also; but never go with three, and usually not with four or more.
Somebody is always getting punctured, or falling ill, or not waking up,
or wanting to rest. If you are alone you can usually agree with
yourself, though sometimes that is hard work, and even two make the
agreeing more difficult.
The best trips in the northern and eastern part of the United States are
briefly: 1. The tour already mentioned. 2. The run from New York city,
up the east bank of the Hudson, crossing at Albany; thence through the
highly interesting and historic valley of the Mohawk, through Utica,
Syracuse, Rochester, and so on to Buffalo; thence to Niagara, Detroit,
and Chicago. 3. From New York city or Albany or Boston (in the latter
cases reaching New York city as described), across Staten Island to
Tottenville and Perth Amboy; thence through Princeton, Trenton,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, to Washington. 4. From Boston, northward
through Lowell, Concord (New Hampshire), Manchester, and on to the White
Mountains, or through Portsmouth, Portland, and out along the Maine
coast towards Bangor or Bar Harbor or Eastport. Most of these trips have
been given in the ROUND TABLE Bicycle Department, and can be had by any
one from the publishers, by ordering the numbers in the foot-notes
accompanying that Department. They can practically all be secured by
purchasing the different road-books issued by the L.A.W.
Of course there are hundreds of other tours, and, indeed, each man can
make up a good tour for himself by merely studying his road-books. These
trips are comprehensive in many ways, and as they are much more ridden,
and therefore more accurately described, it is wiser to take one of them
for your first tour than to begin exploring on your own account at
once.
THE AMERICAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
EASTER FROLIC.
"Is it true that the sun dances Easter morning, and that all the stones
turn upside down, and that if I will climb to the top of that
hill"--pointing to a high hill that was in the immediate
neighborhood--"I can see it all?"
"Sure an' ye can, miss. It's meself that has seen 'em many's the time,
only ye must be up airly, for the sun niver dances after five in the
mornin'."
The getting up was indeed a difficult task, for I was a regular
"lie-a-bed"; but I had never seen the sun dance or stones turn over,
and, being a credulous child, I resolved to try. The only question was,
"How was I to waken?" for my head, once on the pillow, lay there
generally, without even turning over, for a stretch of twelve hours.
Bridget suggested that I tie my hand to the bedpost, but not thinking
this a very safe precaution, I settled the matter by giving her an order
to wake me at half after four o'clock. This she consented to do,
provided I would "niver tell me mither." And I did not until
breakfast-time, which was my very first opportunity, and at the moment I
was so annoyed at the dolt this Irish cook had made of me, that I would
have told a dozen mothers, had I only had the chance. Instead of waking
me at half past four, she woke me at four o'clock. Oh, how sleepy I was!
I remember dreaming of a short red-faced fairy shaking me and saying,
"Hurry, child! stones turning, sun dancing! Hurry-scurry, or you'll be
too late!" And on opening my eyes there stood our old red-faced Bridget.
I dressed as fast as I could, begging her to button my shoes. I was all
in a quiver of excitement for fear of being late, and as soon as it was
light enough to see my way, without waiting for hat or jacket, I rushed
wildly along and up the lane, unto the hill and so on, never pausing
until reaching the very top.
There I sat down on a big stone, so making sure of that one at least,
and with an occasional turning of my head to watch all the other stones
lying around, and especially one big rock over which the apple boughs
swayed, I awaited the sun's rising.
It finally rose, much after the fashion, I suppose, of any other spring
morning. I thought _maybe_ it danced, but my mother didn't agree with
me; she said I was faint and dizzy because I was unaccustomed to rise so
early and go out without breakfast. But the stones never turned, not
even the smallest one; of that I was assured. And so at a quarter before
eight o'clock a very disappointed, tired child wandered down the hill
and along the lane, so reaching home.
That the Irish serving-maid had been making fun of me I did not dream
until I heard a loud, hard laugh, accompanying the words, "What a fool
that child is!" Therefore it was no strange thing I was angry enough to
make full confession.
