Produced by Annie McGuire
[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER A BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.
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PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1895. FIVE CENTS A
COPY.
VOL. XVI.--NO. 830. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.
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[Illustration]
AN OWN RELATION.
BY SOPHIE SWETT.
The country-week girl came up the lane with her head in the air, so
Gideon, who was watching her from the crotch in the old sweet-apple
tree, afterwards remarked to little Adoniram.
After some hesitation Gideon dropped down at her feet. Aunt Esther had
especially enjoined it upon him to be kind to the country-week girl.
Aunt Esther _would_ remember that he used to get under the bed when a
girl came to see Phemie; but that was when he was small.
"Is this Sweet Apple Hill? Be you Trueworthys?" demanded the girl,
looking critically at Gideon.
"Yes, 'm," said Gideon, and then reddened and scorned himself because he
had been overpolite. But the girl was tall for fourteen--"Grazella
Hickins, aged fourteen," the letter from the Country-week Committee had
read--and she wore a wide sash and a scarlet feather in her hat and
carried a pink parasol.
Phemie, who came around the corner of the house just then, saw at a
glance that the finery was shabby, but Gideon thought that Grazella
Hickins was very stylish.
Grazella dropped her bundle upon the grass opposite the front gate and
seated herself upon it, meditatively. She did not arise from it as
Phemie opened the gate, but she surveyed her with an air of friendly
criticism; Phemie was fourteen too.
"I like your looks real well," she remarked at length, with a trifle of
condescension. Her glance sought Gideon and little Adoniram, who peeped
from behind the friendly shelter of the big black-currant bush. "I think
boys are kind of--middling," she added. It was evident that a more
severe adjective than this had been withheld only from motives of
politeness. "I've got an own relation, though, that's an awful nice
boy--awful smart too; you never know what he's going to do next."
Little Adoniram pricked up his ears; Aunt Esther had been known to say
that of him without meaning to be complimentary. City standards of
behavior seemed to be cheerfully different from those of Bayberry
Corner.
"I wouldn't have said a word if Jicksy could have come too," continued
Grazella, and her snapping black eyes slowly filled with tears. "A
cousin is a real comfort."
"Do you mean that you didn't want to come?" asked Phemie, in a
disappointed tone.
"I'm in the newspaper business; 'twas kind of risky to leave it;
there's so many pushin' in. But they don't want me to home; mother she's
married again, and _he_ don't like me. Jicksy is all I've got that's
really my own. If he could have come too--"
She swallowed a lump in her throat with determination, and raised her
eyes to the old sweet apple-tree whose fruit was yellowing in the August
sunshine.
"Are them apples?" she asked. "They ain't near so shiny and handsome as
Judy Magrath keeps on her stand; Judy shines 'em with her apron. I never
was in the country before, and I don't know as I'm going to like it. But
I'm run down, they say, and I've got a holler cough, so I had to come."
Phemie had almost begun to wish that they had not taken a country-week
girl; but now she noticed, suddenly, the meagreness of the tall form,
and the deep hollows under the snapping black eyes, and repented. It was
proverbial that people grew plump and strong on Sweet Apple Hill.
Aunt Esther came out, and the girl's manner softened under the influence
of her tactful kindness. She seemed to like Grandpa Trueworthy too; she
said she had a grandpa once, and 'twas the most she ever did have that
was like other folks.
But, after all, it was she and Gideon who seemed most congenial. Gideon
explained, with a gravely approving wag of the head, that she was
"business." Gideon flattered himself that he had abilities in that line,
and he was cultivating them diligently. He had not expected to get any
hints from a girl; but the country-week girl was assistant at a
newspaper stand, and she also "tended" for Judy Magrath when Judy, as
she explained with sad and severe head-shakings, was obliged to go to a
funeral; but it was Judy's only infirmity, she added, very charitably.
Of course girls did not generally have such business opportunities as
these, and it was Gideon's opinion that she was "considerable of a girl,
anyhow." It must be confessed that Aunt Esther was a little anxious, and
the minister expressed a doubtful hope that she would not prove "a
corrupting influence." Gideon told Grazella all his business plans,
which Phemie never cared to listen to. It was after tea one evening, and
he and Grazella were sitting on the orchard wall, while Phemie and
little Adoniram shook the old damson-plum-tree. He told her of the
contract he had made with the owners of the canning factory at Bayberry
Port, to supply them with berries for the whole season, and, what he
wouldn't tell any fellow, of the great find he had made--a blackberry
thicket over on the other side of Doughnut Hill, almost an acre, and the
berries just beginning to ripen! He was going to sell the plums off his
trees, too, and, later on, his crab-apples, he'd got a business opening,
she'd better believe.
Grazella's eyes snapped, and her thin, sallow cheeks reddened suddenly.
"You'd ought to have a partner!" she cried.
Gideon shook his head doubtfully. "It's awful risky takin' partners," he
said. "If they ain't smart, you have to do all the work; if they are,
they are apt to cheat you."
