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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.

LONG before the children of men came to their earthly dwelling, when the granite floors had been laid, but before the green carpets and draperies had been added, or the bright flowers set in their places, the All-Father said to his servants, “Who will fashion this rocky wilderness into an abode fit for my children?”

“I,” said Frost, “will break up the solid fields into pebbles that poor little Man will be able to manage when he comes.”

“And I,” said Flood, “will wash away some of the traces of my brother’s rough work, and will open channels and shape valleys where rivers may run and men may live.”

“We,” said the little Streams, “will chisel out the mountain-sides into beautiful forms, and will take tribute of the rocks to make rich gardens and fields where man may raise his food.”

“And we,” said the Rivers, “will gather up the treasures of the brooks into our broad bosoms, and spread them out in the valleys where cities will be built; and the busy life of Man will find its best abode above our banks.”

So all the Children of the Flood began their work in the world. The rough rocks gave up to them their treasures, and these they spread out along the valleys, making smooth ledges for roads, and broad intervales for meadows and grain-fields.

Soon gray and yellow lichens began to dot the rocks, and beautiful mosses to embroider the banks, and multitudes of green growing things thronged by the sides of the brooks; for they loved the faithful and busy little workers who were toiling so well for the coming creatures whom they had never seen. And the mosses were not long alone; for graceful, pointed ferns appeared and overshadowed the mosses, and presently shrubs and thickets grew up and overshadowed the ferns, and tall trees lifted their green arches into the air, and over-roofed the shrubs; and they all lived together in peace, and drew their life from the Children of the Flood, who brought them food constantly from the sides of the mountains.

Being filled with this spirit of service and good-will, it naturally happened that the abodes of the mountain brooks became the loveliest places in all the world; and after the children of men had come to their home, and had begun to find out its hidden beauties, there were no places that they loved more to visit, none where the goodness of their Father was shown to them by more charming records, than the shady water-courses in the forests. Here they would sit by the brook-side on mossy rocks, and listen to the voice of the water, which, though they could not fully understand it, seemed to be always telling some very pleasant tale.

Four of the great rivers, hand in hand, encircled the Garden of Eden, and no one can tell how many smaller Children of the Flood wandered through its shady walks, and told sweet stories to the childlike human spirits who had come to live with them. Certainly some of these are wandering upon the earth to this day; and when you meet a little woodland brook whose voice is unusually sweet and low, as if he were telling some half-sad but all-beautiful tale of olden times, while all manner of spicy odors breathe along his banks, you may be perfectly sure—whatever spring he may pretend to start from—that he is a little runaway from Paradise, and can almost carry you back to it, if you will but submit yourself long enough to his spell.

There were other Children of the Flood, which, though less known to men, were not less useful in their way. They lived in the hidden channels among the rocky foundations, and came forth only when, by patient and diligent study, men had discovered their hiding-places, and had learned the spell which could command their services.

Far away in Africa is a great sea of sand, upon which the sun pours out its hottest rays, and men have left it mostly in its solitude, calling it “Sahara, the Great Desert.” Fierce winds, born of the sultry heat, range over its surface, and sometimes sweep forth into the country around, burning and ravaging; and then human creatures sicken or die, while all green things perish in their scorching breath. But under the rocky bed of the desert itself still lurk the little water-spirits, Children of the Flood, with life and health in their cool veins.

Once a man from a far-away country, with keener eyes or a stouter heart than the people of the desert, resolved to call up the healing spirits from the vasty deep of sand. It was a singular undertaking, and a host of turbaned heads looked on in some fear, as he began to sink the shaft which he meant should open a way for the water-sprites to ascend. To them it seemed quite as likely that some malignant Genie lay concealed in a burning cavern beneath, and would take a hot revenge for their intrusion. Perhaps the Frenchman was a sorcerer, they thought. And indeed he was; but his was only that healthful and lawful kind of sorcery which consists in commanding the servants who were appointed in old times to serve us. As the shaft went down, the Arabs stood in the hot sun looking on, when suddenly there leaped from far beneath the surface a cool, white column of water, and sprang high into the air above their heads. Then they shouted with joy, and fell on their faces in the sand to worship the wonderful spirit that had come to their aid.

Once released from her rocky prison, this beautiful Child of the Flood showed no intention of returning thither; on the contrary, she continues to this day to bestow her health-giving presence among the desert people. But that spot is no longer desert; for soon from the arid sands sprang up the tender grass and mosses, which love the water so well that they follow it wherever it grows. And, if the keen-eyed men that know the spell of the water-spirits shall continue their work, it is just possible that the whole sea of sand will some day be converted into fertile fields, fulfilling that old saying that “the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

None of the forces that inhabit the earth have ever performed more willing and various service for man than these Children of the Flood. Dwelling in the secret places of the hills, they feed the ponds and lakes through all the summer drought; and, if only a channel is laid for them, they will rush down to the great cities, and flow through little underground paths into every house, carrying purity and health to all that will accept the gift.

When the fire-fiends break loose among the dwellings of men, the little water-sprites are the only forces that can withstand them; and they will rush into the thickest of the scorching flames undaunted, though often they perish in the fight. Many a time in this way they have saved a great city from destruction, and rescued thousands of precious lives.

Moreover, they are the greatest manufacturers in the world. Wherever there is a wheel to be turned, some little mountain brook is ready to put his brown shoulder to it; and it is hard to say what boys and girls would do for clothes to wear, were it not for these diligent workers. They saw logs, and plane the planks, and knit stockings, and make paper, and weave cloth, and print calico; in short, there is really no end to the useful things they do.

But, with all the burdens they bear, they never lose their beauty or their happiness; indeed, never do they beam so brightly, or sing so merrily, or clothe themselves in such airy garments of spray, as when they are most busily employed in turning wheels, and helping in the work which men have devised for them. No task discourages them, and no danger daunts; no heavy burden crushes their spirits; for have they not undertaken, ages ago, to be the faithful friends and helpers of mankind? And they will never dream of rest while anything remains to be done for our health, comfort, or enjoyment.

Elsie Teller.

THE story which I am going to tell is all true, every bit of it. It is not a made-up story, though some parts of it may sound as if they were made up. Carrie is the real name of a real person, whom I have known almost all her life; and all the account of her shipwreck is taken from her own letters, and those of her friends who were with her.

One thing is certain about Carrie’s adventures,—that they happened to just the right person. For I hardly ever knew any one who took such an eager interest in foreign countries as she did, or liked so much to read about them. At school, beside her geography lessons, she used to try and learn still more from other books about the different parts of the globe; and she could tell you a great deal about the different races of men, and about the various climates and plants and animals, and about the Gulf Stream and the trade-winds, and all those interesting things which travellers know.

So when she grew older,—grew to be quite a large girl, in fact,—she seemed just the person to travel. And when it was decided that she should go and live on the Pacific coast, at a place called Puget Sound, away at the northwest corner of the United States, you may imagine that she was quite excited at the prospect, though she did not like to leave her friends.

She was to reach Puget Sound in this way. First, she was to go in a great steamer from New York to Aspinwall, which is on the Isthmus of Panama. Then she was to cross the Isthmus of Panama by railroad. Then she was to go from Panama by another steamer to San Francisco, in California; and then by another steamer to Puget Sound. So Carrie was to be quite a traveller,—three different steamers; and after all, as you will see, she got into a fourth steamer besides, in a very unexpected way.

Carrie’s voyage at first was very much like other voyages, except that she was not sea-sick at all, which is very unlike the voyages of most people. So she was on deck all day and every evening, and watched the Mother Carey’s chickens in the daytime, and the porpoises at twilight; and she slept soundly at night in her narrow berth, and then went on deck in the morning, and saw the white-capped waves still stretching everywhere around, and seeming to hold up a thousand little hands, as if they were dancing in play. So the great steamer sailed southward, and sailed southward, and passed the Bahama Islands, and the West India Islands, and came into the beautiful Caribbean Sea. And there Carrie’s adventures began.

The Caribbean Sea is thought very beautiful, because there are such bright and lovely colors in the water there, and also in the sky; while even the floating sea-weeds and the birds and the fishes have brighter colors than almost anywhere else. Then there are coral islands too, which the coral insects build. These are beautiful when they are fairly above water; and soil has collected upon them, and trees have grown. But at first they are only low coral reefs, and cannot be seen above the water; and then they are very dangerous, and vessels are sometimes wrecked upon them, in perfectly calm weather, when they are going smoothly on. Carrie had often read about this, but she did not know how soon she was to find it out for herself.

One morning, between three and four o’clock, Carrie and her companions suddenly waked up, and heard a most singular grating and thumping sound underneath the vessel and there was a dashing of water; and then the bell sounded to stop the engine. Then some one came to the state-room door and said, “You must get up and dress quickly,—the vessel is on a coral reef.”

That was all; there was no disturbance inside the vessel, but they heard the people everywhere getting down from their berths, and dressing, and talking in low tones. Carrie dressed just as quickly as she could, and put round her waist a life-preserver, which some one gave her, and then went out into the cabin. She could tell by the violent motions of the engine that they were trying to get off; and soon the vessel began to jerk and strain and creak, so that everybody had to hold on by something, and all the glass rattled and tumbled about the room. The little children began to cry at the noise and strangeness, but the older people kept still and quiet; and Carrie wrote to me that she never knew before how brave and good men and women could be. It was perfectly dark outside, and they were not allowed to go on deck yet, and they could not tell but the ship would break to pieces at any moment; yet there they sat patiently, the parents holding their children in their arms; and Carrie said that some faces which had always before seemed to her disagreeable looked now like the faces of angels.

But at last the daylight came, and they were permitted to go on deck. What a sight they saw! There was the vast rolling ocean around them, just as far as eye could reach, without a spot of land in sight; and here underneath them was the great brave vessel, which had borne them so long, now lying fixed on a reef which they could hardly see under the water. It was impossible to get the steamer off, the captain said, and there were nearly seven hundred people on board, and the boats would not hold a quarter of them. What was to become of them?

This was all they could see on deck, and the waves swept so terribly over the vessel that they all had to go down into the cabin again. There they heard the sailors cutting away the great masts, and the steam-pipe; and then some men came below and began to cut away the state-room doors, and Carrie heard them say, “It is to make a raft,—the only chance for our lives.” But when somebody asked where the raft could take them to, nobody answered, for everybody knew that they were out of sight of land. But still the women and children sat quietly and patiently, with their life-preservers on, waiting for whatever might happen.

Carrie saw somebody writing a letter, and that put it into her head to do the same. So she got out her pencil and a piece of paper, and wrote me a little note with them. She thought that, when they left the vessel, she would leave it in the state-room, directed to me, and perhaps that part of the vessel would float, and I might get the note, even if she were drowned. And I did get it, (though not in that way,) and it came soiled and spotted with salt water, where the sea waves had wet it. And you may well suppose that I shall always keep it.

Carrie heard them say that the vessel had got far out of her course, into a part of the ocean where ships hardly ever came; and that the nearest land was a hundred miles off, and that a boat had been sent there for help, but might never get there. But soon after noon some one came down into the cabin and told them great news. Some sharp-eyed sailor was sure that he saw a low island only a few miles off, and a boat had been sent there also, to see if it was true. This boat was several hours absent, and when they saw it coming back, many of the passengers gathered on deck—all who could hold on—to hear the news. The little boat came nearer and nearer, and the passengers on deck were almost breathless with anxiety, when at last a sailor rose and waved his hat, and shouted, “Success!” so that they could hear it amidst all the noise of waves. Then the men on board the steamer tried to answer them with a good loud shout, but the women could not keep back their tears, and some who had not cried before cried then.

The land which they had discovered was, after all, a part of the same coral reef, where it had risen above the water, four miles from the wreck. It was a little barren islet, a few acres in extent, without any vegetation, any land animals, or any springs of water. Yet it was this little, rocky, desolate spot which seemed likely to save the lives of those hundreds of passengers. For even with the aid of the raft, which was now ready, very few of them could probably be saved.

That night they began lowering the women and children, by ropes, over the lofty side of the vessel. It seemed terrible to Carrie, and she shut her eyes when she found herself swinging in mid-air, and saw the great waves beneath, which sometimes lifted the boat far up, as if to take her in, and then scooped it away so that it made her dizzy to look down at it. The vessel rocked and lurched so, too, that it seemed as if every stroke of the waves must be the last, and each time that the shock came, the ship’s bell struck, as if it warned them what they were doing to do quickly. It was all over soon, however, and when she was once in the boat, it was very exciting to be rowed away, in the dim light, and placed upon the raft, while the boats went back for more.

All that night the women and children sat huddled together on the raft, half in the water, watching the wreck on which their husbands and fathers must stay till morning. Two lights swung from the side of the steamer, and it seemed, as she rocked to and fro, as if these lights continually descended, approached each other, stopped, and beckoned those who watched them. Meanwhile the great bell kept tolling on, which showed them that the vessel still held together, although each sound was a measure of the violence of the waves. If the steamer went to pieces during the night, they knew that scarcely any of those left on board would be saved, so that there was not much sleeping upon the raft, except among the younger children.

In the morning they began to take the women and children in boats to the desolate island. Carrie went in the very first boat, and she said that, when they approached the shore, everything appeared so beautiful and so new, that it seemed as if they must really have died the night before, (as they expected,) and as if those strange wild birds that were always hovering over their heads had taken the shipwrecked people to their own home. As they came still nearer the island, an entirely new kind of bird came flying out to meet them,—such a queer, innocent-looking creature, Carrie said,—full of curiosity, and with a foolish look that made her laugh, as it gazed down into the boat with such an air of interest. The sailors called them “boobies.” They had light blue about their necks, and white, and were of a soft gray color above; and everything about them was childlike, and not keen, or nimble, or sagacious, like most birds. They appeared soft and clumsy and good-natured, seeming pleased at the arrival of the strangers, and Carrie felt hospitably welcomed.

Carrie was almost the first person to land, and she wandered away over the bare island, where perhaps human foot had never trod before. There was nothing green upon it, except the clustering sea-weeds along the shore; but there were beautiful colors, not only among the birds which hovered near their heads, but in the sky and water, and in the scarlet and pink and rose-colored sea-mosses. It seemed to her at first like Robinson Crusoe’s island, only too beautiful for that; and she thought that perhaps Heaven might surprise people in the same way.

I do not suppose that Julia enjoyed it quite as much as Carrie did, for she was more ignorant, and not so thoughtful. Julia was a colored woman, who was to go to Puget Sound with Carrie. The shipwreck was her first experience of travelling, and she was rather surprised that people liked travelling so well. Perhaps my readers may remember the old lady in New Hampshire, last winter, who was in the railway-cars for the first time when a collision happened; and when the conductor asked her if she was hurt, she was surprised at the question, and said she supposed that was the way they always stopped! Now it was precisely so with Julia; and when they were all awaked suddenly in the night, and the steamer was thumping on the coral reef, she only asked if they had arrived at San Francisco? Afterwards, while the sea was washing over the vessel, and everything on board was breaking to pieces, she only sat munching a biscuit, and remarked that, if she had known that travelling was so hard, she should have stayed at home.

Through almost all their first day on the island, the rain came down like a shower-bath; and they slept that night in their soaked clothes, on the hard, bare rocks, as well as they could. The next day was warm and beautiful, and they gradually got dry in the sun. As the blankets and shawls were brought from the ship, they made such shelter as they could, and in a few days they got mattresses, and Carrie had one. She had a bundle for a pillow, and a shawl to cover her, and nothing but the stars over that. And if the rain-clouds came between her and the stars, she had a piece of painted canvas to put between her and the rain. But it was in June, and the nights were not cold; and the days would have been very hot indeed on that bare island but for the blessed trade-winds, that never ceased blowing all the time. Carrie had learned about the trade-winds from her geography, as I told you, but she never before knew what a blessing they could be. And she had another great blessing, too, for she used to take the most delicious bath in the surf every night before she went to bed. The great, powerful surf, that had dashed so terribly over the strong steamer, seemed very soft and gentle now towards the poor shipwrecked people; and every night it refreshed their weary limbs, and then with its murmurs lulled them to repose.

Meantime, the great vessel, the Golden Rule, went to pieces on the rocks, four miles away, and it was only for the first few days that the sailors could go on board, and bring away provisions and clothing. At last, nothing was left of her but part of the machinery on the rocks.

Scarcely anything of the passengers’ property could be saved, and nothing of Carrie’s but what she had upon her person. Happily they got from the wreck most of the ship’s linen, and the women all were set at work to make up garments out of this for themselves and their children. It seemed droll enough, to be walking about clad in towels and table-cloths; but at least the clothing was clean, and they were warm enough except when it rained.

The people were scattered about over the island, as much as possible, and were divided into little “messes” of twenty-five each, or thereabouts, for convenience as to cooking. Carrie’s “mess” lived away at the end of the island, where the birds were most numerous, and so they still felt as if they were living among the birds. For food they had one ship biscuit a day, and sometimes two, for each person, and a small piece of pork or beef, sometimes made into soup, a half-pint for each. Then they had a little tea or coffee without milk, and once Carrie had a taste of stewed peaches. Sometimes they shot and cooked the sea-fowl, or boiled their eggs; and sometimes they made a soup of shell-fish from the great pink conch-shells, such as we see sometimes used as ornaments on mantle-pieces,—those to which children put their ears to hear the sound within them. But Carrie and her friends put them to their mouths, instead; and though they did not taste so good as oysters, they were better than nothing.

Thus they lived on the coral reef. And yet, as they sometimes felt, they were not really much safer than if they were on a floating raft. For their provisions would not last long, with nearly seven hundred people to feed. Then, if there were dry weather, the pools among the rocks would soon be empty. If there were a storm, the surf would probably sweep over the little island. They were far from the ordinary track of vessels; and, should a stray ship pass, they were so low that they could scarcely be seen. The boats they had sent might never reach the land, a hundred miles away, or might find no vessel to send to their relief till it should be too late. So they hardly dared think of the future; and day and night, and day and night went by; and early on the morning of the tenth day they heard the cry, “A sail!” and you may imagine how all that multitude of people started up from their rocky beds! And what happened next I shall tell you next time.

T. W. Higginson.

III.

THERE are certain streets, or parts of streets, in London, which are entirely occupied by booksellers, printers, binders, engravers, &c, &c. There is a seedy row of shops in New York wholly given over to unregenerate dealers in second-hand clothing. In some streets the drug-store has almost become an epidemic: these latter localities are greatly affected by the undertakers, and are always contiguous to some quiet avenue broken out all over with little gilt tin signs bearing the names of doctors, and directing the afflicted public to “Ring the night-bell.” Trades of a feather, like the birds, are fond of flocking together, and have a habit of lighting on particular spots without any particular reason for so doing.

Our friends, the artists, possess the same social tendencies, and, in the selection of their studios, often display the same eccentricity. We shall never be able to understand why eight or ten of these pleasant fellows have located themselves in the New York University.^[1]

There isn’t a more gloomy structure outside of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances; and we hold that few men could pass a week in those lugubrious chambers without adding a morbid streak to their natures,—the present genial inmates to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is something human in the changes that come over houses. Many of them keep up their respectability for a long period, and ripen gradually into a cheery, dignified old age; even if they become dilapidated and threadbare, you see at once that they are gentlemen, in spite of their shabby coats. Other buildings appear to suffer disappointments in life, and grow saturnine, and, if they happen to be the scene of some tragedy, they seem never to forget it. Something about them tells you,

The University is one of those buildings that have lost their enthusiasm. It is dingy and despondent, and doesn’t care. It lifts its machicolated turrets of whity-brown marble above the tree-tops of Washington Parade-Ground with an air of forlorn indifference. Summer or winter, fog, snow, or sunshine,—they are all one to this dreary old pile. It ought to be a cheerful place, just as some morose people ought to be light-hearted, having everything to render them so. The edifice faces a beautiful park, full of fine old trees, and enlivened by one coffee-colored squirrel, who generously makes himself visible for nearly half an hour once every summer. As we write, his advent is anxiously expected, the fountain is singing a silvery prelude, and the blossoms are flaunting themselves under the very nose, if we may say it, of the University. But it refuses to be merry, looming up there stiff and repellent, with the soft spring gales fanning its weather-beaten turrets,—an architectural example of ingratitude.

Mr. Longfellow says that

In one of those same turrets, many years ago, a young artist grew very weary of this life. Perhaps his melancholy spirit still pervades the dusty chambers, goes wearily up and down the badly-lighted staircases, as he used to do in the flesh. If so, that is what chills us as we pass through the long, uncarpeted halls leading to the little nookery tenanted by Mr. Winslow Homer.

The reader should understand that the University is not, like the Tenth Street Studio Building, monopolized by artists. The ground-floor is used for a variety of purposes. We have an ill-defined idea that there is a classical school located somewhere on the premises, for we have now and then met files of spectral little boys, with tattered Latin grammars under their arms, gliding stealthily out of the sombre doorway and disappearing in the sunshine. Several theological and scientific societies have their meetings here, and a literary club sometimes holds forth up stairs in a spacious lecture-room. Excepting the studios there is little to interest us, unless it be the locked apartment in which a whimsical virtuoso has stored a great quantity of curiosities, which he brought from Europe, years ago, and has since left to the mercy of the rats and moths.^[2] This mysterious room is turned to very good dramatic account by the late Theodore Winthrop, in his romance of “Cecil Dreeme.”

It has taken us some time to reach Mr. Homer’s atelier, for it is on the third or fourth floor. But the half-finished picture on his easel, the two or three crayon sketches on the walls, (military subjects,) and the splendid view from his one window, cause us to forget that last long flight of stairs.

The studio itself does not demand particular notice. It is remarkable for nothing but its contracted dimensions: it seems altogether too small for a man to have a large idea in. If Mr. Homer were to paint a big battle-piece, he would be in as awkward a predicament as was the amiable Dr. Primrose, when he had the portraits of all his family painted on one canvas. “The picture,” says the good old Vicar of Wakefield, “instead of gratifying our vanity, as we hoped, leaned, in a mortifying manner, against the kitchen-wall, where the canvas was stretched and painted, much too large to be got through any of the doors.”

It is only a few years since Mr. Homer’s name became known to the public. He is the youngest among the men to whom we look for a high order of excellence in the treatment of purely American subjects. Mr. Homer served his apprenticeship as draughtsman for several illustrated periodicals, learning to draw before he plunged into colors, as more impatient aspirants usually do. The back numbers of the pictorial weeklies furnish innumerable evidences of his industry and progress. A better school of instruction could not have been devised for him. Shortly after the beginning of the war, Mr. Homer went to Virginia, and followed for a while the fortunes of the Army of the Potomac, contributing, from time to time, spirited war-sketches to the pages of a New York illustrated journal. He returned North with a year’s experience of camp-life and a portfolio of valuable studies. From these studies he has since painted his most successful pictures. Mr. Homer is very skilful in the delineation of negro characteristics. The engraving which we print on this page, copied by the artist from the original painting entitled “The Bright Side,” seems to us in his best manner. Of course the broad effect of sunlight attained by oil-colors cannot be reproduced in a wood-cut. Three picturesque-looking Contrabands, loving the sunshine as bees love honey, have stretched themselves out on the warm side of a tent, and, with their ragged hats slouched over their brows, are taking “solid comfort.” Something to eat, nothing to do, and plenty of sunshine constitute a Contraband’s Paradise. The scene is one that was common enough in our camps down South during the war; but the art with which it is painted is not so common.

While Mr. Homer was engaged on this canvas, he suddenly found himself in want of a model for one of the figures. In Italy or France there are men and women who earn their livelihood by serving as models for the painters; but this class does not flourish very well in our country, and Mr. Homer was somewhat puzzled as to how he should find his man. In one of the cross-streets near the University lives a colored person whom we shall call Mr. Bones,—if we were to use his real name he might resent it as a liberty. Mr. Bones (formerly) “belonged to one of the first families of Virginia,” but when the Rebellion broke out he selected New York as his residence, and, at the time of which we are writing, was engaged in the lucrative profession of bootblack,—a profession of which he is still a shining ornament.

It occurred to our artist, that Mr. Bones would serve his purpose excellently well. One morning, as Mr. Bones was passing the University on his usual tour in search of customers, he was accosted by the painter, who explained his artistic wants. But Mr. Bones was proof against the most lucid explanation. If Mr. Bones’s head had been iron-clad, it couldn’t have resisted a new idea more successfully. He was at length induced to enter the University, and, after great trouble,—Mr. Bones at the foot of each stairway evincing a desire to run away,—was finally conducted to the artist’s studio. In order that his prize might not escape him, the painter quietly locked the door. No sooner did Mr. Bones perceive this movement than he gave vent to a series of unearthly shrieks, and proceeded to roll himself up into a ball, much after the fashion of a sow-bug,—a cunning little creature, that can, at will, make itself look for all the world just like large-sized buckshot.

Mr. Bones bounced round the narrow apartment so furiously, and continued to shriek so lustily, that the astonished painter made haste to throw open the door. Mr. Bones instantly ricocheted over the threshold like a huge cannon-ball, and was heard bounding down stairs, five steps at a time.

The cause of this singular conduct on the part of Mr. Bones was afterwards accounted for. It appears the simple fellow had somehow conceived the idea that the artist was “a medicine-man,” (i. e. an army-surgeon,) and that he had lured him, Mr. Bones, into his den for the purpose of relieving the said Mr. Bones of a limb or two, by the way of practice. This is one solution of our friend’s terror. Our own impression is, however, that the profound gloom of the University turned his brain.

In spite of this mischance, “The Bright Side” was finished, the artist being fortunate enough to obtain a less refractory model.

We think it was in 1863 that Mr. Homer received his first general recognition as a painter. In that year he contributed to the thirty-eighth annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design two small pictures, which attracted considerable attention, and were at once purchased by a well-known connoisseur. It was our good fortune to be among the many who saw in these paintings, not only a promise of future excellence, but an excellence accomplished. In an old memorandum-book, kept in those days, is the following note, which we beg leave to transcribe.

“Two little war-scenes (Nos. 255 and 371), by Winslow Homer,—his first appearance in any academy. Mr. Homer calls his pictures ‘The Last Goose at Yorktown,’ and ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ The former represents a couple of Union boys cautiously approaching, on all fours, an overturned barrel, out of the farther end of which the wary goose is observed making a Banks-like retreat. A neat bit of humor, Mr. Homer. The second picture shows a Federal camp at supper-time. The band in the distance is supposed to be playing ‘Home, Sweet Home’; in the immediate foreground are two of the boys, one warming the coffee at the camp-fire, and the other dreamily watching the operation; but his heart is ‘over the hills and far away,’ for the suggestive music of the band has filled his eyes with visions of home. The different sentiments of the two incidents are worked out with gracious skill. The figures are full of character, but a trifle fresh in color, as is also the landscape.”

Mr. Homer has greatly improved on his first war-pictures, admirable as they were, and has given us several careful works on more peaceful subjects than Zouaves and cavalry charges. Yet we think his transcripts of camp-life, the battle-field, and the bivouac are the best exponents of his strength. It is to be hoped that his portfolio and his memory will afford him themes for many a noble picture illustrative of the most desperate struggle that the good knight Freedom ever had with the Prince of Darkness.

T. B. Aldrich.

FLOSS-HAIR ran out to play in the sunshine among the dandelions, as she had played many an April morning before. Grandmamma watched her from the doorway where she sat spinning,—her little bright head in its halo of silky gold swaying and flitting among the goldfinches, with a motion as bird-like and airy as theirs. Suddenly Floss-Hair made a hovering pause over the wavy grass-buds, and turned a questioning glance towards the doorway.

Grandmamma looked very lovely to Floss-Hair from where she stood. A silvery sunbeam had lighted up the motes that danced around her spinning-wheel, so that she seemed to sit and spin behind a veil of gossamer; and in her gray dress, with her quiet eyes smiling out from under her white, smooth hair, she was more than beautiful: she might have sat for the picture of a saint.

Floss-Hair broke a downy seed-globe from its stalk, and blew it one, two, three times. The plumes fluttered around her in the air; not one was left on the stem. “Grandmamma wants me,” she said, and ran back to the door.

“What was it stopped your play, little one?”

“Why, there is scarcely a dandelion left down there in the grass, where so many grew, and in their places are rows of round gray heads, standing up like ghosts. The lawn is not so pleasant as it used to be. Why need flowers die, grandmamma?”

The soft eyes smiled a little more tenderly, in answer. “Did you see where the seed-feathers went, Floss-Hair, when you blew them from the stem?”

“O, into the air, to sail off on the clouds, and be drowned in the sunset, perhaps.”

“No, no, dear; some of them glided away to hide under the velvet grass of the lawn, where they will sleep all summer and all winter, and next spring will come out again, wide-awake young dandelions. And some hurried out to the road-sides and field-borders, where in years to come poor folk will seek their roots for food and medicine. And see there,—the yellow-birds are fluttering over the dandelion-stems by dozens; they will take the gray plumes to weave into the lining of their nests, and hundreds of little, shivering bird-breasts will be thankful, another year, that the golden blossoms you like so well were changed to dandelion-down. It is better to be useful than pretty, pet: and you see that a flower’s going to seed is only its last and best way of doing good.”

“So the dandelions are spinning silk to line bird’s-nests with,” said Floss-Hair; “and grandmamma sits and spins for me. Dear grandmamma, your hair is gray and soft, like dandelion-down,—I hope no cruel wind will ever blow you away from me.”

“But, little one, my hair was once all fly-away gold, like yours. Call me Dandelion-Down,—the phantom of a little Floss-Hair that played among the meadow-blossoms seventy years ago.”

“No, no, grandmamma, I will not call Dandelion-Down a ghost any more; it is a little, common, staring, yellow flower turned to an angel, scattering blessings about the world, like a white-haired grandmamma I know, who has kind thoughts always ready to give everybody. It is not a bad thing, after all, for dandelions and little girls to bloom and fade away. If people could only be sure of growing good and lovely as they grow old!”

“Good is lovely, Floss-Hair,” said grandmamma.

The next spring little Floss-Hair strayed silently among the dandelions, for the chair in the doorway was vacant, and the spinning-wheel was still. But the child’s heart was not wholly sad. Her memory was a nest of warm and tender thoughts, that seemed fluttering back to her from the dear, silver-haired friend, now one of the white angels of heaven.

And Floss-Hair never forgot the last lesson her grandmamma taught her, while she was yet an earth-angel,—the beautiful lesson of the Dandelion-Down.

Lucy Larcom.

THUS Mr. Richard H. Stoddard, shut within the compass of hot brick walls, sung of summer in the country. I trust that few of my young readers are destined to be confined all this hot and dusty weather to the city; that for most, if not all, even of the city-bred, there will be a few weeks by the sea, where the sound of the surf on the beach is cool and pleasant, or among the mountains, about whose tops refreshing breezes play in the sultriest weather, or some otherwhere away from the hurry and glare and heat of the busy town. Whether in country or in city, I venture to hope that those with whom I chatted about May-Day will be disposed to sit down with me again for a little talk concerning Midsummer.

The early flowers of spring have passed away,—their places taken by other, perhaps less lovely blossoms. The orchards have cast their bloom, the young fruit usurping the places of the delicate pink and white blossoms. The early birds, having caught the first worms, and built their nests, and hatched their young, have ceased to sing their love-songs, and, in place of the continuous concert that made vocal the whole earth but a short time since, we have now the drone and hum of the numerous insect-life that the sun has warmed into being and motion everywhere, till

The birds have not all ceased singing. In the early morning we have fitful strains of music from some enthusiastic songster, and there are some of our birds, particularly a little song-sparrow, that sing all summer. Bobolinks, too, (that shall presently become dusky, yellowish-brown, greedy birds, and, going south, be killed and eaten as reed-birds in Maryland, and rice-birds in Louisiana,) quiver and shiver over the meadows, sending forth that fantastic song of theirs, never to be imitated or described. A few robins, having started one young family in the world, are making arrangements for rearing another brood; and the bank-swallows dart in and out of their thick rows of holes in perpendicular sand-precipices.

Haying began with the month. By the way, our sturdy and downright Saxon ancestors, who had a blunt way of giving expressive names to things, called July “Haymonath.” June was styled by them variously “Woedmonath” or “Weydmonath” (weed-month), “Medemonath” (meadow-month), and “Midsumormonath.” A verse, from a song pronounced by Mr. Leigh Hunt to be the oldest in the English language, runs:—

Hence “Weed-month” and “Mead-month.”

What perfume so refreshing and delightful as new-mown hay? I declare I consider it incomparably superior to “Phalon’s Night-Blooming Cereus,” or any, the most delicately scented pomade, or what not, that ever emanated from a barber’s shop or the laboratory of the most cunning perfumer. But this has little to do with the haying.

If you are living in the country, you shall awake some morning with the sound of the sharp strokes of the whetstone on the scythe mingling with your dreams, and, looking from your window upon a fair green meadow, heavy with ripening grass, over which the early wind passes in long waves and beautiful undulations, you shall see stout men moving regularly forward, with a steady rhythmical swing and stride, leaving long, even swaths of fallen grass behind them. Then up and out, if you are an active boy or girl, and to the hay-field, with a light fork to assist in turning the hay, or a rake to gather it into “windrows.”

And I assure you there is rare sport in the hay-field. There are scores of field-mice which have been disturbed by the mowers. There is the pretty little common mouse, equally at home in the field or the granary; and there is a long-tailed, jumping mouse, as agile in his leaps, and as strong proportionately, as that curious creature, the Kangaroo. To chase and capture or kill these little animals do most boys most seriously incline; a quick, intelligent black-and-tan or Scotch terrier adding to the sport amazingly. Then you will doubtless find many of their nests, each with its store of blind and helpless little mice, all too feeble to follow the example of the three historical blind mice,

In England they have a tiny creature known as the Harvest-Mouse, of which it takes six full-grown ones to weigh an ounce. This elegant and curious little animal builds a round, compact nest about the size of an ordinary cricket-ball, in the centre of which live its eight little ones. The nest, which is suspended on stalks of grass or grain a few inches from the ground, has no apparent opening, and it is still a question how the mother manages to get at her young to feed them, they being so closely packed within that their habitation may be rolled across the floor without disturbing them. Public attention was first called to this little quadruped by the Rev. Gilbert White, a naturalist of the latter part of the last century, whose “Natural History of Selborne”—a most charming book—I trust many of my young friends have read or will read.

Besides the mice in the hay-fields, there are moles, snakes, and the occasional nests of bobolinks and ground-sparrows (also of “yellow-jackets” and humble-bees, sometimes). Of the moles there is little to be said, save that their eyes are so small and so buried in the soft fur that most boys believe them to be blind. Also, one variety has a peculiar star-shaped excrescence on its nose, which is more useful to burrow with than beautiful to behold. For the snakes, they are perfectly harmless; and many of them, particularly a bright-green reptile, are really very pretty creatures, when one overcomes man’s natural antipathy to the serpent.

In “making believe” to work a little,—or in really working, as some young folks do,—the morning passes, and noon comes on, flaming, sultry, and oppressive. The most striking description of a summer noon that I call to mind was written by the poet John Clare. It is so good that I venture to quote two stanzas:—

The picture of the feather resting motionless and steadfast upon the water gives the best idea of perfect stillness that I remember to have met with in my reading. Here is a short prose description, by an English writer, of one of “the dog-days,” that sets one broiling to read:—

“Now we occasionally have one of those sultry days that make the house too hot to hold us, and force us to seek shelter in the open air, which is hotter; when the interior of the blacksmith’s shop looks awful, and we expect the foaming porter-pot to hiss as the brawny forger dips his fiery nose into it; when the birds sit open-mouthed upon the bushes, and the fishes fry in the shallow ponds, and the sheep and cattle congregate together in the shade, and forget to eat; when pedestrians along dusty roads quarrel with their coats and waistcoats, and cut sticks to carry them across their shoulders; when everything seen beyond a piece of parched soil quivers through the heated air; and when, finally, a snow-white swan, floating above its own image upon a piece of clear, cool water, into which a weeping willow is dipping its green fingers, is a sight not to be turned from suddenly.”

But nature and life are full of compensations, and on the hottest day falls the refreshing summer rain. The clouds rise black and tremendous from behind the distant mountain-tops. We hear the far-away growling and rumbling of the thunder. Occasional pale, zigzag streaks of lightning dart from the black mass that approaches, threatening and ominous, or brighten its edges with momentary glare. And still the great clouds gather strength, and roll and pile themselves up as they approach, until the entire heavens are darkened; and then falls the rain, in great sheets of water, beating down the grass and growing corn, while, crash after crash, the deafening roar of the thunder bursts over our heads.

And there are gentle summer rains, falling upon the thirsty earth with mild and heavenly blessing. Of such rain Mr. Longfellow has sung. Listen to the patter and the beat of the shower in the cadence of his lines:—

It is pleasant under the great trees in the woods in summer. At this season an imaginative boy wishes he could have lived in merry Sherwood, years ago, with Robin Hood and his men in Lincoln green, forgetting that summer lasts only a few short months, and that we find nowhere any ballads or legends eulogistic of the life of the bold outlaws in the dreary winter-time. Shakespeare, who had a habit of looking at all sides of the subjects he touched upon, did not forget this in his invitation, “Under the Greenwood Tree,” but distinctly relates that

Two rather serious foes to encounter in a woodland life. But the woods are pleasant in summer, and I fully agree with the old Robin Hood balladist, that

though I have a very indistinct notion as to what a “mavis” may be, (I believe it to be a blackbird,) and am certain that I never heard a “merl” sing in my life.

Our English ancestors, partly from the ancient practice of Druidical, and afterwards Romish ceremonials, on feast and fast days, observed many holidays that were ignored by the Puritans when they took the Transatlantic line, and visited this country, via Holland. One of their most popular festivals was Midsummer Eve, or St. John the Baptist’s Eve, as it is called at random. St. John’s Day is the 24th of June, and on the preceding evening many superstitious and other practices were in vogue, of which I propose to say a few words before leaving our gossip about Midsummer.

It may be worth the while, as showing the court etiquette in the details of dress, etc. many years ago, to quote from a manuscript supposed to have been written by a gentleman-usher belonging to the retinue of King Henry VII., which setteth forth how the king and his courtiers shall appear and comport themselves on Midsummer Day:—“The king ought to wear his surcoat, his kirtle, and his pane of ermine; and, if his pane be five ermine deep, a duke shall be but four, an earl three. And the king must have on his head his hat of estate, and his sword before him; the chamberlain, the steward, the treasurer, the comptroller, and the ushers, before the sword; and before them all other lords, save only them that wear robes; and they must follow the king; and the greatest estate to lead the queen.”

In reading this, one is reminded of the formalities and (according to American ideas) frivolities attending an opening of Parliament by the present queen, with the Gold Sticks in Waiting and various other mummeries. Doubtless a few years will see these things pass away in the train of the May-day games, the bull and bear baitings, the cock-fightings, the St. John’s Eve marching-watch, and the other national observances that Englishmen once believed in.

One of the principal rites connected with St. John’s Eve was the building of great bonfires, around which youths and maidens, gayly decked with wreaths, and bearing bouquets of flowers and sweet herbs in their hands, danced to merry measure. Then they all passed through the flame, leaving their garlands and flowers to be burned, and thereafter considered themselves safe from attacks of ague for the ensuing year. They also believed that, if they looked at the fire through the nosegays they carried, they would insure their eyes thereby from any painful disorder. In Ireland, within not many years now past, it was the custom to build these bonfires on commanding eminences, the heads of families passing through the midst with their households. This is supposed to have been a relic of the ancient worship of the sun, or of Bel (or Baal), the god of fire.

On the other hand, however, the observance is claimed as a tradition of early Christianity, the particulars (from an ancient missal) of the destruction of certain fiery dragons throwing some light upon the origin of the custom, and explaining the title of “bonfires,” by which such festival illuminations are still known:—

“In worshyp of Saint Johan the people waked at home, and made three manner of fyres: one was clene bones and noo woode, and that is called a bone fyre; another is clene woode and no bones, and that is called a woode fyre, for people to sit and wake thereby; the third is made of wode and bones, and it is called Saynt Johanny’s fyre. The first fyre, as a great clerke, Johan Belleth, telleth, he was in a certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete, the which causid that dragons to go togyther in tokenynge that Johan dyed in brennynge love and charyte to God and man. Then, as these dragons flewe in th’ ayre, they shed down to that water froth of ther kynde, and so envenymed the waters and caused moch people for to take theyr deth thereby, and many dyverse syknesse. Wyse clerks knoweth well that dragons hate nothing more than the stenche of brennynge bones, and therefore they gadered as many as they mighte fynde, and brent them; and so, with the stenche thereof, they drove away the dragons, and so they were brought out of greete dysease.”

It is a little curious to notice that in the pestilence that was believed to be stayed, as related above, by building bone fires, the cause was supposed to be poisoned water. I believe there is no case on record of the prevalence of the plague or the cholera among a very ignorant people, where the inhabitants were not possessed with the same idea,—that the water had been poisoned. Sometimes hundreds of Jews fell victims to the delusion, sometimes hundreds of Christians; and once, in St. Petersburg, not very many years since, during a visitation of cholera, all the hospitals were broken open by the frantic Moujiks, who murdered the French physicians in attendance, under the belief that they had poisoned the wells to rid the city of its crowds of poor.

It was a firm belief in England for many years, that, if one watched at the church door from seven o’clock on St. John’s Eve till one on the following morning, for three successive years, he would at the third watching see a procession of those who were to die during the year enter the church. “I am sure,” says a writer in the Connoisseur, “that my own sister Hetty, who died just before Christmas, stood in the church porch last Midsummer Eve to see all that were to die in our parish; and she saw her own apparition.” Another account says: “Nine others besides myself went into a church porch with an expectation of seeing those who should die that year; but about eleven o’clock I was so afraid, that I left them; and all the nine positively affirm to me that, about an hour after, the church doors flying open, the minister (who it seems was very much troubled that night in his sleep) with such as should die that year, did appear in order: which persons they named to me, and they appeared then all very healthful; but six of them died in six weeks after, in the very same order that they appeared.” This foolish belief also prevailed concerning St. Mark’s Eve, (April 24,) one of the many relics of the ignorance and superstition of the common people under the rule of the monks.

But there are pleasanter and brighter traditions connected with the festival. Like Allhalloween and St. Mark’s Eve, this night was specially set apart by the young women for the trying of various charms, the end and aim of which were the discovery of their future husbands, or of the fidelity of their present lovers. Miss Hannah More mentions one of these practices in “Tawney Rachel,” where she relates that “Sally Evans would never go to bed on Midsummer Eve without sticking up in her room the well-known plant called Midsummer Men, as the bending of the leaves to the right or to the left would never fail to tell her whether her lover was true or false.” This plant is alluded to in “The Cottage Girl,” a poem written on Midsummer Eve, 1786, as follows:—

Then there was the “dumb cake” and the sowing of hemp-seed. A writer in an old English periodical says: “I and my two sisters tried the dumb cake together. You must know, two must make it, two bake it, two break it, and the third put it under each of their pillows, (but you must not speak a word all the time,) and then you will dream of the man you are to marry. This we did; and, to be sure, I did nothing all night but dream of Mr. Blossom. The same night, exactly at twelve o’clock, I sowed hemp-seed in our back-yard, and said to myself,

Will you believe me? I looked back and saw him behind me as plain as eyes could see him!”

The poet Gay wrote:—

In Spain, as in England, St. John’s Day was selected by the maidens as a proper time on which to test the faith of their lovers by the practice of innocent charms. The following extract from a beautiful ballad sets forth the manner of their charming in a very charming manner, and will very pleasantly close an article which—although I am not nearly at the end of my subject—has already grown beyond the modest bounds I had set for it. There are some traits of London life four or five hundred years ago, as the setting of the “Marching Watch,” the feasts of the ’prentices, etc., upon which I may, perhaps, speak in another article. Here is the song of the Spanish girls on St. John’s Day:—

J. Warren Newcomb, Jr.

VII.

THE “little red” was at the door of the Green Cottage. Frank Scherman had got the refusal of it the night before, and early in the morning Madam Routh’s compliments had come to Mrs. Linceford, with the request, in all the form that mountain usage demanded, that she and the young ladies would make part of the expedition for the day.

Captain Jotham Green, host and proprietor, stood himself at the horses’ heads. The Green Cottage, you perceive, had double right to its appellation. It was both baptismal and hereditary, surname and given name,—given with the coat of fresh, pale, pea-green paint that had been laid upon it within the year, and had communicated a certain tender, newly-sprouted, May-morning expression to the old centre and its outshoots.

Mrs. Green, within, was generously busy with biscuits, cold chicken, doughnuts fried since sunrise, and coffee richly compounded with cream and sugar, which a great tin can stood waiting to receive and convey, and which was at length to serve as cooking utensil in reheating upon the fire of coals the picnickers would make up under the very tassel of Feather-Cap.

The great wagons were drawn up also before the piazza of the hotel; and between the two houses flitted the excursionists, full of the bright enthusiasm of the setting off, which is the best part of a jaunt, invariably.

Leslie Goldthwaite, in the hamadryad costume, just aware—which it was impossible for her to help—of its exceeding prettiness, and of glances that recognized it, pleased with a mixture of pleasures, was on the surface of things once more, taking the delight of the moment with a young girl’s innocent abandonment. It was nice to be received so among all these new companions; to be evidently, though tacitly, voted nice, in the way girls have of doing it; to be launched at once into the beginning of apparently exhaustless delights;—all this was superadded to the first and underlying joy of merely being alive and breathing, this superb summer morning, among these forests and hills.

Sin Saxon, whatever new feeling of half sympathy and respect had been touched in her toward Miss Craydocke the night before, in her morning mood was all alive again to mischief. The small, spare figure of the lady appeared at the side-door, coming out briskly toward them along the passage, just as the second wagon filled up and was ready to move.

I did not describe Miss Craydocke herself when I gave you the glimpse into her room. There was not much to describe; and I forgot it in dwelling upon her surroundings and occupations. In fact, she extended herself into these, and made you take them involuntarily and largely into the account in your apprehension of her. Some people seem to have given them at the outset a mere germ of personality like this, which must needs widen itself out in like fashion to be felt at all. Her mosses and minerals, her pressed leaves and flowers, her odds and ends of art and science and prettiness which she gathered about her, her industries and benevolences,—these were herself. Out of these she was only a little elderly thread-paper of a woman, of no apparent account among crowds of other people, and with scarcely enough of bodily bulk or presence to take any positive foothold anywhere.

What she might have seemed, in the days when her hair was golden, and her little figure plump, and the very unclassical features rounded and rosy with the bloom and grace of youth, was perhaps another thing; but now, with her undeniable “front,” and cheeks straightened into lines that gave you the idea of her having slept all night upon both of them, and got them into longitudinal wrinkles that all day was never able to wear out; above all, with her curious little nose, (that was the exact expression of it,) sharply and suddenly thrusting itself among things in general from the middle plane of her face with slight preparatory hint of its intention,—you would scarcely charge her, upon suspicion, with any embezzlement or making away of charms intrusted to her keeping in the time gone by.

This morning, moreover, she had somehow given herself a scratch upon the tip of this odd, investigating member; and it blushed for its inquisitiveness under a scrap of thin pink adhesive plaster.

Sin Saxon caught sight of her as she came. “Little Miss Netticoat!” she cried, just under her breath, “With a fresh petticoat, and a red nose!”—Then, changing her tone with her quotation,—

Thou always dost! What hast thou gone and got thyself up so for, just as I was almost persuaded to be good? Now—can I help that?” And she dropped her folded hands in her lap, exhaled a little sigh of vanquished goodness, and looked round appealingly to her companions.

“It’s only,” said Miss Craydocke, reaching them a trifle out of breath, “this little parcel,—something I promised to Prissy Hoskins,—and would you just go round by the Cliff and leave it for me?”

“O, I’m afraid of the Cliff!” cried Florrie Arnall. “Creggin’s horses backed there the other day. It’s horribly dangerous.”

“It’s three quarters of a mile round,” suggested the driver.

“The ‘little red’ might take it. They’ll go faster than we, or can, if they try,” said Mattie Shannon.

“The ‘little red’ ’s just ready,” said Sin Saxon. “You needn’t laugh. That wasn’t a pun. But O Miss Craydocke!”—and her tone suggested the mischievous apropos,—“what can you have been doing to your nose?”

“O yes!”—Miss Craydocke had a way of saying “O yes!”—“It was my knife slipped as I was cutting a bit of cord, in a silly fashion, up toward my face. It’s a mercy my nose served to save my eyes.”

“I suppose that’s partly what noses are for,” said Sin Saxon, gravely. “Especially when you follow them, and ‘go it blind.’ ”

“It was a piece of good luck, too, after all,” said Miss Craydocke, in her simple way, never knowing, or choosing to know, that she was snubbed or quizzed. “Looking for a bit of plaster, I found my little parcel of tragacanth that I wanted so the other day. It’s queer how things turn up.”

“Excessively queer,” said Sin, solemnly, still looking at the injured feature. “But as you say, it’s all for the best, after all. ‘There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.’ Hiram, we might as well drive on. I’ll take the parcel, Miss Craydocke. We’ll get it there somehow, going or coming.”

The wagon rolled off, veils and feathers taking the wind bravely, and making a gay moving picture against the dark pines and gray ledges as it glanced along. Sin Saxon tossed Miss Craydocke’s parcel into the “little red” as they passed it by, taking the road in advance, giving a saucy word of command to Jim Holden, which transferred the charge of its delivery to him, and calling out a hurried explanation to the ladies over her shoulder that “it would take them round the Cliff,—the most wonderful point in all Outledge; up and down the whole length of New Hampshire they could see from there, if their eyes were good enough!” And so they were away.

Miss Craydocke turned back into the house, not a whit discomfited, and with not so much as a contrasting sigh in her bosom or a rankle in her heart. On the contrary, a droll twinkle played among the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. They could not hurt her, these merry girls, meaning nothing but the moment’s fun, nor cheat her of her quiet share of the fun either.

Up above, out of a window over the piazza roof, looked two others, young girls,—one of them at least,—also, upon the scene of the setting-off.

I cannot help it that a good many different people will get into my short story. They get into a short time, in such a summer holiday, and so why not? At any rate, I must tell you about these Josselyns.

These two had never in all their lives been away pleasuring before. They had nobody but each other to come with now. Susan had been away a good deal in the last two years, but it had not been pleasuring. Martha was some five or six years the younger. She had a pretty face, yet marked, as it is so sad to see the faces of the young, with lines and loss,—lines that tell of cares too early felt, and loss of the first fresh, redundant bloom, that such lines bring.

They sat a great deal at this window of theirs. It was a sort of instinct and habit with them, and it made them happier than almost anything else,—sitting at a window together. It was home to them, because at home they lived so,—life and duty were so framed in for them,—in one dear, old window-recess. Sometimes they thought that it would be heaven to them by and by. That such a seat, and such a quiet, happy outlook, they should find kept for them together, in the Father’s mansion, up above.

At home, it was up three flights of stairs, in a tall, narrow city house, of which the lower floors overflowed with young, boisterous half brothers and sisters,—the tide not seldom rising and inundating their own retreat,—whose delicate mother, not more than eight years older than her eldest step-daughter, was tied hand and foot to her nursery, with a baby on her lap, and the two or three next above with hands always to be washed, disputes and amusements always to be settled, small morals to be enforced, and clean calico tyers to be incessantly put on.

And Susan and Martha sat up stairs and made the tyers.

Mr. Josselyn was a book-keeper, with a salary of eighteen hundred dollars, and these seven children. And Susan and Martha were girls of fair culture, and womanly tastes, and social longings. How does this seem to you, young ladies, and what do you think of their up-stairs life together, you who calculate, if you calculate at all, whether five hundred dollars may carry you respectably through your half-dozen city assemblies, where you shine in silk and gossamer, of which there will not be “a dress in the room that cost less than seventy-five dollars,” and come home, after the dance, “a perfect rag”?

Two years ago, when you were perhaps performing in tableaux for the “benefit of the Sanitary,” these two girls had felt the great enthusiasm of the time lay hold of them in a larger way. Susan had a friend—a dear old intimate of school-days, now a staid woman of eight-and-twenty—who was to go out in yet maturer companionship into the hospitals. And Susan’s heart burned to go. But there were all the little tyers, and the A, B, C’s, and the faces and fingers.

“I can do it for a while,” said Martha, “without you.” Those two words held the sacrifice. “Mamma is so nicely this summer, and by and by Aunt Lucy may come, perhaps. I can do quite well.”

So Martha sat, for months and months, in the up-stairs window alone. There were martial marchings in the streets beneath; great guns thundered out rejoicings; flags filled the air with crimson and blue, like an aurora; she only sat and made little frocks and tyers for the brothers and sisters. God knew how every patient needle-thrust was really also a woman’s blow for her country.

And now, pale and thin with close, lonely work, the time had come to her at last when it was right to take a respite; when everybody said it must be; when Uncle David, just home from Japan, had put his hand in his pocket and pulled out three new fifty-dollar bills, and said to them in his rough way, “There, girls; take that, and go your lengths.” The war was over, and among all the rest here were these two women-soldiers honorably discharged, and resting after the fight. But nobody at Outledge knew anything of the story.

There is almost always at every summer sojourn some party of persons who are to the rest what the mid-current is to the stream; who gather to themselves and bear along in their course—in their plans and pleasures and daily doings—the force of all the life of the place. If any expedition of consequence is afoot, they are the expedition; others may join in, or hold aloof, or be passed by; in which last cases, it is only in a feeble, rippling fashion that they go their ways and seek some separate pleasure in by-nooks and eddies, while the gay hum of the main channel goes whirling on. At Outledge, this party was the large and merry school-girl company with Madam Routh.

“I don’t see why,” said Martha Josselyn, still looking out, as the “little red” left the door of the Green Cottage,—“I don’t see why those new girls who came last night should have got into everything in a minute, and we’ve been here a week and don’t seem to catch to anything at all. Some people are like burs, I think, or drops of quicksilver, that always bunch or run together. We don’t stick, Susie. What’s the reason?”

“Some of these young ladies have been at Madam Routh’s; they were over here last evening. Sin Saxon knows them very well.”

“You knew Effie Saxon at school, too.”

“Eight years ago. And this is the little one. That’s nothing.”

“You petted her, and she came to the house. You’ve told her stories hundreds of times. And she sees we’re all by ourselves.”

“She don’t see. She doesn’t think. That’s just the whole of it.”

“People ought to see, then. You would, Sue, and you know it.”

“I’ve been used to seeing—and thinking.”

“Used! Yes, indeed! And she’s been used to the other. Well, it’s queer how the parts are given out. Shall we go to the pines?”

A great cliff-side rearing itself up, rough with inaccessible crags, bristling with old, ragged pines, and dark with glooms of close cedars and hemlocks, above a jutting table of rock that reaches out and makes a huge semi-circular base for the mountain, and is in itself a precipice-pedestal eighty feet sheer up from the river-bank. Close in against the hill-front, on this platform of stone, that holds its foot or two of soil, a little, poor, unshingled house, with a tumble-down picket-fence about it, attempting the indispensable door-yard of all better country-dwellings here where the great natural door-yard or esplanade makes it such an utter nonsense. This is the place at which the “little red” drew up, ten minutes later, to leave Prissy Hoskins’s parcel.

Dakie Thayne jumped down off the front seat, and held up his arms to help Leslie out over the wheel, upon her declaring that she must go and do the errand herself, to get a nearer look at Hoskins life.

Dakie Thayne had been asked, at Leslie’s suggestion, to fill the vacant sixth seat beside the driver, the Thoresbys one and all declining. Mrs. Thoresby was politic: she would not fall into the wake of this school-girl party at once. By and by she should be making up her own excursions, and asking whom she would.

“There’s nothing like a boy of that age for use upon a picnic, Mrs. Linceford,” Leslie had pleaded, with playful parody, in his behalf, when the lady had hinted something of her former sentiment concerning the encroachments and monopolies of “boys of that age.” And so he came.

The Haddens got Jim Holden to lift them down on the opposite side, for a run to the verge of the projecting half-circle of rock that, like a gigantic bay-window or balcony in the mighty architecture of the hills, looked up and down the whole perspective of the valley. Jim Holden would readily have driven them round its very edge upon the flat, mossy sward, but for Mrs. Linceford’s nerves, and the vague idea of almost an accident having occurred there lately which pervaded the little party. “Creggin’s horses had backed,” as Florrie Arnall said; and already the new-comers had picked up, they scarcely knew how, the incipient tradition, hereafter to grow into an established horror of the “Cliff.”

“It was nothing,” Jim Holden said; “only the nigh hoss was a res’less crittur, an’ contrived to git his leg over the pole; no danger with his cattle.” But Mrs. Linceford cried out in utter remonstrance, and only begged Leslie to be quick, that they might get away from the place altogether.

All this bustle of arrival and discussion and alighting had failed, curiously, to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child, a girl of nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her shoulders,—tangled, sun-burnt hair tossing above it,—gown, innocent of crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs,—and bare feet, whose heels were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,—who, at the moment of their coming, was wrathfully “shoo-ing” off from a bit of rude toy-garden, fenced with ends of twigs stuck upright, a tall Shanghae hen and her one chicken, who had evidently made nothing, morally or physically, of the feeble enclosure.

“I wish you were dead and in your grav-ies!” cried the child, achieving, between her righteous indignation and her relenting toward her uncouth pets at the last breath, a sufficiently queer play upon her own word. And with this, the enemy being routed, she turned face to face with Dakie Thayne and Leslie Goldthwaite, coming in at the dilapidated gate.

“They’ve scratched up all my four-o’clocks!” she said. And then her rustic shyness overcame suddenly all else, and she dragged her great toe back and forth in the soft mould, and put her forefinger in her mouth, and looked askance at them from the corners of her eyes.

“Prissy? Prissy Hoskins?” Leslie addressed her in sweet, inquiring tones. But the child stood still with finger in mouth, and toe working in the ground, not a bit harder nor faster, nor changing in the least, for more or less, the shy look in her face.

“That’s your name, isn’t it? I’ve got something for you. Won’t you come and get it?” Leslie paused, waiting,—fearing lest a further advance on her own part might put Prissy altogether to flight. Nothing answered in the girl’s eyes to her words; there was no lighting up of desire or curiosity, however restrained; she stood like one indifferent or uncomprehending.

“She’s awful deef!” cried a new voice from the doorway. “She ain’t that scared. She’s sarcy enough, sometimes.”

A woman, middle-aged or more, stood on the rough, slanting door-stone. She had bare feet, in coarse calf-skin slippers, stringy petticoats differing only from the child’s in length, sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, no neck garniture,—not a bit of anything white about her. Over all looked forth a face sharp and hard, that might have once been good-looking, in a raw, country fashion, and that had undoubtedly always been, what it now was, emphatically Yankee-smart. An inch-wide stripe of black hair was combed each way over her forehead, and rolled up on her temples in what, years and years ago, used to be called most appropriately “flat curls,”—these fastened with long horn sidecombs. Beyond was a strip of desert,—no hair at all for an inch and a half more toward the crown; the rest dragged back and tied behind with the relentless tightness that gradually and regularly, by the persistence of years, had accomplished this peculiar belt of clearing. It completed her expression; it was as a very halo of Yankee saintship crowning the woman who in despite of poverty and every discouragement had always hated, to the very roots of her hair, anything like what she called a “sozzle,”—who had always been screwed up and sharp set to hard work. She couldn’t help the tumble-down fence; she had no “men-folks” round, and she couldn’t have paid for a hundred pickets and a day’s carpentering, to have saved her life. She couldn’t help Prissy’s hair even; for it would kink and curl, and the minute the wind took it “there it was again”; and it was not time yet, thank goodness! to harrow it back and begin in her behalf the remarkable engineering which had laid out for herself that broad highway across all the thrifty and energetic bumps up to Veneration, (who knows how much it had had to do with mixing them in one common tingle of mutual and unceasing activity?) and down again from ear to ear. Inside the poor little house you would find all spick and span; the old floor white and sanded, the few tins and the pewter spoons shining upon the shelf, the brick hearth and jambs aglow with fresh “redding,” table and chairs set back in rectangular tidiness. Only one thing made a litter, or tried to; a yellow canary that hung in the window and sang “like a house afire,” as Aunt Hoskins said, however that is, and flung his seeds about like the old “Wash at Edmonton,” “on both sides of the way.” Prissy was turned out of doors in all pleasant weather; so otherwise the keeping-room stayed trim, and her curly hair grew sunburnt.

“She’s ben deef ever sence she hed the scarlet-fever. Walk in,” said the woman, by no means satisfied to let strangers get only the outside impression of her premises, and turning round to lead the way without waiting for a reply. “Come in, Prissy!” she bawled, illustrating her summons with what might be called a beckoning in broad capitals, done with the whole arm from finger-tips to shoulder, twice or thrice.

Leslie followed over the threshold, and Prissy ran by like a squirrel, and perched herself on a stool just under the bird-cage.

“I wouldn’t keep it if ’twarn’t for her,” said Aunt Hoskins, apologetically. She was Prissy’s aunt, holding no other close domestic relation to living thing, and so had come to be “Aunt Hoskins” in the whole region round about, so far as she was known at all. “It’s the only bird she can hear sing of a morning. It’s as good as all out-doors to her, and I haint the heart to make her do without it. I’ve done without most things, but it don’t appear to me as if I could do without them. Take a seat, do.”

“I thank you, but my friends are waiting. I’ve brought something for Prissy, from Miss Craydocke at the hotel.” And Leslie held out the package which Dakie Thayne, waiting at the door, had put into her hand as she came in.

“Lawful suz! Prissy! if ’taint another book!” cried the good woman, as Prissy, quick to divine the meaning of the parcel, the like of which she had been made accustomed to before, sprang to her aunt’s side within hearing of her exclamation. “If she ain’t jest the feelingest and thoughtfullest—Well! open it yourself, child; there’s no good of a bundle if you don’t.”

Poor Prissy was thus far happy that she had not been left in the providence of her little life to utter ignorance of this greatest possible delight—a common one to more outwardly favored children—of a real parcel all one’s own. The book, without the brown paper and string, would have been as nothing, comparatively.

Leslie could not but linger to see it untied. There came out a book,—a wonderful big book,—Grimm’s Tales; and some little papers fell to the floor. These were flower-seeds,—bags labelled “Petunia,” “Candytuft,” “Double Balsam,” “Portulaca.”

“Why, Prissy!” shouted Miss Hoskins in her ear as she picked them up, and read the names; “them’s elegant things! They’ll beat your four-o’clocks all to nothin’. It’s lucky the old Shank-high did make a clearin’ of ’em. Tell Miss Craydocke,” she continued, turning again to Leslie, “that I’m comin’ down myself, to—no, I can’t thank her! She’s made a life for that air child, out o’ nothin’, a’most!”

Leslie stood hushed and penetrated in the presence of this good deed, and the joy and gratitude born of it.

“This ain’t all, you see; nor ’t ain’t nothin’ new. She’s ben at it these two year; learnin’ the child to read, an’ tellin’ her things, an’ settin’ her to hunt ’em out, and to do for herself. She was crazy about flowers, allers, an’ stories; but, lor, I couldn’t stop to tell ’em to her, an’ I never knew but one or two; an’ now she can read ’em off to me, like a minister. She’s told her a lot o’ stuff about the rocks,—I can’t make head nor tail on’t; but it ’ud please you to see her fetchin’ ’em in by the apern-full, an’ goin’ on about ’em, that is, if there was reely any place to put ’em afterwards. That’s the wust on’t. I tell you it is jest makin’ a life out o’ pieces that come to hand. Here’s the girl, an’ there’s the woods an’ rocks; there’s all there was to do with, or likely to be; but she found the gumption an’ the willingness, an’ she’s done it!”

Prissy came close over to Leslie with her book in her hand. “Wait a minute,” she said, with the effort in her tone peculiar to the deaf. “I’ve got something to send back.”

“If it’s convenient, you mean,” put in Aunt Hoskins, sharply. “She’s as blunt as a broomstick—that child is.”

But Prissy had sprung away in her squirrel-like fashion, and now came back, bringing with her something really to make one’s eyes water, if one happened, at least, to be ever so little of a geologist,—a mass of quartz rock as large as she could grasp with her two hands, shot through at three different angles with three long, superb, columnar crystals of clear, pale-green beryl. If Professor Dana had known this exact locality, and a more definite name for the “Cliff,” wouldn’t he have had it down in his Supplement with half a dozen exclamation-points after the “beryl”!

“I found it a-purpose!” said Prissy, with the utmost simplicity, putting the heavy specimen out of her own hands into Leslie’s. “She’s been a-wantin’ it this great while, and we’ve looked for it everywheres!”

“A-purpose” it did seem as if the magnificent fragment had been laid in the way of the child’s zealous and grateful search. “There were only the rocks,” as Aunt Hoskins said; in no other way could she so joyously have acknowledged the kindness that had brightened now three summers of her life.

“It’ll bother you, I’m afeard,” said the woman.

“No, indeed! I shall like to take it for you,” continued Leslie, with a warm earnestness, stooping down to the little girl, and speaking in her clear, glad tone close to her cheek. “I only wish I could find something to take her myself.” And with that, close to the little red-brown cheek as she was, she put the period of a quick kiss to her words.

“Come again, and we’ll hunt for some together,” said the child, with instant response of cordiality.

“I will come—if I possibly can,” was Leslie’s last word, and then she and Dakie Thayne hurried back to the wagon.

The Haddens had just got in again upon their side. They were full of exclamations about the wonderful view up and down the long valley-reaches.

“You needn’t tell me!” cried Elinor, in high enthusiasm. “I don’t care a bit for the geography of it. That great aisle goes straight from Lake Umbagog to the Sound!”

“It is a glorious picture,” said Mrs. Linceford. “But I’ve had a little one, that you’ve lost. You’ve no idea, Leslie, what a lovely tableaux you have been making,—you and Dakie, with that old woman and the blowsy child!”

Leslie blushed.

“You’ll never look prettier, if you try ever so hard.”

“Don’t, Mrs. Linceford!”

“Why not?” said Jeannie. “It’s only a pity, I think, that you couldn’t have known it at the time. They say we don’t know when we’re happiest; and we can’t know when we’re prettiest; so where’s the satisfaction?”

“That’s part of your mistake, Jeannie, perhaps,” returned her sister. “If you had been there you’d have spoiled the picture.”

“Look at that!” exclaimed Leslie, showing her beryl. “That’s for Miss Craydocke.” And then, when the first utterances of amazement and admiration were over, she told them the story of the child, and her misfortune, and of what Miss Craydocke had done. “That’s beautiful, I think,” said she. “And it’s the sort of beauty, may be, that one might feel as one went along. I wish I could find—a diamond—for that woman!”

“Thir garnits on Feather-Cap,” put in Jim the driver.

“O, will you show us where?”

“Well, ’t ain’t nowhers in partickler,” replied Jim. “It’s jest as you light on ’em. And you wouldn’t know the best ones when you did. I’ve seen ’em,—dead, dull-lookin’ round stones that’ll crack open chock full o’ red garnits, as an egg is o’ meat.”

“Geodes!” cried Dakie Thayne.

Jim Holden turned round and looked at him as if he thought he had got hold of some new-fashioned expletive,—possibly a pretty hard one.

They came down, now, on the other side of the Cliff, and struck the ford. This diverted and absorbed their thoughts, for none of the ladies had ever forded a river before.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” asked Mrs. Linceford.

“Safe as meetin’,” returned Jim. “I’d drive across with my eyes shot.”

“O, don’t!” cried Elinor.

“I ain’t agoin’ ter; but I could,—an’ the hosses too, for that matter.”

It was exciting, nevertheless, when the water in mid-channel came up nearly to the body of the wagon, and the swift ripples deluded the eye into almost conviction that horses, vehicle, and all were gaining not an inch in forward progress, but drifting surely down. They came up out of the depths, however, with a tug, and a swash, and a drip all over, and a scrambling of hoofs on the pebbles, at the very point aimed at in such apparently sidelong fashion,—the wheel-track that led them up the bank and into the ten-mile pine-woods through which they were to skirt the base of the Cairn and reach Feather-Cap on his accessible side. It was one long fragrance and stillness and shadow.

They overtook the Routh party at the beginning of the mountain-path. The pine-woods stretched on over the gradual slope, as far as they would climb before dinner. Otherwise the mid-day heats would have been too much for them. This was the easy part of the way, and there was breath for chat and merriment.

Just within the upper edge of the woods, in a comparatively smooth opening, they halted. Here they spread their picnic; while up above, on the bare, open rock, the young men kindled their fire, and heated the coffee; and here they ate and drank, and rested through the noontide.

Light clouds flitted between the mountains and the heavens, later in the day, and flung bewildering, dreamy shadows on the far-off steeps, and dropped a gracious veil over the bald forehead and sun-bleak shoulders of Feather-Cap. It was “weather just made for them,” as fortunate excursionists are wont to say.

Sin Saxon was all life, and spring, and fun. She climbed at least three Feather-Caps, dancing from stone to stone with tireless feet, and bounding back and forth with every gay word that it occurred to her to say to anybody. Pictures? She made them incessantly. She was a living dissolving view. You no sooner got one bright look or graceful attitude than it was straightway shifted into another. She kept Frank Scherman at her side for the first half-hour, and then, perhaps, his admiration or his muscles tired, for he fell back a little to help Madam Routh up a sudden ridge, and afterwards, somehow, merged himself in the quieter group of strangers.

By and by one of the Arnalls whispered to Mattie Shannon. “He’s sidled off with her, at last. Did you ever know such a fellow for a new face? But it’s partly the petticoat. He’s such an artist’s eye for color. He was raving about her all the while she stood hanging those shawls among the pines to keep the wind from Mrs. Linceford. She isn’t downright pretty either. But she’s got up exquisitely!”

Leslie Goldthwaite, in her lovely mountain-dress, her bright bloom from enjoyment and exercise, with the stray light through the pines burnishing the bronze of her hair, had innocently made a second picture, it would seem. One such effects deeper impression, sometimes, than the confusing splendor of incessant changes.

“Are you looking for something? Can I help you?” Frank Scherman had said, coming up to her, as she and her friend Dakie, a little apart from the others, were poking among some loose pebbles.

“Nothing that I have lost,” Leslie answered, smiling. “Something I have a very presumptuous wish to find. A splendid garnet geode, if you please!”

“That’s not at all impossible,” returned the young man. “We’ll have it before we go down,—see if we don’t!”

Frank Scherman knew a good deal about Feather-Cap, and something of geologizing. So he and Leslie—Dakie Thayne, in his unswerving devotion, still accompanying—“sidled off” together, took a long turn round under the crest, talking very pleasantly—and restfully, after Sin Saxon’s continuous brilliancy—all the way. How they searched among loose drift under the cliff,—how Mr. Scherman improvised a hammer from a slice of rock,—and how, after many imperfect specimens, they did at last “find a-purpose” an irregular oval of dull, dusky stone, which burst with a stroke into two chalices of incrusted crimson crystals,—I ought to be too near the end of a long chapter to tell. But this search, and this finding, and the motive of it, were the soul and the crown of Leslie’s pleasure for the day. She did not even stop to think how long she had had Frank Scherman’s attention all to herself, or the triumph that it was in the eyes of the older girls, among whom he was excessively admired, and not very disguisedly competed for. She did not know how fast she was growing to be a sort of admiration herself among them, in their girls’ fashion, or what she might do, if she chose, in the way of small, early belleship here at Outledge with such beginning,—how she was “getting on,” in short, as girls express it. And so, as Jeannie Hadden asked, “Where was the satisfaction?”

“You never knew anything like it,” said Jeannie to her friend Ginevra, talking it all over with her that evening in a bit of a visit to Mrs. Thoresby’s room. “I never saw anybody take so among strangers. Madam Routh was delighted with her; and so, I should think, was Mr. Scherman. They say he hates trouble; but he took her all round the top of the mountain, hammering stones for her to find a geode.”

“That’s the newest dodge,” said Mrs. Thoresby, with a little sarcastic laugh. “Girls of that sort are always looking for geodes.” After this, Mrs. Thoresby had always a little well-bred venom for Leslie Goldthwaite.

At the same time, Leslie herself, coming out on the piazza for a moment after tea, met Miss Craydocke approaching over the lawn. She had only her errand to introduce her, but she would not lose the opportunity. She went straight up to the little woman, in a frank, sweet way. But a bit of embarrassment underneath, the real respect that made her timid, perhaps a little nervous fatigue after the excitement and exertion of the day, did what nerves and embarrassment, and reverence itself, will do sometimes,—played a trick with her perfectly clear thought on its way to her tongue.

“Miss Graywacke, I believe?” she said, and instantly knew the dreadful thing that she had done.

“Exactly,” said the lady, with an amused little smile.

“O, I do beg your pardon,” began Leslie, blushing all over.

“No need,—no need. Do you think I don’t know what name I go by, behind my back? They suppose because I’m old and plain and single, and wear a front, and don’t understand rats and the German, that I’m deaf and blind and stupid. But I believe I get as much as they do out of their jokes, after all.” The dear old soul took Leslie by both her hands as she spoke, and looked a whole world of gentle benignity at her out of two soft gray eyes, and then she laughed again. This woman had no self to be hurt.

“We stopped at the Cliff this morning,” Leslie took heart to say; “and they were so glad of your parcel,—the little girl and her aunt. And Prissy gave me something to bring back to you,—a splendid specimen of beryl that she has found.”

“Then my mind’s at rest!” said Miss Craydocke, cheerier than ever. “I was sure she’d break her neck, or pull the mountain down on her head some day looking for it.”

“Would you like—I’ve found—I should like you to have that too,—a garnet geode from Feather-Cap?” Leslie thought she had done it very clumsily, and in a hurry, after all.

“Will you come over to my little room, dear,—number fifteen, in the west wing,—to-morrow some time, with your stones? I want to see more of you.”

There was a deliberate, gentle emphasis upon her words. If the grandest person of whom she had ever known had said to Leslie Goldthwaite, “I want to see more of you,” she would not have heard it with a warmer thrill than she felt that moment at her heart.

Author of “Faith Gartney’s Girlhood.”

II.

Taking the Forts at Port Royal.

AFTER the departure of the Huguenots from Fort Carolina the place became again a solitude. Years rolled by. Vines crept over the crumbling wall. Acorns sprouted in the mellow earth, and became trees, with long trails of gray moss growing upon the branches. The wild deer made the old fort their home. A hundred years passed before settlers came to the lonely shores. The harbor was wide,—the best on the Atlantic coast south of Hampton Roads,—but the emigrants from France and England chose Charleston as the place for founding their American home. Few vessels entered the roadstead till the Revolutionary war, when English ships of war sometimes dropped anchor inside the bar, and the crews put out in their boats to shoot the ducks and plovers in the marshes, and gather oysters on the beach. Sometimes, in the calm, still evenings, they heard a muffled drum beat beneath the waters, as if far down beneath the surface a drummer was beating the dead march. They were surprised to find that it was caused by a very odd-looking fish, four or five feet in length, covered with large scales, having a great head, with sharp teeth in the under jaw, and a bony roof to his mouth.

There were few settlers on the Sea Islands at that time. The soil was rich, but not so well adapted to the raising of wheat and corn as the uplands in the interior of the country. Two thousand years ago, before Christ was born in Bethlehem, the people of India made cloth from cotton, and the old historian, Herodotus, tells us of trees and shrubs which bore fleeces as white as snow. A planter of South Carolina obtained some seeds of the cotton-plant from India, and in process of time the people began to use the snow-white fibres which surround the seeds for the manufacture of cloth. Then it was discovered that the rich lands along the sea were the best in the world for the cultivation of cotton. Planters came, cut down the forests, bought negroes by the hundred, and in time became very rich.

Up the river, four or five miles from the fort, they laid out the town of Beaufort,—a pleasant place. Being rich, and owning slaves, the planters of the islands became aristocratic, and looked with contempt upon all white men who were obliged to work for a living. Some of these men were exceedingly cruel to their slaves, and God only knows the terrible anguish which the poor creatures suffered during their long bondage. Through many years they prayed for freedom, which came very suddenly one morning, and which was the second great historical event occurring at Port Royal.

Soon after South Carolina seceded from the Union, two forts were erected,—one on Hilton Head, called Fort Walker, where the Rebels planted twenty-three guns,—the other on Bay Point, called Fort Beauregard, which mounted twenty guns. All of the buoys which had floated in the water, to mark the channel, were removed, and the Rebel soldiers in the forts were confident that they could very quickly send any ship to the bottom which might try to enter the harbor. Behind Fort Walker there was a wide plain, the plantation-home of General Drayton, who commanded the Rebel troops. It was in November, and his fields were white with cotton. His slaves were gathering it, working from daybreak till dark, while the soldiers in camp marched on parade, sang songs, told stories, and wondered if the Yankees would ever dare to attempt to take the forts.

But one morning—the 3d of November, 1861—they saw a ship coming down from the north,—another,—another,—and others, till the horizon seemed full of ships and steamers, which came to anchor off the harbor. It was the fleet of Admiral Dupont, whose blue flag was flying from the masthead of the Wabash,—the largest and noblest of all,—with thirty-two huge guns peeping from her port-holes. In the great battle of Trafalgar there were several ships which carried more than a hundred guns, but the Wabash would have been more than a match for the best of them; for Lord Nelson’s heaviest guns were only sixty-eight pounders, while on board the Wabash were cannon carrying shot eleven inches in diameter and weighing two hundred pounds.

Accompanying the war-ships was General T. W. Sherman’s army of ten thousand men. He was not the Sherman who afterward marched from Atlanta to the sea; but this General Sherman was in the battle of Buena Vista in Mexico, where he commanded a battery of light artillery which poured a terrible fire into the Mexicans.

The Rebels had several small gunboats in the harbor, commanded by Commodore Tatnall, who was a traitor to the government. Tatnall steamed down towards the Wabash, fired a shot or two, taking care to keep at a safe distance, and then ran back into the harbor, just as a little dog sometimes dashes bravely out to bark at a noble mastiff.

Admiral Dupont was not ready to make an attack upon the forts till the 7th, when, taking advantage of the high tide, he entered the harbor with his fleet. It was a noble sight. The sky was without a cloud, the air calm. It was like summer in those Southern latitudes, where roses are in bloom through all the year. The Wabash took the lead, and this was the order in which the fleet approached the forts.

The fleet was in two columns,—the Bienville by the side of the Wabash, and the Augusta opposite the Pawnee. There were three other vessels, the Pocahontas, Forbes, and Mercury, which came up two hours later, and took part in the battle. Captain Drayton, of the Pocahontas, was brother of the General who commanded the Rebel troops. They were both South Carolinians,—one a bitter Rebel, and the other a true patriot.

The Rebels were all ready and anxious to get a chance to send the fleet to the bottom of the harbor. The day before the battle, one of the Rebel officers thus wrote to a friend:—“We can give shell two to one, and hot and cold shot in quantities to suit. We are all ready for them, and will give a good account of ourselves to the Yankees. I will write to you next week, and give an account of the fight, the number of prisoners, and the list of vessels destroyed.”

The harbor is very wide, and Commodore Dupont decided to sail in a circle, firing upon Fort Beauregard as he sailed in, then, turning, open upon Fort Walker as he came out. Slowly and steadily the war steamers went in.

The tide was at its flood. The waters rippled around the bows of the noble steamers. It was a moment of intense silence. The Union gunners on the ships, and the Rebel gunners on the shore, stood silently by their pieces, with shot and shell around them. On board the ships, saw-dust had been strewn to soak up the blood which might otherwise run in streams upon the decks. To see that done tests a sailor’s courage; for it may be his own blood. The ship’s side may be broken to splinters, and he torn to pieces, by something unseen. Terrible the scenes on shipboard in battle! No doubt many sailors on the ships, and soldiers on the shore, thought of friends far away, of home, of the scenes of early days, of father, mother, brothers, and sisters,—for men never forget their childhood. Quite likely some of them uttered hasty prayers, as thousands have done when going into battle. But suddenly there was a flash from Fort Beauregard; a great cloud of smoke, a thundering roar, a screaming and weird howling in the air. Prayers were forgotten; men held their breath, till they saw the water boil and foam where the shots plunged. Then the Wabash opened fire. How grand! sixteen guns, one after another, in quick succession,—or two or three at a time,—an unbroken roll of thunder, and the ship trembling from keel to topmast!

The guns came back with a recoil which all but wrenched the great iron bolts from the oaken ribs. The gunners rammed home new cartridges, and before the smoke had drifted away were ready to fire again. Up past Beauregard sailed the fleet, each vessel doing its part, then, rounding towards Hilton Head, came down past Fort Walker. The air seemed to be full of shells and solid shot, splintering planks and timber, masts and spars, cutting away the rigging, on shipboard,—ploughing the ground, upsetting guns, blowing up breastworks, and tearing men to pieces, on shore. It takes but a few minutes to write these lines, but the ships were an hour in making the round,—the guns roaring all the while.

The soldiers in the forts were surprised to find that no vessel had been sunk, and that, instead of steaming away, the fleet was preparing for another turn! Again up the northern side of the circle, past Beauregard, and slowly down, past Walker, sailed the fleet, in its own cloud of white smoke. The Bienville and the four vessels which followed that ship, however, did not return, but, taking a position in the harbor, threw shells, past General Drayton’s house, into the rear of the fort, paying no attention to Tatnall, who was up Beaufort River, firing at long range. How tremendous the fire!

The people at Beaufort heard the thunder of the guns, and, believing that the forts could not be taken, rubbed their hands in glee, and said that the Yankees were “catching it.” Men went out in boats, and with spy-glasses looked down the bay, and shouted to their friends on shore that all was going well. The slaves on the plantations, in their simplicity, said that the great day of the Lord had come,—spoken of in the Bible,—“with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood.”

And now up came the Pocahontas with Captain Drayton on board, who steamed as near as he could go to the fort, to shell out his brother and rout the Rebel troops,—not that there was hate between him and his brother, but because the flag of his country had been insulted, and it was his duty to vindicate its honor. Duty,—what a brave word it is!

Duty is the only path to glory,—duty to God,—duty to our country,—duty to each other;—not only on the battle-field, but at home, at school, and on all occasions. Goodness, virtue, purity, and love,—all lie along that path; and the man, woman, boy, or girl who is dutiful in all things will find unspeakable peace and joy in this life, as well as in the life to come.

Again the vessels come round. The shot from the forts had damaged them. Water was pouring into one of the magazines of the Wabash, but Admiral Dupont was determined not to give up the contest. The first shot from the fort aimed at the Pocahontas was an eighty-pounder, which carried away a portion of the mainmast. The sailors were stripped of their coats; their faces were grimed with powder. On some of the vessels there were pools of blood, where their comrades had been torn in pieces; but they were as eager as the Admiral for another turn. It was past noon. The sun was still shining from a cloudless sky. Again the Wabash led the way, followed closely by the Susquehanna and all the others,—every vessel pouring in shot and shell,—raining fifty, sixty, and even seventy shots a minute upon Fort Walker, which tore up the embankments, and overthrew guns, blowing men into the air. Those were brave soldiers in the fort, but it was not in human nature to stand such a fire. The men on the fleet were equally brave. Standing at the bow of the Wabash was a sailor, who kept swinging the lead, throwing it over the side of the vessel into the water, and calling the depth as steadily as if nothing unusual was going on,—unmindful of the shells which struck all around him, or flew harmlessly by.

But suddenly there was a panic on shore,—officers and men ran as fast as they could for the woods, leaving their tents, trunks, clothing, arms, knapsacks, swords, pistols, and provisions. Then, when Captain Rodgers went ashore, pulled down the flag of the Confederacy, and hoisted the stars and stripes, there was such cheering as never before was heard at Port Royal,—the sailors swinging their caps, and shouting themselves hoarse, while out on the transports—hanging like bees to the rigging—the Union soldiers, who had seen it all, took it up, and answered the brave tars who had won the fight. Then, when at sunset the vessels one after another came into the harbor and anchored, they rent the air with their hurrahs, and sang and danced in a delirium of joy.

Out in General Drayton’s cotton-field stood the negroes, gazing in wonder and amazement at what had happened, for the soldiers had told them that the Yankee ships would certainly be sunk. They were astonished when they saw their master running for the woods as fast as he could go, leaving all of his property to fall into the hands of the Yankees.

The soldiers who went on shore arrested the negroes and put them into General Drayton’s house.

“What are you doing here?” asked an officer.

“Wal, boss, that ere is just what we would like to know,” was the reply.

The officer and all the soldiers laughed heartily. The officer was a kind-hearted man, and, knowing there was no reason why they should be kept as prisoners, opened the door, and told them to go out and enjoy their freedom.

Freedom! It was a new word to them. They had been slaves all their lives. They had prayed to be free, and now freedom had come. Some fell upon their knees and thanked God, while others danced for joy, and shouted and sang all through the night.

Carleton.

THE common little Summer Yellow-Bird, so abundant in the gardens of the New England States during the summer months, belongs to a very remarkable group of birds peculiar to America. Resembling, in many respects, the warblers of Europe, in which are classed the Nightingale, the Robin, and several other birds familiar to us at least in name, they are still quite distinct in several important peculiarities. They are called by Mr. Audubon Wood-Warblers, and the scientific terms sylvicolæ, dendroicæ, &c. indicate that they, for the most part, dwell in the quiet and solitary recesses of the forests.

They constitute a very large family; and between forty and fifty species belonging to it are already known to inhabit North America. Probably more than half as many more are found in the West Indies and in South America. They are unsurpassed by any group either in the variety or the richness of their colors, and a few are also remarkable for their song.

As a family, however, our Wood-Warblers are only well known to naturalists, partly from the fact that they chiefly frequent swampy thickets difficult of human access, and also because a large number of the species go to the far North to spend their summers, and, again, to the far South to spend their winters, paying us but very short visits on their way to and from their respective homes. Almost the only exception in both of these respects is the beautiful, gentle, and intelligent little bird we now introduce to Our Young Folks. Variously known as the “Yellow-Bird,” and by some confounded with our American Goldfinch, which it very little resembles, as the “Blue-eyed Yellow Warbler,” the “Wild Canary,” the “Yellow Poll,” these birds are found in great abundance all over the continent. As soon as the leaves of the trees are fully expanded, toward the middle or last of May, we hear its familiar song; and when we hear it, we may feel assured that summer has fairly come again, and that our long, cold spring has ended. Probably no one of our birds breeds over so wide an expanse of territory as the Summer Yellow-Bird. It is found abundant all the way from Northern Georgia to the farthest northern limits of our continent, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Not so retiring as most of its family, but more familiar, social, and confiding, our little Yellow-Bird is easily encouraged by tolerance, and still more by attention to its wants, to cultivate our society. Put a few small bits of cotton about on the bushes in your gardens, and you will soon find Blue-eyes tugging away at it. She knows in a moment you meant them for her; at least she takes possession of them, and at once begins the foundation of her nest. Sometimes she will place it low down in some fork of a shrub, a few feet from the ground, or in the midst of a thick hedge, or in the honeysuckle running over the porch. Sometimes, where dreadful cats are too common, she finds a higher and a safer place, often in the horsechestnut-tree under your very window, and over the busy, noisy street. Little cares she for the noise or the bustle below, nor for your close neighborhood, if you do not come too near. She delights to be near you, so long as you leave her undisturbed.

If, however, she is disturbed in her nesting, she will look out, another time, for safer quarters,—sometimes building her nest in the top branches of a high tree, fifty feet from the ground. But this is not often.

They build a very neat and durable nest, fastened in the first place by a strong external fabric to several branches of the bush in which it is placed and then woven with great neatness and wonderful skill. The external part is usually woven of strong flaxen fibres of plants and fine strips of bark interwoven with the finer down from the fern and the willow, and lined with fine, soft, and warm materials. Where raw cotton is provided for our little architects in sufficient abundance, they will make their whole nest of it, using only a few tough fibres of bark to give it strength.

A good many summers ago, a pair of Summer Yellow-Birds built their nest under our parlor window. Through the closed blinds, we children watched the busy little creatures weaving their curious little basket-nest. First a few strong fibres were wound round and round, about a few branching twigs, with a good deal of pains and care; but as soon as this part had been fixed to their satisfaction, the task of completing it was simple and rapidly done. One bird was chiefly employed in collecting the materials and bringing them to his mate. The other received them, placed them in position, and completed the inner part of the nest. The manner in which she did this was very interesting. Standing in the middle of the nest, with half-expanded wings, and her tail-feathers spread out like an open fan, she kept rapidly whirling herself round and round. The soft materials were thus worked into a circular or hemispherical form, as her expanded feathers brushed by them. If some pieces proved too unyielding, she would stop and place them to suit her, with her bill. When her mate was dilatory, or did not bring her materials as fast as she required them, she would go in search of some herself. If those he brought seemed to her unsuitable, she would summarily reject them. In this way, working busily parts of two days, they soon had their little home completed. By and by appeared one little egg, then another, until there were five. In a few days more, or a little over a week, we found the eggs were hatched, and during the next ten days we could see how lovingly and tenderly the parents cared for their young. How many thousand tiny insects of various kinds they kept feeding to those five gaping mouths we could hardly tell, nor could we imagine where they found them all. All day long they kept coming and going, by turns,—one staying to keep their nurslings warm, the other going and coming in search of food for mate and nurslings.

One enemy the Summer Yellow-Birds have, which sometimes gives them a good deal of trouble. This is another bird, called the Cow Blackbird because it is so often found keeping company with the cattle in their pastures. This Cow Blackbird is, in its habits, like the Cuckoo of Europe. It never builds its own nest, or takes care of its own young, but invariably lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving them to be hatched out and the young birds brought up by strangers. The worst part of this unnatural proceeding is that the young Blackbirds abuse the hospitality of their foster-parents, by tumbling their adopted brothers and sisters out of their rightful homes. A great many of our small birds are thus imposed upon, and bring up these strangers, without, perhaps, being aware of the cheat. But you will never find our Summer Yellow-Bird suffering herself to be thus imposed upon. How she comes by her knowledge, who can tell? Is it instinct? or is it reason? At all events, she seems to know that it will never do to put up with such an imposition, and she never does.

But what is she to do? Here, when she has just completed her nice new nest, along has come the good-for-nothing Blackbird, and dropped a great ugly egg into it, half filling it up! What is she to do? She can’t roll it out: it is too large and heavy. She can’t afford to abandon the nest she has made with so much care: it would take too much time to provide another one. So, instead, she goes to work and builds up the walls of her nest a little higher, and then covers over the egg so full of mischief with a thick matting of fresh materials. Now she has it fast. It can’t hatch out, to be the death of her own darlings when they appear. She may now bring up her own family in peace and safety.

Sometimes the Blackbird finds the poor mother Yellow-Bird absent from her nest after she has laid some of her eggs, and the vagabond adds to them one of her own. What is poor Blue-eyes to do now? She seems to know that it will be of no use to go on and hatch out both. The intruder will be sure to be the death of her children. The only sure way is to part with them all then, and at once; and so the walls of the nest are raised higher, and Cow-bird’s egg and all are buried up, so that none can hatch; and a second time she lays her eggs, and this time she takes precious good care no vagabond Blackbird can have another chance to disturb them.

Once, when a Yellow-Bird had just completed its pretty nest in a barberry-bush in our garden in Roxbury, an impudent Cow Blackbird one morning left an egg in it. Yellow-Bird, however, soon had it all built over, covered up, and a nest made as good as new. But no sooner was this finished than along comes another Blackbird; and, finding Mistress Blue-eyes off her guard, she, too, deposits a great brown egg. What is to be done now? The nest is already two stories high! No matter: little Blue-eyes is not so easily discouraged. Besides, materials are plenty, and egg number two is soon covered up by story number three; and now, at last, her own brood may be hatched out in safety. This nest, after she had done with it, we took in to the distinguished naturalist, Mr. Audubon, then staying in Boston; and in his work on the Birds of America you may read how much the sagacity and perseverance of our birds pleased and surprised him.

What do our readers call this wonderful intelligence, on the part of these little birds, by which they avoid the ungrateful task of rearing a bird that would repay their kindness with base ingratitude? Is it not more like reason than instinct? No other birds seem to display the like intelligence. The Yellow-Birds invariably manifest it, and never suffer themselves to be thus imposed upon.

Let me tell you one more anecdote of these birds,—not of my own observation, but told me by a friend. A pair of Yellow-Birds built a nest in a low bush near Calais, in Maine. After raising one brood, they did what they rarely do,—repaired the old nest and used it again. The mother had laid in it her eggs and was sitting on them, when a storm partly overturned the nest. They abandoned it, built another in the same bush, and laid some more eggs in that. The gentleman on whose grounds the nests were restored the first nest to an upright position, and securely fastened it. The father-bird came back to it, and sat upon the eggs and hatched them out, while the mother-bird continued on the second nest. Each hatched out, and each fed and brought up its own separate family.

As our young readers may have already inferred from what we have told them, the summer Yellow-Birds are tender, devoted, and watchful parents. They love even the empty nest before their family occupy it, and keep closely to it until it has received its treasures. Then they cling still more closely to both; and, when any one approaches too near, or examines its contents, both birds exhibit a very great uneasiness,—approaching the intruder in a fearless manner, flying about his head and uttering pitiful cries to evince their great distress. Sometimes, before their nest is discovered, they will pretend to be lame, and flutter along the ground, to draw, by this artifice, the intruder aside from the spot they wish him to avoid.

The song of the Yellow-Bird, though not loud, powerful, or varied, is very sweet and pleasant, and is heard from the earliest dawn to evening twilight on the long days of summer. Usually there are several pairs in the same garden, and the male birds respond one to the other. Later, when family cares press upon them, and hungry mouths claim their watchful care, their songs are less frequent, and before September they cease entirely.

Before concluding our sketch of this attractive little summer visitor, it may be interesting to our young readers to know that there are, on the continent of America, a number of Yellow Warblers so very closely resembling our birds that no one but a skilful naturalist can tell them apart, and yet they are all different. Indeed, even the naturalists, until very recently, supposed they were the same with our North American Yellow-Bird. They are all found in South America, or in the West Indies, except our bird; and, what is very singular, they are each found in a different place. Professor Baird calls them the group of the “Golden Warblers.” One is found in Cuba, and nowhere else, another in Jamaica, a third in St. Croix, a fourth in New Granada, and so on. This is a very singular and unusual freak of nature; for it is very rare to find so many different species of birds so closely resembling each other, yet all specifically distinct.

T. M. B.

ONCE upon a time a gentleman went out into a great forest, and cut away the trees, and built there a very nice little cottage. It was set very low on the ground, and had very large bow-windows, and so much of it was glass that one could look through it on every side and see what was going on in the forest. You could see the shadows of the fern-leaves, as they flickered and wavered over the ground, and the scarlet partridge-berry and wintergreen plums that matted round the roots of the trees, and the bright spots of sunshine that fell through their branches and went dancing about among the bushes and leaves at their roots. You could see the little chipping sparrows and thrushes and robins and bluebirds building their nests here and there among the branches, and watch them from day to day as they laid their eggs and hatched their young. You could also see red squirrels, and gray squirrels, and little striped chip-squirrels, darting and springing about, here and there and everywhere, running races with each other from bough to bough, and chattering at each other in the gayest possible manner.

You may be sure that such a strange thing as a great mortal house for human beings to live in did not come into this wild wood without making quite a stir and excitement among the inhabitants that lived there before. All the time it was building, there was the greatest possible commotion in the breasts of all the older population; and there wasn’t even a black ant, or a cricket, that did not have his own opinion about it, and did not tell the other ants and crickets just what he thought the world was coming to in consequence.

Old Mrs. Rabbit declared that the hammering and pounding made her nervous, and gave her most melancholy forebodings of evil times. “Depend upon it, children,” she said to her long-eared family, “no good will come to us from this establishment. Where man is, there comes always trouble for us poor rabbits.”

The old chestnut-tree, that grew on the edge of the woodland ravine, drew a great sigh which shook all his leaves, and expressed it as his conviction that no good would ever come of it,—a conviction that at once struck to the heart of every chestnut-burr. The squirrels talked together of the dreadful state of things that would ensue. “Why!” said old Father Gray, “it’s evident that Nature made the nuts for us; but one of these great human creatures will carry off and gormandize upon what would keep a hundred poor families of squirrels in comfort.” Old Ground-mole said it did not require very sharp eyes to see into the future, and it would just end in bringing down the price of real estate in the whole vicinity, so that every decent-minded and respectable quadruped would be obliged to move away;—for his part, he was ready to sell out for anything he could get. The bluebirds and bobolinks, it is true, took more cheerful views of matters; but then, as old Mrs. Ground-mole observed, they were a flighty set,—half their time careering and dissipating in the Southern States,—and could not be expected to have that patriotic attachment to their native soil that those had who had grubbed in it from their earliest days.

“This race of man,” said the old chestnut-tree, “is never ceasing in its restless warfare on Nature. In our forest solitudes, hitherto, how peacefully, how quietly, how regularly, has everything gone on! Not a flower has missed its appointed time of blossoming, or failed to perfect its fruit. No matter how hard has been the winter, how loud the winds have roared, and how high the snow-banks have been piled, all has come right again in spring. Not the least root has lost itself under the snows, so as not to be ready with its fresh leaves and blossoms when the sun returns to melt the frosty chains of winter. We have storms sometimes that threaten to shake everything to pieces,—the thunder roars, the lightning flashes, and the winds howl and beat; but, when all is past, everything comes out better and brighter than before,—not a bird is killed, not the frailest flower destroyed. But man comes, and in one day he will make a desolation that centuries cannot repair. Ignorant boor that he is, and all incapable of appreciating the glorious works of Nature, it seems to be his glory to be able to destroy in a few hours what it was the work of ages to produce. The noble oak, that has been cut away to build this contemptible human dwelling, had a life older and wiser than that of any man in this country. That tree has seen generations of men come and go. It was a fresh young tree when Shakespeare was born; it was hardly a middle-aged tree when he died; it was growing here when the first ship brought the white men to our shores, and hundreds and hundreds of those whom they call bravest, wisest, strongest,—warriors, statesmen, orators, and poets,—have been born, have grown up, lived, and died, while yet it has outlived them all. It has seen more wisdom than the best of them; but two or three hours of brutal strength sufficed to lay it low. Which of these dolts could make a tree? I’d like to see them do anything like it. How noisy and clumsy are all their movements,—chopping, pounding, rasping, hammering! And, after all, what do they build? In the forest we do everything so quietly. A tree would be ashamed of itself that could not get its growth without making such a noise and dust and fuss. Our life is the perfection of good manners. For my part, I feel degraded at the mere presence of these human beings; but, alas! I am old;—a hollow place at my heart warns me of the progress of decay, and probably it will be seized upon by these rapacious creatures as an excuse for laying me as low as my noble green brother.”

In spite of all this disquiet about it, the little cottage grew and was finished. The walls were covered with pretty paper, the floors carpeted with pretty carpets; and, in fact, when it was all arranged, and the garden walks laid out, and beds of flowers planted around, it began to be confessed, even among the most critical, that it was not after all so bad a thing as was to have been feared.

A black ant went in one day and made a tour of exploration up and down, over chairs and tables, up the ceilings and down again, and, coming out, wrote an article for the Crickets’ Gazette, in which he described the new abode as a veritable palace. Several butterflies fluttered in and sailed about and were wonderfully delighted, and then a bumble-bee and two or three honey-bees, who expressed themselves well pleased with the house, but more especially enchanted with the garden. In fact, when it was found that the proprietors were very fond of the rural solitudes of Nature, and had come out there for the purpose of enjoying them undisturbed,—that they watched and spared the anemones, and the violets, and bloodroots, and dog’s-tooth violets, and little woolly rolls of fern that began to grow up under the trees in spring,—that they never allowed a gun to be fired to scare the birds, and watched the building of their nests with the greatest interest,—then an opinion in favor of human beings began to gain ground, and every cricket and bird and beast was loud in their praise.

“Mamma,” said young Tit-bit, a frisky young squirrel, to his mother one day, “why won’t you let Frisky and me go into that pretty new cottage to play?”

“My dear,” said his mother, who was a very wary and careful old squirrel, “how can you think of it? The race of man are full of devices for traps and pitfalls, and who could say what might happen, if you put yourself in their power? If you had wings like the butterflies and bees, you might fly in and out again, and so gratify your curiosity; but, as matters stand, it’s best for you to keep well out of their way.”

“But, mother, there is such a nice, good lady lives there! I believe she is a good fairy, and she seems to love us all so; she sits in the bow-window and watches us for hours, and she scatters corn all round at the roots of the tree for us to eat.”

“She is nice enough,” said the old mother-squirrel, “if you keep far enough off; but I tell you, you can’t be too careful.”

Now this good fairy that the squirrels discoursed about was a nice little old lady that the children used to call Aunt Esther, and she was a dear lover of birds and squirrels, and all sorts of animals, and had studied their little ways till she knew just what would please them; and so she would every day throw out crumbs for the sparrows, and little bits of thread and wool and cotton to help the birds that were building their nests, and would scatter corn and nuts for the squirrels; and while she sat at her work in the bow window she would smile to see the birds flying away with the wool, and the squirrels nibbling their nuts. After a while the birds grew so tame that they would hop into the bow-window, and eat their crumbs off the carpet.

“There, mamma,” said Tit-bit and Frisky, “only see! Jenny Wren and Cock Robin have been in at the bow-window, and it didn’t hurt them, and why can’t we go?”

“Well, my dears,” said old Mother Squirrel, “you must do it very carefully: never forget that you haven’t wings like Jenny Wren and Cock Robin.”

So the next day Aunt Esther laid a train of corn from the roots of the trees to the bow-window, and then from the bow-window to her work-basket, which stood on the floor beside her; and then she put quite a handful of corn in the work-basket, and sat down by it, and seemed intent on her sewing. Very soon, creep, creep, creep, came Tit-bit and Frisky to the window, and then into the room, just as sly and as still as could be, and Aunt Esther sat just like a statue for fear of disturbing them. They looked all around in high glee, and when they came to the basket it seemed to them a wonderful little summer-house, made on purpose for them to play in. They nosed about in it, and turned over the scissors and the needle-book, and took a nibble at her white wax, and jostled the spools, meanwhile stowing away the corn each side of their little chops, till they both of them looked as if they had the mumps.

At last Aunt Esther put out her hand to touch them, when, whisk-frisk, out they went, and up the trees, chattering and laughing before she had time even to wink.

But after this they used to come in every day, and when she put corn in her hand and held it very still they would eat out of it; and, finally, they would get into her hand, until one day she gently closed it over them, and Frisky and Tit-bit were fairly caught.

O how their hearts beat! but the good fairy only spoke gently to them, and soon unclosed her hand and let them go again. So, day after day, they grew to have more and more faith in her, till they would climb into her work-basket, sit on her shoulder, or nestle away in her lap as she sat sewing. They made also long exploring voyages all over the house, up and through all the chambers, till finally, I grieve to say, poor Frisky came to an untimely end by being drowned in the water-tank at the top of the house.

The dear good fairy passed away from the house in time, and went to a land where the flowers never fade, and the birds never die; but the squirrels still continued to make the place a favorite resort.

“In fact, my dear,” said old Mother Red one winter to her mate, “what is the use of one’s living in this cold, hollow tree, when these amiable people have erected this pretty cottage where there is plenty of room for us and them too? Now I have examined between the eaves, and there is a charming place where we can store our nuts, and where we can whip in and out of the garret, and have the free range of the house; and, say what you will, these humans have delightful ways of being warm and comfortable in winter.”

So Mr. and Mrs. Red set up housekeeping in the cottage, and had no end of nuts and other good things stored up there. The trouble of all this was, that, as Mrs. Red was a notable body, and got up to begin her housekeeping operations, and woke up all her children, at four o’clock in the morning, the good people often were disturbed by a great rattling and fuss in the walls, while yet it seemed dark night. Then sometimes, too, I grieve to say, Mrs. Squirrel would give her husband vigorous curtain lectures in the night, which made him so indignant that he would rattle off to another quarter of the garret to sleep by himself; and all this broke the rest of the worthy people who built the house.

What is to be done about this we don’t know. What would you do about it? Would you let the squirrels live in your house, or not? When our good people come down of a cold winter morning, and see the squirrels dancing and frisking down the trees, and chasing each other so merrily over the garden-chair between them, or sitting with their tails saucily over their backs, they look so jolly and jaunty and pretty that they almost forgive them for disturbing their night’s rest, and think that they will not do anything to drive them out of the garret to-day. And so it goes on; but how long the squirrels will rent the cottage in this fashion, I’m sure I dare not undertake to say.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

OR, A VOYAGE AMONG THE TREE-TOPS.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

A SNAKE “YARN.”

CHEERED by the thought that the breeze was bearing them in the right direction, our adventurers sat up till a late hour. When they at length resolved upon going to sleep, it was arranged that two should sit up,—one to mind the sail, the other to ply a paddle, and keep the craft steadily to her course, as well as could be done with such a rudder. The old sea-cook still had charge of the sheets and halyards, while Tipperary, notwithstanding that he had already proved himself such an indifferent helmsman, was intrusted with the steering.

After the many perils through which they had passed, and under the apprehension of the many more through which they might yet have to pass, Tom’s mismanagement,—the original cause of all their misfortunes,—if not forgotten, was not remembered against him with resentment. It had been only an error of judgment,—a fault of the head, and not of the heart.

Even the negro, whose race appears, almost by instinct, to inherit an antipathy to the countrymen of Tom, and who, previous to the catastrophe, was not always on the best of terms with the Irishman, no longer showed signs of spite: rather had the two become friends. Their friendship sprung from the ties of a common misfortune, and any little difference that now displayed itself was in a rivalry as to which should make himself most useful to the floating community.

On this particular night they sat together as white and black brothers; Mozey attending to the sipo that served for a sheet to the sail, and Tom steering the craft by a star that had been pointed out to him as that towards which he was to keep her head.

Both African and Irishman were not a little vain of being thus left to themselves. Up to that time both had been playing a very subordinate part; the Indian taking upon himself almost the sole management of affairs, and treating them as nobodies. From the night on which they had made their unfortunate mistake by straying into the Gapo, every movement had been made by his counsel and direction: moreover, both had suffered humiliation by his having saved their lives from drowning. Although they were not ungrateful for that, they were nevertheless chagrined to think that they should be so looked upon.

On this night, Munday, worn out by his long-continued exertions, was urged by Trevannion to desist, and recruit his energies by good repose. As there was no particular reason why he should remain awake, he had consented to do so; and, with his back against one of the buttresses, he reposed, silent as the Sphinx.

Neither the man of Mozambique, nor he of Tipperary, was given to habits of silence; and they continued to converse long after the others had sunk into slumber. After what had that day occurred, it was natural that the theme should be snakes. “Yez have got some in your counthry,—haven’t yer, Mozey?” inquired Tom.

“Dar you’se ’bout right, Masser Tum. Haven’t we got um! Snakes ob de biggest kind.”

“But none so big as the wun we saw the day?”

“Buf! you call dat a big snake. He not more den ten yard long. I’ve hab some on de coass of Africa, down dere by Mozabeek, dat measure more den a mile,—ticker round de body den dis ere log we sittin’ on.”

“More than a mile long!” rejoined Tipperary. “And thicker than this tree! Yez don’t mane to say ye iver saw wan ove that size yerself?”

“Well, I’s not say it war a whole mile. It mout be less, an’ it mout a been more dan a mile. Ob one ting I’s sartin shoo: it wa’n’t less den three quarters ob a mile. Youz may b’lieve um or not; jess as you pleeze ’bout dat, Massa Tipprary. All I’b got to say is, dat de snake I ’peak ’bout war long nuff to go clar roun’ de kraal, and twice roun’ too.”

“A kraal! what moight that be? I know what a kreel is. Miny’s the wan I’ve carried on me back, full ov turf at that, in the bogs of Tipperary. Yez don’t mane a kreel, div ye?”

“Kreel! no. I’m ’peakin’ ’bout de place we niggers live in,—village you white folk call ’um.”

“A village! that is a town av people,—men, weemen, and childher.”

“Jess so. Da be men, woman, and chillen in de kraal,—sartin to be plenty of boaf de last,—an’ dar am dogs, and sheeps, and goats, and sometime big cattle. Dat’s zactly what we brack folks ob de African coass call de kraal. Some am bigger dan oders; but de one I ’peak ’bout, dat war surrounded by de snake, war a kraal ob de mod’rate size. It had ’bout a hundred houses, and, ob coorse, it contain zackly hundred families, excludin’ de picaninnies.”

“A snake to extind round a hundherd houses! Whin was that?”

“When dis chile was a picaninny hisself. If you like, Massa Tipprary, I tell you all ’bout it. Ye see, dat de kraal I ’peak ’bout war my native place, wha dis chile fust saw de shinin’ ob de sun. I ’pose I war ’bout ten year ole jess at dat time when de sacumstance ’curred ob which I go tell you. Near de village dar war a big foress. It wa’ filled with all sorts ob dangerous beasts. Da wa’ buffaloes and elephants, an’ de rhinoceros, an’ hipperpotamusses, an’ dar war big monkeys ob de baboon ’pecies. These lass war partickler dangerous, ’pecially to de women ob de place, for if any ob de nigga gals strayed too fur into de foress, den de baboons carried dem up into de tops ob de highest trees, an’ dere kep’ dem prisoner fo’ eber. But de wussest ting in dat wood war de snakes. Da war ob all sorts an’ sizes. Dere war de cobera, berry benemous, dat killed you wif him bite, an’ de spit snake dat fo’ pizen beat de cobera all holler, as it kud kill ye by jess spittin’ upon yer from among de branches ob a tree. An’ da war de whip-snake, dat lashed folks to deaph wif him tail; an’ de rock-boa dat twisted itself roun’ you body an’ crushed you to de jelly. But none ob dese kud hold a candle to de great big snake ob all,—de one I tell you ’bout. Munday, he call dat we see, de spirit ob de waters. Our big snake we nigga of Mozabeek call de debbil ob de woods. Nebba mind ’bout de name. He come one fine mornin’, dis debbil come, while de people ob de kraal war all ’sleep, dat is ’fore anybody get up to go ’bout dar bisness. He surround’ the village twice.”

“You mane that he crawled twice round it?”

“Not a bit ob dat; he may hab crawled twenty time roun’ it: nobody know. De people all ’sleep when he come. What dis chile mean is, dat when de people get out ob dar beads, an’ come to de door, de debbil ob de woods, he hab him body all roun’ de place in two great coil, one on top ob de odder, like de cable ’board ship,—de two makin’ a fence roun’ de kraal, more ’n ten feet high.”

“Saint Pathrick prasarve us!”

“Ah, Masser Tom, I tink I hear you say dat de San Parfick you ’peak ’bout was a great snake killer in yur country. I wish he had been in de island of Mozabeek on dat same mornin’. Pahps dis nigger might still hab a fadder an’ a modder. He loss dem boaf on de occasion we now ’peak ob. You see de snake, after enclosin’ de kraal twice roun’ wif him body, left enuf ob de neck to reach all ober de place; den stretchin’ out him mouf, dat war wide ’nuf to swaller a man ‘ithout chewin’ him, he went from house to house, pickin’ out de people, till der want one lef’, neider man, woman, nor chile. He eat up de chief ob de kraal jess de same as de commonest scum ob de village. As fo’ de picaninnies, he swallow dem eight or ten at a time, jess de same as we see de ant-eater do wif de ants. Boaf de men an’ de women an’ de chillen try to ’scape out ob de place. ’T wa’ n’t no manner ob use. When dey tried to climb ober de body ob de snake, de ole debbil gub hisself a shake, an’ down dey slipped from him sides, as if him skin had been coated from de slush cask. Ob course da wa’ soon all destroyed.”

“But yerself, Mozey; how did yez manage to ’scape?”

“Ah, how! dat wor de bess joke ob de whole. As I’s been tellin’ you, I war at de time only a picaninny, ’bout ten years ob de age. I war considered ’bove de common for dat age, an’ wa’ employed in de house ob de chief, which war called de palace. Well, jess when I see dat great big mouf sarchin’ from place to place an’ swallerin’ up ebberybody, I know it wan’t no use to hide down dar among de houses. Now dar war a big pole dat stood righ’ in front ob de palace, wif a flag floatin’ on de top. When de odder folk war runnin’ about ebbery wha else, I climbed up de pole, an’ when I got to de top, I drawed de flag roun’ me, so as to hide de whole ob my body. When dat ’ere debbil ob de woods had finished off wif de oder people, and cleared out de kraal complete, he nebber thought ’bout lookin’ up de pole, or ’spectin’ whether tha wa’ anybody wrop up in de flag at de top. Dis chile kep up dar till he see de snake ’tretch out him long body, an’ go back to de big foress. Den I slip down from de tree, an’ make my way to de nearest place wha da war people. As boaf my fadder and modder had been eat up ’long wi’ de ress, I afterwards left home an’ tuk to de sea. Dat’s why dis nigger hab wandered all de way fom dat ’ere island ob Mozabeek. Buf! de snake we see here, de spirit ob de water, a’n’t no more to de debbil ob de woods dan a tadpole am to de biggest alligator in all de waters ob de Amazum.”

CHAPTER LXXIX.

ST. PATRICK’S PERFORMANCE.

Notwithstanding the serious air with which Mozey told his very improbable story, Tom did not appear to give implicit credence to it. He evidently suspected that the rogue had been cheating him; and, after several exclamations of wonder, but without betraying incredulity, he sat in silence, apparently cogitating some scheme for repaying him. It was not long before an opportunity offered, his companion unintentionally furnishing him with a cue.

“I’s hab heer, Massa Tum, dat dar am no snake in de country wha you come from. Dat ’ere de troof?”

“Yis. Nayther snake nor toad in owld Oireland,—nayther could live for a single hour, if ye plants them thare. The green island wudn’t contain thim, bekase they’re condimned to die the moment they sit fut on the sod.”

“But what condemn dem?”

“Saint Pathrick, to be shure. Trath, thare’s a story about that. May be yez wud loike to be afther hearin’ it, Mozey?”

“Like um berry much, Massy Tum.”

“Will, thin, I’ll till it to yer. It isn’t such a wondherful story as yours; but it had a betther indin’, as yer’ll see when ye’ve heerd it. Instid av the snakes killin’ all the people exciptin’ wan, the riptiles got killed thimsilves, all but wan,—that was the father of ivry sirpint in the world. He’s livin’ yit, an’ must now be about five thousand years uv age. So the praste sez.

“A long toime ago, owld Oireland was very badly infisted wid thim craythers. They wur so thick all over the swate island, that yez cudn’t sit your fut down widout triddin’ on wan av their tails; an’ to kape out av their way the people had to build a great scaffoldin’ that extinded all over the counthry, and slape on the threes, just as we’ve been doin’ over the gyapo.

“Whiniver they wanted anythin’ to ate, such as purtaties, an’ the loike, they were compilled to git it up from the ground wid long forks; and whin they wur in need to dhrink, they had to dip it up in buckets, as if they were drawin’ it out av a well.

“Av coorse this was moighty inconvanient, an’ cudn’t last long no how. The worst ov it was, that the snakes, instid ov gettin’ thinned off, were ivery year growin’ thicker, by raizin ov their large families ov young wuns. Will, it got so bad at last that ther wusn’t a spot av groun’ bigger than the bunck ov your hand that warn’t occupoyed by a snake, an’ in some places they were two deep. The people up on the platform that I towld yez about, they cursed an’ swore, an’ raged, an’ raved, an’ at last prayed to be delivered from the inimy.”

Here Tom paused to note the effect of his speech on his sable listener.

“But dey war dilibbered,—wur dey?”

“Trath, wur they. If they hadn’t, is it at all loikely that yer wud see me here? Will, the people prayed. Not as your countrymen prays, to a stick or a stone, or beloike to the sarpints themselves, that could do them no benefit; but to a lady, that was able to protect them. We, in owld Oireland, call her the Virgin Mary. She was the mother av Him that came down from the siventh heaven to save us poor sinners. But what’s the use of my tryin’ to explain all that to an ignorant haythen, loike you?”

“No use, Massa Tum, no use,” rejoined the African, in a tone of resignation.

“Never moind, Mozey. The lady heerd their prayer, and that was an ind to it.”

“She killed da snakes!”

“Arrah now; did yez think the Virgin Mary—a raal lady as she was—ud be afther doin’ such dhirty work as slaughter a whole island full of venomous sarpents? Not a bit av that same. It’s true they were desthroyed; but not by her own swate hands. She sinds a man to do the work for her. She sint Sant Pathrick.”

“O, I’s heerd ye ’peak ob dat man, many’s de time, Massa Tum. ’Twur him dat kill de serpents, wur it?”

“Trath was it.”

“But how’d he do it? It muss hab take um a berry long time to destroy um all.”

“There ye are intirely asthray, nager. It only occupied him wan day, an’ not all the day nayther, for he had done the work a thrifle ov a hour or so afther dinner-time.”

“Gollys! how’d he do all dat?”

“Will! ye see, he invited all the snakes to a grand banquit. He had such a charmin’ way wid him that they wun an’ all agreed to come. The place was on the top of a high mountain,—called the Hill of Howth,—far hoigher than any in the Andays we saw when crossin’ thare. The faste he had provided for them was a colliction of toads, includin’ every wun ov thim that inhabited the island. The toads he had invited too; an’ the stupid craythers, not suspictin’ anythin’, come willingly to the place.

“Now yez must undherstand, nager, that the snakes are moighty fond of toads, and frogs too; but Saint Pathrick had no ill-will against the frogs, an’ they wur exchused from comin’. As it was, the toads wur axed at an earlier hour than the snakes, an’ got first to the top of the hill; an’ while they were waitin’ there to see what was to be done, the sarpints came glidin’ up, and bein’ tould that their dinner was spread before them, they fell to, an’ swallowed up every toad upon the hill, which was every wun there was in all Oireland.”

