that he would carry the mail himself. When the others sent in their
bids he sent in his, for fifty dollars. _So_ it happened that Que was
mail-carrier. He was so little and bow-legged, that there were not
many things that he could do; for instance, he couldn't run. His head
and feet were very large, and his arms and intermediate body very
small; therefore he could dream and wonder what he should do when he
grew up, and walk (with care) as much as he pleased, but was not a
favorite among the boys in playing games.
Of course he was not baptized into the name Que, but was called, by
his parents and the christening minister, John Quincy Adams Pond, Jr.;
named for his father, you see. They began to call him Que before he
was out of his babyhood; for they had one boy named John Lee, but as
they always called him Lee, they entirely forgot that fact till after
the ceremony of Que's christening. And they really weren't much to
blame, for they had nine other boys, and poor memories; and though
both are misfortunes, they can't be helped. To avoid mixing their two
Johns, they called one Lee and the other Que.
Que looked upon seven miles a day as no walk at all, and upon fifty
dollars a year as a fortune, and upon "United States mail-carrier" as
a title little below "Hon." or "Esq." He had hoped, all his life, that
he should, some fine day, have a right to one or the other of these
titles. Probably the fact that his name already ended with a "Jr."
excited his ambition in that particular direction. Money and dignity
seemed to Que the two things most to be desired in life, unless I
might add a small family.
Now, we will leave Que's antecedents behind, and go on to his life
while he carried the mail; and a very queer little life it was, as you
will say when you get to the end of it, though I don't know when that
will be, for Que isn't there himself yet. The mail contract was from
July 1, 1860, to July 1, 1861, and if your mathematics are in good
running order, you will see that that was just a year.
July 1, 1860, was as fine a day in Gingoo as any day in the year; and
Que was in as high spirits as on any day in the course of his life.
Unfortunately the mail coach reached Gingoo exactly at forty minutes
past eleven, unless the driver got drunk or fell asleep, which
happened about two hundred and forty days in the year. But whether
sober, drunk, or asleep, the four coach horses always stood before
Gingoo office door by twelve o'clock at latest.
It makes no difference to you or to me when the coach stood there; but
it made a great deal of difference to Que, for twelve o'clock on the
finest day in the year, and that day the first of July, is apt to be
rather warm; and in the year 1860 it was _very_ warm. Nevertheless, at
quarter past twelve, Que started with the bag. I, happening to be at
the right side of him, saw only the bag start with Que.
Perhaps you don't see why Que should have started right in the heat of
the day; but if you had been Que, and could have heard all the
Pointers clamoring for their mail, you would have started just when
Que did. The mail-bag was made of very dark leather, and drew the sun
tremendously. Now, as Que had on a pair of light linen pants and a
little gray lined coat, of course he ought to have walked between the
bag and the sun; but not being a scientific boy, he didn't think of
that, and slung the bag over his sunny shoulder, and from that height
it trailed to the ground.
Que walked on as fast as he could, trying not to think too much of the
heat and the weight; but the peculiar odor that the sun brought from
the leather bag was blown up his nose, and down his throat, and into
his ears, by a strong south wind that blew, and before Que had time to
think whether he had better or better not, he was lying fast asleep by
the side of the road, on the grass; rather he was lying on the
mail-bag, and that was lying on the grass. Why didn't he fall on the
other side? For two reasons; first, he was attracted mail-bag way by
the sleepy odor before spoken of; and secondly, the weight was all
that way, and as he began to sleep before he began to drop, of course
the bag was his natural bed when he did drop.
The Point road was lonesome, and it must have been quite an hour
before any one came that way. Then a man and two horses, and a cart
loaded high with laths, were seen coming over the hill; that is, they
would have been seen, if Que hadn't been asleep just then.
"Hollo! what's all this?" said the driver when he got opposite the bag
and Que.
"All this" neither stirred nor spoke.
"Whoa! whoa, there!" called the driver to his horses.
Now, if Que had been taking only a light, after-dinner nap, he would
have been wide awake as soon as the cart stopped; for the hill was a
long one, and the rumbling had been as long, and merely from lack of
that lullaby, a well-conditioned boy should have wakened at once. But
Que didn't.
"I declare," said the driver, "if it ain't that bran new mail-boy!"
