Pieces People Ask For

SERIOUS, HUMOROUS, PATHETIC, PATRIOTIC,
AND DRAMATIC SELECTIONS IN
PROSE AND POETRY

FOR

READINGS AND RECITATIONS

EDITED BY
GEORGE M. BAKER

BOSTON

WALTER H. BAKER & CO.

1909

Pieces People Ask For

Copyright, 1885, by George M. Baker
(Reading Club, No. 16.)

Copyright, 1886, by George M. Baker
(Reading Club, No. 17.)

Copyright, 1908, by Walter H. Baker & Co.

[Pg 3]

Contents

[Pg 5]

The Reading-Club.

“D’ye see it, pard?”

“See what, Rough?”

“The light from over the Range.”

“Not a bit, Rough. It’s not daybreak yet. Yer sick, an’ yer head bothers ye.”

“Pard, yer off. I’ve been sick, but I’m well again. It’s not dark like it was. The light’s a-comin’—comin’ like the boyhood days that crep’ inter the winders of the old home.”

“Ye’ve been dreamin’, Rough. The fever hain’t all outen yer head yet.”

“Dreamin’? ’Twa’n’t all dreams. It’s the light comin’, pard. I see ’em all plain. Thar’s the ole man lookin’ white an’ awful, just as he looked the mornin’ he drove me from home; and that woman behind him, stretchin’ out her arms arter me, is the best mother in the world. Don’t you see ’em, pard?”

“Yer flighty, Rough. It’s all dark, ’cepting a pine-knot flickerin’ in the ashes.”

“No—the light’s a-comin’ brighter and brighter. Look! It’s beamin’ over the Range bright and gentle, like the smile that used to be over me when my head lay in my mother’s lap, long ago.”

“Hyar’s a little brandy, Rough. Thar; I seen it though my eyes are dim—somehow—hyar, Rough.”

“Never, pard. That stuff spiled the best years of my life—it sha’n’t spile my dreams of ’em. Oh, sich dreams, pard! They take me to the old [Pg 6] home again. I see the white house ’mong the trees. I smell the breath of the apple-blossoms, and hear the birds singin’ and the bees hummin’, and the old plough-songs echoin’ over the leetle valley. I see the river windin’ through the willers an’ sycamores, an’ the dear ole hills all around, p’intin’ up to heaven like the spires of big meetin’-houses. Thar’s the ole rock we called the tea-table. I climb up on it, an’ play a happy boy agin. Oh, if I’d only staid thar, pard!”

“Don’t, Rough; ye thaw me all out, talkin’ that. It makes me womanish.”

“That’s it, pard: we’ve kep’ our hearts froze so long, we want it allus winter. But the summer comes back with all the light from over the Range. How bright it is, pard! Look! How it floods the cabin till the knots an’ cobwebs are plainer than day.”

“Suthin’s wrong, Rough. It’s all dark, ’cept only that pine-knot in the chimbly.”

“No, it’s all right, pard. The light’s come over the Range. I kin see better’n I ever could. Kin see the moister in yer eyes, pard, an’ see the crooked path I’ve come, runnin’ clean back to my mother’s knee. I wasn’t allus called Rough. Somebody used to kiss me, an’ call me her boy: nobody’ll ever know I’ve kep’ it till the end.”

“I hev wanted to ax ye, mate, why ye never had any name but jist Rough?”

“Pard—it’s gettin’ dark—my name? I’ve never heard it since I left home. I buried it thar in the little churchyard, whar mother’s waitin’ for the boy that never come back. I can’t tell it, pard. In my kit you’ll find a package done up. Thar’s two picters in it of two faces that’s been hoverin’ over me since I took down. You’ll find my name thar, pard—thar with hers—an’ mother’s.”

“Hers? Will I ever see her, Rough?”

“Not till you see her by the light that comes over the Range to us all. Pard, it’s gettin’ dark—dark and close—darker than it ever seemed to me afore”—

“Rough, what’s the matter? Speak to me, mate. Can’t I do nuthin’ fer ye?”

“Yes—pard. Can’t ye—say—suthin’?”

“What d’ye mean, Rough? I’ll say any thing to please ye.”

“Say—a—pra’r, pard.” [Pg 7]

“A pra’r! Rough, d’ye mean it?”

“Yes, a pra’r, pard. It’s the—last thing Rough’ll ever—ax of ye.”

“It’s hard to do, Rough. I don’t know a pra’r.”

“Think back, pard. Didn’t yer mother—teach ye—suthin’? One that begins—‘Our Father’—an’ then—somehow—says—‘forgive us’—”

“Don’t, Rough, ye break me all up.”

“The light’s a-fadin’—on the golden hills—an’ the night is comin’—out of the canyuns—pard. Be quick—ye’ll try, pard. Say suthin’—fer Rough”—

“I—Rough—Our Father, forgive us. Don’t be hard on Rough. We’re a tough lot. We’ve forgot ye, but we hain’t all bad. ’Cause we hain’t forgot the old home. Forgive us—be easy on Rough. Thy will be done”—

“It’s comin’ agin—pard. The light’s—comin’—over the Range”—

“Have mercy on—us, an’—an’—an’—settle with us ’cordin’ to—to the surroundin’s of our lives. Thy—Thy kingdom come”—

“Go on, pard. It’s comin’.”

“Now—I lay me down to sleep.”

“That’s—good—mother said that.”

“Hallowed be Thy name—pray—the Lord his soul to keep.”

“That’s good—pard. It’s all glory—comin’ over—the Range—mother’s face—her—face”—

“Thine is the glory, we ask—for Jesus’ sake—Amen.”

“Pard”—

“What, Rough? I’m all unstrung. I”—

“Fare”—

“Rough! Yer worse! What, dead?”

Yes, the wanderings were over. Ended with a prayer, rough and sincere, like the heart that had ceased to throb; a prayer and a few real tears, even in that lone cabin in the cañon; truer than many a death scene knows, although a nation does honor to the dying; a prayer that pleased Him better than many a prayer of the schools and creeds. A rough but gentle hand closed the eyes. The first rays of the morning sun broke through a crevice in the little cabin, and hung like his mother’s smile over the couch of the sleeping boy. Only one mourner watched with Rough as he waited for the new name which will be given to us all, when that light comes to the world from over the Range.

[Pg 8]

You sent for me, and I’ve come: if you have nothing to say, I go back again. How is it, brothers? The doubt seems on all your faces, and your young warriors grasp their fire-weapons, as if they waited the onset of the foe. You were like a small thing upon the great waters; you had no earth to rest upon; you left the smoke of your father’s wig-wam far in the distance, when the lord of the soil took you as little children to his home; our hearths were warm, and the Indian was the white man’s friend. Your great Book tells you to give good gifts. The Indian needs no book: the Great Spirit has written with his finger on his heart. Wisconego here? let me see his eye! Art thou not he whom I snatched from the war-club of the Mohegan, when the lips of the foe thirsted for thy blood, and their warriors had sung thy death-song? Say unto these people that they have bought thy tongue, and that thy coward heart has uttered a lie. Slave of the whites, go! (stabs him) follow Sassawan! White man, beware! the wrath of the wronged Indian shall fall on you like a mighty cataract that dashes the uprooted oak down its mighty chasm; the dread war-cry shall start you from dreams at night, and the red hatchet gleam in the blaze of your burning dwellings. Tremble, from the east to the west, from the north to the south, till the lands you have stolen groan beneath your feet! (Throws hatchet on stage.) Thus do I smite your nation, and defy your power!

[Pg 10]

“Dear me, it’s time to go to bed. It will never do, sitting here. I shall be pale to-morrow, Mr. Pickwick!”

At the bare notion of such a calamity, Mr. Peter Magnus rang the bell for the chambermaid; and the striped bag, the red bag, the leather hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel, having been conveyed to his bedroom, he retired in company with a japanned candlestick to one side of the house, while Mr. Pickwick, and another japanned candlestick, were conducted through a multitude of tortuous windings to another.

“This is your room, sir,” said the chambermaid.

“Very well,” replied Mr. Pickwick, looking round him. It was a tolerably large double-bedded room, with a fire; upon the whole, a more comfortable-looking apartment than Mr. Pickwick’s short experience of the accommodations of the Great White Horse had led him to expect.

“Nobody sleeps in the other bed, of course,” said Mr. Pickwick.

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Very good. Tell my servant to bring me up some hot water at half-past eight in the morning, and that I shall not want him any more to-night.”

“Yes, sir.” And bidding Mr. Pickwick good-night, the chambermaid retired, and left him alone.

Mr. Pickwick sat himself down in a chair before the fire, and fell into a train of rambling meditations. First he thought of his friends, and wondered when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the dingy counting-house of Dodson and Fogg. From Dodson and Fogg’s it flew off at a tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and then it came back to the Great White Horse at [Pg 19] Ipswich, with sufficient clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep; so he roused himself, and began to undress, when he recollected he had left his watch on the table down-stairs.

Now, this watch was a special favorite with Mr. Pickwick, having been carried about, beneath the shadow of his waistcoat, for a greater number of years than we feel called upon to state at present. The possibility of going to sleep unless it were ticking gently beneath his pillow, or in his watch-pocket over his head, had never entered Mr. Pickwick’s brain. So as it was pretty late now, and he was unwilling to ring his bell at that hour of the night, he slipped on his coat, of which he had just divested himself, and, taking the japanned candlestick in his hand, walked quietly down-stairs.

The more stairs Mr. Pickwick went down, the more stairs there seemed to be to descend; and again and again, when Mr. Pickwick got into some narrow passage, and began to congratulate himself on having gained the ground-floor, did another flight of stairs appear before his astonished eyes. At last he reached a stone hall, which he remembered to have seen when he entered the house. Passage after passage did he explore; room after room did he peep into; at length, just as he was on the point of giving up the search in despair, he opened the door of the identical room in which he had spent the evening, and beheld his missing property on the table.

Mr. Pickwick seized the watch in triumph, and proceeded to retrace his steps to his bed-chamber. If his progress downwards had been attended with difficulties and uncertainty, his journey back was infinitely more perplexing. Rows of doors garnished with boots of every shape, make, and size, branched off in every possible direction. A dozen times did he softly turn the handle of some bedroom door which resembled his own, when a gruff cry from within, of “Who the devil’s that?” or “What do you want here?” caused him to steal away, on tiptoe, with a marvellous celerity. He was reduced to the verge of despair, when an open door attracted his attention. He peeped in—right at last! There were the two beds, whose situation he perfectly remembered, and the fire still burning. His candle, not a long one when he first received it, had flickered away in the draughts of air through which he had passed, and [Pg 20] sunk into the socket just as he closed the door after him. “No matter,” said Mr. Pickwick, “I can undress myself just as well, by the light of the fire.”

The bedsteads stood, one on each side of the door; and on the inner side of each was a little path, terminating in a rush-bottomed chair, just wide enough to admit of a person’s getting into or out of bed on that side, if he or she thought proper. Having carefully drawn the curtains of his bed on the outside, Mr. Pickwick sat down on the rush-bottomed chair, and leisurely divested himself of his shoes and gaiters. He then took off and folded up his coat, waistcoat, and neck-cloth, and, slowly tying on his tasselled nightcap, secured it firmly on his head, by tying beneath his chin the strings which he had always attached to that article of dress. It was at this moment that the absurdity of his recent bewilderment struck upon his mind; and throwing himself back in the rush-bottomed chair, Mr. Pickwick laughed to himself so heartily, that it would have been quite delightful to any man of well-constituted mind to have watched the smiles which expanded his amiable features as they shone forth from beneath the nightcap.

“It is the best idea,” said Mr. Pickwick to himself, smiling till he almost cracked the nightcap strings,—“it is the best idea, my losing myself in this place, and wandering about those staircases, that I ever heard of. Droll, droll, very droll.” Here Mr. Pickwick smiled again, a broader smile than before, and was about to continue the process of undressing, in the very best possible humor, when he was suddenly stopped by a most unexpected interruption; to wit, the entrance into the room of some person with a candle, who, after locking the door, advanced to the dressing-table, and set down the light upon it.

The smile that played on Mr. Pickwick’s features was instantaneously lost in a look of the most unbounded and wonder-stricken surprise. The person, whoever it was, had come in so suddenly and with so little noise, that Mr. Pickwick had no time to call out, or oppose their entrance. Who could it be? A robber! Some evil-minded person who had seen him come up-stairs with a handsome watch in his hand, perhaps. What was he to do?

The only way in which Mr. Pickwick could catch a glimpse of his mysterious visitor, with the least danger of being seen himself, was by creeping on to the bed, and peeping out from between the curtains on [Pg 21] the opposite side. To this manœuvre he accordingly resorted. Keeping the curtains carefully closed with his hand, so that nothing more of him could be seen than his face and nightcap, and putting on his spectacles, he mustered up courage, and looked out.

Mr. Pickwick almost fainted with horror and dismay. Standing before the dressing-glass was a middle-aged lady in yellow curl-papers, busily engaged in brushing what ladies call their “back hair.” However the unconscious middle-aged lady came into that room, it was quite clear that she contemplated remaining there for the night; for she had brought a rushlight and shade with her, which, with praiseworthy precaution against fire, she had stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was glimmering away like a gigantic light-house in a particularly small piece of water.

“Bless my soul,” thought Mr. Pickwick, “what a dreadful thing!”

“Hem!” said the lady; and in went Mr. Pickwick’s head with automaton-like rapidity.

“I never met any thing so awful as this,” thought poor Mr. Pickwick, the cold perspiration starting in drops upon his nightcap. “Never. This is fearful.”

It was quite impossible to resist the urgent desire to see what was going forward. So out went Mr. Pickwick’s head again. The prospect was worse than before. The middle-aged lady had finished arranging her hair, and carefully enveloped it in a muslin nightcap with a small plaited border, and was gazing pensively on the fire.

“This matter is growing alarming,” reasoned Mr. Pickwick with himself. “I can’t allow things to go in this way. By the self-possession of that lady, it’s clear to me that I must have come into the wrong room. If I call out, she’ll alarm the house; but if I remain here, the consequence will be still more frightful!”

Mr. Pickwick, it is quite necessary to say, was one of the most modest and delicate-minded of mortals. The very idea of exhibiting his nightcap to a lady overpowered him; but he had tied those confounded strings in a knot, and, do what he would, he couldn’t get it off. The disclosure must be made. There was only one other way of doing it. He shrunk behind the curtains, and called out very loudly,— [Pg 22]

“Ha—hum.”

