

sisters warm. Zitza, the least of all, cried herself to sleep often, and

woke with hunger, wailing, in the sad and quaint accents of her land,

for bread and berries. These were sorrowful sounds for poor Otto Koenig;

he knew well the eager pain for food that forced that cry from the

child's lips,--for his black crust was as small as it could be to keep

him alive, and his cup of sour beer was only a quarter filled. Often, as

he shouldered the rude axe with which he gashed the trees, and wandered

out into the forest, the spicy smell of the pine-boughs seemed to make

him sick and giddy, he was so faint with hunger; and instead of the

hymns the wind used to sing in the long green tufts of leaves, there was

a rush of unearthly whispering laughter, and mocking voices said in the

poor man's ear, "Bread and beer! bread and beer!" chorused with another

rustle of laughter; whereat the unlucky man, half crazed, would bless

himself devoutly, and, taking to his heels, run like a scared cony till

the woods were far behind him.

In the hut things went worse still; in vain did Matthias, the oldest of

the nine children, take his twin sister into the fields to search the

brambles for stray hips, or locks of wool the sheep had not left there

willingly; men and women even worse off had been there before them, and

they came home at night, tired out and footsore, only to hear Zitza's

fretful cry for food, and the constant chatter of Meister Hans, croaking

for his own share in what they had not.

One night, when Mihal had told more wonderful stories than ever, and

fairly talked the other eight to sleep, he was still awake himself.

Nothing stirred on the side of the hut where the children lay sleeping

on some straw covered with sheep-skins, but Meister Hans, who, perched

for the night on the arm of the grandmother's empty chair, rustled his

blue-black wings now and then. But as Mihal lay thinking and hungry, his

looks turned restlessly toward the uneasy bird; and presently he saw the

creature's eyes begin to shine through the darkness brighter and

brighter, till they made the room so light that one could plainly see

the eight sleeping children, the straw-bed from which Father Koenig's

snores were loudly heard, Mother Marthon's petticoat and red jacket hung

against the wall, and the old black chair with the fiery-eyed jackdaw

perched on one arm. Mihal lifted himself on his elbow and rubbed his

eyes. Yes, it was really so! Meister Hans nodded gravely to him, and,

hopping down to the floor, turned his eyes toward the boy, nodded again,

croaked circumspectly, and walked with odd, precise steps toward the

door, which was screened from the cold by a rough mat hung inside, and

again turning, repeated the nod and the croak, as if he were inviting

Mihal to follow him. The child gathered his rags more closely about him,

and stepped across the threshold, at which Meister Hans gave a very

satisfied croak and hopped along. The moon shone brightly on bare brown

fields silvered with white frost, and in the still, cold air the distant

forest stood like a black cloud just dropped upon earth.

In a strange, dreamy way Mihal followed the movements of the bird,

stumbling over hard furrows, bruising his feet against stones, falling

into ditches, but still straight after his odd guide, who peered at him

now and then with one fiery eye, and wagged his head. On and on they

went, away from the pine forest, but into places where Mihal had never

been before, wide as were his usual rambles; on and on, over stone

walls, ditches, stubble-fields, and wide meadows, till they found

themselves at the foot of a high, round hill. Out of one side of this

great mound ran a pure bubbling spring, and over its waters hung an old

oak-tree, leafless now, but still strewing the ground beneath with dry

acorns. Right at the root of this tree was an upright gray stone,

apparently part of a rock deeply sunk in the hillside; dark lichens

clung to its face, and dead leaves lay piled at its foot. Beside this

stone Meister Hans paused, and, looking hard at the boy, deliberately

picked up an acorn, and, hopping to the side of the little gravelly

basin, dropped his mouthful into the fountain, and returned to the flat

stone, where Mihal stood wondering much what was to follow.

Presently the jackdaw approached the stone and knocked upon it three

times. No sound replied, but the rock opened in the middle, and there

stood a little old woman, as withered as a spring apple and as bright as

a butterfly, dressed in a scarlet bodice covered with spangles, and a

black petticoat worked in square characters with all the colors of the

rainbow. She made a reverence to the bird and Mihal, and in a shrill,

eager voice invited them to come in. The boy hesitated, but the little

old woman snatched his hand and pulled him in. A draught of warm air and

a delicious smell of food invited him still more charmingly, he was so

cold and hungry, and he passed through the cleft stone to find himself

in a high round cavern, of shining, sparkling crystals, that glittered

like jewels whenever the light of the old woman's iron lamp shone across

them. She opened a low door in the side of this cavern, and beckoned her

companions to follow. In the middle of a still larger vault stood a

great arm-chair, fashioned from beryl and jasper, with knobs of amethyst

and topaz, in which sat a dwarf no taller than little Zitza. He was

dressed in robes of velvet, green and soft as forest moss, and a ring of

rough gold lay on his grizzled hair; his little eyes were keen and

fiery, his hands withered and brown, but covered with glittering jewels.

