everything.
JACK.
It was a cold evening in early December, and there seemed to be an
undercurrent of excitement in the Jarvis household. The table was
spread in the dining-room with the best silver and linen. Mrs. Jarvis
was better, and had even been able to go into the kitchen to
superintend the preparations for dinner.
Jessie went around with a shining face that no one understood and she
could not explain.
Betty was strangely nervous, and had made several blunders that
morning which mortified the faithful servant very much. An air of
expectancy pervaded the whole house, though the two heads of it had
not a hint of the cause.
Jessie heard the train she had decided to be the important one. She
could hardly contain herself for expectation. She tried hard to sober
herself now and then by the thought, "Perhaps he won't come," but she
couldn't stay sobered, for she felt as certain that he would as that
she lived.
You all know how it happened. The door opened and Jack walked in. One
instant of blank silence, and then a grand convulsion.
Jack fell on his knees with his face in his mother's lap, though he
had not thought a moment before of doing any such thing. Jessie hung
over him, frantically hugging him. Mr. Jarvis, vainly trying to join
this group, could only lay his hands on Jack's head and say in a
broken voice: "My son! My son!" while Betty performed a war dance
around the party, wildly brandishing a basting spoon in one hand and
wiping her streaming eyes on the dishcloth which she held in the
other.
It was long before a word could be spoken, and the dinner was totally
ruined, as Betty declared with tears (though they were not for
sorrow), before any one could calm down enough to eat.
Then the reaction set in, and justice was done to the dinner, while
talk went on in a stream. Jack did not tell his adventures; he only
said that he had come from the city, where he had made arrangements
for a situation with Uncle John--at which Jessie's eyes sparkled. His
looks, even after a week of comfort and hope, spoke for his
sufferings.
There is little more to tell. Jack Jarvis at seventeen was a different
boy from the Jack who at sixteen started out to seek his fortune. You
may be sure that Jessie had her music lessons after all, and that a
new Winnie with a fine young brood at her heels stalked about the
Jarvis grounds the next spring.
WHO ATE THE DOLLY'S DINNER?[29]
BY ISABEL GORDON CURTIS.
A good story for the Big Sister to read to the little boys
and girls.
"Why can't dollies have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as real folks?"
asked Polly Pine.
[Footnote 29: From "For the Children's Hour," Milton Bradley Company.]
"I don't know why," said mamma, laughing; "go and dress them in their
best clothes, get the dolls' house swept and dusted and the table
ready. Then I'll fix their dinner before we go downstairs."
"Oh, how nice!" said Polly Pine.
The doll house stood in the nursery. It was very big and very
beautiful. It was painted red; it had tall chimneys, and a fine front
door with R. Bliss on a brass plate. There were lace curtains at the
windows, and two steps led up to the cunning little piazza. Polly Pine
swept the rooms with her tiny broom and dusted them. Then she set the
table in the dining-room with the very best dishes and the finest
silver. She set a teeny vase in the middle of the table, with two
violets in it, and she put dolly table napkins at each place.
When the house was all nice and clean she dressed Lavinia in her pink
muslin, and Dora Jane in her gray velvet, and Hannah Welch in her
yellow silk; then she seated them around the table, each one in her
own chair. Polly was just telling them about company manners, how they
must not eat with their knives, or leave their teaspoons in their cups
when they drank their tea, when the door opened and in came mamma with
a real dolls' Thanksgiving dinner.
There was a chicken bone to put on the platter before Hannah Welch,
for Hannah always did the carving. There were cunning little dishes of
mashed potato and cranberry sauce, and some celery in a tiny tumbler,
and the smallest squash pie baked in a patty pan. Polly Pine just
hopped up and down with delight when she saw it. She set everything on
the table; then she ran away to put on her nicest muslin frock with
the pink ribbons, and she went downstairs to her own dinner.
There were gentlemen there for dinner--gentlemen Polly was very fond
of--and she had a nice time visiting with one of them. He could change
his table napkin into a white rabbit, and she forgot all about the
dolls' Thanksgiving dinner until it was dessert-time, and the nuts and
raisins came in.
Then Polly remembered, and she jumped down from her chair and asked
mamma if she might go upstairs and see if the dolls had eaten their
dinner. When mamma told about the doll house Thanksgiving, all the
family wanted to go, too, to find out if the dolls had enjoyed their
dinner.