That the lady started at this unexpected sound, was evident by her falling up against the rushlight shade; that she persuaded herself it must have been the effect of imagination, was equally clear, for when Mr. Pickwick, under the impression that she had fainted away, stone dead from fright, ventured to peep out again, she was gazing pensively on the fire as before.

“Most extraordinary female this,” thought Mr. Pickwick, popping in again. “Ha—hum.”

These last sounds, so like those in which, as legends inform us, the ferocious giant Blunderbore was in the habit of expressing his opinion that it was time to lay the cloth, were too distinctly audible to be again mistaken for the workings of fancy.

“Gracious Heaven!” said the middle-aged lady, “what’s that?”

“It’s—it’s—only a gentleman, ma’am,” said Mr. Pickwick from behind the curtains.

“A gentleman!” said the lady with a terrific scream.

“It’s all over,” thought Mr. Pickwick.

“A strange man!” shrieked the lady. Another instant, and the house would be alarmed. Her garments rustled as she rushed towards the door.

“Ma’am”—said Mr. Pickwick, thrusting out his head, in the extremity of his desperation, “ma’am.”

Now, although Mr. Pickwick was not actuated by any definite object in putting out his head, it was instantaneously productive of a good effect. The lady, as we have already stated, was near the door. She must pass it to reach the staircase; and she would most undoubtedly have done so, by this time, had not the sudden apparition of Mr. Pickwick’s nightcap driven her back, into the remotest corner of the apartment, where she stood staring wildly at Mr. Pickwick, while Mr. Pickwick in his turn stared wildly at her.

“Wretch,” said the lady, covering her eyes with her hands, “what do you want here?”

“Nothing, ma’am,—nothing whatever, ma’am,” said Mr. Pickwick earnestly.

“Nothing!” said the lady looking up.

“Nothing, ma’am, upon my honor,” said Mr. Pickwick, nodding his head so energetically, that the tassel of his nightcap danced again. “I am almost ready to sink, ma’am, beneath the confusion of addressing a lady [Pg 23] in my nightcap (here the lady hastily snatched off hers), but I can’t get it off, ma’am (here Mr. Pickwick gave it a tremendous tug in proof of the statement). It is evident to me, ma’am, now, that I have mistaken this bedroom for my own. I had not been here five minutes, ma’am, when you suddenly entered it.”

“If this improbable story be really true, sir,” said the lady, sobbing violently, “you will leave it instantly.”

“I will, ma’am, with the greatest pleasure,” replied Mr. Pickwick.

“Instantly, sir,” said the lady.

“Certainly, ma’am,” interposed Mr. Pickwick, very quickly. “Certainly, ma’am. I—I—am very sorry, ma’am,” said Mr. Pickwick, making his appearance at the bottom of the bed, “to have been the innocent occasion of this alarm and emotion; deeply sorry, ma’am.”

The lady pointed to the door. One excellent quality of Mr. Pickwick’s character was beautifully displayed at this moment, under the most trying circumstances. Although he had hastily put on his hat over his nightcap, after the manner of the old patrol; although he carried his shoes and gaiters in his hand, and his coat and waistcoat over his arm, nothing could subdue his native politeness.

“I am exceedingly sorry, ma’am,” said Mr. Pickwick, bowing very low.

“If you are, sir, you will at once leave the room,” said the lady.

“Immediately, ma’am; this instant, ma’am,” said Mr. Pickwick, opening the door, and dropping both his shoes with a loud crash in so doing.

“I trust, ma’am,” resumed Mr. Pickwick, gathering up his shoes, and turning round to bow again, “I trust, ma’am, that my unblemished character, and the devoted respect I entertain for your sex, will plead as some slight excuse for this”—But before Mr. Pickwick could conclude the sentence, the lady had thrust him into the passage, and locked and bolted the door behind him.

Dickens.

[Pg 24]

[In the autumn of 1760, Louis XV. sent an army into Germany. They took up a strong position at Klostercamp, intending to advance on Rheinberg. The young Chevalier D’Assas was sent out by Auvergne to reconnoitre. He met a party advancing to surprise the French camp. Their bayonets pricked his breast, and the leader whispered, “Make the least noise, and you are a dead man.” D’Assas paused a moment, then cried out as loud as he could, “Here, Auvergne! here are the enemy!” He was immediately cut down, but his death had saved the French army.—History of France.]

[Pg 27]

[Pg 28]

Let me tell you why I am interested in the labor question. Not simply because of the long hours of labor; not simply because of a specific oppression of a class. I sympathize with the sufferers there: I am ready to fight on their side. But I look out upon Christendom, with its three hundred millions of people; and I see, that, out of this number of people, one hundred millions never had enough to eat. Physiologists tell us that this body of ours, unless it is properly fed, properly developed, fed with rich blood and carefully nourished, does no justice to the brain. You cannot make a bright or a good man in a starved body; and so this one-third of the inhabitants of Christendom, who have never had food enough, can never be what they should be. Now, I say that the social civilization which condemns every third man in it to be below the average in the nourishment God prepared for him, did not come from above: it came from below; and, the sooner it goes down, the better. Come on this side of the ocean. You will find forty millions of people, and I suppose they are in the highest state of civilization; and yet it is not too much to say, that, out of that forty millions, ten millions at least, who get up in the morning and go to bed at night, spend all the day in the mere effort to get bread enough to live. They have not elasticity enough, mind or body, left, to do any thing in the way of intellectual or moral progress. [Pg 30]

I believe in the temperance movement. I am a temperance man of nearly forty years’ standing; and I think it one of the grandest things in the world, because it holds the basis of self-control. Intemperance is the cause of poverty, I know; but there is another side to that: poverty is the cause of intemperance. Crowd a man with fourteen hours’ work a day, and you crowd him down to a mere animal life. You have eclipsed his aspirations, dulled his tastes, stunted his intellect, and made him a mere tool, to work fourteen hours, and catch a thought in the interval; and, while a man in a hundred will rise to be a genius, ninety-nine will cower down under the circumstances.

That is why I say, lift a man, give him life, let him work eight hours a day, give him the school, develop his taste for music, give him a garden, give him beautiful things to see, and good books to read, and you will starve out those lower appetites. Give a man a chance to earn a good living, and you may save his life.

If you want power in this country; if you want to make yourselves felt; if you do not want your children to wait long years before they have the bread on the table they ought to have, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the opportunities in life they ought to have; if you don’t want to wait yourselves,—write on your banner, so that every political trimmer can read it, so that every politician, no matter how short-sighted he may be, can read it, “We never forget! If you launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, we never forget; if there is a division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the wrong scale, we never forget. You may go down on your knees, and say, ‘I am sorry I did the act;’ and we will say, ‘It will avail you in heaven, but on this side of the grave never.’” So that a man, in taking up the labor question, will know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, and will say, “I am to be true to justice and to man: otherwise I am a dead duck.”

Wendell Phillips.

[Pg 32]

AN INCIDENT OF STRAIN’S EXPEDITION.

[Pg 37]

[Pg 39]

[Pg 42]

CHARACTERS.

Adrastus.    Crythes.

Adrastus discovered.—Crythes introducing Ion.

[Pg 63]

Once upon a time, an old legend says, in a splendid palace a king lay dying. By his couch knelt his only son, with tears streaming down his face; but only a few quiet words were now and then spoken.

“Father, you remember the beautiful silver bell hanging above the palace,—the one you had made years ago, of such pure tone that the maker stood entranced at its first note, but which has ever since been still? Why did you hang it there, if it was never to be rung?”

“My son, when I was young, and full of life and hope, I commanded the best workmen in my kingdom to make a perfect silver bell, and hang it above my palace, that its sweet tones might tell my people that their king was perfectly happy. But alas! though I expected so much happiness, the moment has never come when I could say, ‘Ring the bell!’ and now I am dying, and it is still silent. My son, if your happiness is ever complete,—if you are without an anxious thought or wish,—then let the silver bell proclaim the fact to all your people.”

“But, father, if you were not lying here I should be happy now, and the bell should ring every day of my life.”

The old king smiled sadly, and, turning his face away, soon slept to wake no more. With much mourning he was laid away in the royal tomb, and his son became king in his stead. He could not ring the bell then, for he grieved for his father; but he thought that after a time he should be happy again.

And the days went by, and the young king married a beautiful girl; and he said, “Now, for the first time, the bell shall ring.”

But as he and his bride came from the church, a woman, young in years, but haggard with grief, carrying a little child in her arms, threw herself at his feet, begging him to spare the life of her husband, who was condemned to die for plotting against the king. “He saw so much splendor and wealth, and we were starving. Oh, on this day, pardon him!”

The king raised the wretched woman, and gave her her husband’s freedom; but a swift shadow had come over his happiness. [Pg 64]

And the months went by, and a beautiful babe was born to be king after him. And he said, “Now at length the bell shall ring.” But just then came word that a terrible sickness raged among the children of the kingdom, that many mothers were mourners, and their hearts could not be comforted.

And the years rolled by, and the king was a great and good man, kind to his people, sharing their sorrows, and, so far as he could, lifting their burdens. The days were so full of thought and work, that he did not think of the bell, or of his own happiness.

At last he too lay dying; and when he knew that the end was drawing near, he asked to be carried to the room of state, and to be placed once more upon his throne, that his people might come to see him. And they crowded in, rich and poor, high and low, kissing his hands, his feet, and even the hem of his garment. And when he saw them so grief-stricken and tearful, a great light came into his dim eyes; and, lifting his trembling arms, in a clear voice he cried, “Ring the silver bell! ring the bell! My people love me; at last I am happy!” And as, for the first time, the bell pealed forth its ringing notes, his spirit took its flight to the unseen land.

—Mrs. Julia D. Pratt, in The Dayspring.

Old Moses, who sells eggs and chickens on the streets of Austin for a living, is as honest an old negro as ever lived; but he has got the habit of chatting familiarly with his customers, hence he frequently makes mistakes in counting out the eggs they buy. He carries his wares around in a small cart drawn by a diminutive donkey. He stopped in front of the residence of Mrs. Samuel Burton. The old lady herself came out to the gate to make the purchases.

“Have you got any eggs this morning, Uncle Moses?” she asked.

“Yes, indeed I has. Jess got in ten dozen from de kentry.”

“Are they fresh?”

“Fresh? yas, indeed! I guantees ’em, an’—an’—de hen guantees ’em.” [Pg 65]

“I’ll take nine dozen. You can just count them into this basket.”

“All right, mum;” he counts, “one, two, free, foah, five, six, seben, eight, nine, ten.—You can rely on dem bein’ fresh. How’s your son comin’ on de school? He must be mos’ grown.”

“Yes, Uncle Moses: he is a clerk in a bank in Galveston.”

“Why, how ole am de boy?”

“He is eighteen.”

“You don’t tole me so! Eighteen, and getting a salary already.—Eighteen (counting), nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-foah, twenty-five.—And how’s your gal comin’ on? She was most growed up de last time I seed her.”

“She is married, and living in Dallas.”

“Wall, I declar’, how de time scoots away! And you say she has childruns? Why, how ole am de gal? She must be jest about”—

“Thirty-three.”

“Am dat so?” (counting) “firty-free, firty-foah, firty-five, firty-six, firty-seven, firty-eight, firty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-free.—Hit am singular dat you has sich ole childruns. You don’t look more den forty years old yerseff.”

“Nonsense, old man; I see you want to flatter me. When a person gets to be fifty-three years old”—

“Fifty-free! I jess dun gwinter bleeve hit; fifty-free, fifty-foah, fifty-five, fifty-six,—I want you to pay ’tenshun when I count de eggs, so dar’ll be no mistake,—fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-free, sixty-foah.—Whew! Dat am a warm day. Dis am de time ob year when I feels I’se gettin’ ole myself. I ain’t long for dis world. You comes from an ole family. When yore fodder died he was sebenty years ole.”

“Seventy-two.”

“Dat’s old, suah.—Sebenty-two, sebenty-free, sebenty-foah, sebenty-five, sebenty-six, sebenty-seben, sebenty-eight, sebenty-eight, sebenty-nine.—And your mudder? She was one ob de noblest lookin’ ladies I ebber see. You remind me ob her so much! She libed to mos’ a hundred. I bleeves she was done past a centurion when she died.”

“No, Uncle Moses: she was only ninety-six when she died.” [Pg 66]

“Den she wan’t no chicken when she died, I know dat.—Ninety-six, ninety-seben, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one, two, free, foah, five, five, six, seben, eight,—dar one hundred and eight nice fresh eggs,—jess nine dozen, and here am one moah egg in case I have discounted myse’f.”

Old Mose went on his way rejoicing. A few days afterward Mrs. Barton said to her husband,

“I am afraid we will have to discharge Matilda. I am satisfied that she steals the milk and eggs. I am positive about the eggs, for I bought them day before yesterday, and now about half of them are gone. I stood right there, and heard old Moses count them myself, and there were nine dozen.”

—Texas Siftings.

“Down, down, down, ten thousand fathoms deep.”—Count Fathom.

“Mr. Bingham,” said the “city editor” of the “Royal Bugle” one morning, “the ‘sporting editor’ is away, and it will be necessary for you to go down to Swampscott to report a race between centre-board yachts.”

“But I don’t know any thing about yachts or yacht-racing.”

“It’s not necessary to know. See the head man, and get the time. That’s about all we want.”

About nine o’clock that night, a forlorn, tramp-like looking object entered the office of the “Royal Bugle,” with the crown of his white Derby knocked in, the rim bent, and his clothing generally hanging limp,—the suit, once light in color, now spotted and stained. As he advanced into a better light, he was recognized as the “fire reporter;” [Pg 68] and a chorus of exclamations followed: “Where’s the fire?” or, “Did they put the hose on you?” as the unfortunate man sank, apparently exhausted, into a chair.

“It’s not a fire,” he growled. “It’s a yacht-race.”

“What did they do to you?”

“Do to me? They did every thing except drown me, and almost did that. This morning,” continued the dejected man, “our local editor sent me down to Swampscott to report a centre-board yacht race. He said if I could get aboard one of the racing yachts I’d have a delightful time,—a regular marine picnic. Well, I had it,—yes, indeedy; enough picnic of the kind to last the rest of life. I knew the yachtsmen were spruce sort of fellows, dressed well; and therefore I put on my best suit,—new rig just from the tailor’s,—and hurried away to the Swampscott sands. I found the fleet of centre-boards tied up to a wharf. In making inquiries of a captain, I hinted that it would be agreeable to me to be a passenger on his yacht.

