THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY OF WORK AND PLAY
CARPENTRY AND WOODWORK
By Edwin W. Foster.
ELECTRICITY AND ITS EVERYDAY USES
By John F. Woodhull, Ph.D.
GARDENING AND FARMING
By Ellen Eddy Shaw.
HOME DECORATION
By Charles Franklin Warner, Sc.D.
HOUSEKEEPING
By Elizabeth Hale Gilman.
MECHANICS, INDOORS AND OUT
By Fred T. Hodgson.
NEEDLECRAFT
By Effie Archer Archer.
OUTDOOR SPORTS, AND GAMES
By Claude H. Miller, Ph.B.
OUTDOOR WORK
By Mary Rogers Miller.
WORKING IN METALS
By Charles Conrad Sleffel.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
Have You a Play-House?]
_The Library of Work and Play_
HOUSEKEEPING
BY ELIZABETH HALE GILMAN
[Illustration]
LEER·V·SOLON.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
"_Look not thou down, but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, Heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?_"
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I. THE PLAY HOUSE 1
PART II. LEARNING AND HELPING 41
PART III. MY HERITAGE 61
CHAPTER
I. My Heritage 63
II. The Plan 69
III. The Accounts 87
IV. The Schedule 101
V. Possessions 115
VI. Care of Fittings and Furniture 121
VII. Upstairs Work 146
VIII. Dining-room and Pantry Work 160
IX. The Kitchen 188
X. The Cellar, Fires, Plumbing, etc. 208
XI. Menus and Marketing 244
XII. Cooking 274
XIII. Washing and Ironing 312
XIV. House Cleaning 337
XV. Emergencies 353
XVI. Servants 370
XVII. Martha 382
XVIII. The Inspiration 388
ILLUSTRATIONS
Have You a Playhouse? _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
A Playhouse Somebody Else Has Made 14
Tidying 52
The Account Book 90
The Broom Closet 140
Straight and Smooth 150
Air, Sun, and Water 156
Order and Daintiness 164
Cooking 274
PART I
THE PLAY-HOUSE
THE PLAY-HOUSE
_Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes,
And Tuesday, smoothly press them.
Wednesday, I mend their little hose,
And Thursday, neatly dress them.
Friday, I play they're very ill,
Saturday, something or other.
Sunday, I say, "Lie still,
I'm going to church with mother."_
WHEN I was walking in a garden the other day, I saw a play-house. And
what do you suppose it was? A big tree with humpy roots which stuck out
of the ground, and low branches which nearly touched the grass at the
ends. You could not stand up straight in the house if you were more
than three feet tall, but as the people who lived in the house were
only about two feet eleven inches, they did not mind that.
You should have seen the china-closet. It was under a bent root, and
all the dishes were white with violet markings. One might have thought
they were big and little and middling-sized clam-shells, if one had not
seen them in a china-closet.
There was a bedroom between two big roots. A doll was taking a nap
there, not on a pine-pillow, but on a whole bed of pleasant-smelling
pine needles which had dropped off a tree in the neighbourhood. The
mistress of the house was in the kitchen cooking, and the kitchen, of
course, was where the sun came through a break in the branches. One
must have a patch of sun in a kitchen, for how can you bake without
it? When I went into this kitchen, there was a cake baking, with an
ornament on the top that looked quite like an acorn.
I was invited to stay for lunch, and I will tell you what we had:
First, there were brown-bread cutlets, and smooth white stone potatoes,
and a wonderful salad made of maple leaves and pepper-grass. Then for
dessert we had the cake I had seen baking, and milk. The cake had a
brown layer made from the garden beds and a yellow layer made from
the path, and was iced with white sand. You will guess that the brown
bread cutlets and the milk were what people getting up plays call
"practicable," which is just a grown-up word for "really and truly."
A tree is one of the nicest play-houses a person can have. But suppose
it is a rainy day! We will play it _is_ a rainy day, and we will go and
go until we get to a house with a steep roof. And we will go in, and
go upstairs, and then upstairs again until we get to a garret, where we
can see the rafters sloping to the ridge over our heads, and the inside
of the shingles. On the floor are trunks and boxes and barrels, and all
sorts of things are hanging from the rafters. Sometimes we hear the
pigeons running on the outsides of the shingles and cooing under the
eaves. It is a lonely sound. It is rather dark, too, but we are brave,
and we get past two saddles, and a row of white petticoats, and a dim
place where there are a lot of old books with strange dark pictures
in them, which one likes to be sure are shut in tight. At last we get
round a corner and find a gable with a pointed window, and there is a
play-house where a little girl and eight dolls live. There are four
rooms in the play-house, though if you are not thinking, you may very
likely walk right through the walls and not know it. On one side of the
window is a bedroom, and on the other side is the kitchen. The dining
room and the living room are in the corners nearest the rest of the
garret.
