old, either, for she's as brisk as a musquito. Her head flies round if
any one opens the door, as if it were strung on wires. I don't believe
she has any fire in her room, for she keeps hitching round after the
sun all day--and when he bids her good afternoon, she comforts her
shoulders with a blanket shawl; then, her lamp is always out long
before I go to bed, and nobody who has a good fire, ever wants to go to
bed and leave it; they'll find a thousand things to do--a letter to
write, or a book to read, or some chestnuts to eat; or, if they haven't
anything else to do, they will sit and look at the fire. I am sure I've
been forced to look at more disagreeable objects than that, for many an
hour.
There's a woman at another window, writing, or rather she has got her
table before her, and her inkstand, and the pen between her fingers;
all that she wants is a few ideas; see, she rolls up her eyes like a
pussy in a fit, and looks _up_, and looks _down_, and makes a love knot
on the paper with her pen, and coaxes her temples with her fingers; but
it's no use, there's nothing _there_! So she may as well get off her
stilts and darn her stockings.
There are two little girls at another window playing with their
dollies. Now I like that--it's a good thing--it teaches them how to
sew, and to cut out little garments, and to contrive and fix up things,
so that when they have _live_ dollies it will come handy to cut out
_their_ frocks. I always like to see little girls play with dollies,
and big girls, too, if they want to; it is better than a novel; better
than a thousand other things that girls do now-a-days, who fancy
themselves ladies as soon as they twist up their ringlets with a comb.
Heigh-ho, it makes me sigh to think there are so few _children_ in
1853.
Over there at another window in the same block, is a very sad sight. A
drunken husband! See how patiently his poor wife is trying to coax him
not to go out. She is fearful he may fall in the street, and get hurt,
and then she feels ashamed to have him seen in such a plight; now she
gently removes his hat--then he puts it on again; now her arm is about
his neck--but only to have it rudely pushed aside, poor woman. I hope
she believes in God, and knows how to _lean_ upon Him.
Now her husband has gone, and she sits down and covers her face with
her hands, and weeps. They are bitter tears--she thinks of the time he
took her proudly away from a happy home, and promised she should be
dear to him as his own life blood. Perhaps she cannot go to that home
_now_--perhaps her father and mother (happily for them) have not lived
to see her joy so soon turned to sorrow; or, if she could go there, she
loves her husband still too much to leave him. She hopes each morning
that he will come home and love her at night--and she tidies up the
hearth, and makes the fire bright, and keeps his supper warm, and wipes
away her tears, and braids her hair in shining plaits as he once loved
to see it, and looks often at the little mantel clock, and then out the
window. By and by she hears his step; oh, it is the same old story--he
reels, cursing, into her presence--perhaps aims at her a blow.
Her little child lies there sleeping. She is glad he is not old enough
to know his father's shame. Sometimes she even prays the babe may die.
She knows, were she taken away, how much it must suffer. Then, she
remembers the time when its father was steady and kind and industrious,
and she thinks of those who roll about in carriages, on the money taken
from _her_ husband's pocket, and that of other poor victims like him.
And then the angry flush mounts to her temples, and she says, "Is there
_no law_ to punish these wicked rumsellers?" Poor thing! that wailing
cry has gone up from Maine to Georgia--from many a houseless wife and
shivering child!
God hears it! I had rather be in _their_ place than the rumseller's.
Well, now it is quite dark, and I must light my lamp and shut my
shutters, or some of those folks may be peeping in and taking notes of
_me_!--who knows? Wouldn't that be a joke?
THE ENGLISH EMIGRANTS.
It was very weary on ship board. Julien and Victor had spied out all
there was to be seen the first week they set sail, and the sailors had
told them all the stories they could possibly think of. Mrs. Adrian
(their mother) was too sick to leave the cabin, and the little boys
were getting very impatient to reach shore.
How would America look? What sort of houses did they have there? What
sort of children? Would they be good play-fellows? These were the
things little Julien and Victor were thinking about.
Their father was thinking of the price of provisions, and about house
rent, and the probabilities of his finding customers for his tailoring
work; and whether they should all have to live in the shop, and whether
his sickly wife would thrive under the changeable climate, and whether
they should make a _home_, or always be like "strangers in a strange
land."