Thereupon he went up and looked at him; but not being of a magnetic
temperament, he didn't wake Que that way.
"Bless the chick, if he isn't dead asleep," continued the driver,
talking to himself. This driver had a habit of talking to himself, for
he said, "then he was always sure of having somebody worth talking
to."
"Now, won't those Pointers growl for their mail, when it is a couple
of hours late? The first day, too! Que'll catch it." Then he gave Que
a little roll, so that he rolled from the bag over into the grass.
"Well, I always _was_ a good-natured fellow. Guess I'll take his bag
along for him, and save him the scolding."
So the driver threw the bag on top of the load of laths, and left the
bag-boy to sleep it out.
When Que had slept half an hour longer, he started up, staring wide
awake.
"I've been asleep," said Que; and so he had.
"My bag's been and gone," continued Que; and so it had.
But he was a bright boy, and all the brighter, perhaps, for having
just been asleep; so he looked round, which is a very good thing to do
when you get into trouble, and the very thing that half the people in
the world never think to do.
"There are tracks in the grass; and there is a cart-track in the dust,
and it had two horses, and these foot-tracks went back to it. Why, the
lath man must have taken it;" and so he had.
Que started towards the Point as fast as he could go, and
consequently, when he got there, which was just fifty minutes after
the bag got there, he had no breath left to ask any questions about
it. Still he panted on to the post-office.
"Who are you?" asked the postmaster.
"I'm--a--bag," gasped Que.
"Bag of wind!" said the postmaster, emphatically.
"A--mail--bag!" said Que.
"Humph! So you're the new mail boy--are you? Send your bag down by
express, and came yourself by accommodation--didn't you?"
"The lath man's got it; where is he?" Que had recovered his breath a
little by this time.
"I don't know anything about the lath man," growled the postmaster.
But when Que began to cry, which he did at once, the postmaster
couldn't stand that, for he had no children of his own, and his
feelings, consequently, weren't hardened; so he dragged the bag from
a corner, and threw it on Que's back.
"There, take your bag, and go home, and don't be two hours late the
first day, next time." He didn't stop to think that there cannot be
two first days to the same thing. Que didn't stop to think of it,
either, but started homewards as fast as his bow-legs would let him. I
think he approximated more nearly to running, that day, than he ever
had done in his life before.
Que's nine brothers treated him with great respect, when he got home.
The family had been to tea, but each one had saved some part of his
supper for Que; so, though he had an indigestible mixture, there was
plenty of it,--while it lasted.
"Did you have a good time, Que?"
"Was it fun?"
"Did you get anything for it?"
"Did you get tired?"
"Going to keep it up?"
"Can't I go next time?"
"Do you like it?"
"Did you see any boys?"
"Anybody give you a lift?"
How all together the questions did come! But the confusion of them
saved Que from the trouble of answering the nine boys, and as soon as
there was a lull, his father said,--
"You were gone some time, sir; I hope you didn't stop to play on the
road?"
"O, no, sir," said Que. "I haven't played at all;" which was very
true, you know.
"Did there seem to be many letters?" asked his mother; and be it
understood, that she asked quite as much because Que looked as if the
bag had been heavy, as from feminine curiosity.
"Didn't notice, ma'am; the bag wasn't very heavy;" and it wasn't,
except on his conscience, and he knew his mother didn't mean that, at
all.
For several weeks after that everything went on smoothly enough. Que
had a pretty good time, and found it some fun, and felt that he was
getting something for it, and didn't get very tired, and kept it up,
and never took any of his brothers with him, and liked the business,
and saw a good many boys, and got a large number of "lifts" from
hay-carts and wagons, and particularly from the lath man. So, in
course of time, all the brothers' questions were satisfactorily
answered.
It is a way that the world has, to let you trip once, and then run on
smooth ground some time, before it puts another snag in your way; and
it made no exception in Que's favor. His drab clothes kept clean a
long time, in spite of the leather bag, and washed well when they were
not clean. The Gingoo postmaster took a fancy to him, and the Point
post master refrained from tormenting him. The mails were not
unbearably heavy nor the month of July remarkably hot after the first.
Que had a good appetite for his supper, and plenty of supper to show
it on, and slept long and heavily every night and a part of every
morning, and thought that the world was a pretty good kind of place,
after all. But that was only because he hadn't come to the second snag
yet.
