[Illustration]
MR. BLAKE’S
WALKING-STICK:
_A CHRISTMAS STORY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS_.
BY EDWARD EGGLESTON,
AUTHOR OF
“THE ROUND TABLE STORIES,” “THE CHICKEN LITTLE STORIES,”
“STORIES TOLD ON A CELLAR DOOR,” ETC.
CHICAGO:
ADAMS, BLACKMER, & LYON PUBLISHING CO.
1872.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
BY ADAMS, BLACKMER, & LYON PUBLISHING COMPANY,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
TO OUR
LITTLE SILVERHAIR
Who used to listen to My Stories;
BUT WHO IS NOW
Listening to the Christmas Stories of the Angels,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
_I have meant to furnish a book that would serve for a Christmas
present to Sunday-scholars, either from the school or from their
teachers. I hope it is a story, however, appropriate to all seasons,
and that it will enforce one of the most beautiful and one of the most
frequently forgotten precepts of the Lord Jesus._
EDWARD EGGLESTON.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE WALKING-STICK WALKS 11
CHAPTER II.
LONG-HEADED WILLIE 20
CHAPTER III.
THE WALKING-STICK A TALKING STICK 25
CHAPTER IV.
MR. BLAKE AGREES WITH THE WALKING-STICK 31
CHAPTER V.
THE FATHER PREACHES, THE SON PRACTICES 36
CHAPTER VI.
SIXTY-FIVE DOLLARS 39
CHAPTER VII.
THE WIDOW AND THE FATHERLESS 44
CHAPTER VIII.
SHARPS AND BETWEENS 51
CHAPTER IX.
THE ANGEL STAYS THE HAND 55
CHAPTER X.
TOMMY PUFFER 57
CHAPTER XI.
AN ODD PARTY 58
MR. BLAKE’S WALKING-STICK.
CHAPTER I.
_THE WALKING-STICK WALKS._
Some men carry canes. Some men make the canes carry them. I never could
tell just what Mr. Blake carried his cane for. I am sure it did not
often feel his weight. For he was neither old, nor rich, nor lazy.
He was a tall, straight man, who walked as if he loved to walk, with a
cheerful tread that was good to see. I am sure he didn’t carry the cane
for show. It was not one of those little sickly yellow things, that
some men nurse as tenderly as Miss Snooks nurses her lap-dog. It was
a great black stick of solid ebony, with a box-wood head, and I think
Mr. Blake carried it for company. And it had a face, like that of an
old man, carved on one side of the box-wood head. Mr. Blake kept it
ringing in a hearty way upon the pavement as he walked, and the boys
would look up from their marbles when they heard it, and say: “There
comes Mr. Blake, the minister!” And I think that nearly every invalid
and poor person in Thornton knew the cheerful voice of the minister’s
stout ebony stick.
It was a clear, crisp, sunshiny morning in December. The leaves were
all gone, and the long lines of white frame houses that were hid away
in the thick trees during the summer, showed themselves standing in
straight rows now that the trees were bare. And Purser, Pond & Co.’s
great factory on the brook in the valley below was plainly to be seen,
with its long rows of windows shining and shimmering in the brilliant
sun, and its brick chimney reached up like the Tower of Babel, and
poured out a steady stream of dense, black smoke.
It was just such a shining winter morning. Mr. Blake and his
walking-stick were just starting out for a walk together. “It’s a fine
morning,” thought the minister, as he shut the parsonage gate. And when
he struck the cane sharply on the stones it answered him cheerily:
“It’s a fine morning!” The cane always agreed with Mr. Blake. So they
were able to walk together, according to Scripture, because they were
agreed.
Just as he came round the corner the minister found a party of boys
waiting for him. They had already heard the cane remarking that it was
a fine morning before Mr. Blake came in sight.
“Good morning! Mr. Blake,” said the three boys.
“Good morning, my boys; I’m glad to see you,” said the minister, and he
clapped “Old Ebony” down on the sidewalk, and it said “I am glad to see
you.”
“Mr. Blake!” said Fred White, scratching his brown head and looking a
little puzzled. “Mr. Blake, if it ain’t any harm--if you don’t mind,
you know, telling a fellow,--a boy, I mean--” Just here he stopped
talking; for though he kept on scratching vigorously, no more words
would come; and comical Sammy Bantam, who stood alongside, whispered,
“Keep a-scratching, Fred; the old cow will give down after a while!”
Then Fred laughed, and the other boys, and the minister laughed, and
the cane could do nothing but stamp its foot in amusement.
“Well, Fred,” said the minister, “What is it? speak out.” But Fred
couldn’t speak now for laughing, and Sammy had to do the talking
himself. He was a stumpy boy, who had stopped off short; and you
couldn’t guess his age, because his face was so much older than his
body.
“You see, Mr. Blake,” said Sammy, “we boys wanted to know,--if there
wasn’t any harm in your telling,--why, we wanted to know what kind of a
thing we are going to have on Christmas at our Sunday-school.”
“Well, boys, I don’t know any more about it yet than you do. The
teachers will talk it over at their next meeting. They have already
settled some things, but I have not heard what.”
