A LITERARY EVENING.
THE I.I. CLUB
Requests you to be present on Saturday evening, October 29th, at its
semi-annual meeting. Essays will be read, to show the work of the
club.
These invitations were scattered broadcast among fathers and mothers,
uncles and aunts, and Saturday evening was eagerly awaited by the
young clubbists.
It was now more than four weeks since Sam had left the boys, and
although they missed him sadly and mourned for him most sincerely,
there seemed to Bess no reason that the five lads should give up
their long-talked-of festival. She was sure that Sam, unselfish as
he had always shown himself, would not wish it otherwise. His memory
had become a tender centre for all their highest, noblest thoughts
and talks, and the five rarely came together without speaking of him,
sometimes laughing quietly at the funny adventures they had had with
him, but more often dwelling with a boyish pride on the courage and
manliness that showed in his every act. It was always, "Sam is,"
"Sam does;" never the dreadful "was" and "did," that past tense which
seems to separate our friends from us by an impassable barrier. Bess
encouraged this feeling of nearness, for she loved to have the boys
feel that their friend had only left them as if for a little journey,
and they would soon meet him again. It was the first time they had
learned the real meaning of death, and it had been a terrible blow to
them all, but the tender, loving memory, and the thought that their
friend was always watching over them, had a sweet, helpful influence
on their young lives. No one had been asked to fill his place in the
club, but instead, when the lads were discussing the details of their
open meeting, Sam's tastes and wishes were followed as closely as if
he had been still among them.
Saturday evening found the Carters' large rooms well filled, and at
exactly half-past seven Bess, followed by the five boys, took her
place on a small raised platform at the end of the room. Each one
wore a white carnation in his buttonhole, from which hung the badge
of membership, a silver interrogation point, Fred's gift. Four of
them were armed with impressive rolls of manuscript, while Fred
carried a large, loose bunch of roses that, with Bessie's help, he
placed before a picture of Sam that stood on a small table in their
midst.
Then, in a few words, Bess reminded the audience of the object and
work of the club. Of what it had done in the past six months, they
could judge by the evening's entertainment; the secret of what its
members would do in the future lay hidden in the boys themselves.
She added a few tender words, referring to the member who had left
them, and then, after saying that the essays were the work of the
boys, and that she had not even seen them, she introduced as the
first reader, Master Philip Cameron.
Phil rose with a rather sheepish giggle, hastily smoothed down his
scalp-lock that would stand aggressively erect, bowed to the
audience, and announced his subject.
"GOLD.
"Gold is a yellow metal that we are all familiar with, though not as
much so as we should like to be. It is used for money and for
ornaments, and is very precious. It is found in a great many places
in the world, and a great deal in a place, but people always wish
there was some more of it. The most interesting place to us is in
California. It was discovered there in 1848 by three men, partly
Mormons. It was their daughter that found it and picked it up and
said what a pretty stone. They tried to keep it a secret, but of
course they couldn't, and pretty soon everybody was going to
California.
"At least, not everybody," explained Phil conscientiously, as he
looked up from his paper, "but ever and ever so many people." Then
he resumed,--
"The State was soon full of people, and it was admitted to the Union.
"There are a good many ways of gold-mining. Sometimes the mines are
in veins in the hard rock. Then the miners bore down to them and dig
out the rock, and break it up fine to get out the gold, just as they
do silver. Another way is to find it in the loose sand in the
bottoms of rocks and in gravel. When the miners first went out, they
used to take a little gravel in a dish with some water, and shake it
hard, so a little would slop over each time. The gold was heavy, and
would sink and stay after all the rest had gone. They called it
'panning out well' when there was a lot left in the dish. Now they
turn brooks to run over a row of troughs with holes scooped out in
the bottoms, and the gold drops into the holes, and the other stone
goes on. Then there is hydraulic mining. They turn a stream of
water against the side of a hill and wash it all down to start with,
and then they put it through the troughs just the same way.
"Gold is soft when it is pure, so they have to mix it with other
metals to keep it from wearing out. They call that alloying it. We
tell how pure gold is by the number of carats. Twenty-four is pure,
but eighteen is very fine.
"I have only one thing more to say. When you say a person has
'sand,' or courage, that comes from gold-mining. When a miner saw a
certain kind of sand, he always knew that gold was mixed with it
underneath."
And Phil sat down, amidst a hum of applause.
"Next comes Master Herbert Walsh," announced Bess, from her chair of
office.
"We had an evening of the old Greek myths," began Bert, by way of
introduction, "and I thought I'd take for my subject
"THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR.
"Ever and ever so long ago there was a king of Athens that had a son
named Theseus. This son didn't live with him, but with his mother,
somewhere else; but when he was strong enough he lifted up a great
rock, and found under it a sword with a gilt handle, and a pair of
shoes. They had been left there for him by his father till he was
strong enough to pry up the rock and get them. So he put them on,
and started for Athens. He had a good many adventures on the way,
with robbers, and a bed that opened and shut, and a wild pig, but at
last he came to Athens, and his father was glad to see him, but his
nephews weren't, for they wanted the crown themselves. But they had
to go away with their mother, Medea, and Theseus had all the right to
the throne.
"But in that country an expedition to Crete was prepared every year,
to send fourteen young gentlemen and young ladies to the Minotaur, a
sort of bull that looked like a man, a little. He was a pet of
Minos, the king of Crete, and used to eat them up. Well, when
Theseus heard about it, he said he'd go, too, and try to kill the
beast. So they sailed away in a schooner with black sails and jibs
and all, but Theseus promised his father that if he killed the
Monitor, he'd put up white sails to come home with. They passed a
brassy giant on the way, but when he found out where they were going,
he let them pass without hurting them.
"They came to Minos, the king of Crete, and while he was looking them
over to see if they were fat, Theseus was so saucy to him that Minos
said he should be the first meal for the Monitor--Minotaur, I mean.
But Minos had a daughter, Ariadne, who was in love with Theseus as
soon as she saw him, and she let Theseus out of his prison, and led
him to the labyrinth where the Moni--Minotaur lived. They had a ball
of twine, and they tied one end to the gate-post, and then unwound it
as they went in, so they could find their way out, for the walks
crisscrossed every way so they would have been apt to get lost. When
they came to the Minotaur, Ariadne stood back and cried, but Theseus
had an awful fight with him and killed him. Then they came out,
hauling in their line as they went along. They let out their
friends, and he married Ariadne; and they went off on board their
boat, but in their hurry they forgot to take the white sails out of
the hold and hoist them, so the poor old king, who was keeping watch,
died of broken heart, because the schooner came back with black
sails, and he supposed Theseus was eaten up.
"My friends, I think there are two morals to this story. First, keep
your promises; and, second, it is a very good thing to fall in love."
A great clapping of hands greeted Bert's somewhat unexpected close.
When quiet was restored, Bess said,--
"Master Frederic Allen will talk to us next." And then she gave an
anxious glance at the boy, to see how he would bear this ordeal.
It seemed impossible that this could be the same Fred who, less than
a year ago, had been shutting himself up, away from all his friends,
and brooding sadly over his blindness, because it had spoiled his
life. With only a slight touch of shyness, he stood there so easily,
with one hand resting on the back of the chair in which Bessie was
sitting, and his whole face bright with the laugh he had just been
enjoying over Bert's remarkable moral.
"I am going to try to tell you a little bit about that fossil over
there," he began, while Bess silently pointed to a superb fossil fish
that lay on a side table. "It came from high up in the Rocky
Mountains, and people used to wonder how it could get there, so high
above water, but now they know. You see, the earth used to be just a
great ball of melted rock, whirling around in the air, and growing
cool over the outside. But as it grew cool and hard, deeper and
deeper down, the core seemed to shrink, and so the outside began to
wrinkle, just like a dried-up old winter apple. And because it was
colder than the air, the water condensed on the earth like steam on a
cold window, and it all ran down into the low places, so there was an
ocean where the Rocky Mountains are now. That was where this fish
lived. He died, and his body sank down, and the sand washed in on
top of it and grew hard. But the earth kept shrinking and making new
wrinkles, till by and by they had changed places, and the Rocky
Mountains were high up out of the water, and the fish was left there
in the rock."
There was a perfect quiet while Fred was speaking, for all those
present knew the boy's sad story, and marvelled at the change in him.
But as he turned back to his chair, there came a hearty burst of
applause, not so much for the little talk, as for the boy himself who
had made such a bold fight against his trouble.
"Master Robert Atkinson" was the next announcement from the mistress
of ceremonies.
Rob shyly came forward and made his best bow, as he gave his subject.
"LEPIDOPTERA.
"That means moths and butterflies. It comes from two words that mean
scale and wing, because the foundation of their wings is covered with
little bits of scales that lap over each other like shingles on a
roof, and give the color, instead of their being gray, like a fly.
They are the prettiest of all the insects, and there are a great many
kinds of them, but they all go in two classes: the butterflies, that
fly in the daytime; and the moths, that come out at night. You can
tell the difference when they settle, too, for the butterflies fold
up their wings till they meet, straight up over their backs, and the
moth's wings lie flat. Their 'feelers,' or antennæ, that are
supposed to be to hear with, are different, too. In the butterflies,
they are largest at the end; but in the moths they are larger in the
middle or next the head, and sometimes they look just like two little
feathers.
"All these moths and butterflies live twice. First they are a worm
or caterpillar, and then in the fall they spin themselves up into a
silk ball. It is very funny to see them. They hang themselves up
head down from the corner of a fence, or some such place, and spin
round and round, leaving themselves in the middle. They lie like
that ever so long, and then they hatch out and eat their way through.
They have to take good care of themselves while their wings are
growing, for fear something will eat them up.
"In the silkworm, they wait till they have spun, and then they bake
the cocoons to kill the animal inside, or else he would eat out.
Then they unwind the silk. Each one lays about six or seven hundred
eggs, so they can afford to kill a few.
"Some of the insects of this class are not so pleasant to have. The
canker-worm belongs to it, and so does the moth that gets into houses
and eats up woollen things.
"All caterpillars change their skins several times, getting a new one
whenever it outgrows the old one. Some caterpillars have great
appetites. One kind eats every day twice as much cabbage leaf as it
weighs, as if I ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of beef a
day."
Rob's somewhat mixed assortment of facts was listened to with a
profound attention that was most gratifying. Ted, as the last
speaker, came forward with a smile of calm assurance, before his name
was called. Unrolling his manuscript, which proved to be a single
strip of paper about three inches wide and four feet long, he bowed
cheerfully to the audience, and began his theme.
"NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
"Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1768, and died in May, 1821. He was
born in Corsica, and was sometimes called; 'the ogre of Corsica,'
after he was dead, and they dared to. He was a very great general
and a very bad man, but he did a few good things. When he was eleven
years old, he began going to a military school, and when he was
twenty-eight he was put at the head of forty thousand men, and he
began to beat the enemy right off. In two years, he had won eighteen
pitch battles. The way he came to have such a good position was
because at Toulon, in a siege, he was the only man who could point
the guns right to have them go into the city. That made him famous.
Well, he conquered Italy and Sardinia and Austria and Egypt. But
that wasn't enough for him, so he came home for a little while, and
went into politics. He made himself first consul of France when he
was only twenty-nine. Five years later, in 1804, he made the pope
crown him emperor. Then he went on conquering countries, and putting
his own relations on the throne--they didn't have any civil-service
reform then--till he had most everything but England and Russia in
the family. And at home he made a few good laws, and straightened
out things where the revolution had mixed them up. But in 1812 he
made an expedition to Russia, and there he was beaten. Then, till
1814, he had ever so many defeats, and finally was arrested and sent
to Elba. He was there about a year, and then ran away and came back
to France. When he came, the king they had put on the throne ran
away, and all his old soldiers came back to him. But on June 17th,
1815, they fought the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was beaten and
captured and carried clear down to St. Helena, where they kept an eye
on him till he died; and I say it served him right."
While Teddy was reading, Bess had seated herself at the piano. When
he finished, she played the opening bars of "Fair Harvard," as the
boys rose, joined hands, and made a low bow to the audience. Then
they began to sing.
"Dear friends, now this evening you've seen our I.I.,
And we leave you to judge of its work.
Of its many good times we will tell by and by;
For as pills under sugar coats lurk,
We must each do our work, ere we share in the play,
For such does our club make its rule;
And many's the lesson we learn day by day,
In this jolliest kind of a school.
We have wandered o'er many a subject ere this,
And our six months have been full well spent;
We no longer sit down and talk nonsense and fun,
For on learning we're all of us bent,
So we solemnly talk of the pagans and worms,
Of minerals, planets, and snakes.
We speak of the glory of Washington's fame,
Of cormorants, Zulus, and lakes.
But we all have a wish to impart from our store;
To improve those around us is kind;
So we've called you together, and made you a feast
Of crumbs from each overstocked mind.
And now, our dear friends, we thank you indeed,
Your attention has been most polite.
Six months from this time we'll invite you again;
In the mean time, we wish you good-night."