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olden-rods, the same that peered over the stone walls in the last days of August, are still nodding to us in the warm September days, climbing up higher and higher in a thick tangle of greenness. For these autumn flowers do not hurry away, as did the delicate Anemones,—the wind-flowers,—opening to the wind, then floating off upon its breezes. They are all stout herbs, that will not care when the hot days of early September give way to chill and cold, and the warm afternoons suddenly fall into damp evenings. These September afternoons! they are among the most charming of the year. The grass is still soft and green, the vines are still hanging in full rich clusters along the roadsides, while the September sun comes in aslant under the trees, and lights up everything with a golden glow. As we ride along the lanes, a rich apple odor comes to us from the orchards; there is a feeling of harvest in the air in the midst of the summer-like heat; we put out our hands, trying to grasp and hold this sunny warmth, which has been gladdening us all summer, and has not merely rejoiced us, but has set growing all these wide fields, these leafy lanes, this rich luxuriance of fruit. For all these, dear Sun, we have to thank you. You have called up the tall trees out of the little seed, and brought the green into the leaves, and the gay colors into the flowers, and the soft ripeness into the fruit. Before you go slanting away into the winter solstice, to look at us only over your shoulder, you give us one more warm greeting, another hot touch to the red sides of the apples, another yellow glow to the pumpkins and squashes.

But these afternoons are short. Suddenly the sun disappears; then all the plants send up into the air their wet vapor that his hot rays have been drawing out; the leaves that have fallen from the trees cling moist among the bushes; and we come home hurriedly, trailing along our large bunches of Golden-Rods, Asters, the last of the Blue Vervain, perhaps some Cardinal-flowers, and great boughs of Clematis with its fleecy seed, drooping to the ground.

One of the most beautiful bunches of flowers I can remember was made up of autumn flowers,—of the gay garden flowers, to be sure, which are well fitted to be brilliant and showy, but have not the same soft charm of spring and summer flowers, the very fleetness and transient nature of which gives them a beauty that the stiffer, long-lived Dahlias and garden Asters cannot have. But the charm of this bunch I speak of was in the exquisite way in which it was arranged. The delicate yellow, late-appearing blossoms of the Madeira-Vine, and its shining, graceful leaves, gave a wonderful grace. It seemed to have picked up all the mellowness of the autumn days along with their gay coloring, and it dwells in my memory among the joys that last forever.

And of this power of arranging flowers I desire to speak. Flowers are so beautiful that it seems as though they might arrange themselves, if the vase were pretty enough,—as they do in the meadow, or on the hillside,—just where they ought to be. But no; I think they like best those who love them, and look happier if a kind, thoughtful hand is caring for them. It does not do to give them a thrust all at once into a vase, although it be ever so pretty; they prefer to be taken one by one, and set deep into the water, where they may miss as little as possible their natural food. There is nothing provokes you so much, perhaps, as to be scolded as “those children” and “those boys” who have done so and so, when you know perfectly well that you have each been acting quite differently from the rest, in your own favorite way, however much you may have seemed to be joining with the others. So with these flowers. They must think it was not quite worth while for you to pick them from their pretty homes, just to let them lie littering the steps, to be trodden on by the first-comer, or else to be put into a pitcher, all in a heap, half of their stems out of the water, broken and torn. It is an art to arrange flowers, and an art that must begin by being loved, like all other arts. There must be a pleasure in setting each flower where it will look prettiest in contrast to the rest,—each with a separate touch of the hand and a thought of the spot where it grew. This power will give more pleasure than many others; for there is almost nothing more pleasing than a gracefully arranged bunch of flowers.

In arranging our autumn bouquet we shall find there is a bewildering variety of these Golden-Rods. Some of them shoot up into tall plumes; others hang gracefully, the flowers rising from the upper side of the stalk,—small flowers of various forms gathered in racemes, or clusters. The leaves, too, of different plants differ in shape; and it is a pleasant study to find all the varieties of the Solidago, or Golden-Rod, as it leads us along pleasant lanes and hedges in these glowing autumn days.

It belongs to the Composite Family, which is a very difficult one to get acquainted with, because it is so very large. We might have been studying them all summer long, for ever since the much-loved Dandelion made its appearance there have been members of this family about. The Succory, Thistle, Sunflower, White-Weed, our late friend, the Joe-Pye-Weed, and all the kinds of Asters, are of this family. You must look at them very closely. What you have picked for one flower, and have called a Daisy, is a bunch of many flowers closely crowded into a head, and the green that surrounds this head is not the calyx, but an involucre. Look at the Succory: you will see it is composed not only of many flowers, but of two different kinds,—those of the centre or disk, and the ray-flowers. Each of these last “strap-shaped” flowers, you will see, consists of five petals showing five teeth on the extremity, united at their edges except on one side, and then lying spread out flat; and each of these rays bears both stamens and pistils. You see from these different flowers in one head what a puzzling family theirs must be; and many of the flowers are exceedingly small and difficult to make out.

We associate the Asters with autumn, but some of their tribe appear in the summer. Yet autumn is the time when they are in their greatest glory, as they show then a surprising variety,—purple, lilac, and white; some with yellow disks; in some the purple creeps into the centre; sometimes the rays are broad and few, sometimes many and fine as a thread. There is a small, white, starry kind, with many heads crowded on the many branches, and a large, showy purple one, with broad rays. There are all shades of lilac, all sizes of the white. When all other flowers have gone, and when the shrubs and other herbs are suddenly touched and withered by the frost, one may see a gay field of Asters, in countless varieties, looking up fresh and joyous into the clear blue sky, a perfect tangle of color. Even after the Golden-Rod has gone, one may pick a bright and variegated bouquet of Asters alone.

Happy those who, in the September days, can find the Fringed Gentian, as its sky-blue corolla lights up the sandy slope that shuts in some mountain road! This flower grows on a tall footstalk, with a calyx as long as its bell-shaped tube, out of which press its fringed edges. It looks straight up into the sky, but it is of a purpler tinge than the sky, though we call it sky-blue, and though Bryant says of it,

There are other varieties of the Gentian in this region, of which the Soapwort Gentian, sometimes called Barrel Gentian, with its corolla closed at the mouth, is more common.

Among the glories of meadow, hedge, and wood are the bright-colored berries;—especially the Barberry bush near the sea-shore; the red juice that deepens into its coral berries glows all along its leaves, and its laden branches hang gracefully with their drooping fruit. There are the orange and scarlet berries of the Bittersweet, whose leaves have a fresh, yellowish, spring-like greenness late into the fall. In some places there are the showy milk-white berries of the Cohosh, or White Baneberry, and the Red Baneberry, with oval, cherry-colored fruit. There are the deep red seeds of the Dwarf Cornel, sometimes called Bunch-berries,—each set, as the flower was, in a frame made by four or five oval leaves,—the brilliant berries of the Solomon’s Seal, and, until late in the autumn, the black-purple fruit of the Elder. And to these may be added the hips of the Sweet-Brier and Wild Rose, greatly varying in shape,—some of them even urn-like in form. A charming doll’s tea-set one may make of these, sitting on a broad stone door-step, with the climbing vine still trailing overhead; the long oval hips, with the help of a pin or two, can easily be turned into coffee-pots, and the rounder ones to tea-pots, or cut apart into cups and saucers. Down in the garden close by, you may see the thick grape-vines, heavy with fruit, and the orchard trees, loaded with pears or apples.

Fruit and seed,—we tasted and saw in the summer some varieties of them, but now is the harvest-time; now we can see and taste all that the summer has been preparing for us, and what has been the work of all the green things. We have seen how

How have all this fruit and these berries ripened from the flowers? How, we should not be able to say, but we can see from what part of the flower the fruit has come. Of these juicy pears, it is the calyx into which we are plunging our teeth, and you can see little traces of its stamens on top, and can remember the green thing that held the flower. Here is indicated the Rose Family, and you see that, instead of the hard red urn of which we made the coffee-pot, with fuzzy seeds inside, we have a soft, delicious fruit, whose true seeds in the middle are polished brown, and done up in papery carpels. The Apple too, Pyrus malus, is of the Rose Family, and comes under the same head as the Pear, Pyrus communis. A Pome is the name given to the product of the pear, apple, and quince trees, which belongs to the first kind of fruits I mentioned,—the Fleshy fruits. If you hold up to the light a thin slice of an apple cut across the core, you will see marked in it the form of the apple-blossom,—a little picture of what it was in the spring. But these are not the remnants of the petals, for they long ago died away above the fruity calyx. This must be only a fanciful resemblance,—an image of the flower still lingering round the seed.

Other big berries are these pumpkins and squashes that lie golden among the dead corn-stalks; the cucumbers and melons, with their cool, delicious fruit, have a similar rind and soft inner portion, and all are gourds.

To the second kind of fruits, the Stone fruits, the peach belongs. Here the outer wall of the ovary, the pericarp, is soft, and the inner is hard like a nut. Its seed lies within its fruit, and is known as the stone.

I have spoken of the Achenium, which belongs to the third kind of fruits, the Dry fruits,—which we found on the outside of the strawberry, and inside the Rose-hip; the fruit of the Composite Family is an achenium. That of the Thistle is crowned with a pappus,—a tuft of fine hairs, the remains of a limb of the calyx, which wafts the seed away. Something like this form of fruit is found in the valuable Cereals. We must not forget these among the important seeds.

Therefore it would be well to inquire. The fruit is called a Caryopsis, or grain. The fruit and seed are incorporated in one, forming the farinaceous substance for which we are so grateful. We eat the rich store of food which had been laid up for the seed, when it should lie waiting in the ground, the little germ not quite ready or strong enough to put out into the earth after other food, or to start up into the air for light and water. Ceres, the goddess of grain and wheat, gives her name to this tribe. You remember how her daughter, Proserpine, was forced to pass one third of her time down in the lower regions, and allowed to spend only two thirds in the light and air with her mother and all her friends. So the little seeds of wheat and grain lie hidden underground a third of the year, and then rejoice us the rest of the year with the springing grain, the full corn in the ear, and the harvest.

On many plants hang pods, on bushes and trees hang nuts, with a hard, crusty wall.

The involucre of the fertile flowers of the Oak forms the cup of the acorn in ripening. This is called a Cupule, and gives to this family the name Cupuliferæ.

Another form of fruit is the Samara or Key fruit, like the winged fruit of the Red Maple, which in the spring foretold some of the glowing autumn beauty of the leaves.

You will see that many of the seeds are furnished with wings to carry them away. Such are the light seeds of the Dandelion and of the Thistle, the fuzz of the Rose-hip, the feathery seeds of the Clematis, and these wings of the Maple, Ash, and Elm. And where are they going? Does the little seed have any doubt or terror when he separates from the branch, and goes floating off on the wind, now here, now there, sometimes lighting on a spire of grass, sometimes dipping into a brook, or lost in its waters, sometimes blown away by a child’s breath who is trying to find out “if her mother wants her,” sometimes snugly laid into the bottom of a nest for a bed for the birds’ eggs, or sometimes carried far away from where it grew, and torn, and combed, and teazled, and wet, and dried, and plunged into a hopper and out again, and pulled and twisted and spun, finer and finer, stronger and stronger, then woven and smoothed, and sold and sewn, till it is turned into dresses for you and me? That is what we do with the downy wings and feathers,—but the seed itself? Perhaps the birds carry it off; no matter; forget them as we will, they find their way at last into the ground. Some fall by the wayside, and the fowls of the air devour them up, and some on stony ground, where there is not much earth, and spring up, and when the sun is up, they are scorched, and because they have no root they wither away. Some fall among thorns that choke them, so that they yield no fruit; and others fall on good ground.

Let us follow one of the Maple keys, which one spring hung gayly on the Red Sugar-Maple. As it danced on the high branches, looking off over the glittering water of a pond, its wings grew and grew, and at last separated it from the tall tree. Away it went, now high and now low, now nearly falling into the deep water, now carried off into the branches of a Birch-tree. There it stayed awhile, till there came along a bird that snapped it up in her beak to weave it into her nest along with twigs and moss. A very comfortable home this, with the little speckled eggs for companions, and, by and by, the chattering little birds.

“When I lived on a tree,” began the Maple-seed, and spread its little wings as though it were a bird.

“What kind of a bird were you,” asked the others, “and why did not you have a nest of your own?”

“I was not exactly a bird,” explains the seed, “but I am quite glad I have wings like a bird, for I can go where I please. Just now, I please to stay here.”

“But we don’t please to stay here,” scolded the small birds, one and all.

“I had such a stiff dragon-fly, just now,” said one, “I could hardly swallow him. If I could only catch my own dinner, I would not have so many of these hard-winged things.”

“Almost everybody has wings,” said the Maple-seed.

“All but caterpillars,” answered one of the little birds, “and they are very soft and nice to eat. Only I have to share and share them with the others, they are so large. Now I like a little bit to myself.”

“If we could only catch beetles on the wing, as our parents do!” said another.

“Your wings are not yet very large,” suggested the seed. “It takes large wings to fly with.”

“So I suppose,” screamed out all the four wide-opened beaks, and some large May-bugs were tucked in before they could shut them.

The pin-feathers grew at last, and the wings came, and the four little birds tumbled and hopped out of the nest, and went out into the wide world. But the seed was tucked in among the twigs. In vain it stretched its wings, after the rest of the family.

“There, after all, I never shall be a Maple, only a mattress for four birds, and that is the end of it. There is one comfort,—I don’t have to fly after my food, like the birds; it is all stored up in my chest, for the time I shall want it.”

Great winds came, and tossed about the Birch-branches, and turned up the white linings of the leaves, and at last hustled the nest to the ground. And more winds came, and tore it apart, and at last the seed found itself lying on a gravelly bank sloping to the pond. Winter was coming, and this would have been an exposed place for a seed with nothing but two tattered remnants of wings to protect it, had not some rains sent down more gravel over the bank, and over the little seed too.

It is in its grave, buried deeper and deeper. Perhaps you trod on it that day you scrambled down the bank after hazel-nuts. It is all in the dark, with no use for its little faded wings. Alone and in prison! But the seed bethinks itself of the nice little store of food the mother-tree laid up for it. It will begin life all fresh with that. Only meanwhile it must wait all winter long under the earth,—under the earth, and under the snow that comes to wrap it up, and tuck it in out of the cold winter airs, till spring shall come. Yes, spring, with the returning sun, with moist days and hot days. She calls to the little seed, and up come two narrow, green leaves. If this very little seed had fallen into our hands, we might have cut it open, after soaking it in water, and then drying it. We should have found the little plant ready formed,—a pair of leaves like the first seedling leaves, on a little stem, coiled up within the coat of the seed, as you can see in the pictures on the preceding page, which illustrate the shape of the seed, the seed cut open to show the plant enlarged, the embryo partly unfolded, and the same after it has begun to grow.

No wonder that the seed could stay patiently all winter, till the sun was ready for it! It had only then to push forward and grow, to send up its little stem into the light and air, where its leaves would unfold, and from the opposite end push down its root into the soil. And in every seed lies just such a little plant concealed, and when you lay it open you will find it more or less visible.

These two first leaves of the Maple are the Cotyledons, of which we have spoken before, and the little bud that appears between them is called the Plumule. It does not appear in the Maple till some days after the seed-leaves; but soon it rises on a stalk that lifts it far up, putting on a pair of minute leaves. It now consists of two pairs of leaves, the seed-leaves being of a different shape from all the succeeding leaves, which, as you may observe in the Bean, are very plainly the seed split apart.

Later a third pair of leaves is formed, rising on a third joint of the stem, which proceeds from the top of the second as that did from the first, and as you saw in the picture. And in this shape, this very autumn, you can find many little Maple-trees. They have changed their few leaves to the brilliant red that all the large Maples have put on. Little as it is, the plant wears the family colors, and is a complete miniature tree. If you pull it up by the roots, you will see how like the picture on page 587 it is, and how it is like a tree.

But if you think of its being our little seed, you will leave it to grow. No need now of its wishing for wings. It would rather now stay “fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.” It is sending down its little roots to hunt for food, to pick out and choose what will be needed for its little stem, and its roots will hold it firm. For now it is to be a great tree. Year after year it will reckon up its age by putting on each year a new ring of growth. For this is one of the outside-growers, the Exogens.

Had it been of the Endogens, like the grass that grows by its side, now as tall as the little Maple, it would have sent up but one little leaf at first. And this can be seen in the seed itself. If you examine some grains of Indian corn, after soaking them in water, each will show one cotyledon and one plumule, ready to shoot up from the base. The cotyledon remains in the seed, while its base comes out to make room for the plumule, which shoots up and forms the first leaves of the plant. These appear one above the other in succession, the first in the form of a scale, the second or third and the succeeding ones being the real leaves of the plant, while the roots thrust themselves down in the other direction. All of which may be seen more plainly in the picture on the opposite page, of a grain of Indian corn in germination.

