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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

AND A LITTLE ABOUT THEIR FLORA.

March and April.—Buds and the First Flowers.

HAT are the Four Seasons? Can you tell me how you would describe them? When we begin to tell over their names according to the months, we who live in New England shudder a little. Is it fair to call March a month of Spring? On the contrary, we think of it as the time for storms and winds, and are all of us ready for the “six weeks’ sledding in March” so often facetiously prophesied. We have to content ourselves with a few days of promise scattered here and there among the snows and east winds of March and April. Our Spring is a short, capricious season, all the more charming in her sudden surprises. She stays with us but a few days, and then suddenly gives us over to her sister Summer, who is ready to visit us even in May, but who is somewhat capricious also. It is only with rare exceptions that we can speak of three months of Summer. There is a rich fulness of life from June through August among the plants and trees, but not a series of warm summer days.

Neither can we say with strictness that Spring is the time for buds and blossoms, Summer for flowers; that Autumn is the season of fruits, and Winter of death. For as to fruits I will pick with you the Checkerberry, that Winter has been storing up, in the first spring day, near where the Mayflower has opened full under the melting snow. In midsummer we gather the rich fruits of the Strawberry and the Raspberry; but ah! we may sometimes see the fall of the leaf in the hasty Horsechestnut. And Autumn prepares the buds upon the trees that began to form in the Summer, and that I want to show you now, in the winter days of March, before we are occupied with the rich succession of summer flowers. Yes, we have buds and blossoms in the Winter!

All winter long you could have seen how a light snow would gather around little knobs on the tree branches. These little knobs were the tender buds. Spring will open them, but Winter has been fostering them under the soft snow. If you bring into the house some of these naked-looking branches, taken from different trees, you will see how varied they are in their growth, and how you can already begin to study the differences of the trees. Here are specimens of the Beech, the Hornbeam, the Oak, the Elm, the Linden, and the Willow. You see there are differences in the position of their buds with regard to each other, in the way that they are set upon the branch, and also in the kind of scales of which they are composed. All these examples I have chosen have terminal buds,—that is, buds at the end of the branches.

There are certain herbs, shrubs, and trees that do not branch out, but carry up a single leafy stem, that develops joint by joint, as you have seen in Indian corn. These form a large class by themselves. These plants grow always from a terminal bud only. This bud shows itself in the Horsechestnut, which will serve as a fine specimen even early in winter. Break off a branch of it. You will see that, besides this large terminal bud, it has buds upon the side, an admirable example for our study of their position. These lateral buds are placed just over broad places, that are scars left where the leaf-stalk fell the autumn before. They stand, therefore, in the angle which the leaf formed with the branch, and which is known as its axil; they are thence called axillary buds.

These leaf-scars you can see plainly on the Horsechestnut shoot. You can see it, too, on the other specimens,—not only the scar, but the little dots that show where the vessels that carried the sap to the leaf were broken off. So every leaf in falling leaves behind it a bud to take its place, and this bud contains within itself the power to grow into a branch, which is to develop new leaves. These axillary buds, that we see so plainly on these specimens, are sometimes carefully hidden. In the Buttonwood the leaf-stalk is hollowed out into a little cup where it joins the branch, with which it covers the bud, like an extinguisher, until it is ready to fall.

The specimens will show you that these axillary buds are either opposite or alternate. They are opposite when two are borne on the same joint of the stem, being on exactly opposite sides of the stem, as you see in the Horsechestnut. They are alternate when there is only one from each joint of the stem, as in the Oak, Beech, Elm, Linden, etc. The leaves that fell to make room for them were alternate, and so will the branches be that they are to form. Only they do not always go on in the perfect symmetry that this would seem to show, for all the buds do not grow. Those that have the advantage in nourishment or sunshine begin to grow first, and starve out their weaker brothers.

Sometimes it is the terminal bud that takes the advantage. This is the case with the Horsechestnut. Its terminal and upper axillary buds are the strongest. In the Lilac the terminal bud rarely appears at all; the uppermost pair of axillary buds takes its place, so each stem branches every year into two. If you watch this different growth, you will see how it helps to produce all our charming variety of foliage. Yet, with all their variety, these buds in their position follow a mathematical law.

Yes, it is Colburn’s Arithmetic and its hard sums that must explain to you the law by which these buds take their places on the branches, as well as that by which the stars find their courses. Take courage, then, with slate and pencil. Your sums are not so dull and tiresome, after all. You know it was with just such sums a man found a planet in the sky that he never saw, and never has seen yet, for aught I know. Until you have mastered these sums, I cannot explain to you fully the arrangement of these alternate buds, but an examination will give you some idea of it.

You will see that no bud is on the same side of the stem as the one next above or next below it. They are seldom placed one above the other on exactly opposite points of the stem; but the second will rise a little to the right or left of the opposite point, and the third a little on one side of the perpendicular to the first. In the Apple and the Pear tree it is only when we reach the sixth leaf that we find one placed exactly over the third, and so on. They are thus placed in series of fives, so that, if you were to trace a line from point to point, you would form a spiral, making two turns for each series, along which the buds are regularly placed. This method of series of fives prevails in most of the twigs we are looking at. But in the Linden the buds are on exactly opposite sides of the stem, so that the third leaf is placed over the first, completing the first spire and beginning the second. This spiral arrangement extends to other parts of the plant, and is very apparent in the scales of the Pines and Firs we have studied.

In our climate, the buds of all plants that endure the winter are usually sheltered with scales, to protect them from sudden changes of cold to warm, or warm to cold. In warmer regions naked buds are frequent. We have a few specimens of these. Those of the Hobblebush are bare, and pretty large; in the Sumach they are small, and sunk in the bark.

The position of the scales and their form correspond to that of the bud on the stem. In the Elm, they are alternate; with the Horsechestnut, opposite. See if, from the specimens you have gathered, or in the illustrations I have given, you can recognize with my description the different varieties of buds.

The buds of the Hornbeam (Carpinus) and Birch (Betula) are alternate. They are spindle-shaped, a little bent towards the stem, pressing closely against it, and rise perpendicularly above the leaf-scar. Their many scales are imbricated, that is, set over each other, as bricks are in building, and are covered with fine hairs. Those of the Beech (Fagus ferruginea) are of similar form, spindle-shaped, but more stiff, standing below an angle of the stem, that bends like a knee.

The buds of the Linden and Elm on so small a twig look much alike. But the Linden bud has but two scales, in the picture resembling three, as the edge of the larger scale, that embraces the bud, appears there like a dividing line. In the Elm the scales are numerous, but plainly alternate in two rows placed closely together. In both the leaf-scar is plainly seen, with the marks left by the three sap-vessels when they fell away.

The Oak has a little cluster of buds raised on a projection of the bark, so that each bud seems sitting on a little cushion, which has a semicircular leaf-scar. The Oak, too, can be recognized by cutting through a small piece of its stem, for it has a star-shaped pith.

The Willow buds are easily found out. They are covered with a single pointed scale.

The Horsechestnut I have already described. It can afford to put out its shoots boldly, for besides its scales it has a warm covering of varnish, that you can see shining in the sun as early as November.

These buds which I have been describing, you will have seen, hold the germs of blossom, leaf, and branch. If you cut open the large terminal bud of the Horsechestnut, you will find packed away there pairs of leaves ready formed, even the blossoms of the coming season plainly visible as small buds. The name of bud, then, is not limited to the bud of the flower, such as we speak of in the words rose-bud and orange-bud, but it is used for the first germ of growth. Each bud upon a tree sends down the little fibres that attach it through its trunk, just as the roots of the tree plunge into the earth. It is these fibres that, with each year’s growth, form the fresh wood of the tree beneath its bark. Each tree is then like a little city, which enlarges itself each year by new buds that produce new branches.

Besides this growth from the branches come the flower-buds, and each flower develops its seeds, that burst away from their birthplace, scatter themselves, and go into the world to create new tree-growths. These seeds are like emigrants, that, leaving the tree to increase by its buds the families left at home, go out to plant new colonies. It is these blossoms that produce the seed that we associate with spring and summer, the flower-blossoms that are to produce the fruit. Now winter can show even these. We can find tree-blossoms in the winter.

Here the branches of two sisters cross each other,—thirsty sisters, for they stand along the streams and rivers impatient; they cannot wait for the spring to bring out their blossoms. They are of the sort that carry their pistils and stamens in separate flowers. One branch shows how both of these have weathered the winter together. They belong to an Alder (Alnus). The staminate aments (as the long bunches, like catkins, are called) began to appear towards the end of the summer, and were perfectly formed before the end of autumn, and have hung naked all winter, and expand with the first warmth of March and April. The staminate aments are the longer ones hanging downwards, while the pistillate aments are shorter, on a bent foot-stalk.

Its sister the Birch (Betula alba) sent out its sterile aments last July, and they hung unprotected all winter, to open into golden flowers in the spring. The fertile catkins come out later with the leaves.

The American Hazelnut (Corylus Americana), too, we can find in the winter, bearing its staminate catkins that unfold in March or April. These are of a grayish yellow, and hang gracefully on their stalks, spreading in the air a yellow dust.

The First Flower.

There ought to be a special holiday in all the schools to celebrate the appearance and opening of the first spring flower. But these flowers are so very shy that nobody ever knows when they are to appear. They open stealthily in the warm sun, under the snow, and only the very adventurous will be the first discoverers. Some of these have found the Mayflower even in March, and in favorable seasons it can be gathered early in April. Let us be of the adventurous sort, and set out on a walk of discovery. How early do you suppose the Pilgrim Fathers found it? How glad they must have been to welcome it, the very first flower in their new home! They were so grateful to it that they gave it the name of Mayflower, from the ship that had been the ship of their hopes, and that had brought them to the New World.

The botanists call it Epigæa repens, a name which means that it creeps closely to the earth, and which you will see describes it exactly. I have heard it called Ground Laurel, Trailing Arbutus, and Wild Lilac, as well as Mayflower. It has smelled as sweetly and looked as freshly under either name.

We must hasten out while the sun is hot, for Winter still disputes for these early spring days, and there is a cold blast that may bring up a snow-storm before the day is over. There are still banks of snow along the edges of the fields, and over in our garden border the snow lingers. Here are a few delicate Snowdrops, that claim to be the first flowers of the season, and we could not have passed them by, for they are very brave to have forced their way up through the frozen earth, with their tender white buds. And some of the children can tell of purple and yellow Crocuses that have come out in the sunny borders sheltered by the blocks of brick houses in town. But these are real wild flowers we are going to pick, and we must take with us some experienced guides, or it will be hard to find them.

Away through by-roads, over the fences, along which the winter’s wind has piled up heaps of leaves, by the snow-banks, into the woods we go. Not in the thick pine woods, but here where there is a little opening, and where among the nut-trees and the oaks and birches a high pine rises we will stop. The moss offers a pleasant seat, a good place to rest; but no, the busy ones of the party begin to fumble round among the dry stalks and rubbish and moss, and seize hold of a bunch of large, brown, dead-looking leaves. Pushing away the sticks and dry, rustling weeds, they pull up a long, trailing stem, and already you can begin to smell a sweet fragrance, and presently there hang before your eyes the bunches of rich pink flowers, fresh and delicate and warm, as if they had in them all the luxuriousness of the summer, and all the grace of spring. They are not unlike the splendid Daphne that is cultivated in the greenhouse, with their almost bell-shaped flowers and rich smell. The Daphne has had all winter the constant fire in the furnace to give it warmth, and the hot rays of the sun, collected on the glass roof, pouring down upon it to paint it with color. And all winter long it has been living with luxurious tropical plants, the very finest society of rare foreign flowers, dainty exclusives that could not bear a winter’s air, and must be shut out from frost and ice.

Our little Mayflower, like its namesake that set itself on a foreign shore in a cold winter’s day, has been sheltering its buds, formed last August, and has kept them all winter under snow and earth, waiting for the spring, without being coaxed or caressed by any hot-house frame or gardener. Where did it get its soft pink color? Some of the underground fairies must have brought it all these treasures from a mine of rubies, or some upper fairies may have stolen for it from the greenhouse color and smell. No, its own little servants, its roots, went digging into the earth that shut it in so warmly, and brought it drink and food out of all her secret cells. You can trace how its fragrance, besides the rich odor of the greenhouse flowers, has a fresh, healthy earth smell, that tells of growing things, and of all the wild-flowers summer is going to bring.

Wait a minute! I forgot to ask you to bring in your pocket or basket a stubbed, round-pointed pair of scissors, that you can cut off the sprays of flower with. Don’t try to break off the flowers, for you see you will pull up a long, trailing stem, roots, flowers, and all. I do not know whether it is because the little Pilgrim Mothers and little Pilgrim Fathers round Boston picked them so ruthlessly that they are not to be found in the neighborhood of Boston; I do know that they are disappearing fast from the near neighborhood of all our towns, because they have been thoughtlessly torn up by the roots, and are retreating farther and farther from us.

The Epigæa belongs to the Heath family, and so its cousins are our beautiful summer Laurel, the Kalmia, and the Rhododendron, and the Azalias, and many others. The trailing Mayflower is not a shrub, as these are, but it shares some of their brilliant coloring, and is a choice specimen to represent this handsome family. It belongs to this family because its tube-shaped corolla is of one piece, or has one petal, which gives it the name Monopetalous. This little tube, spreading out into five scallops, white or rose-colored, is the corolla. It is held in a little green dish, which is the calyx. This calyx is cut into five parts about as long as the tube of the corolla. If these parts of the calyx were quite separate, they would be called its sepals; but here it is but one sepal, deeply cut, just as the corolla is one petal formed into a tube cut at the margin. Each leaf or separate part of a corolla is called a petal; each leaf of a calyx is called a sepal. These protect the stamens and pistils. We will not yet pull it to pieces to count its ten stamens, twice as many as there are parts to the border of the corolla, but you can see the yellow anthers that crown the stamens in the throat of the tube, which is a little hairy within. It has one pistil; you can see its top, the stigma, with its fine points.

What else can you add to its description? It has rounded, heart-shaped leaves placed alternately on the stem, with hairy foot-stalks, or petioles, sometimes half as long as the leaves. The flowers grow in crowded clusters, and beneath each foot-stalk is a whorl of scaly, pointed bracts; these are leaves that are not quite leaves, but look as if they were trying to be. Ah, how much pleasanter to pick them than to buy them from the shops, where they have been clubbed together into pyramidal bunches with the Ground Pine (of the Club-Moss family), a singularly inappropriate way of arranging trailing plants, which must feel an inward shudder at finding themselves bound up together in a fashion so contrary to their natural tastes.

As we lean back in our mossy seat against the pine, arranging our flowers in our baskets, the sun sends down through the evergreen branches a heating ray, and a warm smell comes from the woods. Down by the pool there is, too, an edge of green grass; a few little blades venture up among the dead leaves; one or two have pierced their way through a hole in a dead oak-leaf that some insect made there last summer. In the midst of these spring sights there comes a spring sound. Silence! It is, it is the song of the frogs. There is a rush of the boys to the pond. You will find it is not really a frog. It is the Hylas, a sort of toad, that sings so.

Did you ever read the old Greek fable of Hylas? Once there was a young man of that name, who was a companion of Hercules, going with him on all his wanderings. But one day, as he was passing a fountain, he heard the sweet voices of some Naiads calling to him, and inviting him to come down to them. He could not resist their song, and plunged down, deep down in the stream. Now Hercules was getting ready to go upon a long voyage after the Golden Fleece you have heard of, but he had to wait to look for his favorite Hylas. He wandered up and down, and lost his chance of going on the voyage, and never found him; only at last he heard his complaining voice down at the very bottom of the fountain, wanting to come out. For by this time he had grown very tired of the Naiads, and would much rather be going to the wars with Hercules. It is supposed that he gave his name to these small water-lizards, because of their plaintive voice. Perhaps they too want to come out of their marsh, or would rather be frogs. To me their voices sound very cheery, because it is the first note of Spring, and I think they are only calling to beg her to come quickly before another snow, or before a cold wind that may freeze up their pond.

They say that whatever you are doing when you first hear the frogs—that is, the Hylas—sing, you will be doing all summer long. Are we then to have a long summer picnic in the woods? What a happy prospect! Is this true? you ask. I only know that, one spring, I was shutting the piano as I heard the sharp song of the Hylas, and that piano was shut all summer long!