"Jicksy!" suggested Grazella, wistfully, breathlessly. "I--I've got a
job for him up here--a little one; I didn't tell, because I was afraid
your aunt wouldn't ask me to stay another week if she knew; she's scairt
of me, and I expect she'd be scairter of Jicksy." (The country-week
girl's eyes were sharp.) "Mr. Snell, across the field, said he'd give
him his board to help him take care of his cattle, and I heard they were
wanting a boy to blow the organ in church. It wouldn't suit Jicksy to
throw away his talents workin' for his board; but he's crazy for the
country, and the doctor said 'twould be the makin' of him, account of
his heart beatin' too fast, and whatever he has to eat he always thinks
it enough to go 'round amongst a dozen that's poorer than him. He could
blow the organ, for when he belonged to the show he blew up the fat
man--all the ingy-rubber fixin's that made him fat, you know, every day:
and once he worked for a balloon-man. But if you'd take him for a
partner in your business--"
Grazella's eyes were so anxious that Gideon found it hard to shake his
head with the proper decision, although he felt strongly doubtful
whether Jicksy were "the man for his money."
"He's coming up to Mr. Snell's, anyway," said Grazella, made hopeful by
Gideon's evident weakness. "And when you see how smart he is, you'll say
you wouldn't have nobody else for a partner! He ain't jest common folks,
like you and me, anyhow, Jicksy ain't; his adopted father was a
lion-tamer in a circus, awful famous and talented, and Jicksy himself
has rode elephants and camels, and travelled 'round in the
boa-constructor's cage, and his own uncle is the wild man of the South
Seas!"
Gideon's prudent mind still hesitated; he doubted whether these
wonderful opportunities especially fitted a boy for the berry business.
Nevertheless, when Jicksy arrived, he succeeded in convincing Gideon of
his desirability as a partner, and this in spite of the fact that his
appearance was not pleasing. His face was so thin and wizened that it
made him look like a little old man, and his black hair standing upright
above the snapping black eyes, that were remarkably like Grazella's,
gave him a fierce and combative aspect. Farmer Snell professed himself
satisfied; he said he was up an' comin' if he wa'n't very
likely-lookin'. And he secured the position of organ-blower at the
village church, an easy matter, because it was not coveted by the
Bayberry boys, owing to the fact that the wind in the ancient instrument
would occasionally give out with an appalling screech, and the luckless
and innocent blower was always soundly cuffed therefor by the sexton,
who held that this summary measure was necessary to preserve the public
respect for the organ--which the parish hoped to sell to a struggling
young church at the Port as soon as it could afford a new one.
And Aunt Esther did invite Grazella to stay another week. The neighbors
thought the reason that she gave a very queer one--because she was kept
awake nights by the hard little cough in the room next hers.
Gideon had been influenced by Jicksy's ready tongue. He confided to
Phemie that there ought to be one good talker in a business firm, and
also by the fact that he didn't expect an equal share of the profits,
but realized the value of Gideon's capital and experience. (Gideon had
seven dollars and fifty-nine cents, which he kept tucked away under the
ticking of his bed and counted over every night.)
Jicksy wasn't extravagant either, as Gideon had feared that he would be.
He discovered at once that they were paying Steve Pennyphair, the
stage-driver, too much for carrying the berries to the Port. Freedom
Towle, the milkman, would carry them among his cans for half as much.
Gideon had thought of asking Towle, but the fact was Bobby Towle often
went on the route instead of his father, and Bobby was known to be
greedy. Jicksy managed that difficulty by fastening some canvas (old
hay-caps) securely over the tops of the baskets. Gideon had thought of
the plan; he had lain awake half of two nights reckoning how large a
hole the price of canvas enough would make in that seven dollars and
fifty-nine cents; he hadn't thought of these old hay-caps that Jicksy
had found in the barn chamber.
Jicksy was truly honest, and before the end of the second week of the
partnership he began to wonder whether an ability to think of things
ought not to offset experience; and he had brought home from the Port
library a very large book on the relations of capital and labor. But
before he had settled these knotty problems of the partnership in his
mind something happened that caused a great excitement at Bayberry
Corner, and made many people say they were glad they had known better
than to take country-week children, for if the girl had not been sent to
Sweet Apple Hill the boy would not have come. Jicksy had gone to the
canning factory at the Port to collect a bill, and he had not returned.
The amount of the bill was twenty-four dollars and sixty-four cents;
Gideon had "done" the addition seven times over, and then had Phemie do
it; strangely enough, thought Gideon, Phemie had "a head for figures."
He had run a pitchfork into his foot, so he could not go and collect the
money himself, and although he had a prudent mind, he had not thought of
distrusting his partner. But he had heard from the factory that Jicksy
had collected the money--and he had disappeared.
As soon as the fact became known there was another development; the
minister's watch was also missing. Jicksy had blown the organ for three
services with fidelity and success; only once had that fatal scream
interrupted the devotions of the congregation, and then it was in a mild
and mitigated form. But after the evening service the minister had
thrust his watch, which he kept on the desk while he preached, into the
absurd little pocket with a tight little elastic and a blue ribbon bow
which his wife had made in the embroidered cover of his sermon-case. He
explained that he put it there because he knew that his wife liked to
have him (he was young and newly married), and therefore he was sure
that his memory was not at fault. He had carelessly left the sermon-case
on the desk, where the sexton had found it--without the watch. The boy
who blew the organ was the only one who had an opportunity to take it.
It was the day after this loss that Jicksy took "French leave"; he had
"killed two birds with one stone," Bayberry people said.
Grazella's eyes snapped continually; grandpa said she was as hoppin' as
a parched pea. She said folks had ought to be ashamed of themselves that
could b'lieve such things of Jicksy. The probabilities of the case made
no impression whatever on Grazella's mind.
The minister's wife, who had taken a fancy to the girl, offered her
consolation at the sewing circle, which met at the Trueworthys' two days
after Jicksy's departure.
