said Miss Katy with a face of disgust. "Why, I could no more eat
worsted and fur, as they do--"
"That is quite evident from the fairy-like delicacy of your
appearance," said the Colonel. "One can see that nothing so gross
and material has ever entered into your system."
"I'm sure," said Miss Katy, "mamma says she don't know what does
keep me alive; half a dew-drop and a little hit of the nicest part
of a rose-leaf, I assure you, often last me for a day. But we are
forgetting our list. Let's see,--the Fireflies, Butterflies, Moths.
The Bees must come, I suppose."
"The Bees are a worthy family," said the Colonel.
"Worthy enough, but dreadfully hum-drum" said Miss Katy. "They
never talk about anything but honey and housekeeping; still they
are a class of people one cannot neglect."
"Well, then, there are the Bumble-bees."
"Oh, I doat on them! General Bumble is one of the most dashing,
brilliant fellows of the day.
"I think he is shockingly corpulent," said Colonel Katy-did, not at
all pleased to hear him praised, "don't you?"
"I don't know but he _is_ a little stout," said Miss Katy;
"but so distinguished and elegant in his manners,--something
martial and breezy about him."
"Well, if you invite the Bumble-bees you must have the Hornets."
"Those spiteful Hornets,--I detest them!"
"Nevertheless, dear Miss Katy, one does not like to offend the
Hornets."
"No, one can't. There are those five Misses Hornet,--dreadful old
maids! as full of spite as they can live. You may be sure they will
every one come, and be looking about to make spiteful remarks. Put
down the Hornets, though."
"How about the Mosquitoes?" said the Colonel.
"Those horrid Mosquitoes,--they are dreadfully common! Can't one
cut them?"
"Well, dear Miss Katy," said the Colonel, "if you ask my candid
opinion as a friend, I should say _not_. there's young Mosquito,
who graduated last year, has gone into literature, and is
connected with some of our leading papers, and they say he
carries the sharpest pen of all the writers. It won't do to
offend him."
"And so I suppose we must have his old aunts, and all six of his
sisters, and all his dreadfully common relations."
"It is a pity," said the Colonel, "but one must pay one's tax to
society."
Just at this moment the conference was interrupted by a visitor,
Miss Keziah Cricket, who came in with her work-bag on her arm to
ask a subscription for a poor family of Ants who had just had their
house hoed up in clearing the garden-walks.
"How stupid of them," said Katy, "not to know better than to put
their house in the garden-walk; that's just like those Ants!"
"Well, they are in great trouble; all their stores destroyed, and
their father killed,--cut in two by a hoe."
"How very shocking! I don't like to hear of such disagreeable
things,--it affects my nerves terribly. Well, I'm sure I haven't
anything to give. Mamma said yesterday she was sure she didn't know
how our bills were to be paid,--and there's my green satin with
point-lace yet to come home." And Miss Katy-did shrugged her
shoulders and affected to be very busy with Colonel Katy-did, in
just the way that young ladies sometimes do when they wish to
signify to visitors that they had better leave.
Little Miss Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped
briskly off, without giving herself even time to be offended. "Poor
extravagant little thing!" said she to herself, "it was hardly
worth while to ask her."
"Pray, shall you invite the Crickets?" said Colonel Katy-did.
"Who? I? Why, Colonel, what a question! Invite the Crickets? Of
what can you be thinking?"
"And shall you not ask the Locusts, or the Grasshoppers?"
"Certainly. The Locusts, of course,--a very old and distinguished
family; and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be
asked. But we must draw the line somewhere,--and the Crickets! Why
it's shocking even to think of!"
"I thought they were nice, respectable people."
"O, perfectly nice and respectable,--very good people, in fact, so
far as that goes. But then you must see the difficulty."
"My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain."
"Why, their _color_, to be sure. Don't you see?"
"Oh!" said the Colonel. "That's it, is it? Excuse me, but I have
been living in France, where these distinctions are wholly unknown,
and I have not yet got myself in the train of fashionable ideas
here."
"Well, then, let me teach you," said Miss Katy. "You know we go for
no distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we
found our rank upon color, because that is clearly a thing that
none has any hand in but our Maker. You see?"