The nourishment in the Maple-seed lasted just long enough to provide for sending up the little stem to the air, to seek after what it wants there, and to start the root in the other direction; and then it could shift for itself. It will stretch up higher and higher, passing by the little grass-blade, reaching up till in time it shall toss its own winged seeds in the air, to flutter above the breezy pond, a full-grown tree.

Lucretia P. Hale.

This earth of ours is a house, built by the master-workman, God. Though we know not whereupon the foundations thereof are fastened, nor when the corner-stone was laid, and though in all its building there was no sound of hammer, nor of axe, nor of any laborer’s tools, yet clearly it is a house, a building of many stories. The ocean-level is the first floor; the high hills are the chambers; the mountain-tops are the breezy attic-rooms among the rafters; while all the under-ground depths and the caves of the sea are the cellars, stored with untold comforts for the dwellers in this wondrous house of the world. Will you listen to me, while I tell you about one of the great store-rooms in the earth’s cellar, that you may know with what a generous and careful hand our Father has treasured up gifts for the children of his loving care? Then get your maps and find the State of California, that lies stretched out all its sunny length along the Pacific Ocean. Find, if you can, Santa Clara County. In this county, sixty-five miles south of San Francisco, near the head of the charming valley of San José, and in an eastern spur of the Coast Range of mountains, is the quicksilver mine of New Almaden.

Four years ago, in my summer vacation, I was riding down from the old Mission of Santa Clara on my way to the little village of New Almaden, through an avenue of ancient willow and poplar trees, that extends a distance of three miles, and that was planted long since by the fathers of the Mission. On either side of this delightful avenue, at intervals, there are tasteful cottages, fertile farms, orchards laden with delicious fruit, nurseries and gardens well supplied with water from Artesian wells. Twelve miles beyond San José we came to a little bend in the road called Pat’s Pass, where a brook looked suddenly out upon us; and, as if afraid at being caught so near the highway, it slipped away as suddenly, and scampered off among the trees and bushes. This turn in the road brought us in sight of the romantic village where I was to spend a few weeks with friends.

New Almaden, I found, had only one street; and this, shut in between the vast hills that rose before and behind, wound like a crescent to suit the base of the mountain.

A short day it seemed that came to the occupants of the row of cottages nestling between the strong, protecting hills; for long before the sun waked the sleepers in the valley it shone upon the hill-tops, and after it left us in shade and twilight below, it rested lovingly upon the same high summits.

The houses of this little village all face the mountain that contains the mine. Between the houses and the mountain that rises behind them there is room enough for out-houses and vegetable gardens, while back of the gardens, along the foot of the hill, the frightened little brook, safely hidden by a thick growth of shrubs, wimples on its way. There are two villages connected with the mines. This one—the lower village—is occupied by the families of the superintendent and engineer, and by those of the workmen connected with the smelting works at the upper end of the street.

It was a warm day when we proposed to ride to the top of the hill and visit the mine. At noon, when the wagons going up the hill for ore came along, four laughing girls, Hattie, Jane, Annie, and Mary, with myself, who had been their teacher, mounted one of the huge vehicles. The driver spread out the ore-bags upon the bottom of the wagon to protect our clothes from dirt, and we seated ourselves in Turkish fashion. The driver cracked his whip, and the horses began to wind up the mountain. The view as we rose higher and higher was magnificent. In the gaps between the hills around us we saw the beautiful valley of San Juan, stretching off until the mist made it look like the great sea; while in the distance the Coast Range showed dimly against the sky. As we neared the entrance to the mine, we began to see signs of the upper or miner’s village. Little cabins here and there came into view, and the tow-headed urchins of the Cornish folks or the swarthy children of the Mexican miners toddled about, staring at the ascending wagons, or huzzaing at us as if we were a railroad train.

At this village live the miners and their families. They have a store, and provisions are brought from the lower village on the backs of mules. We were glad, when the wagons stopped, to jump out and stand upon our feet again; and what a strange, busy scene there was about us, to be sure!

Mexicans and Cornishmen principally are the miners; yet Spanish, English, French, Irish, and Indian all were seen running to and fro, loading wagons, tying up bags of ore, and tossing them upon the wagons as if they were only bags of feathers. With shouts of laughter and a perfect Babel of tongues, these great brawny carriers, or tenateros (as they are called), worked away like giants. The miners labor constantly within the mine. They are not paid by the day, but receive wages for the amount of ore they extract. They work in parties, usually of about ten; half the number toiling during the day, the other half by night. So, if the passage upon which a set of men is at work be uncommonly hard, they will not earn much; but if it prove rich and easy, the gain is theirs. Sometimes a miner will make from thirty to forty dollars a week, seldom less than fifteen.

The ore taken out by each party is kept separate, weighed twice a week, and an account taken. They choose one of their number to receive the pay, and he divides it among his fellow-laborers. There is sometimes a trouble. If a lazy fellow gets into a party of industrious miners, he reaps the benefit of their labor, while, like all drones in beehives or among men, he is held a nuisance by his companions. In this case complaint is made to the engineer, who either places the idle one in a set nearer his capacity, or discharges him.

Miss Jane, one of our party, was the daughter of Mr. D——, the engineer, and while we were looking about us she had gone to find her father, who was to conduct us through the mine.

“Where are we going now? where is the great mine?” the girls began to call out on seeing Jane approach.

“O, you’ll see it soon enough,” replied Miss Jane, who, having been over the mine several times, now assumed airs of dignified importance toward the rest of us ignorant mortals, and thought to frighten us by vivid descriptions of the horrors of the vast labyrinth.

Soon Mr. D—— announced that the track was free, and a car ready for us. Candle-boxes were turned down for our seats, and we mounted the car, when to each of us was given a long stick with a bit of lighted candle at the end. We all sat on one side of the car, and rested our candles upon the other end, to keep the flame from our clothes. Fairly started, two stout carriers pushing our train, we noticed, at some distance ahead, an opening—(“Black enough, isn’t it?” said Jane)—right into the side of the hill. This entrance to the tunnel is ten feet wide, and ten feet high to the crown of the arch, which is strongly roofed with heavy timber throughout its entire length.

Mr. D—— went before us with a torch, to make sure that there was nothing in our way.

“Are you warm, girls?” calls out Jane; “because if you are, you won’t be long,—so get your shawls unfolded”;—and sure enough, as from the warmth and sunshine we went into the dark tunnel, a damp, cold blast of air seemed to strike us.

Shivering, shuddering, huddling close up to each other, we were pushed into the mountain, amid such shouts as these:—

“O, my, dear! candle’s out.”

“Dear! dear! I shall fall off this box!”

“O, what a horrid place! how musty it smells!”

“Shall we ever get to the end?”

All this was sufficiently amusing to Jane, who, with peals of laughter, kept calling out, “I told you so!” and adding, with gleeful triumph, “But it’s a great deal worse by and by; it grows worse all the time!”

“Look out for your heads!” shouts Mr. D——, and down into our laps we go, to avoid great troughs in the roof of the tunnel.

“There’s a jolt coming, girls!” says the comforting Jane; and up we go, apparently several feet towards the roof, coming down with a united girl-scream that echoes through the dreadful darkness.

A twinkling glimmer of a light appears ahead, and we hear the hissing sound of a steam-engine, and workmen’s strokes. Directly we stop; Mr. D—— tells us that we have come more than eight hundred feet into the mountain. “And now,” he continues, “you see our kitchen.”

Slowly we are unpacked from our car; and, relighting our troublesome little torches, we follow our leader into a room dug out of the solid rock, where a great steam-engine keeps up a constant buzz. Its work is to unwind a rope from a large wheel, which lowers, through a shaft, a huge iron bucket, to the depths below. By a reverse turn of the wheel, this bucket, filled with ore, is brought up again every ten minutes.

“Now,” said Mr. D——, “we’ll go up into the spare bedroom, if you please.”

Slowly, up a very narrow and almost perpendicular ladder, we creep, bearing our long, unhandy candles; then, through a winding road, we thread our way, and again we seem to be approaching workmen. Here is a chamber with jagged sides and ceiling, where two or three men are loading wheelbarrows, while others with stout picks are tearing down, and making still more jagged, the rough, red walls. I am curious to see how the ore is carried down from this “spare bedroom” to the ground floor; so I follow the wheelbarrow-man, until I see him tip the contents of the barrow into a hole, and hear the ore rattling through those very troughs in the tunnel against which we had wellnigh hit our heads when coming in. It falls into boxes in the side of the tunnel, and from these it is taken upon the cars.

The miners work by the light of a single tallow candle, stuck in the side of the rock. We held our torches as high as possible, to lighten the chamber; and though, by gas-light, the sparkling quicksilver, twinkling and gleaming in the bright red cinnabar, might make it a brilliant spare-room enough, yet it looked weird and dismal to us.

“But the cellar is our finest room,” says Mr. D——. So we prepare to descend the dreadful ladder, where, if one should not hit the round, one might be dashed through hideous darkness to the bottom. Some of the girls find it so frightful that, upon reaching a landing-place near the “kitchen,” they decline going any deeper into the black earth. We will leave them cuddled together in the darkness, to await our return.

Down, down, down, we that are willing go, into depths that seem endless, and the girls begin to wonder if we are not within call of the Chinese, who are always supposed to be opposite us on the globe. Nearly three hundred feet it is before we stand at the bottom of the mine. There we find so many paths striking out here and there, streets crossing and recrossing, leading to chambers where the mighty work of tearing out the interior of the mountain goes on, that the mine seems like a vast city, or like that famous old labyrinth of Egypt with its three thousand chambers.

The miners have given the different passages the names of their saints; and they call them as readily as we do the names of the thoroughfares in a familiar city. There are so many streets in this mine that all the saints’ names which the miners know are exhausted, and a wide passage bears the appropriate name of El Elefante,—The Elephant; while the new streets that are constantly being opened are receiving the names of different animals. You will gain some idea of the extent and number of the streets of this underground city, when I tell you that sixty pounds of candles are used by the workmen every twenty-four hours.

Let us step into one of the rooms where some miners are at work. See that Mexican standing upon a single plank high above us in an arch of rock. He is drilling into the rock in order to place a charge of powder. With every stroke of the drill, his great chest heaves, and he utters a sort of groan, or “something between a grunt and a groan,” which he supposes makes his labor easier. Fancy some eight or ten men working together in a room dark as midnight, but for the dim light of two or three candles, with alternate strokes and groans; add to this three or four carriers going and coming with heavy loads of ore, puffing and wheezing away like so many steamboats, and you must think that life in a quicksilver mine is not so very delightful. Still, Mr. D—— tells us that the miners are generally a healthy and contented set of men. I believe, however, they are not long-lived,—forty-five years being the average which they reach.

Sitting down quietly in a passage of this great cave, I begin to know how wondrous and vast a place it is. There are distant twinkles here and there; confused noises a great way off; explosions in various parts of the mine, so remote that to me they sound like distant thunder; I hear the buzzing of the ponderous wheels of the engine, the emptying of buckets, and the voices of the men, which last sound like baby-tones among all the louder noises. These things make me feel that I am truly in a huge city underneath the ground. Every lesson is valuable, little friends, that brings us nearer to our brother-man, and teaches us sympathy with his labors, his cares and trials, or his joys; so, when I thought of the great number of human beings whose whole lives are spent in just such caves as this, with scarcely a gleam of the sweet light of the sun to fall upon them, I was glad that I had learned a very little of what it was, and I hoped I should appreciate more truly the great though common blessing of daylight.

We have lingered long enough below ground, so we venture up the ladders again, and, reaching the “first floor” of the mine, find our girls sadly impatient to be getting into the light of heaven once more. With much scrambling and shouting we are all at last seated upon the boxes, and our swarthy gnomes begin to push us out. We have gone half-way, when Jane calls to her father: “Father! the chapel.”

“O, yes, yes! I haven’t forgotten that,” replies Mr. D——; and, bidding the carriers halt, we all get out and turn into a narrow path cut through the overarching rock into a small vestibule, where in a niche is placed the shrine of the tutelary saint or protectress of the mine,—Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,—Our Lady of Guadalupe. Before this shrine, in bronze candlesticks, wax candles are always burning. Away in amid the busy turmoil of the mine, to this little silent side-room the miners come to worship before they begin their work, by day or night.

Perhaps we do not worship saints nor the Virgin; but if in some still room of our hearts, remote from noise and tumult, we should all keep an altar where, before every day’s work is begun, we should seek Our Father’s blessing, it would certainly be a most excellent thing.

When we come out into the glad sunshine, the four girls draw a deep sigh, utter a simultaneous “Oh!” shake themselves to be sure they are yet living, I suppose, and then, half blinded by the light, stagger about in the most laughable manner.

The ore that is taken from the mountain is carried down in wagons to the furnaces at the lower village; and now you will like to know how the quicksilver is extracted from the red stone that contains it. This red stone is vermilion or cinnabar, and it is very beautiful. Long ago, before any white man knew about this valuable mine, the Indians used to work it in a rude way with stones and pointed sticks, for the sake of the vermilion with which they painted their bodies. This was as precious to them as gold is to us; for they not only ornamented their own faces with it, but used it as an article of exchange with other Indians, from Columbia River to the Gulf of California. The Indians had gone into the mountain to the depth of sixty feet; and in the first attempts of white men to tunnel the mine, they came upon some rude instruments and several human skeletons, probably the remains of an unfortunate party of Indians buried by the caving in of the earth. See now how differently the untaught savage and the educated man value and use the gifts of nature. The savage prized only the gaudy paint of the rock, while the metal hidden in its substance was nothing to him: he did not even know it was there. We, on the other hand, care little for the vermilion, because our art teaches us that the secret treasure of the rocks, only to be extorted by strong fires, is by far the most valuable. If you do not know the uses of quicksilver, I shall not tell you; but I hope you will find them out from some other source. My business is to inform you about the raw material.

The process of extracting the quicksilver of commerce from cinnabar is so simple that you can readily understand it. Were you to go through the smelting works at New Almaden, you would see a long line of furnaces, fourteen in all,—and perhaps in each furnace a roaring fire would be burning; behind each furnace is an ore chamber, as it is called, where the cinnabar is placed in large pieces, and with open spaces between, so that the flames and smoke from the fire may pass through it. This ore chamber is separated from the furnace by a perforated wall of brick, which allows the flames to enter from the furnace and permeate the mass of ore. Just as steam rises from a kettle of hot water, so the quicksilver passes into vapor, rises from the cinnabar, and rushes out of the ore chamber through a perforated wall on the side opposite to that through which the flames enter, and, along with volumes of smoke, goes into the condensing chambers behind. These condensing rooms, thirteen in all, are separated by partitions that reach, every alternate one, almost to the top, and almost to the bottom of the main room. In the lower part of the chamber is water, and as the smoke from the fire and vapor from the ore pass into the first room, they must rise over the first partition, fall down into the second room, up into the third, down into the fourth, and so on. Passing thus through the thirteen rooms, the vapor or steam of quicksilver cools and condenses, just as you have seen the steam from the teakettle condense into water on the bottom of a plate that had been put over the top of the kettle; only this vapor of which I am telling you forms drops of quicksilver, such as you see in the thermometer, instead of drops of water. At the bottom of each condensing room is a small pipe, through which the quicksilver runs into a trough that extends from one end of the building to the other. Outside the building, and close to it, you might see a row of mighty caldrons or kettles set in the ground. Into each of these a pipe from the main trough pours the beautiful, nimble “water-silver,” as it used to be called. Should any of the vapor fail to be condensed in passing through the condensing chambers, just before it reaches the chimney it is led through a tube, where, from an enclosed pipe, water is scattered over a sieve, falls upon the vapor, and cools it to quicksilver, while the black smoke goes up the tall chimney alone. The quicksilver is ladled from the kettles outside the building, weighed into flasks of seventy-five pounds each, and then it is ready for the market.

Section of the Smelting Furnace.
A. The Furnace.
B. The Ore Chamber.
C C. Condensing Rooms.
D. Enclosed Pipe.
E. Chimney.