"You mustn't think we hold you responsible for what he has done," she
said, gently. "He is only your cousin."
Grazella stood up, her little bony cheeks aflame. "He ain't neither only
my cousin. I just let on, because he'd got up in the world, and I didn't
want folks heavin' it at him that he had a sister that tended for Judy
Magrath. He's my own brother as ever was in the world, and when folks
are thinkin' he's a _thief_, I just want 'em to know that he's my
brother. Jicksy is smarter'n other folks, and you never know what he'll
do next; but I told Gideon that he'd find him an awful square partner,
and I stick to it--now."
There were melancholy head-shakings in the sewing circle; in fact, the
whole circle shook its head as one woman; but it was whispered that the
girl was probably honest; that the little scamp had deceived her, as he
deceived others.
But at that very time an exciting rumor was circulating about Bayberry
Corner. Iky Snell shouted it at the open window of the room where the
sewing circle sat at supper.
A boy had been seen on the turnpike-road coming towards Sweet Apple
Hill, leading a giraffe.
"Looks as if he had a circus procession all to himself," declared Iky,
enviously; and if several persons who had seen him were not very greatly
mistaken, the boy was Jicksy.
"If some boys should come home leadin' a giraffe, why, I might be kind
of surprised," remarked grandpa; "but it does seem jest like Jicksy."
Grazella, who had been trying to swallow blackberry tart mingled with
tears, tried very hard to be calm, though her thin little face paled and
flushed. "You never know what Jicksy will do next," she said, proudly.
Sweet Apple Hill turned out; so did half Bayberry Corner; every one ran
towards the turnpike-road; even the sewing-circle supper-table was
deserted in undignified haste.
It _was_ Jicksy, footsore and begrimed, and accommodating his gait to
the tread of a creature whose body seemed to be set upon stilts, and
whose neck might, as Phemie declared, be tied into a double bow-knot.
The animal was lame, and its head wagged in a curious fashion.
Gideon, seeing his partner afar off, felt a thrill of delight in his
honesty, which seemed probable since he was returning, but it was
followed by a painful doubt concerning his "business bump." Jicksy had
wished to buy Aaron Green's old horse, which Aaron would sell for twenty
dollars. It was a good horse for the money, and it could easily be kept
on their little farm; and the old blue cart in the barn could be
repaired at very small expense, and perhaps what Jicksy said was
true--that you had to have some style to a business to advertise it.
Nevertheless, Gideon had not consented to buy Aaron Green's horse; he
had felt that the twenty-four dollars and sixty-four cents must go under
his bed-ticking with the seven dollars and fifty-nine cents, where he
could count it every night. He felt a wild fear that Jicksy had bought
the giraffe to draw the blue cart, following his theory that there was
nothing like attracting attention to your business.
"I didn't run away!" Jicksy was saying angrily, as Gideon pressed
through the crowd. "Gid understood that it was business that kept me,
didn't you Gid?" But Gideon looked away; he couldn't say that he had
understood, and he was certain that he didn't understand now about that
giraffe.
"I heard that McColloh's show was stranded down to Westport; that's the
show I b'longed to once; couldn't pay their bills, and the sheriff was
after 'em; I thought maybe I could get a horse, cheap." There was
silence as the crowd listened to Jicksy's explanation; only now and then
a shrill question interrupted him. "Foot it? Of course I did." (It was
twenty miles to Westport.) "I wasn't goin' to fool away the firm's
money. Comin' back I had the giraffe; they're slow travellers, and
Squashy is lame. There wasn't any horse that I could buy--trained horses
and Shetland-ponies, and they were selling high. Squashy is lame and
old, and sometimes he gets ugly." (The crowd withdrew from Squashy's
vicinity.) "Me and Nick Pridgett could always manage him. Nick is
partner in a show now, and it's down to Hebron. I saw that in the paper.
When Jim McColloh says to me, 'There's old Squashy; gets on to his tears
worse than ever; you can have him for twenty dollars if you want him.' A
giraffe for twenty dollars! If you knew the show business as well as I
do you'd know that was a big bargain." Jicksy addressed this remark to
Gideon, but his partner was unresponsive; he saw, in fancy, the giraffe
harnessed to the old blue cart, the equipage was attended by crowds; but
the berry business was not a circus. "Quicker 'n scat I give him the
money," pursued Jicksy, and Gideon groaned. "Then I telegraphed to Nick
Pridgett, 'Will you pay fifty dollars for Squashy?' 'Bring him along and
the money is yours,' telegraphs Nick. So I'm bringin' him along." The
crowd cheered; Gideon's face brightened; this _was_ business. "And I've
got to bring him along pretty lively," continued Jicksy, "for there
isn't a building in town big enough to hold him, unless it's the
church."
That made every one think of the watch; but, queerly enough, just at
that moment the minister was seen running in a very undignified manner
up the lane. In dressing to officiate at a wedding at the Port he had
discovered his watch, chain, and all, in one of his coat-tail pockets.
He said that, knowing it was his duty to put it in some unusual place,
and being absent-minded, he had stowed it away there.
Grazella hushed every one's exclamations before they reached Jicksy's
ears. She said her cousin was proud, and she didn't want him to know
that he had been suspected of stealing. Her cousin! The sewing-circle
ladies looked at each other; but she held her head in the air, and
looked so stern that no one dared, or had the heart to contradict her.
