There are many things happening in this world, dear children,--things
that happen to you yourselves day after day, which you are too young
to understand at the time. By and by, when you grow to be as old as I
am, you will remember and wonder about them all.
Now, it was just one of these wonderful things, too great for the
young children to understand, that happened to our little Louise and
her brothers and sister when the Christmas time had come around again,
and the baby was more than a year old.
It was a cold, stormy night; there were great drifts of snow, and
the wind was driving it against the windows. In the beautiful great
parlor, beside the bright fire, sat the sweet, gentle mother, and
in her lap lay the stout little Hans. The children had their little
chairs before the fire, and watched the red and yellow flames, while
Louise had already taken out her knitting-work.
They were all very still, for their father seemed sad and troubled,
and the children were wondering what could be the matter. Their mother
looked at them and smiled, but, after all, it was only a sad smile. I
think it is hardest for the father, when he can no longer give to wife
and children their pleasant home; but, if they can be courageous and
happy when they have to give it up, it makes his heart easier and
brighter.
"I must tell the children' to-night," said the father, looking at his
wife, and she answered quite cheerfully: "Yes, tell them; they will
not be sad about it I know."
So the father told to his wondering little ones that he had lost all
his money; the beautiful great house and gardens were no longer his,
and they must all leave their pleasant home near the Rhine, and cross
the great, tossing ocean, to find a new home among the forests or the
prairies.
As you may suppose, the children didn't fully understand this. I
don't think you would yourself. You would be quite delighted with the
packing and moving, and the pleasant journey in the cars, and the new
and strange things you would see on board the ship, and it would be
quite a long time before you could really know what it was to lose
your own dear home.
So the children were not sad; you know their mother said they would
not be. But when they were safely tucked up in their little beds, and
tenderly kissed by the most loving lips, Louise could not go to sleep
for thinking of this strange moving, and wondering what they should
carry, and how long they should stay. For she had herself once been on
a visit to her uncle in the city, carrying her clothes in a new little
square trunk, and riding fifty miles in the cars, and she thought it
would be quite a fine thing that they should all pack up trunks full
of clothing, and go together on even a longer journey.
A letter had been written to tell Christian, and the next day he came
home from the school. His uncles in the city begged him to stay with
them, but the boy said earnestly: "If my father must cross the sea, I
too must go with him."
They waited only for the winter's cold to pass away, and when the
first robins began to sing among the naked trees, they had left the
fine large house,--left the beautiful gardens where the children
used to play, left the great, comfortable arm-chairs and sofas, the
bookcases and tables, and the little beds beside the wall. Besides
their clothes, they had taken nothing with them but two great wooden
chests full of beautiful linen sheets and table-cloths. These had been
given to the mother by her mother long ago, before any of the children
were born, and they must be carried to the new home. You will see, by
and by, how glad the family all were to have them.
Did you ever go on board a ship? It is almost like a great house upon
the water, but the rooms in it are very small, and so are the windows.
Then there is the long deck, where we may walk in the fresh air and
watch the water and the sea-birds, or the sailors at work upon the
high masts among the ropes, and the white sails that spread out like a
white bird's wings, and sweep the ship along over the water.
It was in such a ship that our children found themselves, with
their father and mother, when the snow was gone and young grass
was beginning to spring up on the land. But of this they could see
nothing, for in a day they had flown on the white wings far out over
the water, and as Louise clung to her father's hand and stood upon the
deck at sunset, she saw only water and sky all about on every side,
and the red clouds of the sunset. It was a little sad, and quite
strange to her, but her younger brothers and sisters were already
asleep in the small beds of the ship, which, as perhaps you know, are
built up against the wall, just as their beds were at home. Louise
kissed her father and went down, too, to bed, for you must know that
on board ship you go _down_ stairs to bed instead of _up_ stairs.
After all, if father, mother, brother, and sister can still cling to
each other and love each other, it makes little difference where they
are, for love is the best thing in the universe, and nothing is good
without it.
They lived for many days in the ship, and the children, after a little
time, were not afraid to run about the deck and talk with the sailors,
who were always very kind to them. And Louise felt quite at home
sitting in her little chair beside the great mast, while she knit upon
her stocking,--a little stocking now, one for the baby.