But the Mayflower is not, after all, our only flower in these spring days. Next to appear, hidden shyly under its last summer’s leaves, we shall find the Hepatica. Such a soft, tender, delicate flower! We should hardly expect it to be the first to venture out. It has not had the warm shelter of the earth, as the Mayflower did, but it ventured to send its delicate hairy stem up into the spring air.

I have spoken of the flowers of the Pines, how they have only stamens and pistils. They have no corolla or calyx, whose duty it is to shield these delicate parts of the flower. The petals of the corollas usually stay till the seed is ready to form, to protect the stamens and pistils, while the sepals of the calyx generally linger till it, the seed, is quite ripened. You often see it holding the fruit, as in the strawberry, where indeed it seems like a green dish, carrying the red, ripe berry. The corolla and the calyx, therefore, are the folds of the dress that Flora wraps round her flower-seeds to protect and shelter them. Ah, you will say the Hepatica has both,—deep-purple petals and a green calyx. But the botanist will tell you no. These three downy green leaves are not the calyx; they are the stem leaves growing close to the flower, and are called the involucre. They surround the calyx, which here is not green, and forms the flower, purple or blue, sometimes pink, more or less pale. Within are its many stamens and its pistils. It is sometimes called Liverleaf, or Liverwort, from the shape of its leaves, supposed to resemble that of the liver. These large dusky-green, heart-shaped leaves last through the winter, and the new ones do not usually appear till after the flowers.

Next time I want to tell you what all the parts of the flower are in flowers that have all the parts, and how these will help you to find their names. You see already how they vary, and that, just as it is not safe to say that Spring has all the blossoms, and Autumn all the fruits, so you cannot say that the painted part of the flower is always the corolla, or that the calyx is always green. Indeed, by and by we shall find the Painted Cup, whose brilliant scarlet belongs neither to its flower nor calyx, but to its stem-leaves.

The flowers all follow a law, but each in its own way, like a set of happy children, that start off for school,—one stopping by the way for a cardinal-flower in the swamps, one clambering over the fences, another going through the woods, and some straight along the road, but all reaching the school-room at the very moment the schoolmistress expects them, neither before nor after,—so we will hope.

Lucretia P. Hale.

Marian Douglas.

WOULD you like to hear about what I did when I was a little girl? It is all true, and I will tell you the story. We lived just outside the village of Quannepaug, now changed to Brushville,—more’s the pity,—and it was then the most quiet, sleepy place that ever was seen, before the Brushville Manufacturing Company turned it upside down, and changed its pretty river into water-power. Double rows of great elms shaded the grass-grown streets, where you seldom saw anything moving except a long row of geese, or a few children “creeping like snail unwillingly to school.” A little stream wound lazily through the village, and then tumbled down and waked itself up, surprised to find itself turning an old mill, the drip of whose large wheel was enough to put it to sleep again. In the mill-pond shadows slept, fishes dozed, and frogs and mud-turtles might be caught napping on the floating logs. Even the old miller nodded in his chair, and the fishermen by the weir were so still that one such remark as “Horned paout yanked peert,” or “Traout’s pooty cherk this arternoon,” served them for talk for the whole day.

I was not sleepy, however, but full of life and restlessness, and yet the quiet of the place gave a certain dreamy unreality to my little pranks and plans. I had all sorts of fancies about fairies and imaginary people, in whom I believed and didn’t believe at the same time. I went to a nice little school, kept by two maiden ladies,—Miss Wealthy Ann and Miss Mehitable Sperry. They were good, kind women, though somewhat sour and grim-looking, and dressed exactly alike, in gray merino in winter, and Merrimac print in summer, with snowy caps and collars. Stern and terrible were their eyes to the offender, yet they were not really severe, and a little bed in the corner of the room for sleepy children showed that they felt for the infirmities of nature. I did not learn much of books from these good ladies; but I was taught to spell, to knit, and to sew, and, as the saying is, kept out of mischief,—which means that I was forced to sit still and dream away long hours over my needle, watching the clouds and the birds, and longing to fly as they did.

My walks to school and back again were the pleasantest part of my life in those days. Full of strange questionings and vague glimpses of beauty were my thoughts,—full too of curiosity and lively, lonely fancies. Is not “I want to know?” the answer in New England to every question? Well, I wanted to know everything, and, among other things, all about the people who lived in the houses that I passed every day. Their doors often stood open in summer weather, so that I could see nice-looking people moving about, and children at play; and they were far apart, with shady court-yards, where there were lilacs always, and sometimes a cat or some chickens. I longed to go in, and used to amuse myself with all sorts of guesses about what was going on there.

I don’t know how the thought came into my head, but one day I was seized with the impulse to go to one of these houses and ask if Mrs. Winchester lived there. Why I selected that name I do not remember, but I meant to make good use of my eyes as I made the inquiry, and find out all I could. So I went boldly up to my favorite house, through the little green gate and the garden I thought so beautiful, with its hollyhocks and larkspurs, pinks and sweet herbs, and its row of currant-bushes bounding the vegetables on either side, knocked at the door unquestioning as in a dream, and inquired for Mrs. Winchester.

“She doesn’t live here Miss,” replied a neat little maid, “but just step in and I’ll ask the ma’am where she does live.”

She showed me into the parlor. What a charming interior! It struck my childish eyes with delight. I had happened upon the oldest house in the village, once a fine old mansion, built before the Revolution, and now inhabited by a lady who was herself a remnant of the Revolutionary days. The ceiling was low, the walls were wainscoted and full of mysterious-looking cupboards. The wide fireplace was surrounded with Dutch tiles of Scripture history, where a lizard-like whale cast forth a tadpole-like Jonah, and Adam and Eve were eating apples as big as watermelons. All the furniture might have come over in the Mayflower, and the carpet was so clean and fresh that I hardly dared to step on it.

But such a nice old lady, such a pattern old lady, sat by an open window, in the sweet air! She was like a picture, with her high-crowned cap, her Bible open before her, and her cat purring to the click of her knitting-needles. She laid down her work, and with a kind smile answered my faltered questions, asking my name, and where I lived, till we fell into a long chat together. At last I remembered that, though this was much pleasanter than school, yet, if I lingered longer, I might perhaps meet with a severer punishment than the tardy mark which already awaited me. How I wished that the dear old lady was my schoolmistress!

As I took my leave she kissed me, and asked me to come again, for she was very lonely and loved little children, and I reminded her of a little girl whom she had lost. Then, opening one of those delightful cupboards, and taking out a little cake so nice that I remember the taste of it to this day, she walked with me to the gate, and gathered a bunch of flowers, which she said I might give to Miss Wealthy Ann, the teacher whom we feared the most, so that she might not be angry. I wondered how she found out about her. I went often to see her afterwards, and she used to tell me long stories about her voyages with her husband, who was a sea-captain, and to show me a cupboard full of wonderful shells, corals, and sea-fans, and whale’s teeth with ships engraved on them.

Once I was almost frightened out of my wits by finding myself in a dentist’s room, and seeing the bloodthirsty man take out his instruments of torture, saying that he supposed I wanted some teeth extracted. Out I ran without waiting to ask for Mrs. Winchester, and never entered that house again.

The next day, however, I took courage and went in at a back gate, where in a dusty yard some boys were playing on a wood-pile. They looked like rough ones, and I didn’t like boys, so I drew back; but one of them called out, “What do you want? saay, gal.”

I stammered out my question about Mrs. Winchester. “Don’t know nothin’ about her,” said a sharp boy. “What do you want to know for? I say, Bill! she’s a gummin’ on us! let’s set the dog on her! Here Nep! Nep!” If I didn’t fly! and, being a fast runner, was soon round the corner, where the boys did not pursue me, for, after all, I suppose they only meant to frighten me in revenge for my hoax.

All this time it never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong, or that there was any deception in this kind of amusement. By talking and thinking so much about Mrs. Winchester, I almost believed in her, and quite expected to see her at last. Still I must have had a vague idea that it wasn’t all right, for I avoided the houses where I was acquainted, though I got a peep into most of the others in the village, seeing some very odd people, and meeting with all sorts of treatment.

I had passed a large house several times which seemed to be quite shut up, but at last I saw a smoke coming out of the back kitchen chimney, and tried a knock at that door, which I found half open. A woman who stood by the fire called out, in a tremendous voice, “I don’t want you here! Get out of my kitchen this minute, or I’ll pin your ears back, and butter your head!” Then, turning round to look at me, she said, in a milder tone, “Thought ’twas beggars! What do you want, little girl?”

She was a most strange-looking creature. If I had then read Walter Scott, I should have taken her for Meg Merrilies, for, though she lacked many inches of the height of that worthy, she was equally broad, muscular, and gypsy-like, and swarthy with the smoke of many kitchens and the suns of many wash-yards. I must say I felt afraid of her, and hardly dared ask the unfailing question, “Does Mrs. Winchester live here?”

“I guess she don’t. What do you want to know for?”

Before I had time to speak, she began to sing, in most wonderful and nasal tones, and a minor key,

“What’s your mar’s name?”

I told her our name and where we lived.

“Well, a’n’t that queer! I swan! I’m goin’ to live with your mar next week.

You see when Square Mix died, Miss Mix she went away to hum with her par in Mumford, and she left me to take care of the house; and now she’s sold it to Judge Wilcox, and so I’m going to live with your mar.

I tell you, I guess you’ll have doughnuts! Folks always think a sight of me, and if your mar’s a real lady, as they say she is, I guess I’ll stay round there a good while.

Your par’s a good pervider, they say, and your mar a’n’t always a pokin’ in the kitchen. I won’t live with such folks! Don’t tell me!”

This queer woman did come the next week, and lived with us many years, ruling the kitchen with a rod of iron, termagant on washing days, tender and gentle in sickness and sorrow, sometimes frightening us out of our wits, and sometimes loading us with cakes and caresses. She scared a playmate of my brothers who had kicked over her pet geranium, by pursuing him with a knife and fierce words and gestures, so that he never dared to go near the kitchen again. Her language was not always choice, yet she was a good American woman of the shouting Methodist persuasion, and fond of flowers and children. She always carried a huge jackknife to protect herself when she came home late from meeting, and once, as she was fond of telling, when a young fellow was dared by his comrades to speak to her, she fairly lifted him off his feet and seated him in the gutter, with his bran-new overcoat on. “Learn how to behave yourself, sir,” said she, brandishing her jackknife in his face, and walked off with a terrible look, as he sat crestfallen, a good deal frightened, and jeered at unmercifully by his companions.

But to come back to Mrs. Winchester. I had been already to all the most promising houses, so one day I knocked at the door of a small cottage, and was admitted to its single room, whose bare walls and floor and scanty fire of shavings told of poverty and distress. I had never seen anything like this before, and I thought of my own warm cloak and mittens, and the bright fire at home, for by this time winter had come. A woman, who looked cold and thin, stood at a washing tub, and a little girl about my own age, and two or three younger children, barefooted and poorly clad, sat on the damp brick floor. A man lay sick upon the only bed, and, though everything was clean, the place looked very desolate. I forgot Mrs. Winchester, and began to ask questions of the woman. She told me that they had been very comfortable until this winter, for she and her husband had plenty of work; but now he had been sick a long time, and perhaps would never get well. She had worked hard and paid everything as well as she could, but medicine and food and things had taken much more than she could earn, and she had sold clothes and furniture, and even the clock, though it went hard, she said, to part with her, it seemed so lonesome without her. Yet she hadn’t been forced to beg, thank God, and she hoped she should get through without it, if he could only get his health again. She poured all this out to me as if it were a relief to tell some one, if it were but a pitying child, and I, who had never before heard a story from the lips of poverty, went crying all the way to school, and missed my lessons for thinking about it. At last a bright thought struck me. I had laid aside a little sum from my pocket-money to purchase “Evenings at Home,” which I had once borrowed from a school-mate and was longing to possess. Yes, that would do!

The next morning I carried my small hoard to the cottage, and putting it into the woman’s hand ran away as fast as I could. After this I took all the money that was given to me to this poor family, till at last I took courage and told my mother about them. She knew much better how to help them, and with her aid the father at last recovered, the clock came home again, and they were made more comfortable than ever before.

Meanwhile, I had an adventure which quite cured me of my inquiring fancies. A new house had been built at the end of the village, and was now occupied for the first time. I felt rather shy of venturing there, but at last, one day, I knocked at the door. Who should open it but our own old clergyman, Dr. Pillow, who had lately moved into the house. There he was, and I must explain why I came, for he knew me, and paused to hear what I had to say.

In a low voice I asked him if he knew where Mrs. Winchester lived.

“No indeed, my dear,” he replied; “who is she?”

I did not know what to say, but the temptation to escape was irresistible, and, without much hesitation, I told him that Mrs. Winchester was a poor woman who had been at our house to beg, and my mother wished to find out where she lived, and to do something for her.

“Winchester, Winchester! no, I cannot say I have heard of her. Strange too, I thought I knew everybody! I must be losing my memory. Mrs. Pillow,” said he, bustling into the parlor, “do you know where a poor woman named Winchester lives?”

“Never heard of such a person! must be a mistake! Who wants to know?”

As he mentioned my name, a tall, sharp-looking woman, whose eyes I had often dreaded in church, came out of the room, and glanced at me keenly. “Winchester; never heard of anybody of the name. Sure it’s not Wilson? There’s a Mrs. Wilson. Better ask your mother to send you again, and to write the name carefully down on a piece of paper. I’m sure you’ve made a mistake. Children are so heedless!”

Then followed a long talk between the Doctor and his wife, upon the important question as to who Mrs. Winchester could possibly be, in the midst of which I slipped away, and ran home, feeling a little uncomfortable.

But what was my horror in the afternoon to see the Doctor himself jogging along on his old mare toward the house. I heard him come in, and, conscience-struck, ran up to the garret to hide myself in an old packing-box, where I had often before crouched to devour a book by myself. Soon there was a great looking and calling for me. I trembled, but kept quiet. Then I heard steps coming up the garret stairs, and my brother, who knew the secret of my lurking-place, burst in upon me and made me come down into the parlor. There I was forced to confess the whole truth before the Doctor, who had come for the sole purpose of satisfying his mind about Mrs. Winchester. My mother and he could not help laughing at my story, and so I escaped punishment that time. But afterwards my mother talked kindly to me about my fault, and of the real nature of truth and of the danger of tampering with its sacredness,—of the importance of strict accuracy, and the harm of forming habits of falsehood,—so that my friend Mrs. Winchester helped me to a good lesson after all. But my merciless brothers teased me about it forever afterward, and I never lost the nickname of Mrs. Winchester.

L. W. J.

THERE are many things, dear Young Folks, which you cannot be, however much you try, and there are many things which you can be by trying. And it so happens that the things which lie within your power are the important ones, while the things over which you have no control are of very little consequence. For instance, you cannot all be good scholars. Some children try very hard to learn their lessons and keep up with their class, yet cannot do it because God has given them minds which do not work quickly, or retain firmly. But then it is no great matter if you are not good scholars. A dull scholar may do just as much good in the world, and be just as happy, as a bright one. There are very learned and brilliant persons whom no one loves, and there are persons of very moderate abilities whom all the world thinks charming. What is required of the dull scholar is to do the best that he can do, not to do as well as some one else who has a quicker grasp and a stronger hold of facts than he. What you all can do, what you all ought to do, is this:—

See that you are as little disagreeable as possible to those with whom you associate.

This is a very simple thing, is it not,—hardly worth putting in Italics? My dear children, read it over again, for it is one of the first requirements both of Christianity and politeness. It is of great importance now, and it is becoming more important every day of your life. For if, while you are young, you allow yourselves to be disagreeable, you will become so fixed in the bad habit that by and by you cannot help yourselves. You will be unpleasant, however much you wish to be attractive. Now let me tell you one or two ways in which you may prevent yourselves from being disagreeable.