Jicksy was up in the world again, and she was not going to have him
dragged down by a sister who had tended for Judy Magrath! When Jicksy
returned from Westport, bringing a dollar's worth of blue paint to paint
the old cart, the partnership was settled upon a firm basis. Jicksy said
Bayberry Corner was a place that suited him "down to the ground," and
the minister's wife had taken Grazella to live with her. That made him
want to stay; they hadn't any real own folks, but just each other.
Gideon said that seeing Jicksy had put some capital into the business,
as you might say, henceforth they would share and share alike.
FOUR YOUNG RUSSIAN HEROES.
BY V. GRIBAYEDOFF.
[Illustration: Decorative T]
[Illustration: THE FOUR CABIN BOYS.]
The death last spring, at Astrakhan, in southeastern Russia, of Captain
Nicholas Novikoff, a retired naval officer, recalls some of the
principal events of the Crimean war. Novikoff was the last survivor of a
famous quartet of heroes. They were cabin-boys on board ships of the
Russian Black Sea fleet at the outbreak of the war against Turkey, in
1853, and their ages ranged at the time from twelve to fourteen years.
The other three were Vasili Rinitzik, Ivan Robert, and Sergius
Farasiouk.
The day after the Russian defeat at the Alma, on September 20, 1854,
Menschikoff, Commander-in-chief, sent peremptory orders to Admiral
Korniloff in Sebastopol, the great Crimean port of war, to sink in the
passage, at the entry of the "Roads," his five oldest line-of-battle
ships and two frigates, in order to prevent the Anglo-French fleet from
forcing an entrance. These orders were carried out on the night of
September 22d. The doomed vessels, pierced with holes, sank in the
roadstead in the presence of their crews, drawn up in parade formation
alongshore. Scarcely a dry eye watched the mournful event. The sailors
and marines who had humbled the Turk but a few months before in the
harbor of Sinope now bent their energies to the defense of Russia's
great stronghold. The men who had navigated and fought the Czar's
proudest men-of-war were assigned to the duty of throwing up
intrenchments, constructing subterranean mines, handling heavy siege
ordnance, and of performing numerous other tasks incident to warfare
ashore.
Among those brave defenders of the great fortress, our four young heroes
soon distinguished themselves by their splendid courage and devotion.
Their share in the defense of Sebastopol was a modest one, but it
consisted, nevertheless, of eleven months' arduous service in the
casemates of the Malakhoff and the Redan, during which time two of their
number were seriously disabled. Novikoff made the finest record of all
by creeping, unperceived during a fog, close to the advance ranks of the
British, opposite the Redan fort, late in June of 1855, and discovering
the pickets asleep. He promptly returned with the information, and this
enabled the besieged to make a successful sally, resulting in the
capture of forty Englishmen.
Farasiouk and Rinitzik were engaged in the Malakhoff fort in the
transport of munitions, but during the great bombardment in June 18th
they were suddenly called to help man a fifty-pound gun, and performed
this duty with such pluck and fortitude that Admiral Nakhimoff
personally complimented them, and promised them the Cross of Merit. The
final assault on the fortress, which culminated in its capture, saw the
boys on the ramparts one night, almost in the front ranks of the
defenders. Two of them, Robert and Farasiouk, had just recovered from
wounds received three weeks earlier. They had been sent to the Redan
fort to aid in the establishment of a lazeretto, and, when the English
rather unexpectedly appeared on the parapets in great force, every
available man among the defenders, including even the hospital
assistants, rushed to the front. The overwhelming defeat of Colonel
Wyndham's columns was due to the desperate bravery of the Redan's
defenders, who, though greatly outnumbered, fought like demons. The four
cabin-boys were in the thick of the fight, Novikoff especially
distinguishing himself by deftly tripping up an English lieutenant, and
forcing him at the pistol's point to surrender his sword.
At the conclusion of peace, among the first to benefit from the imperial
good-will and gratitude were the four sailor lads. The Emperor pinned a
gold medal on each boy's breast, and took them under his special
protection. Although they were of humble birth, he placed them in the
School of Naval Cadets at St. Petersburg, and launched them on an
honorable career in the service of their country. Three of them lived to
attain the rank of Captain in the Russian navy. The fourth, Farasiouk,
was drowned shortly after his promotion to lieutenant in the very harbor
of Sebastopol, which he had helped so bravely to defend.
GREAT MEN'S SONS.
BY ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS.
THE SON OF CROMWELL.
In the famous old English village of St. Ives--famous because of a
certain nursery rhyme concerning a man who, travelling toward the town,
met seven wives with their cats and kits--there once lived a farmer who,
later in his life, became more famous than St. Ives itself.
Out West they would have called him a ranchman. He was really a cattle
farmer, with a big grazing farm that lay along the river Ouse, in what
is termed "the fen country" of England. Here, where the Ouse slipped
thickly and lazily through those low, green, boggy, marshy fields called
the fens, this farmer raised his beef, his pork, and his mutton; and
here lived his son Richard, as lazy and sluggish of nature as the river
along whose banks he lounged or fished or wandered as a boy, until it
was time to send him off to Felsted School, in Essex, where his
brothers, before and after him, were placed for such education as those
days provided.
A slow, good-natured, easy-going fellow was this boy Dick--"lazy Dick,"
his father often called him. He was neither as bright in mind or manner
as his younger brother Harry, nor as promising a lad as his elder
brother Robert. Robin was what this elder brother was called; he was the
delight and hope of his fond father--then called by his neighbors "the
Lord of the Fens," because of the stand he took against the King's
threatened "improvement" of the marshy fen-lands. To-day the world
honors and revels that sturdy farmer of the fens as Britain's mightiest
man--Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England.
