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THE SEA-SWALLOW.
Drawn by Gaston Fay.]          [See Sea-Swallow, page 97.

I.
Boys, Noise, and Toys.

ound-the-world Joe had come home! There it was in the Herald:—

“Arrived—A 1 Clipper Ship Circumnavigator, Brace master, 105 days from Hong Kong, with tea, toys, and fireworks to Joseph Josephs and Sons.”

No more breakfast for me. “Never mind my cap, mother. Hurrah, Charley! here’s news,—such fun, old fellow!”

Charley Sharpe lives next door to our house, and we talk to each other over the fence.

“What is it, George?”

“Why, Round-the-world Joe has come home!”

“Who’s Round-the-world Joe?”

[There! Now sometimes,—this is between you and me,—sometimes I don’t half like Charley Sharpe. He’s what my sister Georgiana—the one that’s engaged, you know—calls “eccentric”; which means asking who Round-the-world Joe is, when, at the same time, you know as well as I do. It must be smart, or Charley Sharpe would not do it; but I don’t think it’s useful, and I know it’s provoking. You see my name’s George Eager, and when I take an interest in a thing, I give all my mind to it, and if anybody has any nonsense to put in, then I’d rather he’d keep it till I’ve got over my earnest fit.]

So I said, in my severest manner: “Now see here, Mr. Sharpe; if you are going to converse rationally, converse rationally; and if you are going to ask me who is Sinbad the Sailor, ask me who is Sinbad the Sailor, and make yourself ridiculous.”

Now Charley Sharpe is the best-natured boy ever I lived next door to, and when he saw I was on my dignity, as he calls it, he stopped being eccentric, and talked sense. “Come, George, don’t lose your temper before breakfast, or you’ll have bad luck all day. What’s the use of being a boy, if you can’t take a joke? Of course I know your Round-the-world Joe. He’s old Captain Brace’s son, that goes to sea with his father in the Circumnavigator, and spins such tough yarns when he comes back. You remember that one about the King of Oude and his barber, snowballing each other with marigolds on Christmas day? and that other one about his chameleon in Calcutta, that travelled an inch a day, and broke out all over with the variegated measles when he stirred it up with a straw?”

“Yes, I do remember that; and if you knew anything about the natural history of that remarkable beast, you would know that Joe’s ‘yarn’ was all true. I can show it to you in father’s Cyclopædia: ‘Chameleon,—a Genus of Saurian reptiles inhabiting the warmest parts of Africa and India the most common Species is the Chameleo vulgaris so well known to travellers in Egypt and Northern Africa. The Chameleon is well described by Aristotle in his History of Animals the name is derived from the Greek and signifies Little Lion or as some maintain Camel Lion. The Chameleon moves very Slowly it will remain for Days on the branch of a tree to which it fixes itself very firmly by means of its Peculiarly divided Feet and Pre-hen-sile Tail. It is true that that the Chameleon Changes its Color with great rapidity and it is probable considering the Scaly character of its skin that the varieties of color are due especially to Changes in the Surface of the skin from the Voluntary Contractions of the Muscular Fibres in the Der-mis modifying the Reflections from the Pig-ment spots as well as from the colorless portions of the skin. From its sudden changes in Color and Size the Chameleon has from time immemorial been selected by Authors as the emblem of the Hypocrite the Wily Flatterer of the Great the Ambitious Dem-a-gogue the Cautious Knave and the Fickle Inconstant persons who from mere Indolence or unsteadiness of purpose are All Things to All Men.’ ”

“But as for you, give you liberty, or give you death! Three cheers for George! I tell you what, old fellow, it just takes your father’s Cyclopædia to teach a boy the difference between a chameleon and a pollywog. Get your cap, and let’s go see Round-the-world Joe.”

But my mother said No; I must allow Joseph to devote that day to the obligations of Fil-i-al affection. She had understood he was a meritorious youth, and Un-feign-ed-ly attached to his worthy mamma.

I am sorry to say I laughed, and my darling mother looked very grave. So I said, “I beg your pardon, mother; but when you said ‘meritorious youth,’ I was thinking of Joe singing ‘There were three sailors of Bristol city.’ Besides, he can chaw tobacco. But Joe does love his mother like sixty, and every time he comes home from sea he brings her sharks’ teeth and tea.”

“The practice of chewing (not chawing) tobacco is a very Rep-re-hen-si-ble one, my son, to which I am sorry to hear that persons who follow the sea are much addicted. It impairs the Di-ges-tive powers, weakens the moral sense, discolors the teeth, softens the brain, and soils the carpet. Now go and feed your pup, and don’t give him strong coffee, as I am told it has a tendency to check the development of dogs.”

She meant “stunts” ’em,—the very thing I was trying to do with my black-and-tan.

Well, Charley and I agreed to put off our visit to Joe for a day or two, and that evening we got permission to walk down Broadway and see the shop-windows all dressed and lighted up for Christmas. By the by, wasn’t it lucky for Round-the-world Joe to get back just in time for the holidays?

It was cold as an iceberg when we started out,—snowing, blowing, and freezing hard; but Charley Sharpe and I are two tough little chaps, I tell you; and when we had bundled ourselves in our stout shaggy sacks, with our skating boots and mittens and comforters, and drawn the flaps of our fur caps over our ears, we felt as snug as two seals at an air-hole. We had promised our two mothers that we would not stay out longer than nine o’clock; so we agreed to take the book-stores and picture-shops on our way down Broadway, and the toy-shops as we returned. Well, we had gone as far as Canal Street, and it was time to turn back. Looking in the windows, we had picked out pictures and books, that we meant to pay for as soon as we got rich enough to set up a library and gallery half as big as Ticknor and Fields’s store; and twice we swapped: I gave Charley an expensive copy of the “History of King Arthur’s Round Table” for “Baron Munchausen,” with Doré’s illustrations, and he gave me a lovely picture of an awful shipwreck, with the loss of every soul on board, and the captain firing a cannon, for a splendid colored plate of a hurdle race, with six horses taking a six-barred gate and a small river at one leap, and one man down on his head, and his horse rolling over him,—which Charley said was splendid. But we have not brought away our pictures yet. Charley says the people that keep the stores put them in the windows to make a show, and they don’t like to take them down till the holidays are over; so we thought we might as well wait.

Well, we began then on the toy-shops, and as we were looking in a window, and Charley was trying to make up his mind what I must give him to boot with my Zouaves charging for his clock-work Great Eastern, a great red chunk of a boy came down the street, singing,—

And when he got to the toy-shop he stopped singing, and began to whistle, low and in a very serious manner; then he walked up to the other window and commenced hitching up his trousers,—they were sailor-trousers,—and the way he did it was very funny: first he took them by the waistband, and hauled them all up; then he grabbed them with both hands by the seat, and gave them a savage jerk; then he twitched the legs of them, and flung out his toes, as if he was going to dance; and then he slapped his hat—it was a sailor-hat—on the back of his head; and all the time he kept on whistling very seriously, as if he was exercised in his mind. Then he put his hand in his pocket, and began to jingle something.

“Ten-penny nails,” whispered Charley.

“Pshaw!” said I.

“Keys, then,” said Charley.

“Not at all,” said I. “Keys and nails don’t jingle so fat; that’s money.”

Then the boy began to sing:—

And then something else about “When he goes rolling ho-o-ome.” Presently the boy began to unbutton his jacket,—it was a sailor-jacket; and he put his hand inside of his blue shirt, and pulled out a leather bag that hung round his neck by a string; there was money in it,—specie,—for we could see the round marks of the rims on the bag; but they were stuffed in so tight they could not chink.

“Coppers,” said Charley, rather loud.

“Quarters, you’d better say,” said I, a little louder.

“Half-eagles, my hearty!” said the sailor-chap. “You see we’ve just been paid off, and the old man he says to me, ‘Joe,’ says he—”

“What! Round-the-world Joe?” said I.

“That’s the name I go by in Home Dock, among some land-turtles about the size of you.”

“Why, don’t you know me, Joe? My name’s George Eager. We used to go to school together,—don’t you remember? And once we had a fight, but that’s all right; and the last time you came home from Japan you brought me—”

“Bless your heart! Give us your flipper!” [Now you must not think hard of Joe for using such expressions. His father used to be in the harpooning profession, and Joe says he can’t help taking after the “old man” sometimes, and “talking whale” when he feels good. But I said, “Joe, you should not call your father ‘the old man,’—it isn’t respectful.” “O,” says Joe, “that’s all right; sailors always call the captain the old man, especially if they respect him a great deal.”]

“And my name’s Charley Sharpe. I am the boy that gave you that Newfoundland pup; and you pulled me out of the water when I broke through the ice, skating.”

“Well,” says Joe, “all I can say is, it’s no use talking; this is what I consider bully.” [“Bully” is sailor and Shakespeare for “jolly,” “lively,” my father says.] “Come in here, and I’ll treat to a ship and a light-house.”

“No,” said Charley; “we are very glad to see you again, Joe; and if we allowed you to spend your money on us, we should not feel as if it was the right kind of glad.”

“That’s good,” said Joe; “I like you for that; and it’s all the same to me; for I brought home a chest full of curiosities and kickshaws, and if you’ll come round and take plum-duff with me to-morrow, you can take your choice.”

“Thank you, Joe,” said I; “we’ll come and see them, if you please. Don’t you feel very happy, Joe, to get back safe to your folks after so many dangers as you’ve gone through; and to bring your dear old mother so much happiness, just in time for a Christmas gift?”

He did not answer me, because just then he had to blow his nose and wipe his eyes,—you see it was so bitter cold out there on the pavement.

“Got a cold? Better come home,” said Charley Sharpe.

Joe began to sing,—he’s as good as a Dime Warbler, that boy is:—

Well, by that time it was getting on to nine o’clock, and we must hurry home,—“beating to windward,” Joe called it, for it was blowing a gale. You may be sure we kept him busy answering questions; all about waterspouts and icebergs and squalls, and albatrosses and penguins and flying-fishes. How big was the biggest whale he ever saw? and did he ever see a cannibal, or the sea-serpent?

“You see, Joe,” said I, “when I get hold of a real live book of travels like you, it does me good to turn you over, and look at the pictures.”

When we reached our door, Joe said he was sorry to “part company,” but we mustn’t forget the plum-duff to-morrow.

“What’s plum-duff?” Charley asked.

“Plum-duff?” said Joe. “Why, plum-duff is a mess of pudding, about the size of a slush-bucket, and stowed with raisins.”

“O, yes,” said Charley, just as if he knew.

But the last thing he said to me that night was, “George, what’s a slush-bucket?”

Next day we went to see Round-the-world Joe open his “kick-shaw” chest. Such a sight of strange things and funny things,—curiosities and toys,—from China and Japan and Malacca and Birmah and Hindostan!

“Why,” said Charley, “I did not know those Chinee folks and the rest of the heathens had toys. I thought they just worshipped idols and drank tea.”

“Nonsense!” said I; “why not? Didn’t they invent kites and firecrackers and chess-men and puppets? How could they have boys and girls if they didn’t have toys?”

“Who says they do have any young folks?” said Charley. “I saw something once that they said was a small Chinee boy; but he seemed to be about a hundred years old.”

Joe laughed, and said that was so. They all looked as if they were born old, and grew up young, like Peter Simple’s father.

“That’s only because their heads are shaved, and they have too much manners,” said I: “it affects their spirits. Of course all nations have young folks, else how could they come? And I believe there have been toys ever since there were any children. Why, in the British Museum there are dolls and foot-balls and marbles that were played with by Egyptian young folks who have been dead and buried four thousand years.

Then Charley asked me, with a very serious face, would I please look in my father’s Cyclopædia and see if Moses invented base-ball, and whether Chinese kites have Pre-hen-sile tails.

But Joe said they had no tails at all; they were rigged so they could stand up to the wind without any ballast. And then he dived down to the bottom of that big chest of his, and fished up two. One was made to represent a splendid bird, all red and green and yellow, with great wings and tail outspread; and the other was a flying-dragon, with horns on its head, and its mouth wide open, and two or three kinks in its tail,—so nice and monstrous! They are both made of a kind of silk, and have green glass for eyes, and Joe says when they are sailing high in the air, and the sun is shining through them, the effect is “bully.” He says he has seen an old man and his grandson squatted on a hillside together, near Hong Kong, flying two such kites; and the grandfather looked so young, and the grandson looked so old, he could hardly tell which was which. He asked the old man what he would take for his kite; but he shook his head,—didn’t want to sell. Says he, “Hi-yah, fou-ké! Mi no savee that pigeon. Mi likee that piece kito too much. S’pose you wanch ketchee one piece kito, can do. Mi ketchee one piece kito feest-chop,—can go top-side ol ploppa.” O, but didn’t that sound funny, the way Joe “sing-songed” it with his eyes shut! He said it was broken China (“pigeon English,” the sailors call it) for “Good gracious, man! I don’t know about that business,—too fond of my kite to sell it. If you want a kite, I can get you a first-rate one, that will fly in fine style.” You see fou-ké means “man,” and savee means “understand,” and “pigeon” is the Chinese way of pronouncing “business.” So the sailors call this outlandish lingo “pigeon English,” because it’s the language they have to trade in; and a Chinaman makes everything “a piece,”—piece of man, piece of moon, piece of house, piece of horse; and ketchee means “get,” and feest-chop means “first-rate,” and top-side means up stairs, or up in the air, or up anywhere; and ol ploppa means “all right.” Joe says the outside Barbarians and the Chinamen had an awful time trying to read each other’s signals till, between them, they invented this pigeon-English, which is a sort of chow-chow, as the Chinese call it,—that is, a hotch-potch,—of Chinese, Portuguese and English.

Joe made us a present of those kites, the bird to Charley, and the dragon to me. Isn’t he a valuable boy to be acquainted with? We don’t intend to let the other boys know we’ve got them till next kite-time, and then see if we don’t astonish these outside barbarians.

Well, the next thing Joe brought out of that enchanted chest was a stamp to seal letters with,—one of those wonders of ingenuity and skill and patience that nobody but a Chinaman or a monk or a prisoner has time to make. The seal part was a little square tablet of pearl, that you might have your initials engraved on; but the handle was a nest of ivory balls, all beautifully carved, and all loose, and moving freely, one within the other, so that by inserting a knitting-needle anywhere through the carved openings, you could turn either of the balls around and around, and examine the curious figures on it. But the wonder is, how those five inside balls, smaller and smaller till you came to the little smooth marble in the centre, got inside of each other; for Joe says there is no seam or opening anywhere. Charley said it reminded him of Peter Pindar’s funny story of “The King and the Apple-Dumplings.”

But Joe told us how the balls got in. He says they are all carved, just as they are, out of a single piece of ivory, solid and round as a billiard-ball. The outside is first carved in some very open pattern,—snakes, for instance, and crocodiles, or vines, and flowers and the branches of a tree; and through the openings it is carefuly cut under, with a sharp, fine instrument, till a complete coating is detached from the solid part inside,—just as the peel of an orange may be loosened from the pulp with a scoop, without being taken off. So here is one hollow ball with a solid one inside of it; and this solid ball is carved through the openings left in the carvings of the outer one, and then peeled, just as the first one was. Now there are two separate carved hollow balls, still with a smaller solid one within. And then the carving is repeated again and again, always in different patterns, till there remains only the little smooth marble in the centre; and even on this figures are often cut. Of course the work becomes more and more difficult, as the carved hollow balls are multiplied, and the carver has almost to feel his way in the heart of the ivory,—under water, too, sometimes, to soften it—Joe’s seal had six balls, but he says he has seen them with twenty; and it sometimes takes the most skilful workman four or five weeks to carve one ball. Only think! two years to make one toy! But Joe says, “What of that, when there are about twenty millions of Chinamen with nothing else to do? And what difference does time make to a lot of lubbers that tell how many bells it is by a cat’s eye?”

“Wha-a-at?” said Charley.

“I tell you they do,” said Joe. “They look in a cat’s eyes to see what’s the time of day.”

