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THE OBSTINATE BOYS.
Drawn by John Gilbert.          [ See A Holiday Romance, page 261.

PART IV.
ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF MISS NETTIE ASHFORD.^*

here is a country, which I will show you when I get into Maps, where the children have everything their own way. It is a most delightful country to live in. The grown-up people are obliged to obey the children, and are never allowed to sit up to supper, except on their birthdays. The children order them to make jam and jelly and marmalade, and tarts and pies and puddings and all manner of pastry. If they say they won’t, they are put in the corner till they do. They are sometimes allowed to have some, but when they have some, they generally have powders given them afterwards.

One of the inhabitants of this Country, a truly sweet young creature of the name of Mrs. Orange, had the misfortune to be sadly plagued by her numerous family. Her parents required a great deal of looking after, and they had connections and companions who were scarcely ever out of mischief. So Mrs. Orange said to herself, “I really cannot be troubled with these Torments any longer, I must put them all to school.”

Mrs. Orange took off her pinafore, and dressed herself very nicely, and took up her baby, and went out to call upon another lady of the name of Mrs. Lemon, who kept a Preparatory Establishment. Mrs. Orange stood upon the scraper to pull at the bell, and gave a Ring-ting-ting.

Mrs. Lemon’s neat little housemaid, pulling up her socks as she came along the passage, answered the Ring-ting-ting.

“Good morning,” said Mrs. Orange. “Fine day. How do you do? Mrs. Lemon at home?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Will you say Mrs. Orange and baby?”

“Yes, ma’am. Walk in.”

Mrs. Orange’s baby was a very fine one, and real wax all over. Mrs. Lemon’s baby was leather and bran. However, when Mrs. Lemon came into the drawing-room with her baby in her arms, Mrs. Orange said politely, “Good morning. Fine day. How do you do? And how is little Tootleum-Boots?”

“Well, she is but poorly. Cutting her teeth, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon.

“O, indeed, ma’am!” said Mrs. Orange. “No fits, I hope?”

“No, ma’am.”

“How many teeth has she, ma’am?”

“Five, ma’am.”

“My Emilia, ma’am, has eight,” said Mrs. Orange. “Shall we lay them on the mantel-piece side by side, while we converse?”

“By all means, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “Hem!”

“The first question is, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange,—“I don’t bore you?”

“Not in the least, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “Far from it, I assure you.”

“Then pray have you,” said Mrs. Orange, “have you any vacancies?”

“Yes, ma’am. How many might you require?”

“Why, the truth is, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange, “I have come to the conclusion that my children,”—O, I forgot to say that they call the grown-up people children in that country,—“that my children are getting positively too much for me. Let me see. Two parents, two intimate friends of theirs, one godfather, two godmothers, and an aunt. Have you as many as eight vacancies?”

“I have just eight, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon.

“Most fortunate! Terms moderate, I think?”

“Very moderate, ma’am.”

“Diet good, I believe?”

“Excellent, ma’am.”

“Unlimited?”

“Unlimited.”

“Most satisfactory! Corporal punishment dispensed with?”

“Why, we do occasionally shake,” said Mrs. Lemon, “and we have slapped. But only in extreme cases.”

“Could I, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange, “could I see the establishment?”

“With the greatest of pleasure, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon.

Mrs. Lemon took Mrs. Orange into the school-room, where there were a number of pupils. “Stand up, children!” said Mrs. Lemon, and they all stood up.

Mrs. Orange whispered to Mrs. Lemon, “There is a pale bald child with red whiskers, in disgrace. Might I ask what he has done?”

“Come here, White,” said Mrs. Lemon, “and tell this lady what you have been doing.”

“Betting on horses,” said White, sulkily.

“Are you sorry for it, you naughty child?” said Mrs. Lemon.

“No,” said White. “Sorry to lose, but shouldn’t be sorry to win.”

“There’s a vicious boy for you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “Go along with you, sir. This is Brown, Mrs. Orange. O, a sad case, Brown’s! Never knows when he has had enough. Greedy. How is your gout, sir?”

“Bad,” said Brown.