The little girl's big sister put up some pictures on the sloping wooden
walls to suit each room. One of them is very useful when the little
girl is deciding what to play. It is seven little pictures on a card
with verses to explain them. You can read the verses at the beginning
of this chapter; I am sorry the pictures are not there, too.
This little girl likes especially to play "Monday, I wash my dollies'
clothes"--because she has a tub and a washboard, and a wringer that
will really let buttons through, and clothespins and a clothes-horse,
and all the garret to put up lines in. Housework, you know, is so much
more fun if you have the right things to do it with.
"Tuesday, I neatly press them," is a good day, too, but "Wednesday, I
mend their little hose," is not. One cannot sit still and make believe
sew, for many minutes. When mother was told about this trouble, she
looked at the pictures and said, "Why, there's no sweeping day! As soon
as the stockings are mended on Wednesday, you had better sweep, and
tidy things up a little." Mother often wants things "tidied up" when it
isn't in the game. She says, she does not keep her little girl's hat
on the dining table, nor leave her bed unmade, and she cannot have the
dolls brought up that way either.
The Friday game is one of the best. The two dolls that have night
dresses are most often sick. Of course, it is a great care to have a
doll sick, but it does make a great many interesting things to do. She
may need cold-water cloths, or a hot-water bottle, or a poultice, and
there is always medicine to give and meals to serve on a tray. Then
the bed should be made over often. The little girl who lives in this
play-house likes to have her dolls ill when she has company, because
then there is some one to be the doctor.
"Saturday something or other," usually means cooking, and that, too, is
a favourite game for company. Sometimes the little girl goes down into
the "really and truly" kitchen to market, or sometimes mother sends up
a little cake baked in a doll's pan. That makes a very grand occasion.
The table must be laid with all the dishes, and napkins if possible,
when there is a cake from the big kitchen.
A great many things can happen in a garret play-house, besides
housekeeping. Sometimes it is so still up there, that one knows one
must be in a deep forest, or out on the plains; and, of course, in that
case, the cooking or nursing may be interrupted by a band of robbers,
or an attack from Indians, or one may have a visit from an escaping
prisoner, and besides, there are always long, dangerous journeys to
take through the garret. In fact, every time one hears a new story,
something unusual is likely to happen in the play-house.
Have you a play-house? I hope you have. Nowadays, when rents are so
high, and when many people live in flats and apartments, it is often
hard to get a play-house, but it can usually be managed in some way. If
we have a nursery or a play-room all our own, then it is easy to have
a play-house. We only have to get mother, or nurse to give us a corner
to fix as we like, and to advise us about sorting things. Perhaps they
will let us make the whole room into a play-house, but we really can
keep house nicely in a much smaller space than that. The great point
is to get the things together which belong together. If the bedroom
things stand together, that is all we need to have a bedroom, and if
the kitchen things are together, there is the kitchen. If we have a
dining table, why, there is the dining room, and our living room can be
anywhere where mother likes us to have most of the chairs.
But even if we have not a play-room we can still have a house. I know
some clever dolls and their mother who keep house in the cupboard part
of an old-fashioned washstand. The way they manage is to make the
cupboard any room they wish to use. Monday morning it is a laundry, and
every night it is a bedroom, and if they give a luncheon it is a dining
room, and Saturday it is a kitchen. They keep the furniture which does
not suit the room they are using in the drawer of the washstand which
is over their heads.
I know another family who live under a dressing table. The legs of the
table show where the corners of their house are, and they change the
room into anything they need it for, as the other people do.
One little girl I know, whose name is Esther, lives in a flat and has
only a bureau drawer for her housekeeping things. This is quite hard,
for it means so much packing and unpacking, and parting with things she
would like to keep when the drawer gets too full. She has to take her
two dolls and a few things she thinks they will need into the parlour
or the bedroom and play house there. In the bedroom, she plays it is
night, because it is always nearly dark in there. Her mother lets her
play with her big grown-up beds and chairs and stoves and irons. If she
did not, Esther would have a hard time keeping house for her dolls.
But it is not always the people who live in flats who have not room for
their things, is it? Sometimes after Christmas, or a birthday, one just
feels as if one were trying to keep house in a toy shop. The best cure
for this trouble is to give things away. Because--it is dreadful to
think about--there are people who have no dolls: and there are people
who have not so much as a tin cup to begin housekeeping with; and there
are little girls who have real babies to look after, and real meals to
cook who would just dearly love to have the games and toys that have to
be packed away in closets and drawers because their owners have so many
other things.
It is easy to _say_, give things away, but, my stars! how hard it is
to decide which to give. One just can't give away the new things, and
one feels so fond of the old ones, when one gets them out and looks
at them. The only way to part with them is to think of Saint Martin
cutting his cloak in two for the beggar, or something inspiring like
that. Even then one feels a little dreary.