We catch a few glimpses--not many, unfortunately--of the quiet home at
St. Ives, in which the Cromwell boys and girls lived. It was a happy and
united home, blessed with a mother whom her children revered, and having
as its head a father they honored and never dared to disobey.
But fathers in those days--two hundred and fifty years and more
ago--though stern in their ways with children, were as fond and as
loving as are the fathers of to-day, and Cromwell the farmer, Cromwell
the General, Cromwell the Lord Protector, loved his children dearly, and
labored for their good alike in the great palace at Whitehall as in the
low, timber-framed house upon the one street of St. Ives, where the
willows shivered in the wind, and the cattle grazed and fattened upon
the wide marshy meadows that lined the sluggish Ouse.
How little Dick Cromwell fared as a boy at St. Ives we have little means
of knowing. When he was ten years old--in the year 1636--the Cromwells
moved into a bigger house at Ely, fifteen miles away. It was called Ely
from the eels that wriggled about in the muddy Ouse, and is that famous
cathedral town of the fens where King Canute, who tried to order back
the tide, once bade his rowers stop his boat that he might hear the
monks of the cathedral sing.
Probably boy Dick thought more of bobbing for eels in the Ouse than of
King Canute and the monks; for there were no monks singing in England
when Richard Cromwell was a boy. There was soon to be no King in
England, either, and in that great uprising against principalities and
powers Dick Cromwell's father was to bear an important part.
We would like to know more of Richard Cromwell's boyhood. We would like
to know how he lived and what he did as a small boy on that cattle farm
among the fens at St. Ives, and at the more spacious homestead in the
shadow of the great gray towers of Ely Cathedral. We would like to know
whether he liked sport, as most boys do, or whether he was too lazy to
exert himself at play. We would like to know how he studied, and what he
learned at the Free Grammar School at Felsted, where, one after the
other, four of the Cromwell boys were sent; whether he loved football as
much as his father did, and became a champion full-back as his father
did when he was a boy.
I am afraid Richard Cromwell was just as careless at his books as at the
later duties that came to him; for, from things that have come down to
us, we know how his busy father, who was as ambitious for his boys as
all fathers are, had but little patience with lazybones anywhere, and
reproved boy Dick for his carelessness as he found fault with young Mr.
Dick, in later years, for his shiftless ways.
Troublesome times came to England. The people rose in defence of their
rights. The King fell. The throne and crown were abolished. The
Parliament bent before the iron will of the people's champion, and from
the Captain of a troop and the General of an army the determined farmer
of the fens took the helm and steered his country through reefs and
breakers, until, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the
commonwealth of England became the first power in Europe, unconquerable
on the land, invincible on the sea.
Step by step Cromwell rose to power. Against his own desire he rose, the
one strong man in England. And, as he advanced, his family rose with him
into notice and position. One by one the older boys died. Robert, a
promising lad of seventeen, died at Felsted School; Oliver, the second
son, named for his father and a Captain in the cavalry, died just before
the great victory of Marston Moor, and Richard Cromwell thus became the
eldest living son, heir to the estates, successor in power, but never
heir to the fame that his mighty father attained.
For there was in "lazy Dick" nothing of his father's masterful manner or
genius in leadership, nothing of the display and vast hospitality that
made famous his ancestor, known as "the Golden Knight of Hinchinbrook,"
nothing of the dash and daring that marked his more remote ancestor,
"Diamond Dick," who unhorsed all his rivals at a tournament, and so
defended the king's colors that the pleased monarch, bluff King Henry
the Eighth, called the victorious champion his "diamond."
We are not even certain that Richard Cromwell fought in the wars against
the King, as did his brother Oliver and Henry. We cannot find that he
desired either the position or prominence that his father's rise to
greatness gave him. Richard Cromwell cared only to live and die a
quiet, inoffensive, lazy country squire. At any other time in the
history of the world he might easily have lived unknown, unhonored, and
unsung. It was his father's fame that brought him into notice; it was
because he had neither the will, the inclination, nor the ability to
take up his father's work, and carry it forward for the greatness and
glory of England, that to-day the world holds in such slight esteem this
quiet son of Cromwell.
We should not blame people for not doing what they cannot do. It may be,
indeed, that "lazy Dick" was not shiftless, though he was lazy, nor a
numbskull simply because he was not great. Richard Cromwell liked to
take things easy; he hated to be bothered; he liked to keep out of
trouble, and was willing to let the world wag as it would so long as he
had a comfortable home and nothing particular to do.
There is nothing really bad in this; but boys and men of that stamp, you
know, never help the world along. And I am afraid that "lazy Dick,"
notwithstanding all his opportunities and the high position to which he
was finally advanced, never did anything to help the world along. If a
good thing came in his way he took it, enjoyed it if he could, and got
out of it if it proved troublesome and laborious.
When he was twenty his father tried to make him a lawyer; but he soon
dropped that profession. He offered him a command in the army, but Dick
seems never to have accepted it. When he was twenty-three he married a
nice girl in Hampshire. Oliver Cromwell loved her dearly, but he and her
father had their hands full trying to make Dick "toe the mark."
[Illustration: RICHARD PREFERRED HUNTING TO POLITICS.]