[Illustration]

About the cave a hundred little creatures, smaller still than he, were

busied in a hundred ways. Some ran to and fro with long ladles,

wherewith they stirred and tasted kettles of smoking broth; others

shredded crisp salads, and sliced fresh vegetables for the pottage;

some, with ready hands, spread a table with flowered damask, golden

plate, and crystal goblets; three tugged and strained at turning a huge

spit before a fire at the end of the cavern, while a dozen more watched

the simmering of pots and pipkins, seething on the coals; and full a

score moulded curious confections, adorned vast pastries, heaped fruits

upon baskets of carved ice, or brewed steaming potions in great silver

pitchers, whose breath of tropic fragrance curled upward in light clouds

to the sparkling roof above; while the red flashes of the blaze on the

hearth lighted up their swarthy little figures and merry faces, and cast

grotesque, mocking shadows against the sides of the cave.

As Meister Hans hopped gravely past all this toward the chair of the

Dwarf-king, making profound reverences all the way, the little monarch

stretched out his sceptre, which was a tall bulrush of gold, and touched

the jackdaw on the head, whereat, to Mihal's great wonder, his old

friend turned suddenly into just such another little old woman as the

one who had brought them in.

After another low reverence to the king, she turned to Mihal and made

him aware, by a long speech, that she had been turned into a jackdaw for

twenty years, because she had once presumed to say that gold was not so

yellow as buttercups, or so bright as sunshine,--a statement altogether

against the belief and laws of the dwarf; but now her punishment was

over, and, knowing that she would never go back to the earth again,

because she had lived there long enough to know better, and had learned

that gold was the best of all things, she had resolved to bring little

Mihal with her, (for she loved him almost as much as gold, and quite as

well as silver, he was such a good boy), and persuade her master to

grant him one wish before he left the cavern.

The king readily consented to do this, but ordered that the boy and his

friendly guide should take their places at the table and be served with

supper first, for well he knew that a hungry child's first wish must be

for food.

The king had scarce given this order before a quick pair of hands

stripped a tender sucking-pig from the spit, another filled a golden

bowl with smoking stew from the caldron, another poured wine and ale

into the clear goblets, and a fourth heaped porcelain dishes from every

simmering pot and pipkin on the hearth; rolls of bread whiter than

hoar-frost, and piles of purple and golden fruit followed, while the

half-starved boy warmed his fingers at the blaze, and then ate and drank

his fill of such viands as he had never before tasted, even in dreams.

But when he could do no more good trencher-service, and the little old

woman reminded him of the wish he was to ask the Dwarf-king to grant, he

sat a long time pondering this important matter.

Now, among the legends that his old grandmother had recounted was one

that had made especial impression on his fancy,--an old Bohemian

tradition of a red-winged goose, followed by six goslings, which

traversed the forests and valleys in the dead of winter, uncaught and

unhurt, for hundreds of years, though whoever was so skilful or so lucky

as to catch the goose would after that succeed in all his undertakings.

Mihal bethought himself, as he sat there, that perhaps the Dwarf-king

was master of this wonderful bird, and could give him the prize at once,

without delay or toil; so he slid from his seat at the table, and,

approaching the king, made known his request.

The dwarf fixed his keen eyes sharply on the child, and shook his

grizzled head from side to side before he spoke, in his rough but kindly

voice, and said: "I cannot do that for thee, little one! All the

treasures in my mountain, or the heart of the dumb earth, could not buy

for thee the red-winged goose. She must be caught; but there is only one

way to this end, and that way hitherto hath no mortal known. He who

would capture the goose must first have caught the goslings, and that

not by two or three, or as he may choose to trap them, but always the

nearest one first, which is ever the last, seeing that they follow her

in line, unbroken and unwavering. Thou must take them one by one, and in

their order, child, however sorely tempted to break the sequence. Keep

thine eye and thy labor for the nearest one, and at last the red-winged

goose itself will reward thy patience."

Mihal heard and treasured up the Dwarf-king's orders, spoke his simple

thanks, bowing low, and, after a gay farewell to the little old woman

who had been his jackdaw, went his way into the upper air; and just as

the sun arose, touching the pine-tree tops with fire, he came to his

father's hut, where the eight children were rubbing their eyes and Zitza

crying for her breakfast. No one knew that Mihal had been farther than

the door-sill, nor did he tell the clamorous brood of children what he

had seen, lest they should mock it as a dream, or attempt the pursuit

themselves.

So he went patiently about his work, helped them look for Meister Hans,

whom all mourned for many a day,--excepting Mihal, who well knew how

much better off the jackdaw was than in any of the pitiful conditions

they fancied, and the parents, who were too thankful to gain even the

bird's small share of bread for their wasted and fretful children.