Once there was a little girl whose family moved into a smaller house.
There was not room in her new play-house for the many things she had
in her old one. Some of them had to be given away. One decision was
so hard to make that she remembered about it after she was a grown-up
woman. There was a little green wagon with yellow wheels, which she
had always had, and which her older sisters had played with before
she was born, and there was a little orange-coloured cart with four
red wheels, which her father had brought out from town, a week or two
before, filled with soap.
Two wagons were too many for the new play-house, and mother said keep
the green one, because the other was only an "advertisement"; and the
older sisters said keep the green one, because it was better and they
had played with it; and father just smiled and said, "You must decide."
When no one was looking, the little girl took the little
orange-coloured wagon with four red wheels, and the big letters round
the outside, which made it an "advertisement," and put it in the box
mother was packing for some other children, and it hurt so to do it
that she could not quite help crying.
Some of us are troubled more with having too few things than too many,
are we not? We can make a game of getting out of this trouble. We must
all be discoverers and inventors, and if there is something needed in
the play-house, we must keep our eyes wide open to see what else will
do or what we can find to make into the thing we want. It spoils the
hunt, and the surprise, if some one else tells you what to do, but one
or two little things will show what the game is like. For instance, if
it is a bed you need, try a strong pasteboard box, not very deep. If
you mind its having no legs, then you must go on a journey and have it
a berth on a car or a ship.
A cigar-box makes a good trunk for a small doll, especially the boxes
which have trays in them. A doll with a cigar-box trunk will never have
moths in her clothes.
Paper napkins are useful for dolls' tablecloths, and for napkins when
they are cut into small squares. They will even do for sheets, if
mother cannot spare us white "pieces" that are big enough. A bandanna
handkerchief, or a scrap of bright calico, makes a good bedquilt.
Shells we have brought home from a day at the beach are convenient for
dishes. Radiators are splendid stoves. And did you ever find out how
much closet room there is under a bed? With the help of a few pins, one
can hang all the dolls' clothes from the springs, and shut them in with
the counterpane, if it happens to be a long one. But if mother does not
want you to do this, you mustn't.
You will be able to make a great many discoveries and inventions,
if you think what you want, and then think what to make it out of.
But the best and most wonderful thing about a play-house is, that if
we have to, we can make one anywhere, or out of anything. Once, two
little girls wrote home about a visit they had paid, "We had two rag
dolls and we played house." Even one little girl, without so much as a
rag doll, can have a play-house. She has only to _imagine_, that is,
pretend, and there it is--with rooms, and staircases, and people, and
everything needful. It can be big or little; and in the country or in
the city. She can do the washing, or give a dinner party; take care of
a sick doll, or work in the garden, just as she pleases. It is easier
and happier to play with the pleasant things people give us, and to be
able to see and touch most of the things in our play-houses, but we
always want some imagined things, too. And if it should happen that
we are in a place where we "have nothing to play with," then we can
imagine and pretend, and go and play in the play-house we always have
with us. In a second, we can build it into a wigwam, or a palace, or a
cave, or a great castle, or it can be just the house we live in when we
are at home.
* * * * *
Sometimes, when we have played a good while in the play-house, we feel
tired, and if it isn't a nap we want, perhaps it is that we would like
to go and play in a play-house somebody else has made. We need not take
a journey to do this, we only need some one to tell us a story, or a
story-book to read to ourselves. We might choose to read "Cinderella,"
for that is the princess of housekeeping stories, or it may be that we
will find one we like, if we go on reading this book.
IRISH STEW
Do you ever have Irish Stew for luncheon? Most Irish Stews are a good
deal alike, but this is the story of one that was different.
Once upon a time there was an Irishman who lived in a little two-roomed
hut on the edge of a bog. All day, he cut peats in the bog, for that
is the way he made his living. It was not a very good living; in fact,
he was very poor indeed. At night, when he came back to the hut, there
were often only a few potatoes for supper, which he boiled in a pot
over the fire. His old father had died a few years before, and that was
the reason he lived alone.
[Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke
A Play-house Somebody Else Has Made]
One chilly, foggy night, the Irishman had come home late through the
wet and the dark, and lighted his fire. There was very little for
supper, and he had not had a chance to cook that, when Thump! Thump!
came a knock on the door. He was ever so frightened, but he thought it
would be better to open the door than have it thumped in. When he
did open it--Preserve us! there were five big robbers with knives, and
pistols, and high boots and fierce, bright eyes. They all crowded into
the little hut, and threw more peat on the fire and demanded supper.
The Irishman apologized, and said he had only potatoes. The robbers
said they had to have something better than that, and all five of
them laid their five big knives on the table with a look which meant,
"Supper or your life!"
The Irishman went into the other little room and sat down on a chest
to think. There was nothing in the room but the chest, and nothing in
the chest but a few old clothes, and the more he tried to think, the
less he was able to do it. At last, for no reason at all, he opened the
chest. In it lay an old cloak, which his father had worn forty years
and more.