“What else can you expect?” said Mrs. Lemon. “Your stomach is the size of two. Go and take exercise directly. Mrs. Black, come here to me. Now here is a child, Mrs. Orange, ma’am, who is always at play. She can’t be kept at home a single day together; always gadding about and spoiling her clothes. Play, play, play, play, from morning to night, and to morning again. How can she expect to improve!”

“Don’t expect to improve,” sulked Mrs. Black. “Don’t want to.”

“There is a specimen of her temper, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “To see her when she is tearing about, neglecting everything else, you would suppose her to be at least good-humored. But bless you, ma’am, she is as pert and as flouncing a minx as ever you met with in all your days!”

“You must have a great deal of trouble with them, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange.

“Ah! I have indeed, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “What with their tempers, what with their quarrels, what with their never knowing what’s good for them, and what with their always wanting to domineer, deliver me from these unreasonable children!”

“Well, I wish you good morning, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange.

“Well, I wish you good morning, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon.

So Mrs. Orange took up her baby and went home, and told the family that plagued her so that they were all going to be sent to school. They said they didn’t want to go to school, but she packed up their boxes and packed them off.

“O dear me, dear me! Rest and be thankful!” said Mrs. Orange, throwing herself back in her little arm-chair. “Those troublesome troubles are got rid of, please the Pigs!”

Just then another lady, named Mrs. Alicumpaine, came calling at the street door with a Ring-ting-ting.

“My dear Mrs. Alicumpaine,” said Mrs. Orange, “how do you do? Pray stay to dinner. We have but a simple joint of sweet-stuff, followed by a plain dish of bread and treacle, but if you will take us as you find us it will be so kind!”

“Don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine. “I shall be too glad. But what do you think I have come for, ma’am? Guess, ma’am.”

“I really cannot guess, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange.

“Why, I am going to have a small juvenile party to-night,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine, “and if you and Mr. Orange and baby would but join us, we should be complete.”

“More than charmed, I am sure!” said Mrs. Orange.

“So kind of you!” said Mrs. Alicumpaine. “But I hope the children won’t bore you?”

“Dear things! Not at all,” said Mrs. Orange. “I dote upon them.”

Mr. Orange here came home from the city, and he came too with a Ring-ting-ting.

“James, love,” said Mrs. Orange, “you look tired. What has been doing in the city to-day?”

“Trap bat and ball, my dear,” said Mr. Orange, “and it knocks a man up.”

“That dreadfully anxious city, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine; “so wearing, is it not?”

“O, so trying!” said Mrs. Alicumpaine. “John has lately been speculating in the peg-top ring, and I often say to him at night, ‘John, is the result worth the wear and tear?’ ”

Dinner was ready by this time, so they sat down to dinner; and while Mr. Orange carved the joint of sweet-stuff, he said, “It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. Jane, go down to the cellar and fetch a bottle of the Upest Ginger-beer.”

At tea-time Mr. and Mrs. Orange, and baby, and Mrs. Alicumpaine, went off to Mrs. Alicumpaine’s house. The children had not come yet, but the ball-room was ready for them, decorated with paper flowers.

“How very sweet!” said Mrs. Orange. “The dear things! How pleased they will be!”

“I don’t care for children myself,” said Mr. Orange, gaping.

“Not for girls?” said Mrs. Alicumpaine. “Come! You care for girls?”

Mr. Orange shook his head and gaped again. “Frivolous and vain, ma’am.”

“My dear James,” cried Mrs. Orange, who had been peeping about, “do look here. Here’s the supper for the darlings, ready laid in the room behind the folding-doors. Here’s their little pickled salmon, I do declare! And here’s their little salad, and their little roast beef and fowls, and their little pastry, and their wee, wee, wee, champagne!”

“Yes, I thought it best, ma’am,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine, “that they should have their supper by themselves. Our table is in the corner here, where the gentlemen can have their wineglass of negus and their egg-sandwich, and their quiet game at beggar-my-neighbor, and look on. As for us, ma’am, we shall have quite enough to do to manage the company.”

“O, indeed you may say so. Quite enough, ma’am!” said Mrs. Orange.

