In a way that was cutely funny,
He jerked to one side, as though he said,
"'I' don't care if it 'isn't' sunny.
"I don't care! I don't care! I don't!" he said,
And he winked with his eye so cheery,
For somebody's left some crumbs of bread,
So my prospects are not all dreary.
"And what's a cold toe, when I've got a whole suit
Of the cunningest warm, brown feathers?
I don't care if I haven't a shoe to my foot;
I am the bird, sir, for all sorts of weathers.
"'I' don't fly away at the first touch of frost,
Like some of your fine-tongued birdies;
I 'don't' think everything's ruined and lost
When the wind mutters threatening wordies.
"I 'don't' care!" he chirped; "I don't care! I don't care!
It might be a great deal colder:
But I'm a fellow that knows no fear—
Old Winter but makes me bolder!"
Ah, plain, little, hardy, brown-coat bird!
Through life I'll try to remember
To meet its winters with cheerful word,
Like thee to brave my December.—_Youth's Companions._
[Illustration]
[Illustration: TOT HIMSELF]
THE BOY WHO WANTED TO BE A HERO.
A VERY small hero, you think, I suppose? Yes, and weak and pale, and
with feet that would not carry even his little body but a very few
steps at a time. Perhaps that was one reason why he was so fond of
reading about brave, daring boys. When his mother came in from her
kitchen, or her garden, or her dairy, to have a little talk with him,
he nearly always had a story to tell her about a hero.
"I've been reading about Robert Fulton," he said to her one day, his
eyes shining. "Wasn't he splendid?"
"Was he?"
"Oh, yes, indeed! A queer boy, though, in school; he didn't like to
study, and was real dull. Isn't that queer, mother, when he knew so
much afterwards?"
"Rather," said mother. "I think he must have learned, like other
people, to do some things that he didn't like; for he certainly studied
hard when he was a man."
"Well, he didn't when he was a little fellow; and his teacher got real
vexed at him one day, he was so dull, and gave him a knock on his hand
with the ruler, saying he was determined to make him do something.
"And Robert said, 'Look here, I came to school to have something beat
into my brains, and not into my hands.' Wasn't that sharp?"
"And saucy," said mother, laughing.
"Well, it's real fun to read about him. He began to invent when he was
a little bit of a boy. Once he made a lead pencil, and it was such a
good one that all the boys liked it; so he made one for each.
"But, O, mother, wouldn't you have liked to have seen that
strange-looking little steamboat when it sailed up the Hudson? You
see, nobody believed she would go! They laughed at Robert, and made
fun of him, and said all sorts of sharp things about him. But one day
in September a crowd came down to the wharf, and waited and watched. I
can't help thinking, what if it hadn't moved when the right time came!
I wonder what he would have done? Seems to me it would have killed me.
But, you see, it did! O, then how they shouted! 'He' wasn't afraid; he
knew it would go. Why, when he was only fourteen years old, he invented
a way of paddling a boat instead of rowing it.
"He could do ever so many things. Did you know he was an artist? This
book says his pictures were splendid, and he earned money by selling
them,—lots of money. When he was only twenty-one, he had earned enough
to buy a farm, and he bought it and gave it to his mother!
"I'll tell you another thing he did. Once there came a man to New York
with a wonderful machine that he said would go of itself,—perpetual
motion, you know, mother. Everybody who went to see it had to pay a
dollar,—and hundreds and thousands went. For a long time Robert Fulton
wouldn't go, though people coaxed him to; he said it was a humbug. At
last he went, and he hadn't been standing by the strange machine but a
few minutes when he said,—
"'Why this is a crank motion; somebody is turning a crank to make this
machine go, and you are an impostor.'
"Then the man was angry; but all the people joined in, and begged
Robert Fulton to find out about it, and the man didn't know how to
refuse to let him examine it; so he knocked off a few pieces of lath,
and found a string around a wheel, and that went back to another part
of the machine that was all shut up, and inside of it was an old man
turning a crank! Oh, mother, he was a genius and a hero! He was brave,
and wise, and did so many grand things! Mother, if your poor little boy
could do one 'little' thing to show that he was brave, wouldn't it be
nice?"
"Very," said mother, with cheerful voice, pretending not to see the
tears in her sick little boy's eyes. "I like heroes very much; I should
like one fur a son. I was thinking about it last night. Suppose you
make up your mind to be one?"