No sooner had he seen it, than he went back to the room where the
robbers were, and they saw him take the pot into the little room, and
very soon come back and put all the potatoes into it and some water,
and hang it over the fire, which was now so hot and bright that the pot
soon began to boil. It simmered, and bubbled and steamed and soon the
robbers began to sniff their supper. It did not smell like anything
they had ever had before, but was not bad for a cold, foggy night.
Pretty soon the Irishman set the pot on the table, and the robbers ate
heartily. The Irishman was busy arranging something near the door. All
of a sudden, one robber choked. He choked, and choked, and two others
beat him on the back. He coughed and coughed, and then, something flew
out of his mouth. It was a button.
The Irishman turned up his eyes to the roof and said, "Ah me, that is
the last of a good old cloak." Before the robbers could move, he had
opened the door and disappeared into the fog.
KING ALFRED AND THE CAKES
A good while ago there was a king of England named Alfred. He was a
great and good king, but in spite of this, he had many enemies, who
tried to take his kingdom away from him. Once, after a battle, the
country was so overrun with his enemies, that he had to separate from
his followers and go away in disguise. You would never have guessed he
was a king when he started, and when, after he had wandered a few days
in the forest, he came to a cowherd's hut, he looked like a hungry,
ragged beggar. The cowherd and his wife gave him supper, and let
him stay all night, and gave him some breakfast next morning. After
breakfast, he sat for a long time looking into the fire, thinking
of his kingdom, and of the dangers and sorrows of his people. The
cowherd's wife was a hard-working woman, and it provoked her to see
a great big man dreaming over the fire all the morning. She said to
herself, "If he has no work of his own to attend to, he shall just help
with mine." She put some meal cakes on a board to bake before the fire,
and told the King to watch them carefully while she went out to feed
the pig.
The King said he would watch them, but he kept on thinking about his
army, and the heavy taxes, and by and by the woman came back.
There was smoke in the room, but she could see that the stranger was
still sitting beside the fire, and that her cakes were burned to
cinders. My, my, but she was angry. She boxed her guest's ears soundly,
little dreaming that she was laying hands on the Sacred Person of the
King, and might be hanged for it. The King, however, took her blows and
her scolding, for he was very sorry he had let the cakes burn.
Afterward, when he had driven out his enemies and was at home again in
his own castle he told what a scolding he had got for thinking about
his troubles when he should have been baking the cakes.
ROAST PIG
Long ago, longer than you can even imagine, nobody in the world knew
how to cook. People were not as dreadfully hungry on that account as
you might think, because, you see, they ate their food uncooked. No one
had ever cooked, and no one had ever thought of it; no one had ever
eaten cooked food, and no one knew how pleasant it tasted.
This is the story of the way a little Chinese boy found out how to
roast pig.
His name was Bo-bo and he had been left at home by his father, Ho-ti,
to look after their hut, and their one big pig, and their nine little
pigs. Bo-bo, was fond of playing with fire, and what did he do but set
fire to some straw, and that set fire to the hut, and burned it down. A
much more serious matter was that the one big pig and the nine little
pigs were burned along with the hut.
Bo-bo was dreadfully frightened when he saw what he had done. He knew
his father would beat him, and he began to cry. He also poked round
among the ruins of the hut, though he did not hope to find anything.
As he was turning over the embers, he found one of the little burnt
pigs, and tried to pull it out. It was very hot, and burnt his hands,
and he did just what you or I would have done--put his burnt fingers in
his mouth.
The instant his hands reached his mouth, Bo-bo forgot all about being
burned. He licked his fingers, but not because they hurt him. He did
not know why he did lick them, but he kept on. Neither he nor any one
else in the world had ever tasted such a wonderful taste.
Pretty soon, it came to him that it was the pig which tasted so
delicious, and no sooner had he thought this, than he sat down in the
ruins of the hut and began to eat great pieces of the little burnt pig.
While he was making the best meal he had ever had in his life, his
father came home, and when he saw that the hut was burnt down and that
his son was eating some horrible food that no one else had ever eaten
before, he began to beat Bo-bo with the stick he had in his hand. But
Bo-bo did not seem to feel it. He hunted in the ashes for another pig
and thrust it into his father's hands. Then the same thing happened
which had happened to him. The pig burned Ho-ti's fingers and he put
them in his mouth, and after that he had no time to think of beating
any one, but sat down with his son in the ashes and made a good dinner.
From that time on, whenever they had little pigs, they burned down
their hut to roast them. When the neighbours found it out, they thought
it very wicked of Ho-ti and Bo-bo to eat burnt pig, but as soon as
they were persuaded to taste it, they changed their minds, and then
everybody was burning down his house in order to roast his pigs. After
a long while, some one found out that one could cook without burning
one's house down, which I am sure you will agree was a great discovery.