The company began to come. The first of them was a stout boy, with a white top-knot and spectacles. The housemaid brought him in and said, “Compliments, and at what time was he to be fetched?” Mrs. Alicumpaine said, “Not a moment later than ten. How do you do, sir? Go and sit down.” Then a number of other children came; boys by themselves, and girls by themselves, and boys and girls together. They didn’t behave at all well. Some of them looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and said, “Who are those? Don’t know them.” Some of them looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and said, “How do?” Some of them had cups of tea or coffee handed to them by others, and said, “Thanks! Much!” A good many boys stood about, and felt their shirt-collars. Four tiresome fat boys would stand in the door-way and talk about the newspapers, till Mrs. Alicumpaine went to them and said, “My dears, I really cannot allow you to prevent people from coming in. I shall be truly sorry to do it, but, if you put yourselves in everybody’s way, I must positively send you home.” One boy, with a beard and a large white waistcoat, who stood straddling on the hearth-rug warming his coat-tails, was sent home. “Highly incorrect, my dear,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine, handing him out of the room, “and I cannot permit it.”

There was a children’s band,—harp, cornet, and piano,—and Mrs. Alicumpaine and Mrs. Orange bustled among the children to persuade them to take partners and dance. But they were so obstinate! For quite a long time they would not be persuaded to take partners and dance. Most of the boys said, “Thanks. Much. But not at present.” And most of the rest of the boys said, “Thanks. Much. But never do.”

“Oh! These children are very wearing,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs. Orange.

“Dear things! I dote upon them, but they are wearing,” said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine.

At last they did begin in a slow and melancholy way to slide about to the music, though even then they wouldn’t mind what they were told, but would have this partner, and wouldn’t have that partner, and showed temper about it. And they wouldn’t smile, no, not on any account they wouldn’t; but when the music stopped, went round and round the room in dismal twos, as if everybody else was dead.

“Oh! It’s very hard indeed to get these vexing children to be entertained,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs. Orange.

“I dote upon the darlings, but it IS hard,” said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine.

They were trying children, that’s the truth. First, they wouldn’t sing when they were asked, and then, when everybody fully believed they wouldn’t, they would. “If you serve us so any more, my love,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine to a tall child, with a good deal of white back, in mauve silk trimmed with lace, “it will be my painful privilege to offer you a bed, and to send you to it immediately.”

The girls were so ridiculously dressed, too, that they were in rags before supper. How could the boys help treading on their trains? And yet when their trains were trodden on, they often showed temper again, and looked as black, they did! However, they all seemed to be pleased when Mrs. Alicumpaine said, “Supper is ready, children!” And they went crowding and pushing in, as if they had had dry bread for dinner.

“How are the children getting on?” said Mr. Orange to Mrs. Orange, when Mrs. Orange came to look after baby. Mrs. Orange had left baby on a shelf near Mr. Orange while he played at beggar-my-neighbor, and had asked him to keep his eye upon her now and then.

“Most charmingly, my dear!” said Mrs. Orange. “So droll to see their little flirtations and jealousies! Do come and look!”

“Much obliged to you, my dear,” said Mr. Orange, “but I don’t care about children myself.”

So Mrs. Orange, having seen that baby was safe, went back without Mr. Orange to the room where the children were having supper.

“What are they doing now?” said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine.

“They are making speeches and playing at Parliament,” said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs. Orange.

On hearing this, Mrs. Orange set off once more back again to Mr. Orange, and said “James dear, do come. The children are playing at Parliament.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Orange, “but I don’t care about Parliament myself.”

So Mrs. Orange went once again without Mr. Orange to the room where the children were having supper, to see them playing at Parliament. And she found some of the boys crying, “Hear, hear, hear!” while other boys cried “No, no!” and others “Question!” “Spoke!” and all sorts of nonsense that ever you heard. Then one of those tiresome fat boys who had stopped the door-way told them he was on his legs (as if they couldn’t see that he wasn’t on his head, or on his anything else) to explain, and that with the permission of his honorable friend, if he would allow him to call him so (another tiresome boy bowed), he would proceed to explain. Then he went on for a long time in a sing-song (whatever he meant!), did this troublesome fat boy, about that he held in his hand a glass, and about that he had come down to that house that night to discharge what he would call a public duty, and about that on the present occasion he would lay his hand (his other hand) upon his heart, and would tell honorable gentlemen that he was about to open the door to general approval. Then he opened the door by saying “To our hostess!” and everybody else said “To our hostess!” and then there were cheers. Then another tiresome boy started up in sing-song, and then half a dozen noisy and nonsensical boys at once. But at last Mrs. Alicumpaine said, “I cannot have this din. Now, children, you have played at Parliament very nicely, but Parliament gets tiresome after a little while, and it’s time you left off, for you will soon be fetched.”