The little lame boy rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and
looked eagerly at his mother. She never made sport of him, therefore
she meant something. What was it?
"Do you see a way for me to be one?" he asked her, and he was so much
in earnest that his voice trembled with excitement.
"Yes, indeed I do; I read about a way last night, and I thought it was
so good that I copied it for you. The wisest man who ever lived gave
this receipt." And mother took from her pocket a bit of paper on which
was written these words:
"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth
his spirit than he that taketh a city."
══════════
RUFUS MAKES A POCKET MEASURE.
"NOW what is it all for? That is what 'I' should like to know. Here you
have been working over that wonderful box every evening for a week. I
believe you are a miser, and that box is to hoard up your treasures in."
Pretty Eva Trumbull fixed her roguish eyes on Rufus, the farmer boy,
and waited to see what he would say.
They were very unlike,—those two. Eva was a city-bred young miss of
thirteen. She had never been in the country before in her life, and
here she was at her farmer uncle's, to spend the whole summer. She
liked it all; everything was "great fun." One of the things which she
like the best, was to dance around Rufus, the good, faithful boy, who
worked for wages in the summer, and for his board and schooling in the
winter, and whom everybody liked, because he was honest and earnest and
faithful. And Eva liked to tease him, or to try to; he had too much
good sense to be easily teased.
It was as she said. For several evenings he had been at work over
a mysterious box. It was made of black walnut, carefully polished,
and had ten compartments in it, divided by neat-fitting, thin
highly-polished boards. It amused Eva very much to see how particular
he was about the fit of each little board.
"Just tell me what it is for, before you go any farther; I'm almost
dying of curiosity."
"If I were going to die of my own free will, I'd try to do it in a
better cause," Rufus said, gravely. He was not so fashionable as Eva,
and he did not understand many of the rules of etiquette, but his
mother had brought him up not to use slang expressions which meant
nothing.
"Why, I just as soon tell you about this box," he said, after a minute.
"You'll laugh, of course; but I don't suppose that will hurt me."
"I won't laugh a bit, unless it is something funny."
"Well, it's a money box."
"A money box! I told you, you were going to be a miser."
"Well, I'm not," said Rufus, laughing. "I'm planning to spend it, not
to keep it; but I like to be sort of systematic about things. You see,
I know just about what I'm worth, now-a-days. There's about six months
in the year that I am earning money; and, take it off and on, in one
way and another I earn about sixty dollars, besides my hoard. Now it
happens that there are ten things for which I need to spend that money,
and as nearly as I can calculate, it might be equally divided between
them. So thinking it all over, I concluded that the systematic way
would be to have a box with ten compartments, all labelled, you know,
and drop the money in a dollar at a time maybe, or ten cents at a time,
just as I happen to be paid."
"That's a real nice idea," said Eva, admiringly; "but I can't imagine
how you can have ten different things, for which you need to spend
money regularly. Now I have a hundred different ways of spending money,
but hardly any of them are regular." Here she gave one of her merriest
laughs.
"Oh, well, it is different with me," explained Rufus. "You see, I don't
know much about spending money for things I might happen to like to
buy. I have to spend mine for the things that 'must' be bought anyhow;
and so it's easier to calculate."
"Still," persisted Eva, "I don't know how you make ten."
[Illustration]
"Well, I'll tell you." There was a little flush on Rufus's face, but
Eva looked so sober, and so interested, that he determined to trust
her. "In the first place, there's mother; I shall paint her name on
this first department, and one-tenth of everything I ever earn is to
pop in there. Then there's clothes for me, they will take another
tenth."
"A tenth for clothes! That will be only six dollars a year, Rufus
Briggs! Do you mean to dress in birch bark, that you think you can make
six dollars a year do it?"
"Well," said Rufus, in a determined tone, "when a fellow 'has' to, you
know, why he 'has' to; besides, that's only for general clothes, I've
got a department here for boots and shoes, and another for shirts, and
if I have to borrow from one of those departments for the other, why it
will do no harm."
But still Eva laughed; she knew that six, or twelve, or eighteen
dollars in a year were of no account so far as clothes were concerned.
Didn't 'she' wear clothes? She knew what they cost.
"They can't cost more than you've got to buy them with," Rufus said,
firmly, and went on with his plan. "There are Mamie and Fannie, my two
little sisters, I've given them each a department; of course mother
will spend the money for them, but I kind of like to put it in their
own names. Then here's the corner for books, I need school books, and
paper, and pens, and all such things you know, but they must all come
out of this general fund.
