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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of Childhood, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Stories of Childhood
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Rossiter Johnson
+
+Release Date: May 29, 2005 [EBook #15933]
+Last Updated: May 15, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF CHILDHOOD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ron Swanson
+
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE CLASSICS
+
+EDITED BY ROSSITER JOHNSON
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF CHILDHOOD
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+_The Riverside Press Cambridge_
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co.
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+A DOG OF FLANDERS  . . . . . . . . . . _Louisa de la Ramé_ (_Ouida_)
+
+THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER . . . . . _John Ruskin_
+
+THE LADY OF SHALOTT  . . . . . . . . . _Elizabeth Stuart Phelps_
+
+MARJORIE FLEMING . . . . . . . . . . . _John Brown, M.D._
+
+LITTLE JAKEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Mrs. S. H. DeKroyft_
+
+THE LOST CHILD . . . . . . . . . . . . _Henry Kingsley_
+
+GOODY GRACIOUS! AND THE FORGET-ME-NOT  _John Neal_
+
+A FADED LEAF OF HISTORY  . . . . . . . _Rebecca Harding Davis_
+
+A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR  . . . . . . _Charles Dickens_
+
+
+
+
+A DOG OF FLANDERS.
+
+BY OUIDA
+
+
+Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world.
+
+They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood. Nello was a
+little Ardennois,--Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the
+same age by length of years, yet one was still young, and the other was
+already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days; both were
+orphaned and destitute, and owed their lives to the same hand. It had
+been the beginning of the tie between them, their first bond of
+sympathy; and it had strengthened day by day, and had grown with their
+growth, firm and indissoluble, until they loved one another very
+greatly.
+
+Their home was a little hut on the edge of a little village,--a Flemish
+village a league from Antwerp, set amidst flat breadths of pasture and
+corn-lands, with long lines of poplars and of alders bending in the
+breeze on the edge of the great canal which ran through it. It had
+about a score of houses and homesteads, with shutters of bright green
+or sky-blue, and roofs rose-red or black and white, and walls
+whitewashed until they shone in the sun like snow. In the centre of the
+village stood a windmill, placed on a little moss-grown slope; it was a
+landmark to all the level country round. It had once been painted
+scarlet, sails and all, but that had been in its infancy, half a
+century or more earlier, when it had ground wheat for the soldiers of
+Napoleon; and it was now a ruddy brown, tanned by wind and weather. It
+went queerly by fits and starts, as though rheumatic and stiff in the
+joints from age, but it served the whole neighborhood, which would have
+thought it almost as impious to carry grain elsewhere, as to attend any
+other religious service than the mass that was performed at the altar
+of the little old gray church, with its conical steeple, which stood
+opposite to it, and whose single bell rang morning, noon, and night
+with that strange, subdued, hollow sadness which every bell that hangs
+in the Low Countries seems to gain as an integral part of its melody.
+
+Within sound of the little melancholy clock almost from their birth
+upward, they had dwelt together, Nello and Patrasche, in the little hut
+on the edge of the village, with the cathedral spire of Antwerp rising
+in the northeast, beyond the great green plain of seeding grass and
+spreading corn that stretched away from them like a tideless,
+changeless sea. It was the hut of a very old man, of a very poor
+man,--of old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been a soldier, and who
+remembered the wars that had trampled the country as oxen tread down
+the furrows, and who had brought from his service nothing except a
+wound, which had made him a cripple.
+
+When old Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty, his daughter had died
+in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her
+two-year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself,
+but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon
+became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello--which was but a pet
+diminutive for Nicolas--throve with him, and the old man and the little
+child lived in the poor little hut contentedly.
+
+It was a very humble little mud-hut indeed, but it was clean and white
+as a sea-shell, and stood in a small plot of garden-ground that yielded
+beans and herbs and pumpkins. They were very poor, terribly poor,--many
+a day they had nothing at all to eat. They never by any chance had
+enough; to have had enough to eat would have been to have reached
+paradise at once. But the old man was very gentle and good to the boy,
+and the boy was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender-natured
+creature; and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage,
+and asked no more of earth or Heaven; save indeed that Patrasche should
+be always with them, since without Patrasche where would they have
+been?
+
+For Patrasche was their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary;
+their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and
+minister; their only friend and comforter. Patrasche dead or gone from
+them, they must have laid themselves down and died likewise. Patrasche
+was body, brains, hands, head, and feet to both of them: Patrasche was
+their very life, their very soul. For Jehan Daas was old and a cripple,
+and Nello was but a child; and Patrasche was their dog.
+
+A dog of Flanders,--yellow of hide, large of head and limb, with
+wolf-like ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened in the
+muscular development wrought in his breed by many generations of hard
+service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly
+from sire to son in Flanders many a century,--slaves of slaves, dogs of
+the people, beasts of the shafts and the harness, creatures that lived
+straining their sinews in the gall of the cart, and died breaking their
+hearts on the flints of the streets.
+
+Patrasche had been born of parents who had labored hard all their days
+over the sharp-set stones of the various cities and the long,
+shadowless, weary roads of the two Flanders and of Brabant. He had been
+born to no other heritage than those of pain and of toil. He had been
+fed on curses and baptized with blows. Why not? It was a Christian
+country, and Patrasche was but a dog. Before he was fully grown he had
+known the bitter gall of the cart and the collar. Before he had entered
+his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware-dealer,
+who was accustomed to wander over the land north and south, from the
+blue sea to the green mountains. They sold him for a small price,
+because he was so young.
+
+This man was a drunkard and a brute. The life of Patrasche was a life
+of hell. To deal the tortures of hell on the animal creation is a way
+which the Christians have of showing their belief in it. His purchaser
+was a sullen, ill-living, brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full
+with pots and pans and flagons and buckets, and other wares of crockery
+and brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he
+might, whilst he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish
+ease, smoking his black pipe and stopping at every wineshop or café on
+the road.
+
+Happily for Patrasche--or unhappily--he was very strong: he came of an
+iron race, long born and bred to such cruel travail; so that he did not
+die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal
+burdens, the scarifying lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, the
+curses, and the exhaustion which are the only wages with which the
+Flemings repay the most patient and laborious of all their four-footed
+victims. One day, after two years of this long and deadly agony,
+Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty,
+unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It was full midsummer,
+and very warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in metal
+and in earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him
+otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his
+quivering loins. The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at
+every wayside house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment
+for a draught from the canal. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a
+scorching highway, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and,
+which was far worse to him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve,
+being blind with dust, sore with blows, and stupefied with the
+merciless weight which dragged upon his loins, Patrasche, for once,
+staggered and foamed a little at the mouth, and fell.
+
+He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of
+the sun: he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him
+the only medicine in his pharmacy,--kicks and oaths and blows with a
+cudgel of oak, which had been often the only food and drink, the only
+wage and reward, ever offered to him. But Patrasche was beyond the
+reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all
+appearances, down in the white powder of the summer dust. After a
+while, finding it useless to assail his ribs with punishment and his
+ears with maledictions, the Brabantois--deeming life gone in him, or
+going so nearly that his carcass was forever useless, unless indeed
+some one should strip it of the skin for gloves--cursed him fiercely in
+farewell, struck off the leathern bands of the harness, kicked his body
+heavily aside into the grass, and, groaning and muttering in savage
+wrath, pushed the cart lazily along the road up hill, and left the
+dying dog there for the ants to sting and for the crows to pick.
+
+It was the last day before Kermesse away at Louvain, and the Brabantois
+was in haste to reach the fair and get a good place for his truck of
+brass wares. He was in fierce wrath, because Patrasche had been a
+strong and much-enduring animal, and because he himself had now the
+hard task of pushing his charette all the way to Louvain. But to stay
+to look after Patrasche never entered his thoughts: the beast was dying
+and useless, and he would steal, to replace him, the first large dog
+that he found wandering alone out of sight of its master. Patrasche had
+cost him nothing, or next to nothing, and for two long, cruel years he
+had made him toil ceaselessly in his service from sunrise to sunset,
+through summer and winter, in fair weather and foul.
+
+He had got a fair use and a good profit out of Patrasche: being human,
+he was wise, and left the dog to draw his last breath alone in the
+ditch, and have his bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might be by the
+birds, whilst he himself went on his way to beg and to steal, to eat
+and to drink, to dance and to sing, in the mirth at Louvain. A dying
+dog, a dog of the cart,--why should he waste hours over its agonies at
+peril of losing a handful of copper coins, at peril of a shout of
+laughter?
+
+Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green ditch. It was a busy road
+that day, and hundreds of people, on foot and on mules, in wagons or in
+carts, went by, tramping quickly and joyously on to Louvain. Some saw
+him, most did not even look: all passed on. A dead dog more or
+less,--it was nothing in Brabant: it would be nothing anywhere in the
+world.
+
+After a time, amongst the holiday-makers, there came a little old man
+who was bent and lame, and very feeble. He was in no guise for
+feasting: he was very poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged his
+silent way slowly through the dust amongst the pleasure-seekers. He
+looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down
+in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed the dog with
+kindly eyes of pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired,
+dark-eyed child of a few years old, who pattered in amidst the bushes,
+that were for him breast-high, and stood gazing with a pretty
+seriousness upon the poor great, quiet beast.
+
+Thus it was that these two first met,--the little Nello and the big
+Patrasche.
+
+The upshot of that day was, that old Jehan Daas, with much laborious
+effort, drew the sufferer homeward to his own little hut, which was a
+stone's-throw off amidst the fields, and there tended him with so much
+care that the sickness, which had been a brain-seizure, brought on by
+heat and thirst and exhaustion, with time and shade and rest passed
+away, and health and strength returned, and Patrasche staggered up
+again upon his four stout, tawny legs.
+
+Now for many weeks he had been useless, powerless, sore, near to death;
+but all this time he had heard no rough word, had felt no harsh touch,
+but only the pitying murmurs of the little child's voice and the
+soothing caress of the old man's hand.
+
+In his sickness they two had grown to care for him, this lonely old man
+and the little happy child. He had a corner of the hut, with a heap of
+dry grass for his bed; and they had learned to listen eagerly for his
+breathing in the dark night, to tell them that he lived; and when he
+first was well enough to essay a loud, hollow, broken bay, they laughed
+aloud, and almost wept together for joy at such a sign of his sure
+restoration; and little Nello, in delighted glee, hung round his rugged
+neck with chains of marguerites, and kissed him with fresh and ruddy
+lips.
+
+So then, when Patrasche arose, himself again, strong, big, gaunt,
+powerful, his great wistful eyes had a gentle astonishment in them that
+there were no curses to rouse him and no blows to drive him; and his
+heart awakened to a mighty love, which never wavered once in its
+fidelity whilst life abode with him.
+
+But Patrasche, being a dog, was grateful. Patrasche lay pondering long
+with grave, tender, musing brown eyes, watching the movements of his
+friends.
+
+Now, the old soldier, Jehan Daas, could do nothing for his living but
+limp about a little with a small cart, with which he carried daily the
+milk-cans of those happier neighbors who owned cattle away into the
+town of Antwerp. The villagers gave him the employment a little out of
+charity,--more because it suited them well to send their milk into the
+town by so honest a carrier, and bide at home themselves to look after
+their gardens, their cows, their poultry, or their little fields. But
+it was becoming hard work for the old man. He was eighty-three, and
+Antwerp was a good league off, or more.
+
+Patrasche watched the milk-cans come and go that one day when he had
+got well and was lying in the sun with the wreath of marguerites round
+his tawny neck.
+
+The next morning, Patrasche, before the old man had touched the cart,
+arose and walked to it and placed himself betwixt its handles, and
+testified as plainly as dumb show could do his desire and his ability
+to work in return for the bread of charity that he had eaten. Jehan
+Daas resisted long, for the old man was one of those who thought it a
+foul shame to bind dogs to labor for which Nature never formed them.
+But Patrasche would not be gainsayed: finding they did not harness him,
+he tried to draw the cart onward with his teeth.
+
+At length Jehan Daas gave way, vanquished by the persistence and the
+gratitude of this creature whom he had succored. He fashioned his cart
+so that Patrasche could run in it, and this he did every morning of his
+life thenceforward.
+
+When the winter came, Jehan Daas thanked the blessed fortune that had
+brought him to the dying dog in the ditch that fair-day of Louvain; for
+he was very old, and he grew feebler with each year, and he would ill
+have known how to pull his load of milk-cans over the snows and through
+the deep ruts in the mud if it had not been for the strength and the
+industry of the animal he had befriended. As for Patrasche, it seemed
+heaven to him. After the frightful burdens that his old master had
+compelled him to strain under, at the call of the whip at every step,
+it seemed nothing to him but amusement to step out with this little
+light green cart, with its bright brass cans, by the side of the gentle
+old man who always paid him with a tender caress and with a kindly
+word. Besides, his work was over by three or four in the day, and after
+that time he was free to do as he would,--to stretch himself, to sleep
+in the sun, to wander in the fields, to romp with the young child, or
+to play with his fellow-dogs. Patrasche was very happy.
+
+Fortunately for his peace, his former owner was killed in a drunken
+brawl at the Kermesse of Mechlin, and so sought not after him nor
+disturbed him in his new and well-loved home.
+
+A few years later, old Jehan Daas, who had always been a cripple,
+became so paralyzed with rheumatism that it was impossible for him to
+go out with the cart any more. Then little Nello, being now grown to
+his sixth year of age, and knowing the town well from having
+accompanied his grandfather so many times, took his place beside the
+cart, and sold the milk and received the coins in exchange, and brought
+them back to their respective owners with a pretty grace and
+seriousness which charmed all who beheld him.
+
+The little Ardennois was a beautiful child, with dark, grave, tender
+eyes, and a lovely bloom upon his face, and fair locks that clustered
+to his throat; and many an artist sketched the group as it went by
+him,--the green cart with the brass flagons of Teniers and Mieris and
+Van Tal, and the great tawny-colored, massive dog, with his belled
+harness that chimed cheerily as he went, and the small figure that ran
+beside him which had little white feet in great wooden shoes, and a
+soft, grave, innocent, happy face like the little fair children of
+Rubens.
+
+Nello and Patrasche did the work so well and so joyfully together that
+Jehan Daas himself, when the summer came and he was better again, had
+no need to stir out, but could sit in the doorway in the sun and see
+them go forth through the garden wicket, and then doze and dream and
+pray a little, and then awake again as the clock tolled three and watch
+for their return. And on their return Patrasche would shake himself
+free of his harness with a bay of glee, and Nello would recount with
+pride the doings of the day; and they would all go in together to their
+meal of rye bread and milk or soup, and would see the shadows lengthen
+over the great plain, and see the twilight veil the fair cathedral
+spire; and then lie down together to sleep peacefully while the old man
+said a prayer.
+
+So the days and the years went on, and the lives of Nello and Patrasche
+were happy, innocent, and healthful.
+
+In the spring and summer especially were they glad. Flanders is not a
+lovely land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely
+of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the
+characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt gray
+tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart
+the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's
+fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who
+has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as
+by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and
+dreary level. But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide
+horizons that have a certain charm of their own even in their dulness
+and monotony; and amongst the rushes by the waterside the flowers grow,
+and the trees rise tall and fresh where the barges glide with their
+great hulks black against the sun, and their little green barrels and
+varicolored flags gay against the leaves. Anyway, there is greenery and
+breadth of space enough to be as good as beauty to a child and a dog;
+and these two asked no better, when their work was done, than to lie
+buried in the lush grasses on the side of the canal, and watch the
+cumbrous vessels drifting by and bringing the crisp salt smell of the
+sea amongst the blossoming scents of the country summer.
+
+True, in the winter it was harder, and they had to rise in the darkness
+and the bitter cold, and they had seldom as much as they could have
+eaten any day, and the hut was scarce better than a shed when the
+nights were cold, although it looked so pretty in warm weather, buried
+in a great kindly-clambering vine, that never bore fruit, indeed, but
+which covered it with luxuriant green tracery all through the months of
+blossom and harvest. In winter the winds found many holes in the walls
+of the poor little hut, and the vine was black and leafless, and the
+bare lands looked very bleak and drear without, and sometimes within
+the floor was flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard, and the
+snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the
+brave, untiring feet of Patrasche.
+
+But even then they were never heard to lament, either of them. The
+child's wooden shoes and the dog's four legs would trot manfully
+together over the frozen fields to the chime of the bells on the
+harness; and then sometimes, in the streets of Antwerp, some housewife
+would bring them a bowl of soup and a handful of bread, or some kindly
+trader would throw some billets of fuel into the little cart as it went
+homeward, or some woman in their own village would bid them keep some
+share of the milk they carried for their own food; and then they would
+run over the white lands, through the early darkness, bright and happy,
+and burst with a shout of joy into their home.
+
+So, on the whole, it was well with them, very well; and Patrasche,
+meeting on the highway or in the public streets the many dogs who
+toiled from daybreak into nightfall, paid only with blows and curses,
+and loosened from the shafts with a kick to starve and freeze as best
+they might,--Patrasche in his heart was very grateful to his fate, and
+thought it the fairest and the kindliest the world could hold. Though
+he was often very hungry indeed when he lay down at night; though he
+had to work in the heats of summer noons and the rasping chills of
+winter dawns; though his feet were often tender with wounds from the
+sharp edges of the jagged pavement; though he had to perform tasks
+beyond his strength and against his nature,--yet he was grateful and
+content: he did his duty with each day, and the eyes that he loved
+smiled down on him. It was sufficient for Patrasche.
+
+There was only one thing which caused Patrasche any uneasiness in his
+life, and it was this. Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at
+every turn of old piles of stones, dark and ancient and majestic,
+standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising
+by the water's edge, with bells ringing above them in the air, and ever
+and again out of their arched doors a swell of music pealing. There
+they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst the
+squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness and the commerce of
+the modern world, and all day long the clouds drift and the birds
+circle and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their
+feet there sleeps--RUBENS.
+
+And the greatness of the mighty Master still rests upon Antwerp, and
+wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that
+all mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly through
+the winding ways, and by the edge of the stagnant water, and through
+the noisome courts, his spirit abides with us, and the heroic beauty of
+his visions is about us, and the stones that once felt his footsteps
+and bore his shadow seem to arise and speak of him with living voices.
+For the city which is the tomb of Rubens still lives to us through him,
+and him alone.
+
+It is so quiet there by that great white sepulchre,--so quiet, save
+only when the organ peals and the choir cries aloud the Salve Regina or
+the Kyrie Eleison. Sure no artist ever had a greater gravestone than
+that pure marble sanctuary gives to him in the heart of his birthplace
+in the chancel of St. Jacques.
+
+Without Rubens, what were Antwerp? A dirty, dusky, bustling mart, which
+no man would ever care to look upon save the traders who do business on
+its wharves. With Rubens, to the whole world of men it is a sacred
+name, a sacred soil, a Bethlehem where a god of Art saw light, a
+Golgotha where a god of Art lies dead.
+
+O nations! closely should you treasure your great men, for by them
+alone will the future know of you. Flanders in her generations has been
+wise. In his life she glorified this greatest of her sons, and in his
+death she magnifies his name. But her wisdom is very rare.
+
+Now, the trouble of Patrasche was this. Into these great, sad piles of
+stones, that reared their melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs,
+the child Nello would many and many a time enter, and disappear through
+their dark, arched portals, whilst Patrasche, left without upon the
+pavement, would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be the charm
+which thus allured from him his inseparable and beloved companion. Once
+or twice he did essay to see for himself, clattering up the steps with
+his milk-cart behind him; but thereon he had been always sent back
+again summarily by a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains
+of office; and fearful of bringing his little master into trouble, he
+desisted, and remained couched patiently before the churches until such
+time as the boy reappeared. It was not the fact of his going into them
+which disturbed Patrasche: he knew that people went to church: all the
+village went to the small, tumble-down, gray pile opposite the red
+windmill. What troubled him was that little Nello always looked
+strangely when he came out, always very flushed or very pale; and
+whenever he returned home after such visitations would sit silent and
+dreaming, not caring to play, but gazing out at the evening skies
+beyond the line of the canal, very subdued and almost sad.
+
+What was it? wondered Patrasche. He thought it could not be good or
+natural for the little lad to be so grave, and in his dumb fashion he
+tried all he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the
+busy market-place. But to the churches Nello would go: most often of
+all would he go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on
+the stones by the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys's gate, would
+stretch himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in
+vain, until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again,
+and winding his arms about the dog's neck would kiss him on his broad,
+tawny-colored forehead, and murmur always the same words: "If I could
+only see them, Patrasche!--if I could only see them!"
+
+What were they? pondered Patrasche, looking up with large, wistful,
+sympathetic eyes.
+
+One day, when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar,
+he got in for a moment after his little friend and saw. "They" were two
+great covered pictures on either side of the choir.
+
+Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar-picture of
+the Assumption, and when he noticed Patrasche, and rose and drew the
+dog gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked
+up at the veiled places as he passed them, and murmured to his
+companion, "It is so terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because
+one is poor and cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see
+them when he painted them, I am sure. He would have had us see them any
+day, every day: that I am sure. And they keep them shrouded
+there,--shrouded in the dark, the beautiful things!--and they never
+feel the light, and no eyes look on them, unless rich people come and
+pay. If I could only see them, I would be content to die."
+
+But he could not see them, and Patrasche could not help him, for to
+gain the silver piece that the church exacts as the price for looking
+on the glories of the Elevation of the Cross and the Descent of the
+Cross was a thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it
+would have been to scale the heights of the cathedral spire. They had
+never so much as a sou to spare: if they cleared enough to get a little
+wood for the stove, a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost they
+could do. And yet the heart of the child was set in sore and endless
+longing upon beholding the greatness of the two veiled Rubens.
+
+The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an
+absorbing passion for Art. Going on his ways through the old city in
+the early days before the sun or the people had risen, Nello, who
+looked only a little peasant-boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell
+from door to door, was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the
+god. Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden shoes,
+and the winter winds blowing amongst his curls and lifting his poor
+thin garments, was in a rapture of meditation, wherein all that he saw
+was the beautiful fair face of the Mary of the Assumption, with the
+waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light of an
+eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and
+buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had
+the compensation or the curse which is called Genius.
+
+No one knew it. He as little as any. No one knew it. Only indeed
+Patrasche, who, being with him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the
+stones any and every thing that grew or breathed, heard him on his
+little bed of hay murmur all manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the
+spirit of the great Master; watched his gaze darken and his face
+radiate at the evening glow of sunset or the rosy rising of the dawn;
+and felt many and many a time the tears of a strange nameless pain and
+joy, mingled together, fall hotly from the bright young eyes upon his
+own wrinkled, yellow forehead.
+
+"I should go to my grave quite content if I thought, Nello, that when
+thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of
+ground, and labor for thyself, and be called Baas by thy neighbors,"
+said the old man Jehan many an hour from his bed. For to own a bit of
+soil, and to be called Baas--master--by the hamlet round, is to have
+achieved the highest ideal of a Flemish peasant; and the old soldier,
+who had wandered over all the earth in his youth, and had brought
+nothing back, deemed in his old age that to live and die on one spot in
+contented humility was the fairest fate he could desire for his
+darling. But Nello said nothing.
+
+The same leaven was working in him that in other times begat Rubens and
+Jordaens and the Van Eycks, and all their wondrous tribe, and in times
+more recent begat in the green country of the Ardennes, where the Meuse
+washes the old walls of Dijon, the great artist of the Patroclus, whose
+genius is too near us for us aright to measure its divinity.
+
+Nello dreamed of other things in the future than of tilling the little
+rood of earth, and living under the wattle roof, and being called Baas
+by neighbors a little poorer or a little less poor than himself. The
+cathedral spire, where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening
+skies or in the dim, gray, misty mornings, said other things to him
+than this. But these he told only to Patrasche, whispering, childlike,
+his fancies in the dog's ear when they went together at their work
+through the fogs of the daybreak, or lay together at their rest amongst
+the rustling rushes by the water's side.
+
+For such dreams are not easily shaped into speech to awake the slow
+sympathies of human auditors; and they would only have sorely perplexed
+and troubled the poor old man bedridden in his corner, who, for his
+part, whenever he had trodden the streets of Antwerp, had thought the
+daub of blue and red that they called a Madonna, on the walls of the
+wine-shop where he drank his sou's worth of black beer, quite as good
+as any of the famous altar-pieces for which the stranger folk travelled
+far and wide into Flanders from every land on which the good sun shone.
+
+There was only one other beside Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at
+all of his daring fantasies. This other was little Alois, who lived at
+the old red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, was
+the best-to-do husbandman in all the village. Little Alois was only a
+pretty baby with soft round, rosy features, made lovely by those sweet,
+dark eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so many a Flemish face, in
+testimony of the Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left broadsown
+throughout the country majestic palaces and stately courts, gilded
+house-fronts and sculptured lintels,--histories in blazonry and poems
+in stone.
+
+Little Alois was often with Nello and Patrasche. They played in the
+fields, they ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies and bilberries,
+they went up to the old gray church together, and they often sat
+together by the broad wood-fire in the mill-house. Little Alois,
+indeed, was the richest child in the hamlet. She had neither brother
+nor sister; her blue serge dress had never a hole in it; at Kermesse
+she had as many gilded nuts and Agni Dei in sugar as her hands could
+hold; and when she went up for her first communion her flaxen curls
+were covered with a cap of richest Mechlin lace, which had been her
+mother's and her grandmother's before it came to her. Men spoke
+already, though she had but twelve years, of the good wife she would be
+for their sons to woo and win; but she herself was a little gay, simple
+child, in no wise conscious of her heritage, and she loved no
+playfellows so well as Jehan Daas's grandson and his dog.
+
+One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good man, but somewhat stern, came on
+a pretty group in the long meadow behind the mill, where the aftermath
+had that day been cut. It was his little daughter sitting amidst the
+hay, with the great tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and many
+wreaths of poppies and blue cornflowers round them both: on a clean
+smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello drew their likeness with a stick
+of charcoal.
+
+The miller stood and looked at the portrait with tears in his eyes, it
+was so strangely like, and he loved his only child closely and well.
+Then he roughly chid the little girl for idling there whilst her mother
+needed her within, and sent her indoors crying and afraid; then,
+turning, he snatched the wood from Nello's hands. "Dost do much of such
+folly?" he asked, but there was a tremble in his voice.
+
+Nello colored and hung his head. "I draw everything I see," he
+murmured.
+
+The miller was silent; then he stretched his hand out with a franc in
+it. "It is folly, as I say, and evil waste of time; nevertheless, it is
+like Alois, and will please the house-mother. Take this silver bit for
+it and leave it for me."
+
+The color died out of the face of the young Ardennois: he lifted his
+head and put his hands behind his back. "Keep your money and the
+portrait both, Baas Cogez," he said simply. "You have been often good
+to me." Then he called Patrasche to him, and walked away across the
+fields.
+
+"I could have seen them with that franc," he murmured to Patrasche,
+"but I could not sell her picture,--not even for them."
+
+Baas Cogez went into his mill-house sore troubled in his mind. "That
+lad must not be so much with Alois," he said to his wife that night.
+"Trouble may come of it hereafter: he is fifteen now, and she is
+twelve; and the boy is comely of face and form."
+
+"And he is a good lad and a loyal," said the housewife, feasting her
+eyes on the piece of pine wood where it was throned above the chimney
+with a cuckoo clock in oak and a Calvary in wax.
+
+"Yea, I do not gainsay that," said the miller, draining his pewter
+flagon.
+
+"Then if what you think of were ever to come to pass," said the wife,
+hesitatingly, "would it matter so much? She will have enough for both,
+and one cannot be better than happy."
+
+"You are a woman, and therefore a fool," said the miller, harshly,
+striking his pipe on the table. "The lad is naught but a beggar, and,
+with these painter's fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a care that
+they are not together in the future, or I will send the child to the
+surer keeping of the nuns of the Sacred Heart."
+
+The poor mother was terrified, and promised humbly to do his will. Not
+that she could bring herself altogether to separate the child from her
+favorite playmate, nor did the miller even desire that extreme of
+cruelty to a young lad who was guilty of nothing except poverty. But
+there were many ways in which little Alois was kept away from her
+chosen companion: and Nello, being a boy proud and quiet and sensitive,
+was quickly wounded, and ceased to turn his own steps and those of
+Patrasche, as he had been used to do with every moment of leisure, to
+the old red mill upon the slope. What his offence was he did not know:
+he supposed he had in some manner angered Baas Cogez by taking the
+portrait of Alois in the meadow; and when the child who loved him would
+run to him and nestle her hand in his, he would smile at her very sadly
+and say with a tender concern for her before himself, "Nay, Alois, do
+not anger your father. He thinks that I make you idle, dear, and he is
+not pleased that you should be with me. He is a good man and loves you
+well: we will not anger him, Alois."
+
+But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and the earth did not look
+so bright to him as it had used to do when he went out at sunrise under
+the poplars down the straight roads with Patrasche. The old red mill
+had been a landmark to him, and he had been used to pause by it, going
+and coming, for a cheery greeting with its people as her little flaxen
+head rose above the low mill-wicket, and her little rosy hands had held
+out a bone or a crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully at a
+closed door, and the boy went on without pausing, with a pang at his
+heart, and the child sat within with tears dropping slowly on the
+knitting to which she was set on her little stool by the stove; and
+Baas Cogez, working among his sacks and his mill-gear, would harden his
+will and say to himself, "It is best so. The lad is all but a beggar,
+and full of idle, dreaming fooleries. Who knows what mischief might not
+come of it in the future?" So he was wise in his generation, and would
+not have the door unbarred, except upon rare and formal occasions,
+which seemed to have neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two
+children, who had been accustomed so long to a daily gleeful, careless,
+happy interchange of greeting, speech, and pastime, with no other
+watcher of their sports or auditor of their fancies than Patrasche,
+sagely shaking the brazen bells of his collar and responding with all a
+dog's swift sympathies to their every change of mood.
+
+All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the chimney
+in the mill-kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary; and
+sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that whilst his gift was
+accepted he himself should be denied.
+
+But he did not complain: it was his habit to be quiet: old Jehan Daas
+had said ever to him, "We are poor: we must take what God sends,--the
+ill with the good: the poor cannot choose."
+
+To which the boy had always listened in silence, being reverent of his
+old grandfather; but nevertheless a certain vague, sweet hope, such as
+beguiles the children of genius, had whispered in his heart, "Yet the
+poor do choose sometimes,--choose to be great, so that men cannot say
+them nay." And he thought so still in his innocence; and one day, when
+the little Alois, finding him by chance alone amongst the cornfields by
+the canal, ran to him and held him close, and sobbed piteously because
+the morrow would be her saint's day, and for the first time in all her
+life her parents had failed to bid him to the little supper and romp in
+the great barns with which her feast-day was always celebrated, Nello
+had kissed her and murmured to her in firm faith, "It shall be
+different one day, Alois. One day that little bit of pine wood that
+your father has of mine shall be worth its weight in silver; and he
+will not shut the door against me then. Only love me always, dear
+little Alois, only love me always, and I will be great."
+
+"And if I do not love you?" the pretty child asked, pouting a little
+through her tears, and moved by the instinctive coquetries of her sex.
+
+Nello's eyes left her face and wandered to the distance, where in the
+red and gold of the Flemish night the cathedral spire rose. There was a
+smile on his face so sweet and yet so sad that little Alois was awed by
+it. "I will be great still," he said under his breath,--"great still,
+or die, Alois."
+
+"You do not love me," said the little spoilt child, pushing him away;
+but the boy shook his head and smiled, and went on his way through the
+tall yellow corn, seeing as in a vision some day in a fair future when
+he should come into that old familiar land and ask Alois of her people,
+and be not refused or denied, but received in honor, whilst the village
+folk should throng to look upon him and say in one another's ears,
+"Dost see him? He is a king among men, for he is a great artist and the
+world speaks his name; and yet he was only our poor little Nello, who
+was a beggar, as one may say, and only got his bread by the help of his
+dog." And he thought how he would fold his grandsire in furs and
+purples, and portray him as the old man is portrayed in the Family in
+the chapel of St. Jacques; and of how he would hang the throat of
+Patrasche with a collar of gold, and place him on his right hand, and
+say to the people, "This was once my only friend"; and of how he would
+build himself a great white marble palace, and make to himself
+luxuriant gardens of pleasure, on the slope looking outward to where
+the cathedral spire rose, and not dwell in it himself, but summon to
+it, as to a home, all men young and poor and friendless, but of the
+will to do mighty things; and of how he would say to them always, if
+they sought to bless his name, "Nay, do not thank me,--thank Rubens.
+Without him, what should I have been?" And these dreams, beautiful,
+impossible, innocent, free of all selfishness, full of heroical
+worship, were so closely about him as he went that he was happy,--happy
+even on this sad anniversary of Alois's saint's day, when he and
+Patrasche went home by themselves to the little dark hut and the meal
+of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the children of the
+village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the
+almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the
+light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle.
+
+"Never mind, Patrasche," he said, with his arms round the dog's neck as
+they both sat in the door of the hut, where the sounds of the mirth at
+the mill came down to them on the night-air,--"never mind. It shall all
+be changed by and by."
