THE THEMES
Elizabeth’s little sister Babs was singing energetically as she played
a pretended accompaniment on the sofa:
“Wild rose and Injun girl, bright alapaca,
Where sweeps the waters of the blue Jumiaca.”
She had caught this from Electra. She knew there were wild roses and
she had heard of alpaca; so she put the words together as they sounded
to her, though they did not convey much meaning.
Elizabeth, in a big chair by the window, giggled. Babs looked up
indignantly and stopped her performance. “What you laughing at?” she
asked.
“I’m laughing at you,” replied Elizabeth; “you are singing that in such
a funny way.”
“I’m not at all,” contradicted Babs. “It is wild rose and Injun girl
and alpaca,--’Lectra knows. She’s got a alpaca dress, too; she showed
it to me.”
Elizabeth for answer laughed the more, to Babs’s great discomfiture.
“What is it, then, if you know so much?” she said.
“It is:
‘Wild roved an Indian girl, bright Alfarata,
Where sweep the waters of the blue Juniata.’”
Babs pondered over this for a moment; it did not seem half as
intelligible to her as her own way of singing it. “I’m going to ask
’Lectra,” she said, finally, and flounced out of the room. Babs was
a tempestuous little body who flew into rages at small provocation.
She was much more practical than Elizabeth and often showed her
contempt for her sister’s fancies. Her favorite doll was a very plain,
inartistic creature to whom was given the unlovely name of Jim Dumps.
Babs was seldom seen without Jim Dumps in her arms, sitting by her
side or near enough to be spoken to and consulted upon any subject.
Babs always took him to bed with her and he had his own seat in a
small chair in the dining-room. He did not wear big boy’s attire but
was seen in dresses to which was added a sacque, a shawl, a scarf, or
anything which happened to appeal to the mood of his small mother.
His face bore the marks and ravages of time; he had been repainted
more than once, and was by no means beautiful, yet Babs loved him with
a faithfulness which was almost pathetic. Mrs. Hollins had made the
mistake upon the Christmas before of substituting another doll of the
same size for battered-up Jim Dumps and had put him out of the way in
the furthest corner of a closet, telling Babs he had gone away, and
hoping she would forget him in time. Babs tried to console herself
with the new doll, but one day, when she was playing bear and the
dark closet was her den, she rooted out the old familiar body of her
favorite and went shrieking with delight to her mother.
“Muvver, muvver,” she cried, “what do you sink I’ve found? My darling
old Jim Dumps. He’s comed back! He’s comed back!” And Mrs. Hollins had
not the heart ever to hide him again.
Elizabeth had not given up playing with dolls, but her favorite was a
lovely being named the Lady Adelaide. She figured in many a romance,
sometimes reaching the dignity of a throne, and sometimes being obliged
to earn her living by singing in the streets. Paper dolls, however,
afforded Elizabeth more amusement and she was always eager for the
first choice of the colored plates in a fashion magazine. Over these
she and Babs had many a squabble, for Elizabeth was still so much of a
child as to consider these playthings very important and could not see
why she should give up to Babs, so at last Mrs. Hollins had to make the
rule that Elizabeth was to have the pages of one periodical and Babs
the other.
After Babs had taken her departure from the room where she had been
singing “Bright Alfarata,” Elizabeth returned to her book. Presently
she gave a long sigh which attracted her mother’s attention.
“What is it, daughter?” she asked. “That was a very big sigh for a
little girl.”
“I am thinking about my weekly theme,” returned Elizabeth, “and I can’t
make up my mind which to write about--lynxes or daddy-long-legs.”
“Those seem to me rather queer subjects,” said Mrs. Hollins, looking
puzzled. “Did Miss Jewett give them to you?”
“Oh no, I thought of them myself. She said not to take any ordinary
thing, like Spring or Happiness or such to write subjects, but to try
to be original.”
“Just what do you mean by ‘to write subjects’?” asked Mrs. Hollins.
“Why, subjects to write about, I suppose; that is what Miss Jewett
said: ‘to write subjects.’”
Mrs. Hollins laughed. “I suspect you haven’t quite the right idea.
There is such a word as trite. You go and look it up in the dictionary
and see if you don’t think it is the word Miss Jewett used.”
