BOOKS AND PLAY
The mother had agreed to take charge of a private school in the city
for a year; and before many days had passed, Ella was setting out
every morning at eight o’clock to practice an hour before school
opened. It was a pleasant walk down the broad street. It had been a
street of homes with flower gardens and trees and wide front steps,
and porches that looked as if people liked to sit in them summer
evenings and talk and have good times together. The gardens were full
of old-fashioned flowers that bloomed as if they were having the best
time of their lives. Between them and the sidewalk were fences so
low and open that they invited passers-by to stop and see the roses,
geraniums, hollyhocks, ladies’-delights, or none-so-pretties, sweet
Mary, sweet William, and the rest of them.
The street was just beginning to think of becoming a business street,
and here and there, wherever there chanced to be a spare nook or
corner, there stood a tiny store which seemed to look up a little
shyly to its more stately neighbors.
Two of these little stores were of special interest to Ella. One had
a stock of roots and herbs, and among them were the cinnamon buds
that she was still fond of. Her first spare penny went into the hands
of a clerk in this store, a solemn-looking man with a pasty white
face. Evidently he felt it his duty to give this reckless small child
a lecture, for, still holding the penny in his hand, he told her how
dangerous it was to eat spices.
“I once knew a man who ate a pound of spice and died,” he said
gloomily.
“How much are these a pound?” Ella asked.
“Forty cents,” the clerk replied.
“Then,” said Ella, “if I buy a cent’s worth each time, I shouldn’t
have had a pound till I had been here thirty-nine times more, should
I?”
“No,” said the clerk wonderingly.
“I’ll be careful,” said Ella blithely. “I’ll keep count, and when I
get to thirty-nine, I’ll stop—and then pretty soon I’ll begin over.
Will you please give me the first pennyworth now?”—and he did.
The other store held a supply of handkerchiefs, neckties, suspenders,
stockings, and whatever other small wares men might want to buy. It
was presided over by a trim little old gentleman with the whitest
of linen and the reddest of cheeks. He was sometimes standing in
the doorway when she went by, and one morning he held a letter
in his hand. Ella would have offered to take it, but she was too
shy. Perhaps the little old gentleman was a bit shy, also, for he
hesitated until she was almost past.
Then he said, “Should you be willing to leave this in the post-office
as you go by?”
“I’d like to ever so much,” replied Ella cordially; and ever after
that, when she passed the store and the little gentleman was in
sight, they exchanged smiles and good-mornings.
“I hope you were very careful of the letter,” said the mother when
she heard the story.
“Barnum’s elephants couldn’t have pulled it away from me,” Ella
declared stoutly. She had just been to Barnum’s circus, so of course
she knew that whereof she spoke.
This was a school for “Young Ladies.” Ella did so wish that there was
just one little girl among the pupils. However, she was used to being
with older girls, and she was soon quite at home among these. Her
studies were arithmetic, which she liked, and French and music, which
she did not like.
“Why do you like arithmetic best?” the mother once asked.
“Because,” replied Ella thoughtfully, “when it’s done, it’s done,
and I know it’s done, and it can’t come undone. In music, even if
I have practiced my very best, I may strike some wrong note and
spoil it all; and in French, I may forget just one word for just one
minute, and then the whole sentence isn’t good for anything at all.
Arithmetic is easy. It’s just add, subtract, multiply, and divide;
and then you know it all. The rest is only different ways of using
these things. A baby ought to know how to learn four things.”
These were what Ella called her real “studies”; but there were two
others that she called her “make-believe studies.” These latter
she had chosen herself according to the color of the covers of the
textbook and the size of the print. The tiny geography was yellow,
with coarse print, and easy questions. The little grammar had a
bright pink cover. It was not much larger than her own hand, and it
was so clear and easy that Ella felt almost as if she had written
it herself. Who could help understanding when an illustration was
“George had four sweet apples,” or “William’s dog has come home”? Of
course, like all productions of grown-ups, it had occasional lapses,
such as, “The gay summer droops into pallid autumn,” which of course
no child ought to be expected to understand.
These two books were so winning that Ella took great pleasure in
saying every day or two, “I have learned my geography lesson,” or “I
have finished my grammar. May I recite it now?” There was another
reason, which she did not realize, but which was a strong one. She
knew that little girls in the public schools did not study French and
did study geography and grammar; and she was beginning to want to do
things just like other girls.
Ella had one great advantage over most little girls, and this was in
her mother’s belief that if a child wanted to do what older people
were doing, she ought to have a chance to try. “She will learn
something,” the busy mother always said, “and whatever she learns
will come in play some time.” That was why, when the mother and her
friend were making wax flowers, Ella was encouraged to see what she
could do. She had really acquired considerable skill. These ornaments
were as fashionable as ever, and the other “young ladies” were so
glad to follow her instructions that she began to feel quite like an
assistant teacher.
She used her skill in making a bouquet for her special little girl
friend at the old home, the one who had sent her the “jockey cap” at
Christmas. Such a bouquet as it was! Ella wrote in her diary, “There
were in it one Moss-rose bud a spiderworth a jonquil, some lily’s of
the valley and a bunch of coral Honeysuckle two Prickly pears some
forgetmenots a bunch of Verbena’s and two Orange-blossoms with two
Hawthorn’s and some grass with two Sweet peas were the contents of
my bouquet.” It is little wonder that they did not dwell together in
unity and that some of them were broken when the time of unpacking
arrived.
Ella also gave reading lessons. The mother had become interested in
her washerwoman, a negress who had once been a slave. The woman was
eager to learn, and Ella used to stop three times a week on her way
home from school to hear her read and, incidentally, to study the
little granddaughter and wonder if there was not some way to make her
hair straight and her face white.
Ella was usually a very happy little girl, but one day, in
pessimistic mood she wrote in her little diary, in as large letters
as the narrow space between the lines would permit, “I wish I did not
have to do anything but read and play all day long”; but certainly
she did a rather large amount of both reading and playing.
As to the reading, there was the library of many volumes at home.
There was the Sunday school collection; and its records of one rainy
Sunday declare that by some method of persuasion she wheedled the
young librarian into allowing her to carry home four books for the
afternoon’s consumption. Then, too, in the same building as the
school there was a large library, open to the public on payment
of one dollar a year, and from this, she might carry home a book
every day if she chose. No one interfered with her taking whatever
she wished, and she usually wandered about among the bookcases and
selected for herself. One day, however, the kindly old librarian
heard a child’s voice asking,
“Will you please help me to get a book? I can’t find what I want.”
He peered over the top of his tall desk, and there stood a little
girl in short skirts and a blue flannel blouse with brass buttons,
looking up at him expectantly.
“Certainly,” he replied, smiling down upon her. “How should you like
one of the Rollo books?”
“I’ve read them all, most of them twice, and some of them three
times.”
“What kind of book should you like?”
“I’d like a book about the Spanish Inquisition,” she declared
serenely.
“What!” exclaimed the good man. “That’s not the kind of book for a
little girl to read. What made you think of that?”
“I read ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ and it said the story happened in
the Spanish Inquisition. I want to know what it is and I want to read
some more stories about it.”
The gray-haired librarian was aghast, but by no means unwise. He
brought her a book about the Inquisition, a big book, a heavy book, a
dismal book, in the finest of print and with two columns to the page.
No sensible child would dream of reading such a book, and the shrewd
old librarian knew it.
One of the constant readers in this library was an old friend of the
librarian, a quaint little gentleman who wore long hair curling at
the ends, knee breeches, and shoes with big buckles. The librarian
must have told him of the little girl’s request, for when she came
again, he talked with her about the books that she had read and
advised her to read Plutarch’s “Lives.” He was not so canny as the
librarian, for this book, too, was in fine print and pages of two
columns, and the little girl never read it until she had become a big
girl. And, alas, she never read the scholarly essay on the cacao
tree which the learned Doctor in Concord had given her. She always
felt guilty about this latter piece of neglect, and when—not through
her fault—the pamphlet was lost, she was uneasily glad.
The mother was sometimes a little troubled because Ella did not like
to read history.
“It is too hard for me,” objected the little girl.
“But in that little history of yours, the words are not nearly so
long as in ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ and you do not think that is hard,”
said the mother.
“No, but long words don’t make reading hard,” said Ella. “I like to
think I’ve read half a line in just one word. It’s like the dissected
map of the United States; it isn’t any harder to put in Texas than
Rhode Island, and Texas is so big that when I have put it in, I feel
as if I had really done something. Short words don’t make reading
easy and long words don’t make it hard. I don’t know what it is, but
somehow it’s the way they write it that makes it hard or easy. I’m
going to know how to do it some time, and then I’ll write some hard
books for children that shall be easy to read.”
Ella was quite given to making lists of the books that she read, and
often for a number of weeks in succession she read at the rate of a
book a day. The following is one of her lists with her occasional
comments:
Up Hill, or Life in the Factory.
Gulliver’s Travels.
Studies for Stories.
Harry’s Vacation, or Philosophy at Home.
Winifred Bertram.
New School Dialogues.
Hetty’s Hopes, or Trust in God.
Romantic Belinda.
Ruth Hall.
Lewis, or the Bended Twig.
True Stories of the Days of Washington. A very good book indeed. It
tells about deeds of heroism and honor. I never read it before.
Began it the 26 of December, finished it 27.
Storybook by Hans Christian Andersen. Very good.
Tim the Scissors Grinder.
Atlantic Monthly. Andersonville Prisoners.
Fighting Joe.
Agnes Hopetoun’s Schools and Holidays.
Curious Stories about Fairies and Other Funny People.
Merry’s Museum.
The Orphan Nieces.
Neighbor Jackwood.
Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper.
Summer in Scotland.
Life of Josephine.
Pilgrim’s Progress.
Tales of the Saxons.
Tanglewood Tales.
Christmas Greens. A splendid story telling about two boys who went
and got some evergreens and sold them and gave the money to their
mother, who needed it very much, and so got on till they became
great and good.
The Young Crusoe.
A Year after Marriage.
Moral Tales.
Poor and Proud. Splendid.
Arabian Nights.
Popular Tales from the Norse.
Out of Debt. Out of Danger.
Peter Parley’s Stories.
The Magic Ring.
Curiosities of Natural History.
Swiss Family Robinson. I have read it a great many times, but it is
so good I wanted to read it again.
Somehow, though one can hardly see how, the small girl contrived to
get in a vast amount of play. Her special friend was a particularly
nice boy who lived next door, indeed, nearer than next door, for the
children persuaded the authorities of the two houses to slip off a
board from the fence between. Beejay, as Ella called him, went to the
public school, which had two sessions, while the “Private School for
Young Ladies” had only one; so it was a little difficult to bring
their leisure hours together; but they made the most of every minute.
They played games without end, croquet, authors, the checkered game
of life, the smashed-up locomotive—a locomotive with a bell-topped
smokestack, a big bell, and a little whistle—dissected maps, and
one game that they called “By a Lady,” since that legend alone was
printed on the box. They made a very creditable ghost with the help
of chalk and phosphorus, and were jubilant when a kindly older sister
pretended to be badly scared by its horrors.
Once upon a time they saved up their pennies till they had enough to
buy a cocoanut; and such a cocoanut! It was the largest they had ever
seen and cost no more than a small one! It was not shaped quite like
the cocoanuts that they had bought before, but the dealer told them
to cut off the outside husk, and they would have a fine large nut
within.
No woman was ever so pleased with a bargaincounter purchase. They
hurried down cellar and Beejay attacked the nut first with a knife,
then with a hatchet. The mischievous thing rolled away from the blows
into corner after corner as if it was bewitched. Ella had just been
learning the “Song of the Brook,” and she quoted,
“‘I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance
Among my skimming swallows’—
Say, Beejay, do you suppose we shall ever have any ‘swallows’? I
should so like just one—of cocoanut milk.” Beejay attacked the puzzle
more savagely than ever. The outer husk came off, and there lay the
tiniest cocoanut that they had ever seen. It was no bigger than a
child’s fist. Such was their great bargain. Such are the deceits of
the world and the sellers of cocoanuts.
“Sold!” said Beejay; “but let’s never, never tell.”