The front door of the doll house was open, and there sat the dolls
just as their little mistress had left them--only they had eaten
nearly all the dinner! Everything was gone except the potato and the
cranberry sauce. The chicken leg was picked bare, the bread was
nibbled, and the little pie was eaten all around.
"Well, this is funny," said papa.
Just then they heard a funny, scratching noise in the doll house, and
a little gray mouse jumped out from under the table. He ran out the
front door of the doll house, and over the piazza, and down the steps
before you could say "Jack Robinson." In a minute he was gone--nobody
knew where. There was another tiny mouse in the doll house under the
parlour sofa, and a third one under Lavinia's bed, with a poor,
frightened gray tail sticking out. They all got away safe. Papa would
not allow mamma to go for the cat. He said:
"Why can't a poor little mouse have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as
we?"
AN OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVING[30]
BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
A long story about a family of hardy New England pioneers in
Revolutionary days. It will be most enjoyed by the older
children.
"Pile in, Hannah. Get right down 'long o' the clock, so's to kinder
shore it up. I'll fix in them pillers t'other side on't, and you can
set back ag'inst the bed. Good-bye, folks! Gee up! Bright. Gee! I tell
ye, Buck."
[Footnote 30: Adapted from "Huckleberries," Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
"Good-bye!" nodded Hannah, from the depths of the old calash which
granny had given her for a riding-hood, and her rosy face sparkled
under the green shadow like a blossom under a burdock leaf.
This was their wedding journey. Thirty long miles to be travelled, at
the slow pace of an oxcart, where to-day a railroad spins by, and a
log hut in the dim distance.
But Hannah did not cry about it. There was a momentary choking,
perhaps, in her throat, as she caught a last view of granny's mob cap
and her father's rough face, with the red head of her small
stepbrother between them, grouped in the doorway. Her mother had died
long ago, and there was another in her place now, and a swarm of
children. Hannah was going to her own home, to a much easier life,
and going with John. Why should she cry?
Besides, Hannah was the merriest little woman in the country. She had
a laugh always lying ready in a convenient dimple.
She never knew what "blues" meant, except to dye stocking yarn. She
was sunny as a dandelion and gay as a bobolink. Her sweet good nature
never failed through the long day's journey, and when night came she
made a pot of tea at the campfire, roasted a row of apples, and
broiled a partridge John shot by the wayside, with as much enjoyment
as if this was the merriest picnic excursion, and not a solitary camp
in the forest, long miles away from any human dwelling, and by no
means sure of safety from some lingering savage, some beast of harmful
nature, or at least a visit from a shambling black bear, for bears
were plentiful enough in that region.
But none of these things worried Hannah. She ate her supper with
hearty appetite, said her prayers with John, and curled down on the
featherbed in the cart, while John heaped on more wood, and,
shouldering his musket, went to lengthen the ropes that tethered his
oxen, and then mounted guard over the camp. Hannah watched his fine,
grave face, as the flickering light illuminated it, for a few minutes,
and then slept tranquilly till dawn. And by sunset next day the little
party drew up at the door of the log hut they called home.
It looked very pretty to Hannah. She had the fairy gift, that is so
rare among mortals, of seeing beauty in its faintest expression; and
the young grass about the rough stone doorstep, the crimson cones on
the great larch tree behind it, the sunlit panes of the west window,
the laugh and sparkle of the brook that ran through the clearing, the
blue eyes of the squirrel caps that blossomed shyly and daintily
beside the stumps of new-felled trees--all these she saw and delighted
in. And when the door was open, the old clock set up, the bed laid on
the standing bedplace, and the three chairs and table ranged against
the wall, she began her house-wifery directly, singing as she went.
Before John had put his oxen in the small barn, sheltered the cart and
the tools in it, and shaken down hay into the manger, Hannah had made
a fire, hung on the kettle, spread up her bed with homespun sheets and
blankets and a wonderful cover of white-and-red chintz, set the table
with a loaf of bread, a square of yellow butter, a bowl of maple
sugar, and a plate of cheese; and even released the cock and the hen
from their uneasy prison in a splint basket, and was feeding them in
the little woodshed when John came in.
His face lit up, as he entered, with that joyful sense of home so
instinctive in every true man and woman. He rubbed his hard hands
together, and catching Hannah as she came in at the shed door,
bestowed upon her a resounding kiss.