Suppose a piece of mischief has been done in school. The teacher wishes to find out who was the perpetrator. He tells the whole story of what has happened, and bids the guilty one report to him after school, or perhaps only expresses his regret that any of his scholars should be concerned in such doings. Here is a good opportunity for you to practise the art of not being disagreeable. Do not cast your eyes about, here, there, and everywhere, to see who is the guilty one. You have not been appointed a police-officer, and discovery is not your business. Secondly, if you happen to see any one with downcast eyes or blushing cheeks or any apparent signs of guilt, do not you increase his embarrassment by staring at him. It is quite possible that he is entirely innocent, and that the real culprit sits in his seat as bold as a lion and shows no change of countenance. Many persons are so organized that they blush without any direct personal cause. The innocent pupil, by his lively imagination, may feel the shame of the guilt and the fear of detection more keenly than the true mischief-maker feels them, almost as keenly as if he were himself that mischief-maker; or he may blush simply because, being nervous and agitated, the thought comes into his mind, “Now if I should blush, they would all think I was the one”;—and with that unlucky thought up comes the torturing blood into his unresisting cheek and makes him very miserable. Your young eyes cannot always detect guilt or innocence by outward signs, but you can greatly increase your schoolmate’s embarrassment by fastening your gaze upon him. Do it not. As you value the character of a high-minded gentleman or lady, do it not. Obey the command of Solomon, and let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee; but look not at the discomfiture of thy friend. And not only in the school-room, but everywhere and at all times, make it a law of your life not to look in any direction in which your looking will cause embarrassment, unless you are officially employed to detect crime or fault. Put your eyes in your pocket, if you cannot keep them where they belong. No person of delicacy ever wishes to see in another that which another does not wish him to see, and if that other incautiously or involuntarily reveals what he wishes to hide, the first will appear to take no notice of it.

Of course, there are a great many cases in which this principle can be brought into play. Your little friends may be awkward through shyness, and make blunders; you may sometimes come upon them suddenly, when they are not prepared to see you. Some person may say to them something which shall wound them. A thousand causes may excite in them feelings which they do not wish to show. I have only given you one example that you may understand what I mean.

Again: never ask your friend a question which he may not wish to answer. And if you have been so truly unfortunate as to stumble upon an unwelcome question, stumble away from it as fast possible. Put your tongue into your pocket along with your eyes, rather than permit it to insist upon a question which your friend’s hesitancy has shown you to be an improper one. Be sure, in the first place, that your heart is right, and then your tongue will not often be wrong. Do not wish to know what your friend does not wish you to know. Take it for granted that he will tell you of his own accord what he desires you to be informed of. Let me give you an instance or two. When Charlotte Bronte, a writer of surpassing genius and a most heroic woman, was beginning to write books, she visited a very intimate old school friend. This friend suspected that she and her sisters wrote for magazines; but as they never said a word to her about it, she said never a word to them. The proofs of one of her books were forwarded to her while she was on that visit, and she occasionally sat at the same table with her friend correcting them, but neither of them spoke a word on the subject. So perhaps you may remember, in “The Wide, Wide World,”—an excellent book which it is well worth your while to read,—Ellen Montgomery is befriended while she is shopping by an old gentleman who afterwards makes her little gifts and does many kind services. Ellen is very anxious to find out his name, but her mamma says no. Since he has not told her his name, and evidently does not care to have her know it, it would be very ill-bred to attempt to find it out. Yet, children, sad as it is, there are persons who really seem to pride themselves on their skill in “finding out” things which they are desired not to know. And I have no doubt, if you have so degrading an ambition, you can acquire a good deal of skill in the business. Where you are pretty sure that a direct question would not be answered, you can put two or three roundabout ones; or, if you think your friend is too wary to answer as you wish, you can ask a younger brother or sister, or some one who is less on his guard or less skilful at parrying impertinent inquiries, and so perhaps worm out the secret. But remember, while you are thus gratifying your curiosity, you are destroying or exhibiting the destruction of all delicacy of feeling; you are developing vulgarity and narrow-mindedness, and are rapidly becoming disagreeable and disliked to an extent which probably you little suspect. So far from pluming yourself on your shrewdness in making such discoveries, you ought to be ashamed even of wishing to make them. It is much better to be a dull scholar than to be bright and use your brightness for unlawful purposes. It is better to be well-bred than well-read, careful of feelings than quick at figures, to fail in spelling than to fail in politeness. If you can be both a good scholar and a pleasant companion, by all means be so, and the brighter the better; but if you will persist in being disagreeable,—if you will not take pains to be agreeable,—you might just as well be a dunce. All your scholarship will only make your ill manners more conspicuous and your company more unwelcome.

Dear little friends, perhaps you do not need these reminders. You are so frank and gay and charming, one can hardly think you would ever willingly be anything else. But we are all likely to err, and I do not believe these suggestions will do you any harm. Read them carefully, I pray you; think upon them and practise them; for, be assured, nothing in this world is so beautiful and so desirable as to love your neighbor as yourself,—in which case your neighbor will be pretty sure to love you.

Gail Hamilton.

IV.

UP—up—up,—from glory to glory!

This was what it seemed to Leslie Goldthwaite, riding, that golden June morning, over the road that threaded along, always climbing, the chain of hills that could be climbed, into the nearer and nearer presence of those mountain majesties, penetrating farther and farther into the grand solitudes sentinelled forever by their inaccessible pride.

Mrs. Linceford had grown impatient; she had declared it impossible, when the splendid sunshine of that next day challenged them forth out of their dull sojourn, to remain there twenty-four hours longer, waiting for anything. Trunks or none, she would go on, and wait at Jefferson, at least, where there was something to console one. All possible precaution was taken; all possible promises were made; the luggage should be sent on next day,—perhaps that very night; wagons were going and returning often now; there would be no further trouble, they might rest assured. The hotel-keeper had a “capital team,”—his very best,—at their instant service, if they chose to go on this morning; it could be at the door in twenty minutes. So it was chartered, and ordered round,—an open mountain wagon, with four horses; their remaining luggage was secured upon it, and they themselves took their seats, gayly.

“Who cares for trunks or boxes now?” Leslie cried out in joyousness, catching the first, preparatory glimpse of grandeur, when their road, that wound for a time through the low, wet valley-lands, began to ascend a rugged hillside, whence opened vistas that hinted something of the glory that was to come. All the morning long, these wheeled about them, and smiled out in the sunshine, or changed to grave, grand reticence under the cloud-shadows, those shapes of might and beauty that filled up earth and heaven.

Leslie grew silent, with the hours of over-full delight. Thoughts thronged in upon her. All that had been deepest and strongest in the little of life that she had lived wakened and lifted again in such transcendent presence. Only the high places of spirit can answer to these high places of God in his creation.

Now and then, Jeannie and Elinor fell into their chatter, about their summer plans, and pleasures, and dress; about New York, and the new house Mrs. Linceford had taken in West Twenty-ninth Street, where they were to visit her next winter, and participate for the first time, under her matronizing, in city gayeties. Leslie wondered how they could; she only answered when appealed to; she felt as if people were jogging her elbow, and whispering distractions, in the midst of some noble eloquence.

The woods had a word for her; a question, and their own sweet answer of help. The fair June leafage was out in its young glory of vivid green; it reminded her of her talk with Cousin Delight.

“We do love leaves for their own sake; trees, and vines, and the very green grass, even.” So she said to herself, asking still for the perfect parable that should solve and teach all.

It came, with the breath of wild grape-vines, hidden somewhere in the wayside thickets. “Under the leaf lies our tiny green blossom,” it said; “and its perfume is out on the air. Folded in the grass-blade is a feathery bloom, of seed or grain; and by and by the fields will be all waving with it. Be sure that the blossom is under the leaf.”

Elinor Hadden’s sweet child-face, always gentle and good-humored, though visited little yet with the deep touch of earnest thought,—smiling upon life as life smiled upon her,—looked lovelier to Leslie as this whisper made itself heard in her heart; and it was with a sweeter patience and a more believing kindliness that she answered, and tried to enter into, her next merry words.

There was something different about Jeannie. She was older; there was a kind of hard determination sometimes with her, in turning from suggestions of graver things; the child-unconsciousness was no longer there; something restless, now and then defiant, had taken its place; she had caught a sound of the deeper voices, but her soul would not yet turn to listen. She felt the blossom of life yearning under the leaf; but she bent the green beauty needfully above it, and made believe it was not there.

Looking into herself and about her with asking eyes, Leslie had learned something already by which she apprehended these things of others. Heretofore, her two friends had seemed to her alike,—able, both of them, to take life innocently and carelessly as it came; she began now to feel a difference.

Her eyes were bent away off toward the Franconia hills, when Mrs. Linceford leaned round to look in them, and spoke, in the tone her voice had begun to take toward her. She felt one of her strong likings—her immense fancies, as she called them, which were really warm sympathies of the best of her with the best she found in the world—for Leslie Goldthwaite.

“It seems to me you are a stray sunbeam this morning,” she said, in her winning way. “What kind of thoughts are going out so far? What is it all about?”

A verse of the Psalms was ringing itself in Leslie’s mind; had been there, under all the other vague musings and chance suggestions for many minutes of her silence. But she would not have spoken it—she could not—for all the world. She gave the lady one of the chance suggestions instead. “I have been looking down into that lovely hollow; it seems like a children’s party, with all the grave grown folks looking on.”

“Childhood and grown-up-hood; not a bad simile.”

It was not indeed. It was a wild basin, within a group of the lesser hills close by; full of little feathery birches, that twinkled and played in the light breeze and gorgeous sunshine slanting in upon them between the slopes that lay in shadow above,—slopes clothed with ranks of dark pines and cedars and hemlocks, looking down seriously, yet with a sort of protecting tenderness, upon the shimmer and frolic they seemed to have climbed up out of. Those which stood in the half-way shadow were gravest. Hoar old stems upon the very tops were touched with the selfsame glory that lavished itself below. This also was no less a true similitude.

“Know ye not this parable?” the Master said. “How then shall ye know all parables?” Verily, they lie about us by the wayside, and the whole earth is vocal with the wisdom of the Lord.

I cannot go with our party step by step; I have a summer to spend with them. They came to Jefferson at noon, and sat themselves down in the solemn high court and council of the mountain kings. First, they must have rooms. In the very face of majesty they must settle their traps.

“You are lucky in coming in for one vacancy, made to-day,” the proprietor said, throwing open a door that showed them a commodious second-floor corner-room, looking each way with broad windows upon the circle of glory, from Adams to Lafayette. A wide balcony ran along the southern side, against the window which gave that aspect. There were two beds here, and two at least of the party must be content to occupy. Mrs. Linceford, of course; and it was settled that Jeannie should share it with her.

Up stairs, again, was choice of two rooms,—one flight or two. But the first looked out westward, where was comparatively little of what they had come for. Higher up, they could have the same outlook that the others had; a slanting ceiling opened with dormer window full upon the grandeur of Washington, and a second faced southward to where beautiful blue, dreamy Lafayette lay soft against the tender heaven.

“O, let us have this!” said Leslie, eagerly. “We don’t mind stairs.” And so it was settled.

“Only two days here?” they began to say, when they gathered in Mrs. Linceford’s room at nearly tea-time, after a rest and a freshening of their toilettes.

“We might stay longer,” Mrs. Linceford answered. “But the rooms are taken for us at Outledge, and one can’t settle and unpack, when it’s only a lingering from day to day. All there is here one sees from the windows. A great deal, to be sure; but it’s all there at the first glance. We’ll see how we feel on Friday.”

“The Thoresbys are here, Augusta. I saw Ginevra on the balcony just now. They seem to have a large party with them. And I’m sure I heard them talk of a hop to-night. If your trunks would only come!”

“They could not, in time. They can only come in the train that reaches Littleton at six.”

“But you’ll go in, won’t you? ’T isn’t likely they dress much here,—though Ginevra Thoresby always dresses. Elinor and I could just put on our blue grenadines, and you’ve got plenty of things in your other boxes. One of your shawls is all you want, and we can lend Leslie something.”

“I’ve only my thick travelling-boots,” said Leslie; “and I shouldn’t feel fit without a thorough dressing. It won’t matter the first night, will it?”

“Leslie Goldthwaite, you’re getting slow! Augusta!”

“As true as I live, there is old Marmaduke Wharne!”

“Let Augusta alone for not noticing a question till she chooses to answer it,” said Jeannie Hadden, laughing. “And who, pray, is Marmaduke Wharne? With a name like that, if you didn’t say ‘old,’ I should make up my mind to a real hero, right out of a book.”

“He’s an original. And—yes—he is a hero,—out of a book, too, in his way. I met him at Catskill last summer. He stayed there the whole season, till they shut the house up and drove him down the mountain. Other people came and went, took a look, and ran away; but he was a fixture. He says he always does so,—goes off somewhere and ‘finds an Ararat,’ and there drifts up and sticks fast. In the winter he’s in New York; but that’s a needle in a haystack. I never heard of him till I found him at Catskill. He’s an Englishman, and they say had more to his name once. It was Wharne-cliffe or Wharne-leigh, or something, and there’s a baronetcy in the family. I don’t doubt, myself, that it’s his, and that a part of his oddity has been to drop it. He was a poor preacher, years ago; and then, of a sudden, he went out to England, and came back with plenty of money, and since then he’s been an apostle and missionary among the poor. That’s his winter work; the summers, as I said, he spends in the hills. Most people are half afraid of him; for he’s one you’ll get the blunt truth from, if you never got it before. But come, there’s the gong,—ugh! how they batter it!—and we must get through tea, and out upon the balcony, to see the sunset and the ‘purple light.’ There’s no time now, girls, for blue grenadines; and it’s always vulgar to come out in a hurry with dress in a strange place.” And Mrs. Linceford gave a last touch to her hair, straightened the things on her dressing-table, shut down the lid of a box, and led the way from the room.

Out upon the balcony they watched the long, golden going-down of the sun, and the creeping shadows, and the purple half-light, and the after-smile upon the crests. And then the heaven gathered itself in its night stillness, and the mountains were grand in the soft gloom, until the full moon came up over Washington.

There had been a few words of recognition with the Thoresby party, and then our little group had betaken itself to the eastern end of the piazza. After a while, one by one, the others strayed away, and they were left almost alone. There was a gathering and a sound of voices about the drawing-room, and presently came the tones of the piano, struck merrily. They jarred, somehow, too; for the ringing, thrilling notes of a horn, blown below, had just gone down the diminishing echoes from cliff to cliff, and died into a listening silence, away over, one could not tell where, beyond the mysterious ramparts.

“It’s getting cold,” said Jeannie, impatiently. “I think we’ve stayed here long enough. Augusta, don’t you mean to get a proper shawl, and put some sort of lace thing on your head, and come in with us for a look, at least, at the hop? Come, Nell; come, Leslie; you might as well be at home as in a place like this, if you’re only going to mope.”

“It seems to me,” said Leslie, more to herself than to Jeannie, looking over upon the curves and ridges and ravines of Mount Washington, showing vast and solemn under the climbing moon, “as if we had got into a cathedral!”

“And the ‘great nerve’ was being touched! Well,—that don’t make me shiver. Besides, I didn’t come here to shiver. I’ve come to have a right good time; and to look at the mountains—as much as is reasonable.”

It was a pretty good definition of what Jeannie Hadden thought she had come into the world for. There was subtle indication in it, also, that the shadow of some doubt had not failed to touch her either, and that this with her was less a careless instinct than a resolved conclusion.

Elinor, in her happy good-humor, was ready for either thing; to stay in the night-splendor longer, or to go in. It ended in their going in. Outside, the moon wheeled on in her long southerly circuit, the stars trembled in their infinite depths, and the mountains abided in awful might. Within was a piano-tinkle of gay music, and demi-toilette, and demi-festival,—the poor, abridged reproduction of city revelry in the inadequate parlor of an unpretending mountain-house, on a three-ply carpet.

Marmaduke Wharne came and looked in at the doorway. Mrs. Linceford rose from her seat upon the sofa close by, and gave him courteous greeting. “The season has begun early, and you seem likely to have a pleasant summer here,” she said, with the half-considered meaning of a common fashion of speech.

“No, madam!” answered Marmaduke Wharne, out of his real thought, with a blunt emphasis.

“You think not?” said Mrs. Linceford, suavely, in a quiet amusement. “It looks rather like it to-night.”

“This?—It’s no use for people to bring their bodies to the mountains, if they can’t bring souls in them!” And Marmaduke Wharne turned on his heel, and, without further courtesy, strode away.

“What an old Grimgriffinhoof!” cried Jeannie, under her breath; and Elinor laughed her little musical laugh of fun.

Mrs. Linceford drew up her shawl, and sat down again, the remnant of a well-bred smile upon her face. Leslie Goldthwaite rather wished old Marmaduke Wharne would come back again and say more. But this first glimpse of him was all they got to-night.

Leslie said the last line of Whittier’s glorious mountain sonnet, low, to herself, standing on the balcony again that next morning, in the cold, clear breeze; the magnificent lines of the great earth-masses rearing themselves before her sharply against a cloudless morning sky, defining and revealing themselves anew.

“Freedom’s northern wind will take all the wave out of your hair, and give you a red nose!” said Jeannie, coming round from her room, and upon Leslie unaware.

Well, Jeannie was a pretty thing to look at, in her delicate blue cambric morning dress, gracefully braided with white, with the fresh rose of recent sleep in her young cheeks, and the gladness of young life in her dark eyes. One might look away from the mountains to look at her; for, after all, the human beauty is the highest. Only, it must express high things, or at last one turns aside.

“And there comes Marmaduke; he’s worse than the north wind. I can’t stay to be ‘blown clear’ by him.” And Jeannie, in high, merry good-humor, flitted off. It is easy to be merry and good-humored when one’s new dress fits exquisitely, and one’s hair hasn’t been fractious in the doing up.

Leslie had never, apparently to herself, cared less, somehow, for self and little vanities; it seemed as if it were going to be quite easy for her, now and henceforth, to care most for the nobler things of life. The great mountain-enthusiasm had seized her for the first time, and swept away before it all meaner thought; and, besides, her trunk had been left behind, and she had nothing to put herself into but her plain brown travelling-dress.

She let the wind play with the puffs of her hair, and send some little light locks astray about her forehead. She wrapped her shawl around her, and went and sat where she had sat the night before, at the eastern end of the balcony, her face toward the morning hills, as it had been toward the evening radiance and purple shade. Marmaduke Wharne was moving up and down, stopping a little short of her when he turned, keeping his own solitude as she kept hers. Faces and figures glanced out at the hall-door for an instant each, and the keen salute of the north wind sent them invariably in again. Nobody wanted to go with a red nose or tossed hair to the breakfast-table; and breakfast was almost ready. But presently Mrs. Linceford came, and, seeing Mr. Wharne, who always interested and amused her, she ventured forth, bidding him good morning.

“Good morning, madam. It is a good morning.”

“A little sharp, isn’t it?” she said, shrugging her shoulders together, irresolute about further lingering. “Ah, Leslie? Let me introduce you to the Reverend Mr. Wharne. My young friend and travelling companion, Miss Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne. Have you two driven everybody else off, or is it the nipping air?”

“I think it is either that they have not said their prayers this morning, or that they don’t know their daily bread when they see it. They think it is only saleratus cakes and maple molasses.”

“As cross this morning as last night?” the lady questioned playfully.

“Not cross at all, Mrs. Linceford. Only jarred upon continually by these people we have here just now. It was different two years ago. But Jefferson is getting to be too well known. The mountain places are being spoiled, one after another.”

“People will come. You can’t help that.”

“Yes, they will come, and frivel about the gates, without ever once entering in. ‘Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity.’ ”

Leslie Goldthwaite’s face quickened and glowed; they were the psalm-lines that had haunted her thought yesterday, among the opening visions of the hill-country. Marmaduke Wharne bent his keen eyes upon her, from under their gray brows, noting her narrowly. She wist not that she was noted, or that her face shone.

“One soul here, at least!” was what the stern old man said to himself in that moment.

He was cynical and intolerant here among the mountains, where he felt the holy places desecrated, and the gift of God unheeded. In the haunts of city misery and vice,—misery and vice shut in upon itself, with no broad outlook to the heavens,—he was tender, with the love of Christ himself.

“ ‘My house shall be called the house of prayer; but these have made it a den of thieves.’ It is true not alone of the temples built with hands.”

“Is that fair? How do you know, Mr. Wharne?” The sudden, impetuous questions came from Leslie Goldthwaite.

“I see—what I see.”

“The whole?” said Leslie, more restrainedly. She remembered her respect for age and office. Yet she felt sorely tempted, shy, proud girl as she was, to take up cudgels for her friends, at least. Mr. Wharne liked her the better for that.

“They turn away from this, with five words,—the toll of custom,—or half a look, when the wind is north; and they go in to what you saw last night.”

“After all, isn’t it just enjoyment, either way? Mayn’t one be as selfish as the other? People were kind, and bright, and pleasant with each other last night. Is that a bad thing?”

“No, little girl, it is not.” And Marmaduke Wharne came nearer to Leslie, and looked at her with a gentle look that was wonderfully beautiful upon his stern gray face. “Only, I would have a kindness that should go deep,—coming from a depth. There are two things for live men and women to do. To receive, from God; and to give out, to their fellows. One cannot be done without the other. No fruit, without the drinking of the sunshine. No true tasting of the sunshine that is not gathering itself toward the ripening of fruit.”

Here it was again; more teaching to the selfsame point,—as we always do get it, with a seeming strangeness, whether it be for mind only, or for soul. You never heard of a new name, or fact in history, that did not come out again presently in some fresh or further mention or allusion. It is the tender training of Him before whom our life is of so great value.

At this moment, the gong sounded again; saleratus cakes and maple molasses were ready; and they all went in.

Leslie saw Imogen Thoresby change seats with her mother, because the draft from the door was less in her place; and take the pale top-cake from the plate, leaving a brown one for the mother. Everybody likes brown cakes best; and it was very unbecoming to sit opposite a great, unshaded window, to say nothing of the draft. Surely a little blossom peeped out here from under the leaf. Leslie thought Imogen Thoresby might be forgiven for having done her curls so elaborately, and put on such an elegant wrapper; even for having ventured only a half-look out at the balcony door, when she found the wind was north. The parable was already teaching her both ways.

I do not mean to preach upon every page. I have begun by trying to tell you how a great influencing thought was given into Leslie Goldthwaite’s life, and began to unravel for her perplexing questions that had troubled her,—questions that come, I think, to many a young girl just entering upon the world, as they came to her;—how, in the simple history of her summer among the mountains, a great deal solved itself and grew clear. I would like to succeed in making you divine this, as you follow out the simple history itself.

“Just in time!” cried Jeannie Hadden, running up into Leslie’s room at mid-afternoon that day. “There’s a stage over from Littleton, and your trunk is being brought up this minute.”

“And the hair-trunk and the mail-bag came on, too, after all, and the queerest people with them!” added Elinor, entering behind her.

They both stood back and were silent, as a man came heavily along the passage with the trunk upon his shoulder. He set it down and unfastened the straps, and in a minute more was gone, and Leslie had the lid open. All there, just as it had been in her own room at home three days ago. Her face brightened, seeing her little treasures again. She had borne it well; she had been able to enjoy without them; but she was very glad that they were come.

“It’s nice that dinner is at lunch-time here, and that nobody dresses until now. Make haste, and get on something pretty. Augusta won’t let us get out organdies, but we’re determined on the blue grenadines. It’s awfully hot,—hot enough for anything. Do your hair over the high rats, just for once.”

“I always get into such a fuss with them, and I can’t bear to waste the time. How will this do?” Leslie unpinned from its cambric cover a gray iron barège, with a narrow puffing round the hem of the full skirt and the little pointed bertha cape. With it lay bright cherry ribbons for the neck and hair.

“Lovely! Make haste and come down to our room.” And having to dress herself, Jeannie ran off again, and Elinor shut the door.

It was nice to have on everything fresh; to have got her feet into rosetted slippers instead of heavy balmoral boots; to feel the lightness and grace of her own movement as she went down stairs and along the halls in floating folds of delicate barège, after wearing the close, uncomfortable travelling-dress, with the sense of dust and fatigue that clung about it; to have a little flutter of bright ribbon in her hair, that she knew was, as Elinor said, “the prettiest part of her.” It was pleasant to see Mrs. Linceford look pleased, as she opened her door to her, and to have her say, “You always do get on exactly the right thing!” There was a fresh feeling of pleasure even in looking over at Washington, sunlighted and shadowed in his miles of heights and depths, as she sat by the cool east window, feeling quite her dainty self again. Dress is but the outside thing, as beauty is but “skin deep”; but there is a deal of inevitable skin-sensation, pleasurable or uncomfortable, and Leslie had a good right to be thoroughly comfortable now.

The blinds to the balcony window were closed; that led to a funny little episode presently,—an odd commentary on the soul-and-body question, as it had come up to them in graver fashion.

Outside, to two chairs just under the window, came a couple newly arrived,—the identical proprietors of the exchanged luggage. It was an elderly countryman, and his home-bred, matter-of-fact wife. They too had had their privations and anxieties, and the outset of their evidently unusual travels had been marred in its pleasure. In plain truth, the good woman was manifestly soured by her experience.

Right square before the blinds she turned her back, unconscious of the audience within, lifted her elbows, like clothes-poles, to raise her draperies, and settled herself with a dissatisfied flounce, that expressed beforehand what she was about to put in words. “For my part,” she announced, deliberately, “I think the White Mountains is a clear—hummux!”

“Good large hummocks, any way,” returned her companion.

“You know what I mean. ’T aint worth comin’ for. Losin’ baggage, an’ everything. We’d enough sight better ha’ stayed at Plymouth. An’ if it hadn’t a ben for your dunderheadedness, givin’ up the checks an’ never stoppin’ to see what was comin’ of ’em, trunks or hen-coops, we might. There’s somethin’ to see, there. That little bridge leadin’ over to the swings and seats across the river was real pretty and pleasant. And the cars comin’ in an’ startin’ off, right at the back door, made it lively. I alwers did like to see passin’.”

The attitudes inside the blinds were something, at this moment. Mrs. Linceford, in a spasm of suppressed laughter herself, held her handkerchief to her lips with one hand, and motioned peremptory silence to the girls with the other. Jeannie was noiselessly clapping her hands, and dancing from one toe to the other with delight. Leslie and Elinor squeezed each other’s fingers lightly, and leaned forward together, their faces brimming over with fun; and the former whispered with emphatic pantomime to Mrs. Linceford, “If Mr. Wharne were only here!”

“You’ve been worried,” said the man. “And you’ve ben comin’ up to ’em gradooal. You don’t take ’em in. If one of these ’ere hills was set out in our fields to home, you’d think it was something more than a hummock, I guess.”

“Well, why ain’t they, then? It’s the best way to put things where you can see ’em to an advantage. They’re all in the way of each other here, and don’t show for nothing to speak of. Worried! I guess I hev ben! I shan’t git over it till I’ve got home an’ ben settled down a week. It’s a mercy I’ve ever laid eyes agin on that bran-new black alpacky!”

“Well, p’raps the folks felt wuss that lost them stylish-lookin’ trunks. I’ll bet they had something more in ’em than black alpackys.”

“That don’t comfort me none. I’ve had my tribulation.”

“Well, come, don’t be grouty, Hannah. We’ve got through the wust of it, and if you ain’t satisfied, why, we’ll go back to Plymouth again. I can stand it awhile, I guess, if ’tis four dollars a day.”

He had evidently sat still a good while for him, honest man; and he got up with this, and began to pace up and down, looking at the “hummocks,” which signified greater meanings to him than to his wife.

Mrs. Linceford came over and put the window down. It was absolutely necessary to laugh now, however much of further entertainment might be cut off.

Hannah jumped up, electrified, as the sash went down behind her.

“John! John! There’s folks in there!”

“’Spose likely,” said John, with quiet relish of amends. “What’s good for me ’ill do for them!”

Author of “Faith Gartney’s Girlhood.”

LITTLE Patty Mudge looked up from her story-book with a sigh, and as she looked up she caught the reflection of her face in a mirror over the table, and sighed again.

“O dear! if I were only slender and pale and graceful, and a grown-up young lady,—or a princess, and lived in an elegant mansion or a palace, and had heaps of money, and could carry bunches of flowers to sick folks lying on ‘snowy couches,’—or could glide like an angel over battle-fields, to ‘bathe the pallid brows of dying heroes,’—or could ‘seek out the gloomy abodes of poverty, and illuminate them with my presence!’ But here I am, nothing but Patty Mudge, short and stout and homely, with a broad face and a wide mouth, and—not exactly poor, but then I have to work rather hard for a little girl; and as for the troubles of this world, somehow I don’t feel so badly about them as I ought to, or else the folks round here don’t have any to speak of. It isn’t easy for me to feel badly about anything, I believe. But I should like to know how to say sympathizing things, and ‘have a mission,’ such as the sermons and poems tell about, and do something great ‘for the good of mankind.’ I wonder if I ever shall.”

“Now’s your chance,” said a little squeaking voice. Where did it come from? There was nothing in sight but a heap of pumpkins on a board just outside the window, and a small mulatto girl passing the garden-fence, scantily clad, and shivering in the cold November sunshine. All that Patty knew of her was that her name was “Poppy,”—“Poppæa” abbreviated,—and that she belonged to a family who had lately been helped to come North by the Freedmen’s Aid Society; a family who had been slaves, and very shiftless ones, it appeared, from their unwillingness to labor, and their ignorant ways of doing the little they could do. They were staying in one end of an old tumble-down house a little way from Patty’s, and of late had been a good deal neglected by the thrifty people of the village, who somehow had forgotten that it takes an education of work to love it and do it well.

But it could not be this little girl who spoke; she was hurrying on, without turning a glance towards the house, eager no doubt to reach her miserable shelter from the cold. Shelter! the hens and the pigs would scarcely call it that. How cheerless it must be, with the wind screaming and puffing between the loose clapboards! And what kind of a dinner did they sit down to yesterday, and what would they have for Thanksgiving to-morrow? But somebody would bake something for them; and so, after all this thinking, Patty was gliding back into her visions of sentimental benevolence, when the faint squeak was heard again, “Now’s your chance!”

Patty’s curiosity was fully aroused. She went out and stood upon the doorstep. The mulatto child was out of sight, and everything was still but the wind, and that hardly whispered through the leafless boughs of the pear-trees. But there was the voice, close to her now. “Help me down,” it said. And Patty’s mouth opened wider than ever, as she saw the topmost pumpkin of the pile at her side, moving itself without aid of hands. She took hold of its stem, and, although it was one of the heaviest of the lot, she scarcely felt its weight at all. The pumpkin seemed of itself to give one great leap to the ground, where it stood shaking its thick sides, as if wearied by the unusual exertion.

“Carry me in!” said the voice again, pantingly.

Patty had not believed her own ears until now. A pumpkin talking! That was more wonderful than Æsop’s fables, truly. But why shouldn’t it speak, as well as brambles and oak-trees and brass kettles? So she turned the great thing over upon its side, and rolled it, or rather let it roll itself, up the steps into the kitchen.

“Cook me,” said the little, panting, squeaking voice again. “Cook me.”

Patty knew how to work very well. She had been helping her mother make the Thanksgiving pies and puddings for some time; but the idea of a pumpkin walking into the house and asking to be cooked was so funny, that she sat down on the floor opposite the plump, yellow-faced vegetable, and laughed, the pumpkin meanwhile rocking backward and forward, as if it were laughing too.

Just then her mother came in. “Mother, may I make some pumpkin pies?” said Patty.

“Well, I don’t care,” was the answer of the busy woman. “Our folks don’t seem to be very fond of ’em, and I’m afraid they wouldn’t fancy any of your mussin’ up. But you can make ’em, if you’ll only promise to get somebody to eat ’em.”

Patty had become so much interested in the talking pumpkin, that she willingly promised; but when she took the knife to peel off the golden rind, it seemed almost wicked to do it! There was such a glow over it, from the ruddy firelight, such a look of live heartiness and comfort about it, lying there, ripe and stout, on the floor, she was reminded indistinctly of the reflection of her own fat face and figure in the mirror. Really, it seemed almost human. Wouldn’t she be haunted by some goblin with fiery eyes, such as the boys made of hollow pumpkin-shells, if she cut this one to pieces?

But the pumpkin began to squeak impatiently, “Cut me up! cut me up!” and Patty obeyed without more ado. Determined to have her pies as nice as they could be made, she poured out her milk, stirred in spice and sweetening, and made the crust light, wondering, while she rolled it out, who would eat them when they were done.

But the pumpkin told her, as it boiled in the kettle; no longer with that low squeak, but with a deep musical rumble, as if laughing with joy over its own fate. “Black Poppy’s people; black Poppy’s people.” And why shouldn’t a pumpkin rejoice in the sacrifice of its own life for a benevolent purpose? A certain poet says it is his faith “that every flower enjoys the air it breathes.” And so, doubtless, every vegetable used for the nourishment of mankind enjoys the death it dies, if it enjoys anything. At all events, the pumpkin, though it had ceased to speak, looked as bright and happy in Patty’s eyes, when it emerged from the oven in the form of half a dozen glossy, flaky pies, as when it rolled so clumsily down from the pile by the door-step, and a great deal handsomer.

And Patty herself, when she carried the pies to Poppy’s wretched home,—having first set one aside in the cupboard, that her mother might see that she could bake pies worth anybody’s eating,—looked almost beautiful with the excitement of doing a kindly deed. Her sun-browned hands and stout arms were just fitted for the healthy work they had been doing, and she had as much reason to be proud of them as any lady of her delicate fingers; for certainly those are the prettiest hands that do most willingly the work they were made for.

And black Poppy’s people could not have received one of the graceful ministering spirits of the story-books with more eloquent gratitude than they did the homely little girl and her heavy basket of pies. Indeed, to these half-starved beings she was a vision of loveliness,—a real angel of mercy.

And in helping to keep them comfortable for the winter, and in teaching them how to take care of themselves, Patty, without knowing it, has “found her mission.” She does not get much time now for looking at her own broad face and large features in the mirror, nor to plan for herself picturesque labors of charity. But since her ears were opened to hear the pumpkin speak, she hears invitations enough to works of kindness close about her home. Indoors and out, everything that can be turned to useful account seeks the acquaintance of little Patty Mudge. All the plants and the animals, and fire and water and air, have found voices, and are always whispering to her eagerly,—“Now’s your chance!”

Lucy Larcom.

UNDER the window of a certain pretty little cottage there grew a great old apple-tree, which in the spring had thousands and thousands of lovely pink blossoms on it, and in the autumn had about half as many bright red apples as it had blossoms in the spring.

The nursery of this cottage was a little bower of a room, papered with mossy-green paper, and curtained with white muslin; and here five little children used to come, in their white nightgowns, to be dressed and have their hair brushed and curled every morning.

First, there were Alice and Mary, bright-eyed, laughing little girls, of seven and eight years, and then came stout little Jamie, and Charlie, and finally little Puss, whose real name was Ellen, but who was called Puss, and Pussy, and Birdie, and Toddlie, and any other pet name that came to mind.

Now it used to happen; every morning, that the five little heads would be peeping out of the window, together, into the flowery boughs of the apple-tree; and the reason was this. A pair of robins had built a very pretty, smooth-lined nest in a fork of the limb that came directly under the window, and the building of this nest had been superintended, day by day, by the five pairs of bright eyes of these five children. The robins at first had been rather shy of this inspection; but, as they got better acquainted, they seemed to think no more of the little curly heads in the window, than of the pink blossoms about them, or the daisies and buttercups at the foot of the tree.

All the little hands were forward to help; some threw out flossy bits of cotton,—for which, we grieve to say, Charlie had cut a hole in the crib quilt,—and some threw out bits of thread and yarn, and Allie ravelled out a considerable piece from one of her garters, which she threw out as a contribution; and they exulted in seeing the skill with which the little builders wove everything in. “Little birds, little birds,” they would say, “you shall be kept warm, for we have given you cotton out of our crib quilt, and yarn out of our stockings.” Nay, so far did this generosity proceed, that Charlie cut a flossy, golden curl from Toddlie’s head and threw it out; and when the birds caught it up, the whole flock laughed to see Toddlie’s golden hair figuring in a bird’s-nest.

When the little thing was finished, it was so neat, and trim, and workman-like, that the children all exulted over it, and called it “our nest,” and the two robins they called “our birds.” But wonderful was the joy when the little eyes, opening one morning, saw in the nest a beautiful pale-green egg; and the joy grew from day to day, for every day there came another egg, and so on till there were five little eggs; and then the oldest girl, Alice, said, “There are five eggs; that makes one for each of us, and each of us will have a little bird by and by”;—at which all the children laughed and jumped for glee.

When the five little eggs were all laid, the mother-bird began to sit on them; and at any time of day or night, when a little head peeped out of the nursery window, might be seen a round, bright, patient pair of bird’s eyes contentedly waiting for the young birds to come. It seemed a long time for the children to wait; but every day they put some bread and cake from their luncheon on the window-sill, so that the birds might have something to eat; but still there she was, patiently watching!

“How long, long, long she waits!” said Jamie, impatiently. “I don’t believe she’s ever going to hatch.”

“O, yes she is!” said grave little Alice. “Jamie, you don’t understand about these things; it takes a long, long time to hatch eggs. Old Sam says his hens set three weeks;—only think, almost a month!”

Three weeks looked a long time to the five bright pairs of little watching eyes; but Jamie said, the eggs were so much smaller than hen’s eggs, that it wouldn’t take so long to hatch them, he knew. Jamie always thought he knew all about everything, and was so sure of it that he rather took the lead among the children. But one morning, when they pushed their five heads out of the window, the round, patient little bird-eyes were gone, and there seemed to be nothing in the nest but a bunch of something hairy.

Upon this they all cried out, “O mamma, do come here! the bird is gone and left her nest!” And when they cried out, they saw five wide little red mouths open in the nest, and saw that the hairy bunch of stuff was indeed the first of five little birds.

“They are dreadful-looking things,” said Mary; “I didn’t know that little birds began by looking so badly.”

“They seem to be all mouth,” said Jamie.

“We must feed them,” said Charlie.

“Here, little birds, here’s some gingerbread for you,” he said; and he threw a bit of his gingerbread, which fortunately only hit the nest on the outside, and fell down among the buttercups, where two crickets made a meal of it, and agreed that it was as excellent gingerbread as if old Mother Cricket herself had made it.

“Take care, Charlie,” said his mamma; “we do not know enough to feed young birds. We must leave it to their papa and mamma, who probably started out bright and early in the morning to get breakfast for them.”

Sure enough, while they were speaking, back came Mr. and Mrs. Robin, whirring through the green shadows of the apple-tree; and thereupon all the five little red mouths flew open, and the birds put something into each.

It was great amusement, after this, to watch the daily feeding of the little birds, and to observe how, when not feeding them, the mother sat brooding on the nest, warming them under her soft wings, while the father-bird sat on the tip-top bough of the apple-tree and sang to them. In time they grew and grew, and, instead of a nest full of little red mouths, there was a nest full of little, fat, speckled robins, with round, bright, cunning eyes, just like their parents; and the children began to talk together about their birds.

“I’m going to give my robin a name,” said Mary. “I call him Brown-Eyes.”

“And I call mine Tip-Top,” said Jamie, “because I know he’ll be a tip-top bird.”

“And I call mine Singer,” said Alice.

“I ’all mine Toddy,” said little Toddlie, who would not be behindhand in anything that was going on.

“Hurrah for Toddlie!” said Charlie, “hers is the best of all. For my part, I call mine Speckle.”

So then the birds were all made separate characters by having each a separate name given it. Brown-Eyes, Tip-Top, Singer, Toddy, and Speckle made, as they grew bigger, a very crowded nestful of birds.

Now the children had early been taught to say, in a little hymn:—

and they thought anything really written and printed in a hymn must be true; therefore they were very much astonished to see, from day to day, that their little birds in their nest did not agree.

Tip-Top was the biggest and strongest bird, and he was always shuffling and crowding the others, and clamoring for the most food; and when Mrs. Robin came in with a nice bit of anything, Tip-Top’s red mouth opened so wide, and he was so noisy, that one would think the nest was all his. His mother used to correct him for these gluttonous ways, and sometimes made him wait till all the rest were helped before she gave him a mouthful; but he generally revenged himself in her absence by crowding the others and making the nest generally uncomfortable. Speckle, however, was a bird of spirit, and he used to peck at Tip-Top; so they would sometimes have a regular sparring-match across poor Brown-Eyes, who was a meek, tender little fellow, and would sit winking and blinking in fear while his big brothers quarrelled. As to Toddy and Singer, they turned out to be sister birds, and showed quite a feminine talent for chattering; they used to scold their badly behaving brothers in a way that made the nest quite lively.

On the whole, Mr. and Mrs. Robin did not find their family circle the peaceable place the poet represents.

“I say,” said Tip-Top one day to them, “this old nest is a dull, mean, crowded hole, and it’s quite time some of us were out of it; just give us lessons in flying, won’t you, and let us go.”

“My dear boy,” said Mother Robin, “we shall teach you to fly as soon as your wings are strong enough.”

“You are a very little bird,” said his father, “and ought to be good and obedient, and wait patiently till your wing-feathers grow; and then you can soar away to some purpose.”

“Wait for my wing-feathers? Humbug!” Tip-Top would say, as he sat balancing with his little short tail on the edge of the nest, and looking down through the grass and clover-heads below, and up into the blue clouds above. “Father and mother are slow old birds; keep a fellow back with their confounded notions. If they don’t hurry up, I’ll take matters into my own claws, and be off some day before they know it. Look at those swallows, skimming and diving through the blue air! That’s the way I want to do.”

“But, dear brother, the way to learn to do that is to be good and obedient while we are little, and wait till our parents think it best for us to begin.”

“Shut up your preaching,” said Tip-Top; “what do you girls know of flying?”

“About as much as you,” said Speckle. “However, I’m sure I don’t care how soon you take yourself off, for you take up more room than all the rest put together.”

“You mind yourself, Master Speckle, or you’ll get something you don’t like,” said Tip-Top, still strutting in a very cavalier way on the edge of the nest, and sticking up his little short tail quite valiantly.

“O my darlings,” said the mamma, now fluttering home, “cannot I ever teach you to live in love?”

“It’s all Tip-Top’s fault,” screamed the other birds in a flutter.

“My fault? Of course, everything in this nest that goes wrong is laid to me,” said Tip-Top; “and I’ll leave it to anybody, now, if I crowd anybody. I’ve been sitting outside, on the very edge of the nest, and there’s Speckle has got my place.”

“Who wants your place?” said Speckle. “I’m sure you can come in, if you please.”

“My dear boy,” said the mother, “do go into the nest and be a good little bird, and then you will be happy.”

“That’s always the talk,” said Tip-Top. “I’m too big for the nest, and I want to see the world. It’s full of beautiful things, I know. Now there’s the most lovely creature, with bright eyes, that comes under the tree every day, and wants me to come down in the grass and play with her.”

“My son, my son, beware!” said the frightened mother; “that lovely seeming creature is our dreadful enemy, the cat,—a horrid monster, with teeth and claws.”

At this, all the little birds shuddered and cuddled deeper in the nest; only Tip-Top, in his heart, disbelieved it. “I’m too old a bird,” said he to himself, “to believe that story; mother is chaffing me. But I’ll show her that I can take care of myself.”

So the next morning, after the father and mother were gone, Tip-Top got on the edge of the nest again, and looked over and saw lovely Miss Pussy washing her face among the daisies under the tree, and her hair was sleek and white as the daisies, and her eyes were yellow and beautiful to behold, and she looked up to the tree bewitchingly, and said, “Little birds, little birds, come down; Pussy wants to play with you.”

“Only look at her!” said Tip-Top; “her eyes are like gold.”

“No, don’t look,” said Singer and Speckle. “She will bewitch you and then eat you up.”

“I’d like to see her try to eat me up,” said Tip-Top, again balancing his short tail over the nest. “Just as if she would! She’s just the nicest, most innocent creature going, and only wants us to have fun. We never do have any fun in this old nest!”

Then the yellow eyes below shot a bewildering light into Tip-Top’s eyes, and a voice sounded sweet as silver: “Little birds, little birds, come down; Pussy wants to play with you.”

“Her paws are as white as velvet,” said Tip-Top; “and so soft! I don’t believe she has any claws.”

“Don’t go, brother, don’t!” screamed both sisters.

All we know about it is, that a moment after a direful scream was heard from the nursery window. “O mamma, mamma, do come here! Tip-Top’s fallen out of the nest, and the cat has got him!”

Away ran Pussy with foolish little Tip-Top in her mouth, and he squeaked dolefully when he felt her sharp teeth. Wicked Miss Pussy had no mind to eat him at once; she meant just as she said, to “play with him.” So she ran off to a private place among the currant-bushes, while all the little curly heads were scattered up and down looking for her.

Did you ever see a cat play with a bird or a mouse? She sets it down, and seems to go off and leave it; but the moment it makes the first movement to get away,—pounce! she springs on it, and shakes it in her mouth; and so she teases and tantalizes it, till she gets ready to kill and eat it. I can’t say why she does it, except that it is a cat’s nature; and it is a very bad nature for foolish young robins to get acquainted with.

“O, where is he? where is he? Do find my poor Tip-Top,” said Jamie, crying as loud as he could scream. “I’ll kill that horrid cat,—I’ll kill her!”

Mr. and Mrs. Robin, who had come home meantime, joined their plaintive chirping to the general confusion; and Mrs. Robin’s bright eyes soon discovered her poor little son, where Pussy was patting and rolling him from one paw to the other under the currant-bushes; and, settling on the bush above, she called the little folks to the spot by her cries.

Jamie plunged under the bush, and caught the cat with luckless Tip-Top in her mouth; and, with one or two good thumps, he obliged her to let him go. Tip-Top was not dead, but in a sadly draggled and torn state. Some of his feathers were torn out, and one of his wings was broken, and hung down in a melancholy way.

“O, what shall we do for him? He will die. Poor Tip-Top!” said the children.

“Let’s put him back into the nest, children,” said mamma. “His mother will know best what to do with him.”

So a ladder was got, and papa climbed up and put poor Tip-Top safely into the nest. The cat had shaken all the nonsense well out of him; he was a dreadfully humbled young robin.

The time came at last when all the other birds in the nest learned to fly, and fluttered and flew about everywhere; but poor melancholy Tip-Top was still confined to the nest with a broken wing. Finally, as it became evident that it would be long before he could fly, Jamie took him out of the nest, and made a nice little cage for him, and used to feed him every day, and he would hop about and seem tolerably contented; but it was evident that he would be a lame-winged robin all his days.

Jamie’s mother told him that Tip-Top’s history was an allegory.

“I don’t know what you mean, mamma,” said Jamie.

“When something in a bird’s life is like something in a boy’s life, or when a story is similar in its meaning to reality, we call it an allegory. Little boys, when they are about half grown up, sometimes do just as Tip-Top did. They are in a great hurry to get away from home into the great world; and then Temptation comes, with bright eyes and smooth velvet paws, and promises them fun; and they go to bad places; they get to smoking, and then to drinking; and, finally, the bad habit gets them in its teeth and claws, and plays with them as a cat does with a mouse. They try to reform, just as your robin tried to get away from the cat; but their bad habits pounce on them and drag them back. And so, when the time comes that they want to begin life, they are miserable, broken-down creatures, like your broken-winged robin.

“So, Jamie, remember, and don’t try to be a man before your time, and let your parents judge for you while you are young; and never believe in any soft white pussy, with golden eyes, that comes and wants to tempt you to come down and play with her. If a big boy offers to teach you to smoke a cigar, that is Pussy. If a boy wants you to go into a billiard-saloon, that is Pussy. If a boy wants you to learn to drink anything with spirit in it, however sweetened and disguised, remember, Pussy is there; and Pussy’s claws are long, and Pussy’s teeth are strong; and if she gives you one shake in your youth, you will be like a broken-winged robin all your days.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

LYDIA’S home was with her grandmother in the country, for her mother was dead, and her father, who was a sea-captain, and seldom at home, did not keep house after the death of the little girl’s mother, but sent her to live with his mother; and there he used to come and visit her on his return from his voyages. It was a large, old-fashioned house where Mrs. Knowlton lived; but she did not occupy it all, for one of her sons, who was married, lived at the homestead and carried on the farm; and his children, Lydia’s cousins, were her playmates and schoolmates.