“O, you get out!” said Charley.

“It’s so,” said Joe; “I’ll take my after-davit; and I’ll tell you how they do it. If you take particular notice of a cat’s eyes, you’ll see that at sunrise the pupil is quite wide; but it keeps on growing narrower and narrower till noon, when there’s nothing left of it but a thin line, as fine as a hair, drawn perpendicularly across the eye. After noon it begins to grow wider and wider—”

“Di-late,” said I.

“Just so,” said Joe,—“wider and wider till sunset; and that’s the reason cats can see so well in the dark; their pupils take in all the light there is.”

“Well,” said I, “if that don’t beat all the cat-stories! How do you wind your cat-clocks up? By the tail?”

“I must tell that yarn to my big brother,” said Charley. “He’s of a literary turn of mind, and I know exactly what he’ll say. He’ll say: ‘It is not to be supposed that it is to this description of time-piece that allusion is had in the spirited descriptive ballad beginning,

I asked Joe if they had such a thing as Christmas in China.

“No,” said Joe, “but they have any quantity of New Years,—paper-flowers and flags and lanterns and fire-works: and such a row, with fiddles and flutes and hautboys and gongs, that you couldn’t sing a sick baby to sleep through a speaking-trumpet.” He says nine tenths of all the people in China starve themselves for a month beforehand to save up money for their New Year’s spree. And such fellows as they are for lanterns and fireworks! They have a “Feast of Lanterns,” as they call it, that comes on the fifteenth of the first month in their year; and then nothing but lanterns, lanterns, everywhere, from the shabbiest fishing-junk in the harbor to the finest Joss-house on the hills; big lanterns, little lanterns, silk lanterns, paper lanterns, round lanterns, square lanterns and lanterns with eight sides, carved lanterns, gilded lanterns, japanned lanterns, painted lanterns, lanterns with flowers and trees, lanterns with men and animals, lanterns with dragons and monsters, lanterns hung out of windows, lanterns on the roofs of houses, lanterns on the masts of junks. In Pekin some of these lanterns cost a thousand dollars, and are divided into halls and chambers, so large that the Chinese, by putting two or three of them together, can eat and sleep in them, receive visits, and have balls and plays.

As for fireworks, Joe says there’s nothing in this world a Chinaman is so fond of, unless it be his opium-pipe or his melon-seeds; crackers, bombs, rockets, wheels, fiery fountains and fiery trees, fiery dragons and fiery devils, fiery suns and fiery rains. For all that, although the Chinese have such a passion for playing with powder, and knew the whole use of it long before a European could shoot a gun, to this day they are as much afraid of a cannon, or a musket, or a revolver, as if they had never heard anything louder than a pop-bottle in their lives; Joe says that’s what puzzles him. But what’s the use, says he, of trying to take the bearings of folks that begin dinner with the dessert and go in black in white?

Well, that chest of Joe’s was a perfect curiosity-shop. It’s my opinion that, for half the queer things he had there, the Great Original Barnum, or Artemus Ward, would have given him a free ticket for life to his show. He had wooden and earthen toys from Benares in Hindostan,—monstrous animals, such as never lived in the earth beneath or the waters under the earth,—funny idols, ugly and foolish enough to scare or shame the stupidest heathen from the error of his ways,—pretty little Brahmin oxen with bells,—elephants with castles on their backs, like chess-men, and camels with cannons,—Hindoo country-people riding in hackories,—a rude sort of machine, half-cart, half-carriage,—and Hindoo young folks, with bangles on their wrists and ankles, playing with monkeys.

But the cunningest of Joe’s toys—the most ingenious and entertaining—were those that are made of paper, wax, and clay, and sold in the bazaars in Calcutta;—little elephants, that could move their trunks in a very surprising and lifelike manner, and little Persian kittens, playing with their own bushy tails; little cockatoos of clay and feathers, with red topknots, that fluttered their wings so naturally, as they hung by hairs in bamboo cages, that the cats would pounce on them; little paper boats, and palanquins, temples, and country-houses; little clay figures of servants, barbers, and pedlers, door-keepers, sweepers, and water-carriers, pipe-servers, umbrella-bearers, and dog-boys, jugglers, dancing-girls, and beggars; and Joe said that in all these the copy was so true in dress, looks, and ways, that, if Charley and I could be carried through the air by genii or magicians, and set down in the middle of Calcutta, we could recognize all such people merely from having seen these clay “dummies” of them.

Then Joe had a full company of Burmese puppets, with a great variety of furniture, dresses, and ornaments. There were princes, ladies and children, soldiers and musicians and dancers, and everything complete for a theatrical performance on a puppet scale; and—but Joe says if I don’t belay this yarn, I’ll pay out all I know in one chapter.

George Eager.

“Money does not last long now-a-days, Clarissa,” said Mr. Andrews to his wife one evening. “It is only a week since I received my month’s salary, and now I have but little more than half of it left. I bought a cord of pine wood to-day, and to-morrow I must pay for that suit of clothes which Daniel had; that will be fifteen dollars more.”

“And Daniel will need a pair of new shoes in a day or two; those he wears now are all ripped, and hardly fit to wear,” said Mrs. Andrews.

“How fast he wears out shoes! It seems hardly a fortnight since I bought the last shoes for him,” said the father.

“O, well! But then he enjoys running about so much that I cannot check his pleasure as long as it is harmless. I am sure you would feel sorry to see the little shoes last longer from not being used so much,” answered the affectionate mother.

Daniel, during this conversation, was sitting on the floor in a corner with his kitten, trying to teach her to stand upon her hind legs. He was apparently much occupied with his efforts, but he heard all that his father and mother had said. Pretty soon he arose, and, going to his father, climbed upon his knee and said, “Papa, do I cost you a good deal of money?”

Now, Mr. Andrews was book-keeper for a manufacturing company, and his salary was hardly sufficient for him to live comfortably at the rate everything was selling, owing to the Rebellion. He had nothing to spare for superfluities, and his chief enjoyment was being at home with his wife and boy, his books and pictures. Daniel’s question was a queer one, but his father replied as correctly as he could.

“Whatever money you may cost me, my son, I do not regret it, for I know that it adds to your comfort and enjoyment. To be sure, your papa does not have a great deal of money, but he would be poor indeed without his little Daniel.”

“How much will my new suit of clothes cost?” asked Daniel.

“Fifteen dollars,” was the reply.

“And how much for my shoes?”

“Two dollars more, perhaps,” said his father.

“That will make seventeen dollars. I wish I could work and earn some money for you, father,” said Daniel.

“O, well, my son, don’t think about that now. If you are a good boy, and study well at school, that will repay me amply,” said Mr. Andrews.

Daniel said no more, but he determined to try and see if he could not help to pay for the clothes his father was so kind as to buy him. An opportunity soon occurred. That very afternoon the load of wood which his father bought came, and was thrown off close to the cellar-door. It was Wednesday, and there was no school. “Now I can save father some money,” thought Daniel; and he ran into the house to ask his mother if he could put the wood into the cellar.

“I am afraid it is too heavy work for you, my son,” said his mother.

“I think I can do it, mother. The wood lies close to the cellar-door, and all I will have to do is to pitch it right down,” replied Daniel.

“Very well, you may try it; but if you find it too hard you must give it up, and let Tim Rooney put it in,” said his mother.

Daniel danced away, and went first to the cellar, where he unhooked the trap-door and opened it, and climbed out into the yard where the sticks of wood lay in a great heap. At first it was good fun to send the sticks clattering one on top of the other down into the cellar, but pretty soon it grew tedious, and Daniel began to think that he had rather do something else. Just then George Flyson came into the yard and asked Daniel if he wasn’t going to fish for smelts that day.

“I guess not. This wood must go in, and then it will be too late to go so far this afternoon,” replied Daniel.

“O, let the wood slide! We have got some round to our house that ought to go in, but I sha’ n’t do it. Father may hire a man to do such work. Come, old Rooney will be glad of that job,” said George.

“No, I am going to do this before anything else,” said Daniel, as he picked up a big stick and sent it scooting down the cellar-way.

“Did your old man make you do it?” asked Flyson.

“Who?” queried Daniel, so sharply that the boy saw his error, and corrected his form of question.

“Did your father make you do this job?”

“No; he does not know I am doing it; and, by the way, George Flyson, don’t you call my father ‘old man.’ If you don’t know any better than to treat your father disrespectfully, you sha’n’t treat mine so,” answered Daniel.

“Ho! Seems to me you are getting mighty pious all of a sudden. Guess I’ll have to be going. I’m not good enough for you,”—and, with a sneering look, George went off.

The wood-pile down cellar grew larger, until the wood-pile in the yard was all gone; then Daniel shut down the trap-door, ran into the house and brushed his clothes, and started out to find his playmates and have a game of base-ball. He felt very happy, for he had earned something for a kind father who was always earning something for him; and the thoughts of this much pleased him. He felt happier still when his father came home to supper and said while at the table, “My wood did not come, did it, mother? I told the man to send it up this afternoon, certainly.” Mr. Andrews always called his wife “mother.”

“O, yes, the wood came. I saw the team back into the yard,” replied Mrs. Andrews.

“Then Rooney must have put it in. I suppose he will charge fifty or seventy-five cents for doing it,” said Mr. Andrews.

“I think a boy put it in,” said his wife.

“What boy?”

“O, a smart little fellow that plays around here a good deal. He wanted the job, and so I let him do it,” said Mrs. Andrews.

“Some little chap that wanted some pocket-money, I suppose. Whose boy was it?” asked Mr. Andrews.

“There he is; he will tell you all about it,”—and Mrs. Andrews pointed to Daniel, who was enjoying the fun quietly. And now he was pleased indeed to hear how gratified his father was at finding his little boy so industrious and thoughtful. It repaid him amply for not going smelt-fishing.

It was not long after this that the bleak winds of November began to blow; the leaves of the trees fell lifeless to the earth; and everything prepared to put on the ermine garb of winter. One evening when Daniel went to bed, he put aside his curtain, and looked out into the street. He was surprised to find it white with snow. Silently and gently, one by one, the tiny flakes had fallen, until hillside and valley, street and house-top, were covered with the spotless snow. “I wonder how deep it will be by morning. Perhaps there will be enough for sleighing. Old Rooney will be round to clear off the sidewalk and platforms. I must get ahead of him this winter, and save father some more money,”—and Daniel got into bed as quick as he could, so that he should awake early in the morning.

When Mr. Andrews awoke the next day, he heard the scraping of a shovel on the sidewalk, and said to his wife, “Tim has got along early this morning. These snow-storms are profitable to him. Last winter I guess I paid him five or six dollars for shovelling snow.”

When he got up, however, and looked out of the window, he was not a little astonished to see Daniel shovelling off the sidewalk, his cheeks all aglow with the healthy exercise.

“See that boy, mother,” said he to his wife, “he has cleared the walk off nicely. What a good little fellow he is. When Christmas comes, we must reward him for all this.”

And so Daniel went on according to this beginning. He cleared the snow off after every storm; in the spring-time he put the garden and yard all in order, and did a great many things which his father had always paid a man for doing. And he had plenty of time to play besides, and then he enjoyed his play better, because there is always a satisfaction in doing good, which lends a charm to everything that we undertake.

One day, about a year after the day that Daniel had put in the first load of wood, his father said to him, “My son, I have kept a memorandum of the work that you have done for me the past year, and I find, that, allowing you what I should have paid Tim Rooney or any other person, I owe you to-day forty-two dollars and sixty cents.”

“So much as that, father? Why, I did not know I could earn so much all myself, and I did not work very hard either,” said Daniel.

“Some of it was pretty hard work for a little boy that likes to play,” replied his father; “but you did it well, and now I am ready to pay you.”

“Pay me? What! the real money right in my hands?”

“Yes, the real money,” and Mr. Andrews placed a roll of “greenbacks” in his little son’s hand.

Daniel looked at it for a few minutes, and then said, “I’ll tell you what to do with this money for me, papa.”

“What, my son?”

“Buy my clothes with it for the next year,” said Daniel.

And Mr. Andrews did so.

William L. Williams.

I want to tell you almost the nicest thing which ever happened to me. Perhaps you will think it has nothing to do with the little Southerners whose story I am to finish for you,—but it has.

I had been away from my country home on a very long visit, and returned the month before Ella and Rosa came. As my little father (there are a hundred and ninety-five pounds of him, but I always call him little for love) and I drove up to the old parsonage, I must say I felt just a little blue over the gay city life I had left behind, and the quiet days before me. Glancing up at my own room, I saw through an open window upon the curtain of the opposite window, which looked toward the sunrise, a beautiful star of fresh green cedar. “That is Lizzie!” I cried at once; for you must know that in those days Lizzie was my true lover, and was forever trying to please me; and as my eyes used to ache then (because a baby pet of mine had struck them in play and left a pain there), my thought was that Lizzie had brought this bit of the woods, which we both loved so dearly, and placed it opposite my bed, so that when the aching eyes first opened every morning they might rest on the soothing green. You shall see if I was right.

The good father, who was in the secret, said, “Let us follow that new star in the east, and see what we shall see!”

So up the stairs we ran. Above the closed door of what I liked to call my “Chamber of Peace” was written, in letters of cedar, “Peace be within.” Wasn’t that a lovely blessing for my coming home? But I was to be made still more ashamed of my blues. When the door opened, I thought I was in fairy-land. How can I ever describe it to you? I did not see all, myself, at first, for no sooner had I caught sight of the emblem which was arranged to catch my first glance, than I threw myself on to my bed in a crumpled little heap, and had a good cry before I could look further. This was the emblem: a heavy wreath of cedar, delicately shaped into the form of a heart, within which was the motto, in tiny letters, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” and above it, in graceful curves and in large letters, “Welcome home, dearest teacher!”

O that precious Sunday-school class of mine! Each one of my five darlings had chosen her own flower, and made of it a little bouquet, and these little knots of sweet blossoms were hung at different points of the blessed heart,—their stems being put into little phials cased in green, with water to keep them fresh. Lily had brought the pure white syringa; Helen, red rosebuds; Fanny, pansies; Emily, fragrant pinks; Mamie, little daintily tinged yellow roses. Wasn’t this a sight to bring glad tears into anybody’s eyes?

But I haven’t told you the half. The doors and windows were all hung with rich festoons of the cedar, drooping gracefully from above them, while here and there over the pictures were scattered wreaths of the same.

Above the head of the bed was suspended such a wreath, over which was the motto, “The Lord is thy keeper.” Would ugly dreams dare come within that holy circle? Upon the wall, at the bed’s side, was a cross; above it, the words, “Come unto me,” and below, “I will give you rest.” And last, but not at all least among the mottoes, was a little one hiding modestly away above my writing-desk,—“Feed my lambs.”

Each curtain had its own emblem. The star in the east I have already spoken of; on a second window was a harp, and on the other an anchor. These were all to have had mottoes; but the false alarm came, “She is coming!” and the fairies fled. The star was to have said, “Christ shall give thee light”; the harp, “Praise the Lord”; and the anchor,—

“That she’ll like,” said the little girls, “for that is her favorite hymn.”

You may believe I did not rest until I heard the whole story of the fairy-work. Perhaps a little bird told me. The great maple, whose boughs sprang into my window as soon as it was opened, was full of the best-natured of gossips, and there was one motherly robin with whom I was very intimate. Indeed, I wrote out her housekeeping experiences in a little book called the “R. B. R.’s, My Little Neighbors.” Of course, if I could at pleasure peep into her nursery and pantry, she could spy back again.

“Now tell me all about it,” said I. “Of course it is Lizzie!”

“Yes, Lizzie and Caddie planned it; and such a time as they had with the little people! In the first place, they took them into the beautiful woods for the cedar, and I saw them come home at sunset trailing great branches behind them. Their lips were shut as tight as if they were never to open again, for the plot was to be kept a great secret from everybody; but their eyes danced, and you never saw such knowing little nods as they gave the young ladies and each other whenever they happened to meet.