"You're the most of a little woman I ever see, Hannah, I swan to
man."
Hannah laughed like a swarm of spring blackbirds.
"I declare, John, you do beat all! Ain't it real pleasant here? Seems
to me I never saw things so handy."
Oh, Hannah, what if your prophetic soul could have foreseen the
conveniences of this hundred years after! Yet the shelves, the pegs,
the cupboard in the corner, the broad shelf above the fire, the great
pine chest under the window, and the clumsy settle, all wrought out of
pine board by John's patient and skilful fingers, filled all her
needs; and what can modern conveniences do more?
So they ate their supper at home for the first time, happy as
new-nested birds, and far more grateful.
John had built a sawmill on the brook a little way from the house, and
already owned a flourishing trade, for the settlement about the lake
from which Nepasset Brook sprung was quite large, and till John
Perkins went there the lumber had been all drawn fifteen miles off, to
Litchfield, and his mill was only three miles from Nepash village.
Hard work and hard fare lay before them both, but they were not
daunted by the prospect....
By and by a cradle entered the door, and a baby was laid in it....
One baby is well enough in a log cabin, with one room for all the
purposes of life; but when next year brought two more, a pair of stout
boys, then John began to saw lumber for his own use. A bedroom was
built on the east side of the house, and a rough stairway into the
loft--more room perhaps than was needed; but John was called in Nepash
"a dre'dful forecastin' man," and he took warning from the twins. And
timely warning it proved, for as the years slipped by, one after
another, they left their arrows in his quiver till ten children
bloomed about the hearth. The old cabin had disappeared entirely. A
good-sized frame house of one story, with a high-pitched roof, stood
in its stead, and a slab fence kept roving animals out of the yard and
saved the apple trees from the teeth of stray cows and horses.
Poor enough they were still. The loom in the garret always had its web
ready, the great wheel by the other window sung its busy song year in
and year out. Dolly was her mother's right hand now; and the twins,
Ralph and Reuben, could fire the musket and chop wood. Sylvy, the
fourth child, was the odd one. All the rest were sturdy, rosy,
laughing girls and boys; but Sylvy had been a pining baby, and grew up
into a slender, elegant creature, with clear gray eyes, limpid as
water, but bright as stars, and fringed with long golden lashes the
colour of her beautiful hair--locks that were coiled in fold on fold
at the back of her fine head, like wreaths of undyed silk, so pale was
their yellow lustre. She bloomed among the crowd of red-cheeked,
dark-haired lads and lasses, stately and incongruous as a June lily in
a bed of tulips. But Sylvy did not stay at home. The parson's lady at
Litchfield came to Nepash one Sunday, with her husband, and seeing
Sylvy in the square corner pew with the rest, was mightily struck by
her lovely face, and offered to take her home with her the next week,
for the better advantages of schooling. Hannah could not have spared
Dolly; but Sylvia was a dreamy, unpractical child, and though all the
dearer for being the solitary lamb of the flock by virtue of her
essential difference from the rest, still, for that very reason, it
became easier to let her go. Parson Everett was childless, and in two
years' time both he and his wife adored the gentle, graceful girl; and
she loved them dearly. They could not part with her, and at last
adopted her formally as their daughter, with the unwilling consent of
John and Hannah. Yet they knew it was greatly "for Sylvy's
betterment," as they phrased it; so at last they let her go.
But when Dolly was a sturdy young woman of twenty-five the war-trumpet
blew, and John and the twins heard it effectually. There was a sudden
leaving of the plow in the furrow. The planting was set aside for the
children to finish, the old musket rubbed up, and with set lips and
resolute eyes the three men walked away one May morning to join the
Nepash company. Hannah kept up her smiling courage through it all. If
her heart gave way, nobody knew it but God and John. The boys she
encouraged and inspired, and the children were shamed out of their
childish tears by mother's bright face and cheery talk.
Then she set them all to work. There was corn to plant, wheat to sow,
potatoes to set; flax and wool to spin and weave, for clothes would be
needed for all, both absent and stay-at-homes. There was no father to
superintend the outdoor work; so Hannah took the field, and marshalled
her forces on Nepasset Brook much as the commander-in-chief was doing
on a larger scale elsewhere. Eben, the biggest boy, and Joey, who came
next him, were to do all the planting; Diana and Sam took on
themselves the care of the potato patch, the fowls, and the cow; Dolly
must spin and weave when mother left either the wheel or loom to
attend to the general ordering of the forces; while Obed and Betty,
the younglings of the flock, were detailed to weed, pick vegetables
(such few as were raised in the small garden), gather berries, herbs,
nuts, hunt the straying turkeys' nests, and make themselves generally
useful. At evening all the girls sewed; the boys mended their shoes,
having learned so much from a travelling cobbler; and the mother
taught them all her small stock of schooling would allow. At least,
they each knew how to read, and most of them to write, after a very
uncertain fashion. As to spelling, nobody knew how to spell in those
days.... But they did know the four simple rules of arithmetic, and
could say the epigrammatic rhymes of the old New England Primer and
the sibyllic formulas of the Assembly's Catechism as glibly as the
child of to-day repeats "The House That Jack Built."
So the summer went on. The corn tasselled, the wheat ears filled well,
the potatoes hung out rich clusters of their delicate and graceful
blossoms, beans straggled half over the garden, the hens did their
duty bravely, and the cow produced a heifer calf.
Father and the boys were fighting now, and mother's merry words were
more rare, though her bright face still wore its smiling courage. They
heard rarely from the army. Now and then a post rider stopped at the
Nepash tavern and brought a few letters or a little news; but this was
at long intervals, and women who watched and waited at home without
constant mail service and telegraphic flashes, aware that news of
disaster, of wounds, of illness, could only reach them too late to
serve or save, and that to reach the ill or the dying involved a
larger and more disastrous journey than the survey of half the world
demands now--these women endured pangs beyond our comprehension, and
endured them with a courage and patience that might have furnished
forth an army of heroes, that did go far to make heroes of that
improvised, ill-conditioned, eager multitude who conquered the trained
bands of their oppressors and set their sons "free and equal," to use
their own dubious phraseology, before the face of humanity at large.
By and by winter came on with all its terrors. By night wolves howled
about the lonely house, and sprung back over the palings when Eben
went to the door with his musket. Joe hauled wood from the forest on a
hand-sled, and Dolly and Diana took it in through the kitchen window
when the drifts were so high that the woodshed door could not be
opened. Besides, all the hens were gathered in there, as well for
greater warmth as for convenience in feeding, and the barn was only to
be reached with snowshoes and entered by the window above the manger.
Hard times these were. The loom in the garret could not be used, for
even fingers would freeze in that atmosphere; so the thread was wound
off, twisted on the great wheel, and knit into stockings, the boys
learning to fashion their own, while Hannah knit her anxiety and her
hidden heartaches into socks for her soldier boys and their father.
By another spring the aching and anxiousness were a little dulled, for
habit blunts even the keen edge of mortal pain. They had news that
summer that Ralph had been severely wounded, but had recovered; that
John had gone through a sharp attack of camp-fever; that Reuben was
taken prisoner, but escaped by his own wit. Hannah was thankful and
grateful beyond expression. Perhaps another woman would have wept and
wailed, to think all this had come to pass without her knowledge or
her aid; but it was Hannah's way to look at the bright side of things.
Sylvia would always remember how once, when she was looking at Mount
Tahconic, darkened by a brooding tempest, its crags frowning blackly
above the dark forest at its foot and the lurid cloud above its head
torn by fierce lances of light, she hid her head in her mother's
checked apron, in the helpless terror of an imaginative child; but,
instead of being soothed and pitied, mother had only laughed a little
gay laugh, and said gently, but merrily:
"Why, Sylvy, the sun's right on the other side, only you don't see
it."
After that she always thought her mother saw the sun when nobody else
could. And in a spiritual sense it was true.
Parson Everett rode over once or twice from Litchfield that next
summer to fetch Sylvia and to administer comfort to Hannah. He was a
quaint, prim little gentleman, neat as any wren, but mild-mannered as
wrens never are, and in a moderate way kindly and sympathetic. When
the children had haled their lovely sister away to see their rustic
possessions, Parson Everett would sit down in a high chair, lay aside
his cocked hat, spread his silk pocket handkerchief over his knees,
and prepare to console Hannah.