And their mother; she was thinking of the gray-haired old father who
had blessed her for the last time, and of the sunny homes of England,
with their wealth of shrub and tree and blossom, and of a dear little
girl whom she left sleeping in a quiet church-yard, between whom and
herself the swift blue waves were building up a wall of separation.
Land ho! shouted the old tars.
Land ho! echoed the merry little boys.
And this was America! this New-York! How very odd and strange
everything was! How anxious the people all looked! How slender!--how
pale!--and what a hurry they all seemed to be in! How they jostled
about, as if they were afraid they shouldn't get their share of
terra-firma! How the cab-men and porters and hack-drivers were just as
independent as the gentlemen and ladies they worked for! and how
showily and gaily the ladies dressed, just to take a promenade.
It was all very funny.
The children and their mother looked with all their eyes; they could
not make up their minds whether they should like it or not; but that
was not the first thing to be considered; they must first decide where
to live.
Mr. Adrian concluded to go to B----, about two days' journey by the
railroad. So their trunks were taken from the ship and carried to the
baggage cars. Little Julien and Victor had nice seats by the window,
and it was very delightful to see the green fields after having seen
nothing but the dashing billows for so many weeks. They felt as glad as
Noah's dove did, when she spread her wings from the door of the ark,
after "the waters were abated." They threw their limbs about, whenever
the cars stopped for the great "iron horse" to lay in some wood for his
supper, as if they were determined to make up for the time they had
been cramped on ship-board.
"Things are not so very cheap after all, over here in America," said
Mr. Adrian, with a sigh, as he took possession of the room that was to
serve them for shop, parlor, kitchen and bed-room. "Well, we must be
patient and industrious; I will put up my sign to-day, and if you and
the children (turning to his wife) are only in good health, I shall
have courage to work."
So the sign was put up: "John Adrian, tailor, from England--all orders
promptly and neatly executed." Then John took out his shears and
"goose," crossed his legs and seated himself with a jacket to make, in
front of the window, where pedestrians could see that he was at his
post, ready for orders.
Julien and Victor, the rosy little Englishmen, didn't fancy much the
small room they lived in. It was almost as much of a prison to them as
the vessel; they liked better to play in the streets. Their mother
looked out the window at them, with a sigh, for her children had been
carefully brought up, and she shuddered at the bad words they were
hearing, and the groups of idle, noisy, vicious children, swarming
about the neighborhood. Oh, how should she keep her little boys pure
and unspotted?
Three weeks had passed by. Little Julien came in, one day, from his
play, when his mother met him at the door, saying, "Run, Julien,
quick--quick--for the doctor."
"Where, mother--where shall I find him?"
"Oh! I don't know," said the distracted woman, chafing her husband's
temples; "ask somebody--quick, dear Julien, for the love of God!--the
death dew is on your father's forehead."
"Cholera," said the doctor. "I can do nothing for him, my poor woman;
the disease is raging fearfully here; he cannot live an hour."
"_Nothing_ to be done?" said the poor wife, fixing her eyes on her
dying husband, and watching his spasms; "_nothing_ to be done? Oh, sir,
don't tell me _that_."
But even while she spoke the dark shadow fell. The loving eyes grew
glassy; the hand she held relaxed its hold, and that "change," so
subtle, so fearful, (that all have _seen_ yet none may _tell_,) flitted
over his face.
Death came for more than _one_ victim, to that doomed house. First one
little head drooped, then another, then the soft eyes closed, and the
little lip said, quiveringly, "It is all dark; kiss us, dear mother;"
and Mrs. Adrian was a childless widow.
Dear children, God be praised that the world is not all a desert--that
there are hearts that feel, eyes that weep, and hands that minister to
the sorrow-stricken. Mammon has left some hearts that he has not
shrivelled, some eyes that he has not blinded, some hands that he has
not fettered.
Poor Mrs. Adrian! She knew that there were strangers about her, and
that their voices were kind, and their hands busy straightening the
dear limbs, and smoothing the cherished locks, and placing them
reverently in "the narrow house;" she knew that the hearse came at
their bidding, and bore her dead away; she knew that they led her back
to that forsaken room, and held the tempting morsel to her grieved lip,
and she felt their warm tears drop upon her cheek, and their kind hands
upon her throbbing forehead; but it was all like a dream to her.