+
+He believed in the future: Patrasche, of more experience and of more
+philosophy, thought that the loss of the mill-supper in the present was
+ill compensated by dreams of milk and honey in some vague hereafter.
+And Patrasche growled whenever he passed by Baas Cogez.
+
+"This is Alois's name-day, is it not?" said the old man Daas that night
+from the corner where he was stretched upon his bed of sacking.
+
+The boy gave a gesture of assent: he wished that the old man's memory
+had erred a little, instead of keeping such sure account.
+
+"And why not there?" his grandfather pursued. "Thou hast never missed a
+year before, Nello."
+
+"Thou art too sick to leave," murmured the lad, bending his handsome
+young head over the bed.
+
+"Tut! tut! Mother Nulette would have come and sat with me, as she does
+scores of times. What is the cause, Nello?" the old man persisted.
+"Thou surely hast not had ill words with the little one?"
+
+"Nay, grandfather,--never," said the boy, quickly, with a hot color in
+his bent face. "Simply and truly, Baas Cogez did not have me asked this
+year. He has taken some whim against me."
+
+"But thou hast done nothing wrong?"
+
+"That I know--nothing. I took the portrait of Alois on a piece of pine:
+that is all."
+
+"Ah!" The old man was silent: the truth suggested itself to him with
+the boy's innocent answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in the
+corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten what the ways
+of the world were like.
+
+He drew Nello's fair head fondly to his breast with a tenderer gesture.
+"Thou art very poor, my child," he said with a quiver the more in his
+aged, trembling voice,--"so poor! It is very hard for thee."
+
+"Nay, I am rich," murmured Nello; and in his innocence he thought
+so,--rich with the imperishable powers that are mightier than the might
+of kings. And he went and stood by the door of the hut in the quiet
+autumn night, and watched the stars troop by and the tall poplars bend
+and shiver in the wind. All the casements of the mill-house were
+lighted, and every now and then the notes of the flute came to him. The
+tears fell down his cheeks, for he was but a child, yet he smiled, for
+he said to himself, "In the future!" He stayed there until all was
+quite still and dark, then he and Patrasche went within and slept
+together, long and deeply, side by side.
+
+Now he had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little
+outhouse to the hut, which no one entered but himself,--a dreary place,
+but with abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned
+himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here on a great gray sea
+of stretched paper he had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies
+which possessed his brain. No one had ever taught him anything; colors
+he had no means to buy; he had gone without bread many a time to
+procure even the few rude vehicles that he had here; and it was only in
+black or white that he could fashion the things he saw. This great
+figure which he had drawn here in chalk was only an old man sitting on
+a fallen tree,--only that. He had seen old Michel the woodman sitting
+so at evening many a time. He had never had a soul to tell him of
+outline or perspective, of anatomy or of shadow, and yet he had given
+all the weary, worn-out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the
+rugged, careworn pathos of his original, and given them so that the old
+lonely figure was a poem, sitting there, meditative and alone, on the
+dead tree, with the darkness of the descending night behind him.
+
+It was rude, of course, in a way, and had many faults, no doubt; and
+yet it was real, true in Nature, true in Art, and very mournful, and in
+a manner beautiful.
+
+Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watching its gradual creation
+after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a
+hope--vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished--of sending this
+great drawing to compete for a prize of two hundred francs a year which
+it was announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent,
+scholar or peasant, under eighteen, who would attempt to win it with
+some unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in
+the town of Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according
+to his merits.
+
+All the spring and summer and autumn Nello had been at work upon this
+treasure, which, if triumphant, would build him his first step toward
+independence and the mysteries of the art which he blindly, ignorantly,
+and yet passionately adored.
+
+He said nothing to any one: his grandfather would not have understood,
+and little Alois was lost to him. Only to Patrasche he told all, and
+whispered, "Rubens would give it me, I think, if he knew."
+
+Patrasche thought so too, for he knew that Rubens had loved dogs or he
+had never painted them with such exquisite fidelity; and men who loved
+dogs were, as Patrasche knew, always pitiful.
+
+The drawings were to go in on the first day of December, and the
+decision be given on the twenty-fourth, so that he who should win might
+rejoice with all his people at the Christmas season.
+
+In the twilight of a bitter wintry day, and with a beating heart, now
+quick with hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed the great picture on
+his little green milk-cart, and took it, with the help of Patrasche,
+into the town, and there left it, as enjoined, at the doors of a public
+building.
+
+"Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. How can I tell?" he thought, with
+the heart-sickness of a great timidity. Now that he had left it there,
+it seemed to him so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, to dream that he, a
+little lad with bare feet, who barely knew his letters, could do
+anything at which great painters, real artists, could ever deign to
+look. Yet he took heart as he went by the cathedral: the lordly form of
+Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and the darkness, and to loom in its
+magnificence before him, whilst the lips with their kindly smile seemed
+to him to murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by
+faint fears that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."
+
+Nello ran home through the cold night, comforted. He had done his best:
+the rest must be as God willed, he thought, in that innocent,
+unquestioning faith which had been taught him in the little gray chapel
+amongst the willows and the poplar-trees.
+
+The winter was very sharp already. That night, after they had reached
+the hut, snow fell; and fell for very many days after that, so that the
+paths and the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, and all the
+smaller streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense upon the
+plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for the milk
+while the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the
+silent town. Hard work, especially for Patrasche, for the passage of
+the years, that were only bringing Nello a stronger youth, were
+bringing him old age, and his joints were stiff and his bones ached
+often. But he would never give up his share of the labor. Nello would
+fain have spared him and drawn the cart himself, but Patrasche would
+not allow it. All he would ever permit or accept was the help of a
+thrust from behind to the truck as it lumbered along through the
+ice-ruts. Patrasche had lived in harness, and he was proud of it. He
+suffered a great deal sometimes from frost, and the terrible roads, and
+the rheumatic pains of his limbs, but he only drew his breath hard and
+bent his stout neck, and trod onward with steady patience.
+
+"Rest thee at home, Patrasche,--it is time thou didst rest,--and I can
+quite well push in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but
+Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to
+stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was
+sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts,
+and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round
+feet had left their print upon so many, many years.
+
+"One must never rest till one dies," thought Patrasche; and sometimes
+it seemed to him that that time of rest for him was not very far off.
+His sight was less clear than it had been, and it gave him pain to rise
+after the night's sleep, though he would never lie a moment in his
+straw when once the bell of the chapel tolling five let him know that
+the daybreak of labor had begun.
+
+"My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet together, you and I," said
+old Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the
+old withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust
+of bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together
+with one thought: When they were gone who would care for their darling?
+
+One afternoon, as they came back from Antwerp over the snow, which had
+become hard and smooth as marble over all the Flemish plains, they
+found dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, a tambourine-player,
+all scarlet and gold, about six inches high, and, unlike greater
+personages when Fortune lets them drop, quite unspoiled and unhurt by
+its fall. It was a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, and,
+failing, thought that it was just the thing to please Alois.
+
+It was quite night when he passed the mill-house: he knew the little
+window of her room. It could be no harm, he thought, if he gave her his
+little piece of treasure-trove, they had been playfellows so long.
+There was a shed with a sloping roof beneath her casement: he climbed
+it and tapped softly at the lattice: there was a little light within.
+The child opened it and looked out, half frightened.
+
+Nello put the tambourine-player into her hands. "Here is a doll I found
+in the snow, Alois. Take it," he whispered,--"take it, and God bless
+thee, dear!"
+
+He slid down from the shed-roof before she had time to thank him, and
+ran off through the darkness.
+
+That night there was a fire at the mill. Out-buildings and much corn
+were destroyed, although the mill itself and the dwelling-house were
+unharmed. All the village was out in terror, and engines came tearing
+through the snow from Antwerp. The miller was insured, and would lose
+nothing: nevertheless, he was in furious wrath, and declared aloud that
+the fire was due to no accident, but to some foul intent.
+
+Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to help with the rest: Baas Cogez
+thrust him angrily aside. "Thou wert loitering here after dark," he
+said roughly. "I believe, on my soul, that thou dost know more of the
+fire than any one."
+
+Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could
+say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could
+pass a jest at such a time.
+
+Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal thing openly to many of his
+neighbors in the day that followed; and though no serious charge was
+ever preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had
+been seen in the mill-yard after dark on some unspoken errand, and that
+he bore Baas Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with little
+Alois; and so the hamlet, which followed the sayings of its richest
+landowner servilely, and whose families all hoped to secure the riches
+of Alois in some future time for their sons, took the hint to give
+grave looks and cold words to old Jehan Daas's grandson. No one said
+anything to him openly, but all the village agreed together to humor
+the miller's prejudice, and at the cottages and farms where Nello and
+Patrasche called every morning for the milk for Antwerp, downcast
+glances and brief phrases replaced to them the broad smiles and
+cheerful greetings to which they had been always used. No one really
+credited the miller's absurd suspicions, nor the outrageous accusations
+born of them, but the people were all very poor and very ignorant, and
+the one rich man of the place had pronounced against him. Nello, in his
+innocence and his friendlessness, had no strength to stem the popular
+tide.
+
+"Thou art very cruel to the lad," the miller's wife dared to say,
+weeping, to her lord. "Sure he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and
+would never dream of any such wickedness, however sore his heart might
+be."
+
+But Baas Cogez being an obstinate man, having once said a thing, held
+to it doggedly, though in his innermost soul he knew well the injustice
+that he was committing.
+
+Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury done against him with a certain
+proud patience that disdained to complain; he only gave way a little
+when he was quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it
+should win! They will be sorry then, perhaps."
+
+Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little
+world all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and
+applauded on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that
+little world turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that
+bleak, snow-bound, famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and
+warmth there could be found abode beside the village hearths and in the
+kindly greetings of neighbors. In the winter-time all drew nearer to
+each other, all to all, except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none
+now would have anything to do, and who were left to fare as they might
+with the old paralyzed, bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire
+was often low, and whose board was often without bread, for there was a
+buyer from Antwerp who had taken to drive his mule in of a day for the
+milk of the various dairies, and there were only three or four of the
+people who had refused his terms of purchase and remained faithful to
+the little green cart. So that the burden which Patrasche drew had
+become very light, and the centime-pieces in Nello's pouch had become,
+alas! very small likewise.
+
+The dog would stop, as usual, at all the familiar gates which were now
+closed to him, and look up at them with wistful, mute appeal; and it
+cost the neighbors a pang to shut their doors and their hearts, and let
+Patrasche draw his cart on again, empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for
+they desired to please Baas Cogez.
+
+Noël was close at hand.
+
+The weather was very wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep, and the
+ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this
+season the little village was always gay and cheerful. At the poorest
+dwelling there were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared
+saints and gilded Jésus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on
+the horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled soup-pot sang and
+smoked over the stove; and everywhere over the snow without laughing
+maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and
+from the mass. Only in the little hut it was very dark and very cold.
+
+Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone, for one night in the week
+before the Christmas Day, death entered there, and took away from life
+forever old Jehan Daas, who had never known of life aught save its
+poverty and its pains. He had long been half dead, incapable of any
+movement except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a
+gentle word; and yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in
+it; they mourned him passionately. He had passed away from them in his
+sleep, and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement,
+unutterable solitude and desolation seemed to close around them. He had
+long been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old man, who could not raise a
+hand in their defence, but he had loved them well; his smile had always
+welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be
+comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal shell that
+held his body to the nameless grave by the little gray church. They
+were his only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon
+earth,--the young boy and the old dog.
+
+"Surely, he will relent now and let the poor lad come hither?" thought
+the miller's wife, glancing at her husband where he smoked by the
+hearth.
+
+Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened his heart, and would not
+unbar his door as the little, humble funeral went by. "The boy is a
+beggar," he said to himself: "he shall not be about Alois."
+
+The woman dared not say anything aloud, but when the grave was closed
+and the mourners had gone, she put a wreath of immortelles into Alois's
+hands and bade her go and lay it reverently on the dark, unmarked mound
+where the snow was displaced.
+
+Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that
+poor, melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation.
+There was a month's rent over-due for their little home, and when Nello
+had paid the last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He
+went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every
+Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The
+cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved
+money. He claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every
+pot and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it on
+the morrow.
+
+Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and in some sense miserable enough,
+and yet their hearts clove to it with a great affection. They had been
+so happy there, and in the summer, with its clambering vine and its
+flowering beans, it was so pretty and bright in the midst of the
+sun-lighted fields! Their life in it had been full of labor and
+privation, and yet they had been so well content, so gay of heart,
+running together to meet the old man's never-failing smile of welcome!
+
+All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the
+darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were
+insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.
+
+When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning
+of Christmas Eve. With a shudder, Nello clasped close to him his only
+friend, while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's frank forehead.
+"Let us go, Patrasche,--dear, dear Patrasche," he murmured. "We will
+not wait to be kicked out: let us go."
+
+Patrasche had no will but his, and they went sadly, side by side, out
+from the little place which was so dear to them both, and in which
+every humble, homely thing was to them precious and beloved. Patrasche
+drooped his head wearily as he passed by his own green cart; it was no
+longer his,--it had to go with the rest to pay the rent, and his brass
+harness lay idle and glittering on the snow. The dog could have lain
+down beside it and died for very heart-sickness as he went, but whilst
+the lad lived and needed him Patrasche would not yield and give way.
+
+They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. The day had yet scarce
+more than dawned, most of the shutters were still closed, but some of
+the villagers were about. They took no notice whilst the dog and the
+boy passed by them. At one door Nello paused and looked wistfully
+within: his grandfather had done many a kindly turn in neighbor's
+service to the people who dwelt there.
+
+"Would you give Patrasche a crust?" he said timidly. "He is old, and he
+has had nothing since last forenoon."
+
+The woman shut the door hastily, murmuring some vague saying about
+wheat and rye being very dear that season. The boy and the dog went on
+again wearily: they asked no more.
+
+By slow and painful ways they reached Antwerp as the chimes tolled ten.
+
+"If I had anything about me I could sell to get him bread!" thought
+Nello, but he had nothing except the wisp of linen and serge that
+covered him, and his pair of wooden shoes.
+
+Patrasche understood, and nestled his nose into the lad's hand, as
+though to pray him not to be disquieted for any woe or want of his.
+
+The winner of the drawing-prize was to be proclaimed at noon, and to
+the public building where he had left his treasure Nello made his way.
+On the steps and in the entrance-hall was a crowd of youths,--some of
+his age, some older, all with parents or relatives or friends. His
+heart was sick with fear as he went amongst them, holding Patrasche
+close to him. The great bells of the city clashed out the hour of noon
+with brazen clamor. The doors of the inner hall were opened; the eager,
+panting throng rushed in; it was known that the selected picture would
+be raised above the rest upon a wooden dais.
+
+A mist obscured Nello's sight, his head swam, his limbs almost failed
+him. When his vision cleared he saw the drawing raised on high: it was
+not his own! A slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that victory
+had been adjudged to Stephan Kiesslinger, born in the burgh of Antwerp,
+son of a wharfinger in that town.
+
+When Nello recovered his consciousness he was lying on the stones
+without, and Patrasche was trying with every art he knew to call him
+back to life. In the distance a throng of the youths of Antwerp were
+shouting around their successful comrade, and escorting him with
+acclamations to his home upon the quay.
+
+The boy staggered to his feet and drew the dog into his embrace. "It is
+all over, dear Patrasche," he murmured,--"all over!"
+
+He rallied himself as best he could, for he was weak from fasting, and
+retraced his steps to the village. Patrasche paced by his side with his
+head drooping and his old limbs feeble from hunger and sorrow.
+
+The snow was falling fast: a keen hurricane blew from the north: it was
+bitter as death on the plains. It took them long to traverse the
+familiar path, and the bells were sounding four of the clock as they
+approached the hamlet. Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent
+in the snow, scratched, whined, and drew out with his teeth a small
+case of brown leather. He held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where
+they were there stood a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully under
+the cross: the boy mechanically turned the case to the light: on it was
+the name of Baas Cogez, and within it were notes for two thousand
+francs.
+
+The sight roused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his
+shirt, and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up
+wistfully in his face.
+
+Nello made straight for the mill-house, and went to the house-door and
+struck on its panels. The miller's wife opened it weeping, with little
+Alois clinging close to her skirts. "Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she
+said kindly through her tears. "Get thee gone ere the Baas see thee. We
+are in sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a power of money
+that he has let fall riding homeward, and in this snow he never will
+find it; and God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It is Heaven's own
+judgment for the things we have done to thee."
+
+Nello put the note-case in her hand and called Patrasche within the
+house. "Patrasche found the money to-night," he said quickly. "Tell
+Baas Cogez so; I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in his
+old age. Keep him from pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good to
+him."
+
+Ere either woman or dog knew what he meant he had stooped and kissed
+Patrasche, then closed the door hurriedly, and disappeared in the gloom
+of the fast-falling night.
+
+The woman and the child stood speechless with joy and fear: Patrasche
+vainly spent the fury of his anguish against the iron-bound oak of the
+barred house-door. They did not dare unbar the door and let him forth:
+they tried all they could to solace him. They brought him sweet cakes
+and juicy meats; they tempted him with the best they had; they tried to
+lure him to abide by the warmth of the hearth; but it was of no avail.
+Patrasche refused to be comforted or to stir from the barred portal.
+
+It was six o'clock when from an opposite entrance the miller at last
+came, jaded and broken, into his wife's presence. "It is lost forever,"
+he said with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his stern voice. "We have
+looked with lanterns everywhere: it is gone,--the little maiden's
+portion and all!"
+
+His wife put the money into his hand, and told him how it had come to
+her. The strong man sank trembling into a seat and covered his face,
+ashamed and almost afraid. "I have been cruel to the lad," he muttered
+at length: "I deserved not to have good at his hands."
+
+Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father and nestled
+against him her fair curly head. "Nello may come here again, father?"
+she whispered. "He may come to-morrow as he used to do?"
+
+The miller pressed her in his arms: his hard, sunburned face was very
+pale, and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child.
+"He shall bide here on Christmas Day, and any other day he will. God
+helping me, I will make amends to the boy,--I will make amends."
+
+Little Alois kissed him in gratitude and joy, then slid from his knees
+and ran to where the dog kept watch by the door. "And to-night I may
+feast Patrasche?" she cried in a child's thoughtless glee.
+
+Her father bent his head gravely: "Ay, ay! let the dog have the best";
+for the stern old man was moved and shaken to his heart's depths.
+
+It was Christmas Eve, and the mill-house was filled with oak logs and
+squares of turf, with cream and honey, with meat and bread, and the
+rafters were hung with wreaths of evergreen, and the Calvary and the
+cuckoo clock looked out from a mass of holly. There were little paper
+lanterns too for Alois, and toys of various fashions and sweetmeats in
+bright-pictured papers. There were light and warmth and abundance
+everywhere, and the child would fain have made the dog a guest honored
+and feasted.
+
+But Patrasche would neither lie in the warmth nor share in the cheer.
+Famished he was and very cold, but without Nello he would partake
+neither of comfort nor food. Against all temptation he was proof, and
+close against the door he leaned always, watching only for a means of
+escape.
+
+"He wants the lad," said Baas Cogez. "Good dog! good dog! I will go
+over to the lad the first thing at day-dawn." For no one but Patrasche
+knew that Nello had left the hut, and no one but Patrasche divined that
+Nello had gone to face starvation and misery alone.
+
+The mill-kitchen was very warm; great logs crackled and flamed on the
+hearth; neighbors came in for a glass of wine and a slice of the fat
+goose baking for supper. Alois, gleeful and sure of her playmate back
+on the morrow, bounded and sang and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas
+Cogez, in the fulness of his heart, smiled on her through moistened
+eyes, and spoke of the way in which he would befriend her favorite
+companion; the house-mother sat with calm, contented face at the
+spinning-wheel; the cuckoo in the clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst
+it all Patrasche was bidden with a thousand words of welcome to tarry
+there a cherished guest. But neither peace nor plenty could allure him
+where Nello was not.
+
+When the supper smoked on the board, and the voices were loudest and
+gladdest, and the Christ-child brought choicest gifts to Alois,
+Patrasche, watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was
+unlatched by a careless new-comer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired
+limbs would bear him sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He
+had only one thought,--to follow Nello. A human friend might have
+paused for the pleasant meal, the cheery warmth, the cosey slumber; but
+that was not the friendship of Patrasche. He remembered a bygone time,
+when an old man and a little child had found him sick unto death in the
+wayside ditch.
+
+Snow had fallen freshly all the evening long; it was now nearly ten;
+the trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took
+Patrasche long to discover any scent. When at last he found it, it was
+lost again quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost and again
+recovered, a hundred times or more.
+
+The night was very wild. The lamps under the wayside crosses were blown
+out; the roads were sheets of ice; the impenetrable darkness hid every
+trace of habitations; there was no living thing abroad. All the cattle
+were housed, and in all the huts and homesteads men and women rejoiced
+and feasted. There was only Patrasche out in the cruel cold,--old and
+famished and full of pain, but with the strength and the patience of a
+great love to sustain him in his search.
+
+The trail of Nello's steps, faint and obscure as it was under the new
+snow, went straightly along the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It was
+past midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of the town
+and into the narrow, tortuous, gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in
+the town, save where some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices of
+house-shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns chanting
+drinking-songs. The streets were all white with ice: the high walls and
+roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot
+of the winds down the passages as they tossed the creaking signs and
+shook the tall lamp-irons.
+
+So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many
+diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other, that the dog had a
+hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on
+his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice
+cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He
+kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience
+traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to
+the steps of the great cathedral.
+
+"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche: he could
+not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the
+art-passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.
+
+The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass.
+Some heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or
+sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had
+left one of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls
+Patrasche sought had passed through into the building, leaving the
+white marks of snow upon the dark stone floor. By that slender white
+thread, frozen as it fell, he was guided through the intense silence,
+through the immensity of the vaulted space,--guided straight to the
+gates of the chancel, and, stretched there upon the stones, he found
+Nello. He crept up and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream
+that I should be faithless and forsake thee? I--a dog?" said that mute
+caress.
+
+The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close. "Let us
+lie down and die together," he murmured. "Men have no need of us, and
+we are all alone."
+
+In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid his head upon the young
+boy's breast. The great tears stood in his brown, sad eyes: not for
+himself,--for himself he was happy.
+
+They lay close together in the piercing cold. The blasts that blew over
+the Flemish dikes from the northern seas were like waves of ice, which
+froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense
+vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the
+snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the
+shadows,--now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven
+figures. Under the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed
+almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold.
+Together they dreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each
+other through the flowering grasses of the summer meadows, or sat
+hidden in the tall bulrushes by the water's side, watching the boats go
+seaward in the sun.
+
+Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed through
+the vastness of the aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had
+broken through the clouds, the snow had ceased to fall, the light
+reflected from the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell
+through the arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the boy
+on his entrance had flung back the veil: the Elevation and the Descent
+of the Cross were for one instant visible.
+
+Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them: the tears of a
+passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face. "I have seen
+them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"
+
+His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing
+upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light
+illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so
+long,--light clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the
+throne of Heaven. Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great
+darkness covered the face of Christ.
+
+The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog. "We shall see
+His face--_there_," he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think."
+
+On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp
+found them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozen
+into stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas
+morning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying
+thus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from the
+great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the
+thorn-crowned head of the Christ.
+
+As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as
+women weep. "I was cruel to the lad," he muttered, "and now I would
+have made amends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have
+been to me as a son."
+
+There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the
+world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. "I seek one who
+should have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the
+people,--"a boy of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on a
+fallen tree at eventide,--that was all his theme. But there was
+greatness for the future in it. I would fain find him, and take him
+with me and teach him Art."
+
+And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she
+clung to her father's arm, cried aloud, "O Nello, come! We have all
+ready for thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old
+piper will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the
+hearth and burn nuts with us all the Noël week long,--yes, even to the
+Feast of the Kings! And Patrasche will be so happy! O Nello, wake and
+come!"
+
+But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens
+with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."
+
+For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the
+sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay
+and glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked
+charity at their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.
+
+Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been.
+It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the
+innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and
+for faith no fulfilment.
+
+All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were
+not divided; for when they were found the arms of the boy were folded
+too closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and the
+people of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a
+special grace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest
+there side by side--forever!
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER.
+
+BY JOHN RUSKIN.
+
+
+I.
+
+In a secluded and mountainous part of Styria, there was, in old time, a
+valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. It was
+surrounded, on all sides, by steep and rocky mountains, rising into
+peaks, which were always covered with snow, and from which a number of
+torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westward,
+over the face of a crag so high that, when the sun had set to
+everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full
+upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold. It was,
+therefore, called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River.
+It was strange that none of these streams fell into the valley itself.
+They all descended on the other side of the mountains, and wound away
+through broad plains and by populous cities. But the clouds were drawn
+so constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular
+hollow, that, in time of drought and heat, when all the country round
+was burnt up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops
+were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its
+grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it
+was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and was commonly called the
+Treasure Valley.
+
+The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, called
+Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers,
+were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes,
+which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into _them_, and
+always fancied they saw very far into _you_. They lived by farming the
+Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were. They killed
+everything that did not pay for its eating. They shot the blackbirds,
+because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they
+should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs
+in the kitchen; and smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all
+summer in the lime-trees. They worked their servants without any wages,
+till they would not work any more, and then quarrelled with them, and
+turned them out of doors without paying them. It would have been very
+odd, if, with such a farm, and such a system of farming, they hadn't
+got very rich; and very rich they _did_ get. They generally contrived
+to keep their corn by them till it was very dear, and then sell it for
+twice its value; they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors,
+yet it was never known that they had given so much as a penny or a
+crust in charity; they never went to mass; grumbled perpetually at
+paying tithes; and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper,
+as to receive from all those with whom they had any dealings, the
+nickname of the "Black Brothers."
+
+The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed, in both
+appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be imagined
+or desired. He was not above twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and
+kind in temper to every living thing. He did not, of course, agree
+particularly well with his brothers, or, rather, they did not agree
+with _him_. He was usually appointed to the honorable office of
+turnspit, when there was anything to roast, which was not often; for,
+to do the brothers justice, they were hardly less sparing upon
+themselves than upon other people. At other times he used to clean the
+shoes, the floors, and sometimes the plates, occasionally getting what
+was left on them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome quantity of
+dry blows, by way of education.
+
+Things went on in this manner for a long time. At last came a very wet
+summer, and everything went wrong in the country round. The hay had
+hardly been got in, when the haystacks were floated bodily down to the
+sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail; the
+corn was all killed by a black blight; only in the Treasure Valley, as
+usual, all was safe. As it had rain when there was rain nowhere else,
+so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else. Everybody came to buy
+corn at the farm, and went away pouring maledictions on the Black
+Brothers. They asked what they liked, and got it, except from the poor
+people, who could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their
+very door, without the slightest regard or notice.
+
+It was drawing toward winter, and very cold weather, when one day the
+two elder brothers had gone out, with their usual warning to little
+Gluck, who was left to mind the roast, that he was to let nobody in,
+and give nothing out. Gluck sat down quite close to the fire, for it
+was raining very hard, and the kitchen walls were by no means dry or
+comfortable looking. He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and
+brown. "What a pity," thought Gluck, "my brothers never ask anybody to
+dinner. I'm sure, when they've got such a nice piece of mutton as this,
+and nobody else has got so much as a piece of dry bread, it would do
+their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them."
+
+Just as he spoke, there came a double knock at the house-door, yet
+heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up,--more like a
+puff than a knock.
+
+"It must be the wind," said Gluck; "nobody else would venture to knock
+double knocks at our door."
+
+No; it wasn't the wind; there it came again very hard, and, what was
+particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to be in a hurry, and not
+to be in the least afraid of the consequences. Gluck went to the
+window, opened it, and put his head out to see who it was.
+
+It was the most extraordinary-looking little gentleman he had ever seen
+in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly brass-colored; his
+cheeks were very round and very red, and might have warranted a
+supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last
+eight-and-forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long silky
+eyelashes, his mustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each
+side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt
+color, descended far over his shoulders. He was about four feet six in
+height, and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the same altitude,
+decorated with a black feather some three feet long. His doublet was
+prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of
+what is now termed a "swallow-tail," but was much obscured by the
+swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must
+have been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling
+round the old house, carried it clear out from the wearer's shoulders
+to about four times his own length.
+
+Gluck was so perfectly paralyzed by the singular appearance of his
+visitor, that he remained fixed without uttering a word, until the old
+gentleman, having performed another and a more energetic concerto on
+the knocker, turned round to look after his fly-away cloak. In so doing
+he caught sight of Gluck's little yellow head jammed in the window,
+with its mouth and eyes very wide open indeed.
+
+"Hollo!" said the little gentleman, "that's not the way to answer the
+door; I'm wet, let me in."
+
+To do the little gentleman justice, he _was_ wet. His feather hung down
+between his legs like a beaten puppy's tail, dripping like an umbrella;
+and from the ends of his mustaches the water was running into his
+waistcoat-pockets, and out again like a mill-stream.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck, "I'm very sorry, but I really can't."
+
+"Can't what?" said the old gentleman.
+
+"I can't let you in, sir,--I can't, indeed; my brothers would beat me
+to death, sir, if I thought of such a thing. What do you want, sir?"
+
+"Want?" said the old gentleman, petulantly, "I want fire and shelter;
+and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on
+the walls, with nobody to feel it. Let me in, I say; I only want to
+warm myself."
+
+Gluck had had his head, by this time, so long out of the window, that
+he began to feel it was really unpleasantly cold, and when he turned,
+and saw the beautiful fire rustling and roaring, and throwing long
+bright tongues up the chimney, as if it were licking its chops at the
+savory smell of the leg of mutton, his heart melted within him that it
+should be burning away for nothing. "He does look _very_ wet," said
+little Gluck; "I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round he
+went to the door, and opened it; and as the little gentleman walked in,
+through the house came a gust of wind that made the old chimneys
+totter.
+
+"That's a good boy," said the little gentleman. "Never mind your
+brothers. I'll talk to them."
+
+"Pray, sir, don't do any such thing," said Gluck. "I can't let you stay
+till they come; they'd be the death of me."
+
+"Dear me," said the old gentleman, "I'm very sorry to hear that. How
+long may I stay?"
+
+"Only till the mutton's done, sir," replied Gluck, "and it's very
+brown."
+
+Then the old gentleman walked into the kitchen, and sat himself down on
+the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it
+was a great deal too high for the roof.
+
+"You'll soon dry there, sir," said Gluck, and sat down again to turn
+the mutton. But the old gentleman did _not_ dry there, but went on
+drip, drip, dripping among the cinders, and the fire fizzed and
+sputtered, and began to look very black and uncomfortable; never was
+such a cloak; every fold in it ran like a gutter.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck at length, after watching the water
+spreading in long quicksilver-like streams over the floor for a quarter
+of an hour; "mayn't I take your cloak?"
+
+"No, thank you," said the old gentleman.
+
+"Your cap, sir?"
+
+"I'm all right, thank you," said the old gentleman, rather gruffly.
+
+"But--sir--I'm very sorry," said Gluck, hesitatingly; "but--really,
+sir--you're putting the fire out."
+
+"It'll take longer to do the mutton then," replied his visitor dryly.
+
+Gluck was very much puzzled by the behavior of his guest; it was such a
+strange mixture of coolness and humility. He turned away at the string
+meditatively for another five minutes.
+
+"That mutton looks very nice," said the old gentleman, at length.
+"Can't you give me a little bit?"
+
+"Impossible, sir," said Gluck.
+
+"I'm very hungry," continued the old gentleman; "I've had nothing to
+eat yesterday, nor to-day. They surely couldn't miss a bit from the
+knuckle!"
+
+He spoke in so very melancholy a tone, that it quite melted Gluck's
+heart. "They promised me one slice to-day, sir," said he; "I can give
+you that, but not a bit more."
+
+"That's a good boy," said the old gentleman again.
+
+Then Gluck warmed a plate and sharpened a knife. "I don't care if I do
+get beaten for it," thought he. Just as he had cut a large slice out of
+the mutton, there came a tremendous rap at the door. The old gentleman
+jumped off the hob, as if it had suddenly become inconveniently warm.
+Gluck fitted the slice into the mutton again, with desperate efforts at
+exactitude, and ran to open the door.
+
+"What did you keep us waiting in the rain for?" said Schwartz, as he
+walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's face. "Ay! what for,
+indeed, you little vagabond?" said Hans, administering an educational
+box on the ear, as he followed his brother into the kitchen.
+
+"Bless my soul!" said Schwartz, when he opened the door.
+
+"Amen," said the little gentleman, who had taken his cap off, and was
+standing in the middle of the kitchen, bowing with the utmost possible
+velocity.
+
+"Who's that?" said Schwartz, catching up a rolling-pin, and turning to
+Gluck with a fierce frown.
+
+"I don't know, indeed, brother," said Gluck, in great terror.
+
+"How did he get in?" roared Schwartz.
+
+"My dear brother," said Gluck, deprecatingly, "he was so _very_ wet!"