“Indeed, we won’t,” declared Ella. “Cross my heart. We won’t have
them all laughing at us. Mother said once cocoanuts were not good for
me. Do you think one that size would make me very, very sick? Let’s
eat it just as fast as we can and put the shell into the furnace,
and no one will ever know.” No one ever did know, for the secret was
faithfully kept.
There was no end to the things the playmates did. They discovered a
place where clay could be found, an agreeable variety of clay, not
so hard as the claystones of the Bearcamp River, and not so soft
as to be sticky, but just right to cut into silk winders, hearts
and rounds, and boys and girls, like those that came out of cookie
pans, and dozens of other things. They followed the directions of
“The Boy’s Own Book” and made a boomerang that would not make the
return trip; a battledore that was continually coming to pieces; a
shuttlecock that never would go straight up, but always off to the
farthest corner of the room. They pored over the minerals that the
learned Doctor had given to Ella, and they had eager searches for
fossils in a non-fossiliferous country.
“The Boy’s Own Book” declared that glass would melt and that asbestus
would not, although it looked like glass. A big brother told them
of a ledge just outside of the city where they could find asbestus.
They packed some lunch into a little willow basket—the one that
Ella always filled with firecrackers and pinwheels a week before
the Fourth of July, trying hard and with a vast expenditure of
mental arithmetic to get as much noise and sparkle for her money as
possible—and off they went to the ledge. They found the asbestus and
brought some home and put it into the kitchen stove. It did not melt;
but neither did the piece of glass that they laid beside it.
“Maybe it’s too thick,” Beejay suggested. “Let’s take some of the
bird of paradise’s tail.”
The bird of paradise was a glass bird with a long tail of spun glass
so bright and shining that it had not been thrown away when the bird
broke into many pieces. This, too, they tried in the stove and also
in the gas, but it would not melt. The children were disgusted.
“The boomerang wouldn’t boom,” declared Ella; “the battledore
wouldn’t bat; the shuttlecock wouldn’t go one bit like either a
shuttle or a cock; and now the glass won’t melt. Let’s just go on our
own way and let the book alone. We can think of things enough to do.
Let’s paint some autumn leaves. I’ll get my water colors and you get
your crayons. You can use one and I’ll use the other, and we’ll see
which will get done first.”
But a voice called, “Ella, I want you to go down street on an errand.”
It chanced that Beejay’s mother had also an errand at the same store;
so the children went off together, swinging the little yellow basket
between them.
When they came home, they were running breathlessly, and waving two
handbills.
“It’s at two o’clock this afternoon,” cried one.
“And it’s only ten cents, and the man said it was almost always
fifteen in other cities,” cried the other, “and that it was well
worth twenty-five.”
“And it’s very educational, the man said it was.”
The two mothers were easily persuaded to let them go to the panorama.
They came home jubilant. There were no movies then, but they had seen
pictures of the city of Venice with a marvelous number of gondolas,
the sinking of the Alabama, the firemen of New York, Dr. Kane’s
vessel that tried to get to the North Pole, and finally “a beautiful
fairy scene,” as Ella declared.
Surely, there was no need of help from “The Boy’s Own Book,” for
on the way home the children had planned to manufacture a fleet of
gondolas, and also an Alabama that, by the pulling of a string, would
really sink. All this they would do without fail to-morrow; but
“to-morrow” was another day, and when it arrived, a little girl with
a hot red face, a sore throat, a headache and a backache was tossing
about in bed. Ella had the measles.
Never did mind cure have a fairer trial. She did not have a knotted
string and repeat over and over, “Every day in every way I am getting
better and better”; but she began at the very foundation, and when
the red spots appeared, she declared:
“It isn’t measles. I won’t have measles. The hall was hot and it made
my face burn when I was there, and it just kept on burning”; but the
longer she said it was not measles, the faster the red spots came out.
“It isn’t fair,” she wailed. “It isn’t the least bit fair that I
should have measles when Beejay hasn’t. We have so many things to do,
I can’t be sick.”
But the red spots grew brighter and brighter. It was only two weeks
before the end of the school year, and Ella had had her last day in
the “Private School for Young Ladies.”