Oh, my dear children, where could she have turned in that dark hour if
not to _Heaven_? What if she had said, with the unbeliever, "There is
no God?" How could she try to lean on reeds that bent and broke beneath
her? Oh, no, no! when sickness and trouble come, our hearts _must have
a God_. Heaven _only_ can bring healing to a heart so stunned with
pain; and there the poor English woman sought it.
Did God ever forsake those who threw themselves on _His_ great loving
heart for comfort?
Never!
If Mrs. Adrian could not smile, she did not weep. True, she looked for
rosy little faces she never more might see; listened for tripping
little feet she never more might hear; but, dear children, peace came
gently down upon her heart, like dew upon the closed flowers, and she
said, with bowed head, "'Tis well."
NEW-YORK SUNDAY.
Dear children: There is the bell for church; but Sunday is not
_Sunday_, here in New-York. I wish I were going to church in the
country with you, where everything is quiet, and sweet, and
holy,--where people go to church to worship God, and not to see and to
show the fashions. No, it is not Sunday here, if the bells _do_ say so.
Why? Because there's a woman, at the corner of that street, spreading
out on her stall, apples and candy, and bananas, and oranges, and
cookies, and sugar-toys, and melons, and cocoa-nuts, and ginger beer;
because there's a cigar shop--(the shutters, closed to be sure,) but
with the door wide open, and the owner already beginning to trade with
customers; because, there's a man selling bouquets, and a
confectioner's saloon open, and people eating ice-creams in it; and
little ragged news boys, who have been screeching ever since day-light,
"New York Herald--Times--Sunday Despatch--dreadful collision and _lass
o' life_--Times, Despatch, and Herald"--and drunken men whom you meet
at every few blocks, and people going everywhere but into the church
doors.
Well, you go into a city church,--it is not like _yours_ in the
country, where the blessed sunlight shines cheerfully in, and the sweet
breeze wafts through the open windows the breath of clover blossoms and
new mown hay; where the minister preaches to poor people, who are not
forced to carry a _dictionary_ to church; where people don't frown and
hastily button the pew door when a stranger comes in; where neighbors
smile kindly on each other, and never gather up the folds of their
dress lest it should sweep against a shilling de-laine; where good "Old
Hundred" and "St. Martins" are sung, instead of twistified, finical,
modern tunes, that old-fashioned folks can't follow; where the minister
is not too stately to pat the little children on the head coming out
the porch, or to give them a pleasant smile to make them feel that they
are part of his parish; where they all walk home, not over crowded,
dusty pavements, but under the leafy trees, with hearts filled with a
quiet joy, seeing "the cattle on a thousand hills," the springs which
run among the hills, "and the birds which build their houses in the
branches;" where the golden sun goes down, not on the bloated drunkard
and noisy Sabbath breaker, but on the hale old man "of silver hairs,"
teaching the cherub on his knee to lisp the evening hymn--upon kneeling
groups under cottage roofs, where envy and hatred and ill-will find no
resting place for their swift and evil feet. That is what Aunt Fanny
calls _Sunday_.
Children, there is one thing I like in New-York: almost all the
churches have "the ivy green" clambering over the windows and turrets,
and pretty willow trees drooping their graceful branches about the
doorways. I love to see it, because I love the beautiful, and because
it is pleasant to get even a glimpse of nature in the artificial city.
But I _don't_ like the stained glass windows. I don't like to see the
congregation with green eyes and pink noses and blue cheeks and yellow
lips. It excites my troublesome bump of mirthfulness, (and that's
wrong, you know, in church;) beside, I catch myself examining the
windows, to see if there are any two of them alike, and counting the
red and pink and blue diamonds, and squares, and wondering whether,
were they transposed this way and that way, the effect would not be
better. And then I know that most of those windows are so arranged that
they can't be opened, to let in the fresh air, and that gives me a
stifled feeling, and I involuntarily untie my bonnet strings, and draw
a long breath, to see if my breathing apparatus is all right!
No, I don't like these modern _improvements_ (?) in churches: in fact,
to tell you the truth, I had rather worship, like the old Covenanters,
among the green hills--the blue sky for a roof, the gnarled old tree
trunks for pillars, the branches for galleries, and the birds for an
orchestra; and unless the minister preached because his heart was _so
full of love to God that he couldn't help_ preaching, I should rather
hear my _Maker_ preach to me, in the soft whisper of the leaves, the
happy hum of the tiny insect, and the low, soft murmur of the stream.
Now, my dear children, don't mistake me. It is our duty to go to
church; and it is wrong to think of anything else in church but
worshipping God; but there's so much display, and show, and fashion
now-a-days, in the churches--so much to distract the thoughts--so much
hollow pretension to piety, that I sometimes feel, as I told you, that
I would rather worship amid the green hills, like the old persecuted
Covenanters. Oh! there was _heart_ in their worship! they sang every
hymn as if they might sing the next one in Heaven.
_So ought we!_ Are you tired of my sermon?
Well, what do you think I saw here in New-York to-day? A boy of _eight_
years old walking in the street, with his hands in his jacket pockets,
_smoking a cigar_! I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry at the
little monkey. Finally, I laid my hand on his shoulder and said,
"You don't _like_ that nasty cigar, I hope, my dear child." He blushed,
and taking it out of his mouth, said,
"Yes, I do, but I'll throw it away if you want me to."
"Thank you," said I, "for your politeness, but it is not of myself I
was thinking. I can easily get out of the way of it, you know, but it
is such a shocking bad habit to get into; so young as you are, too. Oh,
you have no idea how much it costs to smoke. You must always offer a
friend one, else he will call you 'a stingy fellow.' Why, my dear boy,
only think, it will take all your pocket money to buy _cigars_. You
forget that by and by, you will want a store in Broadway, full of
goods, and clerks to sell them, and a house to live in, and may be a
wife, too; ah, you needn't laugh, for I don't believe you'll be able to
get a wife if you keep on smoking till you get old enough to be
engaged. By that time you'll be so stupefied, that nobody will have
you!
"Yes, and many a time when you want a pair of new boots, you'll have to
do without them because you can't _possibly_ go without your cigar, and
you haven't money enough for both. Now, I'd just like to know if a
smart little fellow like you is going to be made such a slave of, by a
miserable little dirty roll of tobacco?"
Well, he said he would not smoke any more, but I've been afraid ever
since to turn a corner, for fear I shall see the precocious young man
walking behind a cigar.
Oh, the country is the place for boys,--on a nice farm, where there is
ploughing, and hoeing, and digging, and sowing, and reaping going on;
where they can jump upon a horse, without any saddle, and ride him to
water, with his mane for a bridle; where they can help build fences,
and help make hay, and help milk cows, and drive them to pasture; where
they can go blackberrying, and strawberrying, and chestnuting, and
everything but bird-nesting. I wouldn't like to leave my purse in the
way of a boy who went bird-nesting. I should know he had a bad heart.
Yes, the country is the place for boys. There are no oyster saloons
there; no cigar shops for them to loitre round; no gangs of bad, idle
boys to teach them all sorts of mischief;--plenty going on in the
country to amuse them innocently--terrible rattlesnakes to be
slaughtered; woodchucks to be hunted; hawks to be shot (who make
mince-meat of the poor little chickens); maple sugar and cider to make;
husking frolics to go to. Just as if I didn't know what was best for
boys, if I _am a woman_. I tell you, some of the greatest heroes in the
world have had _women for mothers_.
THE BOY WHO LIKED NATURAL HISTORY.
Hal Hunt lived at the "Seven Corners;" he was just six years old last
Fourth of July; and as "independent" as you might suppose, with _such_
a birth-day to boast of.
He was on the gun-powder order, I can tell you; bound to make a _fizz_
wherever he went, always popping up in odd places, and frightening
nervous old ladies, and little two-year-olders, who had ventured away
from their mothers' apron strings. Every cat and dog, for ten miles
round, made for the nearest port when Hal and his torn straw hat loomed
up in the distance.
Hal never was in a school room in his life; but it didn't follow that
he did no studying for all that. On the contrary, he sat there, on the
steps of his father's grocery store, with his chin between his little
brown palms, doing up more thinking than the schoolma'am would have
allowed, except in recess.
Hal was very fond of Natural History;--in fact, he had about made up
his mind, that as soon as he owned a long-tailed coat, he would own a
menagerie. Pigs, geese, hens, ducks, cows, oxen, nothing came amiss to
him that went into Noah's ark. He expected to have a grand time when he
got that menagerie--setting them all the cars, and hearing them growl
behind their bars.