"Mistress Perkins, these are trying times, trying times. There is a
sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees--h-m! Sea and waves
roaring of a truth--h-m! h-m! I trust, Mistress Perkins, you submit to
the Divine Will with meekness."
"Well, I don't know," replied Hannah, with a queer little twinkle in
her eye. "I don't believe I be as meek as Moses, parson. I should like
things fixed different, to speak truth."
"Dear me! Dear me--h-m! h-m! My good woman, the Lord reigneth. You
must submit; you must submit. You know it is the duty of a vessel of
wrath to be broken to pieces if it glorifieth the Maker."
"Well, mebbe 'tis. I don't know much about that kind o' vessel. I've
got to submit because there ain't anything else to do, as I see. I
can't say it goes easy--not'n' be honest; but I try to look on the
bright side, and to believe the Lord'll take care of my folks better'n
I could, even if they was here."
"H-m! h-m! Well," stammered the embarrassed parson, completely at his
wit's end with this cheerful theology, "well, I hope it is grace that
sustains you, Mistress Perkins, and not the vain elation of the
natural man. The Lord is in His holy temple; the earth is His
footstool--h-m!" The parson struggled helplessly with a tangle of
texts here; but the right one seemed to fail him, till Hannah
audaciously put it in:
"Well, you know what it says about takin' care of sparrers, in the
Bible, and how we was more valerable than they be, a lot. That kind o'
text comes home these times, I tell ye. You fetch a person down to the
bedrock, as Grandsir Penlyn used to say, and then they know where they
be. And ef the Lord is really the Lord of all, I expect He'll take
care of all; 'nd I don't doubt but what He is and does. So I can fetch
up on that."
Parson Everett heaved a deep sigh, put on his cocked hat, and blew his
nose ceremonially with the silk handkerchief. Not that he needed to:
but as a sort of shaking off of the dust of responsibility and ending
the conversation, which, if it was not heterodox on Hannah's part,
certainly did not seem orthodox to him.... He did not try to console
her any more, but contented himself with the stiller spirits in his
own parish, who had grown up in and after his own fashion.
Another dreadful winter settled down on Nepasset township. There was
food enough in the house and firewood in the shed; but neither food
nor fire seemed to assuage the terrible cold, and with decreased
vitality decreased courage came to all. Hygienics were an unforeseen
mystery to people of that day. They did not know that nourishing food
is as good for the brain as for the muscles. They lived on potatoes,
beets, beans, with now and then a bit of salt pork or beef boiled in
the pot with the rest; and their hearts failed, as their flesh did,
with this sodden and monotonous diet. One ghastly night Hannah almost
despaired. She held secret council with Dolly and Eben, while they
inspected the potato bin and the pork barrel, as to whether it would
not be best for them to break up and find homes elsewhere for the
winter. Her father was old and feeble. He would be glad to have her
with him and Betty. The rest were old enough to "do chores" for their
board, and there were many families where help was needed, both in
Nepash and Litchfield, since every available man had gone to the war
by this time. But while they talked a great scuffling and squawking in
the woodhouse attracted the boys upstairs. Joe seized the tongs and
Diana the broomstick. An intruding weasel was pursued and slaughtered;
but not till two fowls, fat and fine, had been sacrificed by the
invader and the tongs together. The children were all hungry, with
the exhaustion of the cold weather, and clamoured to have these
victims cooked for supper. Nor was Hannah unmoved by the appeal. Her
own appetite seconded. The savoury stew came just in time. It aroused
them to new life and spirits. Hannah regained courage, wondering how
she could have lost heart so far, and said to Dolly, as they washed up
the supper dishes:
"I guess we'll keep together, Dolly. It'll be spring after a while,
and we'll stick it out together."
"I guess I would," answered Dolly. "And don't you believe we should
all feel better to kill off them fowls--all but two or three? They're
master hands to eat corn, and it does seem as though that biled hen
done us all a sight o' good to-night. Just hear them children."
And it certainly was, as Hannah said, "musical to hear 'em." Joe had a
cornstalk fiddle, and Eben an old singing book, which Diana read over
his shoulder while she kept on knitting her blue sock; and the three
youngsters--Sam, Obed, and Betty--with wide mouths and intent eyes,
followed Diana's "lining out" of that quaint hymn "The Old
Israelites," dwelling with special gusto and power on two of the
verses: