WILLIE'S EDUCATION.
Willie was a good deal more than nine years of age before he could read
a single word. It was not that he was stupid, as we shall soon see, but
that he had not learned the good of reading, and therefore had not begun
to wish to read; and his father had unusual ideas about how he ought to
be educated. He said he would no more think of making Willie learn to
read before he wished to be taught than he would make him eat if he
wasn't hungry. The gift of reading, he said, was too good a thing to
give him before he wished to have it, or knew the value of it. "Would
you give him a watch," he would say, "before he cares to know whether
the sun rises in the east or the west, or at what hour dinner will be
ready?"
Now I am not very sure how this would work with some boys and girls. I
am afraid they might never learn to read until they had boys and girls
of their own whom they wanted to be better off than, because of their
ignorance, they had been themselves. But it worked well in Willie's
case, who was neither lazy nor idle. And it must not be supposed that
he was left without any education at all. For one thing, his father
and mother used to talk very freely before him--much more so than most
parents do in the presence of their children; and nothing serves better
for teaching than the conversation of good and thoughtful people. While
they talked, Willie would sit listening intently, trying to understand
what he heard; and although it not unfrequently took very strange shapes
in his little mind, because at times he understood neither the words
nor the things the words represented, yet there was much that he did
understand and make a good use of. For instance, he soon came to know
that his father and mother had very little money to spare, and that his
father had to work hard to get what money they had. He learned also that
everything that came into the house, or was done for them, cost money;
therefore, for one thing, he must not ill-use his clothes. He learned,
too, that there was a great deal of suffering in the world, and that his
father's business was to try to make it less, and help people who were
ill to grow well again, and be able to do their work; and this made him
see what a useful man his father was, and wish to be also of some good
in the world. Then he looked about him and saw that there were a great
many ways of getting money, that is, a great many things for doing which
people would give money; and he saw that some of those ways were better
than others, and he thought his father's way the very best of all. I
give these as specimens of the lessons he learned by listening to his
father and mother as they talked together. But he had another teacher.
Down the street of the village, which was very straggling, with nearly
as many little gardens as houses in it, there was a house occupied by
several poor people, in one end of which, consisting just of a room and
a closet, an old woman lived who got her money by spinning flax into
yarn for making linen. She was a kind-hearted old creature--widow,
without any relation near to help her or look after her. She had had one
child, who died before he was as old as Willie. That was forty years
before, but she had never forgotten her little Willie, for that was his
name too, and she fancied our Willie was like him. Nothing, therefore,
pleased her better than to get him into her little room, and talk to
him. She would take a little bit of sugar-candy or liquorice out of her
cupboard for him, and tell him some strange old fairy tale or legend,
while she sat spinning, until at last she had made him so fond of her
that he would often go and stay for hours with her. Nor did it make much
difference when his mother begged Mrs Wilson to give him something
sweet only now and then, for she was afraid of his going to see the old
woman merely for what she gave him, which would have been greedy. But
the fact was, he liked her stories better than her sugar-candy and
liquorice; while above all things he delighted in watching the wonderful
wheel go round and round so fast that he could not find out whether her
foot was making it spin, or it was making her foot dance up and down
in that curious way. After she had explained it to him as well as she
could, and he thought he understood it, it seemed to him only the more
wonderful and mysterious; and ever as it went whirring round, it sung a
song of its own, which was also the song of the story, whatever it was,
that the old woman was telling him, as he sat listening in her high soft
chair, covered with long-faded chintz, and cushioned like a nest. For
Mrs Wilson had had a better house to live in once, and this chair, as
well as the chest of drawers of dark mahogany, with brass handles, that
stood opposite the window, was part of the furniture she saved when she
had to sell the rest; and well it was, she used to say, for her old
rheumatic bones that she had saved the chair at least. In that chair,
then, the little boy would sit coiled up as nearly into a ball as might
be, like a young bird or a rabbit in its nest, staring at the wheel, and
listening with two ears and one heart to its song and the old woman's
tale both at once.
[Illustration: "WILLIE LIKED MRS WILSON'S STORIES BETTER THAN HER SUGAR
CANDY."]
One sultry summer afternoon, his mother not being very well and having
gone to lie down, his father being out, as he so often was, upon
Scramble the old horse, and Tibby, their only servant, being busy with
the ironing, Willie ran off to Widow Wilson's, and was soon curled up
in the chair, like a little Hindoo idol that had grown weary of sitting
upright, and had tumbled itself into a corner.
Now, before he came, the old woman had been thinking about him, and
wishing very much that he would come; turning over also in her mind, as
she spun, all her stock of stories, in the hope of finding in some nook
or other one she had not yet told him; for although he had not yet begun
to grow tired even of those he knew best, it was a special treat to have
a new one; for by this time Mrs Wilson's store was all but exhausted,
and a new one turned up very rarely. This time, however, she was
successful, and did call to mind one that she had not thought of before.
It had not only grown very dusty, but was full of little holes, which
she at once set about darning up with the needle and thread of her
imagination, so that, by the time Willie arrived, she had a treat, as
she thought, quite ready for him.
I am not going to tell you the story, which was about a poor boy who
received from a fairy to whom he had shown some kindness the gift of a
marvelous wand, in the shape of a common blackthorn walking-stick, which
nobody could suspect of possessing such wonderful virtue. By means of
it, he was able to do anything he wished, without the least trouble; and
so, upon a trial of skill, appointed by a certain king, in order to find
out which of the craftsmen of his realm was fittest to aid him in ruling
it, he found it easy to surpass every one of them, each in his own
trade. He produced a richer damask than any of the silk-weavers; a finer
linen than any of the linen-weavers; a more complicated as well as
ornate cabinet, with more drawers and quaint hiding-places, than any of
the cabinet-makers; a sword-blade more cunningly damasked, and a hilt
more gorgeously jewelled, than any of the sword-makers; a ring set with
stones more precious, more brilliant in colour, and more beautifully
combined, than any of the jewellers: in short, as I say, without knowing
a single device of one of the arts in question, he surpassed every one
of the competitors in his own craft, won the favour of the king and the
office he wished to confer, and, if I remember rightly, gained at length
the king's daughter to boot.
For a long time Willie had not uttered a single exclamation, and when
the old woman looked up, fancying he must be asleep, she saw, to her
disappointment, a cloud upon his face--amounting to a frown.
"What's the matter with you, Willie, my chick?" she asked. "Have you got
a headache?"
"No, thank you, Mrs Wilson," answered Willie; "but I don't like that
story at all."
"I'm sorry for that. I thought I should be sure to please you this time;
it is one I never told you before, for I had quite forgotten it myself
till this very afternoon. Why don't you like it?"
"Because he was a cheat. _He_ couldn't do the things; it was only the
fairy's wand that did them."
"But he was such a good lad, and had been so kind to the fairy."
"That makes no difference. He _wasn't_ good. And the fairy wasn't good
either, or she wouldn't have set him to do such wicked things."
"They weren't wicked things. They were all first-rate--everything that
he made--better than any one else could make them."
"But he didn't make them. There wasn't one of those poor fellows he
cheated that wasn't a better man than he. The worst of them could do
something with his own hands, and I don't believe he could do anything,
for if he had ever tried he would have hated to be such a sneak. He
cheated the king, too, and the princess, and everybody. Oh! shouldn't
I like to have been there, and to have beaten him wand and all! For
somebody might have been able to make the things better still, if he had
only known how."
Mrs Wilson was disappointed--perhaps a little ashamed that she had not
thought of this before; anyhow she grew cross; and because she was
cross, she grew unfair, and said to Willie--
"You think a great deal of yourself, Master Willie! Pray what could
those idle little hands of yours do, if you were to try?"
"I don't know, for I haven't tried," answered Willie.
"It's a pity you shouldn't," she rejoined, "if you think they would turn
out so very clever."
She didn't mean anything but crossness when she said this--for which
probably a severe rheumatic twinge which just then passed through
her shoulder was also partly to blame. But Willie took her up quite
seriously, and asked in a tone that showed he wanted it accounted for--
"Why haven't I ever done anything, Mrs Wilson?"