One day he sat on the door-step running it over in his mind, when the
old rooster, followed by his hens, marched in a procession past the
door.
There was the speckled hen, _black and white_, (with red eyes) looking
like a widow in half mourning; there was the white one that _would_
have been pretty, hadn't she such a turn for fighting that her feathers
were as scarce as brains in a dandy's head; there was the _black_ one,
that contested her claims with the white hen, to a kernel of corn, and
a place in the procession next the rooster, in a manner that would have
delighted the abolitionists.
Hal watched them all, and then it struck him, all of a sudden, that he
had never seen a _hen swim_. He had seen ducks do it, and swans, and
geese, but he never remembered to have seen a HEN swim.
What was the reason? Didn't they know how? or _wouldn't_ they do it?
Hal was resolved to get at the bottom of that problem without delay; so
he jumped up and chased one round till he fell down and tore his
jacket, and the hen flew up in a tree.
Then he tried for the speckled widow; _she_ of course was too sharp for
him.
At last he secured the brown one, and hiding her under his jacket
started for the "creek," about a quarter of a mile off. He told the
hen, going along, that if she didn't know how to swim, it was high time
she did, and that he was going to try her any how; the hen cocked up
her eye but said nothing, though she had her thoughts.
The fact was she never had been in the habit of going out of the
barn-yard, without asking leave of the rooster, who was a regular old
"Blue Beard;" and she knew very well that he wouldn't scratch her up
another worm, for a good twelve-month, for being absent without leave.
So she dug her claws into Hal's side, every now and then, and tried to
peck him with her bill, but Hal told her it was no use, for go into
that creek she _should_.
Well, he got to the creek at last, and stood triumphantly on a little
bank just over it. He took a good grip of his hen, and then lifted up
his arm to give her a nice toss into the water.
He told her that now she was to consider herself a _duck_, instead of a
_hen_, (what a _goose_!) then over he went _splash_ into the water
_himself_. The question was not _now_ whether the _hen_ could swim, but
whether _he_ could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a
little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when
his brother Zedekiah came along and fished him out.
Hal prefers now to try his experiments on his father's door-step; as to
the hen, poor chicken-hearted thing! she didn't dare to show her wet
feathers to her lordly old rooster; so she smuggled herself into
neighbor Jones' barn-yard and laid her eggs wherever it suited the old
farmer, for the sake of her board.
KNUD IVERSON.
I suppose that every boy and girl who reads my "Little Ferns," has
heard or read of martyrs. You have all owned a primer with the picture
of "John Rogers," who was burned alive for being a good man; then, you
remember "Stephen," of Bible memory, who was stoned to death, for the
same reason.
In 1853, when Religion walks in satin slippers, perhaps you think that
no martyrs can be found. Dear children, Aunt Fanny sees them every day;
bearing tortures worse than the fire, or the rack, and opening their
burdened hearts to God alone.
But it is not of these that I would speak _now_. I am going to tell you
of a _little boy martyr_.
"Knud Iverson" was a little Norwegian, a countryman of the famous "Ole
Bull," the great violinist.
Knud's parents had come over from Norway to this country, and settled
in Chicago. (You will find that place if you look in your Atlas, and I
should like to have you find it, because I want you to remember all
about this dear little boy.)
Knud had been early taught how to be a good boy. His parents' words did
not pass into his ears to be forgotten. Knud remembered _everything_
they said; and, what was better, he _practiced_ it. They were quite
sure that when Knud was out of their sight, he behaved just as well as
if their eyes were on him. Can _your_ father and mother be as sure of
YOU?
Knud loved to go to Sabbath school; he never was absent from his class
once. He was not frightened away by a drop of rain, or a warm sun; he
_loved_ to go. His mother did not have to say to him, "Come, come,
Knud! don't you know it is time you were preparing to go to school?"
or, "Come, come, Knud! it is time you were looking over your Sunday
school lesson." No; he was always ready; his lesson in his _head_, and
love for God in his _heart_; and away he trudged, cheerful and happy,
to gladden the eyes of his kind teacher by being promptly in his place.
Perhaps you think because Knud loved to _pray_ that he didn't love to
_play_. Not at all. You didn't know that good boys enjoy play much
better than _bad_ ones, did you? Well, they _do_; because their
consciences are not troubling them all the while, as those of bad boys
are.