After another dance (with more tearing to rags than before supper) they began to be fetched, and you will be very glad to be told that the tiresome fat boy who had been on his legs was walked off first without any ceremony. When they were all gone, poor Mrs. Alicumpaine dropped upon a sofa and said to Mrs. Orange, “These children will be the death of me at last, ma’am, they will indeed!”

“I quite adore them, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange, “but they do want variety.”

Mr. Orange got his hat, and Mrs. Orange got her bonnet and her baby, and they set out to walk home. They had to pass Mrs. Lemon’s Preparatory Establishment on their way.

“I wonder, James dear,” said Mrs. Orange, looking up at the window, “whether the precious children are asleep!”

“I don’t much care whether they are or not, myself,” said Mr. Orange.

“James dear!”

“You dote upon them, you know,” said Mr. Orange. “That’s another thing.”

“I do!” said Mrs. Orange, rapturously. “O, I do!”

“I don’t,” said Mr. Orange.

“But I was thinking, James love,” said Mrs. Orange, pressing his arm, “whether our dear good kind Mrs. Lemon would like them to stay the holidays with her.”

“If she was paid for it, I dare say she would,” said Mr. Orange.

“I adore them, James,” said Mrs. Orange; “but suppose we pay her then!”

This was what brought that country to such perfection, and made it such a delightful place to live in; the grown-up people (that would be in other countries) soon left off being allowed any holidays after Mr. and Mrs. Orange tried the experiment; and the children (that would be in other countries) kept them at school as long as ever they lived, and made them do whatever they were told.

Charles Dickens.

One day Aunt Louise proposed that Dotty Dimple and Jennie Vance should call upon a little girl who was visiting at Dr. Gray’s.

“O yes,” said Dotty, “we truly must go to see Dovey Sparrow; she has such frizzy curls, and she can play five tunes on the piano. But, auntie, how do they make calls?”

“O, all sorts of ways,” replied Miss Louise, with a twinkle in her eye. “Sometimes we take our cards, but I should hardly think it necessary for very young people to do so. Then we just touch the lady’s hand, and talk about the weather, and in three minutes we go away.”

“I’ve seen calls a great many times,” said Dotty, thoughtfully, “and I know we could make one,—Jennie and I; Prudy needn’t go a step.”

She did not feel quite sure that her auntie was not making sport of her, for Miss Louise had sometimes a very sober way of saying funny things. But Dotty took Jennie Vance into the green chamber that afternoon, and repeated what she had heard regarding the making of calls.

“Dovey came from Boston, and we never saw her only in church, so I s’pose we must carry cards, Jennie. I know my auntie would be glad to lend me her silver card-case, she wishes me to be so polite; but I don’t dare ask her,—so I guess I’ll borrow it ’thout saying anything.”

“Hasn’t anybody else got a gold one that I could borrow?” said Jennie, looking rather unhappy as the beautiful toy dropped into Dotty’s pocket.

“O, it’s no matter about you,” returned Miss Dimple, with a peep at the mirror; “you’ll be with me, and I’ll take care of you. Do tell me, Jennie, does my hat look polite? I mean is it style enough?”

“It’s as style as mine,” replied Jennie, gazing into the glass with Dotty. “Why, we look just like each other,—only you’re so pretty, and your sack is silk and mine’s cotton-wool!”

“Well, you don’t care,” said Dotty, graciously; “you’re just as good as I am, if you only behave well. You mustn’t run out your tongue, Jennie,—it looks as if you were catching flies. And you shouldn’t sneeze before people,—it’s rude.”

“I heard you once, Dotty Dimple, and it was at a party too!”

“O, then, ’twas an accident; you must ’scuse me if I did. And now,” added Dotty, giving a final touch to the red tassels in her gaiters,—“now I want you to notice how I act, and do just the same, for my mother has seen the governor, and yours hasn’t.”

“Well, my mother went to New York once,” exclaimed Jennie, determined not to be crushed; “and she has two silk dresses and a smelling-bottle!”

“Poh! Susy’s always had some nightly-blue-sirreup, and Prudy’s been out West. Just as if I’d tell about that! There now, do you know how to behave when anybody induces you to strangers?”

“What do you s’pose?” replied Jennie, tartly; “I speak up and say, ‘Yes, sir!’ ”

Dotty laughed. She seemed to look down, down on her young friend from a great height.

“And shake hands too,” added Jennie, quickly.

“No, you give three fingers, that’s all,—just as if you were touching a toad; and you raise your eyebrows up this way, and quirk your mouth, and nod your head. ‘How do you do, Miss Dovey Sparrow? I’m delighted to meet you, miss! It’s a charming day. Are they all well at Boston?’ You’ll see how I do it. Then I shall take out my handkerjiff, and shake it so the sniff of the nightly-blue-sirreup will spread all over the room. Then I shall wipe my nose this way, and sit down. I’ve seen great ladies do it a great many times.”

“So’ve I too!” nodded Jennie, overawed.

“And,” continued Dotty, “if the people have plants in the window, the ladies say, ‘How flagrant!’ and if the people have children, they say, ‘What lovely little dears!’ and pat their hair. ‘Do you go to school, darling?’ says they.”

“They’ve asked me that over and over,” remarked Jennie.

“And they keep calling everything char-rming, and bee-you-tiful! With such tight gloves on, I know their fingers feel choked.”

“Come,” said Jennie, “we must go; and I guess I shall behave just as well as you, for you never made any calls before, your own self!”

The little girls tripped along the green roadside with an air of importance. Dotty felt like a princess-royal till they reached Dr. Gray’s, and then her brave heart fluttered so fast that she had a secret longing to run home and get Prudy to help her. But the next minute she tossed her head as loftily as if there were a crown on it, and pulled the bell-wire so hard that Betsey Duffy thought the Doctor was wanted, and ran to the door with her sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

“La me! If it isn’t Mrs. Vance’s little dite of a Jinny! And who’s this one? Edward Parlin’s child, I should know by the eyes. Folks all well?”

“Is Miss Dovey Sparrow at home?” asked Dotty, with dignity, at the same time opening her card-case with a click.

“La me! yes, she is, fur’s I know; walk in, children,” replied Betsey, who had never had time in her hard life to learn grammar.

“Then, if she is, you may give her these,” pursued Dotty, placing in Betsey’s hands two cards, one bearing the name “Louise Preston”; the other, the words of a memorandum, “Kerosene oil, vanilla, bar-soap.”

Betsey looked at the cards, then at the exquisite Miss Dimple, and suddenly put her checked apron up to her face.

“Will you wait?” said she, in a stifled voice,—“will you wait, young ladies, till I give her the tickets? Or will you please be so good as to walk in now, if you like?”

Dotty condescended to walk in; and Jennie, her shadow, quietly followed.

About a minute after they had seated themselves in two great chairs, in tripped Miss Dovey Sparrow, blushing and looking as frightened as a wood-pigeon. The roguish Betsey had just told her that these little visitors were the “top of the town,” and she must “talk to them as if she was reading it out of a book.”

Meantime Betsey was hiding in the back parlor, with her checked apron over her mouth, forgetting her potato-yeast in her curiosity to watch these little fine ladies.

Dotty rose, stumbled over a stool, shook hands, but forgot to speak. Jennie did the same, with the addition of putting her little finger in her mouth.

“Ahem!” said Dotty, snapping her card-case.

“Yes’m!” responded Dovey, trembling.

Jennie was on the point of running out her tongue, but stopped herself, and coughed till she choked. It was becoming rather awkward. Dotty wiped her nose nervously, and so did Jennie. Then Dotty folded her arms; Jennie clasped her hands, and both looked out of the window.

Poor Miss Dovey tried with all her might to think of a speech grand enough to make to these wise little guests; but, alas! she could not remember anything but her geography lessons.

Dotty was also laboring in vain; the only thing that came into her head was a wild desire to sneeze. At last, her eye happening to rest on the crimson trimming of Dovey’s dress, she was suddenly reminded of turkeys, and their dislike to the color of red. So she cried out in despair, “Do you keep a turkey at your house?”