+
+The rolling-pin was descending on Gluck's head; but, at the instant,
+the old gentleman interposed his conical cap, on which it crashed with
+a shock that shook the water out of it all over the room. What was very
+odd, the rolling-pin no sooner touched the cap, than it flew out of
+Schwartz's hand, spinning like a straw in a high wind, and fell into
+the corner at the further end of the room.
+
+"Who are you, sir?" demanded Schwartz, turning upon him.
+
+"What's your business?" snarled Hans.
+
+"I'm a poor old man, sir," the little gentleman began very modestly,
+"and I saw your fire through the window, and begged shelter for a
+quarter of an hour."
+
+"Have the goodness to walk out again, then," said Schwartz. "We've
+quite enough water in our kitchen, without making it a drying-house."
+
+"It is a cold day to turn an old man out in, sir; look at my gray
+hairs." They hung down to his shoulders, as I told you before.
+
+"Ay!" said Hans, "there are enough of them to keep you warm. Walk!"
+
+"I'm very, very hungry, sir; couldn't you spare me a bit of bread
+before I go?"
+
+"Bread, indeed!" said Schwartz; "do you suppose we've nothing to do
+with our bread but to give it to such red-nosed fellows as you?"
+
+"Why don't you sell your feather?" said Hans, sneeringly. "Out with
+you."
+
+"A little bit," said the old gentleman.
+
+"Be off!" said Schwartz.
+
+"Pray, gentlemen."
+
+"Off, and be hanged!" cried Hans, seizing him by the collar. But he had
+no sooner touched the old gentleman's collar, than away he went after
+the rolling-pin, spinning round and round, till he fell into the corner
+on the top of it. Then Schwartz was very angry, and ran at the old
+gentleman to turn him out; but he also had hardly touched him, when
+away he went after Hans and the rolling-pin, and hit his head against
+the wall as he tumbled into the corner. And so there they lay, all
+three.
+
+Then the old gentleman spun himself round with velocity in the opposite
+direction; continued to spin until his long cloak was all wound neatly
+about him; clapped his cap on his head, very much on one side (for it
+could not stand upright without going through the ceiling), gave an
+additional twist to his corkscrew mustaches, and replied with perfect
+coolness: "Gentlemen, I wish you a very good morning. At twelve o'clock
+to-night, I'll call again; after such a refusal of hospitality as I
+have just experienced, you will not be surprised if that visit is the
+last I ever pay you."
+
+"If ever I catch you here again," muttered Schwartz, coming, half
+frightened, out of the corner,--but, before he could finish his
+sentence, the old gentleman had shut the house-door behind him with a
+great bang; and past the window, at the same instant, drove a wreath of
+ragged cloud, that whirled and rolled away down the valley in all
+manner of shapes; turning over and over in the air; and melting away at
+last in a gush of rain.
+
+"A very pretty business, indeed, Mr. Gluck!" said Schwartz. "Dish the
+mutton, sir. If ever I catch you at such a trick again-- Bless me, why
+the mutton's been cut!"
+
+"You promised me one slice, brother, you know," said Gluck.
+
+"Oh! and you were cutting it hot, I suppose, and going to catch all the
+gravy. It'll be long before I promise you such a thing again. Leave the
+room, sir; and have the kindness to wait in the coal-cellar till I call
+you."
+
+Gluck left the room melancholy enough. The brothers ate as much mutton
+as they could, locked the rest in the cupboard, and proceeded to get
+very drunk after dinner.
+
+Such a night as it was! Howling wind, and rushing rain, without
+intermission. The brothers had just sense enough left to put up all the
+shutters, and double bar the door, before they went to bed. They
+usually slept in the same room. As the clock struck twelve, they were
+both awakened by a tremendous crash. Their door burst open with a
+violence that shook the house from top to bottom.
+
+"What's that?" cried Schwartz, starting up in his bed.
+
+"Only I," said the little gentleman.
+
+The two brothers sat up on their bolster, and stared into the darkness.
+The room was full of water, and by a misty moonbeam, which found its
+way through a hole in the shutter, they could see, in the midst of it,
+an enormous foam globe, spinning round, and bobbing up and down like a
+cork, on which, as on a most luxurious cushion, reclined the little old
+gentleman, cap and all. There was plenty of room for it now, for the
+roof was off.
+
+"Sorry to incommode you," said their visitor, ironically. "I'm afraid
+your beds are dampish; perhaps you had better go to your brother's
+room; I've left the ceiling on there."
+
+They required no second admonition, but rushed into Gluck's room, wet
+through, and in an agony of terror.
+
+"You'll find my card on the kitchen table," the old gentleman called
+after them. "Remember the _last_ visit."
+
+"Pray Heaven it may be!" said Schwartz, shuddering. And the foam globe
+disappeared.
+
+Dawn came at last, and the two brothers looked out of Gluck's little
+window in the morning. The Treasure Valley was one mass of ruin and
+desolation. The inundation had swept away trees, crops, and cattle, and
+left, in their stead, a waste of red sand and gray mud. The two
+brothers crept, shivering and horror-struck, into the kitchen. The
+water had gutted the whole first floor: corn, money, almost every
+movable thing had been swept away, and there was left only a small
+white card on the kitchen table. On it, in large, breezy, long-legged
+letters, were engraved the words:--
+
+SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE.
+
+
+II.
+
+Southwest Wind, Esquire, was as good as his word. After the momentous
+visit above related, he entered the Treasure Valley no more; and, what
+was worse, he had so much influence with his relations, the West Winds
+in general, and used it so effectually, that they all adopted a similar
+line of conduct. So no rain fell in the valley from one year's end to
+another. Though everything remained green and flourishing in the plains
+below, the inheritance of the Three Brothers was a desert. What had
+once been the richest soil in the kingdom became a shifting heap of red
+sand; and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the adverse
+skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, to seek some
+means of gaining a livelihood among the cities and people of the
+plains. All their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some
+curious, old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants of their
+ill-gotten wealth.
+
+"Suppose we turn goldsmiths?" said Schwartz to Hans, as they entered
+the large city. "It is a good knave's trade; we can put a great deal of
+copper into the gold, without any one's finding it out."
+
+The thought was agreed to be a very good one; they hired a furnace, and
+turned goldsmiths. But two slight circumstances affected their trade:
+the first, that people did not approve of the coppered gold; the
+second, that the two elder brothers, whenever they had sold anything,
+used to leave little Gluck to mind the furnace, and go and drink out
+the money in the ale-house next door. So they melted all their gold,
+without making money enough to buy more, and were at last reduced to
+one large drinking-mug, which an uncle of his had given to little
+Gluck, and which he was very fond of, and would not have parted with
+for the world; though he never drank anything out of it but milk and
+water. The mug was a very odd mug to look at. The handle was formed of
+two wreaths of flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it looked more
+like silk than like metal, and these wreaths descended into, and mixed
+with, a beard and whiskers, of the same exquisite workmanship, which
+surrounded and decorated a very fierce little face, of the reddest gold
+imaginable, right in the front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it
+which seemed to command its whole circumference. It was impossible to
+drink out of the mug without being subjected to an intense gaze out of
+the side of these eyes; and Schwartz positively averred that once,
+after emptying it full of Rhenish seventeen times, he had seen them
+wink! When it came to the mug's turn to be made into spoons, it half
+broke poor little Gluck's heart; but the brothers only laughed at him,
+tossed the mug into the melting-pot, and staggered out to the
+ale-house; leaving him, as usual, to pour the gold into bars, when it
+was all ready.
+
+When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his old friend in
+the melting-pot. The flowing hair was all gone; nothing remained but
+the red nose, and the sparkling eyes, which looked more malicious than
+ever. "And no wonder," thought Gluck, "after being treated in that
+way." He sauntered disconsolately to the window, and sat himself down
+to catch the fresh evening air, and escape the hot breath of the
+furnace. Now this window commanded a direct view of the range of
+mountains, which, as I told you before, overhung the Treasure Valley,
+and more especially of the peak from which fell the Golden River. It
+was just at the close of the day, and, when Gluck sat down at the
+window, he saw the rocks of the mountain-tops, all crimson and purple
+with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning
+and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a
+waving column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the
+double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and
+fading alternately in the wreaths of spray.
+
+"Ah!" said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it for a little while,
+"if that river were really all gold, what a nice thing it would be!"
+
+"No, it wouldn't, Gluck," said a clear, metallic voice, close at his
+ear.
+
+"Bless me, what's that?" exclaimed Gluck, jumping up. There was nobody
+there. He looked round the room, and under the table, and a great many
+times behind him, but there was certainly nobody there, and he sat down
+again at the window. This time he didn't speak, but he couldn't help
+thinking again that it would be very convenient if the river were
+really all gold.
+
+"Not at all, my boy," said the same voice, louder than before.
+
+"Bless me!" said Gluck again, "what _is_ that?" He looked again into
+all the corners and cupboards, and then began turning round and round,
+as fast as he could, in the middle of the room, thinking there was
+somebody behind him, when the same voice struck again on his ear. It
+was singing now very merrily "Lala-lira-la"; no words, only a soft
+running effervescent melody, something like that of a kettle on the
+boil. Gluck looked out of the window. No, it was certainly in the
+house. Up stairs, and down stairs. No, it was certainly in that very
+room, coming in quicker time and clearer notes every moment.
+"Lala-lira-la." All at once it struck Gluck that it sounded louder near
+the furnace. He ran to the opening and looked in; yes, he saw right, it
+seemed to be coming, not only out of the furnace, but out of the pot.
+He uncovered it, and ran back in a great fright, for the pot was
+certainly singing! He stood in the farthest corner of the room, with
+his hands up, and his mouth open, for a minute or two, when the singing
+stopped, and the voice became clear and pronunciative.
+
+"Hollo!" said the voice.
+
+Gluck made no answer.
+
+"Hollo! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again.
+
+Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight up to the crucible,
+drew it out of the furnace, and looked in. The gold was all melted, and
+its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of its
+reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw meeting his
+glance, from beneath the gold, the red nose and the sharp eyes of his
+old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he
+had seen them in his life.
+
+"Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot again, "I'm all
+right; pour me out."
+
+But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything of the kind.
+
+"Pour me out, I say," said the voice, rather gruffly.
+
+Still Gluck couldn't move.
+
+"_Will_ you pour me out?" said the voice, passionately. "I'm too hot."
+
+By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his limbs, took hold of
+the crucible, and sloped it so as to pour out the gold. But instead of
+a liquid stream, there came out, first, a pair of pretty little yellow
+legs, then some coat-tails, then a pair of arms stuck akimbo, and,
+finally, the well-known head of his friend the mug; all which articles,
+uniting as they rolled out, stood up energetically on the floor, in the
+shape of a little golden dwarf, about a foot and a half high.
+
+"That's right!" said the dwarf, stretching out first his legs, and then
+his arms, and then shaking his head up and down, and as far round as it
+would go, for five minutes, without stopping; apparently with the view
+of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck
+stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a
+slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic
+colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over
+this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full half-way to the
+ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate, that Gluck could
+hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The
+features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same
+delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in
+complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and
+intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had
+finished his self-examination, he turned his small, sharp eyes full on
+Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it
+wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the little man.
+
+This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode of commencing
+conversation. It might indeed be supposed to refer to the course of
+Gluck's thoughts, which had first produced the dwarf's observations out
+of the pot; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no inclination to
+dispute the dictum.
+
+"Wouldn't it, sir?" said Gluck, very mildly and submissively indeed.
+
+"No," said the dwarf, conclusively. "No, it wouldn't." And with that,
+the dwarf pulled his cap hard over his brows, and took two turns of
+three feet long, up and down the room, lifting his legs very high, and
+setting them down very hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect
+his thoughts a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his
+diminutive visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his
+amazement, he ventured on a question of peculiar delicacy.
+
+"Pray, sir," said Gluck rather hesitatingly, "were you my mug?"
+
+On which the little man turned sharp round, walked straight up to
+Gluck, and drew himself up to his full height. "I," said the little
+man, "am the King of the Golden River." Whereupon he turned about
+again, and took two more turns, some six feet long, in order to allow
+time for the consternation which this announcement produced in his
+auditor to evaporate. After which he again walked up to Gluck and stood
+still, as if expecting some comment on his communication.
+
+Gluck determined to say something, at all events. "I hope your Majesty
+is very well," said Gluck.
+
+"Listen!" said the little man, deigning no reply to this polite
+inquiry. "I am the King of what you mortals call the Golden River. The
+shape you saw me in was owing to the malice of a stronger king, from
+whose enchantments you have this instant freed me. What I have seen of
+you, and your conduct to your wicked brothers, renders me willing to
+serve you; therefore attend to what I tell you. Whoever shall climb to
+the top of that mountain from which you see the Golden River issue, and
+shall cast into the stream at its source three drops of holy water, for
+him, and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing
+in his first, can succeed in a second attempt; and if any one shall
+cast unholy water into the river, it will overwhelm him, and he will
+become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned
+away, and deliberately walked into the centre of the hottest flame of
+the furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,--a
+blaze of intense light,--rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King of
+the Golden River had evaporated.
+
+"Oh!" cried poor Gluck, running to look up the chimney after him; "O
+dear, dear, dear me! My mug! my mug! my mug!"
+
+
+III.
+
+The King of the Golden River had hardly made his extraordinary exit
+before Hans and Schwartz came roaring into the house, very savagely
+drunk. The discovery of the total loss of their last piece of plate had
+the effect of sobering them just enough to enable them to stand over
+Gluck, beating him very steadily for a quarter of an hour; at the
+expiration of which period they dropped into a couple of chairs, and
+requested to know what he had got to say for himself. Gluck told them
+his story, of which of course they did not believe a word. They beat
+him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the
+morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story
+obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of
+which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the
+knotty question which of them should try his fortune first, drew their
+swords, and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the
+neighbors, who, finding they could not pacify the combatants, sent for
+the constable.
+
+Hans, on hearing this, contrived to escape, and hid himself; but
+Schwartz was taken before the magistrate, fined for breaking the peace,
+and, having drunk out his last penny the evening before, was thrown
+into prison till he should pay.
+
+When Hans heard this, he was much delighted, and determined to set out
+immediately for the Golden River. How to get the holy water, was the
+question. He went to the priest, but the priest could not give any holy
+water to so abandoned a character. So Hans went to vespers in the
+evening for the first time in his life, and, under pretence of crossing
+himself, stole a cupful, and returned home in triumph.
+
+Next morning he got up before the sun rose, put the holy water into a
+strong flask, and two bottles of wine and some meat in a basket, slung
+them over his back, took his alpine staff in his hand, and set off for
+the mountains.
+
+On his way out of the town he had to pass the prison, and as he looked
+in at the windows, whom should he see but Schwartz himself peeping out
+of the bars, and looking very disconsolate?
+
+"Good morning, brother," said Hans; "have you any message for the King
+of the Golden River?"
+
+Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook the bars with all his
+strength; but Hans only laughed at him, and advising him to make
+himself comfortable till he came back again, shouldered his basket,
+shook the bottle of holy water in Schwartz's face till it frothed
+again, and marched off in the highest spirits in the world.
+
+It was, indeed, a morning that might have made any one happy, even with
+no Golden River to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched
+along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains,--their lower
+cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating
+vapor, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran
+in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced,
+in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine. Far
+above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and
+shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak
+of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked
+lightning; and, far beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the
+morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the
+utmost peaks of the eternal snow.
+
+The Golden River, which sprang from one of the lower and snowless
+elevations, was now nearly in shadow; all but the uppermost jets of
+spray, which rose like slow smoke above the undulating line of the
+cataract, and floated away in feeble wreaths upon the morning wind.
+
+On this object, and on this alone, Hans's eyes and thoughts were fixed;
+forgetting the distance he had to traverse, he set off at an imprudent
+rate of walking, which greatly exhausted him before he had scaled the
+first range of the green and low hills. He was, moreover, surprised, on
+surmounting them, to find that a large glacier, of whose existence,
+notwithstanding his previous knowledge of the mountains, he had been
+absolutely ignorant, lay between him and the source of the Golden
+River. He entered on it with the boldness of a practised mountaineer;
+yet he thought he had never traversed so strange or so dangerous a
+glacier in his life. The ice was excessively slippery, and out of all
+its chasms came wild sounds of gushing water; not monotonous or low,
+but changeful and loud, rising occasionally into drifting passages of
+wild melody, then breaking off into short, melancholy tones, or sudden
+shrieks, resembling those of human voices in distress or pain. The ice
+was broken into thousands of confused shapes, but none, Hans thought,
+like the ordinary forms of splintered ice. There seemed a curious
+_expression_ about all their outlines,--a perpetual resemblance to
+living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads of deceitful shadows
+and lurid lights played and floated about and through the pale blue
+pinnacles, dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller; while his
+ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and roar of
+the concealed waters. These painful circumstances increased upon him as
+he advanced; the ice crashed and yawned into fresh chasms at his feet,
+tottering spires nodded around him, and fell thundering across his
+path; and though he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most
+terrific glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and
+oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last chasm, and
+flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the firm turf of the
+mountain.
+
+He had been compelled to abandon his basket of food, which became a
+perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing
+himself but by breaking off and eating some of the pieces of ice. This,
+however, relieved his thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy
+frame, and, with the indomitable spirit of avarice, he resumed his
+laborious journey.
+
+His way now lay straight up a ridge of bare, red rocks, without a blade
+of grass to ease the foot or a projecting angle to afford an inch of
+shade from the south sun. It was past noon, and the rays beat intensely
+upon the steep path, while the whole atmosphere was motionless, and
+penetrated with heat. Intense thirst was soon added to the bodily
+fatigue with which Hans was now afflicted; glance after glance he cast
+on the flask of water which hung at his belt. "Three drops are enough,"
+at last thought he; "I may, at least, cool my lips with it."
+
+He opened the flask, and was raising it to his lips, when his eye fell
+on an object lying on the rock beside him; he thought it moved. It was
+a small dog, apparently in the last agony of death from thirst. Its
+tongue was out, its jaws dry, its limbs extended lifelessly, and a
+swarm of black ants were crawling about its lips and throat. Its eye
+moved to the bottle which Hans held in his hand. He raised it, drank,
+spurned the animal with his foot, and passed on. And he did not know
+how it was, but he thought that a strange shadow had suddenly come
+across the blue sky.
+
+The path became steeper and more rugged every moment; and the high hill
+air, instead of refreshing him, seemed to throw his blood into a fever.
+The noise of the hill cataracts sounded like mockery in his ears; they
+were all distant, and his thirst increased every moment. Another hour
+passed, and he again looked down to the flask at his side; it was half
+empty, but there was much more than three drops in it. He stopped to
+open it, and again, as he did so, something moved in the path above
+him. It was a fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on the rock, its
+breast heaving with thirst, its eyes closed, and its lips parched and
+burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark
+gray cloud came over the sun, and long snake-like shadows crept up
+along the mountain-sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but
+its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight of the dead
+air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw the
+cataract of the Golden River springing from the hillside, scarcely five
+hundred feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang
+on to complete his task.
+
+At this instant a faint cry fell on his ear. He turned, and saw a
+gray-haired old man extended on the rocks. His eyes were sunk, his
+features deadly pale, and gathered into an expression of despair.
+"Water!" he stretched his arms to Hans, and cried feebly,--"Water! I am
+dying."
+
+"I have none," replied Hans; "thou hast had thy share of life." He
+strode over the prostrate body, and darted on. And a flash of blue
+lightning rose out of the east, shaped like a sword; it shook thrice
+over the whole heaven, and left it dark with one heavy, impenetrable
+shade. The sun was setting; it plunged toward the horizon like a
+red-hot ball.
+
+The roar of the Golden River rose on Hans's ear. He stood at the brink
+of the chasm through which it ran. Its waves were filled with the red
+glory of the sunset: they shook their crests like tongues of fire, and
+flashes of bloody light gleamed along their foam. Their sound came
+mightier and mightier on his senses; his brain grew giddy with the
+prolonged thunder. Shuddering, he drew the flask from his girdle, and
+hurled it into the centre of the torrent. As he did so, an icy chill
+shot through his limbs; he staggered, shrieked, and fell. The waters
+closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river rose wildly into the
+night, as it gushed over
+
+THE BLACK STONE.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Poor little Gluck waited very anxiously alone in the house for Hans's
+return. Finding he did not come back, he was terribly frightened, and
+went and told Schwartz in the prison all that had happened. Then
+Schwartz was very much pleased, and said that Hans must certainly have
+been turned into a black stone, and he should have all the gold to
+himself. But Gluck was very sorry, and cried all night. When he got up
+in the morning, there was no bread in the house, nor any money; so
+Gluck went and hired himself to another goldsmith, and he worked so
+hard, and so neatly, and so long every day, that he soon got money
+enough together to pay his brother's fine, and he went and gave it all
+to Schwartz, and Schwartz got out of prison. Then Schwartz was quite
+pleased, and said he should have some of the gold of the river. But
+Gluck only begged he would go and see what had become of Hans.
+
+Now when Schwartz had heard that Hans had stolen the holy water, he
+thought to himself that such a proceeding might not be considered
+altogether correct by the King of the Golden River, and determined to
+manage matters better. So he took some more of Gluck's money, and went
+to a bad priest, who gave him some holy water very readily for it. Then
+Schwartz was sure it was all quite right. So Schwartz got up early in
+the morning before the sun rose, and took some bread and wine in a
+basket, and put his holy water in a flask, and set off for the
+mountains. Like his brother, he was much surprised at the sight of the
+glacier, and had great difficulty in crossing it, even after leaving
+his basket behind him. The day was cloudless, but not bright: a heavy
+purple haze was hanging over the sky, and the hills looked lowering and
+gloomy. And as Schwartz climbed the steep rock path, the thirst came
+upon him, as it had upon his brother, until he lifted his flask to his
+lips to drink. Then he saw the fair child lying near him on the rocks,
+and it cried to him, and moaned for water.
+
+"Water, indeed," said Schwartz; "I haven't half enough for myself," and
+passed on. And as he went he thought the sunbeams grew more dim, and he
+saw a low bank of black cloud rising out of the west; and, when he had
+climbed for another hour, the thirst overcame him again, and he would
+have drunk. Then he saw the old man lying before him on the path, and
+heard him cry out for water. "Water, indeed," said Schwartz; "I haven't
+half enough for myself," and on he went.
+
+Then again the light seemed to fade from before his eyes, and he looked
+up, and, behold, a mist, of the color of blood, had come over the sun;
+and the bank of black cloud had risen very high, and its edges were
+tossing and tumbling like the waves of the angry sea. And they cast
+long shadows, which flickered over Schwartz's path.
+
+Then Schwartz climbed for another hour, and again his thirst returned;
+and as he lifted his flask to his lips, he thought he saw his brother
+Hans lying exhausted on the path before him, and, as he gazed, the
+figure stretched its arms to him, and cried for water. "Ha, ha,"
+laughed Schwartz, "are you there? Remember the prison bars, my boy.
+Water, indeed! do you suppose I carried it all the way up here for
+_you_?" And he strode over the figure; yet, as he passed, he thought he
+saw a strange expression of mockery about its lips. And, when he had
+gone a few yards farther, he looked back; but the figure was not there.
+
+And a sudden horror came over Schwartz, he knew not why; but the thirst
+for gold prevailed over his fear, and he rushed on. And the bank of
+black cloud rose to the zenith, and out of it came bursts of spiry
+lightning, and waves of darkness seemed to heave and float between
+their flashes, over the whole heavens. And the sky where the sun was
+setting was all level, and like a lake of blood; and a strong wind came
+out of that sky, tearing its crimson clouds into fragments, and
+scattering them far into the darkness. And when Schwartz stood by the
+brink of the Golden River, its waves were black like thunderclouds, but
+their foam was like fire; and the roar of the waters below and the
+thunder above met, as he cast the flask into the stream. And, as he did
+so, the lightning glared in his eyes, and the earth gave way beneath
+him, and the waters closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river
+rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over the
+
+TWO BLACK STONES.
+
+
+V.
+
+When Gluck found that Schwartz did not come back, he was very sorry,
+and did not know what to do. He had no money, and was obliged to go and
+hire himself again to the goldsmith, who worked him very hard, and gave
+him very little money. So, after a month or two, Gluck grew tired, and
+made up his mind to go and try his fortune with the Golden River. "The
+little king looked very kind," thought he. "I don't think he will turn
+me into a black stone." So he went to the priest, and the priest gave
+him some holy water as soon as he asked for it. Then Gluck took some
+bread in his basket, and the bottle of water, and set off very early
+for the mountains.
+
+If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue to his brothers,
+it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so strong nor so
+practised on the mountains. He had several very bad falls, lost his
+basket and bread, and was very much frightened at the strange noises
+under the ice. He lay a long time to rest on the grass, after he had
+got over, and began to climb the hill just in the hottest part of the
+day. When he had climbed for an hour, he got dreadfully thirsty, and
+was going to drink like his brothers, when he saw an old man coming
+down the path above him, looking very feeble, and leaning on a staff.
+"My son," said the old man, "I am faint with thirst; give me some of
+that water." Then Gluck looked at him, and when he saw that he was pale
+and weary, he gave him the water; "Only pray don't drink it all," said
+Gluck. But the old man drank a great deal, and gave him back the bottle
+two thirds empty. Then he bade him good speed, and Gluck went on again
+merrily. And the path became easier to his feet, and two or three
+blades of grass appeared upon it, and some grasshoppers began singing
+on the bank beside it; and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry
+singing.
+
+Then he went on for another hour, and the thirst increased on him so
+that he thought he should be forced to drink. But, as he raised the
+flask, he saw a little child lying panting by the roadside, and it
+cried out piteously for water. Then Gluck struggled with himself and
+determined to bear the thirst a little longer; and he put the bottle to
+the child's lips, and it drank it all but a few drops. Then it smiled
+on him, and got up, and ran down the hill; and Gluck looked after it,
+till it became as small as a little star, and then turned, and began
+climbing again. And then there were all kinds of sweet flowers growing
+on the rocks, bright green moss, with pale pink starry flowers, and
+soft-belled gentians, more blue than the sky at its deepest, and pure
+white transparent lilies. And crimson and purple butterflies darted
+hither and thither, and the sky sent down such pure light that Gluck
+had never felt so happy in his life.
+
+Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his thirst became
+intolerable again; and, when he looked at his bottle, he saw that there
+were only five or six drops left in it, and he could not venture to
+drink. And as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he saw a
+little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath,--just as Hans had
+seen it on the day of his ascent. And Gluck stopped and looked at it,
+and then at the Golden River, not five hundred yards above him; and he
+thought of the dwarf's words, "that no one could succeed, except in his
+first attempt"; and he tried to pass the dog, but it whined piteously,
+and Gluck stopped again. "Poor beastie," said Gluck, "it'll be dead
+when I come down again, if I don't help it." Then he looked closer and
+closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully that he could not
+stand it. "Confound the King and his gold too," said Gluck; and he
+opened the flask, and poured all the water into the dog's mouth.
+
+The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail disappeared, its
+ears became long, longer, silky, golden; its nose became very red, its
+eyes became very twinkling; in three seconds the dog was gone, and
+before Gluck stood his old acquaintance, the King of the Golden River.
+
+"Thank you," said the monarch; "but don't be frightened, it's all
+right"; for Gluck showed manifest symptoms of consternation at this
+unlooked-for reply to his last observation. "Why didn't you come
+before," continued the dwarf, "instead of sending me those rascally
+brothers of yours, for me to have the trouble of turning into stones?
+Very hard stones they make, too."
+
+"O dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so cruel?"
+
+"Cruel," said the dwarf, "they poured unholy water into my stream; do
+you suppose I'm going to allow that?"
+
+"Why," said Gluck, "I am sure, sir,--your Majesty, I mean,--they got
+the water out of the church font."
+
+"Very probably," replied the dwarf; "but," and his countenance grew
+stern as he spoke, "the water which has been refused to the cry of the
+weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in
+heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy,
+though it had been defiled with corpses."
+
+So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet.
+On its white leaves hung three drops of clear dew. And the dwarf shook
+them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand. "Cast these into the
+river," he said, "and descend on the other side of the mountains into
+the Treasure Valley. And so good speed."
+
+As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The playing
+colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic mist of dewy
+light; he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a
+broad rainbow. The colors grew faint, the mist rose into the air; the
+monarch had evaporated.
+
+And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and its waves were
+as clear as crystal and as brilliant as the sun. And when he cast the
+three drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they fell, a
+small circular whirlpool, into which the waters descended with a
+musical noise.
+
+Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because
+not only the river was not turned into gold, but its waters seemed much
+diminished in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf, and
+descended the other side of the mountains, toward the Treasure Valley;
+and, as he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way
+under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley,
+behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft
+of the rocks above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams among the
+dry heaps of red sand.
+
+And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new streams, and
+creeping plants grew, and climbed among the moistening soil. Young
+flowers opened suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when
+twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine,
+cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the
+Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had
+been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.
+
+And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven
+from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of
+treasure. And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's
+promise, become a River of Gold.
+
+And to this day the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where
+the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the
+course of the Golden River under the ground, until it emerges in the
+Treasure Valley. And, at the top of the cataract of the Golden River,
+are still to be seen two BLACK STONES, round which the waters howl
+mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called, by
+the people of the valley,
+
+THE BLACK BROTHERS.
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY OF SHALOTT.
+
+BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
+
+
+It is not generally known that the Lady of Shalott lived last summer in
+an attic, at the east end of South Street.
+
+The wee-est, thinnest, whitest little lady! And yet the brightest,
+stillest, and withal such a smiling little lady!
+
+If you had held her up by the window,--for she could not hold up
+herself,--she would have hung like a porcelain transparency in your
+hands. And if you had said, laying her gently down, and giving the
+tears a smart dash, that they should not fall on her lifted face, "Poor
+child!" the Lady of Shalott would have said, "O, don't!" and smiled.
+And you would have smiled yourself, for very surprise that she should
+outdo you; and between the two there would have been so much smiling
+done that one would have fairly thought it was a delightful thing to
+live last summer in an attic at the east end of South Street.
+
+This perhaps was the more natural in the Lady of Shalott because she
+had never lived anywhere else.
+
+When the Lady of Shalott was five years old, her mother threw her down
+stairs one day, by mistake, instead of the whiskey-jug.
+
+This is a fact which I think Mr. Tennyson has omitted to mention in his
+poem.
+
+They picked up the Lady of Shalott and put her on the bed; and there
+she lay from that day until last summer, unless, as I said, somebody
+had occasion to use her for a transparency.
+
+The mother and the jug both went down the stairs together a few years
+after, and never came up at all,--and that was a great convenience, for
+the Lady of Shalott's palace in the attic was not large, and they took
+up much unnecessary room.
+
+Since that the Lady of Shalott had lived with her sister, Sary Jane.
+
+Sary Jane made nankeen vests, at sixteen and three quarters cents a
+dozen.
+
+Sary Jane had red hair, and crooked shoulders, and a voice so much like
+a rat-trap which she sometimes set on the stairs that the Lady of
+Shalott could seldom tell which was which until she had thought about
+it a little while. When there was a rat caught, she was apt to ask
+"What?" and when Sary Jane spoke, she more often than not said,
+"There's another!"
+
+Her crooked shoulders Sary Jane had acquired from sitting under the
+eaves of the palace to sew. That physiological problem was simple.
+There was not room enough under the eaves to sit straight.
+
+Sary Jane's red hair was the result of sitting in the sun on July noons
+under those eaves, to see to thread her needle. There was no question
+about that. The Lady of Shalott had settled it in her own mind, past
+dispute. Sary Jane's hair had been--what was it? brown? once. Sary Jane
+was slowly taking fire. Who would not, to sit in the sun in that
+palace? The only matter of surprise to the Lady of Shalott was that the
+palace itself did not smoke. Sometimes, when Sary Jane hit the rafters,
+she was sure that she saw sparks.
+
+As for Sary Jane's voice, when one knew that she made nankeen vests at
+sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen, that was a matter of no
+surprise. It never surprised the Lady of Shalott.
+
+But Sary Jane was very cross; there was no denying that; very cross.
+
+And the palace. Let me tell you about the palace. It measured just
+twelve by nine feet. It would have been seven feet post,--if there had
+been a post in the middle of it. From the centre it sloped away to the
+windows, where Sary Jane had just room enough to sit crooked under the
+eaves at work. There were two windows and a loose scuttle to let in the
+snow in winter and the sun in summer, and the rain and wind at all
+times. It was quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many
+different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable
+to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay,
+there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a
+shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon,
+and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair
+and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she
+ran a little rope from one of the windows to the other for a
+drying-rope. It would have been more exact to have said on
+washing-nights; for Sary Jane always did her washing after dark. The
+reason was evident. If the rest of us were in the habit of wearing all
+the clothes we had, like Sary Jane, I have little doubt that we should
+do the same.
+
+I should mention that there was no sink in the Lady of Shalott's
+palace; no water. There was a dirty hydrant in the yard, four flights
+below, which supplied the Lady of Shalott and all her neighbors. The
+Lady of Shalott kept her coal under the bed; her flour, a pound at a
+time, in a paper parcel, on the shelf, with the teacups and the pewter
+spoon. If she had anything else to keep, it went out through the palace
+scuttle and lay on the roof. The Lady of Shalott's palace opened
+directly upon a precipice. The lessor of the house called it a flight
+of stairs. When Sary Jane went up and down she went sidewise to
+preserve her balance. There were no bannisters to the precipice, and
+about once a week a baby patronized the rat-trap, instead. Once, when
+there was a fire-alarm, the precipice was very serviceable. Four women
+and an old man went over. With one exception (she was eighteen, and
+could bear a broken collar-bone), they will not, I am informed, go over
+again.
+
+The Lady of Shalott paid one dollar a week for the rent of her palace.
+
+But then there was a looking-glass in the palace. I think I noticed it.
+It hung on the slope of the rafters, just opposite the Lady of
+Shalott's window,--for she considered that her window at which Sary
+Jane did not make nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a
+dozen.
+
+Now, because the looking-glass was opposite the window at which Sary
+Jane did _not_ make vests, and because the rafters sloped, and because
+the bed lay almost between the looking-glass and the window, the Lady
+of Shalott was happy. And because, to the patient heart that is a
+seeker after happiness, "the little more, and how much it is!" (and the
+little less, what worlds away!) the Lady of Shalott was proud as well
+as happy. The looking-glass measured in inches 10 X 6. I think that the
+Lady of Shalott would have experienced rather a touch of mortification
+than of envy if she had known that there was a mirror in a house just
+round the corner measuring almost as many feet. But that was one of the
+advantages of being the Lady of Shalott. She never parsed life in the
+comparative degree.
+
+I suppose that one must be the Lady of Shalott to understand what
+comfort there may be in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass. All the world came
+for the Lady of Shalott into her looking-glass,--the joy of it, the
+anguish of it, the hope and fear of it, the health and hurt,--10 X 6
+inches of it exactly.
+
+"It is next best to not having been thrown down stairs yourself!" said
+the Lady of Shalott.
+
+To tell the truth, it sometimes occurred to her that there was a
+monotony about the world. A garret window like her own, for instance,
+would fill her sight if she did not tip the glass a little. Children
+sat in it, and did not play. They made lean faces at her. They were
+locked in for the day and were hungry. She could not help knowing how
+hungry they were, and so tipped the glass. Then there was the trap-door
+in the sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven
+people lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the
+trap, coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane
+bought her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas
+time,--long ago, when rents were cheaper and flour low. It was a
+monkey, with whiskers and a calico jacket, who jumped out of a box when
+the cover was lifted; and then you crushed him down and hasped him in.
+Sometimes she wished that she had never had that monkey, he was so much
+like the people coming in and out of the sidewalk.
+
+In fact, there was a monotony about all the people in the Lady of
+Shalott's looking-glass. If their faces were not dirty, their hands
+were. If they had hats, they went without shoes. If they did not sit in
+the sun with their heads on their knees, they lay in the mud with their
+heads on a jug.
+
+"Their faces look blue!" she said to Sary Jane.
+
+"No wonder!" snapped Sary Jane.
+
+"Why?" asked the Lady of Shalott.
+
+"Wonder is we ain't all dead!" barked Sary Jane.
+
+The people in the Lady of Shalott's glass died, however,
+sometimes,--often in the summer; more often last summer, when the attic
+smoked continually, and she mistook Sary Jane's voice for the rat-trap
+every day.
+
+The people were jostled into pine boxes (in the glass), and carried
+away (in the glass) by twilight, in a cart. Three of the monkeys from
+the spring-box in the sidewalk went, in one week, out into the foul,
+purple twilight, away from the looking-glass, in carts.
+
+"I'm glad of that, poor things!" said the Lady of Shalott, for she had
+always felt a kind of sorrow for the monkeys. Principally, I think,
+because they had no glass.
+
+When the monkeys had gone, the sickly twilight folded itself up, over
+the spring-box, into great feathers, like the feathers of a wing. That
+was pleasant. The Lady of Shalott could almost put out her fingers and
+stroke it, it hung so near, and was so clear, and gathered such a
+peacefulness into the looking-glass.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear, it's very pleasant," said the Lady of Shalott. Sary
+Jane said it was very dangerous, the Lord knew, and bit her threads
+off.
+
+"And, Sary Jane, dear!" added the Lady of Shalott, "I see so many other
+pleasant things."
+
+"The more fool you!" said Sary Jane.
+
+But she wondered about it that day over her tenth nankeen vest. What,
+for example, _could_ the Lady of Shalott see?
+
+"Waves!" said the Lady of Shalott, suddenly, as if she had been asked
+the question. Sary Jane jumped. She said, "Nonsense!" For the Lady of
+Shalott had only seen the little wash-tub full of dingy water on Sunday
+nights, and the dirty little hydrant (in the glass) spouting dingy
+jets. She would not have known a wave if she had seen it.
+
+"But I see waves," said the Lady of Shalott. She felt sure of it. They
+ran up and down across the glass. They had green faces and gray hair.
+They threw back their hands, like cool people resting, and it seemed
+unaccountable, at the east end of South Street last summer, that
+anything, anywhere, if only a wave in a looking-glass, could be cool or
+at rest. Besides this, they kept their faces clean. Therefore the Lady
+of Shalott took pleasure in watching them run up and down across the
+glass. That a thing could be clean, and green, and white, was only less
+a wonder than cool and rest last summer in South Street.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, one day, "how hot _is_ it
+up here?"
+
+"Hot as Hell!" said Sary Jane.
+
+"I thought it was a little warm," said the Lady of Shalott. "Sary Jane,
+dear, isn't the yard down there a little--dirty?"
+
+Sary Jane put down her needle, and looked out of the blazing, blindless
+window. It had always been a subject of satisfaction to Sary Jane,
+somewhere down below her lean shoulders and in the very teeth of the
+rat-trap, that the Lady of Shalott could not see out of that window. So
+she winked at the window, as if she would caution it to hold its
+burning tongue, and said never a word.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, once more, "had you ever
+thought that perhaps I was a little--weaker--than I was--once?"
+
+"I guess you can stand it if I can!" said the rat-trap.
+
+"O, yes, dear," said the Lady of Shalott. "I can stand it if you can."
+
+"Well, then!" said Sary Jane. But she sat and winked at the bald
+window, and the window held its burning tongue.
+
+It grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. The lean
+children in the attic opposite fell sick, and sat no longer in the
+window making faces, in the Lady of Shalott's glass.
+
+Two more monkeys from the spring-box were carried away one ugly
+twilight in a cart. The purple wing that hung over the spring-box
+lifted to let them pass; and then fell, as if it had brushed them away.
+
+"It has such a soft color!" said the Lady of Shalott, smiling.
+
+"So has nightshade!" said Sary Jane.
+
+One day a beautiful thing happened. One can scarcely understand how a
+beautiful thing _could_ happen at the east end of South Street. The
+Lady of Shalott herself did not entirely understand.
+
+"It is all the glass," she said.
+
+She was lying very still when she said it. She had folded her hands,
+which were hot, to keep them quiet too. She had closed her eyes, which
+ached, to close away the glare of the noon. At once she opened them,
+and said:--
+
+"It is the glass."
+
+Sary Jane stood in the glass. Now Sary Jane, she well knew, was not in
+the room that noon. She had gone out to see what she could find for
+dinner. She had five cents to spend on dinner. Yet Sary Jane stood in
+the glass. And in the glass, ah! what a beautiful thing!
+
+"Flowers!" cried the Lady of Shalott aloud. But she had never seen
+flowers. But neither had she seen waves. So she said, "They come as the
+waves come." And knew them, and lay smiling. Ah! what a beautiful,
+beautiful thing!
+
+Sary Jane's hair was fiery and tumbled (in the glass), as if she had
+walked fast and far. Sary Jane (in the glass) was winking, as she had
+winked at the blazing window; as if she said to what she held in her
+arms, Don't tell! And in her arms (in the glass), where the waves
+were--oh! beautiful, beautiful! The Lady of Shalott lay whispering:
+"Beautiful, beautiful!" She did not know what else to do. She dared not
+stir. Sary Jane's lean arms (in the glass) were full of silver bells;
+they hung out of a soft green shadow, like a church tower; they nodded
+to and fro; when they shook, they shook out sweetness.
+
+"Will they ring?" asked the Lady of Shalott of the little glass.
+
+I doubt, in my own mind, if you or I, being in South Street, and seeing
+a lily of the valley (in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass) for the very
+first time, would have asked so sensible a question.
+
+"Try 'em and see," said the looking-glass. Was it the looking-glass? Or
+the rat-trap? Or was it--
+
+O, the beautiful thing! That the glass should have nothing to do with
+it, after all! That Sary Jane, in flesh and blood, and tumbled hair,
+and trembling, lean arms, should stand and shake an armful of church
+towers and silver bells down into the Lady of Shalott's little puzzled
+face and burning hands!
+
+And that the Lady of Shalott should think that she must have got into
+the glass herself, by a blunder,--as the only explanation possible of
+such a beautiful thing!
+
+"No, it isn't glass-dreams," said Sary Jane, winking at the church
+towers, where they made a solemn, green shadow against the Lady of
+Shalott's bent cheek. "Smell 'em and see. You can 'most stand the yard
+with them round. Smell 'em and see! It ain't the glass; it's the Flower
+Charity."
+
+"The what?" asked the Lady of Shalott slowly.
+
+"The Flower Charity."
+
+"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott. But she said nothing more.
+
+She laid her cheek over into the shadow of the green church towers.
+"And there'll be more," said Sary Jane, hunting for her wax. "There'll
+be more, whenever I can call for 'em,--bless it!"
+
+"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott again.
+
+"But I only got a lemon for dinner," said Sary Jane.
+
+"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott, with her face hidden under
+the church towers. But I don't think that she meant the lemon, though
+Sary Jane did.
+
+"They _do_ ring," said the Lady of Shalott by and by. She drew the tip
+of her thin fingers across the tip of the tiny bells. "I thought they
+would."
+
+"Humph!" said Sary Jane, squeezing her lemon under her work-box. "I
+never see your beat for glass-dreams. What do they say? Come, now!"
+
+Now the Lady of Shalott knew very well what they said. Very well! But
+she only drew the tips of her poor fingers over the tips of the silver
+bells. Clever mind! It was not necessary to tell Sary Jane.
+
+But it grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. Even
+the Flower Charity (bless it!) could not sweeten the dreadfulness of
+that yard. Even the purple wing above the spring-box fell heavily upon
+the Lady of Shalott's strained eyes, across the glass. Even the
+gray-haired waves ceased running up and down and throwing back their
+hands before her; they sat still, in heaps upon a blistering beach, and
+gasped for breath. The Lady of Shalott herself gasped sometimes, in
+watching them.
+
+One day she said: "There's a man in them."
+
+"A _what_ in _which_?" buzzed Sary Jane. "Oh! There's a man across the
+yard, I suppose you mean. Among them young ones, yonder. I wish he'd
+stop 'em throwing stones, plague on 'em! See him, don't you?"
+
+"I don't see the children," said the Lady of Shalott, a little
+troubled. Her glass had shown her so many things strangely since the
+days grew hot. "But I see a man, and he walks upon the waves. See,
+see!"
+
+The Lady of Shalott tried to pull herself up upon the elbow of her
+calico night-dress, to see.
+
+"That's one of them Hospital doctors," said Sary Jane, looking out of
+the blazing window. "I've seen him round before. Don't know what
+business he's got down here; but I've seen him. He's talkin' to them
+boys now, about the stones. There! He'd better! If they don't look out,
+they'll hit--"
+
+"_O, the glass! the glass!_"
+
+The Hospital doctor stood still; so did Sary Jane, half risen from her
+chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with
+their hands full of stones, such a cry rang out from the palace window.
+
+"_O, the glass! the glass! the glass!_"
+
+In a twinkling the South Street boys were at the mercy of the South
+Street police; and the Hospital doctor, bounding over a beachful of
+shattered, scattered waves, stood, out of breath, beside the Lady of
+Shalott's bed.
+
+"O the little less, and what worlds away!"
+
+The Lady of Shalott lay quite still in her little brown calico
+night-gown [I cannot learn, by the way, that Bulfinch's studious and in
+general trustworthy researches have put him in possession of this
+point. Indeed, I feel justified in asserting that Mr. Bulfinch never so
+much as _intimated_ that the Lady of Shalott wore a brown calico
+night-dress]--the Lady of Shalott lay quite still, and her lips turned
+blue.
+
+"Are you very much hurt? Where were you struck? I heard the cry, and
+came. Can you tell me where the blow was?"
+
+But then the doctor saw the glass, broken and blown in a thousand
+glittering sparks across the palace floor; and then the Lady of Shalott
+gave him a little blue smile.
+
+"It's not me. Never mind. I wish it was. I'd rather it was me than the
+glass. O, my glass! my glass! But never mind. I suppose there'll be
+some other--pleasant thing."
+
+"Were you so fond of the glass?" asked the doctor, taking one of the
+two chairs that Sary Jane brought him, and looking sorrowfully about
+the room. What other "pleasant thing" could even the Lady of Shalott
+discover in that room last summer, at the east end of South Street?
+
+"How long have you lain here?" asked the sorrowful doctor, suddenly.
+
+"Since I can remember, sir," said the Lady of Shalott, with that blue
+smile. "But then I have always had my glass."
+
+"Ah!" said the doctor, "the Lady of Shalott!"
+
+"Sir?" said the Lady of Shalott.
+
+"Where is the pain?" asked the doctor, gently, with his finger on the
+Lady of Shalott's pulse.
+
+The Lady of Shalott touched the shoulder of her brown calico
+night-dress, smiling.
+
+"And what did you see in your glass?" asked the doctor, once more
+stooping to examine "the pain."
+
+The Lady of Shalott tried to tell him, but felt confused; so many
+strange things had been in the glass since it grew hot. So she only
+said that there were waves and a purple wing, and that they were broken
+now, and lay upon the floor.
+
+"Purple wings?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Over the sidewalk," nodded the Lady of Shalott. "It comes up at
+night."
+
+"Oh!" said the doctor, "the malaria. No wonder!"
+
+"And what about the waves?" asked the doctor, talking while he touched
+and tried the little brown calico shoulders. "I have a little girl of
+my own down by the waves this summer. She--I suppose she is no older
+than you!"
+
+"I am seventeen, sir," said the Lady of Shalott. "Do they have green
+faces and white hair? Does she see them run up and down? I never saw
+any waves, sir, but those in my glass. I am very glad to know that your
+little girl is by the waves."
+
+"Where you ought to be," said the doctor, half under his breath. "It is
+cruel, cruel!"
+
+"What is cruel?" asked the Lady of Shalott, looking up into the
+doctor's face.
+
+The little brown calico night-dress swam suddenly before the doctor's
+eyes. He got up and walked across the floor. As he walked he stepped
+upon the pieces of the broken glass.
+
+"O, don't!" cried the Lady of Shalott. But then she thought that
+perhaps she had hurt the doctor's feelings; so she smiled, and said,
+"Never mind."
+
+"Her case could be cured," said the doctor, still under his breath, to
+Sary Jane. "The case could be cured yet. It is cruel!"
+
+"Sir," said Sary Jane,--she lifted her sharp face sharply out of
+billows of nankeen vests,--"it may be because I make vests at sixteen
+and three quarters cents a dozen, sir; but I say before God there's
+something cruel somewheres. Look at her. Look at me. Look at them
+stairs. Just see that scuttle, will you? Just feel the sun in't these
+windows. Look at the rent we pay for this 'ere oven. What do you s'pose
+the meriky is up here? Look at them pisen fogs arisen' out over the
+sidewalk. Look at the dead as have died in the Devil in this street
+this week. Then look out here!"
+
+Sary Jane drew the doctor to the blazing, blindless window, out of
+which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.
+
+"Now talk of curin' her!" said Sary Jane.
+
+The doctor turned away from the window, with a sudden white face.
+
+"The Board of Health--"
+
+"Don't talk to me about the Board of Health!" said Sary Jane.
+
+"I'll talk to them," said the doctor. "I did not know matters were so
+bad. They shall be attended to directly. To-morrow I leave town--" He
+stopped, looking down at the Lady of Shalott, thinking of the little
+lady by the waves, whom he would see to-morrow, hardly knowing what to
+say. "But something shall be done at once. Meantime, there's the
+Hospital."
+
+"She tried Horspital long ago," said Sary Jane. "They said they
+couldn't do nothing. What's the use? Don't bother her. Let her be."
+
+"Yes, let me be," said the Lady of Shalott, faintly. "The glass is
+broken."
+
+"But something must be done!" urged the doctor, hurrying away. "I will
+attend to the matter directly."
+
+He spoke in a busy doctor's busy way. Undoubtedly he thought that he
+should attend to the matter directly.
+
+"You have flowers here, I see." He lifted, in hurrying away, a spray of
+lilies that lay upon the bed, freshly sent to the Lady of Shalott that
+morning.
+
+"They ring," said the Lady of Shalott, softly. "Can you hear?
+'Bless--it! Bless--it!' Ah, yes, they ring!"
+
+"Bless what?" asked the doctor, half out of the door.
+
+"The Flower Charity," said the Lady of Shalott.
+
+"Amen!" said the doctor. "But I'll attend to it directly." And he was
+quite out of the door, and the door was shut.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, a few minutes after the
+door was shut.
+
+"Well!" said Sary Jane.
+
+"The glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.
+
+"Should think I might know that!" said Sary Jane, who was down upon her
+knees, sweeping shining pieces away into a pasteboard dust-pan.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott again.
+
+"Dear, dear!" echoed Sary Jane, tossing purple feathers out of the
+window and seeming, to the eyes of the Lady of Shalott, to have the
+spray of green waves upon her hands. "There they go!"
+
+"Yes, there they go," said the Lady of Shalott. But she said no more
+till night.
+
+It was a hot night for South Street. It was a very hot night for even
+South Street. The lean children in the attic opposite cried savagely,
+like lean cubs. The monkeys from the spring-box came out and sat upon
+the lid for air. Dirty people lay around the dirty hydrant; and the
+purple wing stretched itself a little in a quiet way, to cover them.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, at night. "The glass is
+broken. And, Sary Jane, dear, I am afraid I _can't_ stand it as well as
+you can."
+
+Sary Jane gave the Lady of Shalott a sharp look, and put away her
+nankeen vests. She came to the bed.
+
+"It isn't time to stop sewing, is it?" asked the Lady of Shalott, in
+faint surprise. Sary Jane only gave her sharp looks, and said,--
+
+"Nonsense! That man will be back again yet. He'll look after ye, maybe.
+Nonsense!"
+
+"Yes," said the Lady of Shalott, "he will come back again. But my glass
+is broken."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. But she did not go back to her sewing. She
+sat down on the edge of the bed, by the Lady of Shalott; and it grew
+dark.
+
+"Perhaps they'll do something about the yards; who knows?" said Sary
+Jane through the growing dark.
+
+"But my glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott, when it had grown quite,
+quite dark. "He is walking on the waves."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. For it was quite, quite dark.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "Not that man. But there
+_is_ a man, and he is walking on the waves."
+
+The Lady of Shalott raised herself upon her little calico night-dress
+sleeve. She looked at the wall where the 10 X 6 inch looking-glass had
+hung.
+
+"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "I am glad that girl is
+down by the waves. I am very glad. But the glass is broken."
+
+Two days after, the Board of Health at the foot of the precipice, which
+the lessor called a flight of stairs, which led into the Lady of
+Shalott's palace, were met and stopped by another board.
+
+"_This_ one's got the right of way, gentlemen!" said something at the
+brink of the precipice, which sounded so much like a rat-trap that the
+Board of Health looked down by instinct at its individual and
+collective feet to see if they were in danger, and dared not by
+instinct stir a step.
+
+The board which had the right of way was a pine board, and the Lady of
+Shalott lay on it, in her little brown calico night-dress, with Sary
+Jane's old shawl across her feet. The Flower Charity (Heaven bless it!)
+had half covered the old shawl with silver bells, and solemn green
+shadows, like the shadows of church towers. And it was a comfort to
+know that these were the only bells which tolled for the Lady of
+Shalott, and that no other church shadow fell upon her burial.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Hospital doctor, "we're too late, I see. But
+you'd better go on."
+
+The gentlemen of the Board of Health went on; and the Lady of Shalott
+went on.
+
+The Lady of Shalott went out into the cart that had carried away the
+monkeys from the spring-box, and the purple wing lifted to let her
+pass; and fell again, as if it had brushed her away.
+
+The Board of Health went up the precipice, and stood by the window out
+of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.
+
+They sent orders to the scavenger, and orders to the Water Board, and
+how many other orders nobody knows; and they sprinkled themselves with
+camphor, and they went their ways.
+
+And the board that had the right of way went its way, too. And Sary
+Jane folded up the shawl, which she could not afford to lose, and came
+home, and made nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a
+dozen in the window out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.
+
+
+
+
+MARJORIE FLEMING.
+
+BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.
+
+
+One November afternoon in 1810,--the year in which "Waverley" was
+resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes
+in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the
+death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
+India,--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping
+like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm
+down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.
+
+The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
+remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
+west-wind.
+
+The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of
+feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace,"
+slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel
+eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the
+warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her
+weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost
+common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire
+covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what
+redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set,
+heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in,
+as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first
+glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The
+third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all
+rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would
+say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout,
+blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the
+eye of a man of the hills,--a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about
+him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head
+which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the
+world.
+
+He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of
+laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they
+might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with
+laughter, "not an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George
+Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church, one
+to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle
+Street.
+
+We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine,
+afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed
+by its foul breath,--
+
+  "And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
+   Slipped in a moment out of life."
+
+There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than
+Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his youth.
+
+The second was William Clerk,--the _Darsie Latimer_ of "Redgauntlet";
+"a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful
+apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world
+with little more than the report of what he might have been,--a
+humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his
+brother Lord Eldon, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best
+of all the humors, called good.
+
+The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who
+else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and
+entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say,
+not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion,
+something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this
+hair?
+
+Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a
+change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word,
+the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next step,
+moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were
+invisible; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so
+innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all without;
+hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he
+muttered, "How it raves and drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the
+word,--on-ding--" He was now at his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39."
+He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous
+workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote
+"Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan's Well,"
+besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the
+greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but
+mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so
+often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky,
+and that back green where faithful Camp lies.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: This favorite dog "died about January, 1809, and was
+buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the
+house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family
+in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above
+Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to
+dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of 'a dear
+old friend.'"--_Lockhart's Life of Scott_.]
+
+He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close
+to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a
+very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and
+containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such
+order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an
+hour before." He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said,
+"'Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---- it, it won't do:--
+
+  'My spinnin'-wheel is auld and stiff;
+     The rock o't wunna stand, sir;
+   To keep the temper-pin in tiff
+     Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'
+
+I am off the fang.[2] I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll
+awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature
+rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ (a plaid)
+with him. "White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he
+got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; and her
+master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North
+Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith
+of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said
+at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best,
+has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose
+spirits and _cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body made old age
+lovely and desirable."
+
+[Footnote 2: Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost
+its "fang."]
+
+Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he
+and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie!
+Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin
+doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and
+he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come yer ways in,
+Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may
+come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in
+your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it _on-ding o' snaw!_" said Mrs. Keith.
+He said to himself, "On-ding--that's odd--that is the very word."
+"Hoot, awa'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made
+to hold lambs,--the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths
+sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or _cul de sac_.
+"Tak' yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance; and so the Pet
+was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the
+plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,--Maida
+gambolling through the snow, and running races in her mirth.
+
+Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into
+his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy
+little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two
+remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their
+laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made
+the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing
+sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be,
+"Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck
+wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done
+repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely
+and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after
+her,--
+
+  "Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
+   Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;
+   Pin, pan, musky, dan;
+   Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,
+   Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie,
+   You, are, out."
+
+He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical
+gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to
+Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um,
+Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said _Musky-Dan_ especially
+was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from
+the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her
+displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.
+
+Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two
+getting wild with excitement over "Gil Morrice" or the "Baron of
+Smailholm"; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat
+Constance's speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, sobbing
+his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed,
+repeating,--
+
+  "For I am sick, and capable of fears,--
+   Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears;
+   A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
+   A woman, naturally born to fears."
+
+  "If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,
+   Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,--
+   Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious--"
+
+Or, drawing herself up "to the height of her great argument,"--
+
+  "I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
+   For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.
+   Here I and sorrow sit."
+
+Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to
+Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and
+her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."
+
+Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper, and thanks
+still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much
+of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these
+fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of
+Pet Marjorie: before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and
+sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her
+last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom
+she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still,
+over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured
+themselves; there is the old watermark, "Lingard, 1808." The two
+portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different
+times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager
+to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from
+without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life: they are eyes
+that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour
+their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that
+will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to
+Scott's own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile,
+and speaking feature.
+
+There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless, and
+full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's child. One cannot look
+at it without thinking of Wordsworth's lines on poor Hartley
+Coleridge:--
+
+  "O blessed vision, happy child!
+   Thou art so exquisitely wild,
+   I thought of thee with many fears,--
+   Of what might be thy lot in future years.
+   I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
+   Lord of thy house and hospitality;
+   And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest
+   But when she sat within the touch of thee.
+   O too industrious folly!
+   O vain and causeless melancholy!
+   Nature will either end thee quite,
+   Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
+   Preserve for thee, by individual right,
+   A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock."
+
+And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little
+playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend's lines:--
+
+  "Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;
+   And Innocence hath privilege in her,
+   To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes
+   And feats of cunning, and the pretty round
+   Of trespasses, affected to provoke
+   Mock chastisement and partnership in play.
+   And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth
+   Not less if unattended and alone
+   Than when both young and old sit gathered round
+   And take delight in its activity,
+   Even so this happy creature of herself
+   Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
+   Is blithe society: she fills the air
+   With gladness and involuntary songs."
+
+But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this
+is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this
+light brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the
+other.
+
+There was an old servant--Jeanie Robertson--who was forty years in her
+grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in the
+letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept.
+Jeanie's wages never exceeded Ł3 a year, and when she left service she
+had saved Ł40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising
+and ill-using her sister Isabella,--a beautiful and gentle child. This
+partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I
+mention this," writes her surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling
+you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old,
+when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and
+old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.
+She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the
+faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not
+pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew
+on Isabella to 'give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie
+rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you like,
+and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!'
+Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me
+to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This
+Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting
+Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen
+months old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in
+Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated,
+and the little theologian was presented by them with a cap and
+feathers. Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch"
+(catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made
+ye, ma bonnie man?" For the correctness of this and the three next
+replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the
+closed _nieve_ (fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded,
+"Of what are you made?" "DIRT," was the answer uniformly given. "Wull
+ye never learn to say _dust_, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the
+opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder.
+
+Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six. The spelling is
+unaltered, and there are no "commoes."
+
+"MY DEAR ISA,--I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved
+letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time
+I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the
+Square, and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull
+necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune, a Lady of my
+acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean
+Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may think I was
+primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a
+little birsay,--birsay is a word which is a word that William composed
+which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton
+says that my Aunt is beautifull, which is intirely impossible, for that
+is not her nature."
+
+What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of
+the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used
+"beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of
+_be_loving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She
+perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well--we know,
+indeed, that it was far better--for her that this wealth of love was so
+soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must
+have been the law of her earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and
+King"; and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that her
+and our only Lord and King Himself is Love.
+
+Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead: "The day of my existence here
+has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than
+three well-made Bucks, the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo.
+Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith, and Jn. Keith,--the first is the
+funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I walked to Craky-hall
+(Craigiehall), hand in hand in Innocence and matitation (meditation)
+sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender-hearted mind
+which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite
+to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a
+great Buck, and pretty good-looking.
+
+"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing
+sweetly, the calf doth frisk, and nature shows her glorious face."
+
+Here is a confession: "I confess I have been very more like a little
+young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach
+me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other
+lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made
+on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she
+never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a
+great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of
+you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she
+never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it
+and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she
+never never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my
+temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching
+me to write."
+
+Our poor little wifie,--_she_ has no doubts of the personality of the
+Devil! "Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God's most holy church for
+I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a great
+crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are geathered
+together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very same Divil
+that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan
+though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have
+escaped.... I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege
+(plague) that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive it the most
+Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant
+endure."
+
+This is delicious; and what harm is there in her "Devilish"? It is
+strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say "he grudged
+the Devil those rough and ready words." "I walked to that delightful
+place Craky-hall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends
+espacially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him
+for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will
+never forget him!... I am very very glad that satan has not given me
+boils and many other misfortunes--In the holy bible these words are
+written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray
+but the lord lets us escape from him but we" (_pauvre petite!_) "do not
+strive with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronunced a word which
+should never come out of a lady's lips it was that I called John a
+Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor
+is I got one or two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,"--a better
+excuse for bad humor and bad language than most.
+
+She has been reading the Book of Esther: "It was a dreadful thing that
+Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca
+to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to
+hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; _but then Jesus was
+not then come to teach us to be merciful._" This is wise and
+beautiful,--has upon it the very dew of youth and of holiness. Out of
+the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects His praise.
+
+"This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the
+Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned
+2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme
+colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is
+Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I
+should be very thankful I am not a begger."
+
+This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she
+was able for.
+
+"I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name,
+belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks
+2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to
+think that the dog and cat should bear them" (this is a meditation
+physiological), "and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a
+man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like women-dogs; it
+is a hard case--it is shocking. I cam here to enjoy natures delightful
+breath it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose oil."
+
+Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our
+gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the
+services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond
+Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time,
+and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher.
+Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to
+present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having
+done this for his unknown king after the _splore_, and when George the
+Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver at
+Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as it was
+200 years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,--two quaintly
+cropped yew-trees,--still thrive, the burn runs as it did in her time,
+and sings the same quiet tune,--as much the same and as different as
+_Now_ and _Then_. The house full of old family relics and pictures, the
+sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate
+glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and chattering contentedly, is a
+parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, and
+domineered over and _deaved_ the dove. Everything about the place is
+old and fresh.
+
+This is beautiful: "I am very sorry to say that I forgot God--that is
+to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should be
+thankful that God did not forget me--if he did, O what would become of
+me if I was in danger and God not friends with me--I must go to
+unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin--how could I resist it O
+no I will never do it again--no no--if I can help it!" (Canny wee
+wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so
+much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost
+among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again--but as for
+regaining my charecter I despare for it." (Poor little "habit and
+repute"!)
+
+Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are almost daily confessed
+and deplored: "I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that
+I cannot be good without God's assistance,--I will not trust in my own
+selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me,--it will indeed."
+"Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning
+to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the
+worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it."
+
+Poor dear little sinner! Here comes the world again: "In my travels I
+met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got
+ofers of marage--offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me." A
+fine scent for "breach of promise"!
+
+This is abrupt and strong: "The Divil is curced and all his works. 'Tis
+a fine work _Newton on the profecies_. I wonder if there is another
+book of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight
+of the Bible." "Miss Potune" (her "simpliton" friend) "is very fat; she
+pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt from
+the skies; but she is a good Christian." Here comes her views on church
+government: "An Annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of--I am a
+Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and" (O you little Laodicean and
+Latitudinarian!) "a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy!"--(_Blandula! Vagula!
+coelum et animum mutas quć trans mare_ (i.e. _trans
+Bodotriam_)--_curris!_)--"my native town." "Sentiment is not what I am
+acquainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like to practise
+it." (!) "I wish I had a great, great deal of gratitude in my heart, in
+all my body." "There is a new novel published, named _Self-Control_"
+(Mrs. Brunton's)--"a very good maxim forsooth!" This is shocking:
+"Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour, Esq., offered to kiss
+me, and offered to marry me, though the man" (a fine directness this!)
+"was espused, and his wife was present and said he must ask her
+permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed and confounded
+before 3 gentelman--Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings." "Mr. Banester's"
+(Bannister's) "Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good one. A
+great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally." You
+are right, Marjorie. "A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr.
+Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him--truly it is a most beautiful one."
+"I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin,
+Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good
+birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to
+her parients." "Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to
+Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. 'Macbeth' is a pretty
+composition, but awful one." "The _Newgate Calender_ is very
+instructive." (!) "A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be
+dreadful to leave his native country when he might get a wife; or
+perhaps me, for I love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid
+me to speak about love." This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill
+to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again: "Love is a very
+papithatick thing" (it is almost a pity to correct this into pathetic),
+"as well as troublesome and tiresome--but O Isabella forbid me to speak
+of it." Here are her reflections on a pineapple: "I think the price of
+a pine-apple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that
+might have sustained a poor family." Here is a new vernal simile: "The
+hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly
+hatched or, as the vulgar say, _clacked_." "Doctor Swift's works are
+very funny; I got some of them by heart." "Moreheads sermons are I hear
+much praised, but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read
+novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers." Bravo,
+Marjorie!
+
+She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song:--
+
+"EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH,--WHO KNOWS WHICH?) ON MY DEAR LOVE,
+ISABELLA.