But after nightfall Mihal crept softly from his straw in the corner,

tied a sheep-skin across his shoulders, and, with his uneaten supper, a

crust of black bread, in the bosom of his ragged shirt, stole softly out

of the door to seek his fortune. About two miles from the hut there was

a clear space in the pine forest, where there stood a great stone cross,

at the foot of which a tiny spring slept in the grass, and overflowed

softly on the crisp turf at all seasons. At this place Mihal resolved to

wait for the flight of the red-winged goose, and he knew the forest

paths so well that a short half-hour brought him to the open glade. He

knelt and bathed his face in the spring, drank deeply of its pure and

tranquil waters, and then leaned back against the foot of the cross to

eat his crust and wait till moon-rise. Overhead the dark blue sky seemed

to be higher than ever, and the bright stars sparkled so kindly, and

looked so much like watchful eyes to guard and bless him, that Mihal

felt no fear, but gazed upward into the quiet depths of air so long that

he fell fast asleep and dreamed about the Dwarf-king's hill-palace.

_Rose Terry._

(_To be continued._)

AFLOAT IN THE FOREST:

OR, A VOYAGE AMONG THE TREE-TOPS.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MONKEY-POTS.

"The Gapo?" exclaimed the master of the craft. "What is it, Munday?"

"The Gapo?" repeated Tipperary Tom, fancying by the troubled expression

on the face of the Indian that he had conducted his companions toward

some terrible disaster. "Phwat is it, Munday?"

"Da Gapoo?" simultaneously interrogated the negro, the whites of his

eyeballs shining in the moonlight. "What be dat?"

The Mundurucu made reply only by a wave of his hand, and a glance around

him, as if to say, "Yes, the Gapo; you see we're in it."

The three interrogators were as much in the dark as ever. Whether the

Gapo was fish, flesh, or fowl, air, fire, or water, they could not even

guess. There was but one upon the galatea besides the Indian himself who

knew the signification of the word which had created such a sensation

among the crew, and this was young Richard Trevannion.

"It's nothing, uncle," said he, hastening to allay the alarm around him;

"old Munday means that we've strayed from the true channel of the

Solimoes, and got into the flooded forest,--that's all."

"The flooded forest?"

"Yes. What you see around us, looking like low bushes, are the tops of

tall trees. We're now aground on the branches of a _sapucaya_,--a

species of the Brazil-nut, and among the tallest of Amazonian trees. I'm

right,--see! there are the nuts themselves!" As the young Paraense

spoke, he pointed to some pericarps, large as cocoa-nuts, that were seen

depending from the branches among which the galatea had caught. Grasping

one of them in his hand, he wrenched it from the branch; but as he did

so, the husk dropped off, and the prism-shaped nuts fell like a shower

of huge hailstones on the roof of the _toldo_. "Monkey-pots they're

called," continued he, referring to the empty pericarp still in his

hand. "That's the name by which the Indians know them; because the

monkeys are very fond of these nuts."

"But the Gapo?" interrupted the ex-miner, observing that the expressive

look of uneasiness still clouded the brow of the Mundurucu.

"It's the Indian name for the great inundation," replied Richard, in the

same tranquil tone. "Or rather I should say, the name for it in the

_lingoa-geral_."

"And what is there to fear? Munday has frightened us all, and seems

frightened himself. What is the cause?"

"That I can't tell you, uncle. I know there are queer stories about the

Gapo,--tales of strange monsters that inhabit it,--huge serpents,

enormous apes, and all that sort of thing. I never believed them,

though the _tapuyos_ do; and from old Munday's actions I suppose he puts

full faith in them."

"The young patron is mistaken," interposed the Indian, speaking a patois

of the _lingoa-geral_. "The Mundurucu does not believe in monsters. He

believes in big serpents and monkeys,--he has seen them."

"But shure yez are not afeerd o' them, Munday?" asked the Irishman.

The Indian only replied by turning on Tipperary Tom a most scornful

look.

"What is the use of this alarm?" inquired Trevannion. "The galatea does

not appear to have sustained any injury. We can easily get her out of

her present predicament, by lopping off the branches that are holding

her."

"Patron," said the Indian, still speaking in a serious tone, "it may not

be so easy as you think. We may get clear of the tree-top in ten

minutes. In as many hours--perhaps days--we may not get clear of the

Gapo. That is why the Mundurucu shows signs of apprehension."

"Ho! You think we may have a difficulty in finding our way back to the

channel of the river?"

"Think it, patron! I am too sure of it. If not, we shall be in the best

of good luck."

"It's of no use trying to-night, at all events," pursued Trevannion, as

he glanced uncertainly around him. "The moon is sinking over the

tree-tops. Before we could well get adrift, she'll be gone out of sight.

We might only drift deeper into the maze. Is that your opinion, Munday?"

"It is, patron. We can do no good by leaving the place to-night. Wiser

for us to wait for the light of the sun."

"Let all go to rest, then," commanded the patron, "and be ready for work

in the morning. We need keep no look-out, I should think. The galatea is

as safe here as if moored in a dry dock. She is _aground_, I take it,

upon the limb of a tree! Ha! ha! ha!"

The thought of such a situation for a sailing craft--moored amid the

tops of a tall tree--was of so ludicrous a nature as to elicit a peal of

laughter from the patron, which was echoed by the rest of the crew, the

Mundurucu alone excepted. His countenance still preserved its expression

of uneasiness; and long after the others had sunk into unconscious

sleep, he sat upon the stem of the galatea, gazing out into the gloom,

with glances that betokened serious apprehension.