--Some day, when you go to school, you will have this story given to
you to read--for a lesson!
THE KING'S KITCHEN
When King Arthur was King of England, a boy named Gareth, was growing
up in a castle far away from Camelot, the King's city. But he had two
brothers who were at Court, and who were Knights of the Order of the
Round Table, and when they came home, now and then, Gareth asked them
more questions than you could count about the King and his knights,
and the Court, and tournaments, and battles. Every day, he rode and
practised with lance and sword, and exercised in all ways that would
make him strong and skilful with arms. And always he tried to be brave
and to be gentle toward weak things and to tell the truth. And the
reason for all this was that, more than anything else in the world,
he longed to be in the service of the King, and to be a Knight of the
Round Table.
As Gareth grew older, and more and more worthy to be made a knight,
his mother, Bellicent, sorrowed and grieved. Her husband was very,
very old, and her two elder sons had gone away to the Court, and she
could not bear to have Gareth leave her, for he was the youngest and
last. Though she saw that his heart's desire was to be with the King,
yet she felt as if her heart would break if he went. She tried to make
him especially happy at home; she tried to persuade him that he was
not skilful or brave enough to be a knight; she told him of dangers
and wounds, and besought him not to go. Again and again he asked her
permission to go away and earn his knighthood; again and again she
refused.
One day when he had spoken so bravely and truly that she knew not how
to resist him longer, the thought came to her to test his great desire
to be with the King, and she said to him: "If you desire so greatly to
serve the King, give the proof of it which I shall ask of you. Go to
the King and ask him to let you serve him in his kitchen for a year and
a day, and tell no one your name and rank until the time is over."
She thought he would refuse to do it, but he kissed and thanked her,
and quickly made ready to go to Camelot. For he wanted to serve the
King, and this was a way of doing it, though not the one he had hoped
for.
He journeyed a day and a night, and came to Camelot, the wonderful big
city which he had never seen before. In the morning, the King sat in
the Great Hall of his palace to hear the requests and troubles of his
people. There Gareth came, and stood before him. And when he raised
his eyes to the King's quiet face, and met his eyes, he loved him and
longed more than ever to serve him. It was a little hard, when he was
longing to be made a knight, and to be sent on an adventure, just
to ask to be a kitchen-boy; but he did it, and the King granted his
request.
So joyous and strong was he when he went out from the presence of the
King, that he felt nothing would ever be hard to do again. But there
were things which were hard. The kitchen was a great stone room with an
earth floor, and a fireplace at either end as big as a little room.
When the great fires were lit it was mightily hot between, and there
was smoke and hurry, and jostling of servants, and there were some
bad-tempered people and a great deal of hard work. There were trenchers
and platters to be scoured, and big iron pots to be lifted about and
washed, and roasting meats to be watched and turned before the fires.
The cooking tanned Gareth's face and hands as riding in the hot sun
had never done. When he could, he would run out into the courtyard,
and play games with the other kitchen-boys, and when they were tired,
they would sit against the wall and he would tell long tales he had
read, and some that he made up, about knights and dragons and enchanted
forests and robbers. The stories he loved best to tell, though, were
stories of the King.
Often these play-times were broken in upon by the Master of the
Kitchens, who called them back to their tasks with no great gentleness.
Especially was he a hard master to Gareth; and, strangely enough, this
was because Gareth was willing and cheerful, for there are people
with such crooked places in their minds that they cannot see a person
working gladly at a hard task but they want nothing so much as to see
if they cannot break their cheerfulness. And that was the sort of
master Gareth found in the King's Kitchen. He missed his rides over the
downs in the clear air, and the right to go and come as he pleased. But
when things seemed hard he cast off the thought and laughed to himself,
saying, "It is for the King." In a little while, too, he learned to
take fault-finding, and, now and again, a blow, in quietness. And this,
too, was for the King.
As the days came and went, Bellicent, alone now with her old husband,
thought of her son day and night; and the tasks that he must do and the
discomforts he must suffer seemed to her a thousand times worse than he
ever thought them. At last, when hardly a month of his trial had yet
gone by, she could bear it no longer, but sent a messenger to the King
to tell him the story, and to take to Gareth a horse and armour and all
things that he would need when it should please the King to make him a
knight.
After the King had seen the messenger he sent for Gareth, and Gareth
left his scouring and went gaily and eagerly to him. He was glad in
his love for the King, and I think he may have felt that he had borne
rather unusual things for his sake. As he came near, the King loved him
for his youth and gaiety and faithfulness. But Gareth, looking up into
the quiet, loving eyes that were fixed on him, knelt down at the King's
feet and bowed his head, and knew that nothing he could do for the King
would ever be too much.
The King ended Gareth's kitchen service and made him a knight, and some
day you will read other stories about him, for he fought many battles
and loved a beautiful lady.
And it seems likely that the King loved him all the more because he
could cook and scour for his sake.
BROTHER JUNIPER'S COOKING
Have you heard stories about Saint Francis of Assisi? There are a great
many, and people like to hear them over and over again. For, though
Saint Francis lived most of his life in a little, faraway, country town
in Italy, called Assisi, and though he died hundreds of years ago, yet
every year many people go to see the place where he lived, and the
church where he is buried, and many people in countries far away from
Italy love him as well as they do their friends whom they can see and
talk to.
One of the stories about St. Francis tells of a flock of birds that
came to listen to a sermon he preached to them, and another is about a
wolf whom he persuaded not to hurt people any more. The reason he could
do these things, and the reason people who have never seen him love him
very dearly is because he loved everything and everybody in the world,
and God and our Lord Jesus more than all.
No one was so dirty, or so sick, that he did not want to take care of
him; no one was so cross, or so cruel, that he did not want to be kind
to him.
Every day he went about helping poor people, and sick people, and
troubled people; and he taught them all to be sorry for the wrong
things they had done, and to sing songs of joy because God loved them.
After a little, a good many men began to help him do this. They gave
everything they had to the poor, and never after that kept any money.
They worked every day to get a little food, and the rest of the time
they spent in helping and teaching people. St. Francis called them his
"Little Brothers," not because they were small or young, but because
he taught them to think themselves of no importance, and to think, if
anybody scolded them or hurt them, that they deserved it and more too.
One of these Little Brothers was named Brother Juniper. He was always
thinking of ways to help people. One day, all the Brothers went out
to work, and left Brother Juniper to take care of the little hut where
they lived, and to get some food for them. When he set about this he
began to think of the Brothers who usually did the cooking, and how
much time they had to spend every day getting food ready for the others
to eat. To be sure, they had but one good meal a day, yet even so the
cooking of it took time the Brothers might otherwise have used for
prayer, or tending the sick, or some other good work.
As Brother Juniper was thinking of this, a plan popped into his head
which made him very glad. He took two big baskets, and went off happily
to several farmhouses in the neighbourhood, where the people were fond
of the Little Brothers and liked to give them anything they needed.
That day they gave Brother Juniper chickens and eggs and meat and salad
and all sorts of vegetables, and they lent him some big iron pots. He
took the baskets home heavy with food, and he came back and took the
pots home. Then he made a big fire, and all the time he was happy and
sang to himself, because he thought, "I will work hard to-day, and cook
all this food, and then the Brothers won't have to think about cooking
for a week or more." He hung the pots over the fire, and put into them
all the food he had gathered without so much as taking the feathers
off the chickens or the shells off the eggs, or stopping to see whether
the vegetables were all just fit to eat or not. Then he filled the pots
with water, and before long they began to boil. The fire was furiously
hot. Brother Juniper could not get near enough to it to stir the pots.
When he found this out, he took a board and tied it fast to himself,
and, with that for a shield, he leaped to a pot and stirred it, and
then leaped away again to cool himself; then he dashed at another and
stirred that, and so on.
By and by, the Brothers came back, and the Brother Guardian with them,
and they all sat down to dinner. Brother Juniper poured out some of
the stew from his pots and brought it to the table. He was hot and
tired, but delighted, and he told the others what he had done, and that
they need not do any more cooking for a long time. The Brothers looked
at him, and looked at the stew, and looked at each other, but not a
mouthful could they eat. Brother Juniper urged them to begin, and when
they did not, wondered what could be the matter. He was not left long
in doubt, for the Brother Guardian told him that the dinner was not fit
for a pig to eat, and scolded him well for wasting so much good food.
Brother Juniper listened and the gladness died out of him. He went
and knelt at the Brother Guardian's feet and confessed his fault, and
begged to be forgiven for wasting the Brothers' food, and for getting
them a dinner they could not eat. Then he went away by himself, and
the rest of that day and all the next, he neither ate nor spoke, nor
ventured to come near any of the Brothers, because he was so sorry for
his wastefulness and stupidity.
But the Brothers and the Brother Guardian thought they would be willing
to know as little about cooking as Brother Juniper if they could be
like him in some other ways.
THE WIDOW'S CRUSE
Long, long ago, there was a famine in a little town called Sarepta. For
months and months there had been no rain, and nothing could grow in the
fields, and the streams dried up and the sheep died and many people
died, too, because they had no food.
A widow lived in Sarepta, who had one boy, and she was poor. When the
famine began she had just one barrel of meal and one cruse of oil, and
because she knew she could get no more, she and her son ate as little
as they could, but even so, in a few months the meal was far down in
the bottom of the barrel, and the cruse of oil felt very light.
At last one morning, when the woman got up, she found there was only
enough meal and oil to make one little cake. She looked at it a long
time, thinking they must certainly starve to death when that was gone;
then she went out to get some wood for the fire, for she said to
herself, "I will bake this one cake and we will eat it, but after that
we will have to die." I expect she looked white and sad as she went,
for it hurts very much to be so hungry that you die of it.
She found a few sticks, and was picking them up, when a tall old man
stopped beside her and leaned on his staff. His clothes were made of
hairy skins, and he had a long gray beard, and his face and arms and
legs were brown and rough as if he had lived out in the sun and the
frost. He seemed to have been making a journey, and he asked for a
drink of water. The widow was glad it was only water that he wanted,
and was hurrying off to get it, when the old man called after her, and
asked her to bring him a piece of bread.
She thought of the little bit of meal and oil, and of her hungry boy,
and of how hungry she was herself--and now, here was this tired old
man asking for food! It was really more than she could bear. She came
back toward him and said, "As the Lord liveth, I have not a cake, but
only a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and
behold I am gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and
my son, that we may eat it and die!"
The old man saw how hungry and desperate she looked; it may be that
he knew beforehand that she was; nevertheless, he said: "Fear not;
but go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake
first, and bring it unto me, and after that make for thee and thy son.
For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not
waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord
sendeth rain upon the earth."
The widow did not altogether understand what he said, but somehow
she felt stronger and more brave. She went home quickly and baked a
little meal cake, and brought it to the old man, and asked him to come
to her house and rest. He went back with her, and then she set about
baking the rest of the meal and oil. She thought it would only make a
very little cake, but the more meal she took out of the barrel, the
more there was in it; and the more oil she poured from the cruse, the
heavier it was to lift. She could hardly believe it, and yet she saw
it was surely so. Then she went, crying with gladness and relief, and
knelt beside the old man and thanked him, and begged him to stay with
them as long as he could. And he did stay, a good many months, and all
the time of the famine there was meal in the barrel and oil in the
cruse.
By and by, the widow and her son learned that the old man's name was
Elijah, and that he was a Prophet of the Lord God of Israel.
THE LUNCHEON
If we sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and then sailed as far east on
the Mediterranean Sea as we could, we should come to Asia. Then if we
travelled into Asia for a little distance, we should come to a small
lake. Long ago, this lake was called the Sea of Galilee, and one of the
little towns on the shore was named Bethsaida. In this town, almost one
thousand, nine hundred years ago, a boy lived and played and went to
school. His uncles had boats on the lake, for they were fishermen, and
the boy played in the boats, and sometimes his Uncle Andrew let him go
out with him to the fishing.
Bethsaida was a busy, little town. There was always something to do.
The lake and the boats and the fishermen and the nets were always
there; then sometimes Roman soldiers marched into the town, and
merchants from far-off countries came to trade in the market-place. Now
and again men came who gathered crowds round them, and talked loud and
shook their clenched fists and tore their long robes and kept the town
restless for days together.
The boy liked to go with his uncles to listen to these men. He could
not understand what they were talking about, but the crowd buzzed and
jostled, and sometimes groaned and yelled. It was very exciting. Uncle
Peter was often angry about what he heard these men say, but Uncle
Andrew just stroked his beard and went back to the boats.
The people called a man who spoke to them in this way a "Rabbi." This
meant in their language, a master--a man who knew a great deal about
something.
One day, a Rabbi came to Bethsaida, who acted differently from the
others. He did not make speeches in the market-place, and often when
people were crowding to hear him, he went away on the lake or into the
hills. If they followed him, he would sometimes stand in a boat by the
shore, or on a hillside, and talk to them; and he could make sick
people well. He liked children; and the boy had seen him once stop in
the road and talk to a woman. That was a very queer thing for a great
Rabbi to do.
The boy saw very little of his uncles after this new Rabbi came,
for they followed him everywhere he went and seemed to be his close
friends. When they did come home they spoke of him as if they did not
know just what to say, yet always it seemed as if they could have said
more if they had thought it well.
One day, the Rabbi and his friends had gone up into the hills, and
people from the towns on the lake, and from the country round it, had
gone out to find him; for those who had seen him wanted nothing so much
as to see him again, and those who had not seen him could not rest
until they had found out what the others went to see. The boy had been
playing in the boats that morning, which nowadays were most of the time
pulled up on the shore, and when he saw some of the neighbours setting
off for the hills, he made up his mind to go too. First, though, he
thought, "Uncle Andrew will be hungry, and so shall I," and he went
home and got some food to take with him.
The way up through the hills was long and steep. The boy and his
neighbours were tired enough before they came in sight of a great
crowd of people in a green hollow of the hills. It was strange but,
though there were thousands of people all standing together, they did
not make a sound. As the boy came a little nearer, he heard the Rabbi's
voice in the stillness. He wondered why the people kept so quiet. He
did not realize that he was keeping very quiet himself.