"Yes; but who decides what color shall be the reigning color?"
"I'm surprised to hear the question! The only true color--the only
proper one--is _our_ color, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is
the precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction. But
then we are liberal;--we associate with the Moths, who are gray;
with the Butterflies, who are blue-and-gold colored; with the
Grasshoppers, yellow and brown;--and society would become
dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered that the
Crickets are black as jet. The fact is, that a class to be looked
down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the Crickets
were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as everybody
knows, they are often a great deal cleverer than we are. They have
a vast talent for music and dancing; they are very quick at
learning, and would be getting to the very top of the ladder if we
once allowed them to climb. But being black is a convenience,
--because, as long as we are green and they are black, we have a
superiority that can never be taken from us. Don't you see now?"
"Oh, yes, I see exactly," said the Colonel.
"Now that Keziah Cricket, who just came in here, is quite a
musician, and her old father plays the violin beautifully; by the
way, we might engage him for our orchestra."
And so Miss Katy's ball came off, and the performers kept it up
from sundown till daybreak, so that it seemed as if every leaf in
the forest were alive. The Katy-dids, and the Mosquitoes, and the
Locusts, and a full orchestra of Crickets made the air perfectly
vibrate, insomuch that old Parson Too-whit, who was preaching a
Thursday evening lecture to a very small audience, announced to his
hearers that he should certainly write a discourse against dancing,
for the next weekly occasion.
The good Doctor was as good as his word in the matter, and gave out
some very sonorous discourses, without in the least stopping the
round of gayeties kept up by these dissipated Katy-dids, which ran
on, night after night, till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic,
which occurred somewhere about the first of September.
Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one
of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad
shower of last year's leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however,
avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a
nice little cottage that had been built in the wood that summer.
There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and
her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when
the storm howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the
Cricket on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to papa
as he came in from the snowy path, or mamma as she sat at her
work-basket.
"Cheep, cheep, cheep!" little Freddy would say. "Mamma, who is it
says 'cheep'?"
"Dear Freddy, it is our own dear little cricket, who loves us and
comes to sing to us when the snow is on the ground."
So when poor Miss Katy-did's satin and lace were all swept away,
the warm home-talents of the Crickets made for them a welcome
refuge.
THE BEECH AND THE OAK
By Carl Ewald
It all happened long, long ago. There were no towns then with
houses and streets, and church steeples domineering over
everything.
There were no schools, for there were not many boys, and those that
there were learnt from their father to shoot with the bow and
arrow, to hunt the stag in his covert, to kill the bear in order to
make clothes out of his skin, and to rub two pieces of wood
together till they caught fire. When they knew this perfectly, they
had finished their education.
There were no railways either, and no cultivated fields, no ships
on the sea, no books, for there was nobody who could read them.
There was scarcely anything except Trees. But Trees there were in
plenty. They stood everywhere from coast to coast; they saw
themselves reflected in all the rivers and lakes, and stretched
their mighty boughs up towards heaven. They leaned out over the
shore, dipped their boughs in the black fen water, and from the
high hills looked out proudly over the land.
They all knew each other, for they belonged to a great family, and
were proud of it.
"We are all _Oak_ Trees," they said. "We own the land, and
rule over it."
And they were right. There were only a few human beings there in
those days, and those that there were were nothing better than wild
animals. The Bear, the Wolf, and the Fox went out hunting, while
the Stag grazed by the edge of the fen. The Field Mouse sat outside
his hole and ate acorns, and the Beaver built his artistic houses
by the river banks.
One day the Bear came trudging along and lay down at full breadth
under a great Oak Tree, "Are you there again, you robber?" said the
Oak, and shook a lot of withered leaves down over him.
"You should not squander your leaves, my old friend," said the
Bear, licking his paws. "That is all the shade you can give against
the sun."
"If you are not pleased with me, you can go," answered the Oak
proudly. "I am lord in the land, and whatever way you look you find
my brothers and nothing else."
"True," muttered the Bear. "That is just what is so sickening. I
have been for a little tour abroad, I may tell you, and am just a
little bit spoilt. It was in a land down towards the south--there I
took a nap under the Beech Trees. They are tall, slim Trees, not
crooked old things like you. And their tops are so dense that the
sunbeams cannot creep through them. It was a real pleasure there to
take a midday nap, I assure you."
"Beech Trees?" said the Oak inquisitively. "What are they?"
"You might well wish you were half as pretty as a Beech Tree," said
the Bear. "But I don't want to chatter any more with you just now.
I have had to trot a mile on account of a confounded hunter who
struck me on one of my hind legs with an arrow. Now I should like
to have a sleep, and perhaps you will be kind enough to leave me at
peace, since you cannot give me shade." The Bear stretched himself
out and closed his eyes; but he got no sleep _that_ time, for
the other Trees had heard his story, and they began chattering and
talking and rustling their leaves in a way never known in the wood
before.
"What on earth can those Trees be?" said one of them.
"It is, of course, a mere story; the Bear wishes to impose upon
us," said the other.
"What kind of Trees can they be whose leaves sit so close together
that the sunbeams cannot creep between them?" asked a Little Oak,
who was listening to what the big ones were talking about.
But by his side stood an old gnarled Tree, who gave the Little Oak
a clout on the head with one of his lowest boughs. "Hold your
tongue," he said, "and don't talk till you have something to talk
about. You need none of you believe a word of the Bear's nonsense.
I am much taller than you, and I can see far out over the wood. But
so far as ever I can see, there is nothing but Oak Trees."
The Little Oak was shamefaced, and held his tongue; and the other
big Trees spoke to one another in low whispers, for they had great
respect for the old one.
But the Bear got up and rubbed his eyes. "Now you have disturbed my
midday nap," he growled angrily, "and I declare that I will have my
revenge. When I come back I will bring some Beech nuts with me, and
I vow you will all turn yellow with jealousy when you see how
pretty the new Trees are."
Then he made off. But the Oaks talked the whole day long one to
another about the funny Trees he had told them about. "If they
come, I will kill them," said the Little Oak Tree, but directly
afterwards he got one on the head from the Old Oak.
"If they come, you shall treat them politely, you young dog," said
he. "But they will not come."
But in this the Old Oak was wrong, for they did come.
Towards autumn the Bear came back and lay; down under the Old Oak.
"My friends down there wish me to present their compliments," he
said, and he picked some funny things out of his shaggy coat. "Here
you may see what I have for you."
"What is it?" asked the Oak.
"That is _Beech_" answered the Bear--"the Beech nuts which I
promised you." Then he trampled them into the ground and prepared
to go back.
"It is a pity I cannot stay and see how angry you will be," he
growled, "but those confounded human beings have begun to press one
so hard. The day before yesterday they killed my wife and one of my
brothers, and I must see about finding a place where I can live in
peace. There is scarcely a spot left where a self-respecting Bear
can stay. Goodbye, you old, gnarled Oak Trees!"
When the Bear had shambled off, the Trees looked at one another
anxiously.
"Let us see what comes of it," said the Old Oak.
And after this they composed themselves to rest. The winter came
and tore all their leaves off them, the snow lay high over the
whole land, and every Tree stood deep in his own thoughts and
dreamt of the spring.
And when the spring came the grass stood green, and the birds began
singing where they left off last. The flowers came up in multitudes
from the earth, and everything looked fresh and gay. The Oak Trees
alone stood with leafless boughs.
"It is the most dignified thing to come last!" they said to one
another. "The kings of the wood do not come till the whole company
is assembled."
But at last they came. All the leaves burst forth from the swollen
buds, and the Trees looked at one another and complimented one
another on their beauty. The Little Oak had grown ever so much. He
was very proud of it, and he thought that he had now the right to
join in the conversation. "Nothing has come yet of the Bear's Beech
Trees," he said jeeringly, at the same time glancing anxiously up
at the Old Oak, who used to give him one on the head.
The Old Oak heard what he said very plainly, and the other Trees
also; but they said nothing. Not one of them had forgotten what the
Bear had told them, and every morning when the sun came out they
peeped down to look for the Beeches. They were really a little
uneasy, but they were too proud to talk about it.
And one day the little shoots did at last burst forth from the
earth. The sun shone on them, and the rain fell on them, so it was
not long before they grew tall.
"Oh, how pretty they are!" said the Great Oak, and stooped his
crooked boughs still more, so that they could get a good view of
them. "You are welcome among us," said the Old Oak, and graciously
inclined his head to them. "You shall be my foster--children, and
be treated just as well as my own."
"Thanks," said the Little Beeches, and they said no more.
But the Little Oak could not bear the strange Trees. "It is
dreadful the way you shoot up into the air," he said in vexation.
"You are already half as tall as I am. But I beg you to take notice
that I am much older, and of good family besides."
The Beeches laughed with their little, tiny green leaves, but said
nothing.
"Shall I bend my branches a little aside so that the sun can shine
better on you?" the Old Tree asked politely.
"Many thanks," answered the Beeches. "We can grow very nicely in
the shade."
And the whole summer passed by, and another summer after that, and
still more summers. The Beeches went on growing, and at last quite
overtopped the Little Oak.
"Keep your leaves to yourself," cried the Oak; "you overshadow me,
and that is what I can't endure. I must have plenty of sunshine.
Take your leaves away or I perish."
The Beeches only laughed and went on growing. At last they closed
together over the Little Oak's head, and then he died. "That was a
horrid thing to do," a great Oak called out, and shook his boughs
in terror.
But the Old Oak took his foster-children under his protection. "It
serves him right," he said. "He is paid out for his boasting. I say
it, though he is my own flesh and blood. But now you must behave
yourselves, Little Beeches, or I will give you a clout on the
head."
Years went by, and the Beeches went on growing, and they grew
till they were tall young Trees, which reached up among the
branches of the Old Oak.
"You begin to be rather pushing," the Old Tree said. "You should
try to grow a little broader, and stop this shooting up into the
air. Just see where your branches are soaring. Bend them properly,
as you see us do. How will you be able to hold out when a regular
storm comes? I assure you the Wind gives one's head a good shaking.
My old boughs have creaked many a time; and what do you think will
become of the flimsy finery that you stick up in the air?"
"Every one has his own manner of growth, and we have ours,"
answered the young Beeches. "This is the way it's done where we
come from, and we are perhaps as good as you are."
"That is not a polite way of speaking to an old Tree with moss on
his boughs," said the Oak. "I begin to repent that I was so kind to
you. If you have a spark of honourable feeling alive in you, be
good enough to move your leaves a little to one side. There have
been scarcely any buds on my lowest branches this year, you
overshadow me so."
"I don't quite understand how that concerns us," answered the
Beeches. "Every one has quite enough to do to look after himself.
If he is equal to his work, and has luck, it turns out well for
him; if not, he must be prepared to go to the wall. That is the way
of the world."
Then the Oak's lowest branch died, and he began to be seriously
alarmed. "You are pretty things," he said, "if this is the way you
reward me for my hospitality. When you were little I let you grow
at my feet, and sheltered you against the storm, I let the sun
shine on you as much as ever he would, and I treated you as if you
were my own children. And in return for all this you stifle me."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Beeches. So they put forth flowers
and fruit, and when the fruit was ripe the Wind shook the boughs
and scattered it round far and wide.
"You are quick people like me," said the Wind. "I like you for it,
and am glad to do you a good turn." And the Fox rolled on the
ground at the foot of the Beech Trees and got his fur full of the
prickly fruits, and ran with them far out into the country. The
Bear did the same, and grinned into the bargain at the Old Oak
while he lay and rested in the shadow of the Beeches. The Field
Mouse was beside himself with joy over his new food, and thought
that Beech nuts tasted much nicer than acorns. All round new little
Beech Trees shot up, which grew just as fast as their parents, and
looked as green and as happy as if they did not know what an uneasy
conscience was.
But the Old Oak gazed sadly out over the wood. The light-green
Beech leaves were peeping out everywhere, and the Oaks were sighing
and bewailing their distress to one another. "They are taking our
strength out of us," they said, and shook as much as the Beeches
around would let them. "The land is ours no longer." One bough died
after another, and the Storm broke them off and cast them on the
ground. The Old Oak had now only a few leaves left at the very top.
"The end is near," he said gravely.