+
+  "Here lies sweet Isabel in bed,
+   With a night-cap on her head;
+   Her skin is soft, her face is fair,
+   And she has very pretty hair:
+   She and I in bed lies nice,
+   And undisturbed by rats or mice.
+   She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,
+   Though he plays upon the organ.
+   Her nails are neat, her teeth are white;
+   Her eyes are very, very bright.
+   In a conspicuous town she lives,
+   And to the poor her money gives.
+   Here ends sweet Isabella's story,
+   And may it be much to her glory!"
+
+Here are some bits at random:--
+
+  "Of summer I am very fond,
+   And love to bathe into a pond:
+   The look of sunshine dies away,
+   And will not let me out to play.
+   I love the morning's sun to spy
+   Glittering through the casement's eye;
+   The rays of light are very sweet,
+   And puts away the taste of meat.
+   The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,
+   And makes us like for to be living."
+
+"The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and the
+pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and
+water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not
+make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of
+little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever
+was hanged is amusing." Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!
+
+"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese,
+cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul."
+
+"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or 3
+months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he
+killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged."
+
+"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the
+lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars parade there."
+
+"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all my
+life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content
+without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire being
+granted."
+
+"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she
+walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost, and I
+thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer--balmy
+sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to
+make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.
+Superstition is a very mean thing and should be despised and shunned."
+
+Here is her weakness and her strength again: "In the love-novels all
+the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak
+about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss
+Egward's (Edgeworth's) tails are very good, particularly some that are
+very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False
+Keys, etc. etc."
+
+"Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country churchyard are both
+excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Are
+our Marjories nowadays better or worse because they cannot read Tom
+Jones unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat
+Gray's Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie?
+
+Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isabella's bed to make
+her smile like the Genius Demedicus" (the Venus de Medicis) "or the
+statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at
+which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap.
+All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her
+biding me get up."
+
+She begins thus loftily,--
+
+  "Death the righteous love to see,
+   But from it doth the wicked flee."
+
+Then suddenly breaks off as if with laughter,--
+
+  "I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"
+
+  "There is a thing I love to see,--
+   That is, our monkey catch a flee!"
+
+  "I love in Isa's bed to lie,--
+   Oh, such a joy and luxury!
+   The bottom of the bed I sleep,
+   And with great care within I creep;
+   Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
+   But she has goton all the pillys.
+   Her neck I never can embrace,
+   But I do hug her feet in place."
+
+How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--"I lay
+at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by
+continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at
+work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had
+slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much
+interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily."
+
+Here is one of her swains:--
+
+  "Very soft and white his cheeks;
+   His hair is red, and grey his breeks;
+   His tooth is like the daisy fair:
+   His only fault is in his hair."
+
+This is a higher flight:--
+
+  "DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.
+
+  "Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
+   And now this world forever leaved;
+   Their father, and their mother too,
+   They sigh and weep as well as you:
+   Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched;
+   Into eternity theire laanched.
+   A direful death indeed they had,
+   As wad put any parent mad;
+   But she was more than usual calm:
+   She did not give a single dam."
+
+This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of
+the want of the _n_. We fear "she" is the abandoned mother, in spite of
+her previous sighs and tears.
+
+"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel
+over a prayer,--for that we are kneeling at the footstool of our Lord
+and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from
+unquestionable fire and brimston."
+
+She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--
+
+  "Queen Mary was much loved by all,
+   Both by the great and by the small;
+   But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise,
+   And I suppose she has gained a prize;
+   For I do think she would not go
+   Into the _awful_ place below.
+   There is a thing that I must tell,--
+   Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
+   He who would teach her to be civil,
+   It must be her great friend, the divil!"
+
+She hits off Darnley well:--
+
+  "A noble's son,--a handsome lad,--
+   By some queer way or other, had
+   Got quite the better of her heart;
+   With him she always talked apart:
+   Silly he was, but very fair;
+   A greater buck was not found there."
+
+"By some queer way or other"; is not this the general case and the
+mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective
+affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie.
+
+      SONNET TO A MONKEY.
+
+  "O lively, O most charming pug!
+   Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!
+   The beauties of his mind do shine,
+   And every bit is shaped and fine.
+   Your teeth are whiter than the snow;
+   Your a great buck, your a great beau;
+   Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
+   More like a Christian's than an ape;
+   Your cheek is like the rose's blume;
+   Your hair is like the raven's plume;
+   His nose's cast is of the Roman:
+   He is a very pretty woman.
+   I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
+   So was obliged to call him woman."
+
+This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second
+being killed at Roxburgh:--
+
+  "He was killed by a cannon splinter,
+   Quite in the middle of the winter;
+   Perhaps it was not at that time,
+   But I can get no other rhyme!"
+
+Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811.
+You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:--
+
+"MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will think that I entirely forget you but I
+assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you always and
+often sigh to think of the distance between us two loving creatures of
+nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations first at 7
+o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then read our Bible
+and get our repeating, and then play till ten, then we get our music
+till 11 when we get our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1
+after which I get my gramer, and then work till five. At 7 we come and
+knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact
+description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, reverence
+and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of
+
+"MARJORY FLEMING.
+
+"_P.S._--An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible."
+
+This other is a month earlier:--
+
+"MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA,--I was truly happy to hear that you were all
+well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every side, for the
+Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near Death's Door, and one night
+her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell down as they thought
+lifeless. Mr. Heron said, 'That lassie's deed noo,'--'I'm no deed yet.'
+She then threw up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun
+dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks
+me.--I have been another night at the dancing; I like it better. I will
+write to you as often as I can; but I am afraid not every week. _I long
+for you with the longings of a child to embrace you,--to fold you in my
+arms. I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You dont know
+how I love you. So I shall remain, your loving child,_--M. FLEMING."
+
+What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some lines
+to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--
+
+  "There is a thing that I do want,--
+   With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
+   We would be happy if you would
+   Try to come over if you could.
+   Then I would all quite happy be
+  _Now and for all eternity_.
+   My mother is so very sweet,
+  _And checks my appetite to eat;_
+   My father shows us what to do;
+   But O I'm sure that I want you.
+   I have no more of poetry;
+   O Isa do remember me,
+   And try to love your Marjory."
+
+In a letter from "Isa" to
+
+       "Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
+  favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"
+
+she says: "I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories
+together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old
+friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear
+Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9
+times 9 as you used to be?"
+
+But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to
+confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the
+19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in
+bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming
+world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by
+Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the
+judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--
+
+    "Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
+       Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?--
+     Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,
+       Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms?
+       Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
+     Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
+       For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms;
+     I tremble to approach an angry God,
+   And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.
+
+    "Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence,
+       Fain promise never more to disobey;
+     But should my Author health again dispense,
+       Again I might forsake fair virtue's way,
+       Again in folly's path might go astray,
+     Again exalt the brute and sink the man.
+       Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,
+     Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan,
+   Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran?
+
+    "O thou great Governor of all below,
+       If I might dare a lifted eye to thee,
+     Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,
+       And still the tumult of the raging sea;
+       With that controlling power assist even me
+     Those headstrong furious passions to confine,
+       For all unfit I feel my powers to be
+       To rule their torrent in the allowed line;
+   O, aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE."
+
+It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and
+Isabella Keith's letters written immediately after her death. Old and
+withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how
+quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of
+affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that
+power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss!
+
+     "K. PHILIP (_to_ CONSTANCE).
+
+  You are as fond of grief as of your child.
+
+      CONSTANCE.
+
+  Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
+  Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
+  Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
+  Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
+  Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
+  Then I have reason to be fond of grief."
+
+What variations cannot love play on this one string!
+
+In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead
+Maidie: "Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled the
+finest waxwork. There was in the countenance an expression of sweetness
+and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had
+anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. To tell
+you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you was the
+constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler
+of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours before
+all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she said to Dr.
+Johnstone, 'If you let me out at the New Year, I will be quite
+contented.' I asked her what made her so anxious to get out then. 'I
+want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the sixpence you
+gave me for being patient in the measles; and I would like to choose it
+myself.' I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain
+of her head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
+mother! mother!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in
+Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her
+cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture
+the _animosa infans_ gives us of herself,--her vivacity, her
+passionateness, her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for
+swine, for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her
+satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her great
+repentances! We don't wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk
+of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours.
+
+The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night
+Supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The company had all come,--all but
+Marjorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were there,--all were
+come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. "Where's
+that bairn? what can have come over her? I'll go myself and see." And
+he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell rang, and in came
+Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was
+brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. And there, in its
+darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming,
+and Scott bending over her in ecstasy,--"hung over her enamored." "Sit
+ye there, my dautie, till they all see you"; and forthwith he brought
+them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted her up and marched to
+his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him;
+and then began the night, and such a night! Those who knew Scott best
+said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and
+she gave them _Constance's_ speeches and "Helvellyn," the ballad then
+much in vogue, and all her _répertoire_,--Scott showing her off, and
+being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.
+
+We are indebted for the following to her sister: "Her birth was 15th
+January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her
+Bibles.[3] I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of
+body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, never
+was an hour in bed.
+
+[Footnote 3: "Her Bible is before me; _a pair_, as then called; the
+faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament
+over Jonathan."]
+
+"I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments
+of Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all
+that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles
+were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient
+quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her
+ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched.
+When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the
+request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's day
+came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she
+immediately rejoined, 'O, I am so anxious to buy something with my
+sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.' Again, when lying very still, her
+mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'O yes! if you would
+just leave the room-door open a wee bit, and play "The Land o' the
+Leal," and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself' (this is just as
+stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike
+to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the
+nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My
+father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing
+mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and, while walking her up and
+down the room, she said, 'Father, I will repeat something to you; what
+would you like?' He said, 'Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She hesitated
+for a moment between the paraphrase, 'Few are thy days, and full of
+woe,' and the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter,
+a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to
+stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to
+write a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her,
+in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just this once';
+the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity
+she wrote an address of fourteen lines, 'to her loved cousin on the
+author's recovery,' her last work on earth;--
+
+  'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me,
+   I was at the last extremity;
+   How often did I think of you,
+   I wished your graceful form to view,
+   To clasp you in my weak embrace,
+   Indeed I thought I'd run my race:
+   Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken,
+   But still indeed I was much shaken,
+   At last I daily strength did gain,
+   And oh! at last, away went pain;
+   At length the doctor thought I might
+   Stay in the parlor all the night;
+   I now continue so to do,
+   Farewell to Nancy and to you.'
+
+"She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with
+the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head, my head!' Three days
+of the dire malady, 'water in the head,' followed, and the end came."
+
+  "Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly."
+
+It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this: the fervor,
+the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye,
+the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling
+child,--Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the
+depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong
+like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the
+dark; the words of Burns touching the kindred chord, her last numbers
+"wildly sweet" traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by
+the last enemy and friend,--_moriens canit_,--and that love which is so
+soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end.
+
+  "She set as sets the morning star, which goes
+   Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
+   Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
+   But melts away into the light of heaven."
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JAKEY.
+
+BY MRS. S. H. DEKROYFT.
+
+
+I.
+
+At the time of the opening of this story, there were in the rear of the
+New York Institution for the Blind, two small but pleasant parks, full
+of trees and winding walks, where the birds sang, and blind boys and
+girls ran and played. The little gate between the two parks was usually
+left open during school hours, and one bright June morning, while the
+sun was drinking up the dews from the leaves and the flowers, I chanced
+to be walking there, and I heard the little gate opening and shutting,
+opening and shutting; rattle went the chain, then bang went the gate,
+until suddenly, as I was passing it, a little voice saluted me, so
+sweet and musical and up so high, that for the moment I almost fancied
+one of the birds had stopped his song to speak with me.
+
+"I know you. I knows ven you come. Sometimes you tell stories to ze
+girls, and I hear you ven I bees dis side."
+
+Going up and putting my hand on the little speaker's head, I said,--
+
+"Pray, what little girl is this here, with these long pretty curls,
+swinging on the gate?"
+
+"I bees not a girl,--I bees a boy, I be."
+
+Then passing my hand down over a little coat covered with buttons, I
+said,--
+
+"Surely, so you are a little boy; but what is your name?"
+
+"My name bees Little Jakey; dot is my name."
+
+"Little Jakey! Indeed! and pray, when did you come here?"
+
+Quick as thought his little foot struck out against the post again, and
+the gate went flying to and fro, as before; then coming to a sudden
+halt, he said,--
+
+"Vell, I tink I tell you. I bees here von Sunday and von Sunday and
+_von_ Sunday; so long I bees here."
+
+"How old are you, Jakey?"
+
+"I bees seving; dot is my old,--dot is how old I bees."
+
+"And can you not see?"
+
+"No, I not see. Ven Gott make my eyes, my moder say he not put ze light
+in zem."
+
+"And are you going to school here, Jakey?"
+
+"Yes, some ze time I go in ze school, and I read ze letters mit my
+fing-er. Von letter vot live on ze top ze line, I know him, ven I put
+my fing-er on him; hees name bees A; and von oder letter, I know him,
+ven I put my fing-er on him,--round like ze hoop; hees name bees O."
+
+"Who teaches you the letters, Little Jakey?"
+
+"Cassie, ce teach me, but all ze time ce laugh, ven I say ze vords; so
+Miss Setland sen her avay, and now Libbie, ce teach me. But not much I
+go in ze school. I come down here mit ze birds in ze trees. Up to ze
+house ze birds not go. Eddy and Villy, and all ze boys, ven zey play,
+make big noise, and zey scare ze birds. But down here zey not scare,
+and all ze time zey sing."
+
+"You love the birds, Jakey?"
+
+"Yes, I love ze birds. I love von bird up in dot tree. You not see him
+vay high dare? Ven I have eat my dinner in ze morning, I come down
+here, and ven I have eat my dinner in ze noon, I come down here; and
+all ze time, ven I come, he sing. Sometimes some oder birds come in ze
+tree, and zey sing mit him; but all ze time he sing. I vish I sing like
+ze birds. I vish I have vings, and I go vay high in ze sky, vare ze
+stars be. Gott make ze stars, and Georgy say dot zey shine vay down in
+ze vater, he see zem dare; and von time I tell him dot he vill get me
+von mit hees hook vot he catch ze fishes mit; but he laugh and say dot
+he cannot. But I tink I see ze stars ven I come im Himmel mit"--
+
+"Im Himmel! Where is that, Jakey? Where is Himmel?"
+
+"Vy! you not know dot? Himmel bees vare Gott live."
+
+I caught him down from the gate in my arms, and nearly smothered him
+with kisses.
+
+Then he put his hands up and felt my face over, so softly and tenderly,
+that I fancied his little creeping fingers reading there every thought
+in my heart; and finally, clasping his loving arms around my neck, he
+said, in a voice hardly above a whisper,--
+
+"I love you,--you love me?"
+
+"I do indeed love you, you dear lamb," I said; but I could hardly
+speak, my voice was so choked with tears. Perceiving this, he rested
+his little hand softly on my cheek again, and whispered timidly,--
+
+"Vy for you cry?"
+
+But hearing some one approaching, and fearing to be disturbed, I took
+his little hand in mine and led him away, across the park, to a seat
+under the big mulberry, where I held him long and lovingly on my lap,
+as I did often afterwards, while coaxing from his sweet lips the
+following chapters of his strange little life.
+
+
+II.
+
+Little Jakey was indeed _little_ Jakey. I have often seen boys three
+years old both taller and heavier; but never one more perfect in form
+and feature. His little feet and hands might have belonged to a fairy.
+His black eyes were bright and full, with long lashes and arched brows.
+His long curls were blacker than the raven, and while holding him there
+in my arms, I could think of nothing but a beautiful cherub with folded
+wings, astray from heaven. After smoothing down his curls awhile, and
+kissing him many times, I said to him,--
+
+"Dear Jakey, pray where did you come from, and who brought you here?"
+
+Then dropping both his little hands in mine, he said,--
+
+"I come fon Germany. My moder, ce bring me. I come mit her, and mit ze
+baby. Ven I come in ze America, ze flowers bees in ze garden, and ze
+birds bees in ze trees, and ze opples bees on ze trees, and ze
+pot-a-toes bees in ze ground. Zen ze vinds blow and ze birds go avay,
+and ze opples bees in ze cellar, and ze pot-a-toes bees in ze cellar.
+Zen ze vinds blow too hard and ze snow bees on ze ground, and it bees
+cold vinter. Zen long time ze snow go avay, and ze leaves come on ze
+trees, and ze birds come back again, and it bees varm; so long I bees
+in ze America."
+
+"And so you have been here one year? But pray, dear, where is your
+father? Is he dead?"
+
+"No, he bees not dead. He bees in Germany, mit Jeem and mit Fred and
+mit my granfader."
+
+"But, Jakey, why did your mother come away here to America, and leave
+your father away there in Germany?"
+
+I felt his little hands stir in mine; but after a moment he drew a
+little sigh and said,--
+
+"Vell, I tink I tell you. My granfader have some lands, some big lands
+he have, and he sell zem; and may be he not buy it, but he get von big
+house in ze city, mit vindows vay down to ze ground, and in ze vindows
+he put--I not know vot you call zem, but zey have vine in zem, and beer
+in zem."
+
+"Bottles, Jakey?"
+
+"Yes, dot bees it, bottles mit vine and mit beer in zem; and my fader
+go dare, and he give my granfader ze pennies, and he drink ze vine and
+he drink ze beer. Much times and all ze time he go dare, and he do dot.
+And von day he come home, and he have drunk too much ze beer, and hees
+head go von vay and von vay; and he say vicked vords, and my moder ce
+cry. Jeem and Fred bees afraid, and zey hide; but I bees not afraid, I
+bees mit my moder. And ven my fader tink he sit down on ze chair, he go
+vay fall on ze floor; and ven Jeem and Fred hear him, zey run out, and
+ven zey see him dare on ze floor, zey laugh; and my fader say dot he
+vill kill zem, and he vill trow ze chair at zem, but too quick zey run
+avay; and all ze time my moder ce cry and ce cry, and ce not eat ze
+dinner, and ce make my fader go lay on ze bed.
+
+"Von time my fader come home and he have drunk too much ze beer, and he
+have sold ze piano. And von time he come home and he have drunk too
+much ze beer, and he have sold ze harp; and ze man come mit him vot
+have buy it; and ven ze harp go avay, my moder ce cry, and my fader
+strike her mit hees hand, and he strike Jeem and Fred; and me he vill
+strike, but my moder ce not let him.
+
+"Von oder time ze men come dare, and zey take avay all ze tings vot my
+moder have,--ze chair, and ze sofa, and all ze tings. Zen my moder ce
+go live in von leetle house, and some ze time ce not have ze fire dare,
+and some ze time ce not have ze bread. And von time in ze night my
+fader come home, and he bring too much men mit him vot have drunk ze
+beer; and he tell my moder dot ce give ze men ze supper. And my moder
+say dot ce have not ze supper, ce have not ze fire, and ce have not ze
+bread; and ven ce tell ze men go avay, zey say bad vords to my moder,
+and my fader he strike her dot ce go on ze floor. Zen mit her hair he
+drag her to ze door, and mit hees feets he strike her vay out on ze
+stone, and her head bleed. And Jeem he see her dare, and he cry, and
+Fred cry, and I cry; and my moder ce groan like ce die. And von ze men
+vot come mit him strike my fader, and von oder man strike _him_, and
+zey say vicked vords, and zey all strike, and zey break ze tings. And
+vile zey do dot, my moder ce get up, and ce come avay in ze dark, and
+Jeem and Fred come mit her, and I come mit her, and long vay ce sit
+down on ze stone by ze big house; and Jeem bees cold dare, and he cry;
+and Fred bees cold, and he cry. I bees not cold, I not cry, my moder ce
+hold me tight; but all ze time ce cry.
+
+"Zen long time ze man vot live in ze big house open ze door, and he say
+some vords to my moder, and my moder ce tell him dot my fader have got
+ze bad men mit him in ze house, and he tell my moder dot ce come in;
+and Jeem and Fred zey go up ze step, and ze man he lif me, and my moder
+ce come up ze step; and ven ce come in, ze man see ze blood, vare my
+fader have strike her, and he go tell ze lady dot ce come, and ze lady
+vash my moder's head, and ce give her ze medicine vot ce drink. Zen ce
+lay her on ze bed, and I lay on ze bed mit her; and Jeem and Fred zey
+go in von leetle bed to ze fire.
+
+"In ze morning my moder come home, and my fader sleep dare on ze floor,
+and vile he sleep, he make big noise mit hees nose; and Jeem and Fred
+laugh, cause my fader make big noise mit hees nose, but my moder ce
+cry.
+
+"Long time Jeem bees hungry and he cry, Fred bees hungry and he cry,
+but my moder say ce have not ze meat and ce have not ze bread. Zen long
+time my fader vake, and ven he see my moder dare, he say dot he vill be
+good, dot he vill not drink ze vine and ze beer any more; and he kiss
+my moder, and he say dot he love her, and dot he vill get ze fire, and
+he vill get ze bread, but he have not ze money. Zen my moder say dot ce
+vill give him ze vatch vot ce have, ven ce vas mit her moder in Italy,
+to get ze money mit, but ce tink ven he get ze money he vill drink ze
+beer. My fader say No! vile he live and vile he die, he not drink any
+more ze beer; and he kiss Jeem and he kiss Fred and he kiss me, and he
+tell my moder dot ven he sell ze vatch, he vill bring ze money, and he
+vill get ze fire, and he vill get ze meat and ze bread. Zen my moder ce
+get him ze vatch, and he go avay.
+
+"Long time he not come. Zen long time in ze night he come, and he bring
+ze bread mit him, but he have drunk ze beer. My moder tell him dot he
+have, and he say dot he have not; but all ze time hees head go von vay
+and von vay, and some ze vords he speak, and some ze vords he not
+speak. My moder ce tell him, Vare ze money vot he get mit ze vatch? and
+he say dot he have not ze money, dot he not sell ze vatch. Zen my moder
+say, Vare ze vatch den? and he say dot he have loss it, dot vile he
+sell it, von man get it! But my moder say No, he have got ze money and
+he have drunk ze beer mit ze bad men, ce know he have. Zen my fader
+strike her von time and von time; and ven ce go on ze floor, he strike
+her dare mit hees feets, and ce not move, like ce be dead, and he say
+he vill kill her, he vill, he vill! And Jeem scream and Fred scream,
+and my fader get ze big knife vot he cut ze bread mit, and he lif it
+vay high, and say loud much times dot he vill kill zem all! But ze men
+vot vatch in ze night come in, and ven zey see my fader dare mit ze
+knife, zey put ze chain on hees feets and on hees hands, and zey go
+avay mit him. And quick von man come back mit ze doctor, and ven, mit
+hees leetle knife, he have make my moder's arm bleed, ce speak, and ce
+say, Vare my fader be? and ze man tell her dot zey have lock him up,
+and he vill be hang mit ze rope; and my moder ce cry, and long time ce
+bees sick in ze bed."
+
+
+III.
+
+"Did your mother come from Italy, Jakey?"
+
+"Yes; ven my fader have not drunk ze beer, he make ze peoples mit ze
+brush; and he go in Italy, and ven he have make my moder dare mit ze
+brush, ce love him, and ce run away mit him ven her moder not know it.
+And ven ce come in Germany, von oder time he make her mit ze brush, and
+ce hang on ze vall; and Jeem he make, and Fred he make mit ze brush,
+and zey hang on ze vall. Much ze peoples he make mit ze brush, and zey
+give him ze money. Me he not make, but my moder ce make me mit ze
+leetle brush; but ven I bees made, I not hang on ze vall, I bees sut
+like ze book. And ce make Jeem dot vay, and Fred dot vay, and ce keep
+zem. Von time my fader go to ze drawer, and he get zem all, and he go
+avay and he sell zem, and he get ze money; and ven my moder know it, ce
+come vare ze man be vot have buy zem, and I come mit her, and ce give
+him ze ring fon her fing-er, and ce get me back and ce hide me.
+
+"Von time my fader have sell my moder vot hang on ze vall, and ze man
+come dare, and my fader have take her down, and Jeem cry and Fred cry;
+and Fred say let hees go, and Jeem say let hees go, but my moder say
+no, and ze man go avay mit her."
+
+"But, dear Jakey, how long did they keep your father locked up there
+with the chains on him?"
+
+"Oh! big long time; and von time my granfader come dare, and my moder
+bees sick in ze bed; ce not get vell vare my fader have strike her; and
+my granfader tell her dot ze man vot sit vay high in ze seat have said
+_ze vord_, dot my fader go vay off, and be lock up mit ze dark and mit
+ze chains on him, vile he live and vile he die. Zen my moder say ce
+vill go vare he be. My granfader lif her, and ce get up, and I come mit
+zem. And ven my moder come dare, ce go to ze man vot have said _ze
+vord_, and ce tell him dot he vill let my fader go, he vill, _he vill!_
+And ce say dot ce vill die, if he not let my fader go, and ce cry; and
+ce tell ze man vot sit vay high in ze chair, dot he vill let him go?
+but ze man say No, he have said _ze vord_. Zen my moder go down vare my
+fader be mit ze chains on him, and ven ce come dare, ce scream, and ce
+fall on ze ground, like ce be dead. Zen my granfader say dot I go tell
+ze man dot he vill let my fader go, and ven my granfader bring me, and
+I come dare, I tink I say dot; but I tell him dot he vill not kill my
+moder, and I cry, _too loud_ I cry. Zen ze man go _vay high_ on hees
+feets mit his hand on my head, and he say some vords to ze men vot bees
+dare, and he say some vords to my granfader. Zen he go roun on his
+feets and he say some vords to my fader. He tell him, dot he vill be
+good? dot he vill not drink ze beer? dot he vill vork? dot he vill make
+ze peoples mit ze brush? dot he vill love my moder, and get ze bread
+and ze fire and ze meat? and my fader say he vill, he vill! Zen ze man
+vot have said _ze vord_ tell my fader dot he may go; and quick von oder
+man take ze chains fon hees feets and fon hees hands, and he bees too
+glad; and he lif up my moder, and he sake her dot ce speak, and he love
+her, and he come avay mit her. And my granfader bring me; I come mit
+him in hees arms, and vile my granfader valk, he cry.
+
+"Ven it bees night, ze big man vot sit vay high in ze chair and vot
+have said _ze vord_, come to ze house, and he see my moder dare in ze
+bed; and he talk mit her, and he talk mit my fader, and he say some
+vords mit Jeem and mit Fred, and he hold me on hees lap.
+
+"Long time he stay dare, and ven he go vay, he tell my fader, if he
+vill make him mit ze brush? and my fader say dot he vill. Zen much
+times he come dare, and ven my fader have make him big all aroun, fon
+hees feets to hees head, mit ze chair vot he sit in vay high, ven he
+say _ze vord_, he give my fader much ze money, much money he give; and
+my fader get ze fire mit it, and ze bread and ze meat; and he love my
+moder, and he love Jeem, and he love Fred, and me he love.
+
+"Zen my moder sing, but ce have not ze harp, and ce have not ze piano;
+and my fader sing mit her; and much ze peoples he make mit ze brush;
+and my moder ce help him, all ze time ce help him, and Jeem and Fred
+zey help; zey grind ze tings vot he make ze peoples mit. Von time I
+help; ven Fred bees gone, I vash ze brushes, and my moder say dot I
+have make zem clean so better as Fred. And all ze time I rock ze baby
+in ze leetle bed, and I sing ze song vot my moder make ze baby sleep
+mit."
+
+"Did your father stay always good, Jakey, and did he never drink the
+beer any more?"
+
+"Oh! no," he answered, with an earnestness that chilled my very heart,
+and made me feel that he had not yet told me half the sorrow shut up in
+his little bosom; and while, with tears in my eyes, I tried to
+encourage him to go on, I felt almost guilty, and was about deciding to
+probe his little heart no more, when of his own accord he resumed.
+
+"Von time my fader say dot he vill go to ze man mit ze pic-sure vot he
+have make, and he vill get ze money; and my moder say dot ce vill go
+mit him; but my fader say No, he vill go mit hees-self, and ven he have
+got ze money, he vill come home to ze supper. But long time he not
+come. Jeem he go in ze bed, and Fred he go in ze bed, and I go in ze
+leetle bed, and my moder ce have ze baby mit her to ze fire.
+
+"Zen long time my fader come to ze door, and vile he come, he say loud
+ze vicked vords, and my moder know dot he have drunk ze beer. Quick ce
+go to ze vindow, and ven ce see him, ce cry and ce bees afraid, and ce
+not open ze door. Zen my fader tink he have not fine ze door, and he go
+vay roun ze house, and tink he have fine ze door dare; and he strike,
+and he pound, and all ze time he say loud ze vicked vords. Zen he come
+back to ze door, and he strike it mit hees feets much times, and ven ze
+door come open and he see my moder dare, he strike her dot ce fall on
+ze floor mit ze baby. Ze baby cry, but my moder ce not speak, and ce
+not cry. Zen my fader strike her much times mit hees feets, dot ce not
+open ze door, and he go vay to get ze big knife, and he say dot he vill
+kill her. Long time he not fine it; zen vile he come back he not see,
+and he fall on ze floor, and some ze vay he get up and some ze vay he
+not get up, and all ze time he say dot he vill kill, he vill, he vill!
+But all ze time he not kill, he have not ze knife; and he have drunk
+too much ze beer, dot he not get up. Zen long time hees head go down on
+ze floor, and he sleep, and he make big noise mit hees nose.
+
+"Zen I come out ze leetle bed, and I go on ze floor, and ven I come
+vare my moder be, I sake her and I sake her, but ce not speak. Zen I
+come to ze bed vare Jeem be, and I sake him, and I tell him dot my
+fader have kill my moder. Quick Jeem come dare, and he lif her up; and
+Fred come out ze bed, and he get ze baby; and Jeem put ze vater on my
+moder, and he sake her much times, and ce vake, and ce sit up in ze
+chair mit ze baby. And ce tell Jeem dot he get ze blanket fon ze bed
+and he put it on my fader, and he lif hees head, and he put under ze
+pillow.
+
+"Jeem and Fred zey go in ze bed, and I go in ze leetle bed, but all ze
+time my moder ce sit up dare in ze chair, mit ze baby, to ze fire, and
+ce cry and ce cry."
+
+
+IV.
+
+"In ze morning my moder tell my fader dot ce vill go back to Italy, mit
+her moder; and my fader say dot ce may, but ce not go.
+
+"Ze peoples come, but my fader bees not dare, and he not make zem any
+more mit ze brush, but some my moder make.
+
+"All ze time my fader go vay, and he drink ze beer mit ze bad men; and
+ze fire he not get, and he not get ze bread, and too much he strike.
+
+"Von time my moder tell my fader dot ce vill come in ze America, and ce
+vill make ze peoples dare mit ze brush, and ce vill get ze money, and
+ce vill live; and my fader say dot ce may. Zen my moder say dot ce vill
+take ze boys mit her; and my fader say No, he keep ze boys mit him. My
+moder say No, ce take ze boys mit her; and my fader say No, he keep ze
+boys mit him. Zen my moder say ce vill take ze baby and her little
+blind boy mit her, and ce vill come in ze America; and my fader say dot
+ce may.
+
+"Zen my moder sell ze ring fon her fing-er, and some ze money ce get,
+and some ze money my granfader give her. Zen ce make me mit ze brush. I
+sit up in ze chair, and ce look at me, and ce make me all roun mit ze
+flowers. Ce make my curls go roun her fing-er, and zen ce make zem mit
+ze brush in ze pic-sure, and ce make me mit vings; and ce make in my
+hand vot ze boys shoot mit,--not ze gun vot make ze big noise and vot
+kill, but ze bow mit ze tring, I not know vot you call it."
+
+"The bow and arrow, Jakey."
+
+"Yes, dot bees it, ze bow and ze arrow; and von time Jeem have shoot
+Fred mit it in hees back, and he cry, and he come and he tell my moder
+dot Jeem have kill him.
+
+"Ven I bees done, ven my moder have make me, von lady ce come dare and
+ce tell my moder, Vot ce make? and my moder tell her dot ce make me mit
+ze brush, and ce vill sell me, and ce vill get ze money, and ce vill
+come in ze America. Zen von oder day ze lady come dare, and ce give my
+moder much ze money, and ce take ze pic-sure avay mit her; and ven ce
+have go mit it, my moder ce cry and ce cry.
+
+"Von day my granfader come dare mit ze carriage, and Jeem he go in ze
+carriage, and Fred he go in, and my moder ce come in mit ze baby. My
+granfader bring me, and he come in, and ze carriage come vay down to
+ze--I not know vot you call it, but it bees von big house on ze vater."
+
+"A ship, Jakey."
+
+"Yes, ze ship, mit ze trees vay high, and on ze trees, Fred say, long
+tings go vay out like ze sheet; and ze vinds blow in zem, and ze ship
+ce go and ce go. My moder ce come in ze ship mit ze baby in von arm,
+and my granfader bring me, and Jeem and Fred bees dare; and my
+granfader say zey vill go, dot ze ship not come avay mit zem. Zen my
+moder ce kiss Jeem and ce kiss Fred, von time and von time, and ce cry
+and ce cry; and ce tell zem dot zey vill be good, and ven ce get ze
+money, ce vill send it, and zey vill come in ze America mit her. Jeem
+say dot ven he bees a man, he vill come in ze America; and Fred say dot
+he vill come in ze America ven he bees not a man,--ven he get ze money
+he come, and he vill get it.