And now that I have older grown, I have learned how fraught with
superstitions the beautiful Easter day is. Not alone in Ireland, but in
almost every country some qualities of the miraculous or uncanny may be
discovered.
The time for Easter amusement is during the week which follows Easter
day, and it would be a pretty idea at such a season to give a short
tableau entertainment in connection with music and games, the tableaux
indicating the superstitions of various countries.
When the tableau is shown, announce what it is intended to represent;
for example, in Russia the Easter festival might almost be termed the
"kissing festival," for beginning with the Emperor, who on Easter day
kisses various generals and even privates in his army, the singular
contagion spreads throughout the empire, apparently affecting both
aristocrat and plebeian.
_Tableau_.--A boy representing the Russian Emperor kissing a member of
the army.
In the olden days of France it was the custom for a Christian to give a
Jew an Easter box.
_Tableau_.--Two boys, one representing the Christian, the other the Jew.
The Christian must be in the act of boxing the Jew's ear.
Follow this with the France of to-day.
_Tableau_.--An interior of a church, extravagantly trimmed with flowers,
and brilliant with lighted candles. It should be crowded with boys and
girls, mothers and fathers, all in brand-new clothes.
[Illustration]
Show Spain as a dark-haired girl, with a mantilla over her head,
kneeling in a church before a mammoth candle--the Paschal candle, nine
feet long. In order to make it seem taller, stand it on a marble
pedestal.
Rome, with a procession of gayly attired children, and a boy
representing the Pope, in the most elegant of robes, carried in a
crimson chair, over which is a canopy. This chair must be preceded by
two other boys, each carrying white ostrich-feather fans.
Germany, with a group of dancing girls and boys, the girls wearing small
close-fitting white caps, full white aprons over dark gold-braided
skirts and white sleeves; the boys with knee-breeches, white stockings,
showy vests, and gold buttons. Or show a hare running from a nest filled
with colored eggs, before which two little children kneel. The nest
should be placed under a bush, and one of the children should wear a
laughing face, for she holds up an egg.
England, with a crowd of boys and girls returning from Hampton Court,
Kew Garden, or Stoke Pogis, with their arms literally filled with
willow-boughs and branches of blossoms--yellow, pink, and white--with
which they will decorate the church for Easter Sunday. Switzerland, with
a band of musicians carrying guitars, and going from house to house
singing some sweet carol, their hats and caps wreathed with flowers.
A very pretty way to amuse children of all ages is to hide eggs in the
grass or under bushes, and then have an egg-hunt. All eggs found may, of
course, be carried home. Give five minutes for the hunt, and it will
prove great sport for lookers-on also.
[Illustration]
For another game, raise a tent decorated with flags, cheese-cloth
streamers, or ribbons. Opposite the tent in which the guests are to be
seated, and ten feet distant, is a post or tree on which to put the
prize. At the base of the post put a basket of thin glass balls, and
also one at the tent door, only fill this basket with excelsior. The
game is to find the person that will throw the largest number of eggs
from one of the baskets into the other and not break them. Whoever wins
is rewarded by the prize.
For little children, form a ring, and pitch to the centre of the ring a
hard-boiled egg, and let them scramble for it. For larger children, let
them pair off, a boy and girl; thus alternating, they form a ring. Then
start thirteen china or glass eggs, one after the other, from hand to
hand, taking the egg in the right hand, passing it to the left, and so
on around the ring. If an egg drops it must stay where it falls until
the other eggs have gone around the ring three times. It may chance by
that time that all the eggs have dropped. When the third time around is
complete, immediately a grand chain is formed, and the children dance,
and go back to position, picking up the eggs as they dance. If the egg
is not picked up, keeping time to the music, which is being played
throughout the game, that person cannot retain it, but must give it to
the one following. Sometimes no eggs fall, then the game is kept up
until all the eggs have passed rapidly around three times. But when
dropped and picked up, they must then go around once, and after this
final circuit the game is concluded.
