THE KING'S DAUGHTERS IN THE COUNTRY.
"Her father sent her in his land to dwell,
Giving to her a work that must be done;
And since the king loves all his people well,
Therefore she, too, cares for them, every one.
And when she stoops to lift from want and sin,
The brighter shines her royalty therein.
She walks erect through dangers manifold,
While many sink and fail on either hand;
She dreads not summer's heat nor winter's cold,
For both are subject to the king's command.
She need not be afraid of anything,
Because she is the daughter of a king."
_Anon._
[Illustration: {Drawing of woman sitting on fence.}]
While all these sad things were happening Winnie and I were enjoying a
happy summer at my beloved home in the blessed country.
It is not to be imagined that Winnie dropped all her wild ways and
became a saint at once. She had been sobered by her sad experience in
plotting and scheming for the little prince; but since her full
forgiveness her elastic spirits rose to the surface, and her cheerful
disposition asserted itself in many playful pranks and merry, tricksy
ways.
We did not forget our promise to work for the Elder Brother, but for a
time we did nothing but rest fully and completely.
She was delighted with the country. The fresh air and free, wholesome
life acted upon her like wine. She climbed walls and trees, leaped
brooks, whistled, shouted, rode on the hay-carts, helped in the kitchen
and in the garden, drove Dobbin about the country roads, went berrying,
and was a prime favorite with all the boys, though I regret to say that
at first, perhaps on this very account, the country girls were a little
jealous and envious of her. But not a whit cared Winnie for this. She
tramped over the fields and through marshes, with her botanist's can
swung across her shoulder by a shawl-strap, searching for specimens. She
boated and bathed, taking like a duck to the water, and learning to swim
more quickly than any other person I had ever known. She loved to work
in our old-fashioned garden, pulled weeds diligently, and seemed to
love to feel the fresh earth with her fingers. Our flowers were all such
as had grown there in my grandmother's time. It seemed to me that she
must have modeled it on Mary Howitt's garden, for we had the very
flowers which she describes in her poems.
"And there, before the little bench,
O'ershadowed by the bower,
Grow southernwood and lemon thyme,
Sweet-pea and gillyflower;
"And pinks and clove carnations,
Rich-scented, side by side;
And at each end a holly-hock,
With an edge of London-pride.
"I had marigolds and columbines,
And pinks all pinks exceeding;
I'd a noble root of love-in-a-mist,
And plenty of love-lies-bleeding."
There was a bed of herbs, too, which my mother cherished--sweet-marjoram
and summer savory, sage, rue, and rosemary.
Winnie took a great interest in all of these plants. The country girls
thought it odd that she should care for the wild plants which were so
common in our vicinity, not knowing Winnie's enthusiasm for botany, and
her desire to make a large collection to show the princess. An unusually
ignorant girl met her on one of her botanizing expeditions, and Winnie
asked her if maiden-hair grew in our region. "Of course it does!" the
girl replied, indignantly; "you didn't s'pose we all wore wigs, did
you?"
It was some time before Winnie could control herself and explain that
the maiden-hair of which she was in search was a kind of fern.
"Do you want it for a charm?" the girl asked.
"No," replied Winnie; "what will it do?"
"If you put it in your shoe and say the right kind of a charm, you will
understand the language of the birds."
"Then I shall certainly try it," said Winnie, "for that would be great
fun."
Another day mother brought the same girl into the garden, where Winnie
was at work, to give her some vegetables.
"Did you try the charm?" the girl asked.
"Yes, indeed," Winnie replied.
"And did it work?"
"Oh, famously! There is a wood-pecker in the old tree just outside of my
window, and he wakes me by his drumming every morning. This morning I
understood for the first time just what he has been saying. It was 'Wake
up, wake up! little rascal, little rascal, little rascal!'"
The girl stared at Winnie in open-mouthed astonishment. "You must be a
witch," she said.
"That's what they call me--Witch Winnie."
They were standing beside mother's bed of herbs, and the frightened girl
pulled up a stalk of rue and held it at arm's length, as though it were
a protection. "Don't come nigh me! don't work any of your tricks on me!"
she said.