Whenever he could, Richard Cromwell would slip away from the work his
father wished him to do and go out hunting, or have a good time with
other rich do-nothings at his Hampshire farm. He disliked the almost
kingly court of his father at Whitehall Palace, and though sent to
Parliament, he did little and said less. And when he was made one of his
father's chief advisers--a privy councillor--his counsels amounted to
nothing, and his position was simply what politicians call a sinecure.
When, at last, his great father's life went out, and England was left
without a head, Richard Cromwell was named as his successor, and made
Lord Protector. Lazy Dick became King of England, without the title, but
with more of power than many a King before and after him possessed.
But he had neither the skill nor the sense to hold what the people had
given him. I doubt if he cared either for the place or the power. And
they were his but a short time. Dissatisfaction broke into revolt. The
nation was divided. The King came to his own again. Charles the Second
was placed upon the throne from which his father had been hurled, and
Richard Cromwell, without a word of protest, without striking a blow for
his power, stepped quietly down from the Lord Protector's chair his
father had set up, and slipped back into private life, too weak to be
defended by his friends, too insignificant to be persecuted by his foes.
He lived to be an old, old man, and died at eighty-six amid his
rose-gardens at Cheshunt, near London, unhonored and disregarded by the
England his father had liberated, but which the son was too weak to
uphold as a free commonwealth.
We must not be too bard on "lazy Dick." He had not a spark of greatness
in him, and should not be blamed for failing to maintain his father's
glory. It is a hard thing for a small son to live up to the fame of a
great father. And yet the world does not take lack of ability into
account. Richard Cromwell to-day has no place in the world's esteem. His
name lives because he was his father's son; because he was a failure
where his father had been a success; and because his life was so sad and
stupid a sequel to the people's stand for liberty in the days made
glorious in English history by the might and power, the grandeur and
manliness, the strength and patriotism of England's greatest man--Oliver
Cromwell, great father of a small son.
ITS MEANING.
(_Tommy loq._)
Upon the quiet river,
Enamelled and serene,
Great flakes of oil are floating
In blue and pink and green.
"They look like maps all colored
In my geography,
Blue China, and green Ireland,
And pink Algiers I see.
"And still I think the meaning
Of all this oil I've found;
It's this--a school of sardines
Right here is swimming round."
R. K. M.
THE WATERMELON TIDE.
BY EARLE TRACY.
The great still tide that comes from the Gulf when no one is expecting
it reached up through the marshes one summer night, and spread itself
over the banks of the bayou, and found numberless things in places of
safety, and when it was ready to go out again it took them along.
Among its discoveries was a schooner-load of watermelons, about which
Captain Lazare and the boss of the big farm had disagreed so radically
that the melons had been left in a pile on the landing to wait for other
transport. The tide charged itself with them, and when morning broke
they were on their way to New Orleans.
Bascom had been tossing in his sleep as the little _Mystery_ did when
the tide went in one direction along Potosi Channel and the wind went in
the other. With the first glimmer of light he was up and down at the
beach.
"Me, but it's been high," he gasped, coming up from his first plunge and
leaning back in the water as if it were a steamer-chair. "It would be
beautiful to run out with in the _Mystery_--an' me goin' to pick figs
all day in them dumb ole trees! I wish the canning factory would bust!"
Bascom was ready for the hardest kind of work at sea, but things on
shore were unutterably lifeless to him, and how Captain Tony could have
contracted to sell his figs instead of letting the birds take care of
them was past Bascom's understanding.
While he was floating and thinking mournfully of the figs, one of the
watermelons struck him softly on the cheek. He bounded clear out of the
water with fright, and as he made for shore another melon came up under
him and sent him pelting through the shoals. He was not followed, and
when he felt grass under his feet, and realized that he had fled
shoreward for safety and that he had not been hurt at all, he felt very
queer.
"If they was popusses they'd be a-splashin'," he reasoned; "an' if they
was sharks they'd have eaten me--least-ways they wouldn't have been so
polite about lettin' me excuse myse'f. I wonder what they is?"
He moved gingerly into the deep water again, and at last swam out to
investigate. He could see two or three dark round surfaces letting the
tide sway them easily away from shore. At his approach they neither
dived nor turned to attack him. "They mighty tame," said Bascom, laying
his hand on one. "They--_they's watermelons_!"
"Where did you come from?" he asked, taking the nearest in his arms.
"What po' dumb idiot let you get away like this? Did you ax permission
to come here visitin' me? I'm mighty glad to see you, anyways. You's
jus' who I was a-thinkin' of."
He capered round them for a while, then gathered them all in a line
within his arm. They were too many for him, but the wrestle to keep them
from bobbing over or under and getting away was sheer delight. "Three
melons!" he repeated; "cooled in this high tide! Three of 'em! What'll
Captain Tony say?"
He was so interested in thinking of Captain Tony's surprise that the
outside melon escaped from him, and he could not get it again without
losing the other two.
"I'll come back for you," he promised; "you can't go far 'thouten your
fins grow." He took the other two and put them under a clump of
palmettoes, where they would make no new acquaintances while he was
gone. "Don't know as anybody else is up," he said; "but they might be.
It was a terrible hot night."
As he waded out again over the sharp oyster-shells the sky had grown
blue instead of gray, and a brightness sprang across the water, touching
hundreds and hundreds of glistening green watermelons undulating with
the falling tide.
Bascom's heart stood still. He stopped right where he was, and his brown
face grew tense with round-eyed wonder. The water lapped against his
breast. He almost let it take him off his feet. "I knowed they was
called watermelons," he said, slowly, "but I never caught 'em growing in
the water by night before. How's we goin' to get 'em in.'"
He looked from the melons toward the shore, where Captain Tony's long
seine hung on the poles beside the submerged pier. "Usses can haul 'em
in," he said.
Although it was exceedingly early there was no time to lose. It would
take two good hours to get the melons in, and the people on the bay
would be only too glad to help in the rescuing as soon as they woke up.
"Folkses is always so interested in what I find," Bascom grumbled; but
for once no one troubled him. He roused Captain Tony, and they hitched
the net between two boats and, rowing apart, circled around the melons
with it, gathering them in, until they were fairly rafting them before
it toward the shore. The net bulged in a great crescent, and Bascom
could hardly keep his boat abreast of the Captain's. The weight they
were towing made it seem as if his oars were pulling through stiff clay.
No net on all the coast had ever had such a full haul before. Bascom and
the Captain exulted in it, even while their faces grew scarlet.
"We can'd take in anoder one," the Captain declared; "de net can'd stan'
de strain." And closing together as much as the mass between them would
permit, they pulled ashore and rolled the melons out in a line upon the
beach. The tide was going out so fast that each haul made a separate
rank farther and farther out from the high drift-mark in the grass.
It was glorious hard work, and before it was finished the sun had turned
the water violet, then red, then gold and blue, and yet no one had come
to take a share in the salvage, and no one had come to claim the melons.
"I tell you," said Bascom, as he wheeled the last barrow-load up from
the beach--"I tell you they's mascots, and they's come right in from the
deep sea. Do you reckon they's too many of 'em for usses to eat?"
The Captain straightened himself, and measured the heap of cracked
melons, which he had left out as he piled the good ones symmetrically
under one of the live-oaks. "Yo' boy," he said, "if yo' jus' made way
wid de busted ones I'd be paintin' a black ring roun' de mas' of de
little _Mystery_ 'fo' sunset, an' w'ad would I do 'boud pickin' de figs
faw de cannin' factory?"
"O-h-h," groaned Bascom, "I'd forgot about the figs. Can't they wait
till we take these melons off in the _Mystery_ and sell 'em?"
"De melons can wait, ya-as, now we got dem all safe," said the Captain.
"De cracked ones will not keep noway, an' de good ones will las' bettah
dan de figs. An' w'ad is mo' to de point, dere is de ownah of de melons
to consult."
"But he isn't here," Bascom said, "an' we don't know where he is. They
didn't bring his address with 'em when they come in on the tide."
"I reckon I know his address," the Captain answered, "an' maybe yo'
would, also, if yo' let yo'se'f t'ink 'boud id. De big tide washed dem
off de landin' up de bayou. Lazare was a-tellin' me yestahday dat he an'
de boss ad de big fahm had a quahl boud de price o' melons, an' Lazare,
who was to have take dem in de _Alphonsine_, he go off mad, an' de
melons dey stay in a pile on de landin', an' I was t'inkin' boud goin'
up to see de boss me aftah de figs was pick'. I reckon now de bes' way
is faw me to go ad once while yo' pick de figs."
"But we ought to start right now while the tide is goin' out," objected
Bascom.
"Dere will be oder tides, an' dey is waitin' faw de figs ad de factory,"
said the Captain, "so I fink yo' bettah go to pickin', boy"; and without
stopping for further persuasion from Bascom he got into his skiff and
headed toward the mouth of Bayou Porto.
As Bascom carried the last of the melons to add to the heap it slipped
from his hands accidentally, and split into rich red pieces on the sand.
"U-m," he said; "lucky it was a cracked one." He took it up to eat it in
the shade of the live-oak. "Too bad," he added, "after you was so
enterprisin' to start out by yourse'f that me an' Captain Tony couldn't
agree to take you right along. Queer how folkses can't agree 'bout you.
If it wasn't for them dumb ole figs! S'pose when I'm done eatin' I _got_
to go up an' go to pickin'. Seems like such a sailor as Captain Tony
hadn't ought to fuss with things on shore."
His arms were aching from the heavy pull, and they did not feel drawn
toward the sticky figs, and mud daubers were sure to be in the trees
ready to sting interfering people, and he had not finished with the
melon when Peter Pierre, or Peter _Peer_, as the Creoles pronounce it,
came hopping leisurely along the beach, with one leg wrapped around the
other like a stork's. He was a neighbor's boy, and had been sent to
borrow Captain Tony's axe. There would be no morning coffee at his house
until Captain Tony's axe had chopped wood enough to build a fire.
"H-o!" said Peter Peer.
"H-o!" replied Bascom.
"Whose is dose melons?" cried Peter Peer. "Wheah did dey come from?"
"Came down the bayou," said Bascom. "They's mine. Mine an' Captain
Tony's."
"Gimme one?"
"Nop," said Bascom.
"Sell one?"
"N-nop, I reckon not. They ain't so many as they look."
"Heap o' cracked ones," said Peter Peer. "I'll trade yo' my play boat
faw one."
"Eatin' the cracked ones," said Bascom, taking another mouthful; "they's
mighty sweet."
"Yo' can'd eat dem _all_!" cried Peter Peer, his eyes rolling hungrily
from side to side.
"Look a-here, kid," said Bascom; "if you want one so bad I'll tell you
what I'll do. I'll let you pick figs for 'em. I was wantin' to pick 'em
myse'f, but it looks like I got to stay and take charge of these. I'll
give you a cracked melon for every basket of figs you pick."