Elizabeth obeyed, bringing the big dictionary and opening it before her
on the window-seat. She turned over the pages, murmuring to herself,
“t-o-t--t-r-a--t-r-i,--here it is. ‘Trite, worn-out; stale; common.’
Of course that was what she meant. I’m glad you explained it, mother.
Lynxes or daddy-long-legs wouldn’t be trite, would they?”
“Far from it! How did you happen to select them? Do you know anything
about either one?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not a thing, but I am rather interested in
them and I thought the best way to learn about them would be to write
about them, for then I’d have to find out something.”
“That is one way of looking at it, certainly rather an original one
for a little girl. How do you happen to be interested in these two
creatures?”
“Why, you know Neal Paine shot a lynx down by the woods back of the
Paines’s house. I saw it.”
“Yes, I remember that he did and it made quite a stir in the
neighborhood. Some persons thought it must have escaped from some
travelling show and others said it probably made its way down from
Canada, for they do not belong to these parts.”
“That’s what Betsy’s uncle said. He said they used to be in the wild
forests, but that as the country was settled up they went further
north, where it was not so civilized. He thought this one might have a
mate. I shouldn’t like to meet it on a dark night, should you, mother?”
“I must say I should not. What do you know about the daddy-long-legs?
It seems to me they are funny things for you to take an interest in.
Most persons would be afraid of them.”
“I’m not afraid of anything but caterpillars and creepy things, wormy
ones. Betsy and I had a pet daddy at her house. We used to feed it on
gingerbread crumbs and it would let itself down in the middle and pick
up the crumbs with its two forepaws.”
Mrs. Hollins laughed. “I didn’t know daddies had paws.”
“Well, whatever they are; those little short things like claws that
they use to pick up things with.”
“How did you become acquainted with your daddy?”
“He used to come every day and gallop around the round table in Betsy’s
room. I think he liked the bowl of nasturtiums she had there, for
when he got tired of galloping he would go and curl himself up in the
flowers.”
“What made you think it was always the same creature?”
“Because he had a feeler gone. We think he lost it in a fight, for one
day we saw two daddies fighting and they fought like anything. They
have such very, very thin legs and feelers, finer than thread, so it
would be very easy for an enemy to pull one off.”
“What became of your daddy?”
“He committed suicide,” answered Elizabeth with perfect gravity.
“Why, Elizabeth, I do think that is going a little too far. You are a
little too imaginative when you get started sometimes.”
“But, mother, he really did. He walked right into the open fire in
Betsy’s room; we saw him do it. We didn’t know whether he did it
because he was unhappy or because he thought it was a bright and
beautiful palace that he was going into; anyhow he destroyed himself,
for we saw him and we were too late to pull him back from danger. We
really missed him very much.”
“Well, my dear, I think if you were to write just what you have told me
it would make a very good theme and I wouldn’t bother about lynxes this
time.”
“Oh, but I would like to. I might take the daddy first and the lynx the
next time, then I would have a chance to learn more about lynxes. I
really do want to find out a little more about daddies, and I am going
to look them up in a encycellopedia.”
“Not quite so many syllables in that word,” cautioned her mother. “It
is encyclopædia. I think the daddies belong to the spider family,
and you can probably find out about them in the volume which has the
article on spiders.”
“We called him Stilty,” Elizabeth informed her mother, “because he
looked just as if he were walking on stilts.”
“That was a very good name,” agreed her mother. “I think you have
material enough for a very good theme, so you’d better go ahead and
write it while it is fresh in your mind.”
“I must hunt up spiders in the encyclopædia first,” said Elizabeth, and
was soon poring over the article she wanted.
She did not say anything to Betsy about her theme, but to her great joy
it was a success, for Miss Jewett praised it before the whole school.
“I am going to read you the most original theme which has been handed
in,” she told her pupils. “I want you to see how easy it is to find
interesting subjects close at hand. One doesn’t have to go to Europe to
find originality, doesn’t have to hunt in Africa to discover something
unfamiliar. You will all laugh when I tell you this is the story of
Stilty, a Daddy-long-legs, and I can assure you I smiled when I read
the title, but it told me things I didn’t know and so I am sure it will
you.”
A snicker did go around the schoolroom, but the title sounded promising
and the children listened with their best attention. Elizabeth sat
with eyes cast down, feeling very proud, yet a trifle embarrassed.