[Illustration]
Boil a dozen or more eggs in logwood of different strengths of dye; they
will then be colored violet or purple. Give these eggs, with a large pin
or pen-knife, to young people to decorate. Offer a prize for the best
decoration within fifteen minutes.
Still another game is to knock eggs. Hold an egg so that the small end
is shown between the forefinger and the thumb. Sit or stand opposite to
the person with whom you are playing. Then knock each other's eggs. The
knock should be swift and hard, and whosesoever egg is the first to
crack must now be given to the opponent. When starting, each should have
equal number. Whoever has the most eggs after playing ten minutes has
won.
_The Game of Cluck_.--Perhaps this is the jolliest game of all, and it
is essentially for boys. Whoever gives the party should ask each of his
friends to bring a chicken--a real live chicken--and if he is sure he
would not recognize her when with a barnyard of others, he must tie a
ribbon around her neck; he must also bring some hard-boiled eggs. The
court used should be surrounded with a high netting, and the centre of
the court marked with a cross.
At a signal all the players, each with his fowl in his arms, must enter
the court, and the host, going to the centre, now becomes auctioneer,
and taking each offered fowl in turn, he loudly calls, "How many eggs am
I bid for this chicken?"--two eggs, three, or whatever the number may
be; no one must bid what he cannot pay, and the chicken is given to the
boy offering the largest number, and the eggs are given to the previous
owner of the chicken. He may put them wherever he pleases, only they
must be somewhere within the netting.
The sale being over, the "cluck" commences, for it is now each one's aim
to recover his chicken, which can only be done by finding the requisite
number of eggs given for her. This is much easier said than done, for
the boys will have hidden them in their pockets and other peculiar
places. Meanwhile, the chickens, running in every direction, are very
apt to "cluck" loudly.
_The Bird's Nest_.--Put a bird's nest in a room; hunt for it as you
"Hunt the Slipper," only instead of saying "warm, warmer," and so on,
you cluck, cluck, cluck soft or loud as the party goes toward or from
the nest. Only one person hunts at a time; everybody else clucks.
Never rob a bird's nest, no matter how much the pretty eggs may tempt
you. Think of the sorrow of the mother bird when she returns and sees it
empty. Think, too, of the time when these little shells would break, and
a blue or yellow bird, or maybe an oriole, would rise out and sing
sweetest song to you.
Have you ever seen among the variety of confectioners' eggs those
trimmed with roses--the kind that seems near of kin to the
Æolian-harp?--for blow on the roses ever so softly, listen, and you'll
hear a bird.
LEARNING BY DEGREES.
Any out-door or vigorous exercise to which a girl is unaccustomed it is
best she should be content to learn by degrees. This is the best rule
for pleasure as well as for health. If you take so long a tramp to-day
that you cannot walk again for a week because you became "tired to
death," the walk was of no benefit to you, but a positive injury. You
have overstrained your muscles, you feel exhausted, and you conclude
that walking for pleasure is hard work. There is "no fun in getting
played out," you say.
Surely not. But you have mistaken the cause of your failure to find "the
fun." You began by trying to do too much at first. If you have
heretofore been lazy, and have ridden everywhere, when you should have
used the means of locomotion which nature has given you, you had better
begin by doing only a short distance--perhaps only a mile a day--at
first. Do not take any risk of tiring yourself. The distance can be
gradually increased, and this course will so harden and develop the
muscles used that no sense of fatigue need be felt at any time. Instead,
you feel the pleasure that comes of being able to do what you undertake.
The same rule holds with regard to rowing, riding, or any form of sport
or bodily training. "Begin with a moderate amount, and keep it up
persistently until you become used to it;" this is what all common-sense
authorities say on the subject. One's muscles are usually tired after an
exercise, just because they are unused to it and don't understand their
work. They are like lazy little servants, who need to be taught their
duty and forced to do it.
[Illustration: Tom Chift and the Treafure Box]
An Old Time Story of the Days of Captain Kidd
By Howard Pyle
I.
