GOING TO SCHOOL.
Violet's years were like her days--busy and joyous; for they were spent
in making all about her happy, and in finding new wonder and beauty in
the world.
Winter evenings she would sit on her cricket at the old people's feet,
and amuse them by telling her adventures on the way to and from school,
or the wonderful things she had learned there.
Perhaps it had stormed, and she would describe how beautiful it was to
see every thing folded in a mantle of white snow, and to run through the
pearly dust, and scatter it far and wide, and to see it gathering like a
world of blossoms in the branches of the dark pine trees.
Then she would tell how, when it cleared away, every thing shone, and
glittered, and stood so still in the cold, blue air, and she could not
hear her own footsteps any more than those of the squirrels that darted
along the stone wall, and how she had sung, and shouted, and clapped her
hands for company.
Or she had found a half-frozen bird, and, picking it up with her own
half-frozen hands, had warmed it to life, while she felt its little
frightened heart beating beneath her shawl--that heart and her own the
only moving things in the wide, white silence.
And then how glad it made her feel when her bird sprang forth into the
sky again, and she watched his shadow circling round and round her,
until he alighted in a tree just as she passed underneath, and, with his
fluttering wings sent down a shower of snow flakes all over her.
This, she supposed, was the only way he had of telling how well and
strong he felt, and how he loved her for what she had done to him.
But Violet could hardly make the old folks believe what she heard at
school about far-off countries and strange animals--snakes large enough
to crush a horse and rider in their folds, and fishes so huge that half
a dozen people could sit inside of them.
Every child knows these things now, and has pictures of them in his
books; but when Reuben and Mary were young there were few schools; and
they, poor people, had to work instead of study.
On summer mornings, after her work was done, Violet would bring home
roots from her favorite wood, and plant them about the house, until you
would hardly know it, it was so buried in beautiful green vines.
You could not have made Violet think there was a pleasanter home on
earth than hers, when the clematis was starred all over with white
blossoms, and the honeysuckle she had trained over the door was full of
bright yellow flowers, and the hop vine hung full of its beautiful
cones, and among all shone the bright pink wild roses, and the whole air
was sweet with her own favorite violets.
Birds built nests within the vine, and hatched their young, and sang
loudly and sweetly to their friends in the hut as often as they cared to
hear.