Never before had she been so honored as to have a writing of hers read
in public. No doubt Miss Jewett did not want her to feel too much
puffed up, for when she had finished reading she said: “Of course this
is by no means a model theme, for there are faults in spelling and
punctuation, and you would find a great deal to correct if you were to
criticise it. I commend it simply for its originality.”
When the paper was handed back to Elizabeth she did find plenty of red
pencil marks which called her attention to mistakes, but she was quite
exalted, nevertheless, and Betsy was not long in making it known that
no one but Elizabeth could have written the theme.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” she said, as they walked home together, “I am so proud
of you, and to think you took our poor little Stilty and made such a
fine story of him. Why couldn’t I have thought of it? It happened in my
own room and I knew it just as well as you, but I wasn’t smart enough
to find out what a good story it would make.”
“I wasn’t quite sure whether it would be best to take that or another
subject,” Elizabeth told her, “but when I told mother about Stilty she
advised me to write about him, and now I am glad I did.”
“What was the other?”
“I am not going to tell,” returned Elizabeth, “for I may not use it
after all.”
“I think you might tell me,” said Betsy coaxingly, “then if you don’t
use it I can.”
“If I don’t use it I will tell you,” replied Elizabeth, and this was
the most that Betsy could get her to promise.
Whatever else the theme did it certainly started a fancy for familiar
subjects. For the next month or two the gamut was run from crickets
to turkey-gobblers, so that when the lynx tale did appear it did not
make the sensation of Elizabeth’s first theme, and, in fact, was not
so good, as it did not relate personal experience. Betsy wrote a
funny story about a toad; Bess presented a deadly uninteresting and
commonplace theme about a field-mouse, and it became quite the fashion
for the boys and girls to watch the movements of insects, birds, and
small animals, so that if Elizabeth did nothing else, she started up
an interest in natural history and became an unconscious influence for
good, since the children were much more ready than before to protect
the little creatures with whom they were beginning to become acquainted.
To be sure the winter was setting in and there was not much animal life
to observe, but the very rarity of it gave more interest. A cricket
under the hearth, a bird which had lingered longer than usual before
making its migration, a Molly Cottontail, a convocation of crows, all
these were noted and commented upon. As the boys and girls came and
went along the country roads they were alert for any unusual movement
in the bushes or sound in the fields.
“What would you do if you met a wild beast?” asked Bert, one day, as he
and his sister trudged home.
“I’d run,” replied Elizabeth laconically.
“Pooh! that wouldn’t do any good for it could run faster than you
could.”
“Then I’d climb a tree.”
“Suppose it could climb, too; lots of wild beasts can, bears and
panthers and wild-cats can.”
“They say if you turn and look a wild beast straight in the eye it will
turn and slink away,” said Elizabeth.
“I wouldn’t like to try it,” returned Bert; “it might pounce on you
while you were getting ready, and if it were dark it would not do any
good.”
“Most wild beasts can see in the dark,” Elizabeth made answer. “I read
of a man once who met some sort of wild beast and he couldn’t get
away quickly enough so he just leaned over and looked at it between
his legs; it scared the creature so that it ran away, for it didn’t
recognize the strange-looking thing that was before it.”
“That was a good idea,” agreed Bert, at once beginning to practice this
feat. “I could do that, but you couldn’t very well, because you have
skirts on.”
Elizabeth admitted that this was a serious drawback but thought if one
always carried an umbrella with a hideous face painted on and opened it
suddenly it might serve as good a purpose. “I believe I will hunt up an
old umbrella and paint a face on it, or I could get Kathie to do it for
me or Miss Jewett could do it beautifully.”
“It wouldn’t do much good in the dark,” objected Bert.
“If it were done with that shining sort of stuff that they use for
match safes and things it would be very horrible,” declared Elizabeth.
“I would always carry it at night and one done with plain paint in the
daytime.”
Bert thought this might do very well for a girl. “But I would carry a
gun,” he declared; “then I could shoot in a minute.”
“They used to do that way in old times when there were Indians prowling
about: they carried their guns to church so if they were attacked by
wolves or Indians on the way they could defend their families, but
father wouldn’t let you carry a gun to school, Bert.”
It was broad daylight and there did not appear to be much necessity for
such a precaution, so Bert laughed. “I reckon I shan’t need one in this
neighborhood,” he said.
“You never know what may happen,” returned Elizabeth, giving rein to
her imagination.