To tell about Tom Chist, and how he got his name, and how he came to be
living at the little settlement of Henlopen just inside the mouth of the
Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a great
storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. During the heaviest part
of the hurricane a bark went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, just
below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist
was the only soul of all those on board the ill-fated vessel who escaped
alive.
This story must first be told, because it was on account of the strange
and miraculous escape that happened to him at that time that he gained
the name that was given to him.
Even as late as that time of the American colonies, the little scattered
settlement at Henlopen, made up of English, with a few Dutch and Swedish
people, was still only a speck of life upon the vast frontier of the
great American wilderness that spread away, with swamp and forest, no
man knew how far to the westward. That unfathomed wilderness was not
only full of wild beasts, but of Indian savages, who every fall would
come in wandering tribes, no man knew whence, to spend the winter along
the shores of the fresh-water lakes below Henlopen. There for four or
five months they would live upon fish and clams and wild ducks and
geese, chipping their arrow-heads, and making their earthenware pots and
pans under the lee of the sands hills and pine woods below the capes.
Sometimes on Sundays, when the Rev. Hillary Jones would be preaching in
the little log church back in the woods, these half-clad red savages
would come in from the cold, and sit squatting in the back part of the
church, listening stolidly to the words that had no meaning for them.
[Illustration: SUCH A WRECK WAS A GODSEND TO THE POOR AND NEEDY
SETTLERS.]
But about the wreck of the bark in 1686. Such a wreck as that which then
went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals was a godsend to the poor and
needy settlers in the wilderness where so few good things ever came. For
the vessel went to pieces during the night, and the next morning the
beach was strewn with wreckage--boxes and barrels, chests and spars,
timbers and planks, a plentiful and bountiful harvest to be gathered up
by the settlers as they chose, with no one to forbid or prevent them.
The name of the bark, as found painted on some of the water-barrels and
sea-chests, was the _Bristol Merchant_, and she presumedly hailed from
England.
As was said, the only soul who escaped alive off the wreck was Tom
Chist.
A settler, a fisherman named Matt Abrahamson, and his daughter Molly,
found Tom. He was washed up on the beach among the wreckage, in a great
wooden box which had been securely tied around with a rope and lashed
between two spars--apparently for better protection in beating through
the surf. Matt Abrahamson thought he had found something of more than
usual value when he came upon this chest; but when he cut the cords and
broke open the box with his broadaxe, he could not have been more
astonished had he beheld a salamander instead of a baby of nine or ten
months old lying half smothered in the blankets that covered the bottom
of the box.
Matt Abrahamson's daughter Molly had had a baby that had died a month or
so before. So when she saw the little one lying there in the bottom of
the chest, she cried out in a great loud voice that the Good Man had
sent her another baby in place of her own.
The rain was driving before the hurricane storm in dim, slanting sheets,
and so she wrapped up the baby in the man's coat she wore, and ran off
home without waiting to gather up any more of the wreckage.
It was Parson Jones who gave the foundling his name. When the news came
to his ears of what Matt Abrahamson had found, he went over to the
fisherman's cabin to see the child. He examined the linen clothes in
which the baby was dressed. They were of fine linen and handsomely
stitched, and the reverend gentleman opined that the foundling's parents
must have been of quality. A kerchief had been wrapped around the baby's
neck and under its arms and tied behind, and in the corner, marked with
very fine needlework, were the initials T. C.
"What d'ye call him, Molly?" said Parson Jones. He was standing, as he
spoke, with his back to the fire, warming his palms before the blaze.
The pocket of the great-coat he wore bulged out with a big case-bottle
of spirits, which he had gathered up out of the wreck that afternoon.
"What d'ye call him, Molly?"
"I'll call him Tom, after my own baby."
"That goes very well with the initial on the kerchief," said Parson
Jones. "But what other name d'ye give him? Let it be something to go
with the C."
"I don't know," said Molly.
