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BERTHA WEISSER’S WISH.
[Illustration: BERTHA’S HOME.]
[Illustration: Decoration]
Bertha Weisser’s Wish.
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
BY
M. L. B.
“Lord have mercy upon us, and write all thy laws in our hearts
we beseech Thee.—”
[Illustration: Decoration]
BOSTON:
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY.
NEW YORK: HURD AND HOUGHTON.
1865.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. BERTHA’S HOME 7
II. BERTHA’S WISH 14
III. “HOW TO DO IT” 21
IV. LITTLE MARY’S HOME 29
V. “WHOSE LOST HAVE I FOUND” 44
VI. TIM TURNS POLICEMAN 56
VII. ANOTHER CHASE 69
VIII. BERTY RUNS AWAY FOR THE LAST TIME 78
IX. THE HOSPITAL 86
X. MRS. GREY’S SUSPICION 95
XI. THE CHAPEL SERVICE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 103
XII. THE WISH FULFILLED 119
[Illustration: Decoration]
BERTHA WEISSER’S WISH.
CHAPTER I.
BERTHA’S HOME.
It was a dreary, wet October day, and drawing towards the twilight.
The dull leaden-looking sky, the wet slippery pavements, the chilly,
cross, uncomfortable passengers, gave to even the brightest and
most cheerful streets of the great city a very dismal look; and,
as for the meaner ones, with their rows of dreary little shops and
tumble-down houses, their reeking gutters and dripping wayfarers,
they were utterly forlorn.
In one of the meanest of these forlorn streets, in the back attic of
one of these tumble-down houses, a little girl sat looking out at the
window. It was not a pleasant prospect in the brightest of weather,
that little crowded court, upon which everybody’s back-door opened,
and where everybody’s rubbish was collected; but the child was not
looking at the court. Neither did she seem to be looking at the sky,
though the little pale face was turned wistfully upward; she rather
seemed to be thinking intently upon something which occupied all her
mind, and shut out for the moment the dreary court below, the dismal
sky above, and even the poor little room around her.
A very poor little room it was, indeed,—its only furniture being a
ragged, ill-made bed, a rickety stand, two broken chairs, and an old
painted chest, near which a rusty stovepipe came up through the floor
and passed out again at the low roof. But all the room was brightened
somehow by a group of four merry, rosy children, who sat upon this
chest, their little bare legs dangling, and their damp garments
steaming in the heat, laughing and chattering together in a queer
mixture of German and English, which none but an emigrant’s child
could understand.
“Bert!” cried the elder of the two boys, glancing towards the window;
“what are you looking for, Bert?—the moon?”
The children all laughed at this sally, but “Bert” paid no attention;
seeing which, the boy sprang down from the chest and, with a vigorous
pull at the flaxen curls, turned the wistful face round towards him.
“Bert!” said he, “don’t you know, if we don’t pick the rags soon,
it’ll be quite dark, and then Moses will be shut up, and we’ll get
nothing for _das Brod_ to-morrow? Wake up! wake up!”
The girl made no answer, but, with a weary sigh, picked up an old
basket filled with wet rubbish, and, turning the contents out upon
the floor, began, with her brother’s help, to sort them carefully
into separate little heaps; for Bertha Weisser, my dear children, the
dreaming girl by the window, and the heroine of my little story, was
nothing more nor less than a poor little German rag-picker.
Poor and little as she was, however, Bertha had arrived at a dignity
which few of my young readers have reached, I hope; for Bertha
was the head of this little household,—the one whom alone all the
children were bound to “mind,” and to whom also, alas! they were
bound to look for their daily bread; for Berty’s father had died at
sea, and her mother, not taking kindly to the foreign land, had pined
away soon afterward, leaving her helpless family to get their own
living as best they could.
And the best way Bertha could think of—for she was not very wise,
being only eleven years old—was, to gather the rags and papers,
the old bits of iron and copper, and nails and other rubbish, from
the gutters, and sell them to Moses, an old Jew who lived near her
lodging; or else sometimes to sweep the crossings with a stump of
broom, looking the while so forlorn and piteous that kind passengers,
when they were not in too great haste, would fling her a penny.
This was a very poor way to get a living, as you may suppose; and a
very poor living Berty would have gotten by it even if she could have
spent all her earnings upon herself, which was by no means the case;
for there were Lina, and Gottlieb, and Rosa, and little Fritz, the
baby, all younger and therefore more helpless than herself; and Berty
must care for them all; for had she not promised her dead mother, and
were they not her little family, the only ones this side the broad
ocean who had kindred blood of hers in their veins?
To be sure, old Biddy Flanagan, to whom the house belonged, let them
have the back attic, where their mother had died, rent-free, because,
as she said, it was but a poor place, and she’d no heart to turn
out “the motherless orphants”; then, too, Gottlieb was growing a
sturdy lad, with very sharp eyes for old nails and horse-shoes; and
besides, the housepeople often gave Fritz a penny when they met him
toddling about the passages; for Fritz was a pretty baby,—bright-eyed
and rosy-cheeked, and sweet enough, in spite of his rags, to open
the hearts of people less kind than Biddy Flanagan’s poor lodgers.
And beyond all this,—which Berty counted great good-fortune,—an old
lady in the next street, who had known their mother in the dear old
Fatherland, sent them every week a full meal of broken victuals. So
Berty thought this world a very kind world, though her poor little
heart was full, from morning till night, with care for _die Kleinen_,
as she lovingly called the children in her pleasant German tongue.
And Berty’s heart had been fuller than usual these few weeks past;
for, besides all the care, it had held a great wish in it,—a wish
that filled it almost to bursting; and yet this wish was such a very
impossible one, that Berty could think of but one way—and that a very
impossible way—of getting it fulfilled:—“If but a fairy would come
along,—a fairy godmother such as Mrs. Flanagan sometimes told them
about, when she was good-natured and not too busy,—and offer Bert one
of three wishes; O _then_!” But New York was not “ould Ireland,” as
Biddy often assured them, and so, alas! the fairy never came. Still
the wish held its place, and swelled the poor child’s heart all the
more, perhaps, that she never told it to any one.
Sometimes she would lie awake far into the night, staring with
wide-open eyes at the blank darkness of her attic, hugging little
Fritz in her arms, and thinking what if she _had_ a fairy godmother,
and what if she _should_ come and bring the wish, until all the
darkness was full of glorious visions, and poor little Berty, the
German rag-picker, lying there upon her bed of straw, in Biddy
Flanagan’s back attic, dreamed dreams as sweet as any which visit
the soft, guarded pillows of you happy children who fall asleep with
father’s good-night blessings in your ears, and mother’s good-night
kisses on your lips. Yes, the dear Heavenly Father, who bends so
lovingly from his Eternal Throne to listen to your evening prayer,
heard Berty’s German _Vaterunser_ also, and watched over her,
perhaps, all the more tenderly because she had no one else.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Decoration]