"Then here's the housekeeping; I have a corner for that, because mother
must be helped, you know; that place where her name is, means for her
own private use, and here's the rent corner; mother has hard times
bringing that in every month; now you see, I've got nine, and I haven't
looked out for sickness at all; that troubled me at first, but then
I concluded that if any of us were sick, we shouldn't need so many
clothes, nor books, and that it would even itself out; so here's my
last corner."
And very carefully Rufus printed the word, "BENEVOLENCE" over this
compartment.
"Be—nev—o—lence," spelled out Eva, and now she was too much astonished
to laugh. "Why Rufus Briggs! Just as though you could afford to give
six dollars a year to benevolence!"
"Why it's only a tenth," said Rufus stoutly; "and it's got to be
divided up more than any of the others, there are so many things to
give for."
"The idea!" said Eva.
Just then her aunt called her, and she went away thinking about the
wonderful box with its many compartments, and only sixty dollars to put
into them all.
"And six of them to give away!" she said again, and she thought of the
dollar and a half a week that her father gave her for "pin money" out
of which she had never given a cent for benevolence in her life. This
story is true, and it grew; some day I'll tell you the rest of it.
══════════
TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT.
OF all the teachers in the great school, I think the children thought
the most of Miss Carley. She was "so sweet!" they said and "so nice!"
and "so good!" and all the other words that young people like to use,
with "so" before them.
It was when the flowers were getting scarce, that some wise brain
whose father kept a conservatory, proposed that they make Miss Carley
a floral offering on the very next morning. "Let's every single one of
us bring a bouquet in a vase," said the eager little planner, "and set
them on her table, and in the windows, and all around the platform. It
is her birthday, you know, and she loves flowers 'so' much! Won't the
room look too lovely for anything?"
Every child of the seventy-five was delighted, except Trudie Briggs.
She went home, sober not to say cross.
"Won't it be pretty?" said little Kate, hopping along by her side.
"What flowers are you going to take, Trudie?"
"Cabbages," said Trudie crossly; and her mouth being thus snappishly
opened, she talked on. "It is just a plan of Susie Martin's, so that
she can show off her father's greenhouse flowers, and her mother's
beautiful vases! 'I' shan't take a single thing. What have we got to
take? Not even a sweet pea, nor nothing; nothing but weeds, and an
old cracked tumbler to put them in. They may just bring their grand
flowers. I won't have nothing to do with it."
Trudie studied grammar, but when very much excited, she forgot to use
it.
Poor little Kate looked sorrowful; she loved Miss Carley, and wanted to
take her some flowers.
The next morning, when she went to call her father to breakfast, she
saw the south field, all a-bloom with red clover. She thought it
looked lovely; and then and there her resolve was taken. Not a word
said she to Trudie, feeling sure that nine-year-old sister would call
the red blossoms "nothing but weeds." She slipped out just at school
time, and gathered a bunch of the freshest and sweetest, and using her
chubby-brown hand for a vase, started in breathless haste for school.
Trudie, being still cross, had waited for her about two minutes, then
gone on ahead.
It was just a trifle late when little Kate reached the door, the
children were all seated, and Miss Carley's hand was on the bell. How
lovely the schoolroom looked! Everywhere that a vase could be made to
stand there was one, holding the brightest of fall flowers. In the
centre of the table was a wonderful wreath of fine, sweet blossoms,
which Miss Carley had promised to wear at recess.
She looked very happy; every child in the room except Trudie had
remembered her with flowers, and it pleased her. She turned a smiling
face on little Kate, as she came down the aisle, and waited for her,
and bent down to receive the red clovers from the chubby, brown hand,
while Trudie's face was redder than the clovers. She was actually
ashamed of her little sister!
What would Miss Carley say to a bunch of weeds from that hot brown hand!
What she said, was, "You dear child! How sweet they are."
Then she stooped down, and kissed the sweet face of the little giver,
and placed every clover carefully in her belt, where she could "smell
them all the time," she said brightly. And there did little Kate's
gift stay all day, "They were the only flowers she wore," said Susie
Martin. "The little darling! Wasn't it sweet of her?" And Susie meant
the middle of the sentence for little Kate, and the last part for Miss
Carley.
══════════
THEIR FAITH.