+
+"My moder ce kiss zem much times, and ce cry too hard dot ce leave zem.
+And ce tell my granfader dot he vill not give my fader ze beer? and my
+granfader say, No, he not give him, but he vill get it; and my
+granfader cry ven he say dot. And my moder tell him dot ven my fader
+have not ze money, he vill keep him in ze house mit him? and my
+granfader say dot he vill, and he vill keep Jeem and he vill keep Fred
+mit him, and he vill make zem go in ze school. Zen my moder tank my
+granfader much times, and ce kiss him, and ce kiss Jeem, and ce kiss
+Fred; and zey kiss me, and zey kiss ze baby, and zey kiss my moder; and
+zey cry and zey go avay, and my moder ce scream and ce cry. Zen my
+granfader leave Jeem and Fred, and he come back, and he tell my moder
+dot ce not cry; much vords he tell her. Zen he go avay, and ze vinds
+blow, and ze ship ce go and ce go.
+
+"Long time ze ship go, much days and much nights. And von time ze vinds
+blow too hard, and ze ship go von vay and von vay, and ze vaters come
+vay high, and ze vinds make big noise, and it tunder, like ze sky
+break; and von ze trees have come crash down on ze ship, and all ze
+peoples cry, Gott im Himmel! Gott im Himmel! and all ze time zey cry,
+and zey tink dot zey go vay down in ze deep. My moder ce be kneeled
+down, mit ze baby in von arm and mit me in von arm, and ce not cry, but
+all ze time ce pray and ce pray; and vile ce pray, ze ship come crash
+on ze rock, and much ze peoples go vay down in ze vater, and too much
+zey cry, too loud. Zen my moder have tie ze baby mit her shawl, and me
+ce hold mit von arm, and mit von arm ce hold on ze ship. Von time ze
+vater, ven it come vay high, take me avay, and my moder have loss me,
+and too loud ce scream, and von man dare he get me fon ze vater mit my
+hair, and long time he hold me mit his arm.
+
+"Ven it bees morning, and ze vater not come vay high, and ze vinds not
+blow, von oder ship come dare vot have not ze sail, but ce have von big
+fire, and all ze time ce go, _burrh! burrh!_ and all ze peoples vot
+have not go vay down mit ze fishes come in dot ship, and zey get ze
+bread dare, and zey get ze meat dare, and much tings zey get dare.
+
+"Long time zey go in dot ship, and ven zey see ze America, zey come in
+von oder leetle ship vot have no tree, vot have no sail, and vot have
+no fire, but ze men have ze long sticks, and zey go _so_, and zey go
+_so_" (imitating men rowing, with his little hands).
+
+"How did you know that, Jakey; you could not see them?"
+
+"No, I not see zem, but my moder ce tell me; and ven ze leetle boat
+have come close up in ze America, mit ze baby in von arm and mit me in
+von arm, my moder come out ze leetle boat, and ven ce have valk some ze
+vay, ce go down on ze ground and ce pray and ce cry. Not ce feel bad
+dot ce come in ze America, but ce bees too glad dot ce have not go vay
+down in ze deep mit ze fishes, and ze baby and me mit her dare, vare
+von big fish be, vot eat ze peoples."
+
+"Were you not afraid, Jakey?"
+
+"No, I not cry. My moder ce be dare, and ce hold me tight, and I tink
+Gott hear my moder vot ce pray."
+
+
+V.
+
+"Where did your mother go, Jakey, when she first came into this
+country? where did she stop?"
+
+"I not know ze place vare," he said, "but ce go mit ze peoples in von
+big house, up ze steps vay high and ce stay dare. And ven ze bells
+ring, and von Sunday have come, ze baby, ce be dead. I not know zen vot
+dead mean. I not know ce bees cold; and too quick I take my hand avay,
+and I tell my moder dot ce bring ze baby to ze fire. My moder say, No,
+ze fire not varm her, ce bees dead, and ze man vill come and put her
+avay in ze ground; and my moder ce cry and ce cry. And vile ce cry, ze
+man come mit ze box, and he pull ze baby fon my moder, and quick he put
+her in ze box; and ven he make ze nail drive, my moder cry like ce die.
+
+"My moder ce stay dare in ze big house, and von day ce go to fine ze
+peoples vot ce vill make mit ze brush, and von oder day ce go to fine
+ze peoples, and von oder day ce go. Zen von day ce go to fine ze place
+vare ce vill live; and ven ce come back, ce say dot ce have fine it,
+and in ze morning ce vill go dare mit me. But in ze night, all ze time
+ce talk, and ce not know vare ce be. Some ze time ce tink ce bees in
+Germany mit my fader, and ce tink he have drunk ze beer, and he vill
+kill her. Some ze time ce tink ce bees in Italy mit her moder, and ce
+have not run avay mit my fader. And some ze time ce tink ce bees in ze
+ship, and ze vinds blow too hard, and ze tree come crash down. Zen all
+ze time ce say Vater, vater, vater! but ce have not ze vater, and ce
+bees hot, too hot. Ven ce touch me, I tink ce burn me, and ce go up in
+ze bed, and ce pull ze blanket and ze tings, and all ze time ce say
+Vater, vater, vater! And I cry dot I not fine ze vater. I scream, I
+fine ze door, but it not open. I call ze voman, but ce not come; all ze
+day ce not come, all ze night ce not come; and all ze time my moder ce
+burn, burn, and all ze time ce say Vater, vater, vater! I call her, but
+ce not know vot I say; ce not see me; ce not know vare ce be; and ven I
+cry ce not hear me. All ze time ce talk and ce talk.
+
+"Zen dot morning ze man come dare, and ven he see my moder, he go quick
+avay; and von man come mit someting vot he give my moder, and vot ce
+drink, and ven ce have drink it, ce sleep. Long time ce sleep, and ven
+ce vake, ce know vare ce be, and ce know vot ce say. Zen ce put her
+hand on my head, and ce kiss me,--much times ce kiss me; and ce say dot
+ce die, and ce go im Himmel mit ze baby. Zen I cry; and ce tell me dot
+I not cry, dot Gott vill come von time, and he vill bring me im Himmel
+mit her and mit ze baby. He vill, ce know he vill.
+
+"Zen ce not talk, and I tink ce be sleep; and I sake her and I sake
+her, but ce not move. I put my fing-er on her eyes, but zey not open;
+and I call her and I call her, but ce not hear; and I kiss her and I
+kiss her, but ce not know it. I sake her, but ce not vake; and ven I
+feel dot ce bees cold, I know dot ce bees dead, like ze baby, and I
+scream and I scream. I call ze voman, I call ze man, but zey not come,
+zey not hear. Zen long time ze voman ce come, and ven ce open ze door
+ce pull me avay quick fon my moder, and ce pull me up ze stair, von
+stair and von stair. Zen ce push me in ze room, and ce lock ze door,
+and ce take ze key avay mit her. Zen I push ze door and I scream, all
+ze time I scream. I say dot I vill go mit my moder, I vill, I vill!"
+
+
+VI.
+
+"Long time, vile I cry dare, Meme come, and ce say von vord in ze
+keyhole. I not know vot ce say, but I say dot I will go mit my moder,
+but ce not hear me. And ce say von oder time in ze keyhole, Little boy,
+cause vy you cry? Zen I come dare, and I say in ze keyhole dot I shall
+go mit my moder, dot ze voman have lock me up, and ce have take ze key
+avay mit her. Zen Meme tell me dot I not cry, ce know vare ze key be,
+and ce vill get it. Zen quick ce run avay, and ce come back mit ze key,
+and ce put ze key in ze keyhole, and ce go vay high on her feets, and
+ce push and ce push, but ze door not open. Zen ce take ze key out, and
+Meme say von vord in ze keyhole, and I say von vord in ze keyhole. Zen
+ce put ze key in ze keyhole von oder time, and ce go vay high on her
+feets, and ce push and ce push, and ze door come open; and ven Meme see
+me dare, ce say, Vy! little boy, you not see! No, I say, I not see. Zen
+ce say dot ce vill come mit me vare my moder be, and ce take hold my
+hand, and ven ce have come down von stair, and von step and von step,
+ze voman ce be dare; and ce tell Meme dot ce go back, dot ce vill vip
+her. Zen Meme ce come up ze stair, and ce pull von vay and I pull von
+vay, and I say dot I go mit my moder, I vill, I vill! and I cry. Zen
+Meme ce tell me dot I not cry, and ce say low, dot ven ze voman have go
+avay, ce vill come back mit me. Zen I not cry, and I go up ze steps mit
+Meme; and ven I not hear ze voman, and Meme not see her, ce come back
+mit me; von step and von step ce pull me, all ze steps quick down ce
+pull me, and ven ce come on ze floor, quick ce come to ze door vare my
+moder be, and ce make it go open; and ven ce see my moder dare, ce cry.
+But I not cry; I go to ze bed, vare ce be, and ven I feel her mit my
+hands, I tell Meme dot ce be not my moder, ce have not ze curls; and
+Meme say dot ze voman have cut zem; dot ce have cut ze curls fon her
+moder, ven ce vas dead, and ce have sell zem, and ce get ze money.
+
+"Zen ze man come mit ze box, and he push Meme, dot ce go avay; and Meme
+ce pull me, but I say dot I not come, dot I stay mit my moder. Zen ze
+man push me, and he sut ze door, and I scream, I scream! Zen Meme tell
+me dot I not cry, dot ze voman vill hear, and ce vill come and ce vill
+vip her. Zen I not cry too loud, and I come mit Meme up ze stair; and
+ven ce come to ze room, ce go avay, and ce bring me von cake in von
+hand, and von opple in von hand; and ce kiss me, and ce tell me dot ce
+love me; and ce say dot her moder have die, and ze voman have got ze
+gold fon her moder, and ze vatch, and ze locket, mit ze chain, vot have
+her fader and her moder in it, and all ze tings. And Meme say dot her
+moder come to ze America dot ce fine her fader, but ce have die ven ce
+not fine him; and ven ce say dot, ce cry, and vile ce cry, ze voman
+come dare; and ce pull Meme, and ce tell her go avay. And ce lock ze
+door von oder time, and ce take ze key avay mit her; and ven I bees
+alone, I cry, I cry.
+
+"Zen long time ze voman come back, and ce lif me on her lap; and ven ce
+make my curls come roun her fing-er, like my moder, I tink ce bees
+good; but zen I hear ze shear cut, and quick I put my hand, and vile ce
+cut ze curls, ce cut my fing-er dot it bleed, and von curl and von curl
+ce have cut. Zen much I scream, loud I scream. I call my moder, I call
+Meme. I say dot I not have my curls cut, my moder say I not. Zen ze
+voman ce sake me too hard, and ce push me dot I fall, and ce go avay;
+and ce lock ze door, and ce take ze key avay mit her. All ze time I
+cry, and I hold my curls mit von hand and mit von hand; and ven I have
+cry too much, I sleep on ze floor, and I not know it; and long time,
+ven I vake, ze voman have come dare, and vile I sleep, ce have cut all
+ze curls. Some I cry, zen some I not cry; I tink vot my moder have say,
+dot Gott vill come, and he vill bring me im Himmel mit her and mit ze
+baby, and all ze time I tink, Vill he come? Vile I tink, Meme ce come,
+and ce take hold my hand, and ce tell me dot ce have see ze voman cut
+ze curls, and ce say dot I come avay mit her; and ven I come in ze room
+mit Meme, ze voman ce be dare, and ce say some vords. Meme know vot ce
+say, I not know; but I stay dare mit Meme, and I sleep in ze leetle bed
+mit Meme, and I say ze prayer vot Meme say.
+
+"All ze time in ze day Meme go up to ze vindow, and votch dot her fader
+come; and ven ze bell ring to ze door, ce tink dot he have come, and
+quick ce run, but he have not come.
+
+"Von time von man come dare, and vile he mend ze vindow, he talk mit
+Meme, and ven ce tell him vot her name be, he say dot he know her
+fader, dot he have see him, and dot he vill tell him vare ce be. Zen
+Meme ce hop and ce jump and ce laugh, and ce be too glad. All ze days
+ce go up to ze vindow, and ce look and ce look; and ze voman put on
+Meme von oder frock. Ce give Meme ze locket, and ce give her much
+tings, ven ce tink dot Meme's fader come. But much days he not come;
+and von time ze voman vill take avay ze locket fon Meme, and ven Meme
+say dot ce not give it, dot ce have got ze gold fon her moder, and ze
+vatch, and all ze tings, ce strike Meme.
+
+"Zen ven it bees dark, ze voman come avay mit Meme and mit me in von
+oder big house, vare much ze girls and much ze boys be vot have no
+fader and vot have no moder; and ven ze voman have talk mit ze lady
+dare, ce go avay, but ce leave Meme dare, and ce leave me dare. Long
+time Meme stay dare, and I stay dare. Meme go in ze school, and I go in
+ze school, mit ze boys and mit ze girls. And Meme read mit zem ze
+English, and ven ce learn ze vords, ce tell me ze vords, and ven I know
+ze vords, I talk mit zem, and Meme talk mit zem.
+
+"Ze lady dare be good, but all ze time, ven Meme go in ze bed, ce cry
+dot her fader not come, and dot ce not fine him.
+
+"Von time ven it bees cold, too cold, and ze vinds blow, Meme say dot
+ce go, dot ce fine her fader, dot ce know vare he be; and ven ze lady
+not know it, ce get her bonnet and ce get her shawl, and ce kiss me
+much times; and ce say dot ven ce come back, ce vill bring her fader
+mit her, and ce vill take me avay; and zen ven nobody see, ce go out.
+Long time ce go, and ven it bees night, ce have not come back.
+
+"Ze lady come and ce tell me, Vare is Meme? and I tell ze lady ce go
+dot ce fine her fader. Zen ze lady tell ze man dot he go and he fine
+Meme; and ven long time ze man not come back, ze lady ce go; but zey
+not fine her.
+
+"In ze morning von man come dare, and he bring Meme mit him in hees
+arms; and von her hand be freezed, and von her feet be freezed, and
+Meme cry; and ce tell ze lady dot vile ce fine her fader, ce have loss
+ze vay, and ce bees cold, and ce go up ze step to von door, but zey not
+let her come in; and ce go up ze step to von oder door, but zey not let
+her come in. All ze time ce do dot: ce go up and ce go up, but zey not
+let her come in, and some ze time zey sut ze door, ven zey not know vot
+ce say. Zen ce bees too cold, and vile ce vait by von door, ce sleep on
+ze stone; and ze man vot vatch in ze street, he fine her dare all vite
+mit ze snow. He bring her avay to hees place, and he varm her, and ce
+cry and ce cry; and in ze morning von man bring her home to ze lady;
+and long time Meme bees in ze bed, and ce bees sick, and ce
+cough,--much ce cough.
+
+"Much times ze doctor come dare, and he give Meme ze medicine, but ce
+not get vell; and von time, ven I go to ze bed vare ce be, ce tell me
+dot ce die. Zen I cry, and Meme cry; and ce tell me dot ven her fader
+come, I vill tell him dot ze voman have got ze gold fon her moder, and
+ce have got ze locket, and ze vatch, and all ze tings. Zen Meme kiss
+me, and ce tell me dot I vill tell her fader dot ce love me, and dot he
+vill take me avay mit him; and vile Meme say dot, ce cry and ce cough.
+Zen quick ce not cough, and too quick ze lady come dare; and ven ce
+call Meme, Meme ce not hear,--ce have go im Himmel, ce have die, ce be
+dead. Ze lady cry; and all ze girls and ze boys come in, and ven zey
+see Meme dare, zey cry. Zen ze lady ce make nice tings, and ce put zem
+on Meme, all vite like ze snow; and von man bring dare ze box vot zey
+put Meme in, and it bees smooth like ze glass, and it open vare her
+face be; and all ze girls and ze boys see Meme, ven ce bees in ze box
+all vite. And von oder lady dare vot love Meme and vot teach her ze
+English, put ze flowers in ze box mit Meme; and ce kiss her, and I kiss
+her, and ze lady kiss her; and ze man make ze box tight, and he go avay
+off mit Meme, and he put her in ze ground.
+
+"Long time I stay dare, and Meme's fader not come; but von day von good
+man come dare, and he lif me vay high in hees arms, and ven I feel him
+mit my hands, he have von big hat, mit no hair on hees head, and mit no
+but-tens on hees coat. Some English he speak, and some English he not
+speak. All ze time he say zee and zou, zee and zou; and ven he say dot
+he love me, and dot he vill take me avay mit him, I tink he bees
+Gott,--dot he have come, and he vill take me im Himmel mit my moder,
+and mit ze baby, and mit Meme, and I hold him tight aroun mit my arms;
+and zen ze lady say dot I go, and ce tell me Good-by, too quick I take
+my hand avay,--I tink dot ce keep me.
+
+"Zen ze good man come mit me in hees carriage, and he make hees coat
+come roun me; and ven he come to hees house, he go up ze steps mit me
+in hees arms; and ven he have ring ze bell, ze lady come to ze door,
+and ze good man tell her dot he have got me. Zen he stand my feets down
+on ze floor, and he come mit ze tring, and he make it go roun me, and
+he make it how long I bees; and he make hees fing-er go on my feets,
+and he make ze tring go roun my head.
+
+"Zen ze lady take me down ze stair, and ze voman dare put me in ze
+vater, and ce vash me and ce vash and ce vash; zen ce vipe and ce vipe;
+zen ce comb and ce comb, and ce make my curls come roun her fing-er.
+Zen ze good man have come back, and he bring mit him von leetle coat,
+and ze sirt and ze trouser vot I have, and ze stockings and ze shoes
+and ze hat; and ze lady ce put zem on me, and ce put von leetle
+hankchief in my pocket; and ce bring someting vot smell like ze rose,
+and ce spill it on my head, and ce spill it on my hands and on my
+hankchief, and ce vet my face mit it. Zen ze lady ce kiss me much
+times, much times ce kiss; and ze good man kiss me, and he lif me in
+hees arms, and he come avay mit me up ze stair to ze parlor, and ze
+lady bring me ze cake.
+
+"Georgy come fon ze school, and Mary come fon ze school, and Franky,
+and ven zey talk, zey say zee and zou.
+
+"I love ze good man, and I love ze lady; but I know dot ze good man
+bees not Gott, dot he not take me im Himmel mit my moder, and mit ze
+baby, and mit Meme. But he love me dare; and Georgy love me, he give me
+ze pennies in my pocket; and Mary love me, ce kiss me much times; and
+Franky say dot he vill give me hees horse vot go vay up and vay down,
+but he not valk, he have not ze life. He bees von vood horse, mit ze
+bridle and mit ze saddle on him, and Franky's fader have buy him to ze
+store; and much times Franky ride on him, and I ride on him."
+
+
+VII.
+
+Usually, when Little Jakey stopped his sweet talk, it was like the
+running down of a music-box, but not always as easy to set him going
+again. Besides, at the close of the last chapter he seemed to think his
+story ended, and put up his face for a kiss, as much as to say, Now
+please love me a little, and not tease me any more. So I yielded to his
+mood, and petted him awhile; wound his curls around my finger, and
+talked with him about everything likely to amuse him, until coming to a
+little pause in the conversation, I said,--
+
+"How long did you stay with those _thee_ and _thou_ friends, Jakey? How
+long did the good man keep you with him in his house?"
+
+"O, big long time I stay dare," he said, "and von time I come mit Mary
+in ze school vare ce go, and all ze Sundays ze lady and ze good man say
+dot I come mit zem all to ze Meeting. I love Mary; ce give me ze
+flowers, and I sleept mit her in ze bed; and all ze time I go mit her
+in ze garden, and ce tell me ze vords and ze flowers vot I not know.
+
+"Much times ven ze peoples come dare vot say zee and zou, ze good man
+lif me in hees arms, and he tell me dot I talk mit zem, and much zey
+kiss me. Von time von man give me in my pocket ze big moneys, and zen
+Mary ce come mit me to ze store, and ce sell zem, and ce buy me ze coat
+mit ze but-tens, vot I vear in ze Meeting. And ven I go to ze Meeting,
+Mary ce tie ze ribbon roun my hat, and ce bruss me, and ce vash me, and
+ce make my curls come roun her fing-er, like my moder; and ce valk mit
+me to ze Meeting, and all ze time I sit mit her dare.
+
+"Von day, ven ze good man say dot he bring me here in ze Institution,
+vare I read ze letters mit my fing-er, Mary say dot ce vill come mit
+me, and Georgy say dot he come; and Franky say dot he come; and
+Franky's fader say dot he may, and zey all come in ze carriage, and ze
+lady come. Ven zey go avay I not go mit zem, I stay here. Von time Mary
+have come here, and ce kiss me much times, and ce bring me ze flowers,
+and ce bring me ze cakes; and ven ce go avay ce cry, and ce say dot ce
+vill come von oder time, and ce vill bring Franky mit her. But ce have
+not come; von day ce vill come.
+
+"Vill Gott know vare I bees, and vill he fine me here, ven he come? My
+moder say dot he vill come, and I know he vill."
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Two days after these sweet words, to my surprise, I found Little Jakey
+pillowed in an arm-chair.
+
+"Bless me!" I exclaimed, "what has happened to this dear treasure? Are
+you sick, Little Jakey?"
+
+"No," he replied, hardly able to speak, "I not sick, but I have got ze
+pain in my life," placing his little hand on his chest, "dot bees all.
+Vile I hear ze birds sing in ze park, I not know it, and I sleep on ze
+ground; and vile I sleep I tink my moder and ze baby, and Meme mit her,
+come vare I be. I tink zey all come fon Himmel, and I see zem, and I
+talk mit zem, and zey talk mit me, and zey say dot I vill go mit zem;
+but ven I vake I bees sleep on ze ground, and ze big rains have come
+down, and zey have vet me too vet, and I bees too cold; and ven I tink
+I come to ze house, I not fine ze vay; and I have got ze pain in my
+head, and ze pain in my neck. Long time I not fine ze vay; zen long
+time Bridget ce come, and ce bring me to ze house, and ce put me in ze
+bed; and in ze night I have got ze pain in my life."
+
+I knelt down before the dear, stricken lamb, and blaming my neglect of
+him, I kissed him many times, and tried to smooth the pain from his
+little brow; but what I felt, words can never speak.
+
+The next morning Little Jakey was regularly installed in the sick-room.
+
+Days passed, but the doctors would not say that they thought him any
+better. Some days, however, he was able to be pillowed up in an
+arm-chair, and amuse himself a little with the toys the children were
+constantly bringing him; for by this time the desire to do something
+for Little Jakey had come to pervade the whole house.
+
+Once, sitting by his little bed, I discovered that he was trying very
+hard to keep awake, and I said to him softly,--
+
+"Dear Jakey, why do you not shut those sweet eyes of yours, and go to
+sleep? Surely you must be sleepy."
+
+"Yes, but I tink I not sleep. Vile I sleep, ze pain make me groan, and
+Mattie ce hear me, and ce not sleep."
+
+Mattie was then very sick also, and lying on a little bed not far from
+his.
+
+One day Mr. Artman, a German, called on Jakey, who asked for his little
+box of moneys, which had been presented to him mostly by visitors, and
+placing it in Mr. Artman's hand, he said to him, in his own sweet
+way,--
+
+"You vill keep ze leetle box mit you. Von time Jeem and Fred vill come
+in ze America, and ven zey come, you vill give ze big money to Jeem,
+and ze leetle moneys to Fred; and you vill tell zem dot I have go im
+Himmel mit my moder, and mit ze baby, and mit Meme."
+
+
+IX.
+
+One warm day when I visited Little Jakey his bed had been drawn around
+facing the window, and I found him sitting bolstered up there, with his
+long black curls lying out on the pillows.
+
+"My dear," said I, "I have brought you a bouquet, and let us pull it
+into pieces and see what we can make of it."
+
+Soon Little Jakey's bed was strewn over with the flowers. I do not
+remember ever having seen him so cheerful as he was that evening.
+Making a little hoop from a piece of wire, I twined him a wreath, while
+he amused himself handing me the flowers for it, and feeling over their
+soft leaves, and asking their names. Whether large or small, he never
+asked the name of the same kind of flower but once. When we placed it
+on his little head,--
+
+"Vy!" he exclaimed, "von time my moder have vear ze flowers like dis.
+Ce go vare von lady sing vot have come fon Italy; my fader go mit her
+dare. And von time ze lady come to my moder's house, and ce sing to ze
+harp, and ce sing to ze piano, and my moder and my fader sing mit her;
+and ce stay dare to ze supper, and much peoples come to ze supper."
+
+I remained with Little Jakey that night, and when all were still, and
+the night taper was glimmering faintly through the room, I felt his
+little hand pull mine, as if he would draw me closer to him.
+
+"What, dear?" I said, stooping over him.
+
+"I tink I die," he whispered; "I tink I go im Himmel mit my moder, and
+mit ze baby, and mit Meme."
+
+"Why, Jakey," I asked, coaxingly, "what makes you think so?"
+
+"Vy, ven ze baby die, ce be sick; and ven my moder die, ce be sick; and
+ven Meme die, ce be sick; and I be sick, and I tink I die."
+
+"So you are, very sick indeed, dear Jakey," I said; "but you will not
+be sorry to die, will you, dear?"
+
+"No, I not sorry; but all ze time I tink, How vill it be? Ven Gott take
+me im Himmel, vill he come mit me in ze leetle boat? zen vill he come
+mit me in ze big boat, mit ze big fire? and zen vill he come in ze big
+ship, mit ze tree vay high, and mit ze sail? and ven ze vinds blow too
+hard, and ze ship come crash on ze rock, and all ze peoples cry, vill
+Gott hold me tight in hees arms, like my moder?"
+
+"Yes, you dear, dear child," I said, "God will surely keep you close in
+his arms always, and when you come where he is, dear Jakey, your sweet
+eyes will have the light in them. You will see the stars then, and the
+angels, and all the good people who have gone to heaven from this
+world, and God, and his dear Son, Jesus. You know about him, do you
+not? He loves little children."
+
+"Yes, I know him," he said; "my moder have tell me dot von time he have
+come fon Himmel in ze vorld, and ze wicked men have kill him; zey have
+nail him to ze tree; and my moder say dot Jazu be ze Lord, and dot he
+love ze little children, and von time he have lif zem in hees arms; and
+he say dot he love zem all, and dot he vill bring zem im Himmel mit
+him, ven zey bees good. Meme ce know him too, and much times ce talk
+mit him in ze prayer vot ce say; and ce say dot he hear her, ce know he
+do. Ze good man know him, and much he talk mit him in ze Meeting; but
+to ze table he not talk, he tink mit him, mit hees hands so (crossing
+his own little ones, as if in the act of devotion). Georgy do dot vay,
+and Franky, and zey all; and Mary tell me, and I do dot vay."
+
+After a little, he asked again with great earnestness,--
+
+"How vill it be? If Gott not know ven I die, and if he bees not here,
+vill zey keep me von day and von day, vile he come?"
+
+"O yes, dear Jakey," I said; "but God will be here. He is here now. Let
+me explain it to you. God is a great Spirit, and he is everywhere. You
+have a little spirit in you, too, Jakey, that makes you talk and think
+and feel; now, while your spirit is shut up in your little body here,
+it cannot see God, but when this little body dies, your spirit will
+come out, and then it will see God, and see everything, and have wings
+and rise up, like the angels, and fly away to heaven, or Himmel, as you
+call it."
+
+I was wondering what Little Jakey was thinking of this, when, after a
+moment, he exclaimed,--
+
+"Vy! ven my moder have make me in ze pic-sure, ce make me mit vings,
+but ce not say dot I have ze vings, ven I come im Himmel. Heaven bees
+in America, but Himmel bees in Germany. My moder go dare, and ce say
+dot Gott vill come, and he vill bring me mit him dare, vare ce be. I
+vish I come dare now!"
+
+"Darling, you must shut your sweet eyes now and go to sleep."
+
+"No," he said, "ven I sut my eyes, zey not sut, and ven I tink I sleep,
+I not sleep. I bees cold; too cold I bees. I tink I die; I tink I go im
+Himmel now mit my moder, and mit ze baby, and mit Meme. Vill Gott come,
+and vill he fine me here? How vill it be? How--vill--it--be?"
+
+We sprang to him, and, leaning over his little form, felt that his
+pulse was really still, and his sweet breath hushed forever.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST CHILD.
+
+BY HENRY KINGSLEY.
+
+
+Remember? Yes, I remember well that time when the disagreement arose
+between Sam Buckley and Cecil, and how it was mended. You are wrong
+about one thing, General; no words ever passed between those two young
+men; death was between them before they had time to speak.
+
+I will tell you the real story, old as I am, as well as either of them
+could tell it for themselves; and as I tell it I hear the familiar roar
+of the old snowy river in my ears, and if I shut my eyes I can see the
+great mountain, Lanyngerin, bending down his head like a thoroughbred
+horse with a curb in his mouth; I can see the long gray plains, broken
+with the outlines of the solitary volcanoes Widderin and Monmot. Ah,
+General Halbert! I will go back there next year, for I am tired of
+England, and I will leave my bones there; I am getting old, and I want
+peace, as I had it in Australia. As for the story you speak of, it is
+simply this:--
+
+Four or five miles up the river from Garoopna stood a solitary hut,
+sheltered by a lofty, bare knoll, round which the great river chafed
+among the bowlders. Across the stream was the forest sloping down in
+pleasant glades from the mountain; and behind the hut rose the plain
+four or five hundred feet overhead, seeming to be held aloft by the
+blue-stone columns which rose from the river-side.
+
+In this cottage resided a shepherd, his wife, and one little boy, their
+son, about eight years old,--a strange, wild, little bush child, able
+to speak articulately, but utterly without knowledge or experience of
+human creatures, save of his father and mother; unable to read a line;
+without religion of any sort or kind; as entire a little savage, in
+fact, as you could find in the worst den in your city, morally
+speaking, and yet beautiful to look on; as active as a roe, and, with
+regard to natural objects, as fearless as a lion.
+
+As yet unfit to begin labor, all the long summer he would wander about
+the river-bank, up and down the beautiful rock-walled paradise where he
+was confined, sometimes looking eagerly across the water at the waving
+forest boughs, and fancying he could see other children far up the
+vistas beckoning to him to cross and play in that merry land of
+shifting lights and shadows.
+
+It grew quite into a passion with the little man to get across and play
+there; and one day when his mother was shifting the hurdles, and he was
+handing her the strips of green hide which bound them together, he said
+to her, "Mother, what country is that across the river?"
+
+"The forest, child."
+
+"There's plenty of quantongs over there, eh, mother, and raspberries?
+Why mayn't I get across and play there?"
+
+"The river is too deep, child, and the Bunyip lives in the water under
+the stones."
+
+"Who are the children that play across there?"
+
+"Black children, likely."
+
+"No white children?"
+
+"Pixies; don't go near 'em, child; they'll lure you on, Lord knows
+where. Don't get trying to cross the river, now, or you'll be drowned."
+
+But next day the passion was stronger on him than ever. Quite early on
+the glorious, cloudless, midsummer day he was down by the river-side,
+sitting on a rock, with his shoes and stockings off, paddling his feet
+in the clear tepid water, and watching the million fish in the
+shallows--black fish and grayling--leaping and flashing in the sun.
+
+There is no pleasure that I have ever experienced like a child's
+midsummer holiday,--the time, I mean, when two or three of us used to
+go away up the brook, and take our dinners with us, and come home at
+night tired, dirty, happy, scratched beyond recognition, with a great
+nosegay, three little trout, and one shoe, the other having been used
+for a boat till it had gone down with all hands out of soundings. How
+poor our Derby days, our Greenwich dinners, our evening parties, where
+there are plenty of nice girls, are, after that! Depend on it, a man
+never experiences such pleasure or grief after fourteen as he does
+before,--unless in some cases in his first love-making, when the
+sensation is new to him.
+
+But meanwhile there sat our child, bare-legged, watching the forbidden
+ground beyond the river. A fresh breeze was moving the trees and making
+the whole a dazzling mass of shifting light and shadow. He sat so still
+that a glorious violet and red kingfisher perched quite close, and,
+dashing into the water, came forth with a fish, and fled like a ray of
+light along the winding of the river. A colony of little shell parrots,
+too, crowded on a bough, and twittered and ran to and fro quite busily,
+as though they said to him, "We don't mind you, my dear; you are quite
+one of us."
+
+Never was the river so low. He stepped in; it scarcely reached his
+ankle. Now surely he might get across. He stripped himself, and,
+carrying his clothes, waded through, the water never reaching his
+middle, all across the long, yellow, gravelly shallow. And there he
+stood, naked and free, on the forbidden ground.
+
+He quickly dressed himself, and began examining his new kingdom, rich
+beyond his utmost hopes. Such quantongs, such raspberries, surpassing
+imagination; and when tired of them, such fern boughs, six or eight
+feet long! He would penetrate this region, and see how far it extended.
+
+What tales he would have for his father to-night! He would bring him
+here, and show him all the wonders, and perhaps he would build a new
+hut over here, and come and live in it? Perhaps the pretty young lady,
+with the feathers in her hat, lived somewhere here, too?
+
+There! There is one of those children he has seen before across the
+river. Ah! ah! it is not a child at all, but a pretty gray beast with
+big ears. A kangaroo, my lad; he won't play with you, but skips away
+slowly, and leaves you alone.
+
+There is something like the gleam of water on that rock. A snake! Now a
+sounding rush through the wood, and a passing shadow. An eagle! He
+brushes so close to the child, that he strikes at the bird with a
+stick, and then watches him as he shoots up like a rocket and,
+measuring the fields of air in ever-widening circles, hangs like a
+motionless speck upon the sky; though, measure his wings across, and
+you will find he is nearer fifteen feet than fourteen.
+
+Here is a prize, though! A wee little native bear, barely a foot
+long,--a little gray beast, comical beyond expression, with broad
+flapped ears,--sits on a tree within reach. He makes no resistance, but
+cuddles into the child's bosom, and eats a leaf as they go along; while
+his mother sits aloft and grunts indignant at the abstraction of her
+offspring, but on the whole takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on
+with her dinner of peppermint leaves.
+
+What a short day it has been! Here is the sun getting low, and the
+magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting.
+
+He would turn and go back to the river. Alas! which way?
+
+He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the
+way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which
+by some infernal magic seemed to have got between him and the river.
+Then he broke down, and that strange madness came on him, which comes
+even on strong men, when lost in the forest--a despair, a confusion of
+intellect, which has cost many a man his life. Think what it must be
+with a child!
+
+He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and
+that he must climb it. Alas! every step he took aloft carried him
+further from the river, and the hope of safety; and when he came to the
+top, just at dark, he saw nothing but cliff after cliff, range after
+range, all around him. He had been wandering through steep gullies all
+day unconsciously, and had penetrated far into the mountains. Night was
+coming down, still and crystal clear, and the poor little lad was far
+away from help or hope, going his last long journey alone.
+
+Partly perhaps walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he got
+through the night; and when the solemn morning came up, again he was
+still tottering along the leading range, bewildered, crying from time
+to time, "Mother, mother!" still nursing his little bear, his only
+companion, to his bosom, and holding still in his hand a few poor
+flowers he had gathered up the day before. Up and on all day, and at
+evening, passing out of the great zone of timber, he came on the bald,
+thunder-smitten summit ridge, where one ruined tree held up its
+skeleton arms against the sunset, and the wind came keen and frosty.
+So, with failing, feeble legs, upward still, toward the region of the
+granite and the snow; toward the eyry of the kite and the eagle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Brisk as they all were at Garoopna, none were so brisk as Cecil and
+Sam. Charles Hawker wanted to come with them, but Sam asked him to go
+with Jim, and, long before the others were ready, our two had strapped
+their blankets to their saddles, and followed by Sam's dog Rover, now
+getting a little gray about the nose, cantered off up the river.
+
+Neither spoke at first. They knew what a solemn task they had before
+them; and, while acting as though everything depended on speed, guessed
+well that their search was only for a little corpse, which, if they had
+luck, they would find stiff and cold under some tree or crag.
+
+Cecil began: "Sam, depend on it, that child has crossed the river to
+this side. If he had been on the plains, he would have been seen from a
+distance in a few hours."
+
+"I quite agree," said Sam. "Let us go down on this side till we are
+opposite the hut, and search for marks by the river-side."
+
+So they agreed, and in half an hour were opposite the hut, and, riding
+across to it to ask a few questions, found the poor mother sitting on
+the doorstep, with her apron over her head, rocking herself to and fro.
+
+"We have come to help you, mistress," said Sam. "How do you think he is
+gone?"
+
+She said, with frequent bursts of grief, that "some days before he had
+mentioned having seen white children across the water, who beckoned him
+to cross and play; that she, knowing well that they were fairies, or
+perhaps worse, had warned him solemnly not to mind them; but that she
+had very little doubt that they had helped him over and carried him
+away to the forest; and that her husband would not believe in his
+having crossed the river."
+
+"Why, it is not knee-deep across the shallow," said Cecil.
+
+"Let us cross again," said Sam; "he _may_ be drowned, but I don't think
+it."
+
+In a quarter of an hour from starting, they found, slightly up the
+stream, one of the child's socks, which in his hurry to dress he had
+forgotten. Here brave Rover took up the trail like a bloodhound, and
+before evening stopped at the foot of a lofty cliff.
+
+"Can he have gone up here?" said Sam, as they were brought up by the
+rock.
+
+"Most likely," said Cecil. "Lost children always climb from height to
+height. I have heard it often remarked by old bush hands. Why they do
+so, God, who leads them, only knows; but the fact is beyond denial. Ask
+Rover what he thinks."
+
+The brave old dog was half-way up, looking back for them. It took them
+nearly till dark to get their horses up; and, as there was no moon, and
+the way was getting perilous, they determined to camp, and start again
+in the morning.
+
+They spread their blankets, and lay down side by side. Sam had thought,
+from Cecil's proposing to come with him in preference to the others,
+that he would speak of a subject nearly concerning them both; but Cecil
+went off to sleep and made no sign; and Sam, ere he dozed, said to
+himself, "If he doesn't speak this journey, I will. It is unbearable
+that we should not come to some understanding. Poor Cecil!"
+
+At early dawn they caught up their horses, which had been hobbled with
+the stirrup leathers, and started afresh. Both were more silent than
+ever, and the dog, with his nose to the ground, led them slowly along
+the rocky rib of the mountain, ever going higher and higher.
+
+"It is inconceivable," said Sam, "that the poor child can have come up
+here. There is Tuckerimbid close to our right, five thousand feet above
+the river. Don't you think we must be mistaken?"
+
+"The dog disagrees with you," said Cecil. "He has something before him,
+not very far off. Watch him."
+
+The trees had become dwarfed and scattered; they were getting out of
+the region of trees; the real forest zone was now below them, and they
+saw they were emerging toward a bald elevated down, and that a few
+hundred yards before them was a dead tree, on the highest branch of
+which sat an eagle.
+
+"The dog has stopped," said Cecil; "the end is near."
+
+"See," said Sam, "there is a handkerchief under the tree."
+
+"That is the boy himself," said Cecil.
+
+They were up to him and off in a moment. There he lay dead and stiff,
+one hand still grasping the flowers he had gathered on his last happy
+play-day, and the other laid as a pillow between the soft cold cheek
+and the rough cold stone. His midsummer holiday was over, his long
+journey was ended. He had found out at last what lay beyond the shining
+river he had watched so long.
+
+That is the whole story, General Halbert; and who should know it better
+than I, Geoffry Hamlyn?
+
+
+
+
+GOODY GRACIOUS! AND THE FORGET-ME-NOT.
+
+BY JOHN NEAL.
+
+
+Once there was a little bit of a thing,--not more than so high,--and
+her name was Ruth Page; but they called her Teenty-Tawnty, for she was
+the daintiest little creature you ever saw, with the smoothest hair and
+the brightest face; and then she was always playing about, and always
+happy; and so the people that lived in that part of the country, when
+they heard her laughing and singing all by herself at peep of day, like
+little birds after a shower, and saw her running about in the edge of
+the wood after tulips and butterflies, or tumbling head-over-heels in
+the long rich grass by the river-side, with her little pet lamb or her
+two white pigeons always under her feet, or listening to the wild bees
+in the apple-blossoms, with her sweet mouth "all in a tremble," and her
+happy eyes brimful of sunshine,--they used to say that she was no child
+at all, or no child of earth, but a fairy-gift, and that she must have
+been dropped into her mother's lap, like a handful of flowers, when she
+was half asleep; and so they wouldn't call her Ruth Page,--no indeed,
+that they wouldn't!--but they called her little Teenty-Tawnty, or the
+Little Fairy; and they used to bring her fairy tales to read, till she
+couldn't bear to read anything else, and wanted to be a fairy herself.
+
+Well, and so one day, when she was out in the sweet-smelling woods, all
+alone by herself, singing, "Where are you going, my pretty maid, my
+pretty maid?" and watching the gold-jackets, and the blue dragon-flies,
+and the sweet pond-lilies, and the bright-eyed glossy eels, and the
+little crimson-spotted fish, as they "coiled and swam," and darted
+hither and thither, like "flashes of golden fire," and then huddled
+together, all of a sudden, just underneath the green turf where she
+sat, as if they saw something, and were half frightened to death, and
+were trying to hide in the shadow; well and so--as she sat there, with
+her little naked feet hanging over and almost touching the water,
+singing to herself, "My face is my fortune, sir, she said! sir, she
+said!" and looking down into a deep sunshiny spot, and holding the soft
+smooth hair away from her face with both hands, and trying to count the
+dear little fish before they got over their fright, all at once she
+began to think of the water-fairies, and how cool and pleasant it must
+be to live in these deep sunshiny hollows, with green turf all about
+you, the blossoming trees and the blue skies overhead, the bright
+gravel underneath your feet, like powdered stars, and thousands of
+beautiful fish for playfellows! all spotted with gold and crimson, or
+winged with rose-leaves, and striped with faint purple and burnished
+silver, like the shells and flowers of the deep sea, where the
+moonlight buds and blossoms forever and ever; and then she thought if
+she could only just reach over, and dip one of her little fat rosy feet
+into the smooth shining water,--just once--only once,---it would be
+_so_ pleasant! and she should be _so_ happy! and then, if she could but
+manage to scare the fishes a little,--a very little,--that would be
+such glorious fun, too,--wouldn't it, you?
+
+Well and so--she kept stooping and stooping, and stretching and
+stretching, and singing to herself all the while, "Sir, she said! sir,
+she said! I'm going a milking, sir, she said!" till just as she was
+ready to tumble in, head first, something jumped out of the bushes
+behind her, almost touching her as it passed, and went plump into the
+deepest part of the pool! saying, "_Once! once!_" with a heavy booming
+sound, like the tolling of a great bell under water, and afar off.
+
+"Goody gracious! what's that?" screamed little Ruth Page, and then, the
+very next moment, she began to laugh and jump and clap her hands, to
+see what a scampering there was among the poor silly fish, and all for
+nothing! said she; for out came a great good-natured bull-frog, with an
+eye like a bird, and a big bell-mouth, and a back all frosted over with
+precious stones, and dripping with sunshine; and there he sat looking
+at her awhile, as if he wanted to frighten her away; and then he opened
+his great lubberly mouth at her, and bellowed out, "_Once! once!_" and
+vanished.
+
+"Luddy tuddy! who cares for you?" said little Ruth; and so, having got
+over her fright, she began to creep to the edge of the bank once more,
+and look down into the deep water, to see what had become of the little
+fish that were so plentiful there, and so happy but a few minutes
+before. But they were all gone, and the water was as still as death;
+and while she sat looking into it, and waiting for them to come back,
+and wondering why they should be so frightened at nothing but a
+bull-frog, which they must have seen a thousand times, the poor little
+simpletons! and thinking she should like to catch one of the smallest
+and carry it home to her little baby-brother, all at once a soft shadow
+fell upon the water, and the scented wind blew her smooth hair all into
+her eyes, and as she put up both hands in a hurry to pull it away, she
+heard something like a whisper close to her ear, saying, "_Twice!
+twice!_" and just then the trailing branch of a tree swept over the
+turf, and filled the whole air with a storm of blossoms, and she heard
+the same low whisper repeated close at her ear, saying, "_Twice!
+twice!_" and then she happened to look down into the water,--and what
+do you think she saw there?
+
+"Goody gracious, mamma! is that you?" said poor little Ruth; and up she
+jumped, screaming louder than ever, and looking all about her, and
+calling, "Mamma, mamma! I see you, mamma! you needn't hide, mamma!" But
+no mamma was to be found.
+
+"Well, if that isn't the strangest thing!" said little Ruth, at last,
+after listening a few minutes, on looking all round everywhere, and up
+into the trees, and away off down the river-path, and then toward the
+house. "If I didn't think I saw my dear good mamma's face in the water,
+as plain as day, and if I didn't hear something whisper in my ear and
+say, "_Twice! twice!_"--and then she stopped, and held her breath, and
+listened again,--"if I didn't hear it as plain as I ever heard anything
+in my life, then my name isn't Ruth Page, that's all, nor Teenty-Tawnty
+neither!" And then she stopped, and began to feel very unhappy and
+sorrowful; for she remembered how her mother had cautioned her never to
+go near the river, nor into the woods alone, and how she had promised
+her mother many and many a time never to do so, never, never! And then
+the tears came into her eyes, and she began to wish herself away from
+the haunted spot, where she could kneel down and say her prayers; and
+then she looked up to the sky, and then down into the still water, and
+then she thought she would just go and take one more peep,--only
+one,--just to see if the dear little fishes had got over their fright,
+and then she would run home to her mother, and tell her how forgetful
+she had been, and how naughty, and ask her to give her something that
+would make her remember her promises. Poor thing! little did she know
+how deep the water was, nor how wonderfully she had escaped! once,
+once! twice, twice! and still she ventured a third time.
+
+Well and so--don't you think, she crept along, crept along to the very
+edge of the green, slippery turf, on her hands and knees, half
+trembling with fear, and half laughing to think of that droll-looking
+fat fellow, with the big bell-mouth, and the yellow breeches, and the
+grass-green military jacket, turned up with buff and embroidered with
+gems, and the bright golden eye that had so frightened her before, and
+wondering in her little heart if he would show himself again; and
+singing all the while, as she crept nearer and nearer, "Nobody asked
+you, sir, she said! sir, she said! nobody asked you, sir, she said!"
+till at last she had got near enough to look over, and see the little
+fishes there tumbling about by dozens, and playing bo-peep among the
+flowers that grew underneath the bank, and were multiplied by thousands
+in the clear water, when, all at once, she felt the turf giving way,
+and she put out her arms and screamed for her mother. Goody gracious!
+how she did scream! and then something answered from the flowing waters
+underneath, and from the flowering trees overhead, with a mournful
+sweet sound, like wailing afar off, "_Thrice! thrice!_" and the
+flashing waters swelled up, saying, "_Thrice! thrice!_" and the
+flowering branch of the tree swept over the turf, and the sound was the
+same, "_Thrice! thrice!_" and in she went, headlong, into the deepest
+part of the pool, screaming with terror, and calling on her mother to
+the last: poor mother!
+
+Well and so--when she came to herself, where do you think she was? Why,
+she was lying out in the warm summer air, on a green bank, all tufted
+with cowslips and violets and clover-blossoms, with a plenty of
+strawberries underneath her feet, and the bluest water you ever saw all
+round her, murmuring like the rose-lipped sea-shells; and the air was
+full of singing-birds, and there was a little old woman looking at her,
+with the funniest cap, and a withered face not bigger than you may see
+when you look at the baby through the big end of a spyglass: the cap
+was a morning-glory, and it was tied underneath the chin with bleached
+cobweb, and the streamers and bows were just like the colors you see in
+a soap-bubble.
+
+"Goody gracious! where am I now?" said little Ruth.
+
+"Yes, my dear, that's my name," said the little old woman, dropping a
+low courtesy, and then spinning round two or three times, and squatting
+down suddenly, so as to make what you call a cheese.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say that's your real name," whispered little
+Ruth.
+
+"To be sure it is! just as much as-- And pray, my little creature,
+what's your name?"
+
+"Mine! O, my name is Ruth Page, _only_ Ruth Page." And up she jumped,
+and spun round among the strawberries and flowers, and tried to make a
+courtesy like the little old woman, and then they both burst out
+a-laughing together.
+
+"Well," said Goody Gracious, "you're a nice, good-natured, funny little
+thing, I'll say that for you, as ever I happened to meet with; but
+haven't you another and a prettier name, hey?"
+
+"Why, sometimes they call me little Teenty-Tawnty," said Ruth.
+
+"Fiddle-de-dee, I don't like that name any better than the other: we
+must give you a new name," said the little old woman; "but first tell
+me,"--and she grew very serious, and her little sharp eyes changed
+color,--"first tell me how you happened to be here, in the very heart
+of Fairy-land, with nobody to take care of you, and not so much as a
+wasp or a bumble-bee to watch over you when you are asleep."
+
+"Indeed, and indeed, ma'am, I don't know," said little Ruth; "all I do
+know is, that I have been very naughty, and that I am drowned, and that
+I shall never see my poor dear mamma any more!" And then she up and
+told the whole story to the little old woman, crying bitterly all the
+while.
+
+"Don't take on so, my little dear, don't, don't!" said Goody Gracious;
+and out she whipped what appeared to Ruth nothing but a rumpled leaf of
+the tiger-lily, and wiped her eyes with it. "Be a good child, and,
+after a trial of three days in Fairy-land, if you want to go back to
+your mother you shall go, and you may carry with you a token to her
+that you have told the truth."
+
+"O, bless your little dear old-fashioned face," cried Ruth; "O, bless
+you, bless you! only give me a token that will make me always remember
+what I have promised my poor dear mother, and I shall be so happy! and
+I won't ask for anything else."
+
+"What, neither for humming-birds, nor gold-fish, nor butterflies, nor
+diamonds, nor pearls, nor anything you have been wishing for so long,
+ever since you were able to read about Fairy-land?"
+
+"No, ma'am; just give me a ring of wheat-straw, or a brooch from the
+ruby-beetle, if you like, and I shall be satisfied."
+
+"Be it so; but, before I change you to a fairy, you must make choice of
+what you want to see in Fairy-land for three days running; for, at the
+end of that time, I shall change you back again, so that if you are of
+the same mind then, you may go back to your mother, and, if not, you
+will stay with us for ever and ever."
+
+"For ever and ever?" said Ruth, and she trembled; "please, ma'am, I
+should like to go now, if it's all the same to you?"
+
+"No! but take this flower," and, as she spoke, she stooped down, and
+pulled up a forget-me-not by the roots, and breathed upon it, and it
+blossomed all over; "take this root," said she, "and plant it
+somewhere, and tend it well, and at any time after three days, if you
+get tired of being here, all you have to do will be just to pull it up
+out of the earth, and wish yourself at home, and you will find yourself
+there in a moment, in your own little bed."
+
+"Goody gracious! you don't say so!"
+
+"But I do say so."
+
+"I declare, I've a good mind to try!"
+
+"What, pull it up before you have planted it? No, no, my dear. It must
+be left out threescore and twelve hours, and be watered with the dews
+and the starlight of the South Sea, where you are now, thousands and
+thousands of miles from your own dear country; but there is one thing I
+would have you know before you plant the flower."
+
+"If you please, ma'am," said little Ruth.
+
+"It is given to you, my dear, to help you correct your faults; you mean
+to do right, and you try pretty hard, but you are _so_ forgetful, you
+say."
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Well, now, but just so long as you tend this plant with care, and
+water it every day at the same hour,--every day, mind you, and at the
+same hour,--you will be growing better."
+
+Ruth was overjoyed.
+
+"But," continued the fairy, "if you neglect it for a single day, it
+will begin to droop and wither, the leaves will change, and some of the
+blossoms will drop off, and your mother will begin to feel unhappy and
+low-spirited."
+
+"O yes; but I never shall, ma'am,--never, _never!_"
+
+"Don't be too sure; and if you neglect it for two whole days running,
+all the flowers will drop off but one, and your mother will take to her
+bed, and nobody but you will know what ails her."
+
+Poor Ruth began to tremble, and the tears came in her eyes.
+
+"But," continued the fairy,--"_but_ if you should neglect it for three
+days running, my poor child,--but for three days running,--the last
+flower will drop off, and your mother will die of a broken heart."
+
+"O mercy, mercy!" cried poor little Ruth. "O, take it! take it! I
+wouldn't have it for the world!" And she flung it down upon the loose
+earth, and shook her little fingers, just as if something had stung
+her.
+
+"It is too late now. See, my dear, it has already taken root, and now
+there is no help for it. Remember! your mother's health, happiness, and
+life depend upon that flower. Watch it well! And now, daughter of
+earth," and, as she spoke, she stooped, and pulled up a whole handful
+of violets, dripping with summer rain,--and repeating the words,
+"Daughter of earth, away! Rosebud, appear!" shook the moisture all over
+her; and instantly the dear child found herself afloat in the air, with
+pinions of purple gauze, bedropped with gold, with millions of little
+fairies all about her, swarming like butterflies and blossoms after a
+pleasant rain, and welcoming their sister Rosebud to Fairy-land.
+
+"Well," thought Rosebud,--we must call her Rosebud now,--"well, if this
+being a little fairy isn't one of the pleasantest things." And then she
+recollected that she had only three days to stay there and see the
+sights, and she looked round her to ask if there was anybody near to
+help her, and take charge of her, and tell her what to do and where to
+go.
+
+"Daughter," said a sweet voice that she knew, though it appeared to
+come out and steal up from the leaves of another
+morning-glory,--"Daughter!"
+
+"Mother," said Rosebud.
+
+"You may have your choice to-day of these three things,--a
+butterfly-hunt, a wedding, or a play."
+
+"O, a wedding, a wedding," said Rosebud. "O, I have always wanted to
+see a wedding."
+
+"Be it so," said the voice; and instantly a sweet wind arose, and
+lifted her up, and swept her, and thousands more like her, over the
+blue deep so swiftly that nothing could be seen but a mist of sparkles
+here and there, till they all found themselves on the sea-shore, at the
+mouth of a deep sparry cave, all hung about with the richest moss, and
+lighted with pearls in clusters, and with little patches of glow-worms,
+and carpeted with the wings of butterflies. In the midst were a
+multitude of little fairies, hovering and floating over a throne of
+spider-net ivory, on which lay the bride, with a veil of starlight,
+interwoven with the breath of roses, covering her from head to foot,
+and falling over the couch like sunshine playing on clear water.
+
+By and by a faint, strange murmuring was heard afar off, like the
+ringing of lily-bells to the touch of the honey-bees, growing louder
+and louder, and coming nearer and nearer every moment. Rosebud turned
+toward the sea with all the other fairies, and held her breath; and
+after a few moments a fleet of little ships, with the most delicate
+purple and azure sails, so thin that you could see the sky through
+them, came tilting along over the sea as if they were alive,--and so
+they were,--and drew up, as if in order of battle, just before the
+mouth of the cave; and then a silver trumpet sounded on the shore, and
+a swarm of hornets appeared, whizzing and whirring all about the cave;
+and then there was another trumpet, and another, about as loud as you
+may hear from a caged blue-bottle, and compliments were interchanged,
+and a salute fired, which frightened the little lady-fairies into all
+sorts of shapes, and made the little fairy-bride jump up and ask if her
+time had come, though, to tell you the truth, the noise did not appear
+much more terrible to Rosebud than her little brother's pop-gun; and
+then a sort of barge, not unlike the blossom of a sweet pea in shape,
+was manned from the largest of the fleet, and, when it touched the
+bright sparkling sand, out leaped a little prince of a fellow, with a
+bunch of white feathers in his hat, plucked from the moth-miller, a
+sword like the finest cambric-needle belted about his waist, and the
+most unimpeachable small-clothes.
+
+This turned out to be the bridegroom; and after a few more flourishes,
+and not a little pulling and hauling among the bridesmaids, the bride
+and the bridegroom stood up together, and looked silly and sheepish, as
+if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths; and after listening awhile to
+an old droning-beetle, without hearing a word he said, they bowed and
+courtesied, and made some sort of a reply, nobody could guess what; and
+then forth stepped the master of ceremonies, a priggish-looking
+grasshopper, with straw-colored tights, and a fashionable coat,
+single-breasted, and so quakerish it set poor little Rosebud
+a-laughing, in spite of all she could do, every time she looked at his
+legs; and _then!_ out ran the ten thousand trumpeting bumble-bees, and
+the katydid grew noisier than ever, and the cricket chirruped for joy,
+and the bridegroom touched the bride's cheek, and pointed slyly toward
+a little heap of newly gathered roses and violets, piled up afar off,
+in a shadowy part of the cave, just underneath a trailing canopy of
+changeable moss; the bride blushed, and the fairies tittered, and
+little Rosebud turned away, and wished herself at home, and instantly
+the bride and the bridegroom vanished! and the ships and the fairies!
+and the lights and the music! and Rosebud found herself standing face
+to face with the little withered old woman, who was looking mournfully
+at the drooping forget-me-not. The tears came into her eyes, and for
+the first time since the flower took root,--for the very first
+time,--she began to think of her mother, and of her promise to the
+fairy; and she stooped down, in an agony of terror and shame and
+self-reproach, to see how it fared with her forget-me-not. Alas! it had
+already begun to droop and wither; and the leaves were changing color,
+and the blossoms were dropping off, and she knew that her mother was
+beginning to suffer.
+
+"O that I had never seen the hateful flower!" cried Rosebud; and then
+instantly recollecting herself, she dropped upon her knees, and kissed
+it, and wept upon it, and the flower seemed refreshed by her tears; and
+when she stood up and looked into the face of the good little fairy,
+and saw her lips tremble, and the color change in her sweet mournful
+eyes, she felt as if she never should be happy again.
+
+"Daughter of earth! child of the air!" said the fairy, "two more days
+remain to thee. What wouldst thou have?"
+
+"O nothing! nothing! Let me but go back to my dear, dear mother, and I
+shall be so happy!"
+
+"That cannot be. These trials are to prepare thee for thy return to
+her. Be patient, and take thy choice of these three things,--a
+tournament, a coronation, or a ball!"
+
+"Goody gracious! how I _should_ like to see a coronation!" cried
+Rosebud; and then she recollected herself, and blushed and courtesied,
+and said, "if you please, ma'am."
+
+"Call me mother, my dear; in Fairy-land I am your mother."
+
+"Well, mother," said Rosebud, the tears starting into her eyes, and her
+heart swelling, as she determined never to call her mamma, no,
+never!--"well, mother, if you please, I would rather stay here and
+watch the flower: I don't want to see anything more in Fairy-land; I've
+had enough of such things to last me as long as I live. But O, if I
+should happen to fall asleep!"
+
+"If you should, my dear, you will wake in season; but take your
+choice."
+
+"Thank you, mother, but I choose to stay here."
+
+At these words the fairy vanished, and Rosebud was left alone, looking
+at the dear little flower, which seemed to grow fresher and fresher,
+and more and more beautiful every minute, and wondering whether it
+would be so with her dear mamma; and then she fell to thinking about
+her home, and how much trouble she had given her mother, and how much
+better she would always be after she had got back to her once more; and
+then she fell asleep, and slept so soundly that she did not wake till
+the sun was up, and it was time to water the flower.
+
+At first she was terribly frightened; but when she remembered what the
+fairy told her, she began to feel comfortable, and, lest something
+might happen, she took a little sea-shell that lay there, and running
+down to the water, dipped it up full, and was on her way back, thinking
+how happy her poor dear mamma would feel if she could only know _what_
+it was and _who_ it was that made her so much better, when she heard
+the strangest and sweetest noises all about her in the air, as if the
+whole sky was full of the happiest and merriest creatures! and when she
+looked up, lo! there was a broad glitter to be seen, as if the whole
+population of Fairy-land were passing right over her head, making a
+sort of path like that you see at sunrise along the blue deep, when the
+waters are motionless and smooth and clear.
+
+"Well," said she, looking up, "I _do_ wonder where they are going so
+fast,"--and then she stopped,--"and I do think they might be civil
+enough just to let a body know; I dare say 'tis the coronation, or the
+butterfly-hunt, or the tournament, or the-- O, how I should like to be
+there!"
+
+No sooner was the wish uttered, than she found herself seated in a high
+gallery, as delicately carved as the ivory fans of the east; with
+diamonds and ostrich-feathers all about and below her, and a prodigious
+crowd assembled in the open air,--with the lists open,--a trumpet
+sounding,--and scores of knights armed cap-ŕ-pie, and mounted on
+dragon-flies, waiting for the charge. All eyes were upon her, and
+everybody about was whispering her name, and she never felt half so
+happy in her life; and she was just beginning to compare the delicate
+embroidery of her wings with that of her next neighbor, a sweet little
+fairy who sat looking through her fingers at a youthful champion below,
+and pouting and pouting as if she wanted everybody to know that he had
+jilted her, when she happened to see a little forget-me-not embroidered
+on his beaver; and she instantly recollected her promise, and cried
+out, "O mamma! mamma!" and wished herself back again, where she might
+sit by the flower and watch over it, and never leave it, never! till
+her three days of trial were ended.
+
+In a moment, before she could speak a word, or even make a bow to the
+nice little boy-fairy, who had just handed her up her glove on the
+point of a lance like a sunbeam, she found herself seated by the
+flower. Poor little thing! It was too late! Every blossom had fallen
+off but one, and that looked unhealthy, and trembled when she breathed
+upon it. She thought of her mamma, and fancied she could see them
+carrying her up to bed, and all the doctors there, and nobody able to
+tell what ailed her; and she threw herself all along upon the grass,
+and wished all the fairies at the bottom of the Red Sea, and herself
+with them! And when she looked up, what do you think she saw? and where
+do you think she was? why, she was at the bottom of the Red Sea, and
+all the wonders of the Red Sea were about her,--chariots and
+chariot-wheels and the skeletons of war-horses, and mounted warriors,
+with heaps of glittering armor, and jewels of silver and jewels of
+gold, and banner and shield and spear, with millions and millions of
+little sea-fairies, and Robin Goodfellows, and giants and dwarfs, and
+the funniest-looking monsters you ever heard of; and the waters were
+all bright with fairy-lamps that were alive, and with ribbons that were
+alive, and with changeable flowers that swam about and whispered to
+each other in a language of their own; and there were great heaps of
+pearl washed up into drifts and ridges, and a pile of the
+strangest-looking old-fashioned furniture, of gold and ivory, and
+little mermaids with their dolls not longer than your finger, with live
+fishes for tails, jumping about and playing hide-and-seek with the
+sun-spots and star-fishes, and the striped water-snakes of the Indian
+seas,--the most brilliant and beautiful of all the creatures that live
+there.
+
+And while she was looking about her, and wondering at all she saw, she
+happened to think once more of the _forget-me-not_, and to wish herself
+back again! At that instant she heard a great heavy bell booming and
+tolling,--she knew it was tolling--and she knew she was too late--and
+she knew that her mother was dead of a broken heart,--and she fell upon
+her face, and stretched forth her hands with a shriek, and prayed God
+to forgive her! and allow her to see her mother once more,--only once
+more!
+
+"Why, what ails the child?" whispered somebody that seemed to be
+stooping over her.
+
+It was her mother's voice! and poor Ruth was afraid to look up lest it
+should all vanish forever.
+
+"Upon my word, Sarah," said another voice,--it was her father's,--"upon
+my word, Sarah, I do not know; but the poor little creature's thoughts
+appear to have undergone another change. I have heard nothing to-day of
+the forget-me-not which troubled her so the first week, have you?"
+
+"She has mentioned it but once to-day, and then she shuddered; but
+perhaps we had better keep it in the glass till we see whether it will
+bear to be transplanted, for she seems to have set her little heart
+upon having that flower live; I wish I knew why!"
+
+"Do you, indeed, mamma?" whispered poor Ruth, still without looking up;
+"well, then, I will tell you. That flower was given me by a fairy to
+make me remember my promises to you, my poor, dear, dead mamma; and so
+long as I water that every day at the same hour, so long I shall be
+growing better and better, and my poor dear mamma,--boo-hoo! boo-hoo!"
+and the little thing began to cry as if she would break her heart.
+
+"Why, this is stranger than all," said the father. "I can't help
+thinking the poor child would be rational enough now, if she hadn't
+read so many fairy-books; but what a mercy it was, my dear Sarah, and
+how shall we ever be thankful enough, that you happened to be down
+there when she fell into the water."
+
+"Ah!" Ruth Page began to hold her breath, and listen with the strangest
+feeling.
+
+"Yes, Robert; but I declare to you, I am frightened whenever I think of
+the risk I ran by letting her fall in, head first, as I did."
+
+Poor Ruth began to lift her head, and to feel about, and pinch herself
+to see if she was really awake.
+
+"And then, too, just think of this terrible fever, and the strange,
+wild poetry she has been talking, day after day, about Fairy-land."
+
+"Poetry! Fudge, Robert, fudge!"
+
+Ruth looked up, full of amazement and joy, and whispered, "Fudge,
+father, fudge!" and the very next words that fell from her trembling
+lips as she sat looking at her mother, and pointing at a little bunch
+of forget-me-nots in full flower, that her mother had kept for her in a
+glass by the window, were these, "O mother! dearest mother! what a
+terrible dream I have had!"
+
+"Hush, my love, hush! and go to sleep, and we will talk this matter
+over when you are able to bear it."
+
+"Goody gracious, mamma!"
+
+"There she goes again!" cried the father; "now we shall have another
+fit!"
+
+"Hush, hush, my love! you must go to sleep now, and not talk any more."
+
+"Well, kiss me, mamma, and let me have your hand to go to sleep with,
+and I'll try."
+
+Her mother kissed the dear little thing, and took her hand in hers, and
+laid her cheek upon the pillow, and in less than five minutes she was
+sound asleep, and breathing as she hadn't breathed before since she had
+been fished out of the water, nearly three weeks back, on her way to
+Fairy-land.