“I hope it will be something good to eat,” said Tommy Puffer.
Tommy’s body looked for all the world like a pudding-bag. It was an
india-rubber pudding-bag, though. I shouldn’t like to say that Tommy
was a glutton. Not at all. But I am sure that no boy of his age could
put out of sight, in the same space of time, so many dough-nuts,
ginger-snaps, tea-cakes, apple-dumplings, pumpkin-pies, jelly-tarts,
puddings, ice-creams, raisins, nuts, and other things of the sort.
Other people stared at him in wonder. He was never too full to take
anything that was offered him, and at parties his weak and foolish
mother was always getting all she could to stuff Tommy with. So when
Tommy said he hoped it would be something nice to eat, and rolled his
soft lips about, as though he had a cream tart in his mouth, all the
boys laughed, and Mr. Blake smiled. I think even the cane would have
smiled if it had thought it polite.
“I hope it’ll be something pleasant,” said Fred Welch.
“So do I,” said stumpy little Tommy Bantam.
“So do I, boys,” said Mr. Blake, as he turned away; and all the way
down the block Old Ebony kept calling back, “So do I, boys! so do I!”
Mr. Blake and his friend the cane kept on down the street, until they
stood in front of a building that was called “The Yellow Row.” It was a
long, two-story frame building, that had once been inhabited by genteel
people. Why they ever built it in that shape, or why they daubed it
with yellow paint, is more than I can tell. But it had gone out of
fashion, and now it was, as the boys expressed it, “seedy.” Old hats
and old clothes filled many of the places once filled by glass. Into
one room of this row Mr. Blake entered, saying:--
“How are you, Aunt Parm’ly?”
“Howd’y, Mr. Blake, howd’y! I know’d you was a-comin’, honey, fer I
hyeard the sound of yer cane afore you come in. I’m mis’able these yer
days, thank you. I’se got a headache, an’ a backache, and a toothache
in de boot.”
I suppose the poor old colored woman meant to say that she had a
toothache “to boot.”
“You see, Mr. Blake, Jane’s got a little sumpin to do now, and we can
git bread enough, thank the Lord, but as fer coal, that’s the hardest
of all. We has to buy it by the bucketful, and that’s mity high at
fifteen cents a bucket. An’ pears like we couldn’t never git nothin’
a-head on account of my roomatiz. Where de coal’s to come from dis ere
winter I don’t know, cep de good Lord sends it down out of the sky and
I reckon stone-coal don’t never come dat dar road.”
After some more talk, Mr. Blake went in to see Peter Sitles, the blind
broom-maker.
“I hyeard yer stick, preacher Blake,” said Sitles. “That air stick o’
yourn’s better’n a whole rigimint of doctors fer the blues. An’ I’ve
been a havin’ on the blues powerful bad, Mr. Blake, these yer last few
days. I remembered what you was a-saying the last time you was here,
about trustin’ of the good Lord. But I’ve had a purty consid’able
heartache under my jacket fer all that. Now, there’s that Ben of mine,”
and here Sitles pointed to a restless little fellow of nine years old,
whose pants had been patched and pieced until they had more colors than
Joseph’s coat. He was barefoot, ragged, and looked hungry, as some poor
children always do. Their minds seem hungrier than their bodies. He was
rocking a baby in an old cradle. “There’s Ben,” continued the blind
man, “he’s as peart a boy as you ever see, preacher Blake, ef I do say
it as hadn’t orter say it. Bennie hain’t got no clothes. I can’t beg.
But Ben orter be in school.” Here Peter Sitles choked a little.
“How’s broom-making, Peter?” said the minister.
“Well, you see, it’s the machines as is a-spoiling us. The machines
make brooms cheap, and what can a blind feller like me do agin the
machines with nothing but my fingers? ’Tain’t no sort o’ use to butt
my head agin the machines, when I ain’t got no eyes nother. It’s like
a goat trying its head on a locomotive. Ef I could only eddicate
Peter and the other two, I’d be satisfied. You see, I never had no
book-larnin’ myself, and I can’t talk proper no more’n a cow can climb
a tree.”
“But, Mr. Sitles, how much would a broom-machine cost you?” asked the
minister.
“More’n it’s any use to think on. It’ll cost seventy dollars, and if it
cost seventy cents ’twould be jest exactly seventy cents more’n I could
afford to pay. For the money my ole woman gits fer washin’ don’t go
noways at all towards feedin’ the four children, let alone buying me a
machine.”
The minister looked at his cane, but it did not answer him. Something
must be done. The minister was sure of that. Perhaps the walking-stick
was, too. But what?
That was the question.
The minister told Sitles good-bye, and started to make other
visits. And on the way the cane kept crying out, “Something _must_
be done,--something MUST be done,--something MUST be done,” making
the _must_ ring out sharper every time. When Mr. Blake and the
walking-stick got to the market-house, just as they turned off from
Milk Street into the busier Main Street, the cane changed its tune and
begun to say, “But what,--but _what_,--but WHAT,--but WHAT,” until it
said it so sharply that the minister’s head ached, and he put Old
Ebony under his arm, so that it couldn’t talk any more. It was a way he
had of hushing it up when he wanted to think.