“Does your papa keep a sheep?” chimed in Jennie, one octave lower.

“We don’t keep anything,” replied Dovey, in great surprise at these strange queries from such intellectual damsels,—“we don’t keep anything at all,—nor a dog either.”

Then Jennie came out brilliantly with a question of her own devising: “Have you got any trundle-beds in Boston?”

This was too much. The ice began to crack.

“Why, Jennie Vance!” said Dotty, and then she laughed. “Look at that monneument on the mantel! Why, what you laughing at, girls?”

“O, I shall give up!” said Jennie, holding her sides; “this is the funniest house and folks I ever did see!”

“Do stop making me laugh so!” cried Miss Dovey, dropping to the floor and rocking back and forth. “O, ho, now!” screamed Dotty, dancing across the rug, “you don’t look the least bit like a bird, Dovey Sparrow!”

They were all set in a very high gale by this time.

“Be still!” said Miss Dimple, holding up both hands. “There now, I had a sneeze, but O dear, I can’t sneeze it!”

“You’re just like anybody else, after all,” tittered the Sparrow. “Wouldn’t you like to go out and jump on the hay? O, do!”

“Well, there,” replied Miss Dimple, with a fresh burst of merriment, “you never asked us to take off our things,—you never!”

“I didn’t want you to,” said Dovey; “you frightened me almost to death.”

“Did we, though?” cried Dotty, in delight. “Well, I never was so ’fraid my own self! I don’t want to feel so again. You ought to have heard my heart beat!”

“And mine too,” said Jennie; “my hair stood right out straight.”

“We didn’t s’pose you were such a darling,” exclaimed Dotty, kissing her new friend fervently. “O, I love you, and I’m so glad you don’t know how to behave!”

“I’m glad you don’t know how either,” said Dovey, tilting herself on a rocker like a bird on a bough. “I thought you were going to be polite,—O, just as polite!—for you set poor Betsey all of a tremble. Come, let’s go out and play!”

Of course Dotty lost her “borrowed” card-case in the new-mown hay. She confessed the truth with bitter tears, and Aunt Louise was so kind as to forgive her. Weeks afterwards the case was found in the horse’s crib in Dr. Gray’s stable, bearing the prints of Don Carlos’s teeth.

Dotty has never made a fashionable call since.

Sophie May.

Another little incident occurred in the Peterkin family. This was at dinner-time.

They sat down to a dish of boiled ham. Now it was a peculiarity of the children of the family, that half of them liked fat, and half liked lean. Mr. Peterkin sat down to cut the ham. But the ham turned out to be a very remarkable one. The fat and the lean came in separate slices,—first one of lean, then one of fat, then two slices of lean, and so on. Mr. Peterkin began as usual by helping the children first, according to their age. Now Agamemnon, who liked lean, got a fat slice; and Elizabeth Eliza, who preferred fat, had a lean slice. Solomon John, who could eat nothing but lean, was helped to fat, and so on. Nobody had what he could eat.

It was a rule of the Peterkin family, that no one should eat any of the vegetables without some of the meat; so now, although the children saw upon their plates apple-sauce and squash and tomato and sweet potato and sour potato, not one of them could eat a mouthful, because not one was satisfied with the meat. Mr. and Mrs. Peterkin, however, liked both fat and lean, and were making a very good meal, when they looked up and saw the children all sitting eating nothing, and looking dissatisfied into their plates.

“What is the matter now?” said Mr. Peterkin.

But the children were taught not to speak at table. Agamemnon, however, made a sign of disgust at his fat, and Elizabeth Eliza at her lean, and so on, and they presently discovered what was the difficulty.

“What shall be done now?” said Mrs. Peterkin. They all sat and thought for a little while.

At last said Mrs. Peterkin, rather uncertainly, “Suppose we ask the lady from Philadelphia what is best to be done.”

But Mr. Peterkin said he didn’t like to go to her for everything; let the children try and eat their dinner as it was.

And they all tried, but they couldn’t. “Very well, then,” said Mr. Peterkin, “let them go and ask the lady from Philadelphia.”