One day, in the first end of August, a wind sprang up. It wasn't a
very uncommonly high wind, only no one was expecting it, because the
days had been muggy, and that made every one say, "Why, what a high
wind there is to-day!"
You and I can't tell why the wind should have gone on rising through
the forenoon; but we can guess, which will answer our purpose just as
well; for you know it is but little more than that that your father
and his friends, and father's father and his friends, do, when they
meet together and "express opinions."
_I_ guess that the wind rose higher through the forenoon because, as
soon as it began to play about in the morning, it caught the whisper
of people's surprise, and thought it would take the hint, and blow
them up a little.
"What a dickens of a wind!" said Que, when he stood, or tried to
stand, on top of the hill with his bag.
Que had learned all the easy ways of carrying that bag long ago; of
strapping it in a little roll over his shoulders when it wasn't very
full; of carrying it on his head when it had enough inside to balance
just right, and of strapping it round his body when it had nothing in
it. But, as the days had been all stormless alike, he had been obliged
to adapt himself only to the conditions of the bag, and not at all to
the state of the weather.
As the masculine mind is capable of taking in only one idea at a time,
as soon as Que put his mind to the state of the weather, it drew
itself away from the manner of carrying the bag.
"Wish I had something between me and the wind," sighed he.
Just then the wind blew off his hat, to teach him the polite order of
mentioning two persons, of whom himself was one.
Que followed after it as fast as he could, and let the bag drop beside
him, and by chance it hung from his neck to the windward side.
The wind blew very strong.
"I do declare," said he, "I shouldn't wonder a bit if the wind blew me
away."
Que was a truthful boy; but he did wonder very much when he found, two
seconds afterwards, that the wind _was_ blowing him away. But he
didn't wonder at all, when he lay, a minute later, against a huge
apple tree; partly because people generally get through wondering when
they are at the end of anything, but mostly because the blow stunned
Que, so that he didn't know anything for an hour.
When he gradually came to himself, he didn't know where he was. Then a
little wind shook a green apple down on his nose, and he concluded
that he was under an apple tree; which was quite correct.
Then he looked about to see whether he was in the United States or
not; he saw the five juniper trees that had been standing in a row,
half a mile from his father's house, ever since he could remember, and
concluded that he must be; wherein he was again quite correct.
Then he wondered if any one would come for him, for he felt so stiff
and sore that he thought he never could go home alone.
"They'll come for me, _I_ know; for if I've had a gale they must have
had one; and if they have had one they'll know that I've had one. Of
course they'll come."
Que felt round for his mail-bag, and got his head on it, and waited.
While he was lying there it occurred to him that the people down in
the village wouldn't have been walking about with bags broader than
themselves to windward of them, and mightn't have felt the breeze as
he did; so his last reasoning wasn't correct at all.
"I'll bet they didn't feel it a bit!" thought Que; and by this time he
was so fully in possession of his original faculties, that his
reasoning was quite correct again. No one else had felt the gale.
Que put his head on the bag and thought that his end had come, and so
cried himself to sleep.
His family had not felt the gale very heavily; but when tea-time came,
and Que didn't, they felt that; and when darkness came, and Que
didn't, they felt that; and when a report came, with a growl, from
the Point that they wanted their mail, Que's father started out with a
lantern to find it.
Que, having finished his nap, felt better, and tried to get up; but
his ankle didn't want to move; and when he tried again it actually
wouldn't move; so he lay down again to wait and watch. When he saw the
lantern go by, he called, and his father came.
"What are you doing here, sir?"
"Nothing," said Que.
"Get up, then."
"I can't," said Que.
"You've been asleep, sir."
"Yes, sir," said Que.
"What have you done with the mail-bag?"
"It is the mail-bag that's done with me," said Que.
Then his father took him by the collar, and stood him up, and saw at
once what was the matter. Que had sprained his ankle.
It seemed to Que, during the next four weeks, as if that ankle never
would heal; but it did at last, and John Lee, who had carried the mail
in the mean time, was loath to give the job to Que again. He felt for
Que through his pain, but charged him one twelfth of fifty dollars for
doing his work a month, and would like to do it a while longer.
There isn't much more to tell of Que as a mail-boy. The end of the
year found him the possessor of forty-five dollars and five shillings.
The next year the Point afforded a horse, and Que took the mail on the
horse's back; the year following they had a horse and wagon, and Que
drove that; when they have a railway I have no doubt Que will be a
conductor; and when the mail is blown through a tunnel, Que, of
course, will blow it.
Even the second snag, you see, needn't lay you a dead weight on the
earth.
MARY B. HARRIS.
WHAT THE CLOCK SAYS.
The clock's loud tick
Says, "Time flies quick."
"Listen," says the chime;
"Make the most of time,
For remember, young and old,
Minutes are like grains of gold;
Spend them wisely, spend them well,
For their worth can no man tell."
[Illustration: THE SNOW-FALL.]
THE SNOW-FALL.
Old Winter comes forth in his robe of white,
He sends the sweet flowers far out of sight,
He robs the trees of their green leaves quite,
And freezes the pond and the river;
He has spoiled the butterfly's pretty nest,
And ordered the birds not to build their nest,
And banished the frog to a four months' rest,
And makes all the children shiver.
Yet he does some good with his icy tread,
For he keeps the corn-seeds warm in their bed,
He dries up the damp which the rain had spread,
And renders the air more healthy;
He taught the boys to slide, and he flung
Rich Christmas gifts o'er the old and young,
And when cries for food from the poor were wrung,
He opened the purse of the wealthy.
We like the Spring with its fine fresh air;
We like the Summer with flowers so fair;
We like the fruits we in Autumn share,
And we like, too, old Winter's greeting:
His touch is cold, but his heart is warm;
So, though he brings to us snow and storm,
We look with a smile on his well-known form,
And ours is a gladsome meeting.
[Decoration]
STITCHING AND TEACHING.
Will had had the croup. Then the measles took possession of him, and
lastly, the whooping-cough, finding him well swept and garnished,
entered in, and shook and throttled him in a manner quite deplorable.
His convalescence, however, was relieved of its monotony by a headlong
fall from a step ladder in the library, whereby he sprained his wrist,
to say nothing of the mischief that he made, in his descent, amid the
ink, books, and papers.
Treading on a pin in the sewing-room was another diversion in his
favor, giving him, for a while, a daily looking forward to bandages
and poultices, and an opportunity to weigh the advantages of obedience
in case he should ever again wish, and be forbidden, to jump out of
bed and run barefoot amid the dressmaker's shreds in search of his
top.
Now, all this is no uncommon experience for a small boy. I simply
mention it by way of apology for introducing Will in an unamiable
mood. One regrets to have one's friends make an unfavorable first
impression.
This was Will's first morning at school since his recovery. He found
that the boys had gone on in their Latin, had gone on in their French,
leaving him far behind; they had got into decimals, and he way back
pages; they had a new writing-master, and wrote with their faces
turned a new way, to the great disgust of Will. They had had a botany
excursion to Blue Hills, which he had lost. He was down at the foot of
the class, and at the end of the morning he had made up his desperate
mind to remain there forever. It was no use for a fellow to try to put
through such a pile of back lessons.
He came stamping up stairs, kicked at the nursery door, slung in his
bag of books, and stood on the threshold, pouting and glaring angrily
at his sister Emily.
Emily sat in the window opposite, the sunlight sifting through the
flickering ivy leaves on to her golden hair and fair sweet face. She
was singing over her sewing as Will made his noisy entrance. She
looked up at the scowling boy in the doorway, her pale cheeks flushing
with surprise and then with pity.
"What's the matter?" she asked, gently.
"Matter?" roared Will; "I guess you'd ask, if you knew how old 'Crit'
had been cramming the fellows, and me nowhere. I'll--run away to sea,
or somewheres. I'm not going to _stand_ it."
Will bounced his hand down so hard on a tea-poy, two little terra
cotta shepherdesses bounded up from it, knocked their heads together,
and fell clattering to the floor.
"O, Will," cried Emily, rising up with a scared face, and dropping her
pretty work-basket, "don't talk so. You are tired now, and everything
troubles you, because you have been sick so long. By and by, when you
are a little stronger, you will feel differently. Don't think about
the back lessons. Just try to be glad you are well enough to go to
school again, and be with the boys."
"O, don't preach!" persisted Will, gruffly.
With the cloud still hanging over his handsome face, he shook himself
away from the caressing hand which was laid upon his shoulder, as if
to hold him back from running away to the great, pitiless sea.
"Asy! asy, now!"
This was Kathleen, the nurse, calling out in cautioning tones to Will,
who had jerked against the tray she was carrying causing the two
saucers of strawberries to click together sharply, and the buttered
rolls to slip over the edge of the plate.
"You're tired with the school, poor craythur, an' no wonder at that
same. Larnin's murtherin', bad luck to it! I tried it mysel oncet, a
moonth or so, avenin's. It's myself was watchin' for ye, Master Will,
and when ye came round the corner I had this bit sup arl ready for ye.
'The crame--quick--Bridget!' says I, and then I ran away up the two
flights with it; and barrin' the joggle you give it, it's in foine,
tip-top orther an' priservation arl tegither, bless your little sowl!"
Kathleen set out the crisp little rolls and the great crimson berries
in the most tempting way she could devise, and went off, bobbing her
head with satisfaction to see the children place themselves at table,
and partake of her well-timed lunch.
Will, as an atonement for the ungentle way in which he had come in
upon his sister after school, offered her the nicest plate of berries,
and insisted that she should take the crispiest roll. He suddenly
remembered that Emily, too, had had whooping-cough and measles at the
same time, and quite as badly as himself. But, then, she had not
sprained her wrist or lamed her foot; so it was no wonder her temper
had not suffered. Besides, it was expected of girls not to make a
fuss.
In view of these last circumstances, he suppressed the apology he was
about to make for his late unpleasant remarks.
"It never will do to give up too much to girls," he reasoned, draining
the last drop of cream from the pitcher.
"Your grandmamma is coming over from Brookline this afternoon in the
carriage, to take the two of you home with her to spind the night."
This was Kathleen back again at the nursery door, and wiping her face
with her apron as she unburdened herself of this forgotten bit of
news.
"You won't run away to sea now," besought Emily, with imploring eyes.
"Maybe I mightn't," shouted Will, tossing up his cap in glee at this
unexpected prospect of fun.
It was now only the middle of the long summer day. Such a tiresome
journey as the sun had to go before it rolled quite away in the west!
Will longed to give it a push, and to hurry up the clock to strike
five, the hour when they should be on their way to beautiful
Brookline.
Impatient little Will! Emily kindly helped him to get through with the
lagging time. At her suggestion, he played ball a while on the lawn,
while from time to time she nodded encouragingly to him through the
open window. By and by the ball bounded up into a spout, cuddling down
among some soft old maple leaves, where Will could not see it.
Thereupon Will came into the house in a great pet, storming about till
he was persuaded to sit on the floor and paste pictures in his
scrap-book.
This quiet occupation did not amuse him long. His fingers, his chin,
his cheeks, his curls even soon became stiff with mucilage. Mucilage
on his trouser knees, mucilage on his jacket elbows--in fact, mucilage
everywhere on and around him.
Emily, after having, with great painstaking, washed her brother and
all the surrounding furniture, proposed that he should study a Latin
lesson. The book soon went down with a bang. "Because," as Will
sulkily explained to his sighing sister, "it made his head buzz."
Emily gently suggested a French lesson as a corrective of this
unpleasant "buzz." The remedy soon proved to be a failure. The French
book came down more noisily than the Latin book.
Emily laid aside her drawing in despair. It was such a relief to hear
Kathleen's heavy step in the entry, and to remember it was time now
for Will to be dressed for dinner!
Poor Kathleen had a thankless task before her. Master Will required a
great deal of preparation. His curls were gummed and tangled; his
fingers were inky, and suspiciously pitchy.
"You've been climbin' unknownst up that pine tree again, an' you a
told not to?" questioned Kathleen, examining the fingers keenly.
"Hush up, and go ahead!" was Will's rude answer.
"How _can_ you speak so?" reproved Emily, turning round upon Will,
while she tied back her hair with a band of blue ribbon.
"Fie, fie, sir!" cried displeased Kathleen, "going ahead" with great
energy, her mouth pursed up in disapproval of Master Will's manners,
while she washed, and combed, and curled, and took off and put on his
apparel.
"Where's your stockings, Master Will,--the blue stripes?"
"Dunno."