After a while he no longer heard the Rabbi's voice, and the people
began to move and make a little murmur of talking. He crept through the
crowd toward the group round the Rabbi where his Uncle Andrew would
be. When he got there he found they were trying to think of a way to
feed all these hundreds of people who were tired and hungry, and miles
away from any place where they could get food. That reminded him of the
luncheon he had brought, and he pushed the basket into Uncle Andrew's
hand.
Uncle Andrew looked into the basket and smiled when he saw what it had
in it. Then he said to the Rabbi, "There is a lad here, which hath five
barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?"
All the same, though, he held out the basket to the Rabbi, as if he
really thought it would be of some use to him.
The boy looked to see if the great Rabbi would be angry with Uncle
Andrew for saying such a useless thing, when all the others were trying
hard to think what could be done. But no; instead of that, he looked as
if something had made him delightfully happy, and he said, "Make the
men sit down." And they did. Then the Rabbi blessed the five little
loaves and the two little fishes which he had taken out of the basket,
and began to break them up and give them to those especial friends
of his who were always with him. And they carried them to the people
sitting on the grass, and came back for more again and again.
And there always was more.
The boy went with Uncle Andrew, back and forth, again and again. He
wanted, more than anything, to help in some little way, if it were
only to hold back his uncle's robe as he bent toward the people on the
ground.
When they would walk back for more food, he scarcely dared go so near
to the wonderful Rabbi. And yet--his heart was in his throat with the
joy and wonder of it--was it not his own barley bread and fish that the
Rabbi had been so glad to have, and with which he was feeding all these
thousands of hungry people?
Last of all, after every one was fed, the boy sat down close to his
uncle and they had some luncheon, too; but he could not take his eyes
from the Rabbi's face. He looked and looked until he could not see it
any more, for he had gone to sleep in the warm grass.
When he waked the crowd was moving away, and his uncle was helping
gather up the food which was left. The Rabbi had gone away alone into
the hills.
THE FIRE OF COALS
It was spring-time, and eventide, in the thirty-third year of that
amazing time when God walked on the earth, not only everywhere, and in
every man as He does now, but Himself in the form of one Man.
Five of those men who loved Him best, and had been with Him most often,
stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the quick-coming darkness.
Only a week or two before, they had seen their dear Lord nailed on
a cross and left to die. And He had died. And when that happened,
they felt they could not bear to live any longer. But--what do you
think?--first one, and then another, had seen Him alive again, had
talked with Him, touched Him, and been taught by Him as they used to
be. When He was with them, they wished for nothing else; and when He
was away they watched and longed for His return.
It had now been several days since He had been with them, and meanwhile
they had been going about among people who thought of them as men who
had wasted three years wandering round after another man, who was
always about to do something but never did, and who, at last, had been
put to death by the government. I expect it made these men feel lonely
then, just as it makes us feel lonely now, to have to be with people
who think that Our Lord is not alive.
They did not know what to do with themselves as they stood on the shore
that evening. So, when one said, "I go a-fishing," all the rest said
they would go, too. They were glad to be at work again, at something
they had done all their lives.
They started out on the dark water under the stars, and cast their
nets, but when they drew them in, they had caught nothing. They cast
them again, and rowed here and there, and worked as hard as they could,
but they got no fish for their pains, and the night was passing. One
cannot tell whether or not they thought it strange, that men who had
made sick people well, and cast out devils, could not now catch a few
fish. Whatever they thought, they were wet and tired, and hungry, and
the cold, gray early morning had come.
When it began to dawn, they rowed toward the shore. As they drew near,
they saw some one standing on the beach who called to them and asked if
they had any fish. They had to say no. Then the Stranger said "Cast the
net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." They had cast
it, perhaps, in that very place during the night, but they did not say
so; they just cast the net. When they began to draw it, it was heavy
with fish.
This was a strange thing. One of the men said very low, "It is the
Lord." Then the one who had suggested that they go fishing, threw
himself into the water and swam to the shore; he just could not wait.
The others came in the boat, dragging the net full of fishes.
As all through the night everything had seemed to go wrong, so now,
everything was all right. On the shore was just the thing that tired,
hungry, cold people want--a fire, burned down to glowing coals, with
fish and bread baking on it.
But that was not the best thing they found on the shore.
The Stranger told them to draw up the net, and they did, and counted
the fish, one hundred and fifty-three. Then He told them to come and
eat, and He said grace for them and waited on them, and they knew every
word and every gesture, but they could not speak. They just ate and
rested and looked at Him. It made them so glad, and yet it almost made
them afraid, too, that He should care about their hard work, and come
and cook for them and wait on them Himself.
Perhaps it often happened in the years which followed, that when a
friend, or a woman, or a slave came to these men, bringing food and
comfort for their weariness, that with them came also the memory of
the dawn on the beach, and the fire of coals, and the blessing of a
Presence more than theirs.