"Why not call him 'Chist,' since he was born in a chist out of the sea?
'Tom Chist'--the name goes off like a flash in the pan." And so "Tom
Chist" he was called and "Tom Chist" he was christened.
So much for the beginning of the history of Tom Chist. The story of
Captain Kidd's treasure-box does not begin until the late spring of
1699.
That was the year that the famous pirate Captain, coming up from the
West Indies, sailed his sloop into the Delaware Bay, where he lay for
over a month waiting for news from his friends in New York.
For he had sent word to that town asking if the coast was clear for him
to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas
and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay
waiting for his reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's
life topsy-turvy with something that he brought ashore.
By that time Tom Chist had grown into a strong-limbed, thick-jointed boy
of fourteen or fifteen years of age. It was a miserable dog's life he
lived with old Matt Abrahamson, for the old fisherman was in his cups
more than half the time, and when he was so there was hardly a day
passed that he did not give Tom a curse or a buffet or, as like as not,
an actual beating. One would have thought that such treatment would have
broken the spirit of the poor little foundling, but it had just the
opposite effect upon Tom Chist, who was one of your stubborn, sturdy,
stiff-willed fellows who only grow harder and more tough the more they
are treated ill. It had been a long time now since he had made any
outcry or complaint at the ill-treatment he suffered from old Matt. At
such times he would shut his teeth and bear whatever came to him, until
sometimes the boozy old Abrahamson would be driven almost mad by his
stubborn silence. Maybe he would stop in the midst of some ill-treatment
that he was administering, and, grinding his teeth, would cry out:
"Won't ye say naught? Won't ye say naught? Well, then, I'll see if I
can't make ye say naught." When things had reached such a pass as this
Molly would generally interfere to protect her foster-son, and then she
and Tom would together fight the old man until they had wrenched the
stick or the strap out of his hand. Then old Matt would chase them out
of doors and around and around the house for maybe half an hour until
his anger was cool, when he would go back again, and for a time the
storm would be over.
Besides his foster-mother, Tom Chist had a very good friend in Parson
Jones, who used to come over every now and then to Abrahamson's hut upon
the chance of getting a half-dozen fish for breakfast. He always had a
kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go over
to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and write and
cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the words out of
the Bible and the almanack, and knew enough to change tuppence into four
ha'pennies.
This is the sort of boy Tom Chist was, and this is the sort of life he
led.
In the late spring or early summer of 1699 Captain Kidd's sloop sailed
into the mouth of the Delaware Bay and changed the whole fortune of his
life.
And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure-box.
II.
Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went out
fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the old
wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual
fishing-ground of the settlers, and here old Matt's boat generally lay
drawn up on the sand.
There had been a thunder-storm that afternoon, and Tom had gone down the
beach to bale out the boat against the morning's fishing.
It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky was
full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash to the
westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising another storm
to come.
All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore back of
the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering pallidly in
the moonlight, spread for drying after the storm. He was walking up the
shore homeward when he became aware that at some distance ahead of him
there was a boat drawn up on the little narrow beach, and a group of men
clustered about it. He hurried forward with a good deal of curiosity to
see who had landed, but it was not until he had come close to them that
he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew that it must
be a party who had come off from the pirate sloop. They had evidently
just landed, and two men were lifting out a chest from the boat. One of
them was a negro, naked to the waist, and the other was a white man in
his shirt sleeves, wearing petticoat breeches, a Monteray cap upon his
head, a red bandanna handkerchief around his neck, and gold ear-rings in
his ears. He had a long plaited queue hanging down his back, and a great
sheath-knife dangling from his side. Another man, evidently the captain
of the party, stood at a little distance as they lifted the chest out of
the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a lighted lantern in the other,
although the moon was shining as bright as day. He wore jack-boots and a
handsome laced coat, and he had a long drooping mustache that curled
down below his chin. He wore a fine feathered hat, and his long black
hair hung down upon his shoulders.
All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and twinkled
upon the gilt buttons of his coat.