“Another day the little conspirators met at Miss Caddie’s house to make the mottoes. The letters were drawn nicely on card-board, and then cut out, and the delicate cedar-leaves sewed carefully over them. Emily was sick, but begged to be propped up in her bed, that she might make two or three letters for you with her own hands. This I heard from a friend who lives near Miss Caddie. But I saw all the fun of putting up the hangings and the mottoes with my own eyes. If you could have seen the little fairies at their love-work, and heard their merry chatter, you wouldn’t wonder at my excitement. Why, I was actually in such a twitter that I tumbled off the nest two or three times, and Cock Robin was quite pitiful, and said, ‘Poor thing! you are quite worn out. As soon as the children can toddle alone, you shall have a change of air!’ But when I pointed out to him the real cause of my lightheadedness, he was as eager as I in watching them. They were so afraid you would surprise them in the midst of their work that some one was constantly sounding an alarm. Once they were so sure you were coming, that Miss Lizzie, who was balancing herself on the top of the head-board of the bed, arranging that motto, ‘The Lord is thy keeper,’ almost fainted, she was so startled; and the others ran into the closet, or tried to hide under the bed, which was so low they could only get their heads out of sight!

“Sometimes they almost hoped you would come, so that they might see what you would do first (and really I was quite ashamed of you when I saw you rumpling your feathers on the bed in that absurd way,—hardly looking around at all); but finally, about fifteen minutes before you came, they all took flight, each one repeating, as she looked back from the threshold over all the lovely handiwork, ‘Peace be within!’ ”

After this, people came from far and near to see my fairy bower, and I have seen grown-up men and women, and ministers even, wiping the tears from their eyes as they looked at all the pretty devices, with the thought of what loving hearts had planned this charming surprise for a heart that loved them dearly. When little Frankie came to see the wonder, she stood looking very earnestly at the great heart with its motto, “Welcome home, dearest teacher.” “Can you read it, Frankie?” “Of course,” said she, quite indignantly; “it says, ‘Come home, dear Katie!’ ” which wasn’t so wrong as it might have been.

Also a certain little Mamie came and brought her precious little kitten, Snowberry. But I don’t think Snowberry had an eye for the beautiful, for instead of looking about her at all the pretty things Mamie had brought her to see, she just whirled around and around after the tip of her own silly tail, until she was dizzy, and then curled herself in the little box in which Mamie had brought her, and went fast asleep! Mamie was so mortified at the poor taste of her cat, that she made herself very agreeable to make up for it. She even went so far as to say, “I think your books are the most beautifulest in the world!”—but then, happening to think of another young lady whom she was very fond of, she added, “unless Miss Ehle has writed some, and then they’s both alike!”

But now I have given you a very poor picture of my Chamber of Peace, I must tell you about the little girl who came to share it with me one night. And this brings us back to the Little Southerners.

We had been having a merrier picnic than usual that day. We had spent the long morning down under the rocks through which a stormy little brook fights its way, only to tumble down upon the green meadow-grass below, quite too much out of breath even to sigh after its fall. This we called “Little Niagara,” for fun. We liked this wild glen so much—what with the delightful trouble it cost us to get there, and the still greater trouble of getting away, to say nothing of the rollicking music of the brook above the fall, and its refreshing coolness below, under the shade of the overhanging moss cliffs—that we had made an appointment to meet there the next morning. But (Dear me! how much trouble that little word can hold sometimes) there were other things to be done next day.

The evening after our walk, as Mother Robin and I were having a cosey sunset talk, I heard the well-known patter of Ella’s feet over the walk, and presently she and Julia appeared. Now I knew at once that something had happened. There was in their faces that queer mixture of sorrow at being the bearers of ill news, and delight at having news to tell, which I have seen in older faces than theirs.

Ella told the story. “We are going to leave you to-morrow, Miss Katie!”

“Yes,” said Julia, “papa has bought a country-house in N——, and we are all to go directly there to-morrow!”

And so this pleasant little summer castle tumbled down!

“I’m sorry too, Miss Katie, but we’ll be all together there, maw (mamma) and grandmaw and little Walter,—and den you’ll come to see us.” This was Ella’s little comforting speech, and she had to make a good many like it before I could say “Good evening” to them.

As they were leaving, I said, “Now Ella, darling, if you are really going away from us to-morrow, you ought to come and spend to-night with me in my pretty greenery.”

“Den I reckon I will, sure enough, if Aunt Hayet lets me!”

I had no thought that the little girl would really have courage to come to a strange house for the night, but “sure enough,” just as the summer evening began to darken, I saw the dear little creature returning all alone! Such a brave little figure as it was! She came trudging on, swinging one arm sturdily to and fro, and under the other holding tightly a wad of white cotton, while a long train of the same dragged behind her on the sidewalk. This train proved to be one leg of her night-drawers, which she had caught up and made off with, not waiting for them to be folded.

Didn’t she have a welcome! And didn’t she have the most amazing stories, rattled off as fast as my tongue could spin, lest Ella should have time to get up even a homesick sigh between! But I wasted a great deal of breath, for she hadn’t a homesick thought, and was as much at home in the Chamber of Peace as if she had been its good angel.

She was a comical little picture, when I had dressed her in those same little drawers. I suppose she had her nightgowns made in that way, lest she should take cold, when her doll, who always slept with her, should “kitt de clothes off,” as she said she was sure to do!

Ella knelt by herself and prayed, without a word from me, and then the little white drawers hid themselves in my bed, while the bright brown eyes shone from the pillow. As I locked the door, I said (for you see I couldn’t get the idea out of my dull head that Ella was sure to wake up, sooner or later, to the fact that she was in a strange place, and very possibly I should have to take her back to “Aunt Hayet” at midnight): “Now, darling, we are as safe as can be! Nobody can hurt us.”

“Yes,” said the little Christian child, “of tourse; and if anybody should get in through the keyhole he wouldn’t dare touch us with that over our head, would he?” asked she, pointing to the motto above her, “The Lord is thy keeper.” “No,” she added, after thinking some time, “no,—not unless it was Pharaoh;—he might, you know.”

“No, I don’t, Ella. Why would he dare, more than any one else?”

“Why, Miss Katie!”—and there was just a little shade of rebuke in her tone,—“don’t you ’member he didn’t know who the Lord was?”

How many little four-year-olds know what Ella meant? If you will find in your Bibles the second verse of the fifth chapter of Exodus, then you will “’member” as I did.

Ella held her doll on her arm, and I held Ella. The doll was stiff and poky, and dented me all over with her sharp toes, but Ella was round and downy, and altogether a little queen of a bedfellow. As she nestled down for the night, she cried out suddenly, “Miss Katie, why don’t you put me in a book?”

“Why, I don’t know a great deal about you, little kitten.”

“Well, den, I’ll tell you!” So she told me such a very nice little story that I said, “If you will go to sleep now, and wake up to-morrow morning very bright, and tell it again to me just as you have now, I will write it in a book, and perhaps it shall even be printed some time!”. So she cuddled close into arms which loved to hold her so well that they didn’t mind dolly’s “kitts” so very much, and was soon fast asleep.

In the morning, before my eyes were fairly open, Ella’s story (autobiography is the grown-up name for it) began to bubble over her red lips, and I had to fly out of bed for my pencil and book, or else I should have lost some of it. I wrote it down letter for letter just as she spoke it, but I can never give you the twinkling of her fire-fly eyes, nor the comical flourishes of her tongue, which sometimes darted out so far that I was afraid she could never twirl it in again. I copy it for you from the very little green book in which I first wrote it.

“Now, Ella, begin. What shall we call it?”

“Now, Miss Katie, don’t tell about Horace (Horace was baby,—Walter’s twin brother,—who died when he was only one day old. “He was little to have a name, wasn’t he, Ella?” “Why, don’t you know! Dey had to have somepin to put on his tombstone,”) for I don’t want any dead in dat book. But tell about Walter, coz I know a heap o’ sweetness about Walter.”

The last I saw of the Little Southerners was at the railway station the very morning Ella had made her two books. Something in my eyes kept me from seeing very clearly; but Ella’s brown eyes, brighter than her “sure enough lamps,” made rainbows through my tears, as she said, “I ain’t going to be lost from you, Miss Katie!” As for round Rosa, she nearly twisted off her precious little neck in trying to get a good-by look out of the car-window, which she was all the time polishing very hard with the little there was left of “Rag-Dolly” after our happy summer.

Katherine C. C. Walker.

Our little friend went on in the way we have described, every day finding a new thing that she was able to do, and taking the greatest delight in doing it. Gradually her mother’s arm recovered,—as it never would have done, had not the helpfulness of her little daughter enabled her to give it entire rest,—and she was in a situation to resume her family cares.

“What a blessing our little Pussy has been to us!” said her father to her mother, one night, as they were talking over their family affairs.

“Yes,” said the mother; “that dear child is so unselfish, and so much more than willing to do for us, that I am fearful lest we shall make too much of her. I don’t want to make a mere drudge of my daughter, and I think we must send her to school this summer. Pussy is a good reader,—I have always taught her a little every day,—and she writes little letters on a slate quite prettily for a child; but now I think we must send her over to the Academy, and let her go in with the primary class.”

Now the Academy was two miles off; but all the family were used to being up and having breakfast over by seven o’clock in the morning; and then Pussy put on her sun-bonnet, and made a little bundle of her books, and tripped away cheerfully down the hard stony road, along the path of the bright brown brook, through a little piece of waving pine forest, next through some huckleberry pastures and patches of sweet fern-bushes, then through a long piece of rocky and shady forest, till she reached the Academy.

Little Emily Proudie also went to school, at one of the most elegant establishments on Fifth Avenue; and as she was esteemed to be entirely too delicate to walk, her father had provided for her a beautiful little coupé, cushioned inside with purple silk, and drawn by a white horse, with a driver in livery at her command. This was Emily’s own carriage, and one would think that, when she had nothing to do but to get into it, she might have been always early at her school; but, unfortunately for her, this was never the case. Emily could not be induced, by the repeated calls of Bridget, to shake off her morning slumbers till at least half an hour after the time she ought to rise. Then she was so miserably undecided what to put on, and tried so many dresses before she could be suited, and was so dissatisfied with the way her hair was arranged, that she generally came to breakfast all in ill-humor, and only to find that they had got for her breakfast exactly the things that she didn’t fancy. If there was an omelette and coffee and toast, then Emily wished that it had been chocolate and muffins; but if the cook the next morning, hoping to make a lucky hit, got chocolate and muffins, Emily had made up her mind in the mean time that the chocolate would give her a headache, and that she must have tea made; and with all these points to be attended to, there is no wonder that the little coupé, and the little white horse, and the driver in livery, were often kept waiting at the door long after the time when Emily ought to have been in her class-room.

Madame Ardenne often gently complained to Emily’s mother,—very gently, because the Proudies were so rich and fashionable that she would have been in utter despair at the idea of offending them; but still the poor woman could not help trying to make Emily’s mother understand that a scholar who always came into the class-room when the lesson was half over could not be expected to learn as fast as if she were there punctually, besides being a great annoyance to all the rest of the scholars.

Emily’s mother always said that she was sorry it was so, but her dear child was of a most peculiar organization,—that it did not seem possible for her to wake at any regular hour in the morning,—and that really the dear child had a sensitiveness of nature that made it very difficult to know what to do with her.

In fact, young ladies who are brought up like little Emily, to have every earthly thing done for them, and to do no earthly thing for themselves, are often sorely tried when they come to school-life, because there are certain things in education which all human beings must learn to do for themselves. Emily always had had a maid to wash her and dress her, and to do everything that a healthy little girl might do for herself; but no maid could learn to read for her, or write for her. Her mamma talked strongly of sending to Paris for a French dressing maid, to keep her various dresses in order; but even a French dressing-maid could not learn a French verb for her, or play on the piano for her. Consequently poor Emily’s school life was full of grievous trials to her. Her lessons seemed doubly hard to her, because she had always been brought up to feel that she must be saved from every labor, and must yield before the slightest thing that looked like a difficulty.

Little Pussy, after her walk of two miles, would come into the Academy fresh and strong, at least a quarter of an hour before school, and have a good time talking with the other girls before the school began. Then she set about her lessons with the habit of conquering difficulties. If there was a hard sum in her lesson, Pussy went at it with a real spirit and interest. “Please don’t tell me a word,” she would say to her teacher: “I want to work it out myself. I’m sure I can do it.” And the greater the difficulty, the more cheerful became her confidence. There was one sum, I remember, that Pussy worked upon for a week,—a sum that neither her father nor mother, nor any of her brothers, could do; but she would not allow her teacher to show her. She was resolutely determined to do it all alone by herself, and to find out the way for herself,—and at last she succeeded; and a very proud and happy Pussy she was when she did succeed.

My little girls, I want to tell you that there is a pleasure in vanquishing a difficulty,—in putting forth all the power and strength you have in you to do a really hard thing,—that is greater than all the pleasures of ease and indolence. The little girl who lies in bed every morning just half an hour later than her conscience tells her she ought to lie, thinks she is taking comfort in it, but she is mistaken. She is secretly dissatisfied with and ashamed of herself, and her conscience keeps up a sort of uneasy trouble, every morning; whereas, if she once formed the habit of springing up promptly at a certain hour, and taking a good morning bath, and dressing herself in season to have plenty of time to attend to all her morning duties, she would have a self-respect and self-confidence that it is very pleasant to feel.

Pussy’s life in the Academy was a great enjoyment to her this summer. She felt it a great kindness in her mother to excuse her from all family duties, and take all the work upon herself, in order that she might have time to study; and so she studied with a right good will. Her cheerful temper made her a universal favorite. She seemed among her schoolfellows like a choice lot of sugar-plums or sweetmeats; everybody wanted a scrap or portion. One girl wanted Pussy to play with her; another made her promise to walk home with her; two or three wanted to engage her for recess; all Pussy’s spare hours for days and days ahead were always engaged by her different friends. The girls said, “Pussy is such a dear girl! she is so bright! she makes the time pass so pleasantly!” And Pussy in return liked everybody, and thought there never was so pleasant a school, or such a fortunate girl, as herself.

On Saturdays there was no school, and then Pussy would insist on going into the kitchen to help her mother.

“Now, my dear, you ought not to do it,” her mother would say. “You ought to have Saturday to amuse yourself.”

“Well, it amuses me to make the pies,” Pussy would say. “I like to see how many I can turn out in a day. I don’t ask better fun.”

So went on the course of Pussy’s education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

One morning, when little Birdie opened his eyes, and looked towards the window, he was surprised to see the trees before the house all stripped of their bright leaves, and covered with white feathers, as he thought. He jumped out of bed, and trotted to the window in night-dress and bare feet, to look out, with wide blue eyes, at this new wonder that had come to pass. The feathers seemed to hang like wreaths on the brown trees, and the grass beneath was thickly strewn with them, and Birdie saw the pretty soft things floating about in the air, so that he was highly delighted. But he had not been there very long, when his mother called him to come back to bed, before Jack Frost pinched his little bare toes. The boy ran back, and cuddled down in his bed, which seemed very warm and comfortable; but still he kept wondering what had happened in the night to make such a change out of doors. At last he said, “Mamma, what time did you go to sleep last night?”

“At the usual time, dear,” answered his mamma. “But why do you ask?”

“Why, somebody has tooken all the leaves off the trees, and dressed them up with white feathers,” said Birdie; “and may be you saw who did it, ’fore you went to sleep, mamma.”

His mother raised her head, and looked out at the trees, and then said, “Yes, King Winter has been here.”

“Did King Winter do that, mamma?” cried Birdie. “O, do tell me how he hangs all the feathers on those high trees.”

Then his mother said, laughing: “Ah! I see what you want. You are on the watch for a fairy-story. Well, I will tell you a short one, while the room gets warm.”

The little boy was pleased to hear this, and gave his dear mamma a shower of kisses, “for thank you,” as he said, and then begged her to go on.

So she began: “King Winter lives in a very strong palace, near the cold North Pole; it is built of great blocks of thick ice, and all around it stand high, pointed icebergs; and cross white bears keep guard at the gate. He has many little fairy-servants to do his bidding, and they are, like their master, cross and spiteful, and seldom do any kind actions, so that few are found who love them. King Winter is rich and powerful, but he keeps all his wealth so tightly locked up that it does no one any good; and, what is worse, he often tries to get the treasure of other persons, to add to the store in his money-chests.

“One day, when this selfish old king was walking through the wood, he saw the leaves thickly covered with gold and precious stones, which had been spread upon them by King Frost, to make the trees more beautiful, and give pleasure to all who saw them. But looking at them did not satisfy King Winter; he wanted to have the gold for his own, and made up his mind to get it somehow; and back he went to his palace, to call his servants home, for this new work. As soon as he reached the gate, he blew a loud shrill note on his horn, and in a few minutes his odd little fairies came flying in at the windows and doors, and stood before him, quietly waiting to hear his commands. The king ordered some to go out into the forest, at nightfall, armed with canes and clubs, and to beat off all the golden and ruby leaves; then he told others to take strong bags, and gather up all the treasure, and bring it to him. ‘If that silly King Frost does not think any more of gold and precious stones than to waste them on trees, I will teach him better,’ said the old king.

“The fairies promised to obey him, and as soon as night came, off they all rushed to the forest, and a terrible noise they made, flying from one beautiful tree to another, banging and beating the leaves off. Branches were cracking and falling on all sides, and leaves flying about, while the sound of shouting, laughing, and screaming told all who heard it that the spiteful winter-fairies were at some mischief. The other fairies followed, and gathered up the poor shattered leaves, cramming them roughly into the great bags they had brought, and taking them to King Winter’s palace as fast as they were filled.

“This work was kept up nearly all night, and when morning came, the magic forest of many-colored leaves was changed into a dreary place. Bare trees stretched their long brown branches around, and seemed to shiver in the cold wind, and to sigh for the beautiful dress of shining leaves so rudely torn from them.”

When little Birdie heard this, he was almost ready to cry, and said: “I don’t like that Winter man,—he’s naughty; but I’ll give the poor trees my new red dress to keep them warm!”

His mother said he was a good boy, and she would tell him how naughty King Winter was disappointed. “You will soon be laughing again when you hear what happened, my pet.”

Then Birdie was satisfied, and his mother went on: “King Winter was very much pleased, as one great sack after another was tugged in by the fairies, and when morning came he called his servants together, and said, ‘You have all worked well, my friends, and have saved much treasure from being wasted: I will now open these bags, and show you the gold, giving you each a share for yourselves.’ The king then took up the sack nearest to him, and, turning it upside down, gave it a shake. The fairies looked on eagerly, but what was their surprise, when out rushed a great heap of brown leaves, which flew all over the floor, and half choked them with dust! When the king saw this, he growled with rage, and looked at the fairies with a dark frown on his face. They begged him to look at the next sack; but when he did so, it too was found full of brown leaves, instead of gold and precious stones. This was too much for King Winter’s patience. He tossed the bags, one by one, out of the palace window, and would have tossed the unlucky fairies after them, had not some of the bravest ones knelt down and asked for mercy, telling him they had obeyed his orders, and, if King Frost had taken back his treasure, they were not to blame. This turned their master’s anger against King Frost, and very angry and fierce he was. He gnashed his great teeth with rage, and rushed up and down in his palace, until it shook again. At last he made up his mind to go out that night, break down King Frost’s beautiful palace, and take away all his riches. Just see, Birdie, how he went from one wicked thing to another. He began by wishing for what belonged to some one else, and at last was willing to fight and steal to get it. I hope my little boy will always be satisfied with his own toys and books, and never wish for, or try to get, other children’s.”

Birdie promised he would never “do such a bad behavior,” which was a favorite expression of his, and then asked to hear more of the story.

“Well, when night came, King Winter started out, with all of his fairies. Some were armed with the clubs they had beaten off the leaves with, and others had lumps of ice to throw at their enemies; but the king had been so angry all day that he had not told them what to do, and had left their sharp spears locked up. He wrapped himself in his great white cloak of swan’s-down, that he might look very grand; and so they went on their way.

“King Frost lived on the other side of the wood, and he had heard all the noise made by the Winter-fairies, in spoiling the trees, and had seen, the next morning, the mischief they had done. It made him very sorry to find the beautiful leaves all knocked off and taken away, and he determined to punish King Winter for his mean and wicked conduct, by going to attack his palace, that very night.

“He spent the day, making ready for battle, dressing himself and his servants in shining coats of ice-armor, and giving each one several spears and darts of ice, tipped with sharp diamond-points, so that they looked like brave little soldiers.

“The two armies met in the midst of the great wood; and after some words between the kings, their servants fell to blows, and a great battle they had. The Winter-fairies fought with their clubs, and threw lumps of ice at their enemies; but their clubs were weak from being used so roughly the night before, and soon broke; and when their ice-balls were all thrown away, they could find no more. But King Frost had armed his servants well, and they threw their sharp darts among the Winter-fairies, and dashed at them with their spears, wounding a great many. The trees, too, seemed to fight against the cruel fairies; the bare twigs pulled their hair, and scratched their eyes; and the branches tripped them up, and thumped them well, whenever they could. So the Winter-fairies had the worst of it, as those who fight in a bad cause always do; and at last they started off full speed, and rushed through the wood, never stopping until they got back to the palace, and shut themselves in,—leaving their king, who was too proud to run, all alone with his enemies. You may be sure they were not very merciful, but all rushed at the mean old fellow at once. Some threw darts at him; others tried to trip him up; and a host of the little things began to pull at his cloak, screaming out, ‘Give us your cloak to keep our trees warm! You stole their pretty leaves: you must give us your cloak!’

“Now this was a magic cloak, and had been given to King Winter by the queen of the fairies; so, when he felt his enemies pulling at it, he wrapped it tightly around him, and began to run. After him flew his foes, pulling and plucking at his great white cloak, snatching out a bit here and there, and laughing and shouting, while King Winter howled and roared, and rushed along, not knowing where he went. On, on, they flew, up and down the wood, in and out among the trees,—their way marked by the scattered bits of white down from the king’s cloak. It was not until day began to dawn that King Winter found himself near his own palace, when, in despair, he dashed his tattered cloak to the ground, and rushed through the gate, shaking his fist at King Frost.

“He and his fairies took the cloak as a prize; and as they went home through the wood, they hung beautiful wreaths of the white down on all the trees, and also trimmed the branches with their broken spears and darts, which shone like silver in the sunlight, and made the wood look as bright, almost, as before it had been robbed of its golden and ruby leaves. Even the ground was covered with shining darts and white feathers; and every one thought it very beautiful, and very wonderful, and could not tell how it happened.”

“But how did you know all about it, mamma?” said Birdie, very earnestly.

“O, a little bird told me,” said his mother, smiling; “and I thought you would like to hear it. But now we must get ready for breakfast, my boy, and afterwards we can take a look at the ‘white feathers’ on the grass, and see if they will do to make you a cloak.”

“I don’t believe they will,” said Birdie, “but they might do to make a cushion for my little chair.”

And sure enough, after breakfast, Birdie brought in a pan-full of the feathers, and tried to make a cushion, and was very much surprised to find them “run away”; but his father soon came to take him on a sleigh-ride, and then he was perfectly happy, and talked all the way about King Winter.

Margaret T. Canby.

I must begin the story of my pet by describing the Tern family, of which he was a member.

The tern, or sea-swallow, is a large and graceful sea-fowl that frequents the shores of New England during the summer. It is frequently confounded with the gull, from its general appearance, but it is neither so large, so clumsy, nor so voracious. The tern, when full grown, presents a beautiful arrangement of color. The head is black, the back gray; the breast and the lining of the wings are pure white, while the bill and legs are of a bright orange-color. It breeds upon rocks, or small, uninhabited islands, and gets its food on the wing, soaring for hours over the water, ready to seize the fry that come to the surface in endeavoring to escape from the blue-fish below. Woe to the unlucky individual who, in his eagerness to avoid one enemy, falls a prey to the other, for as he jumps out of the water the tern swoops upon him, and, after dropping him once or twice to get him head foremost, swallows him in an instant. The fishermen generally know where the blue-fish is running by seeing where the tern is flying. I have often wondered how, between such lively assailants, the poor fry exist at all.

It was on the pleasant sea-shore at ——, one day in July, that some boys returned from an excursion after birds’ eggs, bringing with them a great many specimens, among which was a tern’s egg just ready to be hatched. We could hear the little creature chirping inside; and a naturalist who was present, with a rap on the shell, summoned him into the world. After everybody had looked at him, a little girl whom I shall call Sally wrapped him up carefully in cotton, and carried him to the kitchen to be kept warm by the fire. There it cried at intervals all day, with nothing to eat, except when a compassionate servant would stuff some bread down its throat Little Sally, at last remembering her charge, brought him to me, to show me how pretty he was, and we admired together his delicate color, and soft puffy down, and pitied his little open mouth crying to be filled. Just then Tom Hinckley, the boatman, came in with some fresh fish and crabs, and we thought we would give the little bird some crab. To the great delight of Sally, he ate several bits off the point of a pin, shut up his mouth with satisfaction, and settled himself to sleep in the palm of my hand, with the most perfect confidence. Of course I could not resist that mute appeal, and held him carefully all the evening. But at last the time came for me to go to my own rest; and what was I to do with the bird? I resolved to make him a nice little bed, near my own, and feed him again in the morning. But once having felt the comfort of a warm hand, he would not stay in his basket; he kept putting his head out and trying to get near me; so, in despair, I wrapped him up in a pocket-handkerchief and kept him on my arm all night. He lay perfectly still until dawn, when he awoke very hungry, and cried out imperatively to be fed. Of course I rose with all speed, fed my noisy guest with some crab I had kept for the purpose, and then retired to take a comfortable nap; but at the end of an hour he was hungry again, and more vociferous, if possible, than before; so that I attempted no more naps that morning.

This was the first day of the little tern, and for many more days I fed him every hour with clam or crab, or the little fish his parents would have given him had he been with them. But I gave him so little at a time, that he did not grow much, and my friend, Professor B., the naturalist, thought I should not succeed in raising him, and advised a more generous allowance. Accordingly I let him eat as much as he would, and in a short time began to see a great improvement. At first he looked so much like a young chicken that I called him “Chicky,” from the resemblance,—a name that he and everybody in the neighborhood soon knew as his; but gradually the little fawn-colored down began to be replaced by black feathers on the head, gray on the back, and white on the breast; and we watched their growth from the little sheaths with the greatest interest. He was my constant companion, either sitting on my hand, or asleep in my pocket, or running about on the grass where I sat. Every sort of thing was done for his pleasure. Little Sally and I would walk down to the beach with him and try to make him catch sandflies; or we would sit in the shade and let him run in and out of a dish of water placed in the grass. Sometimes we would put small eels and minnows in it, which he would catch and swallow with great delight; this being, as we thought, good practice for his future living. At another time, for his amusement, we took him down to the beach with us when we went to bathe, and put him in the sea. He swam perfectly well, but followed me about just as a little tin duck follows the magnet in the water, and seemed very much frightened. I suppose his mother would have been more judicious, and would have taken him to the sea only when he could fly over it.

Chicky had now for some time learned to stay in a box all night; and he soon began to feed himself. I cut up fish for him in pieces about as long as the fry, his natural food, and he would help himself. This was a great relief; for I had been obliged to take him with me wherever I went. Sometimes, on a day’s excursion in a yacht, he would be rather troublesome. Now I could leave him in a little enclosure in my room, and be sure that he would not suffer. But he used to be very glad when I returned, and at night particularly would make the softest little cooing imaginable, until the light was out. In the day time he had a louder note of recognition which he uttered whenever he heard my voice. Professor B—— thought it was different from the cries of the other terns. The Widow P——, with whom I lodged, thought his ears were sharper than hers; for she often only knew of my approach by hearing Chicky’s announcement.

During all this time, of course, Chicky had not the use of his wings; but they were growing, nevertheless, and the first intimation he gave of their being nearly ready was by beginning at sunrise to practise flying. This performance was accompanied by a good deal of noise and flapping, and waked me up much too early, so that I was fain to promote him to a large empty attic, of which he had the sole use. Here he hopped up and down assiduously, till he could bear himself on his wings, and, after a week’s labor, made a flight all around the attic. O, how proud he was! When I came up to see him, he would show off his accomplishment, and, alighting at my feet, would stretch himself up to his full height, with a bridling of the neck at me, as much as to say, “I am not indebted to you for this.” Very often, as I sat there with my work, he would come in a more gentle humor, and lie down on the skirt of my dress, as quietly as a kitten.

But this unsuitable companionship was to come to an end, for I had determined as soon as he was able to fly, to take him back to his native island. An anxious look-out was therefore kept up for several days for wind and tide, until at last both were favorable. Tom Hinckley, the boatman, brought our little yacht to the pier. Chicky’s particular friends were invited to be of the party, and that hero himself, in a box, with a good store of fish, was brought on board. An hour’s sail brought us to the island, and we were landed on the beach, one by one,—Chicky and I last of all. I uncovered the box, took Chicky out, and let him escape into the air. O, how lightly he flew! how he soared to and fro far above my head among the other terns! “Ah!” said I, to myself, “he is making friends with them; he will go with them to-morrow to their feeding-place, and will learn to take care of himself.” A pang of regret that I should never know him again, among so many birds, passed through my heart, but still I thought how happy he would be,—how he would enjoy his freedom and his fellows. Every now and then he would come down from his height and alight near me. I tried to make him feed on some of the fish I had brought, but he was too happy and too excited to eat. He would rest a little while and then fly away again.

It was now late in the afternoon. Our friends had wandered about the island till they were tired, and it was time to think of going home. I deferred as long as I could the decisive moment of leaving. How dreadful it would be, thought I, if I had brought the bird back too soon, and he should be unable to find food. I imagined the other young terns all carefully tended by their parents, and he, all forlorn, reproaching the only one he had known with her cruel desertion! These dismal reflections almost induced a change of determination; but my turn having come to be rowed to the yacht, and Chicky having taken a flight upwards, I was ashamed to declare it, and we soon after set sail. I watched him flying among the other terns till we were so far from the island I could not distinguish him, and then turned my eyes away. We were sailing along at a beautiful rate, when somebody exclaimed, “There is a bird following us! It must be your tern.” I could scarcely believe my eyes. Fast as we were going, he gained upon us; nearer and nearer he came, and at last hovered over our heads, trying to alight. We called to Tom Hinckley to alter our course, and presently we put up our hands and took him in. Dear little fellow! he was wiser than I thought, and was not going to give up his best friend so easily. So we welcomed him back, and he nestled down in his box contentedly, as if he were at home. I was glad to busy myself over him to conceal my tears,—for this mute confession of orphanhood had touched me nearly; and, as I raised my head again, I saw that other eyes than mine were wet. Indeed, we were all quite subdued from one cause or another, and the sail home was very quiet.

As the yacht tacked into the pretty harbor of Wood’s-Hole, I no longer felt afraid of losing my bird, and let him out of his box again. Away he went into the air, but returned to me now and then, to the great wonder of everybody who had not heard of the adventure. As I thought he must be hungry, I took him to his attic that night that he might feed and sleep well after so much excitement. The next morning at daylight I opened the window and put him out,—then retired to my room till the usual hour of rising. When I had dressed, quite curious to know what had become of Chicky, I drew the curtain and looked out. Chicky was seated on a fish-car that was floating in the water just below my windows. He saw me instantly, and, uttering his usual cry of recognition, flew up to the house, fluttering his wings, and crying with all the energy of an empty stomach. I must confess I felt rather dismayed that he had not employed those two valuable hours in getting his breakfast; but I made the best of it, and called to Tom Hinckley to get one more fish for the bird. He swallowed several large pieces with great avidity, and with the last in his mouth flew back to his seat on the car. There he settled himself comfortably, while I went to break my own fast, and to deliberate with my friends upon the future training of the tern.

A unanimous verdict was given, that no more fish should be furnished to Chicky, that he might be forced to seek it for himself. But as we lingered at the breakfast-table, his voice came loud and determined, as he flew about the house, calling for me. As I came out, he hovered about me, and accompanied me to my lodgings, where he perched on the fence and awaited his food. I made several ineffectual attempts to refuse him, but he was so persevering that I was finally weak enough to yield, and there was an end to discipline that day, and a dangerous precedent established. Night came, and I wondered what he would do for a sleeping-place. After a good deal of disturbed feeling on account of the lateness of people in coming home with their boats, he selected a stake in the water to which a boat was moored, and roosted there all night. There were a dozen other stakes, but he invariably took that one at night, while the fish-car he preferred for the day,—both of them being within sight of the two houses I was chiefly in. Whenever I went from one to the other, he noticed it by his peculiar cry, unless he happened to be dozing. Sometimes he would fly up and join me in a walk, and at any time would come if I called him.

One day the brilliant thought occurred to me, that, if I went down to the pier and threw Chicky’s pieces of fish into the water, and let him dive for them, he would learn to feed himself by that hint. Chicky was flying about; and at a propitious moment I threw in the fish. He saw it instantly, dived, and brought it up in perfect style; then he made a great circle all round the harbor, and, coming back, caught another and another, until he had had enough. Then, when he was hungry again, I took him to the great harbor, where great numbers of terns were flying all day, that he might see them feed. He saw, indeed, but did not apprehend. My long and patient walks resulted in nothing but an excellent appetite on his part.

What I should have done in this extremity but for the faithful services of Tom Hinckley, I know not. He came every morning at six o’clock to put the boats in order; but would first take a fish out of the car and bring it to my door all ready for use. Chicky soon understood what he was doing, and would sit on a post and watch him prepare the fish with great interest. Once or twice some boys went into the shallow water near the shore and drove up the little fry where they could catch them for Chicky. He was so much pleased with this attention that he would alight on their heads and go along with them. Indeed, he became so lazy that on our excursions he would often sit perched on my hat rather than fly. He had an excellent memory for any enjoyable morsel he had once eaten. Upon those occasions when I was endeavoring to starve him into getting a living, he would go begging wherever he had been fed with the fry he was so fond of, and would sit on the chimneys of houses where he had been acceptably entertained, and look down into the yard to see if there was anything good to be had. He made such a noise at my own door to announce himself, that I used to be quite ashamed of him; but I had a fortunate ally in my hostess,—a widow woman of a misanthropic turn of mind,—who took to Chicky as a relief from the baseness of her fellow-creatures in general. She was always sitting in her front parlor knitting, and was ready to go to the door to wait upon our domestic tyrant whenever he chose to call. Indeed, there was so much of the bird in the Widow P——’s appearance that it suggested a kind of affinity between Chicky and herself. She had the same excellent appetite, and made the same unqualified demands upon the patience of her friends. However this may be, she was never impatient with his hourly visits, and her voice even took on a tone of hopefulness when addressed to him.

The long, pleasant summer was now drawing to a close, and it was time for me to think of leaving the sea-shore. But I still lingered, in hopes that Chicky would take to his own kind and follow the terns which were departing southward. No such instinct, however, seemed to exist in his breast; he saw them go with the greatest indifference, and sat all day on the car, basking in the sun and rocked by the water. He never seemed to fly for the pleasure of it. If he visited the masts of vessels lying in the harbor, it was in the hope of getting something to eat; if he followed little Sally and me in the boat, he would rest on the oars whenever we did; we would have to tip him over when we were ready to go on. I began to acknowledge to myself that he was a spoilt bird, and felt all the more tenderness for him on account of the unfortunate incompleteness of his education. But what more could I have done? I had attempted everything for his imitation but flying, and that was manifestly out of the question.

It was late in September, when, one morning, I awoke to find a stiff gale blowing from the southeast. I looked out of the window, but saw no Chicky. The waves were dashing over his car. Evidently he had attempted to rise from the water to our house, but on coming above the steep bank which had sheltered him from the violence of the wind, he had been unable either to alight or to go back, and was probably driven across the narrow peninsula to the north shore. I went out frequently in the course of the day to look for him, and once saw him high up in the air, trying to fly against the wind and descend near me; but it was impossible. He was blown backward more rapidly than he could advance, and took refuge again on the sheltered side. Toward night the wind was less violent, and I saw him trying to get back to the harbor. I ran down the bank to meet him; but somehow he could not manage to alight either on his roost or on the pier. I called him to me on a pile of sea-weed; and as he approached, I saw that he had met with some injury, and that his leg was broken. I took him up in my hand, carried him to the house, and put him in his attic. The Widow P—— shook her head prophetically: she was too much accustomed to misfortune not to recognize its approach at once. “No good could never come to nobody in her house,” expressed the very negative of hope. But though there was a deep wound in his breast, I would not be discouraged. I made him as comfortable as I could, fed him, and left him for the night. We wondered much who could have dealt so unkindly with him. The Widow P—— thought it was “one of her enemies”; but the next day we found it was an unconscious stranger who was digging clams. Seeing a handsome bird flying close to him, he thought it would be a good chance to kill him, and struck him with his hoe. Then first observing how tame he was, he was afraid he had done mischief, and let him go. Poor Chicky was begging for a clam, if the man had only known it!

In spite of the Widow P——’s gloomy predictions, Chicky began very soon to show the effects of good nursing. As his appetite was excellent, and he was well supplied with food, there seemed to be nothing in the way of his recovery, and before long he was able to stand on his leg again. Just at this time it became necessary for me to go to the neighborhood of Boston, and again Chicky’s fate hung in the balance. Should I leave him behind to be stolen and carried off, or to be shot for a “specimen,” or, if he escaped these dangers, to get an uncertain and ignominious living by begging? No. I could not bear the thought that a bird which had been so regally brought up should come to such an end. So I resolved to take him with me, and have him cared for until I should be settled for the winter, and able to do it myself. I accordingly put him in a small bandbox, which I could carry in my hand, and brought him safely on the long railroad journey to ——, where there was a person on whom I could rely to feed him during my absence in the country. Unfortunately there was no empty room or attic for him to fly in, and he was put in a cage before a pleasant window that looked out upon a river. As soon as I got back, I was going to let him fly out, and learn to go to and from his new home.

At the end of a week I returned; but how sad was the reply that greeted my ear as I inquired for Chicky! During the whole time of my absence he had called for me incessantly, had refused his food, and only at night seemed to have any rest. As I went up to his cage he uttered a feeble cry of recognition, and when I took him in my hand crouched upon it as if he were glad to be near me. I held him thus a long time, smoothing his feathers and caressing him, when, surprised at his quietness, I looked more closely, and found that my little darling was dying. In vain I tried to recall him to life; the ineffable force that had animated him was beyond my reach, and in a few moments he was gone!

And so the story of my little tern is told. I shall never know, of course, whether I did well or ill in bringing him away from the sea. He had three happy months of existence, and gave three months of amusement and occupation to me. I dedicate this little record of them to his memory, and hope it may give some pleasure, and perhaps instruction, to young lovers of natural history.

M. D. F.

II.

It is the end of October, but Old Ireland’s fields are green; for, though the landscape is destitute of forests, and the hedges which impart such an air of beauty to the soil of England are replaced by stone walls and ditches,—notwithstanding all this, the exceeding greenness of the entire turf makes large amends. Nothing more quickly arrests the eye of the traveller than the striking difference in the character of the dwellings and the methods of cultivation that meet his view, especially when taken in connection with the singular fact, that the most fertile portions of the soil present the poorest dwellings and the most meagre crops, while upon the steep and stony hillsides, the cold, broken, and less fertile lands, both the tenements and the crops are of a far superior quality. In those portions inhabited by the Irish are fields which have been cropped with oats and planted with potatoes, till the soil is so exhausted that it will bear no longer, when it is left to itself to spring up in weeds, briers, and nettles. Heaps of earth serve for fences, with a furze-bush stuck in a gap for a gate. Some of these cabins are made by merely building up three mud walls against the bank of a ditch, laying on some poles for a roof, and covering them with sods and potato-tops, and look for all the world like an overgrown dunghill. But the cottages of the English and Scotch offer a strong contrast. Most of them are built of wood or stone, but even when constructed of earth, as many of them are, present a very different appearance. These are formed by setting four posts in the ground, at the corners, a frame for the door, and others for windows. Around this frame the walls are built with clay and chopped straw, two feet thick. Instead of a hole in the roof to let out the smoke, as in the Irish cabins, there is a stone or brick chimney, and the roof is well thatched with straw, and tight. There is always a little spot enclosed for a garden, and often bees in straw hives. The pigs and cattle, though permitted to run about the door in the daytime, are confined in their hovels at night. In all the cottages of the Scotch quarter may be heard the hum of the wheel, and the stroke of the weaver’s beam, while linen, yarn, and webs of cloth of all degrees of whiteness contrast pleasantly with the emerald hue of the turf.

It was past the middle of the afternoon of a Saturday, when a young man of apparently twenty-three years, with a carpenter’s axe flung over his shoulder, evidently returning from his week’s work, and good-humoredly exchanging greetings with those he met, or who sat smoking at their cottage doors, might be seen ascending an abrupt elevation, commanding a large extent of territory occupied entirely by Scotch. Its summit was crowned with a fortress of massive stone, rough from the quarry, and, though without any pretensions to architectural beauty or ornament, of vast strength, the walls being seven feet in thickness. The house was built upon the edge of a cliff jutting into a bog, at the base of which flowed a brook of dark-colored water, which by a circuitous path reached the river Bann. Being built to the very edge of the little promontory, it was thus naturally impregnable on two sides. The narrow slits in the walls had been evidently loopholes for musketry, while in the larger apertures that served for windows were the stumps of iron gratings long since rusted off. From the front proceeded two angles which were also loopholed, and commanded the principal entrance, the door of which was of oak studded with iron bolts. In the original plan of the house, the whole ground-floor had been devoted to the storage of provisions and the reception of cattle in case of siege, while the upper story was the residence of the family and garrison, and was reached by a flight of steps formed by the projecting stones of the walls. The lower part, or keep, had been lighted only by loopholes, while the upper rooms were airy, and had large windows, which had once been grated, and were still fitted with strong oaken shutters, studded, like the door, with iron. In addition to this was an extensive court-yard, surrounded by a wall of great height and thickness, enclosing the hovels of the cattle, and a fine spring, which welled out from the side of the hill, and whose surplus water, pouring through a narrow and grated aperture in the wall, ran down the sides of the declivity to the bog beneath. All along the course of this rill, which, owing to the steepness of the descent, ran with considerable force, were several little dams made by children in their play, and at the lower dam, which was made of stones and turf, much more capacious than the others, and in the construction of which they had evidently been aided by older hands, was a sluice-way of wood, in which was a little water-wheel whirling with great velocity. Around this were assembled a group of children, who, with their legs bare to the knees, waded into the pond, filled up the sluice with turf, till the wheel stopped, and then, suddenly pulling it away, set up a great shout, and clapped their hands in glee, as the wheel began to turn faster than ever.

The young man to whom we have referred had now nearly gained the summit of the hill, and was fast approaching the house. This was Hugh McLellan, the son of Hugh, the present occupant of the estate. Under ordinary circumstances, as he was naturally light-hearted, he would have been whistling a lively tune to beguile the road as he returned from his labor; for he was a ship-carpenter, and had been all the week at work in a neighboring seaport. His father having given him his time at nineteen, he had by industry and prudence been gradually saving a little, and had been married nearly two years to Elizabeth McLellan. Her parents having died when she was a child, she had been adopted by a wealthy uncle, who, having escaped the misfortunes which befell the other branches of his family, had retained the broad lands of his forefathers. Though of the same name, they were but very distantly, if at all, related. Her uncle, offended that she had married a poor man and a mechanic, disinherited her. But Elizabeth, with a nobler pride, instead of sighing over her trials and making herself miserable by dwelling upon her past prosperity, set herself to learn all kinds of domestic work, that she might fit herself to be a helpmeet to the poor man she had married because she loved him, and, going into the family with Hugh’s parents,—for her uncle had turned her out of doors,—excelled in a short time every member of the family in the very labors to which they had been always accustomed, but which were new to her. Impelled by her strong affection for her husband and offspring, there was no drudgery she could not cheerfully undertake and carry through.

“I may, as they tell me,” said Elizabeth, with equal good sense and piety, “have married below my degree, a poor man, but I have married the man I loved, and that loves me, and that has the property in himself,—one that is a God-fearing man and dutiful to his parents. There is a promise to such, and I have no fear but we shall get along.”

Elizabeth was at this time from home, having taken their babe William, and gone on a visit to a relative.

Although, as we have said, the young man was naturally of a fearless, merry, hopeful nature, his features were now clouded with care; and his step, instead of quickening, became more measured as he approached home, as though he expected some unpleasant news or meeting. There was, indeed, enough in the state of the country and its population to render both old and young thoughtful and anxious. At the beginning of the reign of George II., the nation labored under burdens that nearly destroyed agriculture and repressed all incitement to industry, and the distress among the laboring class was terrible. The woollen manufactures were so depressed that thousands of people had to beg their bread, and hundreds starved to death. In respect to the North of Ireland, the most prosperous part of the country, Primate Boulter thus writes to the Duke of Newcastle: “We have now had three bad harvests together, which has made oat-meal, the great subsistence of the people, dearer than ever.” His Grace then complains of American agents seducing the people with prospects of happier establishments across the Atlantic, and adds, “They have been better able to seduce people of late by reason of the necessities of the poor.” The Primate then assures the Duke that thirty-one hundred had in the preceding summer gone to the West Indies, and that there were then seven ships lying at Belfast, which were carrying off about a thousand passengers; and “the worst of it is, that it affects only Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North, the seat of our linen manufactures.” The Dissenters also at this time presented a memorial in respect to tithes, as the cause of the emigration. It was the pressure of these calamities that subdued the naturally buoyant temper of the young man, and chastened his step; for he had that day finished his season’s work, and knew not, with winter approaching, where to look for more.

As he drew near the threshold, he was espied by one of the little folks who had come to the front of the house in search of turf for the dam, and who, raising the joyful cry, “Hugh has come!” soon brought the whole troop around him. The tallest endeavored to reach his face to kiss him, at the imminent risk of cutting themselves with the sharp axe; others clung to his legs or inserted their hands in his pockets in search of expected and promised presents, while the last comer, seeing little prospect of securing even a finger, set off for the house, screaming at the top of his voice, “Father and mother, Hugh has come!” The shade of sadness on his countenance gave way to a bright smile as the children, some holding by the fingers and others clasping him by the leg, all insisted that he should not stir a step towards the house till he had seen the water-wheel he made for them go. Besides, Aunt Elizabeth was gone away with the baby.

“Who put it in for you?” said Hugh, as, upon receiving this assurance, he put down his axe, and, lifting the youngest to his shoulder, prepared to go with the children, who, delighted, went frisking along and hugging each other in the path before him.

“Father put it in for us,” said the eldest boy. “He didn’t know as he could do it, because he was busy trying to get his piece out of the loom before Sabbath day; but we got mother to coax him for us, and he found time, and he has got his piece all but out. He will have it out by supper-time. Mother has been helping him. But only see,” he exclaimed, pointing to a great stack of weeds, broom, and potato haulm,—“see what a sight of weeds Andrew and I have brought this week; we brought them all on a barrow.”

“No, you didn’t do it all,” cries the little fellow on Hugh’s shoulder; “for Jean and I pulled a lot of them.”

These weeds, where wood was so scarce, were burnt, and the ashes used to bleach the linen thread.

Leaving Hugh to accompany the children, let us take a survey of the house and adjacent lands. When we say that the abodes of the Protestant settlers presented a striking contrast to those of the Irish, both as to comfort and tidiness of appearance, we would not be understood to imply anything like the comfort or culture pertaining to the same class at the present day, but merely relatively; for there can be no good husbandry where the time of the farmer is divided between his land and his loom, as was the custom at that period. When the mere, or wild Irish as they were called, were driven out by James I., and their lands given to Scotch and English settlers, they retired to inaccessible forests and bogs with their cattle, where they bred, and from time to time made attacks upon those who occupied the lands from which they had been driven. Hence the old soldiers and Scotch from the border counties and marches, who had been accustomed to contend with the moss-troopers and the Highland caterans, and of whom the Irish entertained a salutary dread, were planted on the strong and elevated lands that commanded the defiles and roads by which they made their irruptions. Sir Hugh McLellan had received from the crown a grant of fifteen hundred acres, and erected the building we have described as both dwelling and fortress, and here his descendants continued to dwell through the revolutions of that ruthless period,—at one time following their superiors to the field as true liegemen to the king, at others contending for life and goods with the Irish kernes. Three times had the old house been sacked and burnt, but the thick walls of whinstone, resisting all violence, had been as often built upon,—till, in 1649, the family, taking up arms with others for Charles, were deprived of their lands by Cromwell, and driven into Connaught. When the Restoration came, there were so many new claimants for lands that a compromise was made, and portions only of forfeited estates restored, upon which the family again returned to their possessions, though greatly curtailed, and these, through the expense of living and the misfortunes of the times, becoming gradually less and less, Hugh, the present incumbent, found himself, after the sale of some lands to discharge old liabilities, possessed of no more than twelve acres.

And thus, while living in a house conformable to the state and style of his ancestors, and containing the relics of other and better days, he was actually less well to do than many of the occupants of the mud cottages around him, and only by the severest toil and the most rigid economy supported his numerous family in thrift and comfort. Hugh never set himself above his neighbors on the score that his ancestors wrote Sir before their names, or refused to labor because his kindred did not; and he brought his children up in the same faith, and was respected and beloved by all the neighborhood.

“Only see,” said Hannah Brown to her gossip, Sandie Wilson, as they were returning from kirk, “what airs these McLeans do give themselves, just because they’ve got a little of this world’s gear, while there is the McLellans, that everybody kens is a real auld family, never appear to know it; but that’s the way with your real gentry. And there is Elizabeth, Hugh’s wife, that was brought up a real lady, out washing her linen at the brook, and scouring flax just like the rest of us, and singing at her work as though she had not been turned out of doors and lost a great fortune.”

Hugh, having satisfied the desires of the children, and escorted by them, now enters the house. The great oaken table, at which a company of soldiers might be seated, stands in the middle of the floor, where, indeed, it is a fixture. In a corner of the huge fireplace sits the mother, a comely woman of five-and-forty, at her flax-wheel, who greets her son with an appearance of great affection, which is as warmly returned. The father now appears from another room,—a tall, strongly built, grave-looking man, his clothes and beard covered with thrums from the loom, where he has been weaving. Alternate work in doors and out had prevented in his case that pale, sickly look that pertains to the regular weaver. On the other hand, he was far above the common size in his proportions, and manifested in every movement an elasticity and strength evidently undiminished by years. Indeed, he seemed a fit representative of those bonnie Scots whose claymores were so much the dread of the Irish in the troublous times. But his great build was still more strikingly manifested when, the stern features relaxing into a glad smile of parental affection and welcome, he approached Hugh, and, placing his hand fondly upon his shoulder, in a strong Scotch accent called him his dear bairn,—towering a whole head above him, though Hugh was a large, powerful man.

After the evening meal was finished, the children went to their beds, and the older members of the family were left together. As they sat on the great wooden settle by the turf fire, the mother, who had noticed the disturbed and absent air of her son, inquired if he had heard any bad news during the week, and what made him so downcast.

“Mother,” he replied, “there is no news except bad news: there is but one thing talked about by both gentle and simple, and that is the hard times. There is no work to be had now, and they say it will be worse. I heard to-day that in Mitchelster four people had starved to death, and were found dead in the fields with only a little grass in their stomachs. They were reapers, who had been over to England in hopes to get harvest work, but found little, had to beg while there, and starved to death on the way home. I finished my season’s work to-day, and know not where to look for more, and,” continued he, laying his hand upon his father’s knees, and looking him full in the face, “I have been seriously thinking of going to America; but I shall take no step without your advice and free consent, nor go without your blessing.”

At this abrupt communication, the mother’s wheel stopped, and she buried her face in her apron. The elder children fixed their eyes eagerly upon their father, who, with an emotion he in vain strove to conceal, sat gazing into the face of his son. An intense painful stillness pervaded the room. Feeling that he was expected to break the silence, he at length said, though with a tremor in his voice that betrayed the severity of the struggle within: “Hugh, you have been an industrious, God-fearing boy, and a dear good son to your mother and me. I know you have not come to this decision without prayer; and whatever you may decide to do, I make no doubt you will have the blessing of Him who hath said, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’ ”

At this implied assent, the mother sobbed aloud. The father’s voice trembled, but, recovering himself, he continued with a firmer tone. “You are a young man, and naturally look forward to a settlement in life,—a home and land that you can call your own. These can never be yours in this country. Although, by the blessing of God, we are not in danger of absolute want, yet we are sorely taxed by government, and compelled to support a worship opposed to our consciences. We are harassed by Catholics, Independents, and the Established Church, and between these many mill-stones seem likely to be ground to powder. If you remain, the little you have hardly earned and prudently saved will be eaten up, and then, should times continue hard, you will no longer have the means to go. When I was a child, men began to go to America; many that grew up with me went; none of them have ever returned, although many of them are able to if they wish, for we hear of their prosperity from their relatives here. Some of them own hundreds of acres, who, if they had stayed here, would have lived in a mud hovel, worked out by the day, been buried by the parish, and left no better inheritance to their children after them. It is possible there for a poor man, with nothing but his hands, to own the land he tills; here it is not possible. My thoughts have been a great deal on it as I have sat at my loom, and I doubt not, had I gone there at your age, with all these boys and girls, and worked one half as hard as I have here, it would have been far better for myself and my children. Not that I would complain, having food and raiment while others are starving around me. Therefore, my son, though children are very near, and my heart aches at the thought of separation, yet you may be sure that, in whatever you do, you will have a father’s blessing.”

He could not bring himself to tell his son he had better go. Hugh crossed over to where his mother, who had been silent during all this conversation, sat beside her wheel, and, putting his arm tenderly around her neck, said, “Mother, don’t cry so; I will never go without your free consent.”

“You never disobeyed me, Hugh,” she replied; “nor will you now, for I shall not withhold my consent, nor will you go without my blessing. Surely I never harbored a thought but for your good; still, it is a sore thing for a mother to part with a son, (for we are not so strong in these things as men are,) and to put the wide ocean between her and the child she has nursed on her bosom. But what does Elizabeth say to your purpose?”

“She does not know it, for it is only within the week that I have seriously thought of it. But from what I heard her say when some of her kindred went three years agone, and at other times since, I judge that she will be more for it than myself.”

“She has no father or mother, brothers or sisters, to leave behind; none nearer of kin than her uncle, who turned her out of his house and heart for loving you. She was, I think, but ten years old when her mother died; her father was killed by the Irish kernes in ’98, not an arrow-flight from this door. I was a bit lassie then, but I mind it well. It was not a thing to forget. He was brought in all bloody, and laid on this very settle. He groaned once and died. The blood ran from him into the fireplace. Your grandfather was alive then. He was an old soldier and a terrible man with the claymore, and when the wild Irish got between him and the gate, he cut his way through them into the court-yard. All the Protestants fled here for refuge, and I came with my parents.”

“But how is it, Hugh,” said the father, “that you have never mentioned this to us before, and now seem to have made up your mind at once?”

“I have long been thinking of it, father, ever since I knew Elizabeth, and thought of making her my wife, and of having a home of my own,—which I well knew, as you have said, I could never have here. But I thought it would be a hard blow to mother and you, and I kept my thoughts to my own breast, and there they have been smouldering just like these turfs on the fire, and perhaps would have died out just from pure dislike to mention it to you; but the times coming so hard, and my work failing, brought it all up anew. I finished my job last night, and this morning received my wages. Feeling rather sad that I had no other work in prospect, I went to Maggie McDonald’s, that keeps the Stag’s Head, to break my fast, and take a glass of beer; and there I found her house full of good, well-to-do Scotch people from the county of Cavan, lads and lasses and auld people, with little children, and they were bound to Belfast to sail for America. And they showed me letters they had from their kindred there, which said that you could buy a farm for the price of an acre here; that in many places you could have land for the settling; that there were no Irish or prelatists, but the people were all Protestants, and they were so far away that the government permitted them to do much as they pleased; that though the winters were cold, fuel was abundant, and the soil fruitful; that there was plenty of game in the woods and fish on the shores, for there were no dukes or earls to make game-laws; that if any one didn’t have money to buy land, they could have work enough from the other planters till they earned something for themselves; that although they had to work hard, and suffer some the first few years, they soon became independent, whereas when they were here it was dependence and suffering all the time, with no prospect of change. Now me feeling so down-like, it just stirred up the auld fire, and I have thought of nothing else since. But,” he continued, with the caution of a canny Scot, “perhaps I have thought of it ower much, and things are not as they are painted. The tree that blossoms does not always bear; and I might come to rue the day I stretched out my hand farther than I could draw it back again. But I knew it would not be thus with you, and I determined to be guided by those who had experience, whose heads were cool, and whom it is my bounden duty to obey.”

“Well, Hugh,” replied the father, “your fathers left bonnie Scotland, and the auld kirk, and kith and kin, and came here to fight with the wild Irish, that they might plant religion here, and have a home and lands of their own, and they got them; and had it not been for their loyalty to their king, which is no sin to be repented of, their children would have possessed them still. Thus you seem to be ganging the auld gait that they travelled before ye. You must make up your mind for hardship; and sure I am that the savages we hear so much about can be no worse than the wild Irish, by whom so many of your family were murdered in ’41, in the great rebellion. But it’s time we were sleeping, for to-morrow is the Sabbath of the Lord. Get the good book, and let us look to Him without whose blessing nothing prospers.” He then read the passage that records Jacob’s vow, and remarked: “You will go as poor as the patriarch, my son, but you go as he did, with your parents’, and I hope with God’s blessing. I trust, if He should prosper you in the land you seek, that, like father Jacob, you will not be unmindful of Him who gives us all and is over all.”

When Hugh, upon her return, proposed the plan to Elizabeth, she gave her consent without a moment’s hesitation. “It is but little we have to fear,” she said, “if we only have our health, and God’s blessing, and there is One above we must look to for that. Besides your family and a few others it is little I have to make me regret to leave this lawless land, where it is always a plague, a rebellion, or a famine. There can be no worse than this, where my father was killed, and my mother soon followed him from a broken heart. If we go, I never expect to see the day I shall not pity those whom we leave behind. Besides, when there I am washing my linen at the brook, or doing any work, I shall not have my uncle’s daughters come strolling by, tossing their haughty heads, as much as to say, See what you have come to by marrying below your degree.”

This was the only time during her whole life that she ever betrayed that she felt the altered position in which her marriage had placed her; but though she was cheerful as a lark about her work, and probably sang the loudest when her uncle’s daughters came by, yet it was too much for poor human nature to endure without inwardly writhing under it. It seems strange to the casual reader, that, in a country so miserably poor as Ireland, marriages should be so frequent and so early. But this grows out of the improvident character of the people, the little reluctance they feel to beggary, and the facility with which the bare means of existence and shelter are procured, and that state of mind which looks and aspires to nothing higher. They go before the priest, and then by the side of some ditch they pile up some mud and stones, and collect furze and sticks to hold up and cover the roof. They then get a pig and go to housekeeping, their only furniture a broken pot. They hire out with the next landlord, if hands are wanted, if not, beg and steal, and thus, with scarce more of expense than a fox or otter, they find a den in which to shelter themselves, and raise up children to pursue the same wretched existence.

But such was not the character of the pair that sat hand in hand, on a pleasant afternoon, by the graves of Elizabeth’s parents, talking over the subject more important to them than all others. They were of another race, and had received a different training. They had an ancestry, and an honorable name to maintain and emulate. They aspired, not merely to existence, a life spent in tilling the land of others, but to independence, though it be unaccompanied by wealth, and is the fruit of severe toil; and for this they were willing to risk much and to suffer much. Hugh had, on the whole, felt rather disappointed and dissatisfied at the readiness, and, as it had appeared to him at the time, almost levity with which Elizabeth had assented to his proposal that she should leave her native country and go into the wilderness to struggle, far from friends, with poverty and all the unknown trials of the emigrant. He well knew her love for him and her entire confidence in his ability and judgment, and he feared that, if she had assented upon the impulse of the moment, and without sufficiently weighing the difficulties to be encountered and from which he could not shield her, she might, when the hour of trial came, give way to corresponding depression. More especially, as he overheard his mother say at the time to his father, “Poor girl! she little knows what is before her, to take a babe into the wilderness.” But his fears were groundless, and he had yet to learn what material his wife was made of. For as no hardihood of education can infuse grit where it is wanting, so neither can luxury obliterate it when a native element of character. Elizabeth concealed under a lively temperament and exuberant spirits a keen judgment and great decision of character, with a quick temper and a generous, fearless disposition. Perfectly aware of the determination of her uncle to disinherit her if she married Hugh, she married him, and for his sake deliberately embraced to human view a life of poverty. Her keen perception of character was evinced in the declaration that she had married a man that had the property in himself, which perhaps she meant for a slur upon her uncle’s sons, who were all of small capacity, destitute of energy, and lived upon their father. From the time that she made up her mind to marry Hugh, and, as she supposed, poverty, she began to learn to work. She could now spin and weave with the best, could work in doors or out, as was the custom with women of the middle class at that time; she could reap grain and take care of flax, from the pulling to the bleaching. She was superior to the thousand superstitions of the day, and had little fear of warlocks or witches. She would put a piece into the loom, or take up a stocking, or set out on a journey, on Friday, if she wanted to, just as quick as on any other day. Though not in the least inclined to anticipate trouble, but rather to act upon the maxim, Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, she was by no means slack in expedients to avert, or resolutions to meet it when at hand.

In reply to all his efforts to make her take a more serious view of their situation, she, divining at once his apprehensions, exclaimed, giving him a kiss: “It’s no use to talk so to me, Hugh; never fear me; I am no thoughtless girl. I have seen sorrow and hardship, and expect to see more. I expect also to die. I mean to die but once. I don’t mean to die a hundred times through dread of it. That we shall meet hardships I well know. What they will be, I don’t know and I don’t care. But when they come, we shall have to meet them, and we shall find out how to do it.” Such was the character of the helpmeet Hugh took with him into the wilderness to struggle for a homestead; and if, as his mother said, she little knew what was before her, it was very evident that she feared and cared as little.

Hugh, after this attempt, made no further effort to impress her with a more serious view of their situation, except to remark that it was certainly a sad thing to leave all their relatives and friends, and go to live among strangers. “So it is indeed,” replied she, “but they will not be strangers after we come to live among them. What makes us have friends here? Because we do right, and love people, and treat them kindly; and the same kind of conduct will make friends there that made them here. Besides, does not the Bible say, that, when a man’s ways please the Lord, he will make even his enemies to be at peace with him?” It was a peculiar trait in Elizabeth’s character, that, with an implicit trust in Providence, she always strove by her own efforts to leave as little for Providence to do as possible, which often caused her husband to say that she trusted Providence when she could not help it.

The time fixed for their departure now drew near. Two ships were lying at Londonderry, for passengers. In one of these, the Eagle, Captain Gilley, they engaged passage. As the ship was to sail on Monday, many of the relatives and neighbors came in on Sabbath eve to bid the departing couple good by. While they were engaged in conversation, Elizabeth, flinging her plaid over her head, slipped out unnoticed, and in the moonlight took her way to the church-yard; for, as we have said, superstitions went for nothing with her. Here the naturally light-hearted and resolute girl, kneeling beside the graves of her kindred, sobbed aloud. Then, as though the dear departed were present to listen, she exclaimed, “O mother! I shall never, as I have always hoped to, sleep beside my father and you. I am going to a far-off land. There shall I die, and there be buried. But though I have been a wild and thoughtless girl, I have tried to serve the God you served, and the Saviour you taught me to love. God has given me a kind husband and a sweet babe, and we are going on the sea; but I believe that covenant-keeping God who, as you have so often told me, showeth mercy to the children of his saints till the third and fourth generation, will be with me there.” Then, plucking a tuft of grass from the grave, she hid it in her bosom, and rejoined the company without her absence having been observed.

Their relatives accompanied them to the place of sailing. One of the vessels was bound to the West Indies and filled with Irish; the Eagle, with Scotch. The Irish, both on board and on shore, made the air resound with their cries and lamentations. The Scotch, on the other hand, said little: a fervent grasp of the hand, a God bless you, or a silent tear, was all. The winter passage was stormy, in the small and crowded ship; and when a short time out, she sprang a leak, and they were obliged to put back. Setting sail again, they met with heavy weather, and carried away their rudder-head and foretopmast. Hugh repaired the rudder, and from a spare spar made a topmast. As they had lost two men when the topmast went, and were short-handed, he assisted in working the ship. All the worldly goods that they brought with them, besides their clothing, of which they had a good stock, were these: Elizabeth had a feather-bed, and a trammel and hooks on which to hang a pot, and Hugh had his tools. But when the ship sprang a leak they were flung overboard to lighten, with other cargo. They then had left only their clothing and provision for the passage, and ten pounds in gold, which they determined to keep to buy land, and to part with only in the last extremity. The captain was so much pleased with the conduct of Hugh in repairing damages and working the ship, that he gave him back his passage-money, and in addition made him a present of an axe, adze, and saw, from a lot of new tools which he had brought over as a venture.

Just after making the land, they spoke an outward-bound ship, whose captain told them they would not be allowed to land emigrants from Ireland at Boston, and the captain determined to run for York. The wind, that had been light and baffling all the fore part of the day, now came in strong from the south. All possible sail was made on the ship in order to force her in with the land before night. They soon made a high hill or mountain, which the captain told Hugh was Agamenticus, the ancient name of York, where they were going. As night came on, snow began to fall, mingled with rain, which, freezing as it fell, coated the decks and rigging with ice. The ship, as though instinct with life, and anxious to escape the threatening storm, flew before the wind, and was rapidly nearing the land. Our adventurers vainly strove to pierce the veil of mist which hid from their view the shores of their new home; but they could only perceive a black, undistinguishable mass, upon which the vessel seemed to be madly rushing to destruction. The weather now became rapidly worse; but as the captain was well acquainted with the coast, being a native, and there was a large moon, he determined to run in. Hugh, who had stood his watch with the crew ever since the loss of the two seamen in the gale which carried away the topmast, went below at twelve o’clock, and at three was aroused by the welcome sound of the cable running through the hawse-pipe, as the weary vessel swung quietly at her anchor in York River, where we must leave him for the present, to awake in the morning in the new world which he had chosen for his future home.

Elijah Kellogg.

It has been thought by some of the wise, that the sports and recreations in which the youth of a nation indulge have a good deal of influence on the nation itself,—that the English and Americans, for instance, have derived much of their robust and manly determination of character from their early pastimes, never wholly neglected even in manhood. I am of this opinion myself; and, as a great man once said, “If you’ll let me make the ballads of the people, you may write all the heavy books,” so I say, if you will show me what games, and with what vigor and resolution, the boys play, I will tell you what energetic disposition the men bring to their business pursuits, and what degree of freedom and prosperity their nation enjoys.

In my philosophy, it is held that fortitude and courage are essential in a man or a people; and I confidently declare to the boys who read these pages, ay, and to their parents, tutors, and pastors also, that fortitude and courage are vastly increased, if not produced, by out-of-door games and sports. Games demand vigorous exertion in the open air, with exposure to the wintry cold and the scorching summer sun. This exertion and exposure not only increase the muscles and expand the internal organs, but also fortify the resolution and strengthen the will. Every boy knows, that, for the sake of his place in the game, he has not only learned to do, but to endure. Here we are now, on skates upon the pond, or treading sole-leather at foot-ball, hockey, and the like, on the summit of a frozen hill. The wind blows keenly, and there is at first a frosty feeling in toes, fingers, and nose. Every lad here might be at home; but the game is going, and so all are here,—even the littlest lads of all, blowing into the fingers of their mittens, but never thinking of leaving for the fireside. The game goes on slowly at first; then with more animation; and then with a rush, a roar, and a clamor that overpower the angry blast, and defy the icy fingers of Jack Frost, who is outfaced by the rosy cheeks, stared out of countenance by the bold bright eyes. He cannot stand the blast of their warm breaths; and so this tyrant of the weak cuts their company, and goes off to pinch the faces of the old, and nip the toes and fingers of those who are yet too young to take part against him. So, then, these boys that have felt the icy fingers of Jack Frost at their very throats, and beaten him away, have won confidence and hardihood which never can be lost, but will endure so as to be perhaps the safeguard of their nation.

The pursuit of games, all the year round, summer as well as winter, tends to give big hearts, good, stretching lungs, and quick, strong brains. Never mind about any man’s objections. It can be proved that all the prime internal organs are greatly improved by life in the fields, the woods, and on the lakes and streams. Thus games are superior to gymnastic exercises, which are to sports what the tiresome drill of the soldier is to the rush and riot of the battle. Gymnastics will aid in the development of muscle; but what we want is not huge muscles, but good hearts and lungs and brains. Strength resides partly in muscle, no doubt; but the hardest hitter of modern times, Tom Sayers, the fighter, had a long, thin arm, and a hand that a lady’s glove would fit; so that bulk of muscle is not required even for great feats.

Good wind is a thing of immense importance in the games of youth and the exploits of after life. Well, the sports of the icy stream, the snowy field, the piece of woodland, or the summer mead, expand the lungs, and keep them sound. But, besides this, games increase the power of the heart. It is very likely some wiseacre would laugh, if he heard you say that easy breathing depended as much upon the heart as the lungs; but it is so. The trainers of race-horses have found this out; and I believe the fact that English Eclipse was ascertained after death to have a heart that weighed fourteen pounds led to it. When explained, it is easy enough to understand. The flow of the blood through the lungs to get air proceeds from the heart. If that organ sends it through with a good strong burst, it will get aerated in lungs of moderate size; if it does not send the blood on with a good stroke, lungs of the size of two air-balloons would not prevent a distressful choking-up during violent exertion. Eclipse, with his fourteen pounds of heart, and lungs of only moderate size, could “run all day, and the next day too”; and this capacity, as well as his high courage, is mainly attributed to that big heart. Skating, sliding, coasting, hare and hounds, foot-ball, hockey, cricket, base-ball, archery, etc., have a direct tendency to increase the size and force of the heart, and to fortify and strengthen the texture of the lungs. I doubt if mere gymnastics will do either, although they will aid in building up muscle. Gymnasts, although men of immense muscle for their size, very often die of consumption, and, so far as I have observed, the muscle does not begin to go until the lungs are half or three parts gone. So, if you and your elders will consider these things, you will see that the reasonable pursuit of out-door games ought to be encouraged.

There is, however, a wrong as well as a right way of carrying them on; and I shall set myself to relate the right method. In this chapter, which is merely preliminary,—a throwing up and catching of the ball before the real game begins,—I can only speak in general terms, of course. No game should be played after you are really fatigued. This does not mean that you are to quit because you may be “blown” by a long stretch at skating, or a grand rally in the mêlée or “bully” at foot-ball, or in a fine burst at hare and hounds. That is nothing, because, by moderating the speed, in a little while you will get what is called “second wind,” and then you can go on better than before. But when the muscles and moving powers are tired and complain, then do you stop: you have had enough of it. Stop now, and to-morrow you will be as fresh as a lark, after a sound sleep. Keep on longer, and your sleep will be poor; in the morning you will be stiff and sore, and unfit to join in a new game.

Another thing is, what to do, or rather what not to do, when you stop. No sitting down to rest and get cool! None of that, lads, unless you want to be laid up, and miss all the other games of the season, to say nothing of contracting rheumatic disorders that may stick to you for life. Having left off the game while you were hot, put on your clothes while still warm and perspiring. Then walk home, and if home is not a pretty good distance off, walk still farther. Having got hot out of doors, there is but one safe way to get cool again,—that is, gradually, in motion, and out of doors. I dare say that the readers of this magazine know that a race-horse, in running four-mile heats, exerts about as much power as any animal organization is capable of. He pulls up very much heated, bathed in sweat, blowing hard, and often thumping in the flanks. What does the trainer do? The horse is very hot, inside and out, just as you will be at the end of a swift and hotly contested game. He must be cooled. But how? Not suddenly, for if so, congestion and inflammation follow; and not outwardly first, for if so, similar mischiefs will arise. The first thing to be done, especially if the weather is not hot, is to wrap him up in a blanket, as soon as the saddle is removed. “O dear! that’s a curious way to cool him!” say you. But remember, the first object is the relief of the internal parts; and the keeping up of the perspiration, after the excessive exertion has ceased, soon does this. The blanket is then removed, the sweat quickly scraped away, the horse again clothed, and then walked about slowly, until quite restored to his usual condition. His breathing is now regular, and the stroke of his heart is at its ordinary rate.

You see what has been avoided in treating this race-horse? He was not stopped and exposed to the cool air at once; he was clothed, instead of being bared to the wind; he was kept in motion—moderate motion of course—until cool; he was not suffered to drink large draughts of water. When you are heated, and leave off the game, remember what was done with the horse, and why it was done, because the four-miler could probably stand as much as you can, but he cannot stand sudden chills and cold draughts outside, while red-hot, as you may say, inside.

It may be affirmed that exertion at a game never does any harm, even to boys not of robust frame, unless it be too long persisted in; but sitting, or lying down, or loafing about half clothed, while warm, after the game, involves great risk. It is also true, that, these things being attended to, there are no boys so weakly but they may take part in the games of their stronger playfellows with advantage, when in fair health. Great strength is not wanted for the sports and games of youth, but dash, hardihood, speed, and activity are. None of these depend on bulk. You will often find that the best runner and jumper, the quickest and surest catcher and the best batter at ball, is not one of the big boys, but rather small for his age,—only, being what sportsmen call “truly made” and “well-balanced,” his quickness and speed are great, and he has also a good heart and lungs. He will tire out the big, sprawling boys, in half a day’s play.

Some have not a great deal of dash and hardihood to begin with, and to such as these games are of great account. It is a give and take affair. Very little will do to begin with, and every good game played will increase these qualities. Therefore, little boys should “go in” at the first chance that offers; otherwise they might remain like those whose careful mothers never will consent that they shall go into the water because they have not learned to swim. Pluck, precision, and toughness will follow their practice, as surely as night follows day.

Look at foot-ball, which often brings the contending sides into action all together, like two armies, each struggling for possession of the ball,—one to keep it going towards the opposite goal, the other to stop it at all hazards, and bear back the tide of battle; in this the game is better than cricket or base-ball, for in those the individuals only are engaged whose turn it happens to be at the moment. In the rally or “bully” at foot-ball, some hard kicks will be sure to hit the shins of the opposing players, instead of the ball. But does the receiver mind it? No indeed! The sting is felt for an instant; but the ball being in play near him, he goes at it with a shout, and that is about the last he knows as to the kick. Next morning he finds a bruise, but no pain and little soreness: the excitement of the game was the very best of liniments, and beat pain-killers all hollow.

For developing bold and hardy traits no game is better than foot-ball; and as it can be played at any season,—on the ice, on the snow, or over the greensward,—I wonder that it is not more in favor with American boys. When I used to play at it, we commonly remarked that beginners got the worst kicks, and the most of them. This is not because the players intentionally kicked the shins of the new-comers, but because of their own want of dash; while they were getting ready to kick, a player of the other side rushed in and did kick—the ball if he could, and if not, his shins who stood in front of it. So, when you begin to play at foot-ball, kick “early as well as often,” as they say in regard to voting in New York. Don’t hang over the ball and hesitate because an opponent is on the other side of it and close up. Push in and kick away: if you miss the ball, you may make him miss it too.

Again, if you play with a will, you will very soon get the sleight, and that makes an immense difference. It is not a conjuring-like dexterity, such as P. H. C. tells us of, in his “Lessons” about balls and coins, and so on, but a handy use of the implements of the game to the best advantage. Did you ever get into a canoe? No? Well, then, the first time you do, and try to paddle it, you’ll upset it, and get a ducking, because you have not the “knack.” The first time I tried it, overboard I went, though a pretty good oarsman, and somewhat used to cranky craft. It was one night in the northwest of Michigan, soon after it had been admitted as a State, and while the elk were still found above the bend of Cass River. I was belated, reaching the bank of the Saginaw River well on in the night. I had had a lonely tramp for miles after sundown, through the trails in the woods, listening for the first time to the strangely sad note of the whip-poor-will and the bark of the fox. The ferry-man, a French-Canadian, who spent most of his time in trapping, was very drunk, and inclined to be quarrelsome. I took a paddle, launched a canoe, and, getting in, carefully struck out for the opposite shore. But I hadn’t the sleight, and the canoe soon “turned turtle,” and shot me out. I had, however, the sleight of swimming,—learned years before, when a small boy, and afterwards improved in South America, Australia, and among the bright islands under the equator, studding the earth’s zone like jewels in a beauty’s belt,—and so I got ashore easily enough. In cricket and base-ball, whether batting or fielding, the sleight is more than half the battle; in foot-ball and hockey it is not quite so important, boldness being really the first element of a fine player; while at hare and hounds, speed and wind are all in all; and in skating, again, skill is the main thing of course.

Nothing tries the player’s “condition” so much as hare and hounds. At cricket there is often a long pause between each run, and the same at base-ball; at football the exertion is violent, but one player seldom “owns” the ball, that is, has it to himself, long enough to tire him; the skater is not in a game, and naturally pauses when he begins to “blow.” But the lads at hare and hounds cannot stop; if the hare slackens his speed, the hounds will run into him, while, if they slacken when he makes a burst, he will lose them, or get so far ahead that they cannot overtake him within the given bounds. Therefore the condition is tried; for upon that depends the ability to keep up a long run.

Boys in health are almost always in pretty good condition, provided they have plenty of chance for proper activity. Living on good, wholesome, simple diet, and taking much exercise on foot, they are in that state which is hardly ever attained by grown men without training. The Indians are like boys in this regard, when they can get no rum. Then simple diet and the great exercise they are compelled to take in pursuit of game for food keep them in condition,—reduced in flesh and strong in sinew. A school-boy can with impunity run a distance that would half kill his father, unless the latter had some training.

Some think training is a great mystery, but it is in reality a simple affair. Half the rules and practices are arbitrary and empirical, and do at least as much harm as good. Bennett, the Indian who ran races in England, and was called “Deerfoot,” gave me a very good explanation of training when he first returned to this country. He wanted to make matches to run against time on the Fashion Course; to begin with, ten miles and a half in an hour, then eleven, and then eleven and a half. “But,” I said, “Bennett, how can it be safe to match you to do eleven miles and a half in an hour, when you could not do ten and a half before you went to England?”

“O, it’s the training, you know,” he replied. “I was never half trained till I went there; but now I’ve been through the mill.”

“But we haven’t your English trainer here,” said I.

“No, nor don’t want him. I can train myself now. It’s the simplest thing that ever was—when you can stand it.”

“I dare say. And what may be the process, to bring you up to the top notch?”

“Well,” said Deerfoot, draining his glass with a sort of sigh, “it is to live on plain food,—meat, bread, and gruel,—drink nothing but water and tea, and little of that, and walk thirty miles a day. That’s all there is about it.”