The mine of New Almaden is supposed to be—next to the Spanish Almaden—the richest quicksilver mine in the world, and perhaps it is even superior to that. The Indians, who had for years known the place as a deposit of vermilion, told of it to the Spanish Californians, who did not know what the mineral was. It was not until 1845 that a cavalry captain in the Mexican army, named Andres Castillero, meeting a tribe of Indians whose faces were painted with vermilion, gained from them a knowledge of the locality of this mine. This Castillero knew the nature of the ore, laid claim to the mine, formed a company, and began working. For years, hundreds of men have worked here, and still the supply is so abundant that it controls the quicksilver market of the world; by this I mean, that, should this mine be closed for any length of time, the scarcity of the metal would be felt all over the globe.

Within a distance of four miles from New Almaden, and in a straight line from the mine, are two other quicksilver mines, neither, however, so important as the one I have tried to describe to you. One is called the Henriquita, after Henriquita Laurencel, the little daughter of one of the proprietors of the mine at the time of its discovery; the other, Guadalupé, a name suggested by a small river that drains the district.

How long it will be before the quicksilver of these vast storehouses will be exhausted, it is impossible to guess. We can only wonder at the wisdom and the bounty and the divine skill which, when our earth was formed, so wrought that in its depth are veins for the silver, that the stones of it are sapphires, and that it hath dust of gold.

Lucy St. John.

VII.

“Where was our little friend Kate this evening?” asked Father Brighthopes, after the company had gone.

“I can’t imagine why she didn’t come,” replied Emma. “You never saw anybody so delighted as she was when I told her you had got back and would be glad to see her to-night. O, and you never saw such a change in any one, either! Since she has known you, she has appeared so different! She’s a real nice, sensible girl; and she thinks you are an angel, Father Brighthopes.”

“That is sensible, truly!”

“You needn’t shake your head so, for it is sensible. She thinks there’s nobody in the world like you, and I agree with her.”

“Well, well, I am thankful for your good opinion,” said Father Brighthopes; and indeed he was well pleased. We all love to be loved; and to him there was nothing more precious and touching than the love of children. “But if Kate wished so much to see me, I fear some serious accident has occurred to prevent her coming. I think I must call and ask about her in my walk to-morrow.”

“O, I wish you would! and let me go with you! For it’s vacation now, and I’ve nothing to do but just to go round with you.”

“Emma! Emma!” said Mrs. Reverdy, gently reproving her. “You are altogether too forward. You mustn’t think, because our friend is so kind to you, that he will want your company everywhere he goes.” Then, turning to Father Brighthopes,—“Her fondness for you must be her excuse. She is not usually so free. You must not let her weary you.”

“There is no danger of that,” he replied. “Emma knows instinctively when I wish to be alone, and never intrudes upon me. I shall wish to have her take this walk with me, by all means.”

“I am delighted to hear you say so; for my dear child is never so happy, and never improves so fast, as when under your influence.”

A glow of satisfaction warmed the good old man’s heart, for he knew that this praise was sincere; and although he had long since outlived his vanity, if he ever had any, such simple acknowledgments of his usefulness were always very gratifying to him.

The next morning, accordingly, they set out on their walk, Emma skipping by his side, happy as the birds in the bushes.

“Do you remember when we went to see Grant Eastman and his mother?” she cried. “I haven’t been to walk with you since. And do you know, Father Brighthopes, that what we thought was such a misfortune for Grant turned out to be the best thing for him? He didn’t go back into Mr. Marsh’s store at all, but he has a much better place, where he gets twice the wages. The business is just what he likes; and he pleases his employers so well that they have written to his mother a long letter about him. She let me read it,—and you never saw so happy a woman!”

“What an accommodating little mouse that was!” said Father Brighthopes.

“Yes,” cried Emma; “and father says, if it hadn’t been for that nest made of stolen money, Grant might have been spending some of the best years of his life in that mean little store, on a mean little salary. Now he is in a business that will bring out his capacities, father says. Isn’t it curious, how an accident like that can make such a change, not only for him, but for his mother? And we all thought it such a sad thing!”

“My child,” said Father Brighthopes, “it is not always that misfortunes so soon are shown to have been designed for our good. But to the true man, or woman, or little girl, all misfortunes will thus prove to be blessings in the end; although they may hang over us for years,—perhaps for a lifetime. Think of this, my child, when sorrow comes to you,—for it will come: it is something no one can escape,” he said, very tenderly, holding her hand. “Think of this, and try to have faith and strength to bear whatever burden is laid upon you.”

Emma, so happy at that moment, wondered what sorrow could ever happen to her. Then she thought: “This dear old friend cannot be with me always. And my father and mother,—can I ever part with them? Yes, I know it must be so! O, when such sorrows do come, how can I bear them, if I forget what Father Brighthopes is saying to me now?”

As they reached Mr. Orley’s gate, they heard voices of children at play behind the house. At the sound of the gate shutting, the laughter ceased; and in a minute Kate, who ran to the corner to see who had come, flew to meet them, with a face rosy with blushes, and eyes beaming with joy. Her heart beat so fast that she could hardly speak a word as she led them into the house. “Mother!” she called, “here is Father Brighthopes come to see us!”

Mrs. Orley came out of a back room, looking both astonished and pleased at the sight of their visitors. Father Brighthopes scarcely recognized her, she was so changed since he first saw her. She was more neatly dressed,—and her countenance, which was then so sour and care-worn, had an almost happy expression. Nor could he help noticing that the house presented a much more orderly and cheerful appearance than on his former visit.

“Well, Kate,” said he, taking the chair Mrs. Orley placed for him, and giving his hat to the child, “as we did not see you at Mr. Reverdy’s last night, I feared you must be ill.”

“It was I that was sick,” said Mrs. Orley. “I had one of my sick-headaches, and she wouldn’t leave me, although I urged her to, for I knew how great a disappointment it was to her not to go.”

At that moment, a voice without was heard calling: “Kate! Kate! O Kate! Come and help!”

As Kate and Emma ran out, Mrs. Orley continued: “There was another reason why she stayed at home. We talked so frankly when you called before, and your coming did us all so much good, I want to tell you everything, if you will let me. Ah, what you said about Kate was so true! I wonder I never found out before what a dear good child she was. From that day, she took right hold with a will, as if she was determined to help me all she could, and make her home bright and cheerful, in spite of everything. I was a great deal happier after I told you my troubles, and found there was one person in the world who could sympathize with me, and I wasn’t so sharp with the child as I had been; and that seemed to give her great encouragement. The next I noticed, her father, when he came home from his work, looked pleased to see us, and didn’t hurry away to the tavern right after supper, as he had been in the habit of doing, when he used to come home and find the house uncomfortable.

“ ‘I wish you’d stay at home one evening,’ said she, one night, as he was going out later than usual. ‘Why don’t you, father?’

“ ‘You did almost make me forget to go out,’ said he. ‘I never saw you looking so handsome in my life, Kate. And your mother has brightened up wonderfully too. But a man wants a little recreation, you know.’

“ ‘O, yes,’ said she, ‘I know. But what do you do for recreation at the tavern?’

“ ‘What do I do? I play euchre, for one thing.’

“ ‘That must be nice! I wish you would show me how to play euchre. I want recreation too. So does mother.’

“He is really very fond of her, and she said this so sweetly and affectionately, that he let her put his hat away, and get the cards out of his pocket, and draw him up to the table, where they played euchre together half the evening. It was a new thing for me to see him happy at home, and go to bed quite sober; and I was so thankful that I resolved I never would do anything to make the house uncomfortable for him again.

“From that time he has spent nearly all his evenings with us. Sometimes he and Kate play euchre or backgammon; but oftener she reads aloud from books that she takes out of the library. Last night she was afraid, if he came home and found me sick and her gone, he would go to the tavern again; and that is the true reason why you did not see her at Mr. Reverdy’s. You will forgive me for troubling you with this long story, I am sure.”

“Forgive you?” repeated Father Brighthopes, with deep emotion. “You could not have told me anything that could give me such sincere pleasure. Ah! I knew Kate had an excellent heart, yet I never dared expect so much from her. How little we know how much good even a child may do, by her affection and example!”

“But we have you to thank for all this,” said Mrs. Orley, unable to restrain her tears. “I was really getting into a very bad way, though I wasn’t fully aware of it until you came in, and showed me myself, and my duty to Kate. I am not yet what I should be, though I try hard to be. Some days the cloud will come over me again, and I can’t help being very low-spirited. Then, if it wasn’t for Kate, I don’t know what I should do; for she is almost the only society I have. Our neighbors are proud, and they never come and see me, nor invite me to visit them.”

“That is hard,” said Father Brighthopes. “We all need society; but the fault may be in ourselves, if we are deprived of it.”

“O, well, I know I haven’t made myself very attractive to people, and I don’t wonder I have been left alone with my troubles and complaints. Few are so willing to listen to them, and give sympathy and advice in return, as you are. But our neighbors are proud, and I can prove it. There is Laura Follet,—she comes over to play with Kate nearly every day. She says there isn’t a girl in school she likes as well as she does Kate. She never found it out, though, until Mr. Orley, by spending his evenings at home, began to save his wages, and I was able to dress the child a little better than I used to.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t the dress alone that made the change,” said Father Brighthopes. “Kate is not so sad as she was. She is very much happier; and it is happy companions children like.”

“Yes, there is something in that. But why is Laura ashamed to have it known she comes to see Kate? She was here when you called, but she wouldn’t show herself. Last week she gave a party; but, though she had been here playing with Kate every afternoon, and telling how much better she liked her than she did other girls, she invited every girl on the street to her party except Kate. I suppose that was her mother’s doings; but I think it is very mean in her to let her daughter come and enjoy my child’s society on the sly, in that way. It is as mean as stealing.”

Kate and Emma now came into the room, laughing at something very funny.

“What amuses you, my children?” asked the old clergyman, indulgently.

“Kate don’t want me to tell, but I guess I will,” said Emma. “Laura Follet was here when we came. She was under the apple-tree with Kate; but she didn’t want to be seen, for she don’t like to have folks know she comes here. So she cut into the wood-shed. She couldn’t get out of the door without being noticed, so she thought she would jump out of the window. But as she jumped, her hoops caught on a nail, and there she was hung by it, when she called and we ran out to her. She couldn’t get up or down; but there she was,—the drollest-looking object! and we had to lift her up and unhang her!”

“I declare,” said Mrs. Orley, “that served her just right. Where is she now?”

“She is in the wood-shed, crying, she is so ashamed. I wanted her to come in, but she wouldn’t,” said Kate.

“Certainly, she must come in,” said Father Brighthopes. “I remember Laura,—a very pleasant little girl. Go to her, Emma, and tell her I wish to see her.”

After Emma had gone out, the old clergyman put his arms fondly around Kate, and kissed her cheek. “My dear child, your mother has been telling me such good things about you! It makes my heart glad to know how cheerful and industrious and loving you have been. Continue to be so always, and you will turn the bitterness of life into sweetness, and make everybody happy around you.”

Such praise and encouragement from him was too much for the warm-hearted child, and she cried for very joy.

“She won’t come,” said Emma, re-entering. “She says she must go home now.”

“Well, so must we,” said Father Brighthopes, rising. “So tell her we will walk along together.”

He then took leave of Mrs. Orley with such words of kindness and comfort as he knew so well how to speak. Going out, he found Kate and Emma detaining Laura in the yard.

“You come, too, Kate!” said Laura, finding she could not avoid walking with the old clergyman, and wishing for her friend’s company to give her confidence.

Kate, with her mother’s permission, gladly assented, and Father Brighthopes and his three young companions set off together.

J. T. Trowbridge.

X.

The tableaux had to be put off. Frank Scherman was obliged to go down to Boston, unexpectedly, to attend to business, and nothing could be done without him. The young girls felt all the reaction that comes with the sudden interruption of eager plans. A stagnation seemed to succeed to their excitement and energy. They were thrown back into a vacuum.

“There is nothing on earth to do, or to think about,” said Florrie Arnall, dolefully.

“Just as much as there was last week,” replied Josie Scherman, common-sense-ically. Frank was only her brother, and that made a difference. “There’s Giant’s Cairn as big as ever, and Feather-Cap, and Minster Rock, and the Spires. And there’s plenty to do. Tableaux aren’t everything. There’s your ‘howl,’ Sin Saxon. That hasn’t come off yet.”

“ ‘It isn’t the fall that hurts,—it’s the fetch-up,’ as the Irishman observed,” said Sin Saxon, with a yawn. “It wasn’t that I doted particularly on the tableaux, but ‘the waters wild went o’er my child, and I was left lamenting.’ It was what I happened to be after at the moment. When I get ready for a go, I do hate to take off my bonnet and sit down at home.”

“But the ‘howl,’ Sin! What’s to become of that?”

“Ain’t I howling all I can?”

And this was all Sin Saxon would say about it. The girls meant to keep her in mind, and to have their frolic,—the half of them in the most imaginative ignorance as to what it might prove to be; but somehow their leader herself seemed to have lost her enthusiasm or her intention.

Leslie Goldthwaite felt neither disappointment nor impatience. She had got a permanent interest. It is good always to have something to fall back upon. The tableaux would come by and by; meanwhile, there was plenty of time for their “bees,” and for the Cliff.

They had long mornings in the pines, and cool, quiet afternoons in Miss Craydocke’s pretty room. It was wonderful the cleverness the Josselyns had come to with little frocks. One a skirt, and the other a body,—they made nothing of finishing the whole at a sitting. “It’s only seeing the end from the beginning,” Martha said, when Leslie uttered her astonishment. “We know the way, right through; and no way seems long when you’ve travelled it often.” To be sure, Prissy Hoskins’s delaines and calicoes didn’t need to be contrived after Demorest’s fashion-plates.

Then they had their holiday, taking the things over to the Cliff, and trying them all on Prissy, very much as if they had been a party of children, and she a paper doll. Her rosy little face and wilful curls came out of each prettier than the last, precisely as a paper dolly’s does; and when at the end of all they got her into a bright violet print and a white bib-apron, it was well they were the last, for they couldn’t have had the heart to take her out of them. Leslie had made for her a small hoop, from the upper half of one of her own, and laced a little cover upon it, of striped seersucker, of which there was a petticoat also to wear above. These, clear, clean, and stiffened, came from Miss Craydocke’s stores. She never travelled without her charity-trunk, wherein—put at once in perfect readiness for different use the moment they passed beyond her own—she kept all spare material that waited for such call. Breadths of old dresses, ripped and sponged and pressed, or starched, ironed, and folded; flannel petticoats shrunken short; stockings “cut down” in the old, thrifty, grandmother fashion; underclothing strongly patched (as she said, the “Lord’s mark put upon it, since it had pleased Him to give her the means to do without patches”); odds and ends of bonnet-ribbons, dipped in spirits and rolled tightly upon blocks, from which they unrolled nearly as good as new;—all these things, and more, religiously made the most of for whomsoever they might first benefit, went about with her in this, the biggest of her boxes, which, give out from it as she might, she never seemed, she said, to get quite to the bottom of.

Under the rounded skirts, below the short, plain trousers, Prissy’s ankles and feet were made shapely with white stockings and new, stout boots. (Aunt Hoskins believed in “white stockin’s, or go athout. Bilin’ an’ bleachin’ an’ comin’ out new; none o’ yer aggravations ’v everlastin’ dirt-color.”) And one thing more, the prettiest of all. A great net of golden-brown silk that Leslie had begged Mrs. Linceford, who liked netting, to make, gathered into strong, large meshes the unruly wealth of hair brushed back in rippling lines from Prissy’s temples, and showing so its brighter, natural color from underneath, where the outside had grown sun-faded.

“I’m just like Cinderella,—with four godmothers!” cried the child; and she danced up and down, as Leslie let her go from under her hands.

“You’re just like—a little heathen!” screamed Aunt Hoskins. “Where’s yer thanks?” Her own thanks spoke themselves, partly in an hysterical sort of chuckle and sniffle, that stopped each other short, and the rebuke with them. “But there! she don’t know no better! ’T ain’t fer every day, you needn’t think. It’s for company to-day, an’ fer Sundays, an’ to go to Portsmouth.”

“Don’t spoil it for her, Mrs. Hoskins. Children hate to think it isn’t for every day,” said Leslie Goldthwaite.

But the child-antidote to that was also ready.

“I don’t care,” cried Prissy. “To-day’s a great, long day, and Sunday’s for ever and ever, and Portsmouth’ll be always.”

“Can’t yer stop ter kerchy, and say—Luddolight ’n massy, I donno what to tell ye ter say!” And Mrs. Hoskins sniffled and gurgled again, and gave it up.

“She has thanked us, I think,” said Miss Craydocke, in her simple way, “when she called us God-mothers!” The word came home to her good heart. God had given her, the lonely woman, the larger motherhood. “Brothers, and sisters, and mothers!” She thought how Christ traced out the relationships, and claimed them even to Himself!