“All of us?” cried one of the little boys, in the excitement of the moment.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Peterkin, “only put on your india-rubber boots.” And they hurried out of the house.

The lady from Philadelphia was just going in to her dinner; but she kindly stopped in the entry to hear what the trouble was. Agamemnon and Elizabeth Eliza told her all the difficulty, and the lady from Philadelphia said, “But why don’t you give the slices of fat to those who like the fat, and the slices of lean to those who like the lean?”

They all looked at one another. Agamemnon looked at Elizabeth Eliza, and Solomon John looked at the little boys. “Why didn’t we think of that?” said they, and ran home to tell their mother.

THE PETERKINS TRY TO BECOME WISE.

They were sitting round the breakfast-table, and wondering what they should do because the lady from Philadelphia had gone away. “If,” said Mrs. Peterkin, “we could only be more wise as a family!” How could they manage it? Agamemnon had been to college, and the children all went to school; but still as a family they were not wise. “It comes from books,” said one of the family. “People who have a great many books are very wise.” Then they counted up that there were very few books in the house,—a few school-books and Mrs. Peterkin’s cook-book were all.

“That’s the thing!” said Agamemnon. “We want a library!”

“We want a library!” said Solomon John. And all of them exclaimed, “We want a library!”

“Let us think how we shall get one,” said Mrs. Peterkin. “I have observed that other people think a great deal of thinking.”

So they all sat and thought a great while.

Then said Agamemnon, “I will make a library. There are some boards in the wood-shed, and I have a hammer and some nails, and perhaps we can borrow some hinges, and there we have our library!”

They were all very much pleased at the idea.

“That’s the bookcase part,” said Elizabeth Eliza; “but where are the books?”

So they sat and thought a little while, when Solomon John exclaimed, “I will make a book!”

They all looked at him in wonder.

“Yes,” said Solomon John, “books will make us wise, but first I must make a book.”

So they went into the parlor, and sat down to make a book. But there was no ink. What should he do for ink? Elizabeth Eliza said she had heard that nutgalls and vinegar made very good ink. So they decided to make some. The little boys said they could find some nutgalls up in the woods. So they all agreed to set out and pick some. Mrs. Peterkin put on her cape bonnet, and the little boys got into their india-rubber boots, and off they went.

The nutgalls were hard to find. There was almost everything else in the woods,—chestnuts, and walnuts, and small hazel-nuts, and a great many squirrels; and they had to walk a great way before they found any nutgalls. At last they came home with a large basket and two nutgalls in it. Then came the question of the vinegar. Mrs. Peterkin had used her very last on some beets they had the day before. “Suppose we go and ask the minister’s wife,” said Elizabeth Eliza. So they all went to the minister’s wife. She said if they wanted some good vinegar they had better set a barrel of cider down in the cellar, and in a year or two it would make very nice vinegar. But they said they wanted it that very afternoon. When the minister’s wife heard this, she said she should be very glad to let them have some vinegar, and gave them a cupful to carry home.

So they stirred in the nutgalls, and by the time evening came they had very good ink.

Then Solomon John wanted a pen. Agamemnon had a steel one, but Solomon John said, “Poets always used quills.” Elizabeth Eliza suggested that they should go out to the poultry-yard and get a quill. But it was already dark. They had, however, two lanterns, and the little boys borrowed the neighbors’. They set out in procession for the poultry-yard. When they got there, the fowls were all at roost, so they could look at them quietly. But there were no geese! There were Shanghais and Cochin Chinas, and Guinea hens, and Barbary hens, and speckled hens, and Poland roosters, and bantams, and ducks, and turkeys, but not one goose! “No geese but ourselves,” said Mrs. Peterkin, wittily, as they returned to the house. The sight of this procession roused up the village. “A torchlight procession!” cried all the boys of the town; and they gathered round the house, shouting for the flag; and Mr. Peterkin had to invite them in, and give them cider and gingerbread, before he could explain to them that it was only his family visiting his hens.

After the crowd had dispersed, Solomon John sat down to think of his writing again. Agamemnon agreed to go over to the bookstore to get a quill. They all went over with him. The bookseller was just shutting up his shop. However, he agreed to go in and get a quill, which he did, and they hurried home.

So Solomon John sat down again, but there was no paper. And now the bookstore was shut up. