"JACK and GILL went up the bill
To fetch a pail of water;
JACK fell down and broke his crown,
And GILL came tumbling after."
How many persons there are who read those lines without giving one
moment's thought to their hidden beauty. Love, obedience, and devotion
unto death, are here portrayed; and yet people will repeat the lines of
the melancholy muse with a smile on their faces, and even teach it to
their young children as a sort of joyful lyric.
My own infant-mind was tampered with in the same manner; and after I had
committed the poem to memory I was proudly called up by my fond and
doting parents to display my infantile acquirements before admiring
visitors. The result might have been foreknown. All my infancy and youth
passed away, and I never once perceived the hidden worth of these lines
till I had tumbled down a hill myself, cracked my crown, and was laid up
with it a week or more. During that time I had leisure to muse on the
fate of poor JACK. When my mind expanded so as to take in all the
sublimity of his devotion and death, my heart was filled with admiration
and astonishment, and I resolved I would make one effort to rescue the
memory of poor JACK and loving GILL from the oblivion it seemed to be
falling into, in the greater admiration people gave to the musical style
of the writer.
"JACK and GILL went up the hill."
Here you see the obedient, loving, long-suffering, put-upon drudge of
his brothers and sisters-we will take the liberty of giving him a few of
each as we are a little more generous than the author--who was compelled
(not the author, but JACK,) to do all the chores, fetch and carry, 'tend
and wait, bear the heat and burden of the day, and be the JACK for all
of them. He was not dignified by the respectable title of JOHN, or
JONATHAN, but was poor simple JACK.
Virtue will always be rewarded, however, and even freckle-faced,
red-headed JACK had one friend, blue-eyed, tender-hearted GILL, who,
seeing the unhesitating obedience he rendered to all, forthwith
concluded that one so lone and sad could appreciate true friendship and
understand the motives that prompted her to give, unsolicited, her
gushing love. So, when the good JACK started up the hill, loving GILL
generously offered to accompany him. Probably the other children looked
out of the windows after them, and laughed, and jeered, and wondered
whither they were going; but, observing the pail, concluded they were
going
"To fetch a pail of water,"
which they were willing JACK should do, as it would save them the
possibility of being ordered to do it; not that there was a probability
of such a command being given, but there was a slight danger that the
thing might happen in case JACK was occupied otherwise when the water
was needed. But now that he had gone for it, they were all right, and
rejoiced exceedingly thereat.
Meanwhile the two little sympathizing companions toiled up the steep
hill, drinking in with every inhalation of the balmy air copious
draughts of the new-found elixir of life. "Soft eyes looked love to eyes
that spake again,"[2] and their hearts melted beneath each tender glance.
The little chubby hands that grasped the handle of the pail timidly
crept closer together, and by the time they had reached the rugged top,
it needed but one warm embrace to mingle the two souls into one,
henceforth forever.
This was done.
Tremblingly they drew back, blushing, casting modest glances at each
other; and then, to aid them in recovering from their confusion, turned
their attention to the water, which reflected back two happy, smiling
faces. Filling the pail with the dimpled liquid mirror, they turned
their steps homeward.
Light at heart and intoxicated with bliss, poor JACK, ever unfortunate,
dashed his foot against a stone, and thus it was that
"JACK fell down and broke his crown."
[Oh! what a fall was there, my countrywomen!] Fearful were the shrieks
that rent the mountain air as he rolled down the hillside. The pail they
had carried so carefully was overturned and rent asunder, and the
trembling water spilled upon the smiling hill-side--fit emblem of their
vanishing hopes.
Down went the roley-poley boy, like a dumpling down a cellar-door;
crashing his head against the cruel rocks that stood in stony
heartedness in his way, and dashing his brains out against their hard
sides. His loving companion, eyes and month dilated with horror, stood
still and rigid, gazing upon the fearful descent, and its tragic ending,
then throwing her arms aloft, and giving a fearful shriek of agony that
thrilled with horror the hearts of the hearers--if there were any--cast
herself down in exact imitation of the fall of her hero, rolled over and
over as he did, and ended by mingling her blood with his upon the same
stones.
_His_ crown was broken diagonally; _hers_ slantindicularly; that was the
only difference. Her suicidal act is commemorated in the line,
"And GILL came tumbling after."
The catastrophe was witnessed by the assembled family, who hastened to
the bleeding victims of parental injustice, and endeavored to do all
that was possible to restore life to the mangled forms of the two who
loved when living, and in death were not divided.
But all in vain. They were dead, and not till then did the family
appreciate the beautiful, self-denying, heroic disposition of the little
martyr, JACK.
The two innocent forms were buried side by side, and the whole country
round mourned the fate of the infant lovers.
Painters preserved their pictures on canvas, and poets sung them at
eventide. The beauties of their life, and their tragic death, were given
by the poet-laureate of the day in the words I have just transcribed;
and such an impression did these make on the minds of the inhabitants,
that the whole population took them to heart, and, with tears in their
eyes, taught them to their children, even unto the third and fourth
generations.
Alas! it was reserved for our day and generation to gabble them over
unthinking, carelessly unmindful of the fearful fate the words describe.
Repentant ones, drop to their memory a tear, even now! It is not too
late!
[Footnote 2: Original, by some other fellow.]
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[Illustration:
WHAT WE MAY EXPECT IN OUR ARMY OF THE FUTURE.
"NONE BUT THE BRAVE," ETC.]
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