“Now, for once, you’re to be done up. That’s general order number two,” Miss Craydocke said to the Josselyn girls, as they all first met together again after the Cliff party. “We’ve worked together till we’re friends. And so there’s not a word to be said. We owe you time that we’ve taken, and more that we mean to take before you go. I’ll tell you what for, when it’s necessary.”

It was a nicer matter to get the Josselyns to be helped than to help. It was not easy for them to bring forth their breadths and their linings, and their braids that were to be pieced, and their trimmings that were to be turned, and to lay bare to other eyes all their little economies of contrivance; but Miss Craydocke managed it by simple straightforwardness,—by not behaving as if there were anything to be glossed over or ignored. Instead of hushing up about economies, she brought them forward, and gave them a most cheery and comfortable, not to say dignified air. It was all ordinary matter of course,—the way everybody did, or ought to do. This was the freshest end of this breadth, and should go down; this other had a darn that might be cut across, and a straight piecing made, for which the slope of the skirt would allow,—she should do it so; that hem might be taken off altogether and a new one turned; this was a very nice trimming, and plenty of it, and the wrong side was brighter than the right; she knew a way of joining worsted braid that never showed,—you might have a dozen pieces in the binding of a skirt and not be noticed. This little blue frock had no trimming; they would finish that at home. No, the prettiest thing in the world for it would be pipings of black silk, and Miss Craydocke had some bits just right for covering cord, thick as a board, big enough for nothing else; and out they came, as did many another thing, without remark, from her bags and baskets. She had hooks and eyes, and button-fasteners, when these gave out; she used from her own cotton-spools and skeins of silk; she had tailors’ twist for button-holes, and large black cord for the pipings; and these were but working implements, like scissors and thimble,—taken for granted, without count. There was nothing on the surface for the most shrinking delicacy to rub against; but there was a kindness that went down into the hearts of the two young girls continually.

For an hour or two at least each day they sat together so, for the being together. The work was “taken up.” Dakie Thayne read stories to them sometimes; Miss Craydocke had something always to produce and to summon them to sit and hear,—some sketch of strange adventure, or a ghost-marvel, or a bright, spicy magazine-essay; or, knowing where to find sympathizers and helpers, Dakie would rush in upon them uncalled, with some discovery, or want, or beautiful thing to show of his own. They were quite a little coterie by themselves. It shaped itself to this more and more.

Leslie did not neglect her own party. She drove and walked with Mrs. Linceford, and was ready for anything the Haddens really wanted of her; but Mrs. Linceford napped and lounged a good deal, and could spare her then; and Jeannie and Elinor seemed somehow to feel the want of her less than they had done,—Elinor unconsciously drawn away by new attraction, Jeannie rather of a purpose.

I am afraid I cannot call it anything else but a little loss of caste which seemed coming to Leslie Goldthwaite just now, through these new intimacies of hers. “Something always gets crowded out.” This, too,—her popularity among the first,—might have to be, perhaps, one of the somethings.

Now and then she felt it so,—perceived the shade of difference toward her in the tone and manner of these young girls. I cannot say that it did not hurt her a little. She had self-love, of course; yet, for all, she was loyal to the more generous love,—to the truer self-respect. If she could not have both, she would keep the best. There came to be a little pride in her own demeanor,—a waiting to be sought again.

“I can’t think what has come over Les’,” said Jeannie Hadden, one night, on the piazza, to a knot of girls. She spoke in a tone at once apologetic and annoyed. “She was always up to anything at home. I thought she meant to lead us all off here. She might have done almost what she pleased.”

“Everybody likes Leslie,” said Elinor.

“Why, yes, we all do,” put in Mattie Shannon. “Only she will take up queer people, you see. And—well, they’re nice enough, I suppose; only there’s never room enough for everybody.”

“I thought we were all to be nowhere when she first came. There was something about her,—I don’t know what,—not wonderful, but taking. ‘Put her where you pleased, she was the central point of the picture,’ Frank said.” This came from Josie Scherman.

“And she’s just dropped all, to run after goodness knows what and whom! I can’t see through her!” rejoined Jeannie, with a sort of finality in her accent that seemed to imply, “I wash my hands of her, and won’t be supposed accountable.”

“Knew ye not,” broke in a gentle voice, “that she must be about her Master’s business?” It was scarcely addressed to them. Miss Craydocke just breathed audibly the thought she could not help.

There came a downfall of silence upon the group.

When they took breath again,—“O, if she’s religious!” Mattie Shannon just said, as of a thing yet farther off and more finally done with. And then their talk waited under a restraint again.

“I supposed we were all religious,—Sundays, at least,” broke forth Sin Saxon suddenly, who, strangely, had not spoken before. “I don’t know, though. Last Saturday night we danced the German till half past twelve, and we talked charades instead of going to church, till I felt—as if I’d sat all the morning with my feet over a register, reading a novel, when I’d ought to have been doing a German exercise or something. If she’s religious every day, she’s seven times better than we are, that’s all. I think—she’s got a knot to her thread!”

Nobody dared send Leslie Goldthwaite quite to Coventry after this.

Sin Saxon found herself in the position of many another leader,—obliged to make some demonstration to satisfy the aroused expectations of her followers. Her heart was no longer thoroughly in it; but she had promised them a “howl,” and a howl they were determined upon, either with or against her.

Opportunity arose just now also. Madam Routh went off on a party to the Notch, with some New York friends, taking with her one or two of the younger pupils, for whom she felt most constant responsibility. The elder girls were domesticated and acquainted now at Outledge; there were several matronly ladies with whom the whole party was sufficiently associated in daily intercourse for all the air of chaperonage that might be needed; and one assistant pupil, whom, to be sure, the young ladies themselves counted as a most convenient nonentity, was left in nominal charge.

Now or never, the girls declared with one voice it must be. All they knew about it—the most of them—was that it was some sort of an out-of-hours frolic, such as boarding-school ne’er-do-weels delight in; and it was to plague Miss Craydocke, against whom, by this time, they had none of them really any manner of spite; neither had they any longer the idea of forcing her to evacuate; but they had got wound up on that key at the beginning, and nobody thought of changing it. Nobody but Sin Saxon. She had begun, perhaps, to have a little feeling that she would change it, if she could.

Nevertheless, with such show of heartiness as she found possible, she assented to their demand, and the time was fixed. Her merry, mischievous temperament asserted itself as she went on, until she really grew into the mood for it once more, for the pure fun of the thing.

It took two days to get ready. After the German on Thursday night, the howl was announced to come off in Number Thirteen, West Wing. This, of course, was the boudoir; but nobody but the initiated knew that. It was supposed to be Maud Walcott’s room. The assistant pupil made faint remonstrances against she knew not what, and was politely told so; moreover, she was pressingly invited to render herself with the other guests at the little piazza door, precisely at eleven. The matronly ladies, always amused, sometimes a little annoyed and scandalized at Sin Saxon’s escapades, asked her, one and another, at different times, what it was all to be, and if she really thought she had better, and among themselves expressed tolerably grave doubts about proprieties, and wished Madam Routh would return. The vague mystery and excitement of the howl kept all the house gently agog for this Tuesday and Wednesday intervening. Sin Saxon gave out odd hints here and there in confidence.

It was to be a “spread”; and the “grub” (Sin was a boarding-school girl, you know, and had brothers in college) was to be all stolen. There was an uncommon clearance of cakes and doughnuts, and pie and cheese, from each meal, at this time. Cup-custards, even, disappeared,—cups and all. A cold supper, laid at nine on Wednesday evening, for some expected travellers, turned out a more meagre provision on the arrival of the guests than the good host of the Giant’s Cairn had ever been known to make. At bedtime Sin Saxon presented herself in Miss Craydocke’s room.

“There’s something heavy on my conscience,” she said, with a disquiet air. “I’m really worried; and it’s too late to help it now.”

Miss Craydocke looked at her with a kind anxiety. “It’s never too late to try to help a mistake. And you, Miss Saxon,—you can always do what you choose.”

She was afraid for her,—the good lady,—that her heedlessness might compromise herself and others in some untoward scrape. She didn’t like these rumors of the howl,—the last thing she thought of being her own rest and comfort, which were to be purposely invaded.

“I’ve let the chance go by,” said Sin Saxon desperately. “It’s of no use now.” And she rocked herself back and forth in the Shaker chair, of which she had taken possession.

“My dear,” said Miss Craydocke, “if you would only explain to me,—perhaps—”

“You might!” cried Sin, jumping up, and making a rush at the good woman, seizing her by both hands. “They’d never suspect you. It’s that cold roast chicken in the pantry. I can’t get over it, that I didn’t take that!”

Sin was incorrigible. Miss Craydocke shook her head, taking care to turn it aside at the same moment; for she felt her lips twitch and her eyes twinkle, in spite of herself.

“I won’t take this till the time comes,” said Sin, laying her hand on the back of the Shaker chair. “But it’s confiscated for to-morrow night, and I shall come for it. And, Miss Craydocke, if you do manage about the chicken,—I hate to trouble you to go down stairs, but I dare say you want matches, or a drink of water, or something, and another time I’ll wait upon you with pleasure,—here’s the door,—made for the emergency,—and I on the other side of it dissolved in tears of gratitude!”

And so, for the time, Sin Saxon disappeared.

The next afternoon, Jimmy Wigley brought a big basket of raspberries to the little piazza door. A pitcher of cream vanished from the tea-table just before the gong was struck. Nobody supposed the cat had got it. The people of the house understood pretty well what was going on, and who was at the bottom of it all; but Madam Routh’s party was large, and the life of the place; they would wink hard and long before complaining at anything that might be done in the west wing.

Sin Saxon opened her door upon Miss Craydocke when she was dressed for the German, and about to go down stairs. “I’ll trust you,” she said, “about the rocking-chair. You’ll want it, perhaps, till bedtime, and then you’ll just put it in here. I shouldn’t like to disturb you by coming for it late. And please step in a minute now, won’t you?”

She took her through into the boudoir. There lay the “spread” upon a long table, contrived by the contribution of one ordinary little one from each sleeping-chamber, and covered by a pair of clean sheets, which swept the floor along the sides. About it were ranged chairs. Two pyramids of candles, built up ingeniously by the grouping of bedroom tins upon hidden supports, vine-sprays and mosses serving gracefully for concealment and decoration, stood, one on each side, half-way between the ends and centre. Cake-plates were garnished with wreathed oak-leaves, and in the midst a great white Indian basket held the red, piled-up berries, fresh and fragrant.

“That’s the little bit of righteousness to save the city. That’s paid for,” said Sin Saxon. “Jimmy Wigley’s gone home with more scrip than he ever got at once before; and if your chicken-heartedness hadn’t taken the wrong direction, Miss Craydocke, I should be perfectly at ease in my mind.”

“It’s very pretty,” said Miss Craydocke; “but do you think Madam Routh would quite approve? And why couldn’t you have had it openly in the dining-room? And what do you call it a ‘howl’ for?” Miss Craydocke’s questions came softly and hesitatingly, as her doubts came. The little festival was charming—but for the way and place.

“O Miss Craydocke! Well, you’re not wicked, and you can’t be supposed to know; but you must take my word for it, that, if it was tamed down, the game wouldn’t be worth the candle. And the howl? You just wait and see!”

The invited guests were told to come to the little piazza door. The girls asked all their partners in the German, and the matronly ladies were asked, as a good many respectable people are civilly invited where their declining is counted upon. Leslie Goldthwaite, and the Haddens, and Mrs. Linceford, and the Thoresbys were all asked, and might come if they chose. Their stay would be another matter. And so the evening and the German went on.

Till eleven, when they broke up; and the entertainers in a body rushed merrily and noisily along the passages to Number Thirteen, West Wing, rousing from their first naps many quietly disposed, delicate people, who kept early hours, and a few babies whose nurses and mammas would bear them anything but gratefully in mind through the midnight hours to come.

They gained two minutes, perhaps, upon their guests, who had, some of them, to look up wraps, and to come round by the front hall and piazzas. In these two minutes, by Sin Saxon’s order, they seated themselves comfortably at table. They had plenty of room; but they spread their robes gracefully,—they had all dressed in their very prettiest to-night,—and they quite filled up the space. Bright colors, and soft, rich textures floating and mingling together, were like a rainbow encircling the feast. The candles had been touched with kerosene, and matches lay ready. The lighting-up had been done in an instant. And then Sin Saxon went to the door, and drew back the chintz curtains from across the upper half, which was of glass. A group of the guests, young men, were already there, beneath the elms outside. But how should she see them, looking from the bright light into the tree-shadows? She went quietly back, and took her place at the head, leaving the door fast bolted.

There came a knock. Sin Saxon took no heed, but smilingly addressed herself to offering dainties right and left. Some of the girls stared, and one or two half rose to go and give admittance.

“Keep your seats,” said Sin, in her most ladylike way and tone, with the unchanged smile upon her face. “That’s the howl!”

They began to perceive the joke outside. They began to knock vociferously. They took up their cue with a readiness, and made plenty of noise; not doubting, as yet, that they should be admitted at last. Some of the ladies came round, gave a glance, saw how things were going, and retreated;—except a few, parties from other houses, who had escorts among the gentlemen, and who waited a little to see how the frolic would end, or at least to reclaim their attendants.

Well, it was very unpardonable,—outrageous, the scandalized neighbors were beginning already to say in their rooms. Even Sin Saxon had a little excitement in her eye beyond the fun, as she still maintained the most graceful order within, and the exchange of courtesies went on around the board, and the tumult increased without. They tree-toaded, they cat-called, they shouted, they cheered, they howled, they even hissed. Sin Saxon sat motionless an instant when it came to that, and gave a glance toward the lights. A word from her would put them out, and end the whole. She held her coup in reserve, however, knowing her resource, and sat, as it were, with her finger on the spring, determined to carry through coolly what she had begun.

Dakie Thayne had gone away with the Linceford party when they crossed to the Green Cottage. Afterward, he came out again and stood in the open road. Some ladies, boarders at Blashford’s, up above, came slowly away from the uproar, homeward. One or two young men detached themselves from the group on the piazza, and followed to see them safe, as it belonged to them to do. The rest sat themselves down, at this moment, upon the steps and platform, and struck up, with one accord, “We won’t go home till morning.” In the midst of this, a part broke off and took up, discordantly, the refrain, “Polly put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea”; others complicated the confusion further with “Cruel, cruel, Polly Hopkins, treat me so—oh! treat me so!” Till they fell, at last, into an indistinguishable jumble and clamor, from which extricated themselves now and again, and prevailed, the choruses of “Upidee,” and “Bum-bum-bye,” with an occasional drum-beat of emphasis given upon the door.

“Don’t go back there, James,” Dakie Thayne heard a voice from the retiring party say as they passed him,—“it’s disgraceful!”

“The house won’t hold Sin Saxon after this,” said another. “They were out in the upper hall, half a dozen of them, just now, ringing their bells and calling for Mr. Biscombe.”

“The poor man don’t know who to side with. He don’t want to lose the whole west wing. After all, there must be young people in the house, and if it weren’t one thing it would be another. It’s only a few fidgets that complain. They’ll hush up and go off presently, and the whole thing will be a joke over the breakfast-table to-morrow morning, after everybody’s had a little sleep.”

The singing died partially away, just then, and some growling, less noisy, but more in earnest, began.

“They don’t mean to let us in! I say, this is getting rather rough!”

“It’s only to smash a pane of glass above the bolt, and let ourselves in. Why shouldn’t we? We’re invited.” The latent mob-element was very near developing itself in these young gentlemen, high-bred, but irate.

At this moment, a wagon came whirling down the road around the ledges. Dakie Thayne caught sight of the two white leaders, recognized them, and flew across to the hotel. “Stop!” cried he. At the same instant a figure moved hastily away from behind Miss Craydocke’s blinds. It was a mercy the wagon had driven around to the front hall door.

A mercy in one way; but the misfortune was that the supper-party within knew nothing of it. A musical, lady-like laugh, quite in contrast to the demonstrative utterances outside, had just broken forth, in response to one of Sin Saxon’s brightest speeches, when through the adjoining apartment came suddenly upon them the unlooked-for apparition of “the spinster.” Miss Craydocke went straight across to the beleaguered door, drew the bolt, and threw it back. “Gently, young gentlemen! Draw up the piazza chairs, if you please, and sit down,” said she. “Mr. Lowe, Mr. Brookhouse, here are plates; will you be kind enough to serve your friends?”

In three minutes she had filled and passed outward half a dozen saucers of fruit, and sent a basket of cake among them. Then she drew a seat for herself, and began to eat raspberries. It was all done so quickly—they were so entirely taken by surprise—that nobody, inside or out, gainsaid or delayed her by a word.

It was hardly done when a knock sounded at the door upon the passage. “Young ladies!” a voice called,—Madam Routh’s.

She and her friends had driven down from the Notch by sunset and moonlight. Nobody had said anything to her of the disturbance when she came in; her arrival had rather stopped the complaints that had begun; for people are not malignant, after all, as a general thing, and there is a curious propensity in human nature which cools off indignation even at the greatest crimes, just as the culprit is likely to suffer. We are apt to check the foot just as we might have planted it upon the noxious creature, and to let off great state criminals on parole. Madam Routh had seen the bright light and the gathering about the west wing. She had caught some sounds of the commotion. She made her way at once to look after her charge.

Sin Saxon was not a pupil now, and there was no condign punishment actually to fear; but her heart stood still a second, for all that, and she realized that she had been on the verge of an “awful scrape.” It was bad enough now, as Madam Routh stood there, gravely silent. She could not approve. She was amazed to see Miss Craydocke present, countenancing and matronizing. But Miss Craydocke was present, and it altered the whole face of affairs. Her eye took in, too, the modification of the room,—quite an elegant little private parlor as it had been made. The young men were gathered decorously about the doorway and upon the platform, one or two only politely assisting within. They had taken this cue as readily as the other; indeed, they were by no means aware that this was not the issue intended from the beginning, long as the joke had been allowed to go on; and their good-humor and courtesy had been instantly restored. Miss Craydocke, by one master-stroke of generous presence of mind, had achieved an instantaneous change in the position, and given an absolutely new complexion to the performance.

“It is late, young ladies,” was all Madam Routh’s remark at length.

“They gave up their German early on purpose; it was a little surprise they planned,” Miss Craydocke said, as she moved to meet her.

And then Madame Routh, with wise, considerate dignity, took her cue. She even came forward to the table and accepted a little fruit; stayed five minutes, perhaps, and then, without a spoken word, her movement to go broke up, with unmistakable intent, the party. Fifteen minutes after, all was quiet in the west wing.

But Sin Saxon, when the doors closed at either hand, and the girls alone were left around the fragments of their feast, rushed impetuously across toward Miss Craydocke, and went down beside her on her knees.

“O you dear, magnificent old Christian!” she cried out, and laid her head down on her lap, with little sobs, half laughter and half tears.

“There, there!”—and Miss Craydocke softly patted her golden hair, and spoke as she would soothe a fretted and excited child.

Next morning, at breakfast, Sin Saxon was as beautifully ruffled, ratted, and crimped,—as gay, as bewitching, and defiant as ever,—seated next Madam Routh, assiduously devoted to her in the little attentions of the meal, in high spirits and favor; even saucily alluding, across the table, to “our howl, Miss Craydocke!”

Public opinion was carried by storm; the benison of sleep had laid wrath. Nobody knew that, an hour before, she had been in Madam Routh’s room, making a clean breast of the whole transaction, and disclosing the truth of Miss Craydocke’s magnanimous and tactful interposition, confessing that without this she had been at her wits’ ends how to put a stop to it, and promising, like a sorry child, to behave better, and never do so any more.

Two hours later she came meekly to Miss Craydocke’s room, where the “bee” was gathered,—for mere companionship to-day, with chess and fancy-work,—her flourishes all laid aside, her very hair brushed close to her pretty head, and a plain gingham dress on.

“Miss Craydocke!” she said, with an air she could not divest of a little comicality, but with an earnestness behind it shining through her eyes, “I’m good; I’m converted. I want some tow-cloth to sew on immediately.” And she sat down, folding her hands, waiting.

Miss Craydocke laughed. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I haven’t anything to be done just now, unless I cut out some very coarse, heavy homespun.”

“I’d be glad if you would. Beggars mustn’t be choosers; but if they might, I should say it was the very thing. Sackcloth, you know; and then, perhaps, the ashes might be excused. I’m in solemn earnest, though. I’m reformed. You’ve done it; and you,” she added, turning round short on Leslie Goldthwaite,—“you’ve been at it a long time, unbeknownst to yourself; and you, ma’am,—you finished it last night. It’s been like the casting out of the devils in Scripture. They always give a howl, you know, and go out of ’em!”

Author of “Faith Gartney’s Girlhood.”

On a wild, exposed promontory, jutting out into the sea, round which the wild waves roared and foamed, was a rabbit warren. Hundreds of these pretty gray animals, with their odd white tails and sleek skins, had made their burrows there.

They were very happy rabbits, on the whole, getting plenty of grass and roots to eat (I am afraid they sometimes went into the neighboring turnip-field, where they had no right to go); but every now and then the man to whom the warren belonged would come with some other men, and the whole day their guns went bang! bang! bang! and numbers of the rabbits were killed; for the man sold their skins to the furrier, to make muffs and tippets and cuffs to keep people warm. And then it was with the rabbits as it is with men after nations have been fighting against each other. One had lost a mother, a mother her child, a wife a husband; and for a time they were very sad. But rabbits are thoughtless creatures; and these soon forgot their friends, and went playing hide-and-seek in and out of their holes, and behind the sand-hills, just as if there was no such thing as a gun in the world.

The rabbits had other enemies than the men and the guns, and these were the foxes. In a hole on the side of a gorse-covered hill lived two old foxes and their cubs, as young foxes are called. Now foxes, like other folk, must eat; and it happens that what they like best they can only obtain by stealing. But, after all, foxes do not know that it is wrong to steal, so we must not be too hard on them.

Foxes are particularly fond of ducks and geese, to which they cannot possibly assert any right, being domestic animals; but rabbits are also great favorites of theirs, and to these they seem to have more claim, as, being wild, they cannot belong to any one, any more than the foxes whom nobody claims. It happened that one of the young foxes, who dwelt on the side of the furze-covered hill, had been very ill, and the cause was this: being very young, too young, indeed, to seek his own food, his teeth were small, and not sufficiently strong to crack a bone. But, though young, he was greedy, and, his father bringing home a nice fat duck, he seized a leg; but alas for him! he was unable to manage it, and the bone stuck in his throat. For some time his family despaired of his life, but at the time our story commences he was slowly recovering.

“Ah! father,” said Bushytail, in a desponding tone, “I’m so hungry!”

“Delighted to hear it,” replied the father. “What have you got in the house, Mrs. Fox?”

“Nothing,” replied the mother, dejectedly.

“Nothing!” exclaimed Mr. Fox. “Why, what have you done with that goose I brought home only yesterday?”

“It’s all gone. Reinecke and Slyboots were out on the hill all the morning, and came home so hungry! But why have you brought home nothing? You have been out all day. I made sure you would at least bring home a rabbit.”

“I’ve been out hunting,” said the fox, pompously.

“Of course,” replied his wife, “but why did you not bring something home?”

“I’ve been hunting horses and men and dogs,” said the fox, with a lofty air; “but I was hardly in condition, and so they escaped from my pursuit.”

The young foxes looked up admiringly; but the wife sighed, for she knew her husband was not speaking the truth, and that, so far from his having been hunting the dogs and horses, he had himself been hunted, and had had a narrow escape. Indeed, had it not been for the night closing in, he would never have returned home to his family, but been torn in pieces by the dogs, and his tail—his handsome bushy tail—cut off, and hung up as a trophy in the Squire’s hall.

“I’m so hungry!” sighed Bushytail again. “I fancy I could pick just a little bit of rabbit,—a nice, tender young one.”

“You shall have one, my son,” replied the father. “As soon as the night is quite closed in, I will start for the warren.”

In a little while the father set off, and in about an hour returned, with a charming little rabbit swung over his back, of which not only Bushytail but the rest of the family partook, and pronounced delicious. The next night the fox went to the warren and again brought back a rabbit; and so on for many nights; for he was, in spite of his other faults, a kind father, and did not care what trouble he took to provide for his children.

But as the young foxes grew, they required more to eat, so the father and mother went together, and each brought home a rabbit. At last, so many of the rabbits had lost some one from their families, that they determined to find out the murderer, and put a stop to his thefts; so they set a watch, and soon found out that it was the foxes. But what they were to do by way of punishment they knew not. In their dilemma, they thought of the man and the gun who came and banged away at them.

“If he would only give them a good fright. We don’t wish to kill them,” said the rabbits.

So they sent a deputation to the man who owned the gun, begging him to frighten away the foxes.

The man promised all they asked; and they went away quite satisfied with their success, and said to each other, that, after all, the man was not so very badly disposed towards them, for he was going to protect them from the foxes. However, it was from no love of the rabbits that the man had determined to wage war against Reynard, but because he feared he should lose a great many skins.

The very same night, the man went down to the warren, and, having found the track the fox had made, set a noose or snare, that he might become entangled in it.

That evening, Mr. Fox having hurt his foot in trying to get into a hen-roost, his wife was obliged to go by herself. As she came near the warren, she thought she heard a noise; so she turned down and got over the hedge at some distance from her usual place, and thus for a time she escaped the snare.

“I am alone,” said Mrs. Fox, “to-night; and if I only take home a little rabbit, the children will not have enough for supper. I’ll try and get a good fat one.” She managed to catch a fine plump one; and, throwing it over her shoulder, she turned homeward. “I may as well go the shortest way,” said Mrs. Fox: “this rabbit is a heavy load.” So saying, she took the old track, and only discovered her error when it was too late to retreat. She was caught, owing in a great measure to her heavy load, which helped to entangle her more and more, in her struggles to get free. The man, hearing the scuffle, came up, and soon killed poor Mrs. Fox.

The warren-keeper buried Mrs. Fox close by, and set a noose on her grave; for he said to himself, “She has doubtless relations, who will come to look after her and my rabbits, and I may catch them too.”

Mr. Fox and Reinecke and Bushytail and Slyboots sat waiting and listening; but no mother nor any supper made its appearance. They sighed and growled, but at last were obliged to lie down to sleep without anything to eat.

The next day passed, and, as you may guess, no Mrs. Fox appeared. She was lying so quiet under the green sod with the noose above her, waiting for those she loved best. Poor Reynard feared the worst. Such a kind, affectionate wife, so loving a mother, could hardly leave a lame husband and helpless children to starve. No! death alone could account for her absence. Two days passed, and he and his young ones were almost perishing. Still, his foot was so bad, from the nail he had run into it, that he could hardly move; and, had his life only been at stake, he would gladly have lain down and died.

But Reinecke, Bushytail, and Slyboots were starving. “I will try and reach the warren,” said he. So, bidding the young ones keep heart till he returned, he sallied forth. Slow were his steps, and weary the way; and the loss of his kind companion made him feel very sad. As he neared the gap in the wall by which he had been in the habit of entering the warren, what was it made him lift his head and snuff the air?

He knew his wife was not far off; and, as he entered the warren, and saw the little mound where poor Mother Fox was buried, he uttered a low whine, and lay down on it to die! For he became entangled in the noose; and when the warren-keeper came the next morning, he found Reynard stark and stiff, his bones nearly through his skin, and the hair quite worn away where he had slung the stolen rabbits. And the young foxes? What became of them? I really don’t know what became of Bushytail and Reinecke, but some day, perhaps, I will tell you the history of Slyboots, which I happen to know.

Charlotte Kingsley Chanter.

A friend of mine, lately returned from the West, spent nearly the whole of his first visit to us in telling about the Wisconsin Eagle. Among all the novelties of his journey, nothing had apparently interested him so much as this bird; and if you young folks are half as much pleased as I was with the story, and the thoughts to which it gave rise, it will have been quite worth while for me to record them for your benefit.

You will see that I call the hero of my story a Veteran Eagle; but you must not on that account imagine him an old, decrepit bird, with drooping wings, subdued spirits, and an eye dimmed by age; for, on the contrary, he is still active, keen-sighted, and young,—as much the king of birds as ever. In fact, he is no more and no less a veteran than all our brave young officers and privates, who, though mere boys, have won the title of veterans by the experience they have had, and the service they have done in camps and on battle-fields; for you must know that the Wisconsin Eagle is a soldier, has served three years, been in fifteen battles, and done good service to his country. But in telling you his story I must begin at the beginning, and omit no circumstance of his origin, birthplace, enlistment in the army, rank, equipment, &c. And this I am the better able to do, because, since I have been writing this account, a lady who learned my purpose has sent me a pamphlet containing a veritable history of this bird, which was circulated at the Chicago Fair,—an authority by which I shall verify or correct my facts, and from which I shall perhaps occasionally quote.^*

He belonged to the Bald-Head, or more correctly the White-Headed family, a species who in some respects are all young veterans, inasmuch as, at three or four years old, their head-feathers, which were originally brown, have become snowy white, giving them a dignified and venerable appearance. Their other name of Bald-Head is derived from a spot between the beak and eyes, which is almost wholly destitute of feathers, so that the Bald Eagle, which is the emblem of America, assumes in his youth the honors which belong to a bald head and a hoary crown, although one would think he might afford to wait longer for them, as the eagle is a very long-lived bird, instances having been known of his living to be a hundred years old.

And so with the country of which the Bald-Head is the representative. Although America is a young nation, she has had so much experience, and has progressed so much faster than the nations of the Old World, that, if she could see herself in the mirror of history, she would appear with a fresh, ruddy face, and a strong frame, but a little wrinkled and bald about the temples, and with hair which care and anxiety have turned prematurely gray. But long life to her, and a high place among the nations! and if she too has become a veteran in her youth, may it be with her as with our eagle,—only the courage, strength, and wisdom which she has acquired on her many hard-fought fields that entitle her to the name.

But I must not fly away from my bird and his story. They are a fish-eating family by nature, these Bald-Heads, so it is not strange that many of their race should have taken up their abode in the neighborhood of our great lakes, where fish are abundant, and that our eaglet should have first seen the light somewhere in the region of Lake Superior. Here, when quite young, he was taken from the nest in Chippeway County, by a Chippeway Indian, in the month of July, 1861, and was sold to a farmer near by for a bushel of corn. This new owner says, that during the few weeks he kept the eagle he grew very fast and saucy, and that, whilst watching his belligerent freaks among his other domestic animals, the idea one day “struck him like a brick” that his eagle should go to the war. Acting on this idea, he took him to Eau Claire, and offered him for sale to Company C of the Eighth Wisconsin Volunteers.

This new companion in arms was not accepted without due consideration. His merits were well weighed. His eyes, claws, muscles, voice, all underwent examination; but the debate ended in his favor, and the new recruit, having thus passed muster, was finally purchased by a citizen of Eau Claire, and presented to the company, who received him with acclamations, and installed him in his place.

This place was one of no little honor, being next in rank to that of the regimental flag. Indeed, during the three years that followed,—that is, to the end of the war,—it came to take precedence of the flag itself; for the eagle is our national emblem; and, with all honor to the tri-colored flag, the regiment soon came to look upon their eagle as a more perfect representative yet of everything for which they were fighting. So the royal bird became in some sense their leader; and I think it not improbable that “Rally round the Eagle, boys!” was one of their battle-cries.

Wherever Company C went, they were sure to be cheered and welcomed with peculiar enthusiasm. By the time they arrived at Madison, on their way to active service, the novel character of their presiding genius had excited universal interest, and already they and their eagle enjoyed a notoriety for which, thus far, the brave fellows were indebted to the eagle, rather than the eagle to them. That he was in full sympathy with his comrades and the cause in which they were engaged was evident from the beginning. When Company C, or the Eau Claire Badgers, as they were then called, marched into Camp Randall, where the Seventh and part of the Eighth Wisconsin regiments were already assembled, they and their eagle were received with an outburst of cheers; and the men, running to the entrance of the camp, defiled right and left while they passed in, the musicians playing Yankee Doodle. The eagle, who had hitherto looked on with majestic gravity, at this moment seemed inspired with the common enthusiasm, and, seizing in his beak one of the little flags attached to his perch, he spread and flapped his wings, and continued these demonstrations until borne to the Colonel’s quarters. It was a singular fact that he was always, during his continuance in the service, similarly affected by any cheering on the part of his own regiment, but quite indifferent to it when proceeding from other troops in his vicinity.

It was no wonder that the soldiers were proud of their eagle, and believed in him as a bird of good omen. The Eau Claire Badgers henceforward voted themselves the Eau Claire Eagles, and the Eighth Wisconsin was soon known everywhere as the Eagle Regiment.