By this time there were many more human beings in the land than
there were before, and they made haste to hew down the Oaks while
there were still some remaining.
"Oak timber is better than Beech timber," they said.
"At last we get a little appreciation," said the old Oak, "but we
have to pay for it with our lives."
Then he said to the Beech Trees,--"What was I thinking of when I
helped you on in your young days? What an old stupid I was! Before
that, we Oak Trees were lords in the land; and now every year I see
my brothers around me perishing in the fight against you. It will
soon be all over with me, and not one of my acorns has sprouted
under your shade. But before I die I should like to know the name
you give to such conduct."
"That will not take long to say, old friend," answered the Beeches.
"We call it _competition,_ and that is not any discovery of
our own. It is competition which rules the world."
"I do not know these foreign words of yours," said the Oak. "I call
it mean ingratitude." And then he died.
THE OAK AND THE SNAIL
By Mrs. Alfred Gatty
The trunk of the Oak Tree in the corner of the timber yard lay
groaning under the plank, which a party of children had thrown
across him to play see-saw upon.
Not that the plank was so heavy, even with two or three little ones
sitting on each end, nor that the Oak was too weak to hold it
up--though, of course, the pressure was pretty strong just at the
centre, where the plank balanced. But it was such a use to be put
to!
The other half of the Tree had been cut into beautiful even planks,
some time before, but this was the root end, and his time had not
yet come, and he was getting impatient.
"Here we go up, up, up!" cried the children, as the plank rose into
the sky on one side. "I shall catch the tree-tops--no! the church
steeple--no! the stars."
Or, "Here we go down, down, down!" cried the others. "Safe and snug
on the ground--no! right through the world--no! out at the other
side. Ah! steady there, stupid old stump!" This was because the
plank had swerved, not the Tree.
And so the game went on; for the ups and downs came in turns, and
the children shrieked with delight, and the poor Tree groaned
loudly all the time.
"And I am to sit here; and bear not only their weight but their
blame, and be called stupid and be told to keep steady, when it is
they who are giddy and can't be depended upon; and to be contented,
while they do nothing but play pranks and enjoy themselves," said
he; but he said it to himself, for he did not know which to
complain to--the children or the plank. As he groaned, however, he
thought of the time when he was king of the little wood, where he
had grown up from the acorn days of his babyhood, and it broke his
heart to be so insignificant now.
[Illustration: THEY LEARNT FROM THEIR FATHER TO HUNT
THE STAG IN HIS COVERT
_From the painting by John Hassall_]
"Why have they not cut me into planks like the rest?" continued he,
angrily. "I might have led the see-saw myself then, as this fellow
does, who leans so heavily on my back, without a thought that I am
as good or better than himself. Why have they not given me the
chance of enjoying myself like these others--up in the sky at one
end, down on the ground at the other, full of energy and life? The
whole timber yard, but myself, has a chance. Position and honour,
as well as pleasure, are for everybody except me. But I am to stick
in a corner merely for others to steady themselves upon--unthought
of or despised, made a tool of--Miserable me!"
Now this groaning was so dreadful, it woke the large Garden Snail
in the grass hard by, whose custom it was to come out from his
haunt under the timber-yard wall every morning at sunrise, and
crawl round and round the Oak trunk to see the world come to life,
leaving a slimy track behind him on the bark wherever he moved. It
was his constitutional stroll, and he had continued it all the
season, pursuing his morning reflections without interruption, and
taking his nap in the grass afterwards, as regularly as the day
came round.
But napping through such lamentation was impossible, and
accordingly he once more began to crawl up the side of the Oak
trunk, his head turning now to one side, now to the other, his
horns extended to the utmost, that, if possible, he might see what
was the matter.
But he could not make out, though he kept all his eyes open: so
by-and-by he made the inquiry of his old friend the Tree.
"What is the matter, do you ask?" groaned the Oak more heavily than
ever--"you who can change your position and act independently when
you wish; you who are _not_ left a useless log as I am, the
scorn and sport of my own kith and kin? Yes, the very planks who
balance themselves on my body, and mock me by their activity, have
probably come from my own side, and once hung on me as branches,
drinking in life from the life I gave. Oh miserable me! miserable,
despised, useless!"