"FATHER looks so sad," said Hattie to her older sister Bertha. "I
wonder what makes him look so downcast. Is he sick, Bertie, do you
think, or has he heard some bad news, or is it that same old headache?
I couldn't 'think' of sleeping last night. After kissing him, and
looking back, I thought I saw a great tear in his eye, though he
quickly brushed it away and tried to appear cheery. But all night long
I kept seeing that tear, and wondering if you and I couldn't in some
way keep dear, sad papa, from suffering so. O, what can be the matter?
What can we do?"
"Pray," was the calm, assured answer of the sister. "'Ask what ye
will,' said the last Sunday lesson. His promises are all yea and amen.
They are as true as—as—the sun, dear Hattie. Don't you know it? I am
sure He'll never let one of them fail."
Side by side, with clasped hands, they knelt, and silently, but
earnestly, they asked, "O, Heavenly Father, 'do,'—O, DO bless our own
sad father. Help him out of all his trouble. Show us what we can do to
help him and cheer him. For Jesus' sake, Amen."
So they prayed, not once only, as too many do, and forget all about it.
They prayed "without ceasing." Their sympathy for their father was so
great that they thought of little else except how they might help him
and comfort him. They lost all wish for dress and gay society. Their
pastor and Sunday-school teacher observed that something was greatly
troubling them; but though they tried to learn the cause of their
sad countenances, the sisters kept the matter locked up in their own
breasts.
Meanwhile, however, they were coming nearer to Jesus. It was not long
after Hattie noticed that "tear," that both had become converted, and
became very earnest Christians.
"I am almost discouraged, Hattie," said her sister, one day, as she
still noticed her father's sad look. "I'm afraid He isn't going to do
what we want him to. You know it is just three weeks to-day since we
agreed together to ask our Heavenly Father to help. But where's the
help? O, I'm almost in despair." And Bertha could keep back the tears
no longer.
"But I'm not discouraged yet," said Hattie. "Will not God 'avenge his
own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though he bear long?' He
will, he will, and it won't be long either. Don't cry, Bertie; maybe,
before the week is done he will answer."
He did. Very soon that sad-faced father began to smile and rejoice, not
simply because he got into good business, and was greatly prospered,
and all this through the prayers of faith and loving help of those two
dear daughters, but because he gave his own heart to God, and was now a
very happy Christian.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HOW SIDNEY GOT THE PLACE.
HE stood on the shore and looked down longingly at the smooth sheet of
ice. How it sparkled and glowed in the morning sunshine! He could skim
across like a bird; he had his skates strung over his shoulder. What
hindered him from crossing the ice? Why, just as he reached the front
gate, his mother had put her head out of the window and called:
"Sidney?"
"Yes 'm."
"You won't go on the ice, will you?"
Then he had stopped, and looked back at her appealingly.
"Why, mother, the ice is strong enough to bear a four-horse team, and
it cuts off a good mile of walk."
"Can't help it, my son. You won't cross it, will you?"
"No 'm," he had said, sadly.
But the window closed instantly, and his mother went about her work
with a quiet face. She knew that when Sidney said no, he meant it.
So the boy, though he looked at the ice, had not the least idea of
trying it: he merely told it that he wished he had left his skates at
home, instead of lugging them along; and he didn't see why he hadn't.
[Illustration]
A dozen or more boys appeared presently from different directions.
"Going across?" asked Sidney.
And half a dozen voices answered that they just were. The skating was
prime. The most of them had school books.
"Come on," they said to Sidney.
But he shook his head. "Can't."
"Aren't you going across the lake?"
"No, I'm going 'around' the lake. Mother didn't want me to cross on the
ice."
"Ho! Ho!" "Ha! Ha!" "He! He!" These were only a few of the answers.
"Why man, the ice is two feet thick!"
"I didn't say it wasn't," he answered good-humoredly. "I only said
mother didn't want me to go on it. Good morning!"
Off he went, amid shouts and laughter. You know what ill-bred boys
shout at each other at such times:
"Tied to his mother's apron-string!" "Coward!" "Baby!" and all those
things.
He whistled, to drown their voices, and tramped on.
He was not going to school. The fact was, he hoped to get a place as
office boy that morning. He was on his way to see about it. If he
could only have crossed the lake, it would have saved so much time! He
quickened his steps into almost a run as he thought of it, and arrived,
somewhat out of breath, at the place advertised, to see two of the
boys who had shouted after him at the lake, sitting comfortably in two
office chairs, chatting.