While at Madison, the eagle was honored by thousands of visitors of high and low degree. One of the officers had by this time bestowed on him the name of Old Abe,—a name dear to the country, and which well becomes the gallant veteran. He had also been sworn into the United States service,—a ceremony which consisted in putting around his neck ribbons of red, white, and blue, and decorating his breast with a rosette of the same colors. Being now a national bird, he was furnished at State expense with a new perch, consisting of a shaft about five feet long, surmounted by a shield in the form of a heart, on which the stars and stripes were painted, and above it a cross-piece on which the eagle sat. This perch, which was used throughout the war, and is worn and battered by service, is still preserved by the State as an army relic.

An eagle-bearer was regularly appointed, whose duty it was to superintend and care for the bird, and carry him at the head of the company. This duty devolved on several of the boys in succession, and was one always eagerly sought and claimed. Company C was also the regimental color-company; and when the regiment formed in line the eagle was always on the left of the color-bearer. He shared all the battles of the regiment, and was exposed to all their perils; and yet not only did he escape all injury, but not a color-bearer or eagle-bearer of the regiment—though both conspicuous marks—was ever shot down. Once or twice Old Abe was grazed by a bullet, or had a few tail-feathers shot away; but not a drop of his blood was ever shed in any engagement, and the soldiers were almost justified in the belief that he had a charmed life.

He was not foolhardy, however. I have it on official authority, that “at the battle of Farmington, May 9th, 1862, the men, being exposed to a galling fire, were ordered to lie down. The instant they did so, it was impossible to keep him on his perch. He insisted on being protected as well as they, and, when liberated, flattened himself on the ground, and there remained until the men arose, when with outspread wings he resumed his place of peril, and held it to the close of the contest.”

His courage, moreover, was as undoubted as his intelligence, and he was every inch a soldier. The colonel of the regiment testifies that “upon parade, after he had been a year in the service, he always gave heed to ‘Attention!’ With his head obliquely to the front, his right eye directly turned upon the parade-commander, he would listen and obey orders, noting time accurately. After parade had been dismissed and the ranks were being closed by the sergeants, he would lay aside his soldierly manner, flap his wings, and make himself generally at home.”

When the regiment was forming for battle, he and the colors were first upon the line. At such times he always seemed anxious and uneasy, and only assumed composure when they faced and were ready to march to the combat. But it was amid the smoke of battle that he was to be seen in his true glory. Then, with his pinions spread, he would jump up and down on his perch, and as the artillery volleyed forth its thunder he would mingle his voice with it in wild and fearful screams.^†

Of course his enthusiasm inspired the whole brigade, who believed that he sounded the trump of victory, and who vowed that he should never be captured by the enemy. The bird who proved such an inspiration to the soldiers would naturally be greatly exposed to Rebel sharpshooters. At the battle of Corinth, the Rebel General Price, having discovered him, ordered his men to be sure and take him, if they could not kill him; adding, that he would rather get that bird than the entire brigade.

It would be too long a story were I to undertake to tell you all the journeyings, perils, battles, and sieges to which our eagle accompanied, or rather led, the Eighth Wisconsin. “Where,” says Mr. Barret, in his history of our bird, “did the Eagles not go in the Mississippi Valley?” They endured the dangers and toils of the Red River expedition; they stormed at Vicksburg; New Madrid and Island No. 10 were inscribed on their banners; nearly half their original number had found soldier’s graves; but it was their boast that their eagle never lost a battle. It is their glory now, that by heroism such as theirs the country itself is saved.

You may well believe, that, when at last their perils were over and their work well done, the Wisconsin Eagles had a triumphant welcome home. There was a public reception in Madison, and another in Eau Claire; there were bell-ringings, speeches, and salutes. Finally, the eagle, deservedly the chief object of notice to the crowd, was publicly presented to the Governor, and accepted on behalf of the State.

Thus the pet and pride of the regiment was transferred to civil authority, with an assurance from the Governor that he should be well and carefully provided for, and as safely kept as possible, as long as he lived.

He is supported now at the public expense, in a residence appropriated to him, near the State Armory. Like any other honored veteran, he is always brought out and paraded on occasion of every public military exercise or review, and is sure to excite attention and enthusiasm. I am told that, even in his quiet home at Madison, this brave bird is much excited by the report of fire-arms, flapping his wings, shrieking, and otherwise manifesting his familiarity with their use.

When in the service, and subjected to the necessities of camp life, he had a soldierly indifference with regard to his diet, and, like many another chivalrous youth of good birth and breeding, was satisfied with the poorest fare. For some time he lived very contentedly upon rats, until finally he was bitten by one of these vermin, after which he would never accept any of the species as an article of food. Since returning to private life, he shows more aristocratic preferences, and, I am sorry to say, is a dainty fellow. Perhaps he thinks himself deserving of some compensation for his hardships, or is keeping up a perpetual thanksgiving for the country’s deliverance. At all events, his taste for delicate food is unmistakable, and, a grateful country being disposed to pamper him, he is fed chiefly upon live chickens.

I trust the majority of our soldiers do not claim similar compensation, and that the present scarcity of poultry is not owing to this cause. I would rather believe that our boys have had a wholesome discipline in hardships, and are more than satisfied with plain living and home fare, be it ever so homely; but we are an extravagant people by nature and habit, and I am afraid have all a lurking desire for chicken and tidbits, when they are to be had.

However the case may be in the matter of diet, I was, while listening to the story of this bird, constantly detecting a similarity between his traits of character and those of the nation of which he is a worthy representative and type. For instance, Old Abe knows his keeper, and is gratefully attached to him, but is reserved towards strangers, sometimes even showing fight when they presume to take liberties with him, or trifle with his dignity. Thus, when he is disturbed from any cause, this keeper may stroke his ruffled feathers and soothe him by the process, but woe to any foreign or unfriendly hand that ventures to interfere. So I need hardly remind even the youngest among you how, in our time of war and difficulty, the American nation refused to be stroked into good-nature or submission by the rough hand of John Bull, or the dainty one of his French neighbor, that plausible Johnny Crapaud, but how peaceably the people bent their neck to the mild paternal hand of our good President Lincoln, the keeper and ruler whom we had tried and knew we could trust.

It is a fine trait of this Wisconsin Eagle, true bird of America, that he knows and loves every soldier who has fought in the great cause. I am told that he always flaps his wings at sight of a federal uniform, and claims the wearer for a friend; and long may it be before America forgets any of the loyal sons who have done her such good service, or fails to recognize their claims to her gratitude!

Nor did our eagle serve the country in the camp and the field alone. He has been an aid to the sick and the wounded, and as the men, women, and children of the nation exerted themselves heart and hand to furnish and provide for our hospitals, and keep the Sanitary Commission in funds, so this benevolent bird had hardly returned from the duties of his last campaign before he might be found engaged in earning money for the great Chicago Fair, adding no less that twenty thousand dollars to the profits of this charitable enterprise. This sum was realized partly by exhibiting himself to the crowd of visitors who were eager to make his acquaintance, and partly by the extensive sale of his photograph. The latter object was mainly accomplished through a sort of military organization,—boys and girls all over the land being invited to act as agents for obtaining purchasers, and printed commissions as officers in the Army of the American Eagle being served to all who had obtained a certain number of subscribers for the picture,—their military rank being proportioned to their success as salesmen. I have by me now a paper which commissions a boy of my neighborhod as a first lieutenant, and I dare say there are among the readers of the Young Folks officers of various grades to whom Old Abe and his portrait are no strangers.

Mr. Barnum of New York, who has an eye, you know, for natural curiosities and celebrities of every kind, has been very anxious to obtain possession of this eagle for the American Museum, and offered for his purchase as large a sum of money as had been raised through his means at the Chicago Fair; but you may well believe the Wisconsin people proudly refused his offer. As if they would part with such a trophy, or as if a price could be set on the Bird of Liberty! Why, even the stray feathers that he chances to shed are treasured up and prized; and my friend, who told us most of this story, is as proud of his good fortune in possessing one quill and a few little brush feathers, as you or I should be of a bit of the wood of the good ship Cumberland, or a few hairs of the black horse that carried Sheridan on his famous ride.

In case you should like to know something of the personal appearance of Old Abe, I must not omit to tell you that he is a huge fellow, measuring six feet and a half from tip to tip of his spread wings, and his weight is ten and a half pounds. As I have mentioned before, he has a beautiful fringe of white feathers on his head and neck; his tail also is white, spotted with black; but the rest of his plumage is a fine chocolate, with a golden tinge. His legs are bright yellow, his talons black and hooked, and his eye—O, but you must see an eagle’s eye to know its piercing power! And perhaps you may have a chance, for there is a whisper in the air, hinting that at no distant day our feathered hero will make the tour of the New England States. In that case, we may all have an opportunity to pay our respects to him; and if my introduction of this national bird to your acquaintance has given him a title to your regard, I think you will all be as ready as I am to take off your hats to the veteran,—perhaps even to swing them in the air, and unite in giving three cheers for the Wisconsin Eagle.

Maria S. Cummins.

V.

One morning several years ago, as we stood at the window of an old farm-house in New England, looking out through a tangle of withered honeysuckle-vines on “the happy autumn fields,” we grew half sorrowful to think how soon the color would fade out of the rich landscape, and wished that this one view, at least, might be saved from the cold touch of winter, and even the sunny touch of spring. There is a splendor in our New England autumn which makes the other seasons seem tame. Spring is a fresh, sparkling lyric, of which summer is the more sober ending; but autumn is the true poem of the year, and fitly closes the volume; for after that are blank, white pages.

Some such thought as this was in our mind as we leaned on the window-sill that October morning. “Now if a good magician would come along,” we said to ourself, “and put Nature to sleep in her beauty, and keep her just so lovely and unchanged for a hundred years, like the Princess in the fairy story, how charming it would be to come to this one window, at all times of the year, and look out on the dreamy autumn! The hail might rattle against the other windows of the old house, the honeysuckles might climb up and press their rosy faces against the panes,—but not here! Here are perpetual rest, and beauty, and majesty, and tenderness inexpressible.”

It seemed an extravagant sort of wish; but

We didn’t dream then that our wish would ever be realized; yet, truly enough, and in a way that doesn’t seem like a miracle at all, our desire is fulfilled.

On the western wall of the room in which we are writing is a frame,—call it a window, if you will,—through which we can look on “the happy autumn fields” to our heart’s content. Day or night, summer or winter, the view never changes. In the fall of the year, when every wind is robbing the foliage outside of its gay beauty, we smile very complacently to ourself, thinking that our trees do not shed so much as the tiniest red leaf. The snow may lie in great drifts all over New England; but there is a bit of New England, to be seen through our western window, on which the snow never falls. Farmer Jones looks with a troubled eye across his wheat-fields, and weighs the probable consequences of the blight which threatens them; we have no such anxieties on our own account; nor does the high price of hay affect us in connection with the solitary cow that grazes so indefatigably over yonder in the meadow. The twisted thread of water, glimmering in the distance among the purple hills, was never known to freeze over; nor does that bird, poised with stretched wing in the cool, sunny sky, make the slightest progress in his southward journey across the brilliant woodland, every patch of which shows more colors than were in Joseph’s coat. Nothing changes.

It seems a real window to us,—this modest black-walnut frame. We have several such in our snuggery,—some of them looking out on the busy streets of cities in the Old World, and others,

But the pleasantest scene, to our thinking, and the one to which we turn oftenest, is the autumnal landscape by Jervis McEntee.

We wish we could let the reader peep over our shoulder, and catch a glimpse of this exquisite little idyl in colors. It is so pure and delicate, so like the prismatic tracery of the frost on the window-glass, that we scarcely dare to breathe upon it. A copy of the picture in black and white would by no means do it justice; and in presenting our young folks with a specimen of Mr. McEntee’s art, we have been forced to select something more easily reproduced. We are quite sure that the engraving on the next page, “The Flight of the Birds,” will make the reader willing to hear as much as we are permitted to tell concerning the artist.

Jervis McEntee was born at Rondout, one of the most picturesque villages on the Hudson River. Though he passes the winters in the city of New York, Rondout may still be called his residence, for there he has a fine studio, most romantically situated, and there he works from early spring-time until late in the autumn. The beauties of the neighboring scenery are inexhaustible; and he appreciates them with the eye of a lover and an artist.

A man’s pursuit in life is often shaped by what seems the merest accident. A volume left by chance on a window-seat first awoke the heart of one of England’s greatest poets. Under any circumstances, the boy would have become a poet; yet it is interesting to notice how trifles sometimes teach a man the bent of his mind. The incident which fostered a love of art in our friend, when he was but a child, has been told to us so pleasantly by the artist that we cannot do better than to remember his own words.

“When I was very young, there came to this village, then a quiet and secluded place, Henry Pickering, a son of Colonel Timothy Pickering, of Revolutionary note. He had been rich, but in some way had lost his fortune, and, being a cultivated gentleman, fond of art and literature and of quiet habits, settled upon this place as his abode.

“I do not know what chance sent him to my father’s house; but he came there, and wanted to live in his family. By his gentleness and the charm of his manner, he overcame my father’s objections, and took up his abode with us, and continued a member of our family until just previous to his death,—a period of several years, I do not remember how many.

“He had a fine library, among which I remember Audubon’s books, and these he used to show to me. He knew all the prominent artists and literary men of his time, and wrote poetry, chiefly descriptive of natural scenery and the charms of the out-of-door world. There is, I think, a biographical sketch of him in Griswold’s Poets. He was very fond of children; and I became a favorite, accompanied him in his rambles, spending my happiest days in his society among the treasures of his room, and, I dare say, drew from him and his surroundings my first ideas of art. After living many years with us, he left us to embark in business in New York. He meant to be absent only temporarily, for he left his effects behind him, and would not bid us good by. He never returned. He died soon after, and his brother came to Rondout and gathered up his books, leaving with us only the memory of the dear, delightful gentleman. I think of him now with a tender and tearful love, for I believe he directed my infant mind into a channel that perhaps but for him it would never have sought.”

Surely this portrait of Mr. Pickering, hastily and vaguely drawn as it is, is enchanting,—the quiet, simple-hearted scholar, stealing away from the world with his books, to heal, perhaps, some hurt which his nature had sustained in the noisy battle of life. We trust that every reader of this page knows just such a sensitive, wise, lovable old gentleman. But we are interrupting our friend.

“I commenced to paint,” he says, “like most boys, as soon as I could raise a sixpence to buy water-colors and gamboge; and since my earliest recollection I have had ‘studios’ in our garrets and over our carriage-houses; in such places I have spoiled a great deal of good canvas. About twelve or fifteen years ago, my father sent me to New York to spend a winter with Mr. Church, and I occupied a studio next to his in the Art-Union Building.”

Two or three years later, we believe, Mr. McEntee attempted to forsake the brush and devote himself to mercantile pursuits; but, fortunately, he failed. Nature doesn’t make a painter and then permit him, unrebuked, to throw away his gifts. Mr. McEntee returned to his art, and for several years contended with those obstacles which keep guard at the door of success in every profession. Since 1860, however, Mr. McEntee has ranked with the best American landscape-painters, adding each year to his skill and to his reputation. In 1854 he was married to a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Sawyer of New York.

Mr. McEntee’s winter studio is in the Tenth-Street Building, New York, and is particularly rich in studies and sketches, chiefly of autumn scenery among the Catskills and the Adirondacks, though he has not confined his wanderings to those localities.

During the early part of the war, Mr. McEntee’s regiment responded to the call for three-months men; he joined his company, as a sergeant we believe, and was subsequently promoted to a captaincy. Like his brother artist, Gifford, he can handle a musket and a pencil with equal skill. A sketch for his noble picture entitled “Virginia” was one of the results of Mr. McEntee’s campaign. This painting, in the thirty-fourth annual exhibition of the New York Academy of Design, placed him permanently in the front rank of American artists. Mr. McEntee’s works are not numerous; yet few painters are more industrious: he does nothing that is careless or meretricious. Each picture passes from his studio a finished work of art. We advise our young friends never to pass his windows without looking upon the charmed landscapes which they command.

T. B. Aldrich.

LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW

II.

“Well!” said the old nurse, “who would ‘a’ thought that are baby would ‘a’ slept so?—None o’ your worry-cats, she ain’t.”

You will observe from this speech that good Nurse Toothacre had not had early advantages in forming her style of conversation; in consequence of which her manner of expressing herself was not a thing to be recommended as a model for you young folks. You may have forgotten the story of Little Pussy from last month; how the three fairies, Mother Fern, and the pretty Miss Hepatica, and Pussy Willow, endowed her with certain rare gifts, such as beautiful blue eyes, a good healthy constitution, and the gift of seeing the bright side of everything.

This last gift was the greatest of all, as you will see if you think a little, because it is quite plain that it is not so much what people have that makes them happy, as what they think and feel about what they have. If one little girl has an old hat of her sister’s pressed over, and trimmed with some of her sister’s last year’s flowers, and likes it, and is delighted with it, she is really far better off than another little girl whose mother has bought for her three new hats trimmed each with different fine things, and none of which suit her, so that she declares she hasn’t a thing she can wear!

Little Pussy had great need to be gifted with this happy disposition, for she was not a rich woman’s daughter. Her father was a hard-working farmer, who owed about five hundred dollars on his farm; and it was his object, working day and night, to save up money enough to pay for this farm. She had six older brothers,—great, strong, stamping boys; and her mother was a feeble, delicate woman, who had to do all the cooking, washing, ironing, making, and mending for all these men folk, without any help from servants,—so you may believe she had small time to coddle and pet her baby. In fact, before Little Pussy Willow was four weeks old, she was lying in an old basket tied into a straw-bottomed rocking-chair, in the kitchen where her mother was busy about her work; and all day long there she lay, with her thumb in her mouth, and her great, round blue eyes contentedly staring at the kitchen ceiling. Once in two or three hours her mother would take her up and nurse her a little, and pull her clothes down straight about her, and then Pussy would go off to sleep, and sleep an hour or two, and then wake up and stare at the kitchen ceiling as before, and sing and gurgle to herself in a quiet baby way, that was quite like the sound of the little brook behind the house.

When her father came home to his dinner, he would seize her in his great, strong, sun-browned hands, and toss her over his head, and her long-armed brothers would pass her from one to another, like a little shuttle-cock, in a way that would have alarmed many another baby; but Pussy took it all with the utmost composure, and laughed and crowed all the more, the ruder her nursing grew.

“I say, wife, what shall we call her?” said John Papa; “she’s a perfect March blossom,—come just as the pussy-willows were out.”

“Let’s call her Pussy Willow then,” said Sam, the oldest boy; and the rest laughed uproariously, and considered it a famous joke,—for when people work hard all day, and have a good digestion, it is not necessary that a thing should be very funny to make them laugh tremendously. In fine, whether the plant fairies secretly had a hand in it, or because brother Sam was so fond of his conceit, the fact is, that, though the baby was baptized in church by the name of Mary, she was ever afterwards called in the family “Pussy,” and “Pussy Willow.” Tom, the second boy, declared that her cheeks were soft and downy like the pussies, and when she was lying in her cradle, only two weeks old, he would sometimes tickle her cheeks with them to bring out that pretty baby smile which is as welcome on a little face as the first spring flower.

Pussy having a tranquil mind and a good digestion, throve very fast. The old women of the neighborhood remarked that she began to “feel her feet” when she was only a month old, and if anybody gave her the least chance to show off this accomplishment, she would jump up and down till one’s arms were tired of holding her; but when her father or brother or mother was weary of this exercise, and laid her flat on her back in the cradle, Pussy did not make up a square mouth and begin to cry, as many ill-advised babies do, but put her thumb into her mouth, like a sensible little damsel, and set herself to seeing what could be found to amuse her on the top of the kitchen wall. There she saw the blue flies coursing up and down, stopping once in a while to brush themselves briskly with the little clothes-brushes which nature has put on the end of each of their legs, when suddenly they would sweep round and round in circles, and then come down and settle on Pussy’s face, and walk up and down over it, buzzing and talking with each other, first by her eyes, then by her nose, then over her forehead, as if the little face had been a flies’ pleasure-garden, laid out expressly for them to amuse themselves in.

Pussy took it all in good part, though sometimes she winked very hard, and even took her thumb out of her mouth to make some blind little passes with her white baby fists doubled up, which would send the flies buzzing and careering again; but never a cry did she utter.

“Of all the good babies that ever I did see,” said Nurse Toothacre, “I never see one ekil to this. Why, Marthy Primrose wouldn’t know she had a baby in the house, if she hadn’t the washin’ and dressin’ and nussin’ of her.”

By and by little Pussy learned to creep on all-fours, and then she made long voyages over the clean-scoured kitchen floor, and had most beautiful times, because she could open the low cupboard doors and pull out all the things, and pick holes in all the paper parcels, and pull over pails of water, and then paddle in the clear, silver flood that coursed its way along the kitchen in little rivulets. One day she found a paper of indigo in the low closet, with which she very busily rubbed her hands and face and her apron and the floor, so that when her mother came in from hanging out clothes she did not know her own baby, but thought she was a little blue goblin, and had to take her to the wash-tub and put her in like a dirty dress to get her looking like herself again.

Now as Martha Primrose was celebrated as one of the nicest housekeepers in the country, of course she could not allow such proceedings; and as Pussy did not yet understand English, the only way she could keep her from them was to watch her and catch her away when she saw her going about any piece of mischief. In consequence, Baby’s life was a perfect series of disappointments. It often seemed to her that she was stopped in everything she undertook to do. First, she would scuttle across the floor to the kitchen fireplace and fill both little hands with ashes and black coals, just to see what they were made of; and then there would be a loud outcry, and she would be made to throw them down, her apron would be shaken, and her hands washed, and the words, “No! no! naughty!” pronounced in very solemn tones over her. She would look up and laugh, and creep away, and bring up next by the dresser, where she would reach up for a pretty, nice dish of flour which she longed to pull over; and then the “No! no!” and “Naughty!” would sound again. Then Pussy would laugh again, and go into the back kitchen and begin paddling in a delightful pail of water, which was to her the dearest of all forbidden amusements, when suddenly she would be twitched up from behind, and “No! no! naughty baby!” once more sounded in her ear. Pussy heard this so much that it began to amuse her; and so, when her mother looked solemn and stern at her, she would shake her little head and look waggish, and try to imitate the “No! no!” as if it were something said for her diversion.

“You can’t put her out,” said Martha to her husband; “she’s the best little thing; but it is wonderful the mischief she does. She just goes from one thing to another all day long.”

The fact is, baby once got a pan of molasses pulled over on her head, and once fell, head first, into her mother’s wash-tub, which luckily had not at the time very hot water in it; and once she pulled the tap out of her mother’s cask of beer, and got herself pretty well blinded and soaked with the spurting liquid. But all these things did not disturb her serenity, and she took all the washings and dressings and scoldings that followed with such jolly good humor that the usual amusement, when her father and brothers came home, was the recital of Pussy’s adventures for the day; and Pussy, sitting on her father’s knee and discovering herself to be the heroine of the story, would clap her hands and crow and laugh as loud as any of them.

“She’s got more laugh in her than a whole circus,” said John Primrose. “I don’t want no theatre nor no opera when I can have her”;—and her brothers, who used to be gone whole evenings over at a neighboring tavern, gradually took to staying at home to have a romp with little Pussy. When the hay about the old house was mown, they had capital times, tumbling and rolling with little Pussy in the sweet grass, and covering her up and letting her scratch out again, and toss the hay about in her little fat hands, enchanted to find that there was one thing that she could play with and not be called “Naughty baby!” or have “No! no!” called in her ear.

In my next I will tell you all about what little Pussy had to play with, and what she did, when she got older.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

NUTTING SONG.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
AN HOUR OF SUSPENSE.

Scarce had the canoe with its living freight faded out of sight, when Trevannion repented his rashness in permitting his nephew to risk his life in a scheme so ill understood as the tapuyo’s.

He had no suspicion of the Indian’s good faith. It was not that that caused him regret; only a certain compunction for having so easily consented to expose to a dread danger the life of his brother’s son,—a life intrusted to his care, and for which he should be held answerable by that brother, should it be his fortune ever to see him again.

But it was of no use to indulge in these regrets. They were now idle. The act which had caused them was beyond recall. The canoe must go on to its destination. What was that? Trevannion could not even conjecture. He only knew that Munday had started for the malocca; but his purpose in going there was as much a mystery as though he had pretended to have gone on a voyage to the moon.

Trevannion even felt angry with the tapuyo, now that he was out of reach, for having concealed the plan of his enterprise and the extent of the danger to be encountered. But there was now no alternative but to await the return of the tapuyo, or the time that would tell he was never more to return.

It had been fixed by the Indian himself, in a speech whispered into the ear of Trevannion as he pushed off the canoe. It was this:—“A word, Patron! If we’re not back before daylight, stay where you are till to-morrow night. Then, if it be dark, do as we proposed for to-night. Steal out and away. But don’t fear of our failing. I only say that for the worst. The Mundurucú has no fear. Pa terra! in an hour’s time we shall be back, bringing with us what we’re in need of,—something that will carry us clear of our enemies and of the Gapo.”

So the party remained seated on the log. Each had his own conjecture about Munday’s plan, though all acknowledged it to be a puzzle.

The surmise of Tipperary Tom was sufficiently original. “I wondher now,” said he, “if the owld chap manes to set fire to their town! Troth, it’s loike enough that’s what he’s gone afther. Masther Dick sayed it was ericted upon scaffolds wid bames of wood an’ huts upon them that looked loike the laves of threes or dry grass. Shure them would blaze up loike tindher, an’ create a moighty conflagrayshin.”

The opinion of Tom’s auditors did not altogether coincide with his. To set the malocca on fire, even if such a thing were possible, could do no good. The inhabitants would be in no danger from conflagration. They would only have to leap into the flood to save themselves from the fire; and, as they could all swim like water-rats, they would soon recover a footing among the trees. Besides, they had their great rafts and canoes, that would enable them to go wherever they wished. They could soon erect other scaffolds, and construct other huts upon them. Moreover, as Munday and Richard had informed them, the scaffolds of the malocca were placed a score of yards apart. The flames of one would not communicate with the other through the green foliage of that humid forest. To fire the whole village with any chance of success, it would be necessary to have an incendiary under each scaffold, all applying the torch together. It could not be for that purpose the tapuyo had gone forth.

While engaged in the debate, they got so engrossed by it as to become neglectful of a duty enjoined upon them by the tapuyo, to keep a strict watch over the captive. It was Tipperary Tom and the Mozambique who had been charged with this guardianship. Both, however, confident that it was impossible for the savage to untie himself, had only glanced now and then to see that he was there, his bronze-colored body being scarcely visible in the obscurity.

As it grew darker, it was at length impossible for them to distinguish the captive from the brown surface of the ceiba, except by stooping down over him, and this both neglected to do. Little dreamt they of the sort of creature they were dealing with, who could have claimed rivalry with the most accomplished professors of the famous rope-tricks.

As soon as he saw that the eyes of his sentinels were no longer upon him, he wriggled himself out of the sipos with as much ease as if he had been an eel, and, sliding gently from the log, swam off.

It was a full half-hour after his departure before either of the sentinels thought of giving any attention to the state of their prisoner. When they did so, it was to find him gone, and the coils of tree-rope lying loosely upon the log. With simultaneous exclamations of alarm, they turned towards Trevannion, and then all looked in the direction of the lagoa, thinking they might see a swimmer going out. Instead of that they saw, through the dim light, what appeared to be a fleet of canoes, with men in them violently wielding their paddles, and directing their crafts right into the arcade!

CHAPTER LXXXIX.
SCUTTLING THE CANOES.

The Mundurucú and his young companion, having paddled their craft out of the little creek, turned its head towards the Mura village. Though the fires were no longer blazing so brightly as at an earlier hour of the night, there was still a red glow seen here and there, that told the position of the scaffolds, and served as a beacon to direct their course. But they needed no such pilotage. The border of the forest was their guide, and along this they went, taking care to keep close in under its shadow. It was dark enough out upon the open water to prevent their being observed; but the Mundurucú was accustomed to act with extreme circumspection, and more than ever since the mistake we recorded some time before.

As the malocca was but a short distance from the forest border, the tree line would bring them close to its water frontage. Beyond that he could trust to the guidance of the surrounding fires.

Less than half an hour’s use of the paddle—its blade dipped gently in the water—brought them within a hundred yards of the outskirts of the village. Although the expedition was not to end here, it was not their design to take the canoe any farther. I say their design, for by this time the young Paraense had been made acquainted with his companion’s purpose. The chief reason why Munday had not disclosed it to Trevannion was, that the Patron, deeming it too dangerous, might have put a veto upon its execution. What this plan was will be learnt by a relation of the mode in which it was carried out.

Tying the canoe to a tree in such a way that they could easily detach it again, the two slipped over the gunwale, and laid themselves silently along the water. Each was provided with a swimming-belt; for the task they had undertaken might require them to remain a good while afloat; and, moreover, it would be necessary for them now and then to remain still, without making any noise by striking the water to sustain themselves, while, furthermore, they would need at times to have both arms free for a different purpose. Thus accoutred, and Munday armed with his knife, they swam under the scaffolds.

They were careful not to cause the slightest commotion,—careful, too, to keep out of the narrow belts of light that fell slantingly from the fires above. These were becoming fewer, and fast fading, as the fires, one after another, went out. It appeared certain that the whole village was asleep. No human form was seen, no voice heard; no sign of human beings, save the scaffolding that had been constructed by them, and the half-score of boats in the water underneath, moored to the trunks of the supporting trees.

It was to these vessels that the Mundurucú was directing himself and his coadjutor. Though his eyes were everywhere, his mind was fixed upon them. There were, in all, about half a score of them, six being igarités, or canoes rudely constructed of tree bark, similar in shape and fashion to that they had just parted from, but three of them of larger size, each capable of containing about eight men. The others were large rafts or punts of rude fabrication, each big enough to support a toldo hut, with a whole family, and a number of friends to boot.

Only to the canoes did the tapuyo direct his attention. On swimming past the punts he did not even stay to regard them. To all the igarités, however, except one,—and it the largest,—he paid a visit; stopping a considerable time alongside each, but lying so low in the water that only his head could have been seen above the surface, and scarcely that through the treble shadow of the night, the scaffolds, and the tree-tops. It was only visible to his companion, whose face was all the while within three feet of his own, and whose hands were employed in assisting him in his subtle task. What was this task, so silent and mysterious?

In each of the five canoes to which the swimmers had paid their silent visit, and just after their departure from it, could have been heard a gurgling sound, as of water gushing up through a hole in the bottom. It was heard, but only by him who had made the hole and the companion who had held the craft in its place while the knife-blade was accomplishing its purpose. To its sharp point the soft tree-bark had yielded, and in ten minutes’ time the five canoes, one after another, were scuttled, and, if left to themselves, in a fair way of going to the bottom.

But they were not left to themselves. They would have been, but for the negligence of Tom and the sable Mozambique. Just as the scuttlers had concluded their part of the task, and were about to climb into the sixth canoe, that had been left seaworthy, a dark form that might have been taken for some demon of the flood was seen to rise out of the water, and stand dripping upon one of the rafts. It stood only for a second or two,—just long enough to draw breath,—and then, laying hold of a knotted lliana that formed a sort of stair, it climbed to the scaffolding above.

Dim as was the light, the Mundurucú recognized the dripping climber as the captive he had left on the log. “Santos dios!” he muttered, in a hoarse whisper, “ ’tis the Mura. They’ve let him escape, and now we’re discovered. Quick, young master. Into the igarité. All right; there are two paddles: you take one, I the other. There’s not a moment to be lost. In ten minutes more we should have been safe; but now—see! they are filling fast. Good! If he gives us but ten minutes before raising the alarm—Ha! there it is. Off! off!”

While the tapuyo was speaking, still in a muttered undertone, a wild yell was heard upon the scaffolding above. It was a signal sent forth by the returned captive to warn his slumbering nation, not that their navy was being scattered in its very dock by an unknown enemy, for he had neither seen the scuttler nor suspected what had been going on, but simply to tell his tribe of the adventure that had befallen himself, and conduct them in all haste to the spot where he had parted from his detested but careless captors. He had seen the two of them go off in the igarité, impudently appropriating his own vessel before his face. Where could they have gone, but to make a nocturnal investigation of the malocca?

It was for this reason he had himself approached it so stealthily, not raising any note of alarm until he felt safe upon the scaffolding of his own habitation. Then did he send forth that horrid haloo-loo.

Scarce had its echoes ceased to reverberate through the village, when it was answered by a hundred voices, all shouting in a similar strain, all giving a response to the tribe’s cry of alarm. Men could be heard springing from their hammocks, and dropping down upon the platforms, the timbers of which creaked under quick, resonant footsteps. In the dim light some were seen hastily snatching up their bows, and preparing to descend to their canoes, little suspecting that they would find them scuttled and already half swamped.

As Munday had said, there was not a moment to be lost; and, acting up to his words, he did not permit one to be lost. In the large igarité propelled by the two paddles, he and his assistant stole off among the trees, and were soon out upon the lagoa, pulling, as fast as their strength and skill would permit them, in the direction of the creek.