“He smiled serenely, the villain! and said he’d be delighted to have me come aboard. Oh, the baseness of the man! Very soon the race began; and when fairly under way, and I had settled into a comfortable seat to enjoy it, the captain shouted, ‘All down, down below the’—the—what do you call the rail that runs around the top of the boat?—the gun—the gun”—

“Whale!”

“Yes, the gunwhale. Well, he said we must keep our heads below that, in order to offer less resistance to the wind. Therefore three of us were obliged to lie on our stomachs on the bottom of the boat. If we wanted to see the race, we looked through the skipper’s windows”—

“The what?”

“Why, the skipper’s holes, as they call them,—a nautical term for windows, I sup”—

“Scupper-holes!”

“Well, yes, that sounds more like. The man who lay next to me kept himself busy and contented by eating peanuts. But that was nothing, comparatively. Soon we ran into a big wave. If the skipper’d had any sense of honor or regard for his passengers, he would have turned one side to let the wave pass; but he didn’t. He ran slap into it, and the crest of it came on board, caromed on the skipper himself, who stood at the helm, and then circulated among the shifting ballast. Owing to the [Pg 69] peanut-eater, the skipper-win—no, the scupper-holes—were clogged; and the remnant of the wave, unable to escape from the boat, was absorbed by our clothing, and my new suit began to take additional shades and wrinkles.

“Suddenly that graceless captain shouted something about ‘hard lee,’ and then the boat lurched and tipped the other way; and we, lying prostrate, were ordered to creep carefully around the centre-board, and lie on the other side. That was the most fiendish! If my memory be good, we crawled back and forth around that centre-board a dozen times. If we were going to win the race, why didn’t we keep straight on, and not turn to the right or left every twenty minutes?

“But the climax came. The skipper decided to turn the boat around when she was going at full speed, and to drive her in the opposite direction. Well, when she turned around”—

“Jibed, you mean.”

“Yes, that sounds like it. When she jibed she turned over on her side, and a part of the shifting ballast, another man, and myself, went overboard; but we caught on the gunwhale, and, the boat coming down flat again, we crawled in. When I, forlorn and dripping, asked if they turned around usually in that way, they laughed.

“Well, about an hour afterward, after mopping the bottom of the boat some more with our clothing, we reached the landing from which we had departed.”

“We did not win.

“In response to an inquiry in regard to our defeat, the captain, ungrateful, said that he had too much ballast. Wasn’t that the refinement of cruelty? Wasn’t it a dastardly insult? After I’d spoiled a suit of clothes by exerting myself in his behalf in climbing around that centre-board, and nearly lost my life,—of course, if I had not caught the side of the boat when I went overboard, they would not stop to take me in, because the race was very important, and the prize was a three-cornered blue flag,—after all that, I say, ’twas rascally to hint that I’d lost the race for him.

“When the boat was a safe distance from the shore, after leaving me on the wharf, the captain cried, ‘Had a good time?’ Gentlemen, to reply would have been an indignity to myself; but I indulged in a little pantomime to show the pirate skipper that, if I’d had him there, I’d [Pg 70] injure the wharf with him. ‘Why didn’t I come home sooner?’ Because I waited the coming of night to shield me from the gaze of the village constable, who has a personal enmity against tramps,—makes them saw wood. I knew that my tattered and begrimed appearance would bring me under the ban of the law. I walked home by way of the beach.”

George A. Stockwell.

He came into my office with a portfolio under his arm. Placing it upon the table, removing a ruined hat, and wiping his nose upon a ragged handkerchief that had been so long out of the wash that it was positively gloomy, he said,—

“Mr.———, I’m canvassing for the National Portrait Gallery; very valuable work; comes in numbers, fifty cents apiece; contains pictures of all the great American heroes from the earliest times down to the present day. Everybody subscribing for it, and I want to see if I can’t take your name.

“Now, just cast your eyes over that,” he said, opening his book and pointing to an engraving. “That’s—lemme see—yes, that’s Columbus, perhaps you’ve heard sumfin’ about him. The publisher was telling me to-day, before I started out, that he discovered—No; was it Columbus that dis—Oh, yes, Columbus, he discovered America—was the first man here. He came over in a ship, the publisher said, and it took fire, and he staid on deck because his father told him to, if I remember right, and when the old thing busted to pieces he was killed. Handsome picture, ain’t it? Taken from a photograph, all of ’em are; done especially for this work. His clothes are kinder odd, but they say that’s the way they dressed in them days.

“Look at this one. Now, isn’t that splendid? That’s William Penn, one of the early settlers. I was reading t’other day about him. When he first arrived, he got a lot of Indians up a tree, and, when they shook some apples down, he set one on top of his son’s head, and shot an arrow plump through it and never grazed him. They say it struck them [Pg 79] Indians cold; he was such a terrific shooter. Fine countenance, hasn’t he? Face shaved clean; he didn’t wear a mustache, I believe, but he seems to have let himself out on hair. Now, my view is, that every man ought to have a picture of that patriarch so’s to see how the fust settlers looked, and what kind of weskets they used to wear. See his legs too. Trousers a little short, maybe, as if he was going to wade in a creek, but he’s all there. Got some kind of a paper in his hand, I see. Subscription-list, I reckon. Now, how does that strike you?

“There’s something nice. That, I think, is—is—that—a—a—yes, to be sure, Washington,—you recollect him, of course. Some people call him Father of his Country; George—Washington. Had no middle name, I believe. He lived about two hundred years ago, and he was a fighter. I heard the publisher telling a man about him crossing the Delaware River up yer at Trenton; and seems to me, if I recollect right, I’ve read about it myself. He was courting some girl on the Jersey side, and he used to swim over at nights to see her, when the old man was asleep. The girl’s family were down on him, I reckon. He looks like a man to do that, don’t he? He’s got it in his eye. If it’d been me, I’d gone over on a bridge; but he probably wanted to show off afore her,—some men are so reckless, you know. Now, if you’ll conclude to take this, I’ll get the publisher to write out some more stories, and bring ’em round to you, so’s you can study up on him. I know he did ever so many other things; but I’ve forgot ’em, my memory’s so awful poor.

“Less see! Who have we next? Ah, Franklin! Benjamin Franklin! He was one of the old original pioneers, I think. I disremember exactly what he is celebrated for, but I think it was a—flying a—oh! yes, flying a kite, that’s it. The publisher mentioned it. He was out one day flying a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was a-flickering up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a tree, and hit him on the head; then he discovered the attraction of gravitation, I think they call it. Smart, wasn’t it? Now, if you or me’d ’a’ been hit, it’d just ’a’ made us mad, like as not, and set us a-ravin’. But men are so different! One man’s meat’s another man’s pison. See what a double chin he’s got. No beard on him, either, though a goatee would have been becoming to such a round face. He hasn’t got [Pg 80] on a sword, and I reckon he was no soldier; fit some when he was a boy, maybe, or went out with the home-guard, but not a regular warrior. I ain’t one myself, and I think all the better of him for it.

“Ah, here we are! Look at that. Smith and Pocahontas! John Smith! Isn’t that gorgeous? See how she kneels over him, and sticks out her hands while he lays on the ground, and that big fellow with a club tries to hammer him up! Talk about woman’s love! There it is for you! Modocs, I believe. Anyway, some Indians out West there, somewheres; and the publisher tells me that Captain Shackanasty, or whatever his name is there, was going to bang old Smith over the head with a log of wood, and this here girl she was sweet on Smith, it appears, and she broke loose, and jumped forward, and says to the man with a stick, ‘Why don’t you let John alone? Me and him are going to marry, and if you kill him I’ll never speak to you as long as I live,’ or words like them; and so the man he give it up, and both of them hunted up a preacher, and were married, and lived happy ever afterward. Beautiful story, isn’t it? A good wife she made him, too, I’ll bet, if she was a little copper-colored. And don’t she look just lovely in that picture? But Smith appears kinder sick, evidently thinks his goose is cooked; and I don’t wonder, with that Modoc swooping down on him with such a discouraging club.

“And now we come to—to—ah—to—Putnam—General Putnam: he fought in the war, too; and one day a lot of ’em caught him when he was off his guard, and they tied him flat on his back on a horse, and then licked the horse like the very mischief. And what does that horse do but go pitching down about four hundred stone steps in front of the house, with General Putnam lying there nearly skeered to death! Leastways the publisher said somehow that way, and I once read about it myself. But he came out safe, and I reckon sold the horse, and made a pretty good thing of it. What surprises me is, he didn’t break his neck; but maybe it was a mule, for they’re pretty sure-footed, you know. Surprising what some of these men have gone through, ain’t it?

“Turn over a couple of leaves. That’s General Jackson. My father shook hands with him once. He was a fighter, I know. He fit down in New Orleans. Broke up the rebel legislature, and then, when the Ku Kluxes got after him, he fought ’em behind cotton breastworks, and licked ’em till they couldn’t stand. They say he was terrific when he got real [Pg 81] mad,—hit straight from the shoulder, and fetched his man every time. Andrew, his fust name was; and look how his hair stands up.

“And then, here’s John Adams, and Daniel Boone, and two or three pirates, and a whole lot more pictures, so you see it’s cheap as dirt. Lemme have your name, won’t you?”

Dipper Bay was a little inlet, almost land-locked, in which the water was deep enough to float his sloop at this time of tide, and its high rocky shores would afford him a perfect protection from the fury of any squall, or even hurricane. But Leopold felt that his chances of reaching this secure haven were but small, for the breeze was very light.

The sloop “Rosabel” was but a short distance from the shore when the wind entirely subsided, and the long rollers were as smooth as glass. The lightning glared with fearful intensity, and the thunder boomed like the convulsions of an earthquake. By this time Rosabel [for whom the sloop had been named], who had before enjoyed the sublimity of [Pg 83] the coming storm, now began to realize its terrors, and to watch the handsome boatman with the deepest anxiety. The sails flapped idly in the motionless air, and Dipper Bay was still half a mile distant.

“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Hamilton,” said Leopold. “If the squall will keep off only a few moments, we shall be in a safe place.”

The skipper evidently “meant business;” and, shipping the long oars, he worked with a zeal which seemed to promise happy results, and Rosabel began to feel a little re-assured. But the sloop was too large, and too broad on the beam, to be easily rowed, and her progress was necessarily very slow.

“Can’t I help you, Leopold?” asked the maiden, when she saw what a tremendous effort the boatman was making.

“You may take the tiller, and steer for Dip Point, if you please,” replied Leopold, knowing that his beautiful passenger would be better satisfied if she could feel that she was doing something.

Leopold plied his oars with all the vigor of a manly frame, intent upon reaching the little bay, where the high rocks would shelter his craft from the fury of the storm. Then a breeze of wind came, and he resumed his place at the tiller. He had almost reached the haven when he saw coming down over the waters a most terrific squall. Before he could haul down his mainsail, the tempest struck the “Rosabel.” He placed his fair charge in the bottom of the boat, which the savage wind was driving towards the dangerous rocks. Before he could do any thing to secure the sail, the main-sheet parted at the boom. He cast off the halliards, but the sail was jammed and would not come down.

The “Rosabel” was almost upon the rocks. Seizing an oar, Leopold, satisfied that he could do nothing to save the boat, worked her away from the rocks, so that she would strike upon the narrow beach he had just left. The fierce squall was hurling her with mad speed upon the shore. By the most tremendous exertion, and at the imminent peril of his life, he succeeded in guiding her to the beach, upon which she struck with prodigious force, crushing in her keel and timbers beneath the shock. Without a word of explanation, he grasped the fair Rosabel in his arms, and leaped into the angry surges, which were driven high upon the rocks above him. The tide had risen so that there was hardly [Pg 84] room under the cliff for him to stand; but he bore her to this only partial refuge from the fury of the storm.

The tempest increased in violence, and the huge billows rolled in with impetuous fury upon him. Grasping his fair burden in his arms, with Rosabel clinging to him in mortal terror, he paused a moment to look at the angry sea. There was a narrow shelf of rock near him, against which the waves beat with terrible violence. If he could only get beyond this shelf, which projected out from the cliffs, he could easily reach the Hole in the Wall, where Harvey Barth had saved himself in just such a storm. He had born Rosabel some distance along the beach, both drenched by the lashing spray, and his strength was nearly exhausted. The projecting shelf was before him, forbidding for the moment his further progress.

Placing his left foot on a rock, his fair but heavy burden on his knee, clasping her waist with his left hand, while his right was fastened for support in a crevice of the cliff, he paused for an instant to recover his breath and watch for a favorable chance to escape from his perilous position. Rosabel, in her terror, had thrown her arms around his neck, clinging to him with all her might. When he paused, she felt, reposing on his powerful muscles, that she was safe—she confessed it afterwards; though, in that terrible sea and near those cruel rocks, the strength of the strongest man was but weakness. Leopold waited. If the sea would only recede for an instant, it would give him the opportunity to reach the broader beach beyond the shelf, over which he could pass to the Hole in the Wall. It was a moment of hope, mingled with a mighty fear.

A huge billow, larger than any he had yet seen, was rolling in upon him, crested and reeking with foam, and might dash him and his feeble charge, mangled and torn, upon the jagged rocks. Still panting from the violence of his exertion, he braced his nerves and his stout frame to meet the terrible shock.

With every muscle strained to the utmost tension, he waited the coming wave. In this attitude, with the helpless maiden clinging to him for life, with the wreck of his fine yacht near, he was a noble subject for an inspired artist.

The coming wave, buried him and the fair maiden in its cold embrace. It broke, and shattered itself in torrents of milky foam upon the hard [Pg 85] rocks. But the larger and higher the wave, the farther it recedes. Leopold stood firm, though he was shaken in every fibre of his frame by the shock. The retiring water—retiring only for an instant, to come again with even greater fury-gave him his opportunity, and he improved it. Swooping, like a strong eagle, beneath the narrow shelf of rock, he gained the broader sands beyond the reach of the mad billows. It blew a hurricane for some time. The stranded yacht was ground into little pieces by the sharp rocks, but her skipper and his fair passenger were safe.

Oliver Optic.

[Matt. xxii. 37-39.—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”]

[Pg 96]

(WITH A CHORUS.)

Scene.—Mrs. Mervin’s Sitting-room.

Emma. Well, mother, as our advertisement appeared in the paper last evening, I suppose we may expect any amount of answers in the shape of Irish girls.