Christian had brought his flute, and at night he played to them as he
used at home, and, indeed, they were all so loving and happy together
that it was not much sorrow to lose the home while they kept each
other.
Sometimes a hard day would come, when the clouds swept over them, and
the rain and the great waves tossed the ship, making them all sick,
and sad too, for a time; but the sun was sure to come out at last, as
I can assure you it always will, and, on the whole, it was a pleasant
journey for them all.
It was a fine, sunny May day when they reached the land again. No
time, though, for them to go Maying, for only see how much is to
be done! Here are all the trunks and the linen-chests, and all the
children, too, to be disposed of, and they are to stop but two days in
this city. Then they must be ready for a long journey in the cars and
steamboats, up rivers and across lakes, and sometimes for miles and
miles through woods, where they see no houses nor people, excepting
here and there a single log cabin with two or three ragged children at
play outside, or a baby creeping over the doorstep, while farther on
among the trees stands a man with his axe, cutting, with heavy blows,
some tall trees into such logs as those of which the house is built.
These are new and strange sights to the children of the River Rhine.
They wonder, and often ask their parents if they, too, shall live in a
little log house like that.
How fresh and fragrant the new logs are for the dwelling, and how
sweet the pine and spruce boughs for a bed! A good new log house in
the green woods is the best home in the world.
Oh, how heartily tired they all are when at last they stop! They have
been riding by day and by night. The children have fallen asleep with
heads curled down upon their arms upon the seats of the car, and the
mother has had very hard work to keep little Hans contented and happy.
But here at last they have stopped. Here is the new home.
They have left the cars at a very small town. It has ten or twelve
houses and one store, and they have taken here a great wagon with
three horses to carry them yet a few miles farther to a lonely, though
beautiful place. It is on the edge of a forest. The trees are very
tall, their trunks moss-covered; and when you look far in among them
it is so dark that no sunlight seems to fall on the brown earth. But
outside is sunshine, and the young spring grass and wild flowers,
different from those which grow on the Rhine banks.
But where is their house?
Here is indeed something new for them. It is almost night; no house is
near, and they have no sleeping-place but the great wagon. But their
cheerful mother packs them all away in the back part of the wagon,
on some straw, covering them with shawls as well as she can, and bids
them good-night, saying, "You can see the stars whenever you open your
eyes."
It is a new bed and a hard one. However, the children are tired enough
to sleep well; but they woke very early, as you or I certainly should
if we slept in the great concert-hall of the birds. Oh, how those
birds of the woods did begin to sing, long before sunrise! And
Christian was out from his part of the bed in a minute, and off four
miles to the store, to buy some bread for breakfast.
An hour after sunrise he was back again, and Louise had gathered
sticks, of which her father made a bright fire. And now the mother is
teaching her little daughter how to make tea, and Fritz and Gretchen
are poking long sticks into the ashes to find the potatoes which were
hidden there to roast.
To them it is a beautiful picnic, like those happy days in the grape
season; but Louise can see that her mother is a little grieved at
having them sleep in the wagon with no house to cover them. And when
breakfast is over she says to the father that the children must be
taken back to the village to stay until the house is built. He, too,
had thought so; and the mother and children go back to the little
town.
Christian alone stays with his father, working with his small axe as
his father does with the large one; but to both it is very hard work
to cut trees; because it is something they have never done before.
They do their best, and when he is not too tired, Christian whistles
to cheer himself.
After the first day a man is hired to help, and it is not a great
while before the little house is built--built of great, rough logs,
still covered with brown bark and moss. All the cracks are stuffed
with moss to keep out the rain and cold, and there is one window and a
door.
It is a poor little house to come to after leaving the grand old one
by the Rhine, but the children are delighted when their father comes
with the great wagon to take them to their new home.
And into this house one summer night they come--without beds, tables,
or chairs; really with nothing but the trunks and linen-chests. The
dear old linen-chests, see only how very useful they have become! What
shall be the supper-table for this first meal in the new house? What
but the largest of the linen-chests, round which they all gather, some
sitting on blocks of wood, and the little ones standing! And after
supper what shall they have for beds? What but the good old chests
again! For many and many a day and night they are used, and the mother
is, over and over again, thankful that she brought them.
As the summer days go by, the children pick berries in the woods and
meadows, and Fritz is feeling himself a great boy when his father
expects him to take care of the old horse, blind of one eye, bought to
drag the loads of wood to market.
Louise is learning to love the grand old trees where the birds and
squirrels live. She sits for hours with her work on some mossy cushion
under the great waving boughs, and she is so silent and gentle that
the squirrels learn to come very near her, turning their heads every
minute to see if she is watching, and almost laughing at her with
their sharp, bright eyes, while they are cramming their cheeks full of
nuts--not to eat now, you know, but to carry home to the storehouses
in some comfortable hollow trees, to be saved for winter use. When the
snow comes, you see, they will not be able to find any nuts.
One day Louise watched them until she suddenly thought, "Why don't we,
too, save nuts for the winter?" and the next day she brought a
basket and the younger children, instead of her knitting-work. They
frightened away the squirrels, to be sure, but they carried home a
fine large basketful of nuts.
Oh, how much might be seen in those woods on a summer day!--birds and
flowers, and such beautiful moss! I have seen it myself, so soft and
thick, better than the softest cushion to sit on, and then so lovely
to look at, with its long, bright feathers of green.
Sometimes Louise has seen the quails going out for a walk; the mother
with her seven babies all tripping primly along behind her, the wee,
brown birds; and all running, helter-skelter, in a minute, if they
hear a noise among the bushes, and hiding, each one, his head under a
broad leaf, thinking, poor little foolish things, that no one can see
them.
Christian whistles to the quails a long, low call; they will look this
way and that and listen, and at last really run towards him without
fear.
Before winter comes the log house is made more comfortable; beds and
chairs are bought, and a great fire burns in the fireplace. But do the
best they can the rain will beat in between the logs, and after the
first snowstorm one night, a white pointed drift is found on the
breakfast-table. They laugh at it, and call it ice-cream, but they
almost feel more like crying, with cold blue fingers, and toes that
even the warm knit stockings can't keep comfortable. Never mind, the
swift snowshoes will make them skim over the snow-crust like birds
flying, and the merry sled-rides that brother Christian will give them
will make up for all the trouble. They will soon love the winter in
the snowy woods.
Their clothes, too, are all wearing out. Fritz comes to his mother
with great holes in his jacket-sleeves, and poor Christian's knees are
blue and frost-bitten through the torn trousers. What shall be done?
Louise brings out two old coats of her father's. Christian is wrapped
in one from head to foot, and Fritz looks like the oddest little man
with his great coat muffled around him, crossed in front and buttoned
around behind, while the long sleeves can be turned back almost to his
shoulders. Funny enough he looks, but it makes him quite warm; and in
this biting wind who would think of the looks? So our little friend
is to drive poor old Major to town with a sled-load of wood every day,
while his father and brother are cutting trees in the forest.
Should you laugh to see a boy so dressed coming up the street with a
load of wood? Perhaps you wouldn't if you knew how cold he would be
without this coat, and how much he hopes to get the half-dollar for
his wood, and bring home bread and meat for supper.
How wise the children grow in this hard work and hard life! Fritz
feels himself a little man, and Louise, I am sure, is as useful as
many a woman, for she is learning to cook and tend the fire, while
even Gretchen has some garters to knit, and takes quite good care of
the baby.
Little Hans will never remember the great house by the Rhine; he was
too little when they came away; but by and by he will like to hear
stories about it, which, you may be sure, Louise will often tell her
little brother.
The winter is the hardest time. When Christmas comes there is not even
a tree, for there are no candles to light one and no presents to give.
But there is one beautiful gift which they may and do all give to each
other,--it makes them happier than many toys or books,--it is love. It
makes even this cold dreary Christmas bright and beautiful to them.
Next winter will not be so hard, for in the spring corn will be
planted, and plenty of potatoes and turnips and cabbages; and they
will have enough to eat and something to sell for money.
But I must not stay to tell you more now of the backwoods life of
Louise and her brothers and sister. If you travel some day to the
West, perhaps you will see her yourself, gathering her nuts under the
trees, or sitting in the sun on the doorstep with her knitting. Then
you will know her for the little sister who has perhaps come
closest to your heart, and you will clasp each other's hands in true
affection.