Winnie explained that she was only in sport, but the girl was only half
reassured, and still clung to the spray of rue.
Miss Prillwitz afterward explained that rue, like vervain, was supposed
to "hinder witches of their will," probably from the fact that it was
once used in the Church of Rome, bound in fagots, as a holy-water
sprinkler, and is spoken of in old writings as the "Herb of Grace."
In this way Witch Winnie's name was revived again, and was applied to
her by her new friends, even though they did not believe in her uncanny
powers.
The princess came to us later in the season for a visit of a month, and
we came to know her intimately and love her dearly. She brought five of
the boys from the Home with her, for mother was pleased with the
enterprise, and father had said that he guessed it wouldn't break him to
give those city children a taste of what the country was like, and if we
women folk could stand them he supposed he could.
Winnie took the boys in charge and led them off with her on her long
tramps and to row in the safe, flat-bottomed boat. They had great sport,
crabbing, bathing, swimming, and fishing, and their vacation did them a
world of good. These were the boys for whom the princess had planned the
industrial classes, but Mr. Trimble lay at the hospital injured, it was
thought, unto death by the explosion at Rickett's Court, and that plan
was postponed for the present.
The boys attracted much attention in the Sabbath-school and wherever
they appeared. Many questions were asked, and Miss Prillwitz was
requested to explain the plan of the Home, in public and in private at
the sewing society, and at the Fourth of July picnic.
We were not all ignorant country bumpkins at Scup Harbor, and we were
not all poor. There were plenty of farmers, who dressed coarsely and
fared plainly, who had bank accounts that would have bought out many a
New Yorker of fashion. They were not selfish either. I have heard
somewhere of a stingy deacon who, on hearing of a case of heart-rending
distress, prayed for it in this wise:
"O Lord, 'giving doth not impoverish Thee, neither doth withholding
enrich Thee,' but giving doth impoverish us, and withholding doth enrich
us; therefore do Thou attend to this case, good Lord; do _Thou_ attend
to this case."
Now this story may not be exaggerated, but I can only say that he did
not live in our section of the country. Our deacons were soft-hearted,
though horny-handed men, and though they had the poor of their own
church and vicinity to look out for, and performed that office well,
they decided that Scup Harbor was rich enough to extend a helping hand
to New York, since New York was either too poor or too hard-hearted to
care for its own.
Accordingly a collection was taken up in church that made Miss
Prillwitz's heart sing for joy; and the Ladies' Benevolent Sewing
Society voted to have a box of clothing ready for the Home by cold
weather.
The grown people were not the only ones interested; there were girls
among us of gentle manners and hearts, and who were far better educated
than Milly Roseveldt. Some of these heard of Miss Prillwitz's eminence
as a scientist, and helped me to organize a class for her in Natural
History, and the remainder of the summer took on an aspect of mental
improvement as well as of physical recreation. Miss Prillwitz mapped out
a course of work and reading for each of us to carry on after her return
to the city, and the circle arranged to meet at the homes of the
members, and read essays and discuss different scientific subjects.
Winnie was surprised at the amount of intelligence and information
displayed, and soon acquired a sincere respect for country girls. It was
at one of our meetings after the princess had returned to New York that
she noticed that Ethel Stanley, the daughter of a wealthy dairy farmer,
wore a little silver cross with a purple ribbon knot.
"Has it come here, too?" she asked; "are you a King's Daughter?"
"Oh yes," replied Ethel; "I belong to the Helpful Ten, and there is a
Cheer-Up Ten at the Corners. What do you call your link?"
"The Seek-and-to-Save Ten," Winnie replied; and she explained the
mission of our Circle, and how we hoped to help the Elder Brother in his
search for the little lost princes. Ethel was delighted. "I think we
might help you," she said; "we are Methodists, but we don't mind working
for you if you will let us. I suppose you are all Episcopalians in New
York?"
"Oh dear, no!" exclaimed Winnie, "we are everything; Tib is a
Congregationalist, and Emma Jane is a Unitarian, Adelaide is
Presbyterian; 'Trude Middleton is a Dutch Reformer; Rosario Ricos is
Catholic; Puss Seligman is a Jewess; Little Breeze comes from
Philadelphia Quaker stock, though she is so gay you wouldn't think it;
Cynthia Vaughn is a Baptist; Milly Roseveldt is the only Episcopalian;
and I'm a--heathen."
"No you are not," I protested; "you are a follower of the Elder Brother,
Winnie, and that means you are a Christian." She gave my hand a little
squeeze, and Ethel exclaimed, "I should think your society would go to
pieces; I don't see how you can work together with such different
views."
"That depends," said Winnie, thoughtfully, "whether in the future we all
pull in different directions, and tear our charity to pieces between us,
or whether each of us uses all her force to bring in people from our
different church organizations to help in the work, and make it widely
and purely undenominational. I mean to write a little parable on that
subject some day, for I feel full of it."
"Do!" we all exclaimed; "write it for the next meeting at Ethel's."
"I don't know; it would hardly be a scientific essay, you know."
"I am not sure about that," replied Ethel; "I think it might be called a
scientific method of carrying on charitable enterprises. Please write
it, and I will invite our Ten, and the Cheer-up Ten from the Corners,
and the Loyal Legion, and the Missionary Society, and all the girls I
know generally."
The plan was carried into effect, and at the next meeting Winnie read us
this fable, which she called
A FISH STORY.[A]
[A] NOTE.--This allegory was first published in _Good Company_, of 1880.
"Once upon a time the fishes and salt-water animals down in the bay
decided to organize a Home for Sea-urchins.
"The circumstances of the remarkable agitation which suddenly spread
among the peaceful denizens of the deep became known to me by my
inadvertently getting a spray of sea-fern in one of my bathing-sandals.
I suddenly discovered that I could understand the voices of the little
creatures that I had so often watched from Tib's father's dory, or
sported among when I took my sea-bath. I lay in the dory one afternoon,
looking down into the clear depth of the water, watching the tricks and
manners of a sea-anemone, and thinking how similar her behavior was to
that of a reigning belle at a popular watering-place, when it dawned
upon me that she _was_ the belle of the cove, surrounded by a circle of
obsequious masculine admirers, prominent among whom were the
hermit-crab, the octopus, the jelly-fish, the lobster, the conger-eel,
the king-iyo, and the stickleback--"
"Now, Winnie," I objected, "you never saw an octopus or a king-iyo in
our cove, and you can't make me believe it!"
"My dear Tib," Winnie replied, "didn't I tell you this was a fish story?
Pray do not interrupt again. The animals that I have mentioned were all
aspirants to the hand of the Sea-Anemone, and the first remarks which I
overheard and comprehended were her confidences to her friend the
Gold-Fish, in which she intimated that she considered the Jelly-Fish the
most amiable, the Lobster the richest, the King-iyo (a titled foreigner
from Japan) the most _distingue_, and the Conger-Eel the most polite;
but, after all, the Hermit-Crab was really the best, and she liked him
more than any of the others, with the exception of the Octopus, who was
so fascinatingly wicked.
"The next time that I looked into the cove was during a meeting of the
managers of the Sea-Urchins' Home.
"The Sea-Anemone had just been unanimously elected to the presidency on
account of her popularity.
"The Cuttle-Fish had been created secretary in recognition of his
remarkable facility in throwing ink, while all official documents were
stamped by the Seal.
"The Electric-Eel was made visiting physician; and the Shark, surgeon
and lecturer on vivisection.
"The Hermit-Crab, who had been detailed to make observations on the
_modus_ in which such societies were carried on among human beings, made
the following report:
"MISS PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-FISHES:
"Your committee have made a careful investigation of the subject
assigned them, and agree that while man's faculties have not been
cultivated to so high an extent as those pertaining to fishes, he is
still a moral and intellectual animal. We believe that if he were put in
possession of the advantages accorded to our race, and were submerged in
salt-water for several centuries, his brain would undoubtedly become so
pickled as to reduce it in size and intensify its quality. Favorable
conditions of brain-pickling are all that is necessary, in our opinion,
to develop some of the most advanced specimens of this _genus_ into a
low form of _mollusk_.