Her Uncle John kept a flock of sheep, beside the other animals that are usually kept upon a farm, and Lydia was very anxious to have a lamb for her own to make a pet of,—one that would know her as its mistress and love her and follow her about. There were no young lambs at the farm when Lydia went there to live; but her Uncle John said that, when there were any, she should have one for her own.

In the spring, very early, there came on a terrible snow-storm. It snowed for two days and two nights, and everything was buried under the drifts. Uncle John’s sheep had been turned out to browse among the shrubbery in the pastures and among the woods, and the great storm overtook them there, and they did not come home. The storm was so severe that the men could not find the sheep, and feared they would all perish of cold and hunger. It was several days before the snow settled enough to permit a search for them; and when at last the men did go out, it was with great snow-shoes, to prevent them from sinking too deep in the immense drifts. After a long and fruitless search for the missing flock, as they were returning home, they came to a place where there was a little valley or hollow between the partly wooded hillocks, and one of them noticed that it was filled almost to a level with snow; but all over the surface there were little holes not larger than a pipe-stem, through which a steam was rising.

“Look here, Mr. Knowlton,” said one of the men. “What do you make of this?”

“Ah, my sheep are under there,” said Mr. Knowlton. “Bring on the snow-shovels, boys, and we’ll dig ’em out.”

And, true enough, there were the sheep, all huddled together in this little hollow, whither they had resorted to escape the fury of the storm, and in which the snow had buried them; but their warm breaths had kept open the little breathing-holes, and they gnawed the bark and twigs off the shrubs and trees as high as they could reach.

As soon as the opening was made, the poor creatures rushed out; but the piercing March wind was so much colder than their snow-covered retreat, that they shivered with cold, and many of them stiffened and died. Among these was a mother-sheep that left a poor little bleating lamb, bewildered and chilled. Uncle John wrapped the little creature up in the great cape of his overcoat, and carried it home and gave it to Lydia. All the children gathered round to see the poor little thing, but no one thought it would live. The sheep were driven into the barn, but many of them died of the sudden chill they had taken while so exhausted for want of food and fresh air.

Lydia devoted herself to her little lamb, and fed and tended it with the kindest care, and it soon began to grow and thrive. It would follow its young mistress all about the house, its little feet going tap, tap, tap, on the floor, and it was full of fun and frolic; all the children loved Kate,—for that was the name which Lydia gave her lamb,—and Kate would run after them as they scampered down the long orchard-slope to the spring, and hop up, almost like a kitten, if they turned suddenly and clapped their hands to her. Kate was always on the clean, soft grass as the spring and summer came on; and her wool was white as snow. She never went away to the pastures and woods with the old sheep in the flock, for she was such a little pet that she could not be happy except when near her kind little playmates, the children; and they were so afraid that any harm might come to their darling Kate, that they kept her always in the orchard, which was close behind the house. The back door opened right out upon the grass, and there were three or four large old oaks close to the house. Sometimes in the summer evenings the tea-table was carried out and spread under the interlacing boughs, greatly to the delight of all the children; and there they romped and frolicked with Kate till bed-time, after the table was removed,—and sometimes Uncle John would take off his coat and have a merry game with them.

One summer morning, very early, Lydia was up, and with her little pan of milk went out to give Kate her breakfast. Kate was usually at the door by the time the first member of the family was stirring; but now she was not at her accustomed place, and though Lydia called her loud and long, she did not come. Lydia hastened to the barn, but she was not there, nor in the shed, nor garden. The man milking in the farm-yard had not seen her; but to Lydia’s anxious inquiries, he only said that he noticed “a strange yaller dog round here at the dawn o’ day; like enough he’d been a-worryin’ on her.”

Lydia rushed through the house, out at the orchard door, and into the high, wet grass; it was trampled, and the dew brushed off, as though something had been chased through it; and at last, under the old sweet apple-tree, she found her pet, cold and stiff, with a few bright drops of blood just under her snow-white neck.

Down upon the wet grass dropped Lydia, and, laying her face upon the soft wool, she cried as if her heart would break. “O my poor, poor Kate!” she sobbed. “To think you should come to this! All those hundreds of common sheep alive and well in the pastures, and you, my poor little lamb, killed, murdered! It’s too cruel!”

The horn was sounded for breakfast, but Lydia did not heed it; she was too choked with grief to eat; and when her cousin Hannah came out to find her, she met her hugging her dead pet in her arms and bringing it to the house. Then there was a fresh outburst of grief, and Uncle John and all the family came out to look at poor Kate and sympathize with Lydia.

“It was that ’ere yaller dog that done it,” said the man Reuben. “I knew he wa’n’t round here for nothing.”

“Let’s kill him, if we ever can find him,” whispered Hannah.

“So we will,” said Lydia.

After breakfast, Uncle John brought a box, and poor Kate was laid in it, and covered with sweet-brier roses and buttercups, and a little grave was dug under one of the old oaks, and there the pet was buried. A large slate, without a frame, was set up endwise in the ground, after Lydia’s cousin Jane had scratched deeply upon it, with the point of an awl, these words:—

All the children thought it was very solemn; and so it was to them, whatever the grown people thought of it.

That night, after the children went to bed, they lay awake a long time, talking over the fate of poor Kate, and devising means for being revenged upon the dog in case he should have the audacity to come there again in search of more prey. Nothing was too bad to be done to him; they would shoot him,—only they had no gun, and if they had, they did not know how to use it; they would scald him,—only that might put him in misery without killing him, and he must be killed to rid the world of such a monster of cruelty; they would poison him, but they hadn’t any poison and didn’t know where to get any; they would drown him, but if he was large and strong, he mightn’t be easy to manage; they would beat him, but he wouldn’t stand still to let them do that. They nearly despaired of being revenged upon him, till suddenly a bright thought struck Lydia: they would hang him, so they would; they could do that easily enough,—anybody could hang a dog; and besides, he deserved hanging, for he had committed a murder, and murderers are hanged for their crimes;—and so the yellow dog was sentenced to be hung.

The children did not disclose their plans, for somehow they had misgivings that they had not the victim yet in their hands, and might have some trouble in catching him; and if they should fail in their designs, they did not want to be laughed at. They were careful, however, to get a very minute description of the culprit from Reuben, who was the only person who had seen him, and they were then sure they should recognize him at sight.

That evening, after tea, when Lydia had been out to feed the chickens and shut them up for the night, what should she see but the very dog prowling about the sweet apple-tree in the orchard where the dead lamb had lain! Quick as a flash, she darted into the house, seized a piece of raw meat unobserved, and, beckoning to her two cousins, who were looking out of the window, started for the orchard at a flying pace, and the two cousins after her.

Calling to the dog in her kindest tones, she approached him, and he came toward them, wagging his tail. He smelt the meat, but she would not give him any there, and they ran on, out of the orchard, across the road, into a field leading down to a bushy, swampy meadow, where an old apple-tree grew out of the hillside, in such a way that one of its branches nearly touched the ground, the dog still following them; and here they gave him the meat, which he swallowed at a mouthful.

“The wretch! It’s the last supper he’ll eat!” said Lydia. “Hold him tight by the collar, girls! But oh! we haven’t brought any rope! O, isn’t it too bad? You hold him while I run home for a rope!”

“O, it’s too far! He’ll pull away from us,” said Jane, “before you can get back, and he might bite us too!”

“Let’s take our garters!” said Hannah.

No sooner said than done. The six stout, home-knit garters came off in a twinkling, and were tied together, while the yellow dog stood wagging his tail and wondering if a second piece of meat were coming. A slip-noose was placed over his head, the end thrown across the low limb of the apple-tree, and the united strength of the three girls pulled him slowly up till he dangled in the air, just above the ground. They made the string fast to the limb, though the poor creature struggled terribly, and then started for home as fast as they could run. The feeling of exultation over the common enemy was short-lived, however, and Lydia’s heart misgave her before she fairly reached the house. She went in; but she did not like to meet her grandmother lest she should ask her where she had been. So she stole up to her room; but she could not read or sew or knit, or amuse herself in any way.

“He’s only a dog,” she said to herself, “an old ugly tiger of a dog, to kill my poor Kate; his name ought to be Tiger, anyhow. But then I suppose he didn’t know any better than to kill Kate; dogs naturally worry sheep, as they do cats. Perhaps he wasn’t so much to blame after all! And then what if he is somebody’s pet? Perhaps somebody thinks as much of him as I did of my Katie,” and Lydia’s heart grew very soft. “If I wasn’t afraid, I’d go and cut him down; but he might bite me. But then perhaps he is dead by this time,”—and the tears came into her eyes.

Just then Hannah opened the door softly. “Lydia,” said she in a whisper, “do you suppose that poor dog is dead yet?”

“I don’t know; if I thought he wasn’t, I believe I’d go and cut him down.”

“So would I,” said Hannah. “Perhaps he wasn’t the dog that killed poor Kate after all!”

“Yes, he was, I almost know; but I don’t suppose he knew any better.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Hannah; “and how he trusted us, and wagged his tail when we fed him, and never tried to get away from us, nor bite us!”

“Let’s go,” said Lydia.

Down the back stairs they glided, noiselessly, and then on a swift run they started for the old apple-tree. The way seemed to lengthen before them.

“If he’s dead,” said Hannah, “let’s bring him home and bury him beside poor Kate.”

“Yes, so we will!” said Lydia. “But what will Uncle John say? O dear! I hope he isn’t dead!”

Just then they came in sight of the apple-tree. The dog was gone! Breathless the girls ran on. There hung a part of the rope of garters, broken short off just above the animal’s head. He had carried off the noose around his neck. The girls gave a sigh of relief, and looked at each other. “Where do you suppose he went to?” said each, at the same instant.

“Look there!” said Hannah. “What’s that?” and she walked toward the swamp. “There he is now,” she exclaimed, pointing to a knoll of grass, some yards before them; and sure enough, there lay the poor animal moaning piteously.

“He’s choked with that string,” said Lydia. “How I wish I could get it off!”

But there was water all over the surface of the meadow between them and the dry hillock on which the dog was lying; it was getting nearly dusk, and with reluctant feet and heavy hearts they turned homeward.

“Let’s get Reuben to go and get him,” said Hannah, “and cut off the string!”

“O, he would plague us so,” said Lydia, “we should never hear the last of it! Besides, you know he always goes to bed as soon as he milks.”

That night Lydia’s grandmother was not very well, and wanted Lydia to sleep with her; and she went to bed, but not to sleep. Hannah, too, tossed restlessly about, and whenever she closed her eyes she seemed to see the poor dog lying on the grassy hillock, moaning in pain, and with his head all swollen. The night—one of the shortest of the year—seemed endless to her, and as soon as the yellow light of the summer sun came creeping up the eastern sky, she was up and dressed, and, before any one in the house was stirring, started for the meadows. She did not forget her scissors, a small tin pan, and a piece of meat. Through the high, wet grass she ran, regardless of dress or stockings, and when at last she reached the edge of the water, she could dimly see the yellow dog still lying just where he lay the night before. Taking off her shoes and stockings, she boldly waded into the swamp, jumping here and there from one bunch of grass to another, which grew up through the oozy ground.

“He must be dead,” thought she, “he lies so still and makes no noise”; but as she came nearer, he wagged his tail faintly at the sound of her steps. His head and eyes were so swollen that he could not see, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, dry and parched with suffering. He breathed with a short and choking sound.

“Poor dog! poor dog!” said Hannah, her voice choking, “you shall not be abused any more!”—and, applying the scissors to the string, she had it off in a moment. Dipping up a pan of water, she brought it and wet the poor creature’s tongue. In a minute or two he tried to drink, and with difficulty swallowed a little of the water. This seemed to revive him; he got upon his feet, staggered a little, but finally settled down again, still wagging the tip of his tail faintly. Again Hannah held the basin of water to his mouth, and he drank more, opened his eyes a little, and tried to lick her hand. This was too much forgiveness,—a poor victim caressing the hands that had hung him; and Hannah cried over him almost as hard as she had over poor Kate. Presently he ate the meat she placed before him, and then with a joyful heart Hannah started for the house. She had only just got on her shoes and stockings, when, looking up, she saw Lydia running down the hill; in her hand were scissors and a piece of meat. She had come on the same errand. Looking round for the dog, they saw him just disappearing in the woods.

They returned to the house and kept the matter secret, but had no more visits from the yellow dog. Reuben said, several times, he thought it was “’mazing strange that ’ere yaller dog never come round here no more. He reckoned he kinder thought they had a plot agin him!” but the girls said never a word.

The next autumn, Hannah and Lydia took the old horse and chaise to go to a town some five or six miles off, and on their way stopped at the house of one of Lydia’s cousins, where she had not been for a year or two. As they drew up to the door, what should they see but that very yellow dog lying on the door-step.

The two girls looked at each other curiously enough. In the course of the forenoon the dog came in, and Lydia’s cousin patted him on the head, calling him a “dear old fellow”;—and then she went on to tell how he had been missing all night once during the last summer, and had come home in the morning with his head and eyes all swollen, and she supposed some one must have beaten him dreadfully. “He is one of the best dogs in the world,” she said, “and loves us all dearly; but he will sometimes worry the sheep.”

Hannah and Lydia blushed, and made haste to change the subject of conversation, and got away as soon as they could. They kept their secret till they were grown up, deeply thankful that they had not succeeded in avenging too cruelly the death of poor Kate.

Harriet F. Woods.

I SUPPOSE you think this quite a fanciful name for a little girl, and feel, upon reflection, rather glad that your mother didn’t call you Dilly-dally; now the fact was, she hadn’t been christened Dilly-dally (although it suited her so precisely, that Adam himself would have been puzzled to find her a better name), but Gertrude, or Ida, or some fine thing or other, no matter what, since nothing but Dilly-dally told the story of her character, and since it clung to her like any bur.

She began very early to show her natural disposition, as you may see when I tell you that she was the longest while in the world cutting her first teeth; after her mother had detected the earliest glimmer of a tiny pearl creeping through the pink gum, it positively seemed a hundred years to a day before it could be coaxed far enough along to assure an impartial beholder of its existence; it was just as though Dilly-dally said to herself, “There now! I’ve got it along so far, I guess I’ll wait till to-morrow to finish the job!” Though one could hardly blame her, for I suspect it is trying to be cutting teeth from morning till night.

One might, however, have forgiven her that, if she hadn’t made the same to-do over learning to walk. When her mother held out her arms and cried, “Baby walk to mamma its own se’f, and then baby shall go ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy,”—and all the rest of the nursery rhyme in nursery language, which only babies are supposed to understand,—baby would take two steps, with her little arms used as the tight-rope dancers use their poles, and, finding walking all work and no play, would plump down and finish the distance with hands and knees, looking much like an overgrown lizard. At one period, her friends flattered themselves that she would talk early; but after having achieved “Pa” and “Ma,” she appeared to think she had acquired enough English for all practical purposes, and relapsed into her original Hebrew. Upon which followed a war of words, wherein there was a good deal said on both sides to little or no purpose; and after all was said and done, Dilly-dally showed a strong inclination to stammer, to clip her words, to abridge her sentences, even to drawl, and wilfully to plunder and murder the King’s English, rather than say the right thing, at the right time, in the right place.

I will spare you a relation of the Dilly-dally primer, the Dilly-dally multiplication-table, the Dilly-dally penmanship, other than to say, that the pitfalls were numerous between twice one and twelve times twelve, and that from straight lines to pot-hooks was an affair of time.

“Will you run up stairs and bring my thimble?” her mother would ask, sometimes.

“In a minute.”

“But I am waiting, child.”

“Just half a second, mamma; just till I put Rosa’s arm into her sleeve.”

“I want you to go directly; do not stay for that.”

“Yes, mamma.”

And having got fairly launched on the staircase, she would perhaps encounter Freddie spinning his top on the landing, and proceed to assist in that delicate task, till her mother, out of all manner of patience, would call, “Can’t you find it?”

“In a second, mamma; only Freddie says I can’t spin a top, and I can.”

“Never mind what Freddie says, but bring my thimble.”

After some time she calls to her mother over the balusters, “Mamma, where did you say your thimble was?” for having been employed before the glass in disposing her mother’s breakfast-cap jauntily upon her own head, together with a bunch of false curls, she has contrived to forget about the thimble.

“You naughty girl, what have you been doing? It is on my toilette table.” But still Dilly-dally does not appear, and her mother in despair goes herself to see what detains her, and finds her in cap and curls, with the window raised, listening to a hand-organ in the street.

“Is this the way you do my errands?”

“O, I was coming in a minute, mamma.”

“And how many minutes does it take to make an hour? Do you ever think of that when you dilly-dally your time away?”

“No, mamma; but the monkey is so engaging.”

In the mornings, Dilly-dally was longer at her toilette than any belle preparing for a ball; she must dabble in the water awhile, and watch the drops hanging like gems, as she said, from the tips of nose, chin, and fingers, and imagine herself an Indian princess, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. Sometimes she devoted herself to the manufacture of paper junks, sailing them in her bath-tub; at other times she would wet her hair till it resembled a mermaid’s for moisture, and then she must needs sit in the sun to dry it, and turban her head with a towel. She would often be found, after every one else had done breakfast, “with one stocking off and one stocking on,” the water dripping from her hair and making little rivers all across the carpet, one arm hooked into the sleeve of a sack while the rest of the garment dangled behind, delving in the piece-bag for some silk to make Rosa a gown. Then, if any one attempted to assist or hasten matters, the fastenings of her skirts were found to be in a perilous condition, the button-holes in her frock gaped as though they were bent upon swallowing a regiment of buttons, the knots in her boot-lacings defied competition, and all this, and much more, because she had neglected to take the stitch in time that saves nine.

But Dilly-dally had read a good deal; that is to say, she had begun a host of books. She could tell you all about the first chapter or so of the “Rollo Books”; she had made the acquaintance of one of “The Seven Little Sisters”; she had looked into “The Magician’s Show-Box”; she had become entangled in “Tanglewood Tales”; the “Memoirs of a London Doll” came very near conquering her; she had bidden adieu to Christian at the House Beautiful, and had given Robinson Crusoe the cut long before Friday appeared to parry it; and she had left Cinderella at the door of the ball-room! It is true, she fully intended to pursue Rollo to the world’s end; she had dreamed about Cinderella all one night, and had been heard to say that the step-sisters deserved a box with five nails in it; she had carried Christian’s burden every step of the way, and had quaked with Crusoe over the mysterious footprints; but she had always said, “I will finish this to-morrow,” or, “I mean to read the rest of that when I get time,” or, “When I have romped a little with Freddie, or tried on the new hat I am making for Rosa, I will see who answered the bell at the ‘House Beautiful.’ ” And so it came about that the things she was always going to do somehow never were done.

Dilly-dally had the dearest little work-basket, that stood on straw legs of its own, and was just at her elbow whenever she wanted to use it; it was bronze and gold color, braided in a quaint and curious pattern. No one knew exactly what it contained, although it was pretty full, till one day it was upset and the contents dispersed all over the carpet. Everybody of course scrambled to find and pick them up, and thus were brought to light a host of unfortunate articles that had vainly been awaiting the finishing touch for six months or more. There was a doll’s hat, the crown hanging by just two stitches, from which a long thread still dangled, precisely as she had left it, when, losing her needle, she had gone to beg another, and, finding Freddie playing horse in the nursery with a string and a chain, allowed herself to be put into harness, and the hat to be laid upon the shelf, so to speak. There was a doll’s dress half sewed on the waist, another record of delay; there lay a rag-baby losing flesh, or sawdust rather, daily, from a ghastly hole in one foot, the result of a defect in its constitution that had never been properly remedied; a needle-book, which needed sadly to turn over a new leaf, like its mistress; a spool-bag that had never fulfilled its destiny; a Zouave with one arm and no legs; a soldier’s sock down at the heel in every sense, the yarn having been broken off and entangled wofully with a skein of blue sewing-silk and a mass of pink crochet-cotton, backed by the germ of a crocheted mat. There was a cotton-flannel rabbit with one eye; a book-mark that would probably never mark anything but Dilly-dally’s sad habit; a velvet butterfly impaled on the passive needle, looking as if it had just burst from the chrysalis, and had lost a wing in the struggle; a pin-cushion that seemed likely to turn itself inside out; the skeleton of a cardboard cradle; and a pen-wiper merely cut out. You may imagine what she had to endure on the event of that catastrophe,—how they all laughed and joked about these unfinished articles, and how she tried to defend herself by saying that Fanny Gray came in just as she was getting on nicely with the butterfly,—that she was just going to sew up the hole in the rag-doll’s foot,—that Rosa didn’t need the dress right away,—that the hat had gone quite out of fashion,—and as for the cradle, Rosa had grown too old to use one; all of which excuses did not mend matters, for her mother said, “I bought you this pretty basket, my dear, in hopes it would make you industrious; but now that you have used it so ill, I shall take it away until every article begun here is well finished.” And Dilly-dally cried herself into a headache, a favorite custom of hers whenever she meant to have her own way, and one which she had too often found successful not to be overcome with dismay when it proved no longer available. Nevertheless, she needed a few more lessons in the tactics of adversity to effect a reform in her habits.

Dilly-dally was invited one day to a grand picnic; they were to get into the cars for a few minutes, when they would suddenly find themselves transported, as if by witchcraft, out of the gray city, into the most delightful country-side, where the blue sky was endless, as well as the green pasture-lands, and where groves of oak-trees offered as cool and beautiful a retreat as any Gothic palace. She was to go, and what would she not enjoy! She would hear the birds sing, free and bold, not at all like the poor old blind canary, who always sang a little as if he expected some one to clap him; she would see the brooks that were always running away from home, and seemed in such a hurry to get down hill and to take short cuts across the fields,—the merry brooks, that always laughed, no matter what fell out, and that the loudest when the day was darkest and the way stoniest,—the brooks that were like “traps to catch sunbeams.” O yes! and the air would be fragrant with clover and wild-rose; and the reapers would be out in the meadows cutting the long grasses and setting free the hived-up odors; and, O ecstasy! she would wear her new pink lawn! I don’t dare to tell how long she lay awake thinking about it all, nor how late she awoke in the morning, having gone to the picnic in her dreams, but without her shoes and stockings. It is due to her to say, however, that she neither engaged in shipping nor mantua-making while dressing; but, overhearing a whisper to the effect that her kitten had caught its first mouse, she could not forbear to throw on her wrapper and steal down the back stairs to pat the kitten for her wonderful exploit; and once there, puss must have some milk as due desert, and cook declared she must wait till it was skimmed; and then, as the cook was picking over berries for preserves, she must assist sufficiently to stain her hands and spill a dishful over her spick-and-span skirts. And when she was all dressed anew, there was her luncheon-basket to pack, which her mother had directed her to ask Bridget to do the night before, but which Dilly-dally had put off doing till to-morrow; then, at the last moment, she must run up stairs for her sun-shade, and, on her way, tuck Rosa into bed for fear she would come to grief if left at large, and rush over to Fanny Gray’s to see if Fanny’s mother was really going to be so cruel as to keep her at home. And when at length she arrived at the station, it was plain that the cars, as well as time and tide, waited for nobody,—they had been gone just one moment! Birds and brooks and haymakers, and wide perfumed fields and bowers of oak-leaves all lost in that one moment!

“I am very sorry for you,” said her mother when she returned; “that one little squandered minute was all you needed to reach the station in time. Can you tell whereabouts you lost it? Was it at Fanny Gray’s, or tucking Rosa into bed?”

“Perhaps so,” murmured the contrite Dilly-dally; “but I think it was lost last night, where I played at catch a minute in the hall, when you had sent me for Bridget to pack my luncheon, instead!”

Some time after this, a gentleman who had been travelling in South America brought her a present of two beautiful cardinal-birds, whose bright, eager eyes seemed mightily inquisitive concerning the new state of things, and who sat all day bunched up on their perch, while one would now and then moodily pipe a homesick strain, as though he asked his companion in metre if it were possible that they were not birds bewitched. Dilly-dally took great pleasure in watching them, they had such pretty ways of pluming themselves, such brilliant scarlet crowns, with half-handkerchiefs of the same color coming down in a peak on their breasts; and she wished a hundred times that they would sing “just as if they were at home, and nothing had happened.”

“They miss their freedom among the magnolia and oleander trees of the South,” said her mother.

“O, but mayn’t I let one of them out, and see if he will sing in your rose-geranium tree?”

So she carried the cage to the flower-stand, and opened the tiny wire door, and invited one of the cardinals to a promenade, or, in bird language, to a wing. The poor bird looked askance at the open door, put out his head, took a bird’s-eye view of the location, after the manner of one who has “seen the world,” and flew into the nearest plant with one wild trill of melody, like a fountain in the air! A ray of sunlight burnished the green leaves and his scarlet vest, while his nervous motion shook down the perfume that nestles no one knows where.

“Put him back into the cage now,” said her mother, after he had picnicked on the geranium some time. “Puss may happen in.”

“In a minute,” replied Dilly-dally.

“You had better not delay.”

“A minute can’t make much difference, mamma.”

But as she spoke, the bird—having by short flights from plant to plant got up a belief in liberty, now spread its wings, whirred across the room, alighted one instant on the old time-piece, as if to signify, “We are both of a piece, Time and I: that is to say, we fly, we elude you”—gave one farewell chirrup, and sailed boldly out at a window that had been left open,—the very window Dilly-dally had been told to close some time before, and in delaying had forgotten about. Dilly-dally saw him glance along in the sun, take breath on a neighboring spire, heard him drop her a merry rondeau, and from that day to this their acquaintance has ceased; his deserted mate grew melancholy, refused to eat, and so one day dropped off her perch.

When the gentleman who had brought them came to hear about it all, he said to Dilly-dally, “Would you like a parrot?”

“O, so much, sir!”

“A parrot of splendid plumage, a parrot that can learn to talk?”

“O how nice!” cried she, clapping her hands.

“A parrot that will sing, if you don’t take care,” he continued,

Dilly-dally was silent.

“Very well,” said he, “I am going back to South America to-morrow. I shall be gone twelve months; when I come home, if you have lost the name of Dilly-dally, then you shall have just such a parrot; otherwise, you know, I should be afraid you would neglect to feed him.”

“I will try,” she promised, hanging her head.

“You see,” he went on to say, “I am in a way responsible for its well-being. I bring it hundreds of miles away from its country and kind; for the gay forests of the South, I give it solitary confinement. Let me then be sure that, in intrusting it to your care, it shall enjoy all the little privileges to which a prisoner is entitled; that it shall have a careful jailer, who will never dilly-dally about providing it with figs and apples.”

The twelve months have not yet passed, and I have to record the completion by Dilly-dally of several of the articles contained in her forfeited work-basket, among which is the butterfly, developed into a Purple Emperor, while the invalid doll has been at the needle-cure, and is now as buxom as doll need be. So she is keeping her promise, and the name “Dilly-dally” is becoming so odious to her that I expect daily to see it drop off from her like an ugly garment, and that she will emerge the Pink of Propriety.

Mary N. Prescott.

J. Warren Newcomb, Jr.

XI.

ONE of the striking results of the boys’ visit to their neighbor’s model farm was the change of conversation in the Spangler family. When the boys came in to their meals, they talked continually of what they had seen there, and when out at work there was no end to the references to what had somehow become a sort of standard for their imitation. Uncle Benny was therefore careful to encourage all the good resolutions which his pupils seemed insensibly to be making, as well as to answer the crowd of new questions that were put to him at every turn. The boys could not help making comparisons between the general neatness of the Allen farm and the squalid condition of their own; and they were not slow in endeavoring to copy their neighbors, though their opportunities for doing so were not very great.

Farmer Spangler was of necessity obliged to listen to numerous discussions, in which his neighbor’s superior management was so highly extolled and his own so much condemned. Luckily for all, Spangler was a man of few words, and hence was a capital listener. He very seldom replied to any attack on his management,—as much because of his habitual taciturnity as from a conviction that was insensibly taking possession of him, that there must be some truth in what was said. Generally, Uncle Benny was quite moderate in his depreciation of Spangler’s style of farming, as he was unwilling to give offence. But there were occasions, such as when he witnessed some gross departure from good management, or some example that would be really injurious to the boys, and then he would explain himself for Spangler’s especial benefit. But even then he talked at Spangler over the boys’ shoulders; that is, though he addressed his words to them, he was really intending them for the father. In this way he could drop hints in much sharper language than if he had spoken to the man himself. Spangler took no offence at these side thrusts, and rarely made any reply.

On one occasion, when the latter was putting a young and skittish horse to the wagon, he threw the harness suddenly and with great violence on its back, instead of gently placing it there. The timid creature, not yet accustomed to being harnessed, shrunk back and became quite unmanageable, and ended by treading on the wagon-shaft, which he broke in two. Seeing this, Spangler became enraged, and gave the horse a violent kick in the side. Uncle Benny and the boys were standing by and saw it all.

“That will never do,” said the old man, addressing the boys, but loud enough for Spangler to hear. “A horse should never be kicked, or even punished. It is gentle treatment alone that makes a horse valuable, and cruel treatment makes him worthless. We Americans abuse our horses more unfeelingly than any other people, and control them through fear of us instead of love for us. Even the unchristianized Arabs never abuse their horses, nor do the Chinese ever punish theirs. ‘As obstinate as a mule,’ is a common expression; but a mule is not naturally obstinate, but is made so by being educated to bad treatment. The mule which, in the hands of most Americans, would be not only useless, but dangerous to all who came near him, would, in the hands of a Chinaman, become quiet as a lamb and tractable as a dog. A vicious, jibing, or runaway mule is almost unknown among the Chinese, because of the uniform gentleness with which they treat them. They educate all other domestic animals by the same rule, securing obedience through the agency of love instead of fear. Cattle, pigs, ducks, and birds are equally cared for. These dumb beasts have sensibilities and affections as well as ourselves. Never let me see a horse kicked by any of you. A hired man who should kick my horse, or beat him with a shovel, as is often done, should be turned off immediately.”

“That must be the reason why our Nancy and the pigs like me so well,” added Bill Spangler when the old man had concluded. “I curry them up, and never scold them, and they come to me just like a dog.”

“Yes,” replied Uncle Benny, “the law of kindness operates as strongly on the brute creation as it does on human hearts. The man who is truly merciful will always be merciful to the dumb, dependent creatures around him.”

This accident to the wagon-shaft delayed Spangler a whole hour in starting for Trenton, because, as he had but one wagon, the damage must in some way be repaired. It was so broken that nailing would not answer; so they tied the shaft round with a small horse-blanket, and kept that in its place by ropes and straps, and with this unsightly contrivance Spangler drove off for Trenton. There was no real necessity for his going, even before the breakdown; but then there was to be a vendue, or auction sale, of household goods and farming utensils, and, though he had no occasion to purchase any of them, yet he thought it would be well for him to be there, “just to see how they sold.” There are some people in this world who have a passion for attending funerals, and one of Spangler’s fancies was for attending vendues, no matter how much home business he might neglect by going.

All this happened just after dinner, in the month of June, when there were strong indications of a thunder-gust. But off Spangler went, and, as Uncle Benny had expected, the gust broke upon him while he was on the road, and gave him a complete drenching. Of course, it drove all hands into their usual refuge,—the barn; and there they sat while the rain poured down in torrents. It was the first good rain there had been for two weeks, and was much wanted by the farming community. It poured down so heavily, and continued so long, that Uncle Benny observed, “There must be at least an inch of this rain.”

“What is an inch of rain?” inquired Joe Spangler, looking through a knot-hole in the side of the barn, over a great pond that had been suddenly filled by the shower. “I should say it was a foot.”

“Well, boys,” replied the old man, “an inch of rain don’t mean the water that is collected in puddles where the ground happens to be full of holes, but that which falls on a level all over the land. Now, when this shower is over, look into the bucket out by the pump,—I remember it was empty when the rain began,—and whatever depth of water you may find in it will be the extent of the rain-fall. This is what we call a rain-gauge; and it is by having so simple a contrivance at all times in use that observing men, who watch the clouds and the weather, have been able to prove that about as much rain falls in one year as in another. Thus, if we have long spells of dry weather, they are succeeded by heavy rains, and thus very extraordinary rains are followed by long dry spells, making the rain-fall of many years average about the same.”

“But an inch of rain don’t sound much, though it looks to be a great deal,” exclaimed Tony King.