Mrs. Mervin. Quite likely; and I must confess I dread the ordeal. It is better, however, to advertise, and have the girls call at the house, than to seek them at the intelligence office. [Pg 103]

Emma. Oh, yes, indeed! I made a vow the last time you sent me there for a girl, that if I could possibly help it I would never enter such a place again.

Mrs. Mervin. Well, I hope our present plan will be successful, and we shall be fortunate enough to secure a good girl. If we had less company, and our family were not so large, we would try to do the work together, and get along without help.

Emma. I wish we might, mother. I have often felt, after the disorderly reign of some tyrannical Bridget, that I would like to banish them all from whence they came, and wield the kitchen sceptre alone. (Bell rings.) There comes number one, I’ll warrant.

Enter Bridget Rooney.

Bridget. The top of the mornin’ to ye, ma’am; and sure is yer name Mervin?

Mrs. Mervin. It is; and I suppose you have come to answer my advertisement for a girl.

Bridget. Indade I have, ma’am. Is it a cook ye would be afther wantin’?

Mrs. Mervin. I wish a girl to do general housework, and of course that includes a knowledge of plain cooking. Would you like such a place?

Bridget. And sure I can’t tell, ma’am, till I ax ye a few questions, and finds out the characther of the place intirely. What wages do ye give?

Mrs. Mervin. Three dollars.

Bridget. And how many have ye in the family, ma’am?

Mrs. Mervin. Seven persons.

Bridget. Well, indade, and if ever I heard the like! Sivin persons, and only three dollars wages! Shure me cousin, Kate Murphy, gits four dollars, and there’s only three in the house. I’ll come for no three dollars, unless yer house has all the modern convainyences. Do ye have gas in the kitchen and girl’s room?

Mrs. Mervin. We have gas in the kitchen, but we do not think it necessary in the girl’s sleeping-room.

Bridget. And, faith, it’s as much wanted there as anywhere. A poor girl doesn’t want to be groping about with a nasty kerosene-lamp. How much time in a week do you give a girl to herself, ma’am?

Mrs. Mervin. One afternoon and evening a week. I believe that is a general rule. [Pg 104]

Bridget. It’s not a rule I goes by, ma’am. I wants two afternoons a week, and every evenin’ besides, and I’m used to have my friends come whenever I like.

Mrs. Mervin. I see you wouldn’t suit me at all, so you had better not remain here any longer. I don’t intend to pay a girl wages, and give her half her time besides.

Bridget. And shure yer no lady, ma’am; and I wouldn’t set fut in yer house if ye’d give me five dollars a week, bad luck to ye.

[Exit Bridget.

Mrs. Mervin. Not a very promising specimen to begin with, surely.

Emma. I should think not, indeed. The idea of her asking four dollars a week, and wanting, as you said, nearly half her time! (Bell rings.) There’s another. I shall find full employment in tending the door-bell, at this rate.

Enter Norah McCarty.

Norah. Are you the lady, ma’am, the paper said wanted a girl?

Mrs. Mervin. Yes, I advertised for one yesterday. Can you do general housework?

Norah. Faith I can, ma’am; it’s a gineral’s housework I’ve been doing, and I might have staid in the place foriver, only that herself was that fussy that niver a soul could plaze her.

Mrs. Mervin. Can you make good bread?

Norah. Good bread is it ye say? And indade I can make that same. I makes it with imtens, ma’am; and if it sours a bit, I puts a handful of salerathus into it, and it comes out of the oven as swate as a nut, and a fine color on it besides.

Emma. Dear me! I should think it might have a fine color with a handful of saleratus in it!

Mrs. Mervin. At what other place have you lived besides the one you mentioned?

Norah. Nowheres at all, ma’am; that’s the first place I wint when I came from the ould counthry.

Mrs. Mervin. How long did you live there, and what part of the work did you do?

Norah. Well, ma’am, I lived there three weeks, ’liven days, and a fortnight—barrin’ the two days that I staid out to take care of me cousin Mike; and I did the fine work, mostly, ma’am,—scrubbing, sifting ashes, and ’the likes of that. Do ye think ye would like to hire me, ma’am? [Pg 105]

Mrs. Mervin. I guess not. I am afraid you haven’t had experience enough to do my work properly.

Norah. Well, ma’am, if that’s any thing I could buy at the store, I would be willing to spend a thrifle to get some, for the sake of livin’ wid ye.

Mrs. Mervin. Experience in housework cannot be bought at the stores; so you had better look somewhere else for a place.

[Exit Norah.

Emma. Well, mother, did you ever hear of such stupidity before?

Mrs. Mervin. She’s the greenest specimen I’ve seen yet. I wonder who will come next? (Bell rings.)

Emma. We shall soon see.

Enter Ellen Flynn.

Ellen. A fine day, ma’am. Is it yerself that wants a girl?

Mrs. Mervin. Yes, if I can find a good one; but I am sorry to say they seem to be growing very scarce.

Ellen. You are mistaken there, ma’am; it’s good places that’s gittin’ scarce. How big a family do ye have?

Mrs. Mervin. There are seven of us, and we of course have company occasionally.

Ellen. That’s too many intirely; but I s’pose with all thim ye keep two girls and a man besides.

Mrs. Mervin. No, we keep but one servant.

Ellen. Servint is it! Well, ma’am, that’s what I niver allows meself to be called. What sort of convainyences is there in the house? Is there a rocking-chair in the kitchen, where I can rest meself while the pot’s a-bilin’?

Mrs. Mervin. No, I don’t consider that a necessary article of kitchen furniture.

Ellen. We differs there, ma’am; I can’t do without a rocking-chair. I see you have a pianny. I s’pose ye wouldn’t mind if I learned to play on it afther me work is done—would ye?

Mrs. Mervin. I should object very strongly to giving a girl such a privilege.

Ellen. Well, ma’am, it’s gittin’ quite the fashion for the ladies that live out to play. Me cousin Kate Donnelly plays “St. Pathrick’s Day in the Mornin’,” and “Rory O’More,” illigant; and I’ve made up me mind I’ll live in no place agin where I can’t have the chance to play the pianny. [Pg 106]

Mrs. Mervin. Then the quicker you look for such a place, the better. It isn’t worth while for me to spend any more time talking with you.

Ellen. Indade, it’s a very uncivil tongue ye have, ma’am; and it’s meself that ought to grumble for spendin’ me precious time talkin’ to the likes of you.

[Exit Ellen.

Emma. It grows worse and worse, mother! What are we coming to?

Mrs. Mervin. Dear me! I don’t know! I am fairly discouraged! (Bell rings.)

Enter Joanna.

Joanna. Are ye afther wantin’ a girl, ma’am?

Mrs. Mervin. Yes; I want a good one.

Joanna. Faith, thin, it’s glad I am that my brother Pathrick read me the scrap in the paper last night, for I’m wantin’ a place.

Mrs. Mervin. What can you do?

Joanna. Well, thin, I can do any thing at all that ye likes. I washes beautiful; and me clothes has such a fine blue color on thim, when I takes thim in, it would do yer sowl good to see thim.

Mrs. Mervin. Oh, dear! I don’t like so much bluing in my clothes.

Joanna. Faith, thin, I’ll jist lave out the blue a few times, and they’ll be as fine a yaller as ye wish; any thing to suit ye, ma’am.

Emma. Can you do common cooking?

Joanna. I niver does any thing common, miss; all I cooks is in the fust style. I can make Meringo pies that would melt in your mouth, Charlotte Russians, and Blue Munge, too.

Emma. Indeed! you seem quite like an adept in cooking.

Joanna. I don’t know what an adipt is; but if you mean I’m a good cook, I am that. Ye ought to see the fine roast pig I cooked the other day; sich a handsome baste was niver set before on a gintleman’s table, I’ll warrant.

Mrs. Mervin. You seem to despise common cooking. I have very little else done in my family. We live quite plainly, and I hardly think you would suit me.

Joanna. Well, now, ma’am, we won’t let the cooking come betwixt us. I can cook plain, if I like; so, if ye plaze, I’d like to come and try. [Pg 107]

Mrs. Mervin. Can you bring me a certificate of good character from the lady who last employed you?

Joanna. A stifkit! What’s that, shure?

Mrs. Mervin. A paper, stating what character you bear.

Joanna. Indade, ma’am, I niver carries my charactercher round in a dirty piece of paper, that’s liable to be torn up any day. I thinks more of meself than that.

Mrs. Mervin. Very well; I cannot take you, unless you can bring me such a paper.

Joanna. Faith, ye won’t have the chance; and I’m thinkin’ it’ll be a long time before ye gets suited. Ye’ll find no dacent girl will carry her charactercher loose in her hand.

[Exit Joanna.

Emma. Another verdant specimen. These interviews grow interesting. I’m beginning to enjoy them. I wonder who will come next? (Bell rings.)

Mrs. Mervin. We shall soon see who has given the bell such a gentle pull.

Enter Angelina Simper.

Angelina. Are you the lady who manifested her desire to secure an assistant in her family, by inserting an advertisement in “The Gazette” of last evening?

Mrs. Mervin. Yes; I advertised for a servant-girl. Do you wish such a situation?

Angelina. I might be induced, madam, to accept a position in your family for a sufficient consideration.

Mrs. Mervin. Are you familiar with housework?

Angelina. Yes, in a certain way. I am in the habit of idealizing and etherealizing every thing which I undertake. I think I have discovered the method of extracting the poetry from housework; and instead of regarding it as a wearisome drudgery, I make it a grand poem.

Emma. I think you must be an inventive genius if you can find any poetry in washing greasy dishes, or scrubbing kitchen floors.

Angelina. Ah, miss, there is poetry in every thing. I revel in it, morning, noon, and night. Its glorious beams brighten my pathway at every step of my earthly progress. I have written a volume of sweet verses; and if they can only be properly brought before the public, my name will be immortalized, and the poet’s laurels forever crown my brow. It is to gain a sufficient sum to publish this gem among poetical works, that I have decided, for a short time, to put in practice my ideal method of housekeeping. [Pg 108]

Mrs. Mervin. Can you make bread, and do up shirts?

Angelina. Yes: I can insert the rising element in a liquid form into the snowy flour; or I can use those subtile powders that permeate the mass of doughy particles, and make them rise in comely proportions.

Emma. Indeed! but how about the shirts?

Angelina. Well, after bringing them in from their bath in the sunlight, I immerse them in starch of pearly whiteness, and after sufficient time has elapsed I press to their bosoms a hot iron. I am reminded by this that only through fiery trials we can be made to shine with becoming lustre ourselves.

Mrs. Mervin. I think you will have to find some other place in which to practise your fine ideas of housework. You soar quite too high for us.

Angelina. Adieu; this weary birdling seeks another nest.

[Exit Angelina.

Emma. O, mother! I thought I should burst out laughing in her face. She is an escaped lunatic, I do believe.

Mrs. Mervin. I should think she was. (Bell rings.) There’s another; this time an artist, perhaps. I’ll go straight to the office, and have that advertisement taken out.

Enter Mary.

Mary. Is this Mrs. Mervin who advertised for a girl?

Mrs. Mervin. Yes, I am the lady. Do you know of any good girl?

Mary. I would like to get a place myself. I have worked in a shop since I left my home in the country, three years ago; but I find the confinement doesn’t agree with me, and I had rather do housework.

Mrs. Mervin. You understand it, then, I suppose.

Mary. Oh, yes! I am next to the oldest in a family of nine children, and my mother commenced teaching me to do housework almost as soon as I could go alone. As soon as the sister next me could take my place, I left home to see if I could earn something to help along. A man like my father, with a small farm and a large family of children, finds it rather hard to get along sometimes. [Pg 109]

Mrs. Mervin. Yes, he must find it hard to feed and clothe so many, with so little ready money as farmers generally have. You are a dutiful daughter to endeavor to assist him what you can; but would your parents approve of your living out in the city?

Mary. Yes: ever since my side has ached with such constant sewing, mother has been urging me to live out; and I should have tried to get a place long before this, only I dreaded so much to go to an intelligence-office. When I saw your advertisement, I decided to apply here immediately.

Mrs. Mervin. I am very glad you did, for I should like to engage you without further delay. How soon can you come?

Mary. To-night, if you wish; my week is out at my boarding-place, and I shouldn’t care to commence another.

Mrs. Mervin. Very well, you can come, then, and I will give you three dollars a week. Will that be satisfactory?

Mary. Quite so: that is more than I clear some weeks now; and it will be such a relief to have done with so much sewing. Good-morning, ma’am. I’ll be here about five o’clock.

[Exit Mary.

Emma. There, mother, see what has come by advertising in a respectable paper. I think you have secured a jewel,—so tidy and civil,—and I know by her looks she knows how to do every thing.

Mrs. Mervin. Yes, I am greatly pleased with her appearance; and how much more sensible in her to do housework than kill herself sewing in a shop! I hope the time will soon come when a great many more in her circumstances will go and do likewise.

Mrs. S. E. Dawes.

[Pg 5]

The Reading-Club.

“Douce est la morte qui vient en bien aimant.”

Up on the heights in the Old Dominion, where the houses are few, and many of the mountaineers know little of the settlements below, a man of God lived who took to preaching the gospel in his own rude way. He was a man of strong character and clear common sense. He could just read the Bible—that was all; but he got at the heart of things as his ministry showed, and drew near to the heart of his Master. He was a very plain preacher, a most careless and unguarded man. He told the people the truth without any apologies, with all kindness and tenderness of heart. Many were turned from sin unto righteousness; and the presbytery, in whose bounds his work was, determined to ordain him, simply on the ground of his efficiency and clear call to the ministry, though he had no education. He objected. They persisted. Finally the day was appointed, and a large company from the mountains and the valleys below gathered to witness the examination for licensing and ordination of this strange character. All knew that there would be something entertaining in his answers. The presbytery assembled, the congregation looking on. John Leland took his place in front, dropping his head into his hands. The moderator simply stated the object of the meeting, addressing Mr. Leland. The latter looked up and said,— [Pg 9]

“Mr. Moderator, I’ll tell you all I know. It won’t take long,” and down his head went into his hands again. A smile went around the assembly.

Moderator. Mr. Leland, do you believe that God had a people, chosen and elect before the foundations of the world?

Leland. I don’t know what God was doin’ before he made the world. Don’t know any thin’ about it. I a’n’t a educated man.

Moderator. Yes, but you must understand me. You certainly believe that God had a people chosen and elect from all eternity?

Leland. No. I don’t believe that. They couldn’t a’ been our kind o’ folks, anyway; because ours are made out of the dust of the earth, you know.