"The opinions of the Hermit-Crab were considered a marvel of liberality
and generous thinking. He proceeded to explain the society-forming
instinct of the human race as a professor of our own species might
lecture on the concretions of deep-sea corals, and continued swimmingly,
as fishes usually do, until a white-whiskered Sea-Lion begged leave to
make a motion, in the language of a motto of conduct which he had often
heard shouted to seamen by their commanders: 'When you are in the navy,
do as the knaves do.' 'Let us,' he added, 'act upon this principle of
conformity, by doing amongst men as the many do, and immediately
organize a fair to meet the salaries of our officers and pay the debt on
the society building.'
"'But none of us need salaries,' objected the Lobster, 'and we have no
debt.'
"'As to declining a salary because I do not need it,' replied the
Sea-Lion, 'I can only say that I find no such example set by the race
whose customs we are following; and without a debt, or at least a
deficit in the accounts of our treasurer, the respectability of our
society may well be questioned.'
"A committee of Codfish aristocrats was at once authorized to secure a
debt of magnificent proportions, at whatever cost, and the salary of
each member of the society was set according to his own estimates.
Frequent meetings of the managers were appointed for the purpose of
drawing the salaries, and as the care of the Sea-Urchins could with the
utmost ingenuity be made to take up but a small portion of the time,
each of the managers seized upon these meetings as opportunities to air
their own particular opinions. The Lobster, who was something of an
autocrat, and had determined from the outset to run the concern, took
the entire business management into his own claws, greatly incensing the
ladies on the debt committee by intimating that they knew nothing of
business, and that his office-boy, the Craw-Fish, could have devised a
debt of far nobler proportions. The King-iyo, or three-tailed fish of
Japan, trusted that the philosophy of the Orient was to have its full
recognition in the principles of the society, and that the Sea-Urchins
would be instructed in Buddhism. The Octopus, who had been one of the
most desperate characters in the bay, carried his change of heart so far
as to assert that no one could be considered as religious, or even
respectable, who had not been extremely wicked, and urged that only the
most depraved and hopeless young Sea-Urchins be admitted into the Home.
While the Octopus raved over essential wickedness, and the King-iyo of
philosophy, the Jelly-Fish dabbled in humanitarianism, and asserted that
brains were not to be tolerated, thought was to be considered a crime,
and a heart the only organ necessary for the spiritual body. All books
on theology and philosophy should be sold for old paper, and the
proceeds invested in charlotte russe for tramps and criminals. Every
measure in the least savoring of logic or common sense must be vetoed.
"The Stickleback, who luxuriated in controversy, and in making himself
generally disagreeable, summed up the remarks of those preceding him as
the merest vaporing of idiocy, and denounced every system of belief held
by his fellow-managers, before hearing it, with the same impartiality.
Antagonism, he asserted, was the only rational attitude for any fish
under all circumstances. The Conger-Eel, managing to gain possession of
the floor, endeavored to pour oil on the troubled waters. He was sure
that if the heterogeneous, and even antipathetic, ideas held by the
different managers were only presented in writing, they would, properly
mingled, blend as sweetly as lemon juice and loaf sugar in a cooling
summer libation. The Cuttle-Fish, was unanimously elected chairman of a
committee for eliciting and reconciling the opinions of the managers in
a printed constitution. He opened the ball with a statement of his own
views, which he passed to each member in turn, asking them to add their
several criticisms and corrections. When the paper had gone the rounds
it was read in open session by the Hermit-Crab, who summed up everything
that had gone before, in a paper entitled 'A Historical Review of the
Documents, beginning with the King-iyo's criticism of Mr.
Snapping-Turtle's attack on Mr. Shrimp's vindication of Mr. Jelly-Fish's
Apology of Mr. Conger-Eel's Deprecatory Answer to Mr. Lobster's satire
on Mr. Stickleback's Challenge to Mr. Octopus's Dogmatic Denunciation of
Mr. Shark's strictures on Miss Sea-Anemone's conciliatory explanation of
Mr. Cuttle-Fish's exposition of the views of the society.'