"You here!" he said in dismay; and wondered how many more wanted the
place.
Yes, they assured him they were there; and they didn't cut through into
the lake, either. They hoped he had a nice walk this cold morning. But
there wasn't much fun in teasing Sidney; he was so good-natured.
"I should have liked to skate across," he said, swinging, his skates to
the floor, "but mother worries about it, and she asked me not to go on
the ice this morning. So of course I didn't."
[Illustration: ON THE LAKE.]
"Of course I would!" said the larger boy. "My mother is just such a
moolly. She tried to make me keep off, but I told her 'No sir!' Catch
me going around, with the thermometer below zero."
"It's queer what ails the mothers," said the third boy, laughing.
"There's three of them it seems, only mine is my grandmother. 'Now,
Tommy dear, 'don't' skate across,' she said." And he mimicked the
feeble voice.
"What did you say?" inquired his giggling friend.
"Oh, I said—
"'Of course not, grandma. I wouldn't "think" of such a thing.'
"I meant, you know, that I wouldn't think of such a thing as walking
around."
Then there was more laughing. Presently they began to talk about their
chances for the place, in the midst of which the door to the inner
office opened, and the man who wanted a boy called one of them to him.
The other boys waited until in turn each had been to talk with the
lawyer. He took their names and ages, and asked for specimens of
their handwriting, and gave them a chance to show how rapidly and
correctly they could add a column of figures, then he left them all to
themselves, and they discussed their hopes.
[Illustration: "I WANT A BOY WHO CAN OBEY HIS MOTHER," SAID THE LAWYER.]
At last the door opened again, and the gentleman said:
"Sidney Martin, I have decided that you are the boy I want. If the
terms suit, you may consider yourself engaged. It is only fair to
explain to these others what decided me. Thomas is a trifle more rapid
at figures than you, and Henry's writing is rather better; but, the
truth is, you all talked pretty loud while you were alone here, and
that partition is thin. I want a boy who can obey is mother, even when
he thinks her rules are unnecessary. And I want one who is neither
disrespectful nor deceitful, which, by your own stories, you two were
this morning. Remember, my lads, that a boy who respects his mother, is
very apt to be trustworthy."
————————————
THE LITTLE YELLOW DOG.
BY MRS. C. M. LIVINGSTON.
MAMIE was a dear little bit of a girl, pretty and bright and loving,
with such a sunshiny face that it cured the blues just to look at her.
She had a great many names. She would answer to "Dantie," "Pussy,"
"Sunshine" and "Polly," quite as well as to Mamie. "Polly" was
grandpa's name for her.
[Illustration: MR. JYRICKS' LITTLE DOG.]
Polly had one fault; that does not mean that she had but one, but that
this one was so very great it was noticed more than all the others.
The fault was this: she was never quite ready to do anything the very
minute she was asked to; she always had something of her own to attend
to first.
If papa said, "Dantie, please get my slippers," he was sure to hear
"Yes, in just a minute, papa; Dollie is most asleep." When grandpa
said, "Come, little Polly, can't you run up-stairs and get my glasses?"
She was sure to take just three more turns round the room—if she
happened to be playing with kitty—before she started. Or if she were
reading a story and was asked to do an errand, she would get slowly
up, and creep along with her eyes on the book, stop at the foot of the
stairs and read, and then call out, "Mamma, did you say you wanted a
spool of white or black thread?"
It was very trying indeed, and grandpa said the ugly weed ought to be
rooted out before it grew any bigger. Sometimes he tried to make her
ashamed of it. When she was gone for a long time for the newspaper that
he sent her for, she would find grandpa busily writing when she came
with it, and he would take no notice of her until she said, "Here is
your paper, grandpa."
"My paper!" he would say then, looking over his glasses at her. "Sure
enough, I did send for a paper some minutes ago, didn't I? But the time
has gone by now, I have turned my attention to other subjects; no paper
for me, Miss Polly, thank you."
Then Mamie would hang her head and blush; but by the next time grandpa
asked her to do an errand for him, she had forgotten all about it.
One day grandpa called Mamie to take a walk with him. She ran for her
hat and sack, for she was always glad of the chance to go with him.
They always had nice times together; he explained everything to her
that she did not know about, and let her chatter off long stories. And
if they came along to any shop or place where anything curious was
going on, grandpa took her right in.
[Illustration: "MAY I PICK THEM?"]