abilities and livelier imagination than the Snail, but for gravity
of demeanour and calmness of nerve who is his equal? And if a sound
judgment be not behind such outward signs, there is no faith to be
put in faces!
Accordingly, Sir Helix Hortensis--so let us call him, for that is
his scientific name--made no answer at first to the wailings of the
Oak. Three times he crawled round it, leaving three fresh traces of
his transit, before he spoke, his horns turning hither and thither
as those wonderful eyes at the end strove to take in the full state
of the case. And his are not the eyes, you know, which waste their
energies in scatter-brained staring. He keeps them cool in their
cases till there is something to be looked at, and then turns them
inside out to do their work.
And thus he looked, and he looked, and he looked, while the
children went on shouting, and the plank went on see-sawing, and
the Tree went on groaning; and as he looked, he considered.
"Have you anything to say?" at last inquired the Oak, who had had
long experience of Sir Helix's wisdom.
"I have," answered the Snail. "You don't know your own value,
that's all."
"Ask the see-sawers my value!" exclaimed the prostrate Tree,
bitterly. "One up at the stars, another beyond the world! What am
_I_ doing meanwhile?"
"Holding them both up, which is more than they can do for
themselves," muttered the Snail, turning round to go back to the
grass.
"But--but--stop a moment, dear Sir Helix; the see-sawers don't
think that," argued the Tree.
"They're all light-minded together, and don't think," sneered the
Snail. "Up in the sky one minute, down in the dust the next. Never
you mind that. Everybody can't play at high jinks with comfort,
luckily for the rest of the world. Sit fast, do your duty, and have
faith. While they are going flightily up and down, your steady
balance is the saving of both."
THE STORY OF A STONE
By David Starr Jordan
Once on a time, a great many years ago, so many years that if your
father should give you a dollar for every year you could buy up the
whole town you live in and have enough left to pay the National
Debt; in those old days when the great Northwest consisted only of
a few hills, ragged and barren, and full of copper and quartz; in
the days when the Northern Ocean washed the crest of Mount
Washington and wrote its name upon the Pictured Rocks, and the tide
of the Pacific swept over Plymouth Rock and surged up against
Bunker Hill; when the Gulf of Mexico rolled its warm and shallow
waters as far north as Escanaba and Eau Claire; in fact, an
immensely long time ago--there lived somewhere in Oconto County,
Wisconsin, a little jelly-fish. It was a curious creature, about
the shape of half an apple, and the size of a cat's thimble, and it
floated around in the water and ate little things and opened and
shut its umbrella, pretty much as jelly-fishes do in the ocean now.
It had a great many little feelers that hung down all around like
so many mites of snakes, and so it was named Medusa, after that
lady in the old times who wore snakes instead of hair, and who felt
so badly because she couldn't do them up. Well, our little Medusa
floated around and opened and shut her umbrella for a long time--a
month, or a year, perhaps--we don't know how long. Then, one
morning, down among the sea-weeds, she laid a whole lot of tiny
eggs, transparent as crab-apple jelly and much smaller than a
dew-drop on the end of a pine-leaf. Now she leaves the scene, and
our story henceforth concerns only one of these eggs.
Well, one day, the sun shone down into the water--the same sun that
shines through your window now--and a little fellow whom we will
call Favosites, because that was his name, woke up inside of the
egg and came out into the great world. He was only a wee bit of
floating jelly, shaped like a cartridge pointed at both ends. He
had at his sides an immense number of little paddles that went
flapping, flapping all the time, keeping him constantly in motion,
whether the little fellow wanted to go or not. So he kept scudding
along in the water, dodging from right to left, to avoid the
ungainly creatures that wanted to eat him. There were crabs and
clams, of a fashion that neither you nor I will ever see alive.
There were huge animals with great eyes, savage jaws and long
feelers, that sat in the end of a long, round shell and glowered at
him, and smaller ones of the same kind that looked like lobsters in
a dinner-horn.
But none of these got the little fellow, else I should not have any
story to tell.
At last, having paddled about long enough, he thought of settling
in life. So he looked around until he found a flat bit of shell
that just suited him, when he sat down upon it, and grew fast, like
old Holger Danske, in the Danish myth. Only, unlike Holger, he
didn't go to sleep, but proceeded to make himself at home. So he
made an opening in his upper side, and rigged for himself a mouth
and a stomach, and put a whole row of feelers out, and began
catching little worms and floating eggs and bits of jelly and bits
of lime,--everything he could get,--and cramming them into his
little stomach.
He had a great many curious ways, but the funniest of all was what
he did with the bits of lime. He kept taking them in and tried to
wall himself up inside with them, as a person would stone a well or
as though a man should swallow pebbles and stow them away in his
feet and all around under the skin, till he had filled himself
full.
But little Favosites became lonesome all alone on the bottom of
that old ocean, among so many outlandish neighbors; and so, one
night, when he was fast asleep, and dreaming as only a coral animal
can dream, there sprouted out of his side, where his sixth rib
would have been if he had had so many, another little Favosites,
who very soon began to eat worms and wall himself up as if for dear
life. Then, from these two another and another little bud came out,
and another and another little Favosites was formed, and they all
kept growing up higher and higher, and cramming themselves fuller
and fuller of limestone, till at last there were so many of them,
and they were so crowded together, that there wasn't room for them
to grow round; so they had to grow six-sided, like the cells in a
honeycomb.
Once in a while, some one in the company would get mad because the
others got all of the lime, or would feel uneasy at sitting still
so long and swallowing stones, and would secede from the little
union, without as much as saying "Good-bye," and would sail around
like the old Medusa, and would lay more eggs, which would hatch out
into more Favosites.
Well, the old ones died or swam away or were walled up, and new
ones filled their places, and the colony thrived for a long time,
and had accumulated quite a stock of lime. But, one day, there came
a freshet in the Menomonee River, and piles of dirt and sand and
ground-up iron ore were brought down, and all the little Favosites'
mouths were filled with it. They didn't like the taste of iron, so
they all died; but we know that their house was not spoiled, for we
have it here. So the rock-house they were making was tumbled about
in the dirt, and the rolling pebbles knocked the corners off, and
the mud worked its way into the cracks and destroyed its beautiful
whiteness.
There it lay for ages, till the earth gave a great, long heave,
that raised the rest of Wisconsin out of the ocean, and the mud
around our Favosites' house packed and dried into hard rock and
closed it in; and so it became part of the dry land. There it lay,
imbedded in the rock for centuries and centuries.
Then, the time of the first fishes came, and the other animals
looked on them in awe and wonder as the Indians eyed Columbus. They
were like the gar-pike in our Western rivers, only much larger,--as
big as a stove-pipe,--and with a crust as hard as a turtle's shell.
Then there came sharks, of strange forms, savage and ferocious,
with teeth like bowie-knives. But the time of the old fishes came
and went, and many more times came and went, but still Favosites
lay in the ground.
Then came the long, hot, wet summer, when the mists hung over the
earth so thick that you might almost have cut them into chunks with
a knife, like a loaf of gingerbread; and great ferns and rushes,
big as an oak and tall as a steeple, grew over the land. Huge
reptiles with jaws like a front door, and teeth like cross-cut
saws, and little reptiles with wings like bats, crawled and swam
and flew.
But the ferns died, and the reptiles died, and the rush-trees fell
into the swamps, and the Mississippi, now become quite a river,
covered them up, and they were packed away under great layers of
clay and sand, till at last they were turned into coal, and wept
bitter tears of petroleum. But all the while Favosites lay in the
rock at Oconto.
Then the mists cleared up and the sun shone and the grass began to
grow, and strange animals began to come and feed upon it. They were
funny little zebra horses, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, and
great hairy elephants, and hogs with noses so long they could sit
on their hind legs and root, and lots of still stranger creatures
that no man ever saw alive. But still Favosites lay in the ground.
So the long, long summer passed by, and the autumn, and the Indian
summer; and at last the great winter came, and it snowed and
snowed, and it was so cold that the snow wasn't off by the Fourth
of July; and then it snowed and snowed till the snow never went off
at all; and then it got so cold that it snowed all the time, till
the snow covered all the animals, and then the trees, and then the
mountains. Then it would thaw a little, and streams of water would
run over the snow; then it would freeze again, and pack it into
solid ice. Still it went on, snowing and thawing and freezing till
the ice was a mile deep over Wisconsin, and the whole United States
was one great skating rink.
So it kept on for about a million years, until once when the spring
came and the south winds blew, it began to thaw up. Then the ice
came sliding down from the mountains and hills, tearing up rocks
little and big, from the size of a chip to the size of a meeting
house, crushing forests as you would crush an egg-shell, and wiping
out rivers as you would wipe out a chalk-mark. So it came pushing,
thundering, grinding along slowly enough, but with tremendous
force, this mile-deep glacier, like an immense plow drawn by a
million oxen.
So the ice plowed across Oconto County, and little Favosites was
rooted out from the quiet place where he had lain so long; but, by
good fortune, he happened to slip into a crevice in the ice, where
he wasn't much crowded, else he would have been ground to powder,
as most of his relatives were, and I shouldn't have had this story
to tell.
Well, the ice slid along, melting all the while, and making great
torrents of water which, as they swept onward, covered land with
clay and pebbles, till at last it came to a great swamp, overgrown
with tamarac and cedar. Here it stopped and melted, and all the
rocks and stones and dirt it had carried with it, little Favosites
and all, were dumped into one great heap.
Ages after, a farmer in Grand Chote, Michigan, plowing up his
clover field, to sow for winter wheat, picked up a curious bit of
"petrified honeycomb," and gave it to the schoolboys to take to
their teacher, to hear what he would say about it. And now you have
read what he said.
HOW THE STONE-AGE CHILDREN PLAYED
By Charles C. Abbott
Not long since I wandered along a pretty brook that rippled through
a narrow valley. I was on the lookout for whatever birds might be
wandering that way, but saw nothing of special interest. So, to
while away the time, I commenced geologizing; and, as I plodded
along my lonely way, I saw everywhere traces of an older time, when
the sparkling rivulet that now only harbors pretty salamanders was
a deep creek, tenanted by many of our larger fishes.
How fast the earth from the valley's slopes may have been loosened
by frost and washed by freshets, and carried down to fill up the
old bed of the stream, we will not stop to enquire; for older
traces of this older time were also met with here. As I turned over
the loose earth by the brook-side, and gathered here and there a
pretty pebble, I chanced upon a little arrow-point.
Whoever has made a collection, be it of postage stamps or birds'
eggs, knows full well how securing one coveted specimen but
increases eagerness for others; and so it was with me that pleasant
afternoon. Just one pretty arrow-point cured me of my laziness,
banished every trace of fatigue, and filled me with the interest of
eager search; and I dug and sifted and washed the sandy soil for
yards along the brook-side, until I had gathered at least a score
of curious relics of the long-departed red men, or rather of the
games and sports and pastimes of the red men's hardy and active
children.
For centuries before Columbus discovered San Salvador, the red men
(or Indians as they are usually called) roamed over all the great
continent of North America, and, having no knowledge of iron as a
metal, they were forced to make of stone or bone all their weapons,
hunting and household implements. From this fact they are called,
when referring to those early times, a stone-age people, and so, of
course, the boys and girls of that period were stone-age children.
But it is not to be supposed that because the children of savages
they were altogether unlike the youngsters of to-day. In one
respect, at least, they were quite the same--they were very fond of
play.
Their play, however, was not like the games of to-day. We might,
perhaps, call the principal game of the boys "Playing Man," for the
little stone implements that were their toys were only miniatures
of the great stone axes and long spear-points of their fathers.
In one particular these old-time children were really in advance of
the youngsters of to-day; they not only did, in play, what their
parents did in earnest, but they realized, in part, the results of
their playful labor. A good old Moravian missionary who labored
hard to convert these Indians to Christianity, says: "Little boys
are frequently seen wading in shallow brooks, shooting small fishes
with their bows and arrows." Going-a-fishing, then, as now, was
good fun; but to shoot fishes with a bow and arrow is not an easy
thing to do, and this is one way these stone-age children played,
and played to better advantage than most of my young-readers can.
Among the stone-age children's toys that I gathered that afternoon
was a very pretty stone hatchet, very carefully shaped, and still
quite sharp. It has been worked out from a porphyry pebble, and in
every way, except size, is the same as hundreds that are still to
be found lying about the fields.
No red man would ever deign to use such an insignificant looking
axe, and so we must suppose it to have been a toy hatchet for some
little fellow that chopped away at saplings, or, perhaps knocked
over some poor squirrel or rabbit; for our good old Moravian
friend, the missionary, also tells us that "the boys learn to climb
trees when very young, both to catch birds and to exercise their
sight, which by this method is rendered so quick that in hunting
they see objects at an amazing distance." Their play, then, became
an excellent schooling for them; and if they did nothing but play
it was not a loss of time.
Several little arrow-points I also found in the valley. The axe was
not far away, and both it and they may have belonged to the same
bold and active young hunter. All of these arrow-points are very
neatly made.
The same missionary tells us that these young red men of the forest
"exercise themselves very early with bows and arrows, and in
shooting at a mark. As they grow up they acquire a remarkable
dexterity in shooting birds, squirrels, and small game."
Every boy remembers his first pen-knife, and, whether it had one or
three blades, was proud enough of it; but how different the fortune
of the stone-age children, in this matter of a pocket-knife, which
was doubtless a piece of flint chipped into a shape that might be
used as a knife.
I have found scores of such knives in the fields that extend along
the little valley, and a few came to light in my search that
afternoon in the brook-side sands and gravel. So, if this chipped
flint is a knife, then, as in modern times, the children were
whittlers.
Of course, our boys nowadays would be puzzled to cut a willow
whistle or mend the baby's go-cart with such a knife as this; but
still, it will not do to despise stone cutlery. There is a big
canoe in one of the Government buildings that is sixty feet long.
That boat was made in quite recent times, and only stone knives and
hatchets were used in the process.
I found, too, in that afternoon walk, some curiously shaped
splinters of jasper, which at first did not seem very well adapted
to any purpose; and yet, although mere fragments, they had every
appearance of having been purposely shaped, and not of accidental
resemblances to a hook or sickle blade. When I got home I read that
perfect specimens, mine being certain pieces of the same form, had
been found off in Norway; and Professor Nilsson, who has carefully
studied the whole subject, says they are fish-hooks made of flint,
the largest being bone. Hooks of exactly the same pattern as these
really have been found within half a mile of the little valley I
worked in that afternoon.
The fish-hooks found in Norway have been thought to be best adapted
for, and really used in, capturing cod-fish in salt water and perch
and pike in inland lakes. The broken hooks I found were fully as
large; and so the little brook that now ripples down the valley,
when a large stream, must have had a good many big fishes in it, or
the stone-age fishermen would not have brought their fishing-hooks,
and have lost them, along this remnant of a larger stream.
But it must not be supposed that only children in this by-gone era
did the fishing for their tribe. Just as the men captured the
larger game, so they took the bigger fishes; but it is scarcely
probable that the boys who waded the little brooks with bows and
arrows would remain content with that, and, long before they were
men, doubtless they were adepts in catching the more valuable
fishes that abounded, in Indian times, in all our rivers.
So, fishing, I think, was another way in which the stone-age
children played.
THE MIST
By Carl Ewald
The sun had just gone down.
The frog was croaking his "good-night," which lasted so long that
there seemed no end to it. The bee was creeping into its hive, and
little children were crying because they had to go to bed. The
flower was closing up its petals and bowing its head; the bird was
tucking its bill under its wing; and the stag was laying himself
down to rest in the tall, soft grass in the glade of the wood.
From the village church the bells were ringing for sunset, and when
that was over the old clerk went home. On his way he had a little
chat or two with the people who were out for an evening stroll, or
were standing before their gate and smoking a pipe till they bade
him good-night and shut the door.
Then it grew quite quiet, and the darkness fell. There was a light
in the parson's house, and there was one also in the doctor's. But
the farmers' houses were dark, because in summer-time the farmers
get up so early that they must go early to bed.
And then the stars began to twinkle, and the moon crept higher and
higher up the sky. Down in the village a dog was barking. But it
must have been barking in a dream, for there was nothing to bark
at.
"Is there anybody there?" asked the Mist.
But nobody answered, for nobody was there. So the Mist issued forth
in her bright, airy robes. She went dancing over the meadows, up
and down, to and fro. Then she lay quite still for a moment, and
then she took to dancing again. Out over the lake she skipped and
deep into the wood, where she threw her long, damp arms round the
trunks of the trees.
"Who are you, my friend?" asked the Night-Violet [Footnote: An
inconspicuous flower which in Denmark is very fragrant in the
evening, the "night-smelling rocket" (_Hesperis triatto_).],
who stood there giving forth fragrance just to please herself.
The Mist did not answer, but went on dancing.
"I asked you who you were," said the Night-Violet. "And as you
don't answer me, I conclude that you are a rude person."
"I will now conclude _you_" said the Mist. And then she spread
herself round the Night-Violet, so that her petals were dashed with
wet.
"Oh, oh!" cried the Night-Violet. "Keep your fingers to yourself,
my friend. I have a feeling as if I had been dipped in the pond.
You have no reason for getting so angry just because I asked you
who you are."
The Mist let go of her again. "Who am I?" she said. "You could not
understand even if I told you."
"Try," said the Night-Violet.
"I am the dewdrop on the flower, the cloud in the sky, and the mist
on the meadow," said the Mist.
"I beg your pardon," said the Night-Violet. "Would you mind saying
that again? The dewdrop I know. It settles every morning on my
leaves, and I don't think it is at all like you."
"No; but it is I all the same," said the Mist mournfully. "But no
one knows me. I must live my life under many shapes. One time I am
dew, and another time I am rain; and yet another time I babble as a
clear, cool streamlet through the wood. But when I dance on the
meadows in the evening, men say that it is the marsh-lady brewing."
"It is a strange story," said the Night-Violet. "Do you mind
telling it to me? The night is long, and I sometimes get a little
bored by it."
"It is a sad story," answered the Mist. "But you may have it and
welcome." But when she was about to lie down the Night-Violet shook
with terror in all her petals.
"Be so kind as to keep at a little distance," she said, "at least
till you have properly introduced yourself. I have never cared to
be on familiar terms with people I don't know."
So the Mist lay down a little way off and began her story:--"I
was born deep down in the earth--far deeper than your roots go.
There I and my sisters--for we are a large family, you must
understand--came into the world as waves of a hidden spring, pure
and clear as crystal; and for a long time we had to stay in our
hiding-place. But one day we suddenly leapt from a hillside into
the full light of the sun. You can well imagine how delightful it
was to come tumbling down through the wood. We hopped over stones
and rippled against the bank. Pretty little fishes gambolled
amongst us, and the trees bent over so that their beautiful green
was reflected in our waters. If a leaf fell, we cradled it and
fondled it and carried it out with us into the wide world. Ah, that
was delightful! It was indeed the happiest time of my life."
"But when are you going to tell me how you came to turn into mist?"
asked the Night-Violet impatiently. "I know all about the
underground spring. When the air is quite still, I can hear it
murmur from where I stand."
The Mist lifted herself a little and took a turn round the meadow.
Then she came back, and went on with her story:--"It is the worst
of this world that one is never contented with what one has. So it
was with us. We kept running on and on, till at last we ran into a
great lake, where water-lilies rocked on the water and dragon-flies
hummed on their great stiff wings. Up on the surface the lake was
clear as a mirror. But whether we wished it or not, we had to run
right down by the bottom, where it was dark and gruesome. And this
I could not endure. I longed for the sunbeams. I knew them so well
from the time I used to run in the brook. There they used to peep
down through the leaves and pass over me in fleeting gleams. I
longed so much to see them again that I stole up to the surface,
and lay down in the sunshine all amongst the white water-lilies and
their great green leaves. But, ugh! how the sun burnt me there on
the lake I It was scarcely bearable. Bitterly did I regret that I
had not stopped down below."
"I can't say this part of your story is very amusing," said the
Night-Violet. "Isn't the Mist soon coming?"
"Here it is!" said the Mist, and dropped down once more on the
flower, so that it nearly had the breath squeezed out of it.
"Ough! ough!" shrieked the Night-Violet. "Upon my word, you are
the most ill-natured person I have ever known. Move off, and go on
with your story, since it must be so."