"Of course this paper satisfied no one, and the meeting plunged at once
into a whirlpool of ruinous discussion.
"The Stickleback bristled his spines and glared angrily about him,
shrieking, 'Antagonism! Nihilism!'
"'Fanaticism, Sensationalism!' yelled the Octopus.
"'Dogmatism! Absolutism!' replied the Lobster, hurling clams about him
in the belief that they were works on combative theology.
"'Asceticism! Monasticism!' groaned the Hermit-Crab, retreating into a
pipe bowl and blocking the entrance with a pearl-oyster.
"'Humanitarianism!' warbled the Jelly-Fish, as he choked three
sea-melons and a quart of sea-mushrooms into the mouth of a sick
Grampus.
"'Paganism! Barbarianism!' retorted the King-iyo, punching the
Jelly-Fish.
"'Optimism! Universalism!' sweetly chanted the Conger-Eel, but as he
spoke the entire convention broke up and floated away, leaving the
little Sea-Urchins crying for their supper, and only a debt of colossal
proportions to mark the site of the proposed Home."
"And how do you propose to avoid the fate of the Fish Society?" Ethel
asked, after the storm of applause which followed Winnie's paper had
subsided.
"By recognizing, from the first, that we unite only for this special
purpose, and that we all have very varied and contradictory opinions,
which we will make no attempt to reconcile or ventilate. I think we can
make our very differences an element of strength, if it is acknowledged
from the outset that we are to be different. As Corresponding Secretary
of our Ten I have received the most encouraging reports from the girls.
They are all working hard for the Home, and all working in different
ways, and each seems to think that the Home belongs to her
individually--as it really does--and that her organization is
responsible for its success. I am sure that when we next meet, the girls
will accept Mrs. Middleton's proposition to have the Home of the Elder
Brother entered as one of the Dutch Reformed charities, and I hope that
each of the other girls will take measures to have it recognized as one
of the charities of her particular church organization. I have a letter
from Little Breeze, saying that the Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia, of
which her mother is a member, propose to own a bed in the Home; and Puss
Seligman writes that the Hebrew Charitable Association, of which her
brother is Vice-President, have voted to hold themselves responsible
for every child of their race whom we entertain. Cynthia Vaughn reports
that the Church of ----burgh, Pennsylvania, will keep us in coal on
condition that a delegation of the children go to the Baptist
Sunday-school. Miss Prillwitz has already divided the Home into
detachments, sending the children, as far as possible, to the churches
which their mothers prefer, and there is a strong division of Baptists."
"I think," said Ethel, "that our Methodist Church would like to have a
share in the work. I am sure that father will be glad to supply you with
milk and butter as his own private subscription."
The President of the Loyal Legion then spoke up, and proposed that their
organization furnish barrels and make the rounds of the farms in
procession, soliciting apples and potatoes, which they would freight to
the Home, on condition that a Loyal Legion Temperance Society be
organized among the children of the Elder Brother, to be considered as a
branch of the Scup Harbor Legion.
The Cheer-up Ten from the Corners held a brief meeting in the orchard,
and returned to report that they had decided to adopt one of our
children to clothe. They desired that the child of the poorest parents
be assigned them, and promised that if the proper measurements were
sent, they would keep it respectably dressed in garments of their own
make.
I suggested little Georgie, a child rescued from Mrs. Grogan, whose
mother could only furnish fifty cents a week from her scanty earnings
for his support; and our convention broke up for that day, after
partaking of strawberries and cream, singing a good old hymn, slightly
altered for the occasion by Winnie.
"Here we raise our Ebenezer,
Hither by God's grace we come;
And we hope, by His good pleasure,
Long we may remain a Home."
* * * * *
NOTE.--The Messiah Home, 4 Rutherford Place, New York, a charity founded
for children by children, whose beautiful work suggested to the author
this simple story, has been greatly helped by circles of the King's
Daughters, several of whom have adopted children to clothe after the
manner of the Cheer-up Ten. The writer commends this work to any other
circles of the King's Daughters eager to do the work of the Elder
Brother.