Moderator. Mr. Leland, we have heard of your Christian life, of your efficiency and your success, and we are met to ordain you to the ministry of the gospel. This is a solemn occasion, and you must not make light of the questions. Now, I want to know if you believe in the total depravity of mankind?

Leland. No, I don’t, if you mean by that that men are as bad as they can be; for the Devil a’n’t any worse’n that, you know.

Moderator. Do you believe in imputed righteousness, and that it is sufficient to save all who have faith?

Leland. I don’t know any righteousness that will save a man who won’t do right himself.

Moderator. Do you believe in the final perseverance of the saints?

Leland. I don’t know what that means.

Moderator. Well, you believe that all who are converted will be kept, and not fall away?

Leland. Oh, I don’t know how it is down in the settlements, among the educated; but I tell you up where we live, we have the awfulest cases of backsliding.

Moderator. But, Mr. Leland, you certainly believe that when a man is converted he will be kept in some way, and finally saved?

Leland. I cannot tell much about that, till I am saved myself. Don’t know any thing about it now.

Moderator. You feel that you are called to preach the gospel? [Pg 10]

Leland. No, I never heard any one call me.

Moderator. We do not mean that you heard a voice—any thing said—but that you are called.

Leland. Well, Mr. Moderator, if there wasn’t any voice, or any thing said, don’t know how there could be any call. Never heard any.

Moderator. You believe it is your duty to preach the gospel to all creatures?

Leland. No. I don’t believe it my duty to preach to the Dutch, for instance. I can’t talk Dutch. If the Lord wanted me to preach to them, in some way I could talk Dutch; but I can’t, I never tried.

Moderator. Mr. Leland, you certainly desire to see all men come to repentance, and turn to righteousness. Your acts show that. We have heard of your self-sacrificing spirit, your love for mankind, and all your good works to win sinners to the gospel and repentance.

Leland. Mr. Moderator, I’ll tell you the honest truth. I am a little ashamed of it; but it is God’s truth just as I tell you. Some days I do feel that way; and then again, some of them act so bad, I don’t care if the Devil gets half of them.

After the presbytery had retired to take counsel over the matter, they returned and announced that while his answers had not been entirely satisfactory in every respect, nevertheless, in view of his efficiency in preaching, they had voted to ordain him, which they proceeded to do in the usual manner. After it was over, Mr. Leland lifted his head out of his hands, straightened himself up, and stood his full height. Looking first at the moderator, and then all round him, he said,—

“Brethren, I’ve put you to a heap o’ trouble. I don’t know any thin’ about your doctrines, ’n’ I told you I didn’t. I’ve been doin’ the best I could, preachin’ the gospel as I found it in the Bible. Now, you see, I don’t know any thing else. Another thing: when the apostles put their hands on a man’s head, I read that the man had some power, or some sense, or some knowledge, that he hadn’t afore. But now, brethren, honest and true, right out, you’ve all had your hands on me, and I am just as big a fool as ever I was. But I thank you, nevertheless: I’m very much obleeged to you.”

And so they let him go.

[Pg 11]

Admiring my flowers, sir? P’raps you’d step inside the gate, and walk round my little place? It ain’t big, but there’s plenty of variety,—violets and cabbages, roses and artichokes. Any one that didn’t care for flowers ’ud be sure to find beauty in them young spring onions. People’s ideas differ very much, there ain’t a doubt of it. One man’s very happy over a glass of whiskey and water, and another thinks every thing ’ud go straight in this ’ere world if we all drank tea and lemonade. And it’s right enough: it keeps things even. We should have the world a very one-sided affair if everybody pulled the same way. Philosopher, am I? Well, I dunno. I’ve got a theory to be sure—every one has nowadays; and mine is, that there is a joke to be found in every mortal thing if only we look in the right place for it. But some people don’t know how to look for it. Why, sir, if you’ll believe it, I was talking to a man yesterday that couldn’t see any thing to laugh at in the naval demonstration.

Am I independent? Well, I makes money by my fruit and vegetables, if that’s what you mean. But there’s so many ways of being independent. One man marries a woman with £20,000 a year, and calls that independence. Another votes on the strongest side, and calls that being independent. One takes up every new-fangled idea that comes out, and says he’s independent. Some calls impudence independence. There’s not a name as fits so many different articles. No! I’ve never bin married. Somehow, I don’t think married men see the fun in every thing same as single ones. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the ladies, but I do [Pg 18] think they enjoy a good cry more than a good laugh. Was I ever in love? and did I laugh then? Why, yes, never laughed heartier in my life. It’s a good many years ago now. I was living in lodgings down Clerkenwell way, and the landlady’s daughter was as pretty a creature as ever you see, bright and cheery, like a robin, when first I knew her. But, by and by, she grew pale and peaky,—used to go about the house without singing, and had such big, sad-looking eyes. Her home wasn’t a particularly happy one, for her mother was a nagger. Perhaps you’ve never come across a woman of that pertikler character. Well, then, you should say double the prayers of ordinary people; for you’ve much to be thankful for. I never looked at her without feeling that her husband must have been very happy indeed when he got to heaven. I sometimes think, sir, that women of this sort might be made use of, and prisons, and all other kind of punishment, done away with: perhaps, though, the lunatic asylums ’ud get too full.

Well, I grew to be quite intimate with Bessie; and one evening, I don’t know how it was, she told me all her troubles. She was engaged to a young man; and her mother wouldn’t consent to them marrying, and was always worrying her to break it off. I asked her if there were any thing against him. Nothing, except that her mother had taken a dislike to him: he wasn’t very strong, but he was the best, cleverest, dearest fellow that ever lived. All the time she was talking I felt a gnawing sort of pain somewhere in my inside. First, I thought I must be hungry; but, when I came to eat, all my food seemed to get in my throat, and stick there. This won’t do, old fellow, thinks I: there must be a joke to be got out of it somewhere. So I set to consider; and there, clear enough, it was. Why, the joke ’ud be to let Bessie marry her young man, and see the pretty cheeks grow round and pink again. But how to do it, there was the rub. I began to cultivate the old lady’s society with a view to finding out her weak point: for, being a woman, of course she had a weak point; and, being a very ugly woman, what do you think it was? Why, vanity, to be sure. I soon noticed a change in her. She took her hair out of paper every day, instead of only on Sundays, as she had been used to do; and she put on a clean cap sometimes, and smirked whenever I passed her. Why, here’s a bigger joke than I bargained for, thinks I! While I’ve been studying the woman to find out her weak [Pg 19] point, she thinks I’ve been admiring her. But I soon saw what use I could make of this. I went down into the kitchen when she wasn’t busy,—I knew it would be rather too hot other times,—and I got talking about Bessie. “It’s strange,” I says, “that a fine-looking girl like that shouldn’t have a sweetheart. Things was different when you was younger, I’ll be bound.”

“As for that,” says she, “Bessie has a sweetheart; but I don’t approve of him. He’s not exactly the sort of man I expected for her.”

“But, lor’,” I says, “you wouldn’t go and keep that girl single! Think what harm you may do yourself. You can’t be so cruel as to give up all idea of marrying agin! Why, you don’t look forty.” That wasn’t an untruth, for she looked fifty. She tossed her head, and told me to go along. I didn’t go along. I says, “There’s no doubt lots of young fellows ’ud be glad enough of a good-looking wife like you, but mightn’t care for a daughter as old as Miss Bessie.” This seemed to strike her very much. I followed it up, got talking to her day after day, and always led the conversation to the same point. At last one day when I came home from work, she says, “It’s all settled. Bessie’s going to be married, and her Tom’s coming here this evening.” Then I went up to my own room, and laughed till I cried. Presently I heard the little girl run up-stairs as she hadn’t run for many a long day, and I knew she’d gone to put on a smart ribbon for Tom’s sake. She tapped at my door as she passed. Would I come down? somebody was there, and wanted to know me. I called out that I was busy, and couldn’t come; and she went away. But after about an hour she came again. I was sitting in the dark, thinking of a good many things; and before I had time to speak she was down on her knees beside me, and hiding her face.

“You told me you were busy,” she said; “and here you are all in the dark and cold, and I can’t bear any one to be dull or lonely to-night, because I’m so very, very happy. And I know it’s all through you. Mother would never have given in of her own accord. You’ve always been my friend when I wanted one very badly; and now you must be angry with me, or you wouldn’t stay away to-night. And you won’t even speak to me. Oh, whatever I’ve done to vex you, don’t think of it any more!” [Pg 20]

She nestled up to me so close that her hair touched my coat-sleeve, and her pretty eyes looked up all swimming with tears. I ground my teeth, and clinched my hands, or—or I don’t know what I mightn’t ha’ done. You see the joke of this, sir, don’t you? Here was the girl crying, and asking me to forgive her, and like her a little; and there was I—not disliking her a bit all the time. Ha, ha, ha! I had a hearty laugh at her, and hurried with her down-stairs, and was introduced to Tom, and I talked to the old lady, and drank the young people’s health, and was as happy as possible. And on the wedding-day I gave her away as if I had been her father; and I sang a song and danced: and, when the time came for Bessie to go away with her husband, I dried her eyes; for at the last moment the tender-hearted little thing broke down, and cried, and kissed us all, and asked her mother not to feel angry with her for leaving her all alone; and then the mother cried, and what with having so many eyes to wipe, I found myself wiping my own just as if it all weren’t a tremendous joke.

How have they got on since? ’Bout as well as most people, I suppose; she loves him, and takes care of him. And the mother’s softened down a bit since she’s bin a grandmother. And as to my godson, there never was such a boy. I have him with me as much as possible, and he’s beginning to see the joke of every thing almost as much as I do myself. And when I die, all this little place’ll belong to him, and he’ll be a rich man: so my death’ll be the biggest joke of all, you see, sir.

“De anemules an’ de beastesses,” said Uncle Remus, shaking his coffee around in the bottom of his tin cup, in order to gather up all the sugar, “dey kep’ on gettin’ mo’ and mo’ familious wid wunner nudder, twel bimeby, ’twant long ’fo’ Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum got ter sorter bunchin’ der perwishions tergedder in de same house. Arter while de roof sorter ’gun ter leak, en one day Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum ’semble fer ter see ef dey couldn’t kinder patch her up. Dey had a big day’s wuk in front un um, en den dey fotch der dinner wid um. Dey lumped de vittles up in one pile, en de butter w’at Brer Fox brung dey goes en puts in de spring-house fer ter keep cool, en den dey wen’ ter wuk, en ’twan’t long ’fo’ Brer Rabbit’s stummuck ’gun ter sorter growl en pester ’im. Dat butter of Brer Fox’s sot heavy on his mine, en his mouf water eve’y time he ’member ’bout [Pg 27] it. Presen’ly he say ter hisself dat he bleedzd ter have a nip at dat butter, en den he lay his plans, he did. Fus news you know, w’ile dey was all wukkin’ ’long, Brer Rabbit raise his head quick en fling his years forred en holler out,—

“‘Here I is. W’at you want wid me?’ en off he went like sump’n wuz arter ’im.

“He sailed ’roun’, old Brer Rabbit did, en arter he make sho dat nobody ain’t foller’n ’im, inter de spring-’ouse he bounces, en dar he stays twel he git a bait er butter. Den he santer on back en go to wuk.

“‘Whar you bin?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.

“‘I hear my chilluns callin’ me,’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee, ’en I hatter go see w’at dey want. My ole ’oman done gone en tuck mighty sick,’ sezee.

“Dey wuk on twel bimeby de butter tas’e so good dat ole Brer Rabbit want some mo’. Den he raise up his head, he did, en holler out,—

“‘Heyo! Wait! I’m a comin’!’ en off he put.

“Dis time he stay right smart while, en w’en he git back Brer Fox ax him whar he bin.

“‘I bin ter see my ole ’oman, en she’s a sinkin’,’ sezee.

“Dreckly Brer Rabbit hear um callin’ ’im ag’in, en off he goes, en dis time, bless yo’ soul, he gets de butter out so clear dat he kin see hisse’f in de bottom er de bucket. He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer den a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt up.

“‘How’s yo’ ole ’oman dis time?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.

“‘I’m oblije ter you, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but I’m fear’d she’s done gone by, now,’ en dat sorter make Brer Fox en Brer Possum feel in moanin’ wid Brer Rabbit.

“Bimeby, w’en dinner-time come, dey all got out der vittles, but Brer Rabbit keep on lookin’ lonesome, en Brer Fox and Brer Possum, dey sorter rustle ’roun’ for ter see ef dey can’t make Brer Rabbit feel sorter splimmy.”

“What is that, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy.

“Sorter splannny, honey—sorter like he’s in a crowd—sorter like his ole ’oman ain’t dead ez she mout be. You know how fokes duz w’en dey gits whar people’s a moanin’.”

The little boy didn’t know, fortunately for him, and Uncle Remus went on,—

“Brer Fox and Brer Possum rustle roun’, dey did, gittin’ out de vittles, en bimeby Brer Fox say, sezee,— [Pg 28]

“‘Brer Possum, you run down to de spring en fetch de butter, en I’ll sail ’roun’ yer en set de table,’ sezee.

“Brer Possum he lope off arter de butter, en dreckly here he comes lopin’ back, wid his years a trimblin’, en his tongue a hangin’ out. Brer Fox, he holler out,—

“‘W’at de matter now, Brer Possum?’ sezee.

“‘You all better run yer, fokes,’ sez Brer Possum, sezee. ‘De las’ drap er dat butter done gone.’

“‘Whar she gone?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.

“‘Look like she dried up,’ sez Brer Possum, sezee.

“Den Brer Rabbit he look sorter wise, he did, en he up’n say, sezee,—

“‘I speck dat butter melt in somebody’s mouf,’ sezee.

“Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho ’nuff de butter wuz gone. W’ile dey was sputin’ over der wunderment, Brer Rabbit say he see tracks all ’roun’ dar, en he p’int out dat ef dey’ll all go ter sleep, he kin ketch de chap w’at stole de butter. Den dey all lie down, en Brer Fox en Brer Possum dey soon drapt off ter sleep; but Brer Rabbit he stay ’wake, en w’en de time come, he raise up easy en smear Brer Possum’s mouf wid de butter on his paws, en den he run off en nibble up de bes’ er de dinner w’at dey lef’ layin’ out, en den he come back en wake up Brer Fox, en show ’im de butter on Brer Possum’s mouf. Den dey wake Brer Possum up, en tell ’im about it; but c’ose Brer Possum ’ny it to de las’. Brer Fox, dough, he’s a kinder lawyer, en he argafy dis way,—dat Brer Possum wuz de fus one at de butter, en de fus one fer ter miss it, en, mo’n dat, dar hung de signs on his mouf. Brer Possum see dat dey got ’im jammed up in a cornder, en den he up en say dat de way fer ter ketch de man w’at stole de butter is ter bil’ a big bresh-heap en set her afier, en all hands try ter jump over, en de one w’at fall in, den he de chap w’at stole de butter. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox dey bofe ’gree, dey did; en dey whirl in en b’il’ de bresh-heap, en dey b’il’ her high, en dey b’il’ her wide, en den dey totch her off. W’en she got ter blazin’ up good, Brer Rabbit he tuck de fus turn. He sorter step back, look ’roun’ en giggle, en over he went mo’ samer den a bird fly in’. Den come Brer Fox. He got back little fudder, en spit on his han’s, en den lit out en made de jump, en he come so nigh gettin’ in dat de een’ er his tail kotch afier. Ain’t you never see no fox, honey?” inquired Uncle Remus in a tone that implied both conciliation and information. [Pg 29]

The little boy thought probably he had, but he wouldn’t commit himself.

“Well, den,” continued the old man, “nex’ time you see one un um, you look right close en see ef de een’ er his tail ain’t white. Hit’s des like I tell you. Dey b’ars de skyar er dat bresh-heap down ter dis day. Dey er marked—dat’s w’at dey is—dey er marked.”

“And what about Brother Possum?” asked the boy.

“Old Brer Possum, he tuck a runnin’ start, he did, en he come lumberin’ ’long, en he hit—ker blam!—right in de middle er de fier, en dat waz de las’ er old Brer Possum.”

“But, Uncle Remus, Brother Possum didn’t steal the butter after all,” said the little boy, who was not at all satisfied with such summary injustice.

“Dat w’at make I say w’at I duz, honey. In dis worrul, lots er folks is gotter souffer fer udder folkes’ sins. Look like hit’s mighty on wrong; but hit’s des dat a way. Tribbalashun seem like she’s a waitin’ roun’ de cornder fer ter ketch one en all un us, honey.”

Harris.

Love! Love is the flight of the soul towards God, towards the great, the sublime, and the beautiful, which are the shadow of God upon earth. Love your family, the partner of your life, those around you ready to share your joys and sorrows, the dead who were dear to you, and to whom you were dear. But let your love be the love taught you by Dante and by us,—the love of souls that aspire together, and do not grovel on the earth in search of a felicity which is not the destiny of the creature here to reach; do not yield to a delusion which inevitably would degrade you into egotism. To love, is to promise, and to receive a promise for the future. God has given us love, that the weary soul may give and receive support upon the way of life. It is a flower which springs up on the path of duty, but which cannot change its course. Purify, strengthen, and improve yourselves by loving. Ever act—even at the price of increasing her earthly trials—so that the sister soul united to your own may never need, here or elsewhere, to blush through [Pg 30] you or for you. The time will come when from the height of a new life, embracing the whole past and comprehending its secret, you will smile together at the sorrows you have endured, the trials you have overcome.

Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the house that God has given you, that, by striving to perfect yourselves therein, you may prepare to ascend to him. It is your name, your glory, your sign among the peoples. Give to it your thought, your counsel, your blood. Raise it up, great and beautiful, as foretold by our great men. And see that you leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood, or of servitude, unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be one, as the thought of God. You are twenty-four millions of men, endowed with active, splendid faculties, with a tradition of glory the envy of the nations of Europe; an immense future is before you, your eyes are raised to the loveliest heaven, and around you smiles the loveliest land in Europe; you are encircled by the Alps and the sea, boundaries marked out by the finger of God for a people of giants. And you must be such, or nothing. Let not a man of that twenty-four millions remain excluded from the fraternal bond which shall join you together; let not a look be raised to that heaven, which is not that of a free man. Let Rome be the ark of your redemption, the temple of your nation. Has she not twice been the temple of the destinies of Europe? In Rome two extinct worlds, the Pagan and the Papal, meet each other like the double jewels of a diadem; and you must draw from thence a third world, greater than the other two. From Rome, the Holy City, the City of Love (Amor), the purest and wisest among you, elected by the vote, and strengthened by the inspiration, of a whole people, shall give forth the pact that shall unite us in one, and represent us in the future alliance of the peoples. Until then you have no country, or you have it contaminated.

Love humanity. You can only ascertain your own mission from the aim placed by God before humanity at large. God has given you your country as cradle, humanity as mother, and you can only love your brethren of the cradle in loving your common mother. Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea, are other peoples, now fighting, or preparing to fight, the holy [Pg 31] fight of independence, of nationality, of liberty: other peoples striving by different routes to reach the same goal,—improvement, association, and the foundation of an authority which shall put an end to moral anarchy, and link again earth to heaven, and which mankind may love and obey without remorse or shame. Unite with them, they will unite with you. Do not invoke their aid where your single arm can suffice to conquer; but say to them, that the hour will shortly sound for a terrible struggle between right and blind force, and that in that hour you will ever be found with those who have raised the same banner as yourselves.

And love, young men, love and reverence above every thing the ideal. The ideal is the word of God, superior to every country, superior to humanity; it is the country of the spirit, the city of the soul, in which all are brethren who believe in the inviolability of thought, and in the dignity of our immortal soul; and the baptism of this fraternity is martyrdom. From that high sphere spring the principles which alone can redeem the peoples. Arise for them! and not from impatience of suffering, or dread of evil. Anger, pride, ambition, and the desire of material prosperity are arms common to the peoples and their oppressors; and, even should you conquer with them to-day, you will fall again to-morrow: but principles belong to the peoples alone, and their oppressors can find no arms to oppose them. Adore enthusiasm. Worship the dreams of the virgin soul, and the visions of early youth, for they are the perfume of paradise, which the soul preserves in issuing from the hands of its Creator. Respect above all things your conscience; have upon your lips the truth that God has placed in your hearts, and, while working together in harmony in all that tends to the emancipation of our soil, even with those who differ from you, yet ever bear erect your own banner, and boldly promulgate your faith.

Mazzini

[Pg 36]

“So this is the uproar? Well, isn’t this a monster big building? And that chantieleer! It’s got a thousand candles if it has one. It must have taken a sight of tallow to have run them all!”—“They are make-believe candles, aunt, with little jets of gas inside to give the effect of real ones.”—“I want to know! Well, I only wish that your uncle Peleg was here. You’re sure, Louisa, that this is a perfectly proper place?”—“Why, aunt, you don’t suppose that papa would consent to our attending the opera if it were other than a perfectly proper place, do you?”—“No, no, dear; I suppose not. But somehow you city folks look upon such things differently from what we do who live in the country. Dear suz! Louisa, do look way up there in the tiptop of the house! Did you ever see such a sight of people? Why, excursion-trains must have run from all over the State. Massy, child! There’s a woman forgot her bonnet! Do just nudge her, Louisa, and tell her of it. My Eliza Ann cut just such a caper as that one Sunday last summer,—got clean into the meeting-house, and half way down the middle aisle, before she discovered it, and the whole congregation a-giggling and a-tittering. Your cousin Woodman Harrison shook the whole pew; and I don’t know but what he’d ’a’ hawhawed right out in meeting if his father hadn’t ’a’ given him one of his looks. As ’twas, I was afeard he’d bust a blood-vessel. Just speak to that poor creature, Louisa. She’ll feel awfully cut up when she finds it out, and ’tis a Christian duty to tell her.”—“Why, aunt, don’t you know that she is in full dress, and left her bonnet at home intentionally? See how beautifully her hair is arranged. You don’t suppose she wanted to cover up all that elegance, do you?”—“Come bareheaded a-purpose! Well, I do declare! But, Louisa, where’s the horse-chestnut?”—“The horse-chestnut, aunt?”—“Yes, child; you said something or other about a horse-chestnut playing a voluntary or something of that sort.”—“Oh, the orchestra! Yes, I remember. Don’t you see those gentlemen in front of the stage?”—“Them men with the fiddles and the bass-viols?”—“Yes. Well, they compose the orchestra, and the orchestral part of this opera is [Pg 37] particularly fine.”—“I want to know! Belong to the first families, I suppose. They are an uncommon good-looking set of men. Is Mrs. Patte a furrener?”—“Yes; she’s a mixture of Spanish and Italian. She was born in Madrid, but came to the United States when only five years of age, and remained here until she was nearly seventeen. There, aunt; there’s the bell, and the curtain will rise in a minute. Yes; see, there it goes.”—“Louisa!”—“Sh—! listen. I want you to hear Signor Monti. He is considered a very fine bass.”—“But, Louisa, oughtn’t we to stand up during prayer-time?”—“You forget, aunt, that this is only a play, and not a temple.”—“Dear suz! I only wish your uncle Peleg was here. Somehow it seems kinder unchristian to be play-acting worship.”—“Why, aunt, there’s no need of your feeling so conscience-stricken. Lots of church-people come to the opera. It isn’t like the theatre, you know. It’s more—more—er—well, I can’t just express it, aunt. But, anyway, people who discountenance the theatre, especially during Lent, approve of the opera.”—“But, Louisa, what is the matter? La sakes, child! let’s get out as spry as ever we can! The theatre is all on fire. Hurry, Louisa! Wish that your uncle Peleg”—“Sh—aunt; do sit down. It isn’t a fire. It’s only the people applauding because Patti is on the stage. Don’t you see her?”—“Sakes alive! Is that it? I thought we was all afire, or Wiggin’s flood had come. So that is Mrs. Patte. Well, I declare for it! she’s as spry as a cricket, and no mistake. Why, Louisa, how old is she? She looks scarcely out of her teens.”—“Oh, aunt, you must not be so practical, and ask such personal questions. Ladies don’t always want their ages known; but, between ourselves, she’s over forty.”—“Is it possible? There, they’re at it again. What is the matter now?”—“Why, Scalchi has appeared. Don’t you see?”—“What, that dapper little fellow a-bowing and a-scraping and a-smirking! Is that Mr. Scalchi?”—“That’s Madame Scalchi, aunt; and she’s taking the part of Arsaces, the commander of the Assyrian army, you know.”—“Louisa, are you sure that this is a perfectly proper place? I only wish Peleg was here, for then I shouldn’t feel so sort a-skerry like and guilty.”—“Now, aunt, we mustn’t speak another word till the opera is through, because we disturb the people.”—“I suppose we do; but, whenever any thing happens, you nudge me, and I’ll nudge you; or we can squeeze hands,—that’s the way Peleg and I do when we go [Pg 38] to the lyceum. It’s sorter social, and everybody can hear just as well.” Soon outrang the glorious voice. “Bravo! bravo! bravo!” echoed from all parts of the house “Hooray!”—“Why, Aunt Tabor! sit down.”—“If Peleg were only here! Hip, hip”—“Aunt, in pity’s name keep still! Don’t get so excited.”—“Well, I never! The sweat’s just a-rolling off me, and I am as weak as a rag-baby. I wish I had my turkey-tail. This mite of a fan of yours don’t give wind enough to cool a mouse.”—“Now, aunt, do keep quiet. You’ll hear better, and won’t get so warm.”—“Well, dear, I suppose you are right. But didn’t that sound like an angel-choir?”—“’Twas certainly very fine. One thing is sure: you’ve heard Patti at her best.”—“I’m so glad I came; and if Peleg was only along! But, there, I hain’t going to speak again till the uproar is over.” And so the opera went on, when, suddenly: “Louisa Allen, what are them half-nude statutes a-standing up in the back there? Don’t they realize that the whole congregation can see them? and haven’t they any modesty?”—“Why, aunt, that’s the ballet.”—“The what?”—“The ballet, aunt. Look, look! there they come. Isn’t that the very poetry of”—“Louisa Sophronia Tabor Allen, just you pick up your regimentals, and follow me; and that quick, too.”—“But, auntie”—“You needn’t auntie me. Just get your duds together, and we’ll travel. Thank goodness your uncle Peleg Josiah Tabor is not here! Don’t let me see you give as much as a glance to where those graceless nudities are, or, big as you are, I’ll box your ears.”—“Why, aunt”—“Louisa, I only wish I had my thickest veil, for I am positively ashamed to be caught in this unchristian scrape. Come, and don’t raise your eyes. There, thank goodness, we’re in pure air at last!”—“Why, aunt, I thought you were enjoying the opera!”—“The uproar, Louisa? I have nothing to say agin the uproar. Them voices would grace a celestial choir. This I say with all reverence. But that side show! I wouldn’t have had my Eliza Ann, nor my Woodman Harrison, ’a’ witnessed what we’ve come near a-witnessing for a thousand-dollar bill. No, not for a ten-thousand bill. And I am so thankful that your uncle Peleg was not here! Somehow, Louisa, I feel as if I’d fallen like the blessed Lucifer out of the moon.”

[Pg 39]

[Pg 40]

We had been hearing for weeks of a small lake in the heart of the forest, some ten miles from our camp, which was alive with trout,—unsophisticated, hungry trout: the inlet to it was described as stiff with them. In my imagination I saw them lying there in ranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a solid mass. The lake had never been visited, except by stray sable hunters in the winter, and was known as Unknown Pond. I determined to explore it fully, expecting that it would prove to be a delusion, as such haunts of the trout usually are. Confiding my purpose to Luke, we secretly made our preparations, and stole away from the shanty one morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat, a pair of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple sugar; while I had my case of rods, reel, and book of flies, and Luke had an axe and the kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of this kind in the woods.

A couple of hours before sundown we reached the lake. If I live, to my dying day I shall never forget its appearance.... But what chiefly attracted my attention, and amused me, was the boiling of the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were a vast kettle with fire underneath. A tyro would have been astonished at this common phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once understand me, when I say that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I began casting, and had got out perhaps fifty feet of line, and gradually increased it to a hundred. It is not difficult to learn to cast, but it is difficult to learn not to jerk off the flies at every throw. Finally, in making a shorter cast, I saw a splash where the leader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, and did not need the unfeigned “dam” of Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light. Instantly, upon casting, there was a rush, a swirl. I struck, and “Got him, by—” Never mind what Luke said I got him by. “Out on a fly,” continued that irreverent guide; but I [Pg 41] told him to back water, and make for the centre of the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like a shot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapidity that made it smoke. “Give him the butt,” shouted Luke. It is the usual remark in such an emergency. I gave him the butt; and, recognizing the fact and my spirit, the trout sank to the bottom, and sulked. It is the most dangerous mood of the trout, for you cannot tell what he will do next. We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for him to reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and he soon developed his tactics. Coming to the surface, he made straight for the boat faster than I could reel in, and evidently with hostile intentions.

“Look out for him!” cried Luke, as he came flying in the air. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and when I picked my traps up he was spinning across the lake as if he had a new idea, but the line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave him the butt again, a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift. In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, was coming back again, making straight for the boat as before. Luke, who was used to these encounters, having read them in the writings of travellers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defence. The trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was, of course, slack: and the danger was, that he would entangle it about me, and carry away one leg. This was evidently his game: but I untangled it, and only lost a breast-button or two by the swift-moving string. The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the line on the reel. More butt, more indignation on the part of the captive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and I was getting exhausted. We had been back and forth across the lake, and around and around the lake. What I feared was, that the trout would start up the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a new fancy, and began the execution of a manœuvre which I had never read of. Instead of coming straight toward us, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in, and kept my eye on him. Round and round he [Pg 42] went, narrowing the circle. I began to suspect the game, which was to twist my head off. When he had reduced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water. It would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to the occasion. Instead of turning around with him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round went the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcys all around the horizon; the rosy tint of the west made a broad bank of pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and line and all, if he would only go the other way for a change.

When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side. After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound! Fish always lose by being “got in and dressed.” It is best to weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large one I ever caught, got away with my leader when I first struck him. He weighed ten pounds.

Charles Dudley Warner.

It happened out on South Hill, nine thousand miles from Maple Street. The man’s wife had taken up the carpet in the bath-room the day before, and put all the crooked tacks in a saucer, and put it on a chair. It is a marvellous thing why women will always save tacks that come out of the carpet; although it is a matter of record, that, out of the countless millions of tacks thus laid by, not one was ever used again, save in the soles of the bare masculine feet. They—the tacks, not the feet—are stowed away in saucers up on high shelves, in dark closets, and in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. And on these dusty perches they remain until the corroding hand of time, and dust, and spider-webs, and dead flies, and flakes of whitewash, and old bits of resin, and chunks of sealing-wax, and old steel pens, and similar accumulations, have filled the saucer to overflowing, when it is taken down and thrown away by the woman, who petulantly wonders who under the sun put all that trash in the saucer, and stuck it up there. And nine times out of ten she charges the crime on her husband. The tenth time she declares it was the hired girl. And always, before the saucer of crooked tacks is stowed away on the shelf, it is stuck around for three or four days on chairs and in corners of the room, spilling out occasional tacks on the carpet of every bedroom in the house, which [Pg 46] fill the masculine soles with agony, and darken the air of the bedroom with inartistic but forcible profanity. Nothing is so painful as a crooked tack in the middle of one’s foot. A broken heart doesn’t hold half so much anguish, and a boil is a blessing in comparison.

This man who lives so far from Maple Street had a splendid bath; and when he had rubbed his skin into a glow with a crash-towel as rough as a pig’s back, he gathered his socks, and, backing up to the only chair in the room, sat down to put them on.

Every tack in that saucer saw him coming down.

Every last tack smiled in anticipation of the dénoûment, and stood on its head, and reached for him.

Every last solitary individual and collective tack fetched him, got him, and held to him.

He dropped his socks, and rose from that chair with an abruptness that knocked his head against the ceiling. He came down, and waltzed wildly round and round the room, shrieking and yelling, gyrating madly with his arms, while his eyes stuck out so far they hung down. He howled until the neighbors besieged the house, yet he wouldn’t let any of them in. At last his yells died away; but they could hear his breath hiss between his set teeth, while at short intervals would come a yell, supplemented by the remark, “There’s another out!” In about three-quarters of an hour the yells ceased entirely, the window was opened, and a shower of tacks fell over the assembled and wondering multitude; while a large saucer skimmed across the street, and smashed against the side of a house opposite.

Nobody knows what ails the man, for he will not tell any one a thing about it: but he takes his meals off the mantel-piece all the same; and, when he sits, he sits down on his hip, for all the world as though he wore a “tied-back.” But he doesn’t. It’s a tacked-back that ails him.

J. M. Bailey.

The power to discern right amid all the wrappings of interest, and all the seductions of ambition, was singularly his. To choose the lowly; for their sake to abandon all favor, all power, all comfort, all ambition, all greatness,—that was his genius and glory. He confronted [Pg 47] the spirit of the nation and of the age. I had almost said, he set himself against nature, as if he had been a decree of God overriding all these other insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not called to be a universal orator, any more than he was a universal thinker. In literature and in history he was widely read; in person most elegant; in manners most accomplished; gentle as a babe; sweet as a new-blown rose; in voice, clear and silvery. He was not a man of tempests; he was not an orchestra of a hundred instruments; he was not an organ, mighty and complex. The nation slept, and God wanted a trumpet, sharp, far-sounding, narrow, and intense; and that was Mr. Phillips. The long roll is not particularly agreeable in music or in times of peace; but it is better than flutes or harps when men are in a great battle, or are on the point of it. His eloquence was penetrating and alarming. He did not flow as a mighty gulf-stream: he did not dash upon the continent as the ocean does; he was not a mighty rushing river. His eloquence was a flight of arrows, sentence after sentence, polished, and most of them burning. He shot them one after the other, and where they struck they slew; always elegant, always awful. I think scorn in him was as fine as I ever knew it in any human being. He had that sublime sanctuary in his pride that made him almost insensitive to what would by other men be considered obloquy. It was as if he said every day, in himself, “I am not what they are firing at. I am not there, and I am not that. It is not against me. I am infinitely superior to what they think me to be. They do not know me.” It was quiet and unpretentious, but it was there. Conscience and pride were the two concurrent elements of his nature.

He lived to see the slave emancipated, but not by moral means. He lived to see the sword cut the fetter. After this had taken place, he was too young to retire, though too old to gather laurels of literature, or to seek professional honors. The impulse of humanity was not at all abated. His soul still flowed on for the great under-masses of mankind; though, like the Nile, it split up into diverse mouths, and not all of them were navigable.

After a long and stormy life, his sun went down in glory. All the English-speaking people on the globe have written among the names that shall never die, the name of that scoffed, detested, mob-beaten Wendell [Pg 48] Phillips. Boston, that persecuted and would have slain him, is now exceedingly busy in building his tomb, and rearing his statue. The men that would not defile their lips with his name are to-day thanking God that he lived.

He has taught a lesson that the young will do well to take heed to,—the lesson that the most splendid gifts and opportunities and ambitions may be best used for the dumb and the lowly. His whole life is a rebuke to the idea that we are to climb to greatness by climbing up on the backs of great men; that we are to gain strength by running with the currents of life; that we can from without add any thing to the great within that constitutes man. He poured out the precious ointment of his soul upon the feet of that diffusive Jesus who suffers here in his poor and despised ones. He has taught the young ambitions, too, that the way to glory is the way, oftentimes, of adhesion simply to principle: and that popularity and unpopularity are not things to be known or considered. Do right and rejoice. If to do right will bring you into trouble, rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer with God and the providences of God in this world.

He belongs to the race of giants, not simply because he was in and of himself a great soul, but because he bathed in the providence of God, and came forth scarcely less than a god; because he gave himself to the work of God upon earth, and inherited thereby, or had reflected upon him, some of the majesty of his Master. When pygmies are all dead, the noble countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look forth, radiant as a rising sun,—a sun that will never set. He has become to us a lesson, his death an example, his whole history an encouragement to manhood,—to heroic manhood.

Henry Ward Beecher.

I told Hezekiah—that’s my man. People mostly call him Deacon Parsons, but he never gets any deaconing from me. We were married—“Hezekiah and Amariah”—that’s going on forty years ago, and he’s jest Hezekiah to me, and nothin’ more. [Pg 49]

Well, as I was saying, says I, “Hezekiah, we aren’t right. I am sure of it.” And he said, “Of course not. We are poor sinners, Amy; all poor sinners.” And I said, “Hezekiah, this ‘poor-sinner’ talk has gone on long enough. I suppose we are poor sinners, but I don’t see any use of being mean sinners; and there’s one thing I think is real mean.”

It was jest after breakfast: and, as he felt poorly, he hedn’t gone to the shop yet; and so I had this little talk with him to sort o’ chirk him up. He knew what I was comin’ to, for we hed had the subject up before. It was our little church. He always said, “The poor people, and what should we ever do?” And I always said, “We never shall do nothin’ unless we try.” And so, when I brought the matter up in this way, he just began bitin’ his toothpick, and said, “What’s up now? Who’s mean? Amariah, we oughtn’t to speak evil one of another.” Hezekiah always says “poor sinners,” and doesn’t seem to mind it; but when I occasionally say “mean sinners,” he somehow gits oneasy. But I was started, and I meant to free my mind.

So I said, says I, “I was goin’ to confess our sins. Dan’l confessed for all his people, and I was confessin’ for all our little church.

“Truth is,” says I, “ours is allus called one of the ‘feeble churches,’ and I am tried about it. I’ve raised seven children, and at fourteen months old every boy and girl of ’em could run alone. And our church is fourteen years old,” says I; “and it can’t take a step yet without somebody to hold on by. The Board helps us; and General Jones, good man, he helps us,—helps too much, I think,—and so we live along; but we don’t seem to get strong. Our people draw their rations every year as the Indians do up at the agency, and it doesn’t seem sometimes as if they ever thought of doing any thing else.

“They take it so easy!” I said. “That’s what worries me. I don’t suppose we could pay all expenses; but we might act as if we wanted to, and as if we meant to do all we can.

“I read,” says I, “last week about the debt of the Board; and this week, as I understand,” says I, “our application is going in for another year, and no particular effort to do any better; and it frets me. I can’t sleep nights, and I can’t take comfort Sundays. I’ve got to feelin’ as if we were a kind of perpetual paupers. And that was what I meant when I said, ‘It is real mean!’ I suppose I said it a little [Pg 50] sharp,” says I, “but I’d rather be sharp than flat any day; and if we don’t begin to stir ourselves, we shall be flat enough before long, and shall deserve to be. It grows on me. It has jest been ‘Board, Board, Board,’ for fourteen years, and I’m tired of it. I never did like boardin’,” says I; “and even if we were poor, I believe we might do something toward settin’ up housekeepin’ for ourselves.

“Well, there’s not many of us—about a hundred, I believe; and some of these is women-folks, and some is jest girls and boys. And we all have to work hard, and live close; but,” says I, “let us show a disposition, if nothing more. Hezekiah, if there’s any spirit left in us, let us show some sort of a disposition.”

And Hezekiah had his toothpick in his teeth, and looked down at his boots, and rubbed his chin, as he always does when he’s goin’ to say somethin’. “I think there’s some of us that shows a disposition.”

Of course I understood that hit, but I kep’ still. I kep’ right on with my argument; and I said, “Yes, and a pretty bad disposition it is. It’s a disposition to let ourselves be helped when we ought to be helping ourselves. It’s a disposition to lie still and let somebody carry us. And we are growing up cripples—only we don’t grow.

“’Kiah,” says I, “do you hear me?” Sometimes when I want to talk a little he jest shets his eyes, and begins to rock himself back and forth in the old arm-chair; and he was doin’ that now. So I said, “’Kiah, do you hear?” And he said, “Some!” and I went on. “I’ve got a proposition,” says I. And he sort o’ looked up, and said, “Hev you? Well, between a disposition and a proposition, I guess the proposition might be better.”

He’s awful sarcrostic, sometimes. But I wasn’t goin’ to get riled, nor thrown off the track; so I jest said, “Yes; do you and I git two shillin’s’ worth apiece, a week, out o’ that blessed little church of ourn, do you think?” says I. “Cos, if we do, I want to give two shillin’s a week to keep it goin’; and I thought maybe you could do as much.” So he said he guessed we could stand that; and I said, “That’s my proposition, and I mean to see if we can’t find somebody else that’ll do the same. It’ll show disposition, anyway.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll hev your own way,” says he: “you most always do.” And I said, “Isn’t it most allers a good way?” Then I brought out my subscription paper. I had it all ready. I didn’t jest know how to [Pg 51] shape it, but I knew it was something about “the sums set opposite our names;” and so I drawed it up, and took my chances. “You must head it,” says I, “because you’re the oldest deacon; and I must go on next, because I am the deacon’s wife; and then I’ll see some of the rest of the folks.”

So ’Kiah sot down, and put on his specs, and took his pen, but did not write. “What’s the matter?” says I. And he said, “I’m sort o’ ’shamed to subscribe two shillin’s. I never signed so little as that for any thing. I used to give that to the circus when I was nothin’ but a boy, and I ought to do more than that to support the gospel. Two shillin’ a week! Why, it’s only a shillin’ a sermon, and all the prayer-meetin’s throwed in. I can’t go less than fifty cents, I am sure.” So down he went for fifty cents; and then I signed for a quarter, and then my sunbonnet went onto my head pretty lively; and says I, “Hezekiah, there’s some cold potato in the pantry, and you know where to find the salt; so, if I am not back by dinner-time, don’t be bashful, help yourself.” And I started.

I called on the Smith family first. I felt sure of them. And they were just happy. Mr. Smith signed, and so did Mrs. Smith; and Long John, he came in while we were talkin’, and put his name down; and then old Grandma Smith, she didn’t want to be left out; so there was four of ’em. I’ve allers found it a great thing in any good enterprise to enlist the Smith family. There’s a good many of ’em. Next, I called on the Joslyns, and next on the Chapins, and then on the Widdy Chadwick, and so I kept on.

I met a little trouble once or twice, but not much. There was Fussy Furber; and bein’ trustee, he thought I was out of my spear, he said; and he wanted it understood that such work belonged to the trustees. “To be sure,” says I: “I’m glad I’ve found it out. I wish the trustees had discovered that a leetle sooner.” Then there was sister Puffy that’s got the asthma. She thought we ought to be lookin’ after “the sperritooalities.” She said we must get down before the Lord. She didn’t think churches could be run on money. But I told her I guessed we should be jest as spiritual to look into our pocketbooks a little, and I said it was a shame to be ’tarnally beggin’ so of the Board. [Pg 52]

She looked dredful solemn when I said that, and I almost felt as I’d been committin’ profane language. But I hope the Lord will forgive me if I took any thing in vain. I did not take my call in vain, I tell you. Mrs. Puffy is good, only she allus wanted to talk so pious; and she put down her two shillin’s, and then hove a sigh. Then I found the boys at the cooper-shop, and got seven names there at one lick; and when the list began to grow, people seemed ashamed to say no; and I kept gainin’ till I had jest an even hundred, and then I went home.

Well, it was pretty well towards candle-light when I got back, and I was that tired I didn’t know much of any thing. I’ve washed, and I’ve scrubbed, and I’ve baked, and I’ve cleaned house, and I’ve biled soap, and I’ve moved; and I ’low that a’most any one of that sort of thing is a little exhaustin’. But put your bakin’ and movin’ and bilin’ soap all together, and it won’t work out as much genuine tired soul and body as one day with a subscription paper to support the gospel. So when I sort o’ dropped into a chair, and Hezekiah said, “Well?” I was past speakin’; and I put my check apron up to my face as I hadn’t done since I was a young, foolish girl, and cried. I don’t know what I felt so bad about: I don’t know as I did feel bad. But I felt cry, and I cried. And ’Kiah, seein’ how it was, felt kind o’ sorry for me, and set some tea a-steepin’; and when I had had my drink with weepin’, I felt better. I handed him the subscription paper, and he looked it over as if he didn’t expect any thing; but soon he began saying, “I never! I never!” And I said, “Of course you didn’t: you never tried. How much is it?”—“Why, don’t you know?” says he. “No,” I said: “I ain’t quick in figures, and I hadn’t time to foot it up. I hope it will make us out this year three hundred dollars or so.”

“Amy,” says he, “you’re a prodigy—a prodigal, I may say—and you don’t know it. A hundred names at two shillin’ each gives us twenty-five dollars a Sunday. Some of ’em may fail, but most of ’em is good; and there is ten, eleven, thirteen, that sign fifty cents. That’ll make up what fails. That paper of yourn’ll give us thirteen hundred dollars a year!” I jumped up like I was shot. “Yes,” he says, “we sha’n’t need any thing this year from the Board. This church, for this year at any rate, is self-supporting.”

We both sot down and kep’ still a minute, when I said kind o’ softly, “Hezekiah,” says I, “isn’t it about time for prayers?” I was just [Pg 53] chokin’; but, as he took down the Bible, he said, “I guess we’d had better sing somethin’.” I nodded like, and he just struck in. We often sing at prayers in the morning; but now it seemed like the Scripter that says, “He giveth songs in the night.” ’Kiah generally likes the solemn tunes, too; and we sing “Show pity, Lord,” a great deal; and this mornin’ we had sung “Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,” ’cause ’Kiah was not feelin’ very well, and we wanted to chirk up a little.

So I just waited to see what metre he’d strike to-night; and would you believe it? I didn’t know that he knew any sech tune. But off he started on “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” I tried to catch on; but he went off lickerty-switch, like a steam-engine, and I couldn’t keep up. I was partly laughin’ to see ’Kiah go it, and partly crying again, my heart was so full; so I doubled up some of the notes, and jumped over the others; and so we safely reached the end.

But, I tell you, Hezekiah prayed. He allers prays well; but this was a bran’ new prayer, exactly suited to the occasion. And when Sunday come, and the minister got up and told what had been done, and said, “It is all the work of one good woman, and done in one day,” I just got scared, and wanted to run. And when some of the folks shook hands with me after meetin’, and said, with tears in their eyes, how I’d saved the church; and all that, I came awful nigh gettin’ proud. But, as Hezekiah says, “we’re all poor sinners;” and so I choked it back. But I am glad I did it; and I don’t believe our church will ever go boarding any more.

Presbyterian Journal.

[Pg 56]

CHARACTERS.

Ingomar. Leader of a band of Alemanni.
Parthenia. A Greek girl.        

It had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus, returning with victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown, even in that luxurious city. A large number of people from the rural districts had taken advantage of half-rates on the railroad, and had been in town watching the conflict in the arena, listening to the infirm, decrepit ring-joke, and viewing the bogus sacred elephant.

The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from the free-lunch counter, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The restless hyena in the Roman menagerie had sunk to rest, and the Numidian lion at the stock-yards had taken out his false teeth for the night. The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the dark waters of the Tiber with a wavy, tremulous light. The dark-browed Roman soldier moved on his homeward way, the sidewalk flipping up occasionally, and hitting him in the small of the back. No sound was heard, save the low sob of some retiring wave as it told its story to the smooth pebbles on the beach, or the unrelenting boot-jack as it struck the high board fence in the back yard, just missing the Roman tomcat in its mad flight; and then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the half-stifled Roman snore would steal in upon its deathly stillness, and then die away like a hot biscuit in the hands of the hired man. [Pg 68]

In the green room of the amphitheatre a little band of gladiators were assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hung upon their brows, and the large knobs on their profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with them in the arena.

There was an embarrassing silence of about five minutes, when Spartacus, gently laying his chew of tobacco on the banister, stepped forth and addressed them:—

“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,—Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met in the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet has never squealed. I do not say this egotistically, but simply to show that I am the star thumper of the entire outfit.

“If there be one among you who can say that ever in public fight, or private brawl, my actions did belie my words, let him stand forth and say it, and I will spread him around over the arena till the coroner will have to soak him out of the ground with benzine. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come, and I will construct upon their physiognomy such cupolas and cornices and dormer-windows and Corinthian capitals and entablatures, that their own masters would pass them by in the broad light of high noon unrecognized.

“And yet I was not always thus,—a hired butcher,—the savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from Sparta, Wisconsin, and settled among the vine-clad hills and citron-groves of Syracuse. My early life ran as quiet as the clear brook by which I sported. Aside from the gentle patter of my angel mother’s slipper on the bustle of my overalls, every thing moved along with the still and rhythmic flow of goose-grease. My boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We stole the Roman muskmelon, and put split sticks on the tail of the Roman dog, and life was a picnic and a hallelujah.

“When, at noon, I led the sheep beneath the shade, and played ‘Little Sallie Waters’ on my shepherd’s flute, there was another Spartan youth, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime; we led our flocks to the same pasture, and together picked the large red ants out of our doughnuts. [Pg 69]

“One evening, after the sheep had been driven into the corral, and we were all seated beneath the ‘Bammygilead’-tree that shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, and Dr. Mary Walker, and other great men; and how a little band of Spartans at Milwaukee had stood off the police, and how they fled away into the mountains, and there successfully held an annual pass over the C. M. & St. P. Railway. Held it for a year! I did not know then what war was; but my cheeks burned, I knew not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it would be to leave the reservation, and go upon the war-path. But my mother kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go and soak my head, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans landed on our coasts. They pillaged the whole country, burned the agency buildings, demolished the ranche, rode off the stock, tore down the smoke-house, and ran their war horses over the cucumber-vines.

“To-day I killed a man in the arena; and when I broke his helmet clasps, and looked upon him, behold! he was my friend. The same sweet smile was on his face that I had known when in adventurous boyhood we bathed in the glassy lake by our Spartan home, and he had tied my shirt into 1,752 dangerous and difficult knots. He knew me, smiled faintly, told me always to tell the truth, and to travel by the Milwaukee & St. Paul road, and then ascended the golden stair. I begged of the Praetor that I might be allowed to bear away the body, and have it packed in ice, and shipped to his relatives in Sparta, Wisconsin; but he couldn’t see it. As upon my bended knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged this poor boon, and the Praetor answered, ‘Let the carrion rot. There are no noblemen but Romans and Ohio men. Let the show go on. Bring forth the bobtail lion from Abbyssinia.’ And the assembled maids and matrons and the rabble shouted in derision, and told me to ‘brace up;’ and they threw peanut-shells at me, and told me to ‘cheese it,’ with other Roman flings which I do not now recall.

“And so must you, fellow gladiators, and so must I, die like dogs. To-morrow we are billed to appear at the Coliseum at Rome; and reserved seats are even now being sold for our moral and instructive performance, while I am speaking to you. [Pg 70]

“Ye stand here like giants as ye are; but to-morrow some Roman dude will pat your red brawn, and bet his shekels upon your blood.

“O Rome! Rome! Thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Thou hast given to that gentle, timid, shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note, muscles of iron, and a heart of steel. Thou hast taught him to drive his sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the stomach of his foe; to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of a fierce Numidian lion, even as the smooth-cheeked senator looks into the laughing eyes of the chambermaid. And he shall pay thee back till the rushing Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled. Ye doubtless hear the gentle murmur of my bazoo.

“Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? ’Tis three days since he tasted flesh, but to-morrow he will have gladiator on toast, and don’t you forget it; and he will fling your vertebræ around his cage, and wipe his nose on your clustering hair.

“If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting the butcher’s knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me! Strike down the warden and the turnkey, slide our baggage out the third story window of the amphitheatre, overpower the public, and cut for the tall timber!

“O comrades! Warriors! Gladiators! If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, and by the still waters, and be buried according to Hoyle, instead of having our shin-bones polished off by Numidian lions, amid the groans and hisses of the populace here in Rome, New York. Let us break loose, chaw the ear of the night watchman, buy our tickets via the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railway, and go to farming in Dakota! Then if the fierce Roman don’t like our style, he knows our post-office address.”

Bill Nye.

It was night.

The boarding-house was wrapt in tenebrous gloom, faintly tinted with an odor of kerosene. [Pg 74]

Suddenly there arose on the air a yell, followed by wild objurgations and furious anathemas.

Then there was a clanking and rattling, as of an over-turned picket-fence, and another yell with more anathemas. The fatted boarders listened, and, ghostly clad, tip-toed along to Buffum’s room,—he of Buffum & Bird, second-hand furniture dealers. As they stood there, there was a whiz, a grinding, a rattling and a bang, and more yells. They consulted, and knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

“Open it.”

“I can’t.”

Convinced that Buffum was in his last agony, they knocked in the door with a bedpost.

The sight was ghastly. Clasped between two sturdy, though slender, frames of walnut, Buffum, pale as a ghost, was six feet up in the air. He couldn’t move. He was caught like a bear in a log-trap.

“What on earth is it?” they said.

“Bedstead—combination. New patent I was tellin’ you about,” gasped Buffum.

His story was simple, though tearful. He had brought it home that day; and, after using it for a writing-desk, had opened it out and made his bed. He was going peacefully to dream-land, when he rolled over and accidentally touched a spring. The faithful invention immediately became a double crib, and turned Buffum into a squalling wafer. Then he struggled, and was reaching around for the spring, when the patent bedstead thought it would show off some more, and straightened out, and shot up in the air, and was a clothes-horse. Buffum said he didn’t like to be clothes, and he would give the thing to anybody that would get him out. They said they would try. They didn’t want any such fire-extinguisher as that for their trouble, but they would try. They inspected it cautiously. They walked all around it. Then the commission-merchant laid his little finger on the top end of it. The thing snorted and reared as if it had been shot, slapped over with a bang, and became an extension-table for ten people. When they recovered from the panic, they came back. They found the commission-merchant in the corner trying to get breath enough to swear, while he rubbed his shins. Buffum had disappeared, but they knew he had not gone far. The [Pg 75] invention appeared to have taken a fancy to him, and incorporated him into the firm, so to speak. He was down underneath, straddling one of the legs, with his head jammed into the mattress. Nobody dared to touch it. The landlady got a club and reached for its vital parts, but could not find them. She hammered her breath away; and when she got through, and dropped the club in despair, the thing spread out its arms with a gasp and a rattle, turned over twice, and slapped itself into a bed again, with Buffum peacefully among the sheets. He held his breath for a minute; and then, watching his opportunity, made a flying-leap to the floor, just in time to save himself from being a folding-screen.

A man with a black eye and cut lip told the “Wasp” editor about it yesterday. He said he owned the patent, that Buffum had been explaining to him how it worked.

From the San Francisco “Wasp.”

[Pg 77]

A HAY-TIME IDYL.

[Pg 82]

[Pg 85]

Who had thought, until Grant said it, that the crisis comes in battle when both armies are nearly exhausted, and that usually the one wins which attacks first? When did he ever fail to attack first? Who had thought, until he suggested it, that the trouble with the Potomac army, the pride of the nation, was, that it had not fought its battles through? Who then living has forgotten the utter downfall of hope, the absolute despair throughout the North, as the moan from the Wilderness came rolling up on the southern breeze? Is the task hopeless? Is this last mighty effort only more disastrous than that of McClellan, of Pope, of Burnside, of Hooker? No! listen to the assurance, “I’ll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Every loyal heart in the land is inspired. That telegram to the President was the death-knell of rebellion.

But the test-hour of Grant had not yet come. Meade was glorious, Sherman magnificent; but Sigel is routed, Butler has not succeeded, Banks utterly failed. Shall Grant unloose his grip? Never! Was it, then, less than the inspiration of genius? Sheridan, take the Sixth Corps, and clean out the valley so a “crow must take his rations when he flies over it.” Meade, absorb the army of the James, and never let Lee escape. Sherman, march to the sea as a cyclone of devastation. Thomas, play with Hood until you draw him to destruction. Stoneman, take your bold riders across the mountains, into Virginia and the Carolinas, right across every line of supply to the enemy. Wilson, push your twelve thousand mounted men into the heart of Alabama. Canby, capture Mobile.

Such was the new combination, audacious in strategy beyond precedent; but, if faulty in any respect, military critics have not discovered it. Its perfection, and the result of the execution, stamp it forever with the insignia of genius. Masterly tactics, brilliant manœuvring, bold fighting, though essential to success after the combinations have produced the strategical situation, yet rarely cure material defect in the latter. If cured at all, it is generally by blunders of the enemy. Lee and Johnston, as defensive generals, were not blunderers. I pity the man who, in the face of the record, attacks General Grant as a [Pg 86] master of grand strategy. I need not speak of his tactics. I believe mankind are agreed, that the history of war discloses no display of tactical skill and vigor superior to Grant’s about Vicksburg, and from the 3d to the 9th of April, 1865, being directed to prevent General Lee’s attempted escape from Petersburg and junction with Johnston in North Carolina. The annals of other wars seem tame when read by the side of the story of that week’s work. It resulted in the despatch to Secretary Stanton, so simple and modest in language, yet the most momentous of all history: “General Lee surrendered the army of Northern Virginia this afternoon on terms proposed by myself.” The work was done, and how completely done,—done precisely as planned; not an element, not a vestige, of luck in it. Every army was at the precise place designed, with the exact work accomplished that was marked out for it. Method, plan, design, exclude the idea of luck. Let us in humble reverence say, as the truth was, the God of nations blessed General Grant in his awful undertaking.

Judge Veazey.

[Pg 88]

A STORY OF HOLLAND.