The narrator made a long pause, either to draw breath after such a declamation, or to give time for his companion to indulge his astonishment.

“Gora!” exclaimed the latter, impatient for further explanation. “How ’bout de snakes demselves? Surely dey didn’t swallow one anodder?”

“Trath! an’ that’s jest what they did do,—every mother’s son of thim.”

“But dat ’ere doan’ tan to reezun, unless dey hab a fight one wif de odder? ’Splain yourself, Massa Tum.”

“Will, yez have guessed it exactly widout my sayin’ a word. They did have a foight, that went all roun’ through the whole crowd, like a shindy in Donnybrook fair. Yez would loike to hear how it begun. Will, I’ll tell ye. There was two kinds av the riptile. Wan they called ‘Ribbon snakes,’ an’ the tother ‘Orange snakes,’ by razon av their color, both in politics and religion. They had a king over both that lived moighty foine at their expinse. But he couldn’t manage to keep thim continted with payin’ him taxes, unless by sittin’ the wan agaynst the tother. An’ this he did to the full av his satisfacshin. Now the bad blood that was betwane thim showed itself at that great gatherin’ worse than iver it had done afore. Thare wasn’t toads enough to give them all a full male; and by way of dissart they thought they’d turn to an’ ate wun another. Av course that was just what Sant Pathrick wanted; for he wasn’t plazed at their having two sorts of religion. So the ould praste hugged thim on in the quarrel, till it come to blows, an’ inded in both kinds killin’ an’ atin’ wun another till there was nothing lift av ayther exceptin’ the tails.”

“Golly! what becomed of de tails?”

“O, thim? The people jumped down from the scaffolds and gathered thim up into a hape, and thin made a great bonfire av thim, and aftherwardt spred the ashes over the groun’; and that’s what makes ould Oireland the greenest gim av the oshin.”

“But, Massa Tum, you hab say dat one ob de snakes scape from the genr’l congregation?”

“Trath did I say it. Wun did escape, an’ ’s livin’ to make mischief in ould Oireland to this very day.”

“Which one was he?”

“Their king.”

“De king. How you call um, Massa Tipprary?”

“The divvel.”

CHAPTER LXXX.

LIGHTS AHEAD.

The expression of incredulity had now floated from the countenance of the Irishman to that of the African, who in turn suspected himself imposed upon. The leer in Tom’s eye plainly declared that he considered himself “quits” with his companion; and the two remained for some moments without further exchange of speech. When the conversation was resumed, it related to a theme altogether different. It was no longer on the subject of snakes, but stars.

The pilot perceived that the one hitherto guiding him was going out of sight,—not by sinking below the horizon, but because the sky was becoming overcast by thick clouds. In ten minutes more there was not a star visible; and, so far as direction went, the helm might as well have been abandoned. Tom, however, stuck to his paddle, for the purpose of steadying the craft; and the breeze, as before, carried them on in a direct course. In about an hour after, this gave token of forsaking them; and, at a still later period, the log lay becalmed upon the bosom of the lagoa.

What next? Should they awake the others and communicate the unpleasant intelligence? Tom was of opinion that they should, while the negro thought it would be of no use. “Better let dem lie ’till,” argued he, “and hab a good night ress. Can do no good wake um up. De ole craff muss lay to all de same, till dar come anodder whif ob de wind!”

While they were disputing the points, or rather after they had done disputing, and each held his tongue, a sound reached their ears that at once attracted the attention of both. It was rather a chorus of sounds, not uttered at intervals, but continued all the time they were listening. It bore some resemblance to a distant waterfall; but now and then, mingling with the hoarser roaring of the torrent, were voices as of birds, beasts, and reptiles. None of them were very distinct. They appeared to come from some point at a great distance off. Still they were loud enough to be distinguished, as sounds that could not proceed out of the now tranquil bosom of the lagoa.

Perhaps they might sooner have attracted the notice of the two men, but for the sighing of the breeze against the sail, and the rippling of the water as it rushed along the sides of the ceiba. When these sounds had ceased, the conversation that ensued produced the same effect; and it was only after the dispute came to a close that the disputants were made aware that something besides their own voices was disturbing the tranquillity of the night.

“What is it, I wondher?” was the remark of Tipperary Tom. “Can yez tell, Mozey?”

“It hab berry much de soun’ ob a big forress!”

“The sound av a forest! What div yez mane by that?”

“Wha’ shud I mean, but de voices ob de animal dat lib in de forress. De birds an’ de beast, an’ de tree frogs, an’ dem ere crickets dat chirps ’mong de trees. Dat’s what dis nigger mean.”

“I b’lieve ye’re right, nager. It’s just that same. It can’t be the wather, for that’s did calm; an’ it can’t purceed from the sky, for it don’t come in that direction. In trath it’s from the forest, as ye say.”

“In dat case, den, we muss be near de odder side ob de lagoa, as de Indyun call um,—jess wha we want to go.”

“Sowl, thin, that’s good news! Will we wake up the masther an’ till him av it? What do yez think?”

“Dis nigga tink better not. Let um all sleep till de broke ob day. Dat can’t be far off by dis time. I hab an idee dat I see de furs light ob mornin’ jess showin’ out yonner, at de bottom ob de sky. Gora! what’s yon? Dar, dar! ’trait afore de head. By golly! dar’s a fire out yonner, or someting dat hab de shine ob one. Doan ye see it, Massa Tum?”

“Trath, yis; I do see somethin’ shinin’. It a’n’t them fire-flies, div yez think?”

“No! ’t a’n’t de fire-fly. Dem ere flits about. Yon ting am steady, an’ keeps in de same place.”

“There’s a raal fire yandher, or else it’s the willy-wisp. See! be me troth thare’s two av thim. Div yez see two?”

“Dar am two.”

“That can’t be the willy-wisp. He’s niver seen in couples,—at laste, niver in the bogs av Oireland. What can it be?”

“What can which be?” asked Trevannion, who, at this moment awaking, heard the question put by Tom to the negro.

“Och, look yandher! Don’t yez see a fire?”

“Certainly; I see something very like one,—or rather two of them.”

“Yis, yis; there’s two. Mozey and meself have just discovered thim.”

“And what does Mozey think they are?”

“Trath, he’s perplixed the same as meself. We can’t make hid or tail av thim. If there had been but wan, I’d a sayed it was a willy-wisp.”

“Will-o’-the-wisp! No, it can scarce be that,—the two being together. Ah! I hear sounds.”

“Yes, masther, we’ve heerd thim long ago.”

“Why didn’t you awake us? We must have drifted nearly across the lagoa. Those sounds, I should say, come out of the forest, and that, whatever it is, must be among the trees. Munday! Munday!”

“Hola!” answered the Indian, as he started up from his squatting attitude: “what is it, Patron? Anything gone wrong?”

“No: on the contrary, we appear to have got very near to the other side of the lagoa.”

“Yes, yes!” interrupted the Indian, as soon as the forest noises fell upon his ear; “that humming you hear must come thence. Pa terra! lights among the trees!”

“Yes, we have just discovered them. What can they be?”

“Fires,” answered the Indian.

“You think it is not fire-flies?”

“No; the loengos do not show that way. They are real fires. There must be people there.”

“Then there is land, and we have at last reached terra firma.”

“The Lard be praised for that,” reverently exclaimed the Irishman. “Our throubles will soon be over.”

“May be not, may be not,” answered the Mundurucú, in a voice that betrayed both doubt and apprehension.

“Why not, Munday?” asked Trevannion. “If it be fires we see, surely they are on the shore; and kindled by men. There should be some settlement where we can obtain assistance?”

“Ah, Patron! nothing of all that need follow from their being fires; only that there must be men. The fires need only be on the shore, and as for the men who made them, instead of showing hospitality, just as like they may take a fancy to eat us.”

“Eat us! you mean that they may be cannibals?”

“Just so, Patron. Likely as not. It’s good luck,” pursued the tapuyo, looking around, “the wind went down, else we might have been carried too close. I must swim towards yon lights, and see what they are, before we go any nearer. Will you go with me, young master?”

“O, certainly!” replied Richard, to whom the question was addressed.

“Well, then,” continued the tapuyo, speaking to the others, “you must not make any loud noise while we are gone. We are not so very distant from those fires,—a mile or thereabout; and the water carries the sound a long ways. If it be enemies, and they should hear us, there would be no chance of escaping from them. Come, young master, there’s not a minute to spare. It must be very near morning. If we discover danger, we shall have but little time to get out of its way in the darkness; and that would be our only hope. Come! follow me!”

As the Indian ceased speaking, he slipped gently down into the water, and swam off to the two lights, whose gleam appeared every moment more conspicuous.

“Don’t be afraid, Rosetta,” said Richard, as he parted from his cousin. “I warrant it’ll turn out to be some plantation on the bank, with a house with lights shining through the windows, and white people inside, where we’ll all be kindly received, and get a new craft to carry us down to Para. Good by for the present! We’ll soon be back again with good news.”

So saying, he leaped into the water and swam off in the wake of the tapuyo.

CHAPTER LXXXI.

AN AERIAL VILLAGE.

The swimmers had not made many hundred yards when they saw beyond doubt that the forest was not far off. It was even nearer than they had at first imagined, the darkness having deceived them; and perhaps the log may have drifted nearer while they were under the impression that they lay becalmed.

At all events, they were now scarcely a quarter of a mile from the forest, which they knew stretched along the horizon as far as they could have seen had it been daylight. They could only just distinguish a dark belt or line rising above the surface of the water before them; but that this extended right and left to a far distance could be told from the sounds that came from it. There was the hum of tree-crickets and cicadas, the gluck of toads and frogs, the screams of aquatic birds, the hooting of owls, and the strange plaintive calls of the goat-suckers, of which several species inhabit the Gapo forests; the whip-poor-will and the “willy-come-go” all the night long giving utterance to their monotonous melody. Harsher still were the cries proceeding from the throats of howling monkeys, with now and then the melancholy moaning of the aï, as it moved slowly through the branches of the embaüba (cecropia-tree). All these sounds, and a score of other kinds,—some produced by insects and reptiles of unknown species,—were blended in that great choir of nature which fills the tropical forest with its midnight music.

The two swimmers, however, paid no attention to this fact; their whole thoughts being occupied by the lights, that, as they advanced, grew every moment more conspicuous. There was no longer any doubt about these being the blaze of fires. It was simply a question of where the fires were burning, and who had kindled them.

The young Paraense supposed them to be upon the shore of the lagoa. About this, however, his companion expressed a doubt. They did not seem to burn steadily, their discs appearing now larger and now less. Sometimes one would go out altogether, then blaze up afresh, while another was as suddenly extinguished. The younger of the two swimmers expressed astonishment at this intermittence, which his companion easily explained. The fires, he said, were placed at some distance from the edge of the forest, among the trees, and it was by some tree-trunk now and then intervening that the illusion was caused.

Silently the swimmers approached, and in due time they glided in under the shadow of the thick foliage, and saw the fires more distinctly. To the astonishment of Richard—for the tapuyo did not seem at all astonished—they did not appear to be on the ground, but up in the air! The Paraense at first supposed them to have been kindled upon the top of some eminence; but, on scanning them more closely, he saw that this could not be the case. Their gleaming red light fell upon water shining beneath, over which, it was clear, they were in some way suspended.

As their eyes became accustomed to the glare, the swimmers could make out that the fires were upon a sort of scaffold raised several feet above the water, and supported by the trunks of the trees. Other similar scaffolds could be seen, on which no fires had been kindled,—from the fact, no doubt, that their occupants were not yet astir.

By the blaze human figures were moving to and fro, and others were on the platforms near by, which were more dimly illuminated; some entering, some coming forth from “toldos,” or sheds, that stood upon them. Hammocks could be seen suspended from tree to tree, some empty, and some still holding a sleeper.

All this was seen at a single glance, while at the same time were heard voices, that had been hitherto drowned by the forest choir, but could now be distinguished as the voices of men, women, and children,—such as might be heard in some rural hamlet, whose inhabitants were about bestirring themselves for their daily avocations.

The tapuyo, gliding close up to the Paraense, whispered in his ear, “A malocca!”

“An Indian village!” Richard rejoined. “We’ve reached tierra firme, then?”

“Not a bit of it, young master. If the dry land had been near, those fires wouldn’t be burning among the tree-tops.”

“At all events, we are fortunate in falling in with this curious malocca, suspended between heaven and earth. Are we not so?”

“That depends on who they are that inhabit it. It may be that we’ve chanced upon a tribe of cannibals.”

“Cannibals! Do you think there are such in the Gapo?”

“There are savages in the Gapo who would torture before killing,—you, more especially, whose skins are white. They remember, with bitterness, what first drove them to make their home in the midst of the water forests,—the white slave-hunters. They have reason to remember it; for the cruel chase is still kept up. If this be a malocca of Muras, the sooner we get away, the safer. They would show you whites no mercy, and less than mercy to me, a red man like themselves. We Mundurucús are their deadliest enemies. Now, you lie still, and listen. Let me hear what they are saying. I know the Mura tongue. If I can catch a word it will be sufficient. Hush!”

Not long had they been listening, when the Indian started, an expression of anxiety suddenly overspreading his features, as his companion could perceive by the faint light of the distant fires.

“As I expected,” said he, “they are Muras. We must be gone, without a moment’s loss of time. It will be as much as we can do to paddle the log out of sight before day breaks. If we don’t succeed in doing so, we are all lost. Once seen, their canoes would be too quick for us. Back, back to the monguba!”

Mayne Reid.

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

CHARADES.

No. 13.

R. J. D.

No. 14.

A. R.

PUZZLE.

No. 12.

A. S.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 22.

W. C. C.

ENIGMAS.

No. 16.

CLASSICAL.

I am composed of 45 letters.

Annie White.

No. 17.

I am composed of 36 letters.

Anna.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 23.

B. R.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 24.

R. N. B.

ANSWERS.

Charades.

Puzzle.

Illustrated Rebuses.

A Lady in Ohio writes:—

“My little boy Walter, eight years old, found out, unassisted, the enigma No. 7 in the April number of ‘Our Young Folks.’ He was so delighted with his success, that he begged me to send his solution to you, as he could not write sufficiently well to do it himself. He has read ‘The Tempest,’ a portion of ‘Oliver Twist,’ and the greater part of the Bible, so that he could solve it readily.

“He was so young to have found out an enigma of that kind, that I thought I must gratify him. ‘Our Young Folks’ is eagerly watched for every month, and it is a source of great pride to him that he is a subscriber (he is one of a club). We have often remarked that the gratification he feels in the reception of any one number of the magazine amply repaid us for the price of the subscription.

“I certainly think it is the best magazine for the young that I have ever seen.”

Sylva. No.

A. C. Z. Do not be too critical before you have learned to spell. Finis is not “French for Ends,” but Latin for end.

Scribus. You sent no answer to your Latin enigma, and therefore lost your trouble. You write handsomely.

A Subscriber. If you have, as you say, had editorial experience, do you not remember that anonymous communications have small weight? The article to which you refer speaks of the past; can you point out any deviation in it from the recognized facts of history? You say justly, “Truth is eternal, sacred, and safe”; if, then, these pages but newly record old and true chronicles, where is the error?

H. W. T. Always direct letters which are meant for the Editors to them, and not to the Publishers.

M. F. sends other answers to Arithmetical Puzzle No. 2, as follows:—

W. S. J. The probable cause of your receiving no answer is that you directed your letter wrongly. Read “A Business Letter” in our last volume, and you will see that communications ought not to go to any Editor personally. The rebus you name was printed from the copy supplied by the person whose initials were appended to it. We often have a dozen similar designs for a common proverb; if we use any, we either take the first that was received, or else the best of the number.

From H. G. A. of Cambridge, Mass., we have the following ingenious result of mathematical talent and application, which he calls

“The above square,” writes our friend, “contains the numbers from 1 to 81 inclusive, and has the following properties:—

“1. The sum of any row of nine numbers, vertical, horizontal, or diagonal, is 369.

“2. The sum of any nine numbers forming a square, wherever taken, is 369.

“3. If the four corner numbers (1, 42, 50, 61), the middle numbers of the four outside rows (80, 72, 20, 12), and the central number (31) be added together, their sum will be 369.

“4. The sum of the nine numbers similarly situated in any square formed by twenty-five or forty-nine numbers is 369.

“One or more vertical rows may be transferred from the left to the right, or from the right to the left, or one or more horizontal rows from the top to the bottom, or from the bottom to the top, and the properties of the square be unchanged.”

How many of our readers can reproduce this remarkable table for themselves on slate or paper, first studying it well, and then laying it aside while they puzzle over the problem?

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Obvious printer errors including punctuation have been silently corrected.

Inconsistencies, variations and possible errors in spelling have been retained.

[The end of Our Young Folks, Volume 2, Number 7, edited by J. T. Trowbridge, Gail Hamilton and Lucy Larcom.]