"You ought to know that best yourself," she answered, still cross. "I
suppose because you don't like work. Your good father and mother work
very hard, I'm sure. It's a shame of you to be so idle."
This was rather hard on a boy of seven, for Willie was no more then. It
made him look very grave indeed, if not unhappy, for a little while, as
he sat turning over the thing in his mind.
"Is it wrong to play about, Mrs Wilson?" he asked, after a pause of
considerable duration.
"No, indeed, my dear," she answered; for during the pause she had begun
to be sorry for having spoken so roughly to her little darling.
"Does everybody work?"
"Everybody that's worth anything, and is old enough," she added.
"Does God work?" he asked, after another pause, in a low voice.
"No, child. What should He work for?"
"If everybody works that is good and old enough, then I think God must
work," answered Willie. "But I will ask my papa. Am I old enough?"
"Well, you're not old enough to do much, but you might do something."
"What could I do? Could I spin, Mrs Wilson?"
"No, child; that's not an easy thing to do; but you could knit."
"Could I? What good would it do?"
"Why, you could knit your mother a pair of stockings."
"Could I though? Will you teach me, Mrs Wilson?"
Mrs Wilson very readily promised, foreseeing that so she might have a
good deal more of the little man's company, if indeed he was in earnest;
for she was very lonely, and was never so happy as when he was with
her. She said she would get him some knitting-needles--wires she called
them--that very evening; she had some wool, and if he came to-morrow,
she would soon see whether he was old enough and clever enough to learn
to knit. She advised him, however, to say nothing about it to his mother
till she had made up her mind whether or not he could learn; for if he
could, then he might surprise her by taking her something of his own
knitting--at least a pair of muffetees to keep her wrists warm in the
winter. Willie went home solemn with his secret.
The next day he began to learn, and although his fingers annoyed him a
good deal at first by refusing to do exactly as he wanted them, they
soon became more obedient; and before the new year arrived, he had
actually knitted a pair of warm white lamb's-wool stockings for his
mother. I am bound to confess that when first they were finished they
were a good deal soiled by having been on the way so long, and perhaps
partly by the little hands not always being so clean as they might
have been when he turned from play to work; but Mrs Wilson washed them
herself, and they looked, if not as white as snow, at least as white
as the whitest lamb you ever saw. I will not attempt to describe the
delight of his mother, the triumph of Willie, or the gratification of
his father, who saw in this good promise of his boy's capacity; for all
that I have written hitherto is only introductory to my story, and I
long to begin and tell it you in a regular straightforward fashion.
Before I begin, however, I must not forget to tell you that Willie did
ask his father the question with Mrs Wilson's answer to which he had not
been satisfied--I mean the question whether God worked; and his father's
answer, after he had sat pondering for a while in his chair, was
something to this effect:--
"Yes, Willie; it seems to me that God works more than anybody--for He
works all night and all day, and, if I remember rightly, Jesus tells
us somewhere that He works all Sunday too. If He were to stop working,
everything would stop being. The sun would stop shining, and the moon
and the stars; the corn would stop growing; there would be no more
apples or gooseberries; your eyes would stop seeing; your ears would
stop hearing; your fingers couldn't move an inch; and, worst of all,
your little heart would stop loving."
"No, papa," cried Willie; "I shouldn't stop loving, I'm sure."
"Indeed you would, Willie."
"Not you and mamma."
"Yes; you wouldn't love us any more than if you were dead asleep without
dreaming."
"That would be dreadful."
"Yes it would. So you see how good God is to us--to go on working, that
we may be able to love each other."
"Then if God works like that all day long, it must be a fine thing to
work," said Willie.
"You are right. It is a fine thing to work--the finest thing in the
world, if it comes of love, as God's work does."
This conversation made Willie quite determined to learn to knit; for if
God worked, he would work too. And although the work he undertook was a
very small work, it was like all God's great works, for every loop he
made had a little love looped up in it, like an invisible, softest,
downiest lining to the stockings. And after those, he went on knitting
a pair for his father; and indeed, although he learned to work with a
needle as well, and to darn the stockings he had made, and even tried
his hand at the spinning--of which, however, he could not make much for
a long time--he had not left off knitting when we come to begin the
story in the next chapter.