“Why, Tony,” replied Uncle Benny, “an inch of rain weighs more than a hundred tons to the acre, and is equal to nearly twenty-three thousand gallons. A watering-pot must have a big nozzle to discharge that quantity in an hour, as the clouds often do for us. This rain will be worth a great many thousands of dollars to the farmers about here, especially if it should be followed by really fine weather.

“Fine weather,” he continued, “is a wonderful thing for the farmer!—next among his blessings to the Divine promise that seed-time and harvest should never fail. A single day of sunshine is considered worth ten millions of dollars to the farming interest of England in a season of doubtful harvests. There is said, in Europe at least, to be more war in a day’s rain than in the ill-temper of the most quarrelsome monarch, and more peace in a morning’s sunshine than even in a treaty of commerce; because people, having their time occupied and their stomachs full, have neither leisure nor disposition to quarrel.”

“What can be the use of so much rain, Uncle Benny?”

“Use?” returned the old man; “it has a thousand uses. Water is the great nourishment and stimulant of vegetation. Some plants will seem to live on water alone, neither needing nor receiving manure beyond what nature enables them to gather from the water below and the air above. Take one of your corn-hills as an illustration. The corn-stalk stands exactly where it grew. It spreads its roots all around, but does not change its place. As it cannot travel about in search of food, such as it may need must therefore be brought to it. Who is to do this? Not you, because you supposed you had done all that was necessary when you planted the grain. It is water, the rain-water, that performs this important office of bringing to the plant the food which has been deposited in the soil. A mere sprinkle will not do this; it must be just such a soaking shower as we are now having. Besides, water dissolves many substances which exist in the air as food for plants,—so graciously has Heaven provided,—and then, when these are brought into the soil by rains, they there come in contact with another set of substances which the plants require also, and the whole being thus combined and liquefied with water, they constitute the very food by which vegetation lives and grows. The water, thus saturated with vegetable food, travels along under ground, feeding the plants which Providence requires to remain stationary. This is one of the great uses of so much rain.”

The next morning being bright and sunny, the old man piloted the boys into the two-acre corn-field they had planted. On the way thither they passed under a fine Mayduke cherry-tree, then loaded with delicious fruit. The rain and wind had shaken off quantities of cherries, which lay upon the ground. These the boys stopped to gather and eat, spitting out the stones in every direction. Noticing their actions, Uncle Benny spoke up:—“Boys, when I was in Spain, I learned a proverb which has been in use in that country for centuries,—‘He who plants trees loves others beside himself.’ It means, that, as it takes nearly a lifetime for many trees to grow and produce fruit, the chance is that he who plants the tree will hardly live long enough to eat the product, and that he must therefore love those who are to come after him, or he would not plant trees of whose fruits they are more likely to partake than he. Now, whenever a Spaniard eats a peach, a cherry, or a pear by the roadside, he works out a little hole in the ground with his foot, and plants the stone; he thinks of those who are to come after him,—he loves others beside himself. It is a thank-offering to the memory of the kind soul by whom the tree was planted from which he has just eaten. Hence the roadsides throughout that beautiful country are lined with abundance of the most tempting fruits, all free to every one. Boys, not one of you has ever planted a tree. It is time for you to begin. I shall never live to gather the fruit, but all of you may be spared to do so. It is our duty to leave the world as good at least as we found it,—better if we can. I have no good opinion of the fellow who is content to snore under the shadow of a noble shade-tree without planting another for the next generation to enjoy, or to eat the fruit from trees which others have planted, without at some time imitating their example. The sooner one sows, the sooner will he reap. There, boys, right along the fence, two or three for each of you.”

Each boy struck his heel into the soft ground, made a slight hole, dropped into it a couple of cherry-stones, covered them over, and pressed down the earth with his foot. It was certainly a very small affair, but it was nevertheless something for the boys. Each one could not help feeling that he had done a good deed, for he had planted a tree.

“O,” exclaimed the old man, “what a country this would be if every owner of a farm would go and do likewise! The roadsides would everywhere be lined with noble trees, glorious to look upon, grateful in their shadiness, and affording bountiful harvests of delightful fruit, free to the passing traveller, and yielding a profusion even to the birds. There would be plenty of fruit for all. Even the thieves who now prey upon the fruit-grower would have no further inducement to steal.”

Finding the ground too wet for hoeing, they deferred that operation for a week, when Tony ran twice over the cornfield with the cultivator, to mellow up the ground and cut off the weeds. Then all hands turned in with hoes to clean up the rows and give the corn its first hilling. Before undertaking this, Uncle Benny had brought a large file from his tool-chest, with which he had sharpened up the boys’ hoes to such an edge as had never before been seen on Spangler’s farm. The hoes were great, clumsy things, unfit for the hands of a small boy; but they shaved off the weeds with so much ease that the excessive weight of the tool was forgotten in the sharpness of the edge. Instead of two or three chops being required to cut up a stout weed, a single clip went clean through it. There could be no doubt that the trifling work of filing enabled the boys to get over two or three times as much ground as if they had been working with dull hoes. There was a real economy of time in thus beginning right, besides comfort, and a thorough execution done upon the weeds.

The whole party worked together, each taking a row. Uncle Benny, having an old back, which he knew would very soon begin to ache if he should stoop much, had provided himself with a long-handled hoe. This enabling him to work without stooping, he flourished it about among the weeds so actively as to surprise the boys, who observed, moreover, that the old man contrived somehow to keep a little ahead of them all. Between the sharp hoes and the full force of hoers, the weeds had a poor chance of surviving that day.

Presently the youngest boy, Bill, while chopping vigorously at a thistle, struck his hoe violently against a stone. He was about repeating the blow, when the old man called out to him to stop and examine his hoe. Bill did so, and found a great indentation had been made in the edge. The other boys of course came round to see what was the matter, and they too saw how the keen edge of the tool had been turned by the blow against the stone.

“Now, Bill,” said Uncle Benny, “pick up the stone, put it in your pocket, and when you get to the end of the row we’ll put it under the fence, where you may be sure it will not be likely to dull your hoe a second time. All of you must do the same with the stones or broken bricks or oyster-shells you meet with, as I won’t have anything on this ground big enough to dull a hoe. If you calculate on having sharp tools, you must keep the ground clear.”

Such careful management was new to the boys, but they had equally been strangers to the luxury of a sharp hoe. Dull hoes, and plenty of brickbats to strike against, were regular incidents of their early agricultural education, and they now thought this new lesson of Uncle Benny was one of the queerest he had taught them. But they soon discovered there was something to be gained, for, on coming out at the end of his row, each boy found that he had three or four shells or stones in his pocket, all which were carefully placed under the bottom rail of the fence.

As all farm laborers have an hour allowed them for dinner, there was time, after that meal, for Uncle Benny to sharpen their hoes again. The morning’s experience had made each boy a full convert to the new doctrine. Indeed, as they were taking up the line of march for the cornfield, for the afternoon’s work, Tony inquired of the old man if it wouldn’t be a good thing to put the file in his pocket and bring it along;—the hoes might want sharpening again before night. During the afternoon’s work there was a good deal of slashing among the stones, and an occasional demand for the file to retouch the hoes, which quite pleased the old man.

Well, after worrying through some rows that were much fouler than the others, the parties drew up to the fence, and Uncle Benny proceeded to file up the hoes for the second time that afternoon. He could see no actual necessity for doing so, but thought it could do no harm to gratify the boys. While thus engaged, with his hoe resting on the fence, which ran along the public road, a stranger stepped up and inquired if he would like to buy some trees or grape-vines. At the same moment he opened a large book which he carried in his hand, and, resting it on the top rail of the fence, displayed a highly colored picture of a bunch of grapes, larger and finer in appearance than had ever been seen by any of the party. They all gathered round the book, as the man ran over the leaves with just enough deliberation to afford a full view of the magnificent specimens it contained. There were great bunches of peaches, apples, plums, cherries, currants, and other fruits, colored up and set off in just such a style as would be likely to tempt every one who examined them to become a purchaser.

Uncle Benny took the book in his hand, and made a long examination, during which the stranger was very lavish of his praise of each specimen as it fell under the old man’s eye. Then addressing the stranger, he inquired, “Did you raise all these trees?”

“O no,” was the reply, “my business is to sell them.”

“Where were they grown?” inquired Uncle Benny.

“Well, a good way off,” answered the stranger.

“But don’t you tell us where they were cultivated, and who is the nurseryman?” continued Uncle Benny.

“Well, not often,” was the answer.

“No,” rejoined the shrewd old man; “I don’t think we want to buy anything from a nurseryman who is ashamed of his name.”

He closed the book, returned it to the stranger, and resumed his business of touching up the hoes. When the stranger was fairly out of hearing, the old man addressed the boys: “This man is what is known as a tree-pedler. Now, Tony, if ever you get a farm of your own, take care how you buy anything from a tree-pedler. Things sold by these fellows are generally considered cheap because the price is low. But what is thus called a cheap tree or vine is the very dearest thing you can buy. You can’t get a really valuable article without paying for it a fair price. Plants that are sold at an excessively low price should be avoided, as they invariably have some defect about them. They have either been badly grown, or been stunted, or have a poor supply of roots, or they are the refuse of a nursery which has been bought up by a pedler, to be worked off among the farmers. Especially you should never touch a plant, even as a gift, when the seller refuses to tell you where or by whom it was grown.”

“But that was nice fruit that he showed in his book,” interrupted Tony.

“O yes,” replied Uncle Benny, “they looked very well on paper, like many other impositions. They sounded very cheap also,—peach-trees at three dollars a hundred, when the price is usually ten or twelve. Now, suppose I were to set out a hundred of these trees, saving five or six dollars in the price, and, after cultivating them two or three years, should then discover that, instead of their producing the fine fruit that was promised, it was scarcely good enough for the pigs? There would be the loss of at least two years’ time and labor, and all the money I had paid, besides the vexation which every one feels on discovering that he has been cheated. It would be even worse in the case of pear-trees, for there one has to wait longer for them to come into bearing. By saving ten cents in the purchase of a tree, he may find that, instead of the Bartlett he bargained for, he has been cheated into the purchase and cultivation of a choke-pear. It is the poorest sort of economy to buy cheap trees; and it is sometimes dangerous to get them, even at full prices, from persons in whose character you do not have full confidence. But there are others who think just as I do on this subject, as I will show you.”

Taking from his pocket a number of “The Country Gentleman,” he read to them the following article:—

While the hoeing of this cornfield was going on, there was continual opportunity for observing the difference in growth of that end of the rows which received the drainage from the barn-yard. The plants were double the height of the others, and there was a deep, rank green that was nowhere else perceptible. Here too the weeds grew taller and stouter, as well as more abundantly. Uncle Benny had always taught the boys that the greatness of a farmer’s crop was not to be measured by the number of his acres, but by the thoroughness with which he enriched his land, and the care bestowed upon the crop. His theory was to put a large amount of labor on a small amount of land. The two-acre cornfield was an excellent illustration of his theories. The boys saw for themselves that in that portion which received the washing from the barn-yard they would have a far greater crop than from the other portion, because of the full supply of manure which it received. Whenever he came to a remarkably fine hill of corn, the old man would tell them that the earth was really of no great use except to afford a standing-place for plants while the farmer was feeding them, and that money laid out in manure must not be considered as money lost, because it always reproduced itself in the crop. He rarely gave chemical reasons, or used scientific terms, as the boys had had no knowledge of them.

But he explained how it was that plants acquired their growth. The earth kept them in an upright position, but they grew by feeding on the fertilizing materials added to the soil, from water, and from the air which surrounded them. Both air and water were indispensable; hence the necessity for rain, and for the continued stirring up of the soil by harrowing the surface, so that the air should penetrate to the roots, and the water, in a heavy shower, should soak into the ground, instead of running off and wetting only the surface. Thus, if the day’s hoeing was useful to the growing crop, it was made equally instructive to the minds of the boys, for a practical lecture was delivered on the spot, with fact and illustration united. Lessons thus learned are usually the most instructive, as well as most likely to be remembered.

When the day’s work was done, the old man sat down upon the stump of an apple-tree to rest, the boys gathering about him, and Tony asked, “Uncle Benny, how much money can an acre of ground be made to produce?”

“Ah,” replied the old man, “you ask me too much. It would require a great book to answer that question, and even then it would be only half answered. I do not think the capacity of an acre of ground has ever been ascertained. You do not put the question in the right way. It is not the acre that produces the crop, but the man who cultivates the acre. All agricultural history is full of instances of this being the case. There are families who starve on fifty acres, while there are others who live comfortably on one or two. But another time we’ll look a little further into this question, for it is one that a farmer’s boy should have answered as promptly as possible. There are grown-up people, too, who would be benefited by examining the subject more closely than they have been in the habit of doing.”

Author of “Ten Acres Enough.”

A TREASURY OF CHARADES, PUZZLES, PROBLEMS AND FUNNY THINGS.

CHARADES.

No. 7.

Willy Wisp.

No. 8.

Carl.

No. 9.

L. L.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 12.

Thomas Y.

ENIGMAS.

No. 7.

No. 8.

No. 9.

Dick Dilver.

No. 10.

A Little Girl.

No. 11.

J. P. V.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 13.

R. N. B.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 14.

May.

PUZZLES

No. 6.

What is the longest and shortest thing in the world, the swiftest and slowest, the most divisible and the most extended, the least valued and the most regretted,—without which nothing can be done,—which devours all that is small, yet gives life to all that is great?

A.

No. 7.

What English word contains all the vowels in their alphabetical order?

W. E. S.

No. 8.

Entire, I am the opposite of fast; behead me, and I am the noise of cattle; curtail me, and I am an exclamation; behead me again, and I am another exclamation.

Paul.

No. 9.

A. S.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 15.

C. D.

ANSWERS.

Charades

Enigmas.

Puzzles.

Transpositions.

Illustrated Rebuses.

E. A. T. We should like to use your rebus, but some of the symbols are too far-fetched in their ingenuity. Thank you. Shall we hear from you again?

Edith. We had engraved your rebus when your note came.

S. Thanks, hearty thanks, for your French puzzles.

Willy Wisp thinks that we misrepresented him in our note upon his communications in a former number. Perhaps we did,—but certainly without intention. The point he wished to establish was, that he had made a rebus which required no letters to complete it, and which had no symbols that were used metaphorically, as we might say. We admit this; and we only wished to point out to him that his excellent efforts had not succeeded in doing away with symbols that were rather far-fetched, or used in different ways. The faults of the rebuses which we print are as plain to us as they can be to anybody else, and we only allow them to pass because the puzzles in which they occur are the best we have, and we cannot alter them greatly without destroying the authors’ ideas. We do not consider the use of key for k, by way of example, as at all proper; but that symbol crept in, as did hay for ha in “have,” by some oversight, and would not bear our criticism any more than that of our correspondents. One word more, friend Willy, and we have done. We beg to be excused for not having stated your position fully, but don’t think that any of the rebuses are our own; they all have come from our contributors; and when there has been no signature, the reason has been that none was supplied, or that the engraver did not return the sketch in time to have the name printed.

“Coosie Coo.” We want the address of the author of this story, which we accept.

J. P. V. Read “A Business Letter” in our issue of June, 1865.

H. L. H. Not perfect enough.

W. G. S. offers for an inversion, “Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns,” but does not say whether he claims to be the author of it.

Charles T. of St Louis writes:—“Here is a sentence which is grammatically correct, and makes sense when read both ways, but is not quite so long as your example,—‘Red root put up to order.’ ”

From Fall River comes a pleasant note, with an enclosure, both of which we are delighted to print.

The solution will be given in the next “Letter Box.”

H. A. D. has written us a letter from which we take a sentence that makes us both sorry and glad. She says, after speaking of some things she has read in our magazine:—“Now about myself. I am twelve years old, and I am a cripple,—haven’t walked for four years; and ‘Our Young Folks’ is much pleasure to me in my lonely hours.” Little friend, thousands of warm young hearts, reading this simple sentence, will be filled with sympathy for you, while we are very happy to think that our labors have helped to lighten your lot.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Obvious printer errors including punctuation have been silently corrected.

Inconsistencies, variations and possible errors in spelling have been retained, with the following exception:

[The end of Our Young Folks, Volume 2, Number 4, edited by J. T. Trowbridge, Gail Hamilton and Lucy Larcom.]