CHAPTER XC.
THE LOG LEFT BEHIND.

The escape of their captive had caused the keenest apprehensions to the people upon the raft, which were scarce intensified at the sight of the canoe entering the arcade.

By the simplest reasoning they had leaped to the quick conclusion that the latter was but the sequence of the former. The Mura had swum back to his malocca. They knew he could easily do it. He had warned his kindred, and it was they who now manned the igarité that was making approach. It was only the first of a whole fleet. No doubt there was a score of others coming on behind, each containing its complement of cannibals. The manatee-hunter had got back to his village in time to tell of the two who had gone there in his own canoe. These, unaware of his escape, had, in all probability, been surprised and taken prisoners. Shouts had been heard from the village just before the man was missed. It was this, in fact, that had caused them to think of their prisoner. On finding that he had given them the slip, they interpreted these shouts in two ways. They were either salutations of welcome to the returned captive, or cries of triumph over the death or capture of the tapuyo and his companion.

More like the latter. So thought they upon the log; and the thought was strengthened by the appearance of the big canoe at the entrance of the arcade. Its crew were Mura savages, guided to their place of concealment by him who had stolen away.

These conjectures, varied though they were, passed through their minds with the rapidity of thought itself; for scarce ten seconds had elapsed from the time of their sighting the canoe until it was close up to the ceiba.

Then, to their great joy, they saw they had been reasoning wrongly. The two forms had been magnified into ten, partly through the deception of the dim light, and partly because they had been springing from side to side while paddling the canoe and steering it into the creek.

As they drew near, the others could see that they were in a state of the wildest excitement, working with all their strength, and gazing anxiously behind them.

“Quick, uncle,” cried Richard, as the igarité struck against the deadwood. “Quick! all of you get aboard here.”

“Pa terra!” added the tapuyo. “Do as he tells you. By letting your prisoner get off you’ve spoiled my plans. There’s no time to talk now. Into the igarité! If the others are still afloat—then—then—Haste, patron! Everybody into the igarité!”

As the Indian gave these directions, he himself sprang on to the log; and tearing down the skin sail, he flung it into the canoe. After it he pitched several pieces of the charqui, and then descended himself.

By this time all the others had taken their seats in the canoe, Richard having caught little Rosa in his arms as she sprang down.

There was not a moment of delay. The two paddles belonging to the igarité were grasped, one by Munday himself, the other by the negro, who was next best rower, while the two bladed with the bones of the cow-fish were in the hands of Trevannion and his nephew.

There were thus four available oars to the craft, that promised a fair degree of speed.

With a last look at the log that had carried them safely, though slowly,—a look that, under other circumstances, might have been given with regret,—they parted from it, and in a score of seconds they had cleared the craft from the branches of the trees, and were out upon the bosom of the lagoa.

“In what direction?” inquired Trevannion, as for a moment their strokes were suspended.

“Stay a minute, Patron,” replied the tapuyo, as he stood up in the igarité and gazed over the water in the direction of the Mura village. “Before starting, it’s as well to know whether they are able to follow us. If not, it’s no use killing ourselves by hard work.”

“You think there’s a chance they may not come after us?”

“A chance,—yes. It would have been a certainty if you had not let that ape loose. We should now be as safe from pursuit as if a hundred leagues lay between us and them. As it is, I have my fears; there was not time for them to go down,—not all of them. The small ones may, but the big igarité,—it would be still afloat; they could bale out and calk up again. After all, it won’t carry the whole tribe, and there’s something in that,—there’s something in that.”

While the tapuyo thus talked he was standing with his head craned out beyond the edge of the igarité, scanning the water in the direction of the village. His final words were but the involuntary utterance of what was passing in his mind, and not addressed to his companions. Richard alone knew the meaning, for as yet the others had received no explanation of what had passed under the scaffolds. There was no time to give a detailed account of that. It would be soon enough when the igarité was fairly on its way, and they became assured of their safety.

No one pressed for an explanation. All, even Trevannion himself, felt humiliated by the thought that they had neglected their duty, and the knowledge that but for that very neglect the danger that threatened them would have been now at an end.

The dawn was already beginning to appear along the eastern horizon, and although it was far from daylight, there was no longer the deep darkness that but a short while before shrouded the water. Out on the lagoa, at any point within the circumference of a mile, a large object, such as a canoe, could have been seen. There was none in sight.

This looked well. Perfect stillness reigned around the Mura village. There was no human voice to be heard, where but the moment before there had been shouting and loud talking, both men and women taking part in what appeared a confused conversation. The fires, too, were out, or at all events no longer visible from the lagoa.

Munday remarked that the silence augured ill. “I fear they are too busy to be making a noise,” said he. “Their keeping quiet argues that they have the means, as well as the intention, to come after us. If they had not, you would hear their howls of disappointment. Yes: we may be sure of it. They’re emptying such of their canoes as may still be above water.”

“Emptying their canoes! what mean you by that?”

Munday then explained the nature of his late expedition, now that its failure could no longer be charged upon himself. A few words sufficed to make the whole thing understood, the others admiring the bold ingenuity of the plan as strongly as they regretted having given cause for its being frustrated.

Though no pursuers had as yet appeared, that was no reason why they should stay an instant longer by the entrance to the arcade; so, once more handling the paddles, they put the great igarité to its best speed.

CHAPTER XCI.
THE ENEMY IN SIGHT.

There was no debating the question as to the course they should take. This was opposite to the direction in which lay the malocca. In other words, they struck out for the open water, almost in the same track by which they had come from the other side while navigating the tree-trunk.

Trevannion had suggested keeping “in shore” and under the shadow of the tree-tops.

“No use,” said the tapuyo; “in ten minutes more there will be light over the water. We’ll be seen all the same, and by following the line of the forest we should give our pursuers the advantage; they, by keeping straight across, would easily overtake us. The trees go round in a circle, don’t you see?”

“True,” replied Trevannion; “I did not think of that. It is to be hoped we shall not have pursuers.”

“If we have they will soon come up with us, for they have more paddles, and are better skilled in the use of them; if they come after us at all, they will be sure to overtake us.”

“Then we shall be captured,—perhaps destroyed.” This was spoken in a whisper in the ear of the tapuyo.

“It don’t follow,—one or the other. If it did, I shouldn’t have much hope in handling this bit of a stick. We may be pursued, overtaken, and still get off in the end. They may not like close quarters any more than we. That, you see, depends on how many of their vessels are gone to the bottom, and how many are still afloat. If more than half that were scuttled have sunk, we may dread their arrows more than their oars. If more than half are above water, we shall be in more danger from their speed.”

Notwithstanding the enigmatical character of the tapuyo’s speeches, Trevannion, as well as the others, was able to understand them. He simply meant that, if the enemy were left without a sufficient number of canoes to pursue them in large force, they would not think of boarding, but would keep at a distance, using their arrows in the attack.

It was by no means a pleasant prospect; still, it was pleasanter than the thought of coming to close quarters with a crowd of cannibal savages, and being either hacked to pieces with their knives, clubbed to death with their macanas, or dragged overboard and drowned in the lagoa.

“In five minutes more,” continued the tapuyo, “we shall know the best or the worst. By that time it will be light enough to see in under the trees yonder. By that time, if they have a single igarité above water, she’ll be baled out. By that time they should be after us. If we don’t see them in five minutes, we need never look for them again.”

A minute—another—a third elapsed, and still no appearance of pursuers or pursuit. Slower still seemed the fourth, though it too passed, and no movement on the water. Every heart beat with hope that the time would transpire without any change. But, alas! it was not to be so. The black line was broken by the bow of a canoe, and in an instant after the craft itself was seen gliding out from under the shadow of the trees. The tapuyo’s prediction was fulfilled.

“The big igarité!” he exclaimed. “Just what I had fears of; I doubted its going down in time. Eight in it! Well, that’s nothing, if the others have sunk.”

“But stay a moment,” returned Richard; “see yonder! Another coming out, farther down to the right!”

“That’s the cockle-shell we took from the harpooner. There are two in it, which is all it will hold. Only ten, as yet. Good! if that’s their whole strength, we needn’t fear their coming to close quarters. Good!”

“I can make out no more,” said the young Paraense, who had suspended paddling to get a better view of the pursuers. “I think there are no more.”

“Just my thoughts,” rejoined the tapuyo. “I had that idea all along. I was sure the small craft had gone down. You remember we heard a splashing before we got well off,—it was caused by the sinking of the igarités. Our hope is that only the big one has kept afloat. As yet I see no others.”

“Nor I,” added Richard. “No, there are but the two.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” exclaimed Trevannion. “There will be but ten against us. Though we are not equal in numbers, surely we should be a match for such puny savages as these. O that we only had arms!”

As he said this, the ex-miner looked into the bottom of the canoe to see what there was available in the way of weapons. There was the pashuba spear, which Munday had pitched in along with the strips of charqui; and there was another weapon equally effective in hands skilled in its use. It was a sort of barbed javelin or harpoon, the one with which the manatee-hunter had struck the juarouá. During the day, while doing nothing else, Munday had amused himself by completing the conquest of the peixe-boi, which he found, by the line and float, had got entangled among the tree-tops. Its carcass had been left where it was killed, for it was the weapon only which he coveted. In addition to these, there were the paddles,—those manufactured from the shoulder-blades of the cow-fish,—looking like weapons that it would be awkward to have come in contact with one’s skull in a hostile encounter. Last, and not least to be depended upon, there was the tapuyo’s own knife, in the use of which he had already given proofs of his skill. In a hand-to-hand contest with ten savages, armed as these might be, there was not so much to be dreaded.

But Munday assured them that there would be no danger of a close fight. There were no more canoes in sight. Twenty minutes had now elapsed since the two had shot out from the trees, and if there had been others they would long since have declared themselves. Arrows or javelins were the only weapons they would have to dread; and with these they would most certainly be assailed.

“They’ll be sure to overtake us,” said he; “there are six of them at the paddles, and it’s easy to see that they’re already gaining ground. That’s no reason why we should wait till they come up. When the fight takes place, the farther we’re away from their village the better for us; as who knows but they may fish up some of their swamped canoes, and come at us with a reserve force. To the paddles, then, and pull for our lives!”

Mayne Reid.

CHARADES.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 28.

ENIGMAS.

I am composed of 55 letters.

My 7, 9, 14, 4, is a celebrated Italian city.

My 28, 47, 15, 44, is a Western State.

My 23, 16, 33, 26, 20, 1, 8, 30, is a river of Russia.

My 11, 48, 45, 10, 51, is a river of Brazil.

My 49, 43, 40, 5, 2, is an important city of Arabia.

My 3, 54, 34, 6, 18, is a city of Beloochistan.

My 12, 28, 42, 22, is a cape of South America.

My 36, 21, 42, is a river of North Carolina.

My 50, 37, 53, 41, 22, 22, 6, 46, is an important city of Georgia.

My 52, 13, 22, 2, is a river of Siberia.

My 15, 7, 38, 28, 29, 24, 55, 3, is a city of Siberia.

My 32, 15, 31, 40, 28, 22, 55, 9, 16, is a Western State.

My 55, 9, 17, 23, 6, 16, is a division of Africa.

My 35, 39, 41, 10, is a river of Mississippi.

My 25, 29, 42, 28, 22, is one of the Great Lakes.

My 7, 19, 23, is a river in Louisiana.

My 27, 9, 28, 23, is a mountain of the United States.

My whole is an old proverb.

W. A. May.

I am composed of 19 letters.

My 4, 5, 14, 9, 6, is what all “young folks” love to do.

My 2, 17, 18, 19, passes us twenty-four times every day.

My 16, 10, 11, 9, 2, we see but a dozen times in a year.

My 4, 5, 8, 7, 3, 9, 17, 11, none care to see at all.

My 3, 9, 10, 13, is the name of a noted English college.

My 10, 18, 15, 16, 17, 1, 2, 8, 19, all good children love the best.

My 16, 10, 9, 2, is very troublesome to housekeepers.

My 9, 2, 12, 4, 1, 7, 8, is not profitable upon the farm.

My 16, 12, 13, 18, 9, 6, 4, are very precious to us all.

My 19, 14, 12, 11, is what farmers love in spring-time!

My 4, 7, 8, 6, 1, is what nobody loves at any time.

My 16, 12, 4, 9, 7, 3, 1, 10, 6, is an honored holiday emblem.

My 15, 2, 12, 13, 8, is the name of a notable river in Europe.

My 4, 18, 16, 11, 3, 19, is a noted champion of “equal rights.”

My 14, 19, 16, 10, 18, 15, is what ancient warriors favored in the field.

My 15, 6, 16, 17, 19, 4, 8, none but the wicked ever experience.

My 19, 10, 4, 3, 9, 15, 6, 8, is a beautiful garden ornament.

My 11, 17, 9, 12, 10, 13, 4, are found in most young people’s heads.

My 14, 11, 1, 7, 5, 19, 4, are a graceful addition to the crown of a deer.

My 4, 2, 14, 15, 5, would be a disagreeable companion in the surf at Newport.

My whole is the title of a quaint story in verse, by one of our prominent living poets.

B. F.

I am composed of 37 letters.

My 3, 7, 23, 4, is a vegetable.

My 15, 1, 5, 32, 2, 8, is one of the senses.

My 6, 31, 11, 20, 13, 30, 33, 16, is a spice.

My 21, 34, 37, 17, 18, is possessed by all.

My 9, 27, 24, 26, 28, 35, 21, is of no importance.

My 14, 29, 36, 12, is used by artists.

My 25, 10, 32, 35, 28, 1, 15, 8, is a flower.

My 19, 23, 28, is a fool.

My whole is a true but old saying.

Mademoiselle Marie.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 29.

Willy Wisp.

PUZZLES.

ANSWERS.

Walter B. you can do much toward learning to paint by yourself from books and from patient attempts at drawing from nature; that is, taking as well as you can the likenesses of the objects you see about you,—houses, trees, stones, brooks, animals, and people. But to do best, you need a teacher who can point out the errors which you would not be likely to see yourself, and the way of correcting them. You will find Chapman’s Drawing-Book and Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing excellent helps and advisers; any bookseller can supply you with them.

Davidus has made 331 words out of “Horsemanship.” We almost fear that we have busied many little heads over unprofitable work in making mention, as we did, of the long list of new words to be found packed away in one long old one. Such a puzzle is well now and then as a curiosity, but too many would be a waste of time. Try your ingenuity on some new sort of puzzle for us, boys and girls!

J. B. The rebus writer is expected to spell rightly with his symbols,—so far, at least, as to make the solution sound right. We of course print rebuses sometimes which have imperfections in them; we do not intend by this to set a bad example, but only to indicate that those are the best which have been sent us; and as we think that the children would prefer a child’s puzzle to one of ours, we do not use any others if we can possibly help it.

Samuel C. D., Jr. The North American Indians are the original inhabitants of the continent. How long they have been here, and whence they came, are questions that must remain unanswered, although learned treatises have been written in support of various theories about their origin and history.

Fraxinella wishes to be a writer, but fears she has not talent enough. By and by, dear,—by and by; there’s time enough yet. Begin by being a good child and a good scholar, and you will find your place in time. Tell papa that we think he does just right to sit down as soon as he has had his supper to read to his children, and that we are sure they will love and honor him all the more for it.

Aneta. Look at the subject of your enigma, please, and see if you have it all right.

J. E. B., who shows a considerable aptitude for versification, sends us a rhythmical address to the American Flag. We would copy a verse, had we room, to show how neatly it is put together. But J. E. B. has imitated in his vein of thought and manner of expression—unconsciously, no doubt—Drake’s lyric upon the same subject, which even an old writer can hardly hope to approach, much less a young one.

A. F. Your sketches are most neat and creditable. Yet we must lay your rebuses aside, as upon the whole too intricate. One so clever as you appear to be ought to be able to originate all his symbols, and not borrow from others. Will you have the patience to try again?

Alma. A little simpler example, if you please.

Hagar V. No such translation has been made so far as we can learn.

N. H. D. You only sent us the answers to your problems. How could we tell whether they were right without having all your “work” set down also?

Mary B. Everett sends an enigma which looks like a good one, but has no answer; of course it must go into the basket.

She also sends a little poem, called “Apple-Blossoms,” the first and last verses of which we copy:—

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.

Illustrations have been relocated due to using a non-page layout.

Some photographs have been enhanced to be more legible.

[The end of Our Young Folks. An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls. Volume 2, Issue 10 edited by J. T. Trowbridge, Gail Hamilton and Lucy Larcom]