And that’s more than many can do, and more than most will do. Young men who have been worn down by study and late hours at sedentary occupations sometimes come to me, and ask to be recommended to a good trainer. They are more in need of a good nurse; but it is useless to suggest that they are not fit for training. If they would live like school-boys in holiday-time, and play with them for three months, it would be well; but such advice as this would be received with disdain, and perhaps as an insult. Training, they have heard, is the only thing, and they will not be satisfied till put under the regimen and rule of some such man as Deerfoot or Dooney Harris. They soon have enough of it. The pedestrian goes to work with them as his trainer went to work with him, and is much amazed to find that the pupil gets weaker and slower, instead of stronger and faster, as he did. Mr. Harris proceeds with his young man upon the plan followed heretofore with great success by those about to fight for a championship. All such men over-work such pupils. They go upon the principle that good condition is produced by reducing flesh by means of very strong exercise; and so it is, in men like themselves. But such a course is exceedingly dangerous to nervous young men who are debilitated through study and still life. It is likely to train them into a consumption, instead of giving them the strong, clear wind and firm muscle which support against fatigue. Instead of being reduced, they need to be built up,—to be made plump and ruddy, like the boys whose whoops at play now startle their shattered nerves and irritate their tempers; and to this desirable end a wise course of sports and pastimes is the very best prescription.

Charles J. Foster.

OLD GREGORY.

Yesterday afternoon I was reading my new story-book. Richard had gone to the post-office over at Bitterbush, and mother was out in the kitchen helping Jane, so there was nobody in the sitting-room but me. I “built” a huge fire, that rollicked and roared gloriously in the stove, and then I took my book and curled up in mother’s arm-chair, in the bay-window. Outdoors the fields stretched ghostly and white away to the cold gray sky. Somehow, something in the still winter day out there made me think, with a chill, of two lines Richard is always humming to a queer tune of his own,—

But I, and the great rose-geranium, and Redo in his cage, were as cosey as could be, there in the warm bay-window, with the crimson curtains drooping over us. So I read and read; the story of the poor little “ugly duck,” that bore all its misfortunes so humbly, hoping for better days, and at last grew to be a magnificent swan, white and radiant; the story of the sweet mermaid princess, who endured the bitterest agony for the sake of an immortal soul; and last, about the nightingale that sang the dead emperor into life,—the little neglected nightingale that sang at the window of the death-chamber till Death longed for his still garden where the pale roses bloomed, and so “floated out, like a cold white shadow,” and the emperor stood up in his imperial robes, and said “Good morning” cheerfully to his attendants, when they came in to look after the corpse. He was very grateful, you may be sure, and offered her the most splendid situation at his court; but she only thanked him, and went singing back to her own good greenwood. Then I dropped my book, and sat thinking; the fire stopped roaring and just whispered drowsily, blinking through the chinks in the stove-doors; Redo swung himself slower and slower in the ivory ring, with only a chirp now and then, and I think we were all falling into a doze, when the geranium rustled its sweet leaves a little, and said:—

“I’ve been thinking about my life, this afternoon. It has been a very little, still one, I know; but yet somehow to-day I feel a thrill of joy and thanks going all through my green leaves and strong stems, because I do live. I remember myself long ago, a wee, puny leaf, mottled with yellow, struggling for life in an old broken pitcher which stood in a dirty window, among bits of soap, old nails, balls of twine, and boxes of shoe-blacking. I don’t know to whom I belonged, nor who placed me there. Sometimes, when it rained, the water oozed through the casement and moistened the earth around me a little, and mornings the sun came through the thick dirt upon the panes, and just touched me with its sweet, faint glow. How I used to watch and long for it! The very looking forward to it often kept me alive, I think, through the long, chill nights. I used to wonder if it were a blunder, my coming into the world, and yet I had a dim longing and hope under all that, that somebody might care for me and bless me, and that I might cheer somebody as the sun did me. I think it was this hope, after all, that kept me alive through the gray days and the dreary nights, with the earth parched around me, and every pore choked with dust.

“One day I heard footsteps coming near; and they had the sound of great, soft, slatternly feet, accompanied by a rattling of pails and brushes. Then a woman pushed aside the dirty old curtain that hung over the window, and cried out: ‘Goodness me! if here ain’t that little geranium slip! And I guess it’s alive yet. Well, as I’m going to clean the winder, I s’pose I might as well throw it out with some of the rest of this trash.’ She took the pitcher in her limp, slow hands, and was pattering through the entry toward the back door, when I heard a little, thin voice call from somewhere: ‘Don’t throw it out, Aunt Lide; may be it’ll grow.’ May be it’ll grow! O blessed voice! O blessed words! And I, poor numb dying leaf, resolved from that moment that I would grow. It was possible. Some one had hope for me. The woman looked at me a moment, and then carried me into the dingy little room whence the voice came. I see it now, with its four bare, musty walls, with its wooden, unpainted mantel, and the sickly fire fluttering under it, with its bedstead draped in ugly ‘nine-patch quilts’; and clearest and saddest of all, and yet sweet, the small white face of the little girl there, propped up in a straight-backed arm-chair with a crutch at each side. ‘If I could only tend it, and see it grow!’ she said, with a light shining up through the gray eyes like my sweet, dim morning-sunshine. Her aunt placed me in the window, and went out, saying crossly, ‘It’ll only be in the way’; but she looked in, after a little, and said quite kindly: ‘Margery, if you want to water your geranium there’s some water in that bowl on the mantel. Mebby you can hobble to it.’ So Margery tended me day by day, and watched me hour after hour, and I grew strong and green and tall, and she loved me passionately I know, and I’m sure I brightened her life. She used to fondle me softly with her wee white fingers, and she had the sweetest loving little fashion of kissing me and whispering, ‘My beautiful!’ She told me, in her queer, grave way, that I filled the whole room with my green, fragrant presence, and that I grew in her heart. O, it was a joy to live then! I used to watch my shadow at noon down upon the floor in the sunshine that fell there, with its multitude of dainty leaves thickly flecking the window shadow, and I felt sure then that I was no blunder, and that some loving invisible Hand above Margery’s shaped and cared for me. She was not always patient. How could she be, with that bitter pain, and that dull, dull life of hers? She used to sit close to me, with her head bowed upon the sill beside me, that I might hide from her sight the ghostly old church out there, and the grave-yard, with its broken fences, and fallen tablets with their faces growing musty and green down in the damp, dead grass. Alas! the poor forgotten dead, and the cows drearily nipping the brown weeds. ‘And yet,’ she said many times in a passionate whisper to me and herself, ‘I’d as well be lying down there, with the cows nipping the weeds over me, as living so.’ Then I thought of my own old dumb chilled life, and the hope that still blessed me in it, and how that hope was now realized, and I had come to a new, rich life of real living and loving; and so I had faith, and hoped for her. She used to talk to me most at dusk, sitting with her cheek against my leaves. One evening she kissed me, and whispered, ‘My beautiful!’ and then she sat still a long time with her hands clasped in her lap. I didn’t know why, but I felt, somehow, that her thoughts were not all bitter. She whispered to me again at last: ‘I’m sure, my beautiful, that the same Care is over me, broad and loving, that covers you; and who knows but some day it will bring me out of my dark cramped life into a brighter and larger one? Who knows, did I say? I am quite sure of it.’ Had she read my thoughts? Had I taught it her, unconsciously, in some silent way? I could not tell; but from that time she never complained, and in all her little daily tasks, in her hours of pain, and the long, long days of nothing to do, I think she learned well a glorious lesson; and that was the lesson of patience.

“But how did we part when we loved each other so? Aunt Lide came pattering into the room one afternoon, with a cup of yeast in one hand and a dirty towel in the other.

“ ‘There’s some Aid Society girls over the way,’ said she. ‘I saw ’em over to Mis Green’s when I went to borry yeast. They’re a-going from house to house for contributions to the big Fair. I told ’em they needn’t come here. I sha’n’t bother with it.’

“Margery’s thin white hands grasped her crutches in that little, eager, trembling way of hers when she was excited.

“ ‘But O Aunt Lide,’ she said, ‘if I could only give something! I am so good-for-nothing. I do want to do some good, some way, and be a part of life like other people. Would they take my geranium? Dear, darling geranium! yes, I can give you up. Take it, Aunt Lide, and tell them I do pray it may do somebody as much good as it has me.’

“Aunt Lide yawned, and wiped the yeast off the sides of the cup with her towel. Margary was almost out of breath, and all in a tremble with eagerness.

“ ‘Well, I don’t care,’ her aunt said; ‘I’ll send it with Mis Green’s boy up to the rooms where the Fair’s to be. He’s going to take her things up.’

“So she gathered me into her arms, and Margaret kissed me, with the tears shining in her eyes; and so we parted.

“Among the thousand twinkling lights, myself a part of a sweet green wilderness, with red, white, and blue radiantly glowing above and around,—with the air full of songs of the red, white, and blue,—with bright, joyous faces bending over me,—with jewelled white hands touching me, and the music of glad voices all about me,—I felt a longing for my other life,—a longing to be out of all this, and back there in the dusk, with her face against my leaves, and her lips whispering her heart-thoughts to me. But I never doubted that she loved me still, and was thinking of me; and that was a comfort.

“By and by a woman with a tender, motherly face bought me, and it was your mother, and here I am in her bay-window; and I have lived to a serene green old age. Wake up, puss! The fire’s out.”

I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the geranium or Richard said that last; but there was the geranium standing perfectly still, with the afternoon light shining serenely through its leaves, and Richard was bending over me, looking like a jolly young Esquimaux in his big overcoat and huge fur cap and muffler. So I slid out of the arm-chair and tried to walk, but my feet were “asleep”; and then I gathered myself into a heap upon the rug, and held Richard’s letters and papers while he kindled the fire; and then we had such a magnificent time, chatting and laughing and reading and teasing each other, till mother called us out to tea.

Lucia Chase.

DOUBLE ACROSTIC CHARADES.^*

The thing conveyed. The vehicle.

A meeting in which, by speech, both the thing and the vehicle are conveyed.

An ancient lawgiver; the first to apply “the vehicle” to a particular purpose.

What we are all apt to do in the selection of the vehicle.

A conjunction of the vehicles.

H.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 3.

J. A.

ENIGMA.
No. 2.

We were once at a picnic, for which a name made up of 25 letters furnished us with abundant supplies.

For fish we had, 7, 9, 15, 21, 11, 23, 16, 4; 12, 13, 23, 20, 18; and one 11, 13, 4.

For meats cold, 18, 14, 7; and something purporting to be a young 15, 18, 2, 20, 21.

With this we took a 15, 23, 6, 20, 21, 13, 23.

For drinks there were, 17, 16, 19; 7, 5, 3, 10; and 6, 4, 22.

We had also 20, 19, 21, 22; and 12, 2, 16.

Our fruits were the 12, 16, 6, 20, 18; 12, 11, 14, 23; 15, 18, 13, 23, 23, 25; and 24, 12, 12, 3, 16.

We finished with 1, 24, 17, 22, 23; 5, 20, 11; and 2, 15, 11, 20, 23, 16, 24, 8.

The name upon which we feasted thus is that of a great man whose death England and America have not yet done lamenting.

May Leonard.

ANSWERS.

J. and L. B. come to us with what they call “another question of school honor,” which they state thus:—

“If we are involved in a scrape with several of our schoolmates, and we are questioned privately by the teacher, is it more honorable for us to tell, or to refuse to tell, the names of those who were with us? Will you please tell us, also, if we see any one do something that is against the rules, if it is better to complain of them and be thought a telltale, or to let it pass?”

In the first case, if you frankly confess your own part in the “scrape,” and your willingness to receive your full share of the penalty, and then further tell your teacher that you sincerely wish to be excused from inculpating others, you would probably be allowed to remain silent; but if the question be pressed, you must answer it freely, because your silence might mislead, cause suspicion to fall upon those who were not to blame, and screen those who should justly receive the reward of their folly or naughtiness.

In the second case, you should not turn “telltale,” unless you are injuriously affected by the misdemeanor of your schoolmate. If you should be appointed a monitor, or be given charge of the school-room in the teacher’s absence, it then becomes your plain duty to note and report all transgressions; but under other circumstances it is not your business to be concerned with the behavior of others; you are not responsible for them, and to assume of your own accord to be a spy and an informer is to do a mean thing. But if, by accident, you become aware of some really wrong thing, of general ill-effect, you may then put your teacher upon guard,—but in this you must act most conscientiously, being sure that your motives are good, that you say no more than you know to be the truth, and with a view to check the offence rather than to punish the offender.

Flora has an inversion: “Ada, live on dew & wed no evil, Ada.”

M——e S. gives us a “magic square” which always adds up 671; but we have no room for the table at present.

Snow-Bird. Altogether too old.

Fritz. There is no postage-stamp Magazine published in this country. We do not know of any such, although some of the foreign Magazines have many postage-stamp advertisements.—Not this year: we have so many plans to complete. We think you will like “Round-the-World Joe” quite as well.

Nellie K. A. The large sketch is good in drawing, but it does not read well.

W. J. B. The sketch is correctly outlined, but the shading is not so good; that is a little hard, and therefore the bird’s body looks flat, instead of round. You will do well to master thoroughly some simpler subjects before attempting such as this, which, although it looks easy, really requires an accurate eye and a skilful hand to reproduce it.

Alice and Fenella. We do not account here for the receipt of all the letters we get, but we reply to all questions which appear to require answers. We cannot, of course, explain exactly why such and such puzzles, for instance, are not used, because we should have no room for anything else; but we intend to satisfy all other inquiries. If any query of yours has been overlooked, please repeat it.

A. D. A. wishes to know “what becomes” of Leslie Goldthwaite after the summer of which we have heard; thinks that other events must have befallen her, and that “there must have been winters in her life as well as summers.” Undoubtedly; but we must remember that it was only a summer we were invited, at this time, to spend with her, and that in this summer she was learning to “live in others’ lives.” What became of others, just at that time, was the chief interest with her, and through her must be to us.

G. W. R. gave no answer.

C. B. W. Should you have used articles with your proper names? Why did you omit the accents?

J. T. and N. Well drawn, but too intricate.

S. Y. No, thank you.

W. B. Hen-he-v-her doesn’t spell never. A Granite State boy ought not to resort to such Cockneyism, even in a rebus.

Hattie E. S. writes:—

“I must apologize to you for the liberty I am taking in writing to you, but I thought I had a pretty good excuse.

“My little brother went away from home for the first time, to boarding school, last winter, and I, to amuse and interest him, edited a little paper, published semi-monthly, which I called the ‘Schoolboy’s Friend.’ I invited his schoolmates to send original articles for it, and offered rewards for the best. I succeeded beyond my highest anticipation, and some of the articles sent showed real talent. One of my contributors was a little fellow, not yet fourteen years old, who sent some very pretty verses, at different times. The last (received only last night) I thought particularly pretty, and papa said, ‘Perhaps “Our Young Folks” may think them worthy a place in their columns.’ So I thought I would send them to you. The writer is John T. AtLee; he will be fourteen years old in October. If you don’t think them good enough to publish, I am sure you will agree with me in saying that they show talent.”

And here are the verses:—

Delie E. E. We can’t spare the room for it.

Bryan B. You have done well.

Violet. It is ended.

Nellie & Charlie send some “comparisons,” as they call them, from which we select some of the most amusing.

Sophie S. sends us a letter, so full of pleasant chat and of questions, that we can’t help printing it all, and here it is:—

And now for our reply. Your prose is better than your poetry, Sophie. If the charade had been as good as the letter we should have printed it. We shall like to see your stories, but you must remember our frequent remark that beginners cannot expect to do as well as old hands, and to be accepted in competition with them. The drawing is very clever indeed. It is defective in finish, but the idea is animated and natural. It is yet too soon for you to question of greatness; but there is no reason to doubt that you may draw excellently by and by. Let us hear from you again.

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.

[The end of Our Young Folks. An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls. Volume 3, Issue 2 edited by J. T. Trowbridge, Gail Hamilton and Lucy Larcom]