+
+
+
+
+A FADED LEAF OF HISTORY.
+
+BY REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
+
+
+One quiet, snowy afternoon this winter, I found in a dark corner of one
+of the oldest libraries in the country a curious pamphlet. It fell into
+my hands like a bit of old age and darkness itself. The pages were
+coffee-colored, and worn thin and ragged at the edges, like rotting
+leaves in fall; they had grown clammy to the touch, too, from the grasp
+of so many dead years. There was a peculiar smell about the book which
+it had carried down from the days when young William Penn went up and
+down the clay-paths of his village of Philadelphia, stopping to watch
+the settlers fishing in the clear ponds or to speak to the gangs of
+yellow-painted Indians coming in with peltry from the adjacent forest.
+
+The leaves were scribbled over with the name of John,--"John," in a
+cramped, childish hand. His father's book, no doubt, and the writing a
+bit of boyish mischief. Outside now, in the street, the boys were
+pelting each other with snowballs, just as this John had done in the
+clay-paths. But for nearly two hundred years his bones had been
+crumbled into lime and his flesh gone back into grass and roots. Yet
+here he was, a boy still; here was the old pamphlet and the scrawl in
+yellowing ink, with the smell about it still.
+
+_Printed by Rainier Janssen_, 1698. I turned over the leaves, expecting
+to find a sermon preached before Andros, "for the conversion of
+Sadducees," or some "Report of the Condition of the Principalities of
+New Netherland, or New Sweden, for the Use of the Lord's High
+Proprietors thereof" (for of such precious dead dust this library is
+full); but I found, instead, wrapped in weighty sentences and backed by
+the gravest and most ponderous testimony, the story of a baby, "a
+Sucking Child six Months old." It was like a live seed in the hand of a
+mummy. The story of a baby and a boy and an aged man, in "the devouring
+Waves of the Sea; and also among the cruel devouring Jaws of inhuman
+Canibals." There were, it is true, other divers persons in the company,
+by one of whom the book is written. But the divers persons seemed to me
+to be only part of that endless caravan of ghosts that has been
+crossing the world since the beginning; they never can be anything but
+ghosts to us. If only to find a human interest in them, one would
+rather they had been devoured by inhuman cannibals than not. But a baby
+and a boy and an aged man!
+
+All that afternoon, through the dingy windows of the old building, I
+could see the snow falling soft and steadily, covering the countless
+roofs of the city, and fancying the multitude of comfortable happy
+homes which these white roofs hid, and the sweet-tempered, gracious
+women there, with their children close about their knees. I thought I
+would like to bring this little live baby back to the others, with its
+strange, pathetic story, out of the buried years where it has been
+hidden with dead people so long, and give it a place and home among us
+all again.
+
+I only premise that I have left the facts of the history unaltered,
+even in the names; and that I believe them to be, in every particular,
+true.
+
+On the 22d of August, 1696, this baby, a puny, fretful boy, was carried
+down the street of Port Royal, Jamaica, and on board the "barkentine"
+Reformation, bound for Pennsylvania; a Province which, as you remember,
+Du Chastellux, a hundred years later, described as a most savage
+country which he was compelled to cross on his way to the burgh of
+Philadelphia, on its border. To this savage country our baby was bound.
+He had by way of body-guard his mother, a gentle Quaker lady; his
+father, Jonathan Dickenson, a wealthy planter, on his way to increase
+his wealth in Penn's new settlement; three negro men, four negro women,
+and an Indian named Venus, all slaves of the said Dickenson; the
+captain, his boy, seven seamen, and two passengers. Besides this
+defence, the baby's ship was escorted by thirteen sail of merchantmen
+under convoy of an armed frigate. For these were the days when, to the
+righteous man, terror walked abroad, in the light and the darkness. The
+green, quiet coasts were but the lurking-places of savages, and the
+green, restless seas more treacherous with pirates. Kidd had not yet
+buried his treasure, but was prowling up and down the eastern seas,
+gathering it from every luckless vessel that fell in his way. The
+captain, Kirle, debarred from fighting by cowardice, and the Quaker
+Dickenson, forbidden by principle, appear to have set out upon their
+perilous journey, resolved to defend themselves by suspicion, pure and
+simple. They looked for treachery behind every bush and billow; the
+only chance of safety lay, they maintained, in holding every white man
+to be an assassin and every red man a cannibal until they were proved
+otherwise.
+
+The boy was hired by Captain Kirle to wait upon him. His name was John
+Hilliard, and he was precisely what any of these good-humored,
+mischievous fellows outside would have been, hired on a brigantine two
+centuries ago; disposed to shirk his work in order to stand gaping at
+Black Ben fishing, or to rub up secretly his old cutlass for the behoof
+of Kidd, or the French when they should come, while the Indian Venus
+stood by looking on, with the baby in her arms.
+
+The aged man is invariably set down as chief of the company, though the
+captain held all the power and the Quaker all the money. But white hair
+and a devout life gave an actual social rank in those days, obsolete
+now, and Robert Barrow was known as a man of God all along the
+coast-settlements from Massachusetts to Ashley River, among whites and
+Indians. Years before, in Yorkshire, his inward testimony (he being a
+Friend) had bidden him go preach in this wilderness. He asked of God,
+it is said, rather to die; but was not disobedient to the heavenly
+call, and came and labored faithfully. He was now returning from the
+West Indies, where he had carried his message a year ago.
+
+The wind set fair for the first day or two; the sun was warm. Even the
+grim Quaker Dickenson might have thought the white-sailed fleet a
+pretty sight scudding over the rolling green plain, if he could have
+spared time to his jealous eyes from scanning the horizon for pirates.
+Our baby, too, saw little of sun or sea; for, being but a sickly baby,
+with hardly vitality enough to live from day to day, it was kept below,
+smothered in the finest of linens and the softest of paduasoy.
+
+One morning when the fog lifted, Dickenson's watch for danger was
+rewarded.  They had lost their way in the night; the fleet was gone,
+the dead blue slopes of water rolled up to the horizon on every side
+and were met by the dead blue sky, without the break of a single sail
+or the flicker of a flying bird. For fifteen days they beat about
+without any apparent aim other than to escape the enemies whom they
+hourly expected to leap out from behind the sky-line. On the sixteenth
+day friendly signs were made to them from shore. "A fire made a great
+Smoak, and People beckoned to us to putt on Shoar," but Kirle and
+Dickenson, seized with fresh fright, put about and made off as for
+their lives, until nine o'clock that night, when, seeing two
+signal-lights, doubtless from some of their own convoy, they cried out,
+"The French! the French!" and tacked back again as fast as might be.
+The next day, Kirle being disabled by a jibbing boom, Dickenson brought
+his own terrors into command, and for two or three days whisked the
+unfortunate barkentine up and down the coast, afraid of both sea and
+shore, until finally, one night, he run her aground on a sand-bar on
+the Florida reefs. Wondering much at this "judgment of God," Dickenson
+went to work. Indeed, to do him justice, he seems to have been always
+ready enough to use his burly strength and small wit, trusting to them
+to carry him through the world wherein his soul was beleaguered by many
+inscrutable judgments of God and the universal treachery of his
+brother-man.
+
+The crew abandoned the ship in a heavy storm. A fire was kindled in the
+bight of a sand-hill and protected as well as might be with sails and
+palmetto branches; and to this, Dickenson, with "Great trembling and
+Pain of Hartt," carried his baby in his own arms and laid it in its
+mother's breast. Its little body was pitiful to see from leanness, and
+a great fever was upon it. Robert Barrow, the crippled captain, and a
+sick passenger shared the child's shelter. "Whereupon two Canibals
+appeared, naked, but for a breech-cloth of plaited straw, with
+Countenances bloody and furious, and foaming at the Mouth"; but on
+being given tobacco, retreated inland to alarm the tribe. The ship's
+company gathered together and sat down to wait their return, expecting
+cruelty, says Dickenson, and dreadful death. Christianity was now to be
+brought face to face with heathenness, which fact our author seems to
+have recognized under all his terror. "We began by putting our trust in
+the Lord, hoping for no Mercy from these bloody-minded Creatures;
+having too few guns to use except to enrage them, a Motion arose among
+us to deceive them by calling ourselves Spaniards, that Nation having
+some influence over them"; to which lie all consented, except Robert
+Barrow. It is curious to observe how these early Christians met the
+Indians with the same weapons of distrust and fraud which have proved
+so effective with us in civilizing them since.
+
+In two or three hours the savages appeared in great numbers, bloody and
+furious, and in their chronic state of foaming at the mouth. "They
+rushed in upon us, shouting 'Nickalees? Nickalees?' (Un Ingles.) To
+which we replied 'Espania.' But they cried the more fiercely 'No
+Espania, Nickalees!' and being greatly enraged thereat, seized upon all
+Trunks and Chests and our cloathes upon our Backs, leaving us each only
+a pair of old Breeches, except Robert Barrow, my wife, and child, from
+whom they took nothing." The king, or Cassekey, as Dickenson calls him,
+distinguished by a horse-tail fastened to his belt behind, took
+possession of their money and buried it, at which the good Quaker
+spares not his prayers for punishment on all pagan robbers, quite blind
+to the poetic justice of the burial, as the money had been made on land
+stolen from the savages. The said Cassekey also set up his abode in
+their tent; kept all his tribe away from the woman and child and aged
+man; kindled fires; caused, as a delicate attention, the only hog
+remaining on the wreck to be killed and brought to them for a midnight
+meal; and, in short, comported himself so hospitably, and with such
+kindly consideration toward the broad-brimmed Quaker, that we are
+inclined to account him the better-bred fellow of the two, in spite of
+his scant costume of horse-tail and belt of straw. As for the robbery
+of the ship's cargo, no doubt the Cassekey had progressed far enough in
+civilization to know that to the victors belong the spoils. Florida,
+for two years, had been stricken down from coast to coast by a deadly
+famine, and in all probability these cannibals returned thanks to
+whatever God they had for this windfall of food and clothes devoutly as
+our forefathers were doing at the other end of the country for the
+homes which they had taken by force. There is a good deal of kinship
+among us in circumstances, after all, as well as in blood. The chief
+undoubtedly recognized a brother in Dickenson, every whit as tricky as
+himself, and would fain, savage as he was, have proved him to be
+something better; for, after having protected them for several days, he
+came into their tent and gravely and with authority set himself to
+asking the old question, "Nickalees?"
+
+"To which, when we denied, he directed his Speech to the Aged Man, who
+would not conceal the Truth, but answered in Simplicity, 'Yes.' Then he
+cried in Wrath 'Totus Nickalees!' and went out from us. But returned in
+great fury with his men, and stripped all Cloathes from us."
+
+However, the clothes were returned, and the chief persuaded them to
+hasten on to his own village. Dickenson, suspecting foul play as usual,
+insisted on going to Santa Lucia. There, the Indian told him, they
+would meet fierce savages and undoubtedly have their throats cut, which
+kindly warning was quite enough to drive the Quaker to Santa Lucia
+headlong. He was sure of the worst designs on the part of the cannibal,
+from a strange glance which he fixed upon the baby as he drove them
+before him to his village, saying with a treacherous laugh, that after
+they had gone there for a purpose he had, they might go to Santa Lucia
+as they would.
+
+It was a bleak, chilly afternoon as they toiled mile after mile along
+the beach, the Quaker woman far behind the others with her baby in her
+arms, carrying it, as she thought, to its death. Overhead, flocks of
+dark-winged grakles swooped across the lowering sky, uttering from time
+to time their harsh, foreboding cry; shoreward, as far as the eye could
+see, the sand stretched in interminable yellow ridges, blackened here
+and there by tufts of dead palmetto-trees; while on the other side the
+sea had wrapped itself in a threatening silence and darkness. A line of
+white foam crept out of it from horizon to horizon, dumb and
+treacherous, and licked the mother's feet as she dragged herself
+heavily after the others.
+
+From time to time the Indian stealthily peered over her shoulder,
+looking at the child's thin face as it slept upon her breast. As
+evening closed in, they came to a broad arm of the sea thrust inland
+through the beach, and halted at the edge. Beyond it, in the darkness,
+they could distinguish the yet darker shapes of the wigwams, and
+savages gathered about two or three enormous fires that threw long red
+lines of glare into the sea-fog. "As we stood there for many Hour's
+Time," says Jonathan Dickenson, "we were assured these Dreadful Fires
+were prepared for us."
+
+Of all the sad little company that stand out against the far-off
+dimness of the past, in that long watch upon the beach, the low-voiced,
+sweet-tempered Quaker lady comes nearest and is the most real to us.
+The sailors had chosen a life of peril years ago; her husband, with all
+his suspicious bigotry, had, when pushed to extremes, an admirable
+tough courage with which to face the dangers of sea and night and
+death; and the white-headed old man, who stood apart and calm, had
+received, as much as Elijah of old, a Divine word to speak in the
+wilderness, and the life in it would sustain him through death. But
+Mary Dickenson was only a gentle, commonplace woman, whose life had
+been spent on a quiet farm, whose highest ambition was to take care of
+her snug little house, and all of whose brighter thoughts or romance or
+passion began and ended in this staid Quaker and the baby that was a
+part of them both. It was only six months ago that this first-born
+child had been laid in her arms; and as she lay on the white bed
+looking out on the spring dawning day after day, her husband sat beside
+her telling her again and again of the house he had made ready for her
+in Penn's new settlement. She never tired of hearing of it. Some
+picture of this far-off home must have come to the poor girl as she
+stood now in the night, the sea-water creeping up to her naked feet,
+looking at the fires built, as she believed, for her child.
+
+Toward midnight a canoe came from the opposite side, into which the
+chief put Barrow, Dickenson, the child, and its mother. Their worst
+fears being thus confirmed, they crossed in silence, holding each other
+by the hand, the poor baby moaning now and then. It had indeed been
+born tired into the world, and had gone moaning its weak life out ever
+since.
+
+Landing on the farther beach, the crowd of waiting Indians fled from
+them as if frightened, and halted in the darkness beyond the fires. But
+the Cassekey dragged them on toward a wigwam, taking Mary and the child
+before the others. "Herein," says her husband, "was the Wife of the
+Canibal and some old Women sitting in a Cabbin made of Sticks about a
+Foot high, and covered with a Matt. He made signs for us to sitt down
+on the Ground, which we did. The Cassekey's Wife looking at my Child
+and having her own Child in her lapp, putt it away to another Woman,
+and rose upp and would not bee denied, but would have my Child. She
+took it and suckled it at her Breast, feeling it from Top to Toe, and
+viewing it with a sad Countenance."
+
+The starving baby, being thus warmed and fed, stretched its little arms
+and legs out on the savage breast comfortably and fell into a happy
+sleep, while its mother sat apart and looked on.
+
+"An Indian did kindly bring to her a Fish upon a Palmetto Leaf and set
+it down before her; but the Pain and Thoughts within her were so great
+that she could not eat."
+
+The rest of the crew having been brought over, the chief set himself to
+work and speedily had a wigwam built in which mats were spread, and the
+shipwrecked people, instead of being killed and eaten, went to sleep
+just as the moon rose, and the Indians began "a Consert of hideous
+Noises," whether of welcome or worship they could not tell.
+
+Dickenson and his band remained in this Indian village for several
+days, endeavoring all the time to escape, in spite of the kind
+treatment of the chief, who appears to have shared all that he had with
+them. The Quaker kept a constant, fearful watch, lest there might be
+death in the pot. When the Cassekey found they were resolved to go, he
+set out for the wreck, bringing back a boat which was given to them,
+with butter, sugar, a rundlet of wine, and chocolate; to Mary and the
+child he also gave everything which he thought would be useful to them.
+This friend in the wilderness appeared sorry to part with them, but
+Dickenson was blind both to friendship and sorrow, and obstinately took
+the direction against which the chief warned him, suspecting treachery,
+"though we found afterward that his counsell was good."
+
+Robert Barrow, Mary, and the child, with two sick men, went in a canoe
+along the coast, keeping the crew in sight, who, with the boy,
+travelled on foot, sometimes singing as they marched. So they began the
+long and terrible journey, the later horrors of which I dare not give
+in the words here set down. The first weeks were painful and
+disheartening, although they still had food. Their chief discomfort
+arose from the extreme cold at night and the tortures from the
+sand-flies and mosquitoes on their exposed bodies, which they tried to
+remedy by covering themselves with sand, but found sleep impossible.
+
+At last, however, they met the fiercer savages of whom the chief had
+warned them, and practised upon them the same device of calling
+themselves Spaniards. By this time, one would suppose, even Dickenson's
+dull eyes would have seen the fatal idiocy of the lie. "Crying out
+'Nickalees, No Espanier,' they rushed upon us, rending the few Cloathes
+from us that we had; they took all from my Wife, even tearing her Hair
+out, to get at the Lace, wherewith it was knotted." They were then
+dragged furiously into canoes and rowed to the village, being stoned
+and shot at as they went. The child was stripped, while one savage
+filled its mouth with sand.
+
+But at that the chief's wife came quickly to Mary and protected her
+from the sight of all, and took the sand out of the child's mouth,
+entreating it very tenderly, whereon the mass of savages fell back,
+muttering and angry.
+
+The same woman brought the poor naked lady to her wigwam, quieted her,
+found some raw deerskins, and showed her how to cover herself and the
+baby with them.
+
+The tribe among which they now were had borne the famine for two years;
+their emaciated and hunger-bitten faces gave fiercer light to their
+gloomy, treacherous eyes. Their sole food was fish and
+palmetto-berries, both of which were scant. Nothing could have been
+more unwelcome than the advent of this crowd of whites, bringing more
+hungry mouths to fill; and, indeed, there is little reason to doubt
+that the first intention was to put them all to death. But, after the
+second day, Dickenson relates that the chief "looked pleasantly upon my
+Wife and Child"; instead of the fish entrails and filthy water in which
+the fish had been cooked which had been given to the prisoners, he
+brought clams to Mary, and kneeling in the sand showed her how to roast
+them. The Indian women, too, carried off the baby, knowing that its
+mother had no milk for it, and handed it about from one to the other,
+putting away their own children that they might give it their food. At
+which the child, that, when it had been wrapped in fine flannel and
+embroidery had been always nigh to death, began to grow fat and rosy,
+to crow and laugh as it had never done before, and kick its little legs
+sturdily about under their bit of raw skin covering. Mother Nature had
+taken the child home, that was all, and was breathing new lusty life
+into it, out of the bare ground and open sky, the sun and wind, and the
+breasts of these her children; but its father saw in the change only
+another inexplicable miracle of God. Nor does he seem to have seen that
+it was the child and its mother who had been a protection and shield to
+the whole crew and saved them through this their most perilous strait.
+
+I feel as if I must stop here with the story half told. Dickenson's
+narrative, when I finished it, left behind it a fresh, sweet
+cheerfulness, as if one had been actually touching the living baby with
+its fair little body and milky breath; but if I were to try to
+reproduce the history of the famished men and women of the crew during
+the months that followed, I should but convey to you a dull and dreary
+horror.
+
+You yourselves can imagine what the journey on foot along the bleak
+coast in winter, through tribe after tribe of hostile savages, must
+have been to delicately nurtured men and women, naked but for a piece
+of raw deerskin and utterly without food save for the few nauseous
+berries or offal rejected by the Indians. In their ignorance of the
+coast they wandered farther and farther out of their way into those
+morasses which an old writer calls "the refuge of all unclean birds and
+the breeding-fields of all reptiles." Once a tidal wave swept down into
+a vast marsh where they had built their fire, and air and ground slowly
+darkened with the swarming living creatures, whirring, creeping about
+them through the night, and uttering gloomy, dissonant cries. Many of
+these strange companions and some savages found their way to the hill
+of oyster-shells where the crew fled, and remained there for the two
+days and nights in which the flood lasted.
+
+Our baby accepted all fellow-travellers cheerfully; made them welcome,
+indeed. Savage, slave, and beast were his friends alike, his laugh and
+outstretched hands were ready for them all. The aged man, too,
+Dickenson tells us, remained hopeful and calm, even when the
+slow-coming touch of death had begun to chill and stiffen him, and in
+the presence of the cannibals assuring his companions cheerfully of his
+faith that they would yet reach home in safety. Even in that strange,
+forced halt, when Mary Dickenson could do nothing but stand still and
+watch the sea closing about them, creeping up and up like a visible
+death, the old man's prayers and the baby's laugh must have kept the
+thought of her far home very near and warm to her.
+
+They escaped the sea to fall into worse dangers. Disease was added to
+starvation. One by one strong men dropped exhausted by the way, and
+were left unburied, while the others crept feebly on; stout Jonathan
+Dickenson taking as his charge the old man, now almost a helpless
+burden. Mary, who, underneath her gentle, timid ways, seems to have had
+a gallant heart in her little body, carried her baby to the last, until
+the milk in her breast was quite dried and her eyes grew blind, and she
+too fell one day beside a poor negress who, with her unborn child, lay
+frozen and dead, saying that she was tired, and that the time had come
+for her too to go. Dickenson lifted her and struggled on.
+
+The child was taken by the negroes and sailors. It makes a mother's
+heart ache even now to read how these coarse, famished men, often
+fighting like wild animals with each other, staggering under weakness
+and bodily pain, carried the heavy baby, never complaining of its
+weight, thinking, it may be, of some child of their own whom they would
+never see or touch again.
+
+I can understand better the mystery of that Divine Childhood that was
+once in the world, when I hear how these poor slaves, unasked, gave of
+their dying strength to this child; how, in tribes through which no
+white man had ever travelled alive, it was passed from one savage
+mother to the other, tenderly handled, nursed at their breasts; how a
+gentler, kindlier spirit seemed to come from the presence of the baby
+and its mother to the crew; so that, while at first they had cursed and
+fought their way along, they grew at the last helpful and tender with
+each other, often going back, when to go back was death, for the
+comrade who dropped by the way, and bringing him on until they too lay
+down, and were at rest together.
+
+It was through the baby that deliverance came to them at last. The
+story that a white woman and a beautiful child had been wandering all
+winter through the deadly swamps was carried from one tribe to another
+until it reached the Spanish fort at St. Augustine. One day therefore,
+when near their last extremity, they "saw a Perre-augoe approaching by
+sea filled with soldiers, bearing a letter signifying the governor of
+St. Augustine's great Care for our Preservation, of what Nation soever
+we were." The journey, however, had to be made on foot; and it was more
+than two weeks before Dickenson, the old man, Mary and the child, and
+the last of the crew, reached St. Augustine.
+
+"We came thereto," he says, "about two hours before Night, and were
+directed to the governor's house, where we were led up a pair of
+stairs, at the Head whereof stood the governor, who ordered my Wife to
+be conducted to his Wife's Apartment."
+
+There is something in the picture of poor Mary, after her months of
+starvation and nakedness, coming into a lady's chamber again, "where
+was a Fire and Bath and Cloathes," which has a curious pathos in it to
+a woman.
+
+Robert Barrow and Dickenson were given clothes, and a plentiful supper
+set before them.
+
+St. Augustine was then a collection of a few old houses grouped about
+the fort; only a garrison, in fact, half supported by the king of Spain
+and half by the Church of Rome. Its three hundred male inhabitants were
+either soldiers or priests, dependent for supplies of money, clothing,
+or bread upon Havana; and as the famine had lasted for two years, and
+it was then three since a vessel had reached them from any place
+whatever, their poverty was extreme. They were all, too, the "false
+Catholicks and hireling Priests" whom, beyond all others, Dickenson
+distrusted and hated. Yet the grim Quaker's hand seems to tremble as he
+writes down the record of their exceeding kindness; of how they
+welcomed them, looking, as they did, like naked furious beasts, and
+cared for them as if they were their brothers. The governor of the fort
+clothed the crew warmly, and out of his own great penury fed them
+abundantly. He was a reserved and silent man, with a grave courtesy and
+an odd gentle care for the woman and child that make him quite real to
+us. Dickenson does not even give his name. Yet it is worth much to us
+to know that a brother of us all lived on that solitary Florida coast
+two centuries ago, whether he was pagan, Protestant, or priest.
+
+When they had rested for some time, the governor furnished canoes and
+an escort to take them to Carolina,--a costly outfit in those
+days,--whereupon Dickenson, stating that he was a man of substance,
+insisted upon returning some of the charges to which the governor and
+people had been put as soon as he reached Carolina. But the Spaniard
+smiled and refused the offer, saying whatever he did was done for God's
+sake. When the day came that they must go, "he walked down to see us
+embark, and taking our Farewel, he embraced some of us, and wished us
+well saying that _We should forget him when we got amongst our own
+nation_; and I also added that _If we forgot him, God would not forget
+him_, and thus we parted."
+
+The mischievous boy, John Hilliard, was found to have hidden in the
+woods until the crew were gone, and remained ever after in the garrison
+with the grave Spaniards, with whom he was a favorite.
+
+The voyage to Carolina occupied the month of December, being made in
+open canoes, which kept close to the shore, the crew disembarking and
+encamping each night. Dickenson tells with open-eyed wonder how the
+Spaniards kept their holiday of Christmas in the open boat and through
+a driving northeast storm; praying, and then tinkling a piece of iron
+for music and singing, and also begging gifts from the Indians, who
+begged from them in their turn; and what one gave to the other that
+they gave back again. Our baby at least, let us hope, had Christmas
+feeling enough to understand the laughing and hymn-singing in the face
+of the storm.
+
+At the lonely little hamlet of Charleston (a few farms cut out of the
+edge of the wilderness) the adventurers were received with eagerness;
+even the Spanish escort were exalted into heroes, and entertained and
+rewarded by the gentlemen of the town. Here too Dickenson and Kirle
+sent back generous gifts to the soldiers of St. Augustine, and a token
+of remembrance to their friend, the governor. After two months' halt,
+"on the eighteenth of the first month, called March," they embarked for
+Pennsylvania, and on a bright cold morning in April came in sight of
+their new home of Philadelphia. The river was gay with a dozen sail,
+and as many brightly painted Indian pirogues darting here and there; a
+ledge of green banks rose from the water's edge dark with gigantic
+hemlocks, and pierced with the caves in which many of the settlers yet
+lived; while between the bank and the forest were one or two streets of
+mud-huts and of curious low stone houses sparkling with mica, among
+which broad-brimmed Friends went up and down.
+
+The stern Quaker had come to his own life and to his own people again;
+the very sun had a familiar home look for the first time in his
+journey. We can believe that he rejoiced in his own solid, enduring
+way; gave thanks that he had escaped the judgments of God, and closed
+his righteous gates thereafter on aught that was alien or savage.
+
+The aged man rejoiced in a different way; for, being carried carefully
+to the shore by many friends, they knowing that he was soon to leave
+them, he put out his hand, ready to embrace them in much love, and in a
+tender frame of spirit, saying gladly that the Lord had answered his
+desire, and brought him home to lay his bones among them. From the
+windows of the dusky library I can see the spot now, where, after his
+long journey, he rested for a happy day or two, looking upon the dear
+familiar faces and waving trees and the sunny April sky, and then
+gladly and cheerfully bade them farewell and went onward.
+
+Mary had come at last to the pleasant home that had been waiting so
+long for her, and there, no doubt, she nursed her baby, and clothed him
+in soft fooleries again; and, let us hope, out of the fulness of her
+soul, not only prayed, but, Quaker as she was, sang idle joyous songs,
+when her husband was out of hearing.
+
+But the baby, who knew nothing of the judgments or mercy of God, and
+who could neither pray nor sing, only had learned in these desperate
+straits to grow strong and happy in the touch of sun and wind, and to
+hold out its arms to friend or foe, slave or savage, sure of a welcome,
+and so came closer to God than any of them all.
+
+Jonathan Dickenson became a power in the new principality; there are
+vague traditions of his strict rule as mayor, his stately equipages and
+vast estates. No doubt, if I chose to search among the old musty
+records, I could find the history of his son. But I do not choose; I
+will not believe that he ever grew to be a man, or died.
+
+He will always be to us simply a baby; a live, laughing baby, sent by
+his Master to the desolate places of the earth with the old message of
+Divine love and universal brotherhood to his children; and I like to
+believe, too, that as he lay in the arms of his savage foster-mothers,
+taking life from their life, Christ so took him into his own arms and
+blessed him.
+
+
+
+
+A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR.
+
+BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought
+of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his
+constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They
+wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and
+blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water;
+they wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely
+world.
+
+They used to say to one another, sometimes, Supposing all the children
+upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water, and the sky
+be sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds
+are the children of the flowers, and the little playful streams that
+gambol down the hillsides are the children of the water; and the
+smallest bright specks playing at hide-and-seek in the sky all night,
+must surely be the children of the stars; and they would all be grieved
+to see their playmates, the children of men, no more.
+
+There was one clear shining star that used to come out in the sky
+before the rest, near the church-spire, above the graves. It was larger
+and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and every night
+they watched for it, standing hand in hand at the window. Whoever saw
+it first, cried out, "I see the star!" And often they cried out both
+together, knowing so well when it would rise, and where. So they grew
+to be such friends with it, that before lying down in their beds, they
+always looked out once again, to bid it good night; and when they were
+turning round to sleep, they used to say, "God bless the star!"
+
+But while she was still very young, O, very, very young, the sister
+drooped, and came to be so weak that she could no longer stand in the
+window at night; and then the child looked sadly out by himself, and
+when he saw the star, turned round and said to the patient pale face on
+the bed, "I see the star!" and then a smile would come upon the face,
+and a little weak voice used to say, "God bless my brother and the
+star!"
+
+And so the time came, all too soon! when the child looked out alone,
+and when there was no face on the bed; and when there was a little
+grave among the graves, not there before; and when the star made long
+rays down towards him, as he saw it through his tears.
+
+Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make such a shining
+way from earth to heaven, that when the child went to his solitary bed,
+he dreamed about the star; and dreamed that, lying where he was, he saw
+a train of people taken up that sparkling road by angels. And the star,
+opening, showed him a great world of light, where many more such angels
+waited to receive them.
+
+All these angels who were waiting turned their beaming eyes upon the
+people who were carried up into the star; and some came out from the
+long rows in which they stood, and fell upon the people's necks, and
+kissed them tenderly, and went away with them down avenues of light,
+and were so happy in their company, that lying in his bed he wept for
+joy.
+
+But there were many angels who did not go with them, and among them one
+he knew. The patient face that once had lain upon the bed was glorified
+and radiant, but his heart found out his sister among all the host.
+
+His sister's angel lingered near the entrance of the star, and said to
+the leader among those who had brought the people thither,--
+
+"Is my brother come?"
+
+And he said, "No."
+
+She was turning hopefully away, when the child stretched out his arms,
+and cried, "O sister, I am here! Take me!" And then she turned her
+beaming eyes upon him and it was night; and the star was shining into
+the room, making long rays down towards him as he saw it through his
+tears.
+
+From that hour forth the child looked out upon the star as on the home
+he was to go to, when his time should come; and he thought that he did
+not belong to the earth alone, but to the star too, because of his
+sister's angel gone before.
+
+There was a baby born to be a brother to the child; and while he was so
+little that he never yet had spoken word, he stretched his tiny form
+out on his bed and died.
+
+Again the child dreamed of the opened star, and of the company of
+angels, and the train of people, and the rows of angels with their
+beaming eyes all turned upon those people's faces.
+
+Said his sister's angel to the leader,--
+
+"Is my brother come?"
+
+And he said, "Not that one, but another."
+
+As the child beheld his brother's angel in her arms, he cried, "O
+sister, I am here! Take me!" And she turned and smiled upon him, and
+the star was shining.
+
+He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his books when an old
+servant came to him and said,--
+
+"Thy mother is no more. I bring her blessing on her darling son!"
+
+Again at night he saw the star, and all that former company. Said his
+sister's angel to the leader,--
+
+"Is my brother come?"
+
+And he said, "Thy mother!"
+
+A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the star, because the mother
+was reunited to her two children. And he stretched out his arms and
+cried, "O mother, sister, and brother, I am here! Take me!" And they
+answered him, "Not yet." And the star was shining.
+
+He grew to be a man whose hair was turning gray, and he was sitting in
+his chair by the fireside, heavy with grief, and with his face bedewed
+with tears, when the star opened once again.
+
+Said his sister's angel to the leader, "Is my brother come?"
+
+And he said, "Nay, but his maiden daughter."
+
+And the man who had been the child saw his daughter, newly lost to him,
+a celestial creature among those three, and he said, "My daughter's
+head is on my sister's bosom, and her arm is round my mother's neck,
+and at her feet there is the baby of old time, and I can bear the
+parting from her, God be praised!"
+
+And the star was shining.
+
+Thus the child came to be an old man, and his once smooth face was
+wrinkled, and his steps were slow and feeble, and his back was bent.
+And one night as he lay upon his bed, his children standing round, he
+cried, as he had cried so long ago,--
+
+"I see the star!"
+
+They whispered one another, "He is dying."
+
+And he said, "I am. My age is falling from me like a garment, and I
+move towards the star as a child. And O, my Father, now I thank thee
+that it has so often opened, to receive those dear ones who await me!"
+
+And the star was shining; and it shines upon his grave.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of Childhood, by Various
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