"All right," said Peter Peer; "gimme de basket."
Bascom gave him a corner of melon to seal the bargain and keep the
basket from looking too large, and Peter Peer was soon whistling in the
trees behind the Captain's house. Bascom had scarcely settled himself
under the live-oak when Sonny Ladnier and his younger brother came in
sight with their red-sailed cat-boat, bent on an early trip to Potosi.
They saw the pile of melons, and it drew them like an undertow.
"Wheah yo' ged all dem melons?" they shouted.
"Growed 'em," replied Bascom; "do you want some?"
"Yo' bet yo'!" cried Sonny, tying up the boat. "Hand one ovah."
"What for?"
"W'at faw? W'y, to eat."
"I mean, what will you give me?" Bascom explained.
"Two bits faw two."
Bascom shook his head. There was only one way in which those melons
could be had. After some argument Sonny and his little brother repaired
to the fig-trees, each with a chunk of melon in one hand and a basket in
the other. Sonny Ladnier was big enough to have tried to bully Bascom,
but the people on the bay had a respectable fondness for him, not to
mention his partner.
During the hour, Narcisse Fontaine, big Noel Roget, Rubier Peer, who
came to look for Peter, and Patrice Rodriguez, with his pointed beard
and his reputation for duelling, added themselves to Bascom's force
behind the Captain's house, and the figs were fairly charmed from the
trees. Bascom did not think it safe to leave the melon pile for more
than a moment at a time, and he was sitting alone beside it, and had
just cleaved open the crack of a long striped "rattlesnake," when a
strange schooner passed by a length or two, then came about, and
anchored off the point. She was the _Luna May_, from Pass Christian, and
he had never seen her before. As three men got down in her tender he
could hear their voices as plainly as if they were talking to him.
"'Cose dey sell dem. Wat dey have dem faw?"
"Bud we got no money. We spen' it all las' night."
"We can trade 'im out of some. I give my knife faw one o' dem big ones.
It's a terrib' hot day. Dat little chap be mighty easy to bargain wid.
_Yo'_ see."
"You see," echoed Bascom, chuckling, as they left their skiff, and came
sauntering up to him. "Somethin' I can do for you gentlemans to-day?" he
inquired.
"Whose is dese melons?" asked the first schooner-man.
"Mine, jus' now," said Bascom.
"Aw, get away."
"Well, they is."
"Den I reckon yo' lookin' faw a chance to get rid o' some o' dem."
"Not as I knows on," Bascom said.
"Wat?" cried the second schooner-man. "I'll give yo' dis." He took out a
big Spanish pocket-knife that opened with a spring. "Yo' can have it faw
t'ree of dem."
"I don't reckon I need any knife," Bascom said.
"Aw," said the third schooner-man, impatiently, "a lot of dem is good
faw not'ing. He got to give us some. If he ain't got de sense to trade
faw dem we take dem."
He spread Bascom out swiftly with his hands, and sat down on him,
directing his mates to pile melons in their skiff. After the first
instant Bascom did not offer the slightest resistance. He lay gathering
breath against the weight of the man on his chest, and when he was quite
sure of himself he lit it out again in a terrific howl for help. The man
clapped a hand on his mouth, but Bascom had no need to speak again. A
posse of men and boys came dashing round the house, some of them putting
down the baskets, and others brandishing sticks as they ran.
The schooner-men jumped into their skiff, but Patrice and Rubier and
Noel and Sonny Ladnier rushed into the water after them, and brought
them back. A dozen hands rescued the stolen melons, while with Irish
expletives and Creole fierceness Patrice pounded the biggest man as a
preparation to bidding them good-by. The crowd was following his
example, and it would have gone hard with the strangers if Bascom had
not had a different mind.
[Illustration: "MAKE 'EM PICK YOUR FIGS!" HE SHOUTED, "MAKE EM PICK YOUR
FIGS!"]
"Make 'em pick your figs!" he shouted. "Make 'em pick your figs! They'll
look handsome in the trees! Make 'em pick for you!"
The cry found favor, and the verdict became, "If yo' want to go free yo'
got to pick de figs!"
When Captain Tony and the boss of the big farm approached the point, and
saw a strange schooner anchored there, the Captain felt anxious. "I hope
de boys not havin' troubl'," he said. "I don' see w'at dat boat wan'
stop dere faw."
As they landed, Bascom met them and explained. "I've got the crew of
that schooner pickin' figs for me, an' some of the boys from round here
is watchin' that they do it lively. They was honin' for some cracked
watermelons, an' I thought they'd better do a little work, seein' as
they got out of temper."
The boss was a Northern man. He looked at Bascom's agile weather-beaten
figure, and they all went round to see the force of overseers and the
three men in the trees. "That's about the way I have to work it," he
said. "More overseers than men; but how do yours manage to make the men
work so lively?"
"Ho!" said Bascom, "easy enough. They're workin' by the job. Can't go
till they're done."
But it was not until Patrice told why the strangers sat so glum and warm
and active in the trees that the Captain and the boss understood.
"Yo' boy," said the Captain, as they went back to the melon-pile, "an'
yo' nevah picked a fig yo'se'f?"
"Not a one," said Bascom, candidly. "The boys came along at first an'
wanted to pick for cracked melons, an' then 'bout the time they was
gettin' tired this schooner hove in sight. After I begun to have
comp'ny, looked like it was best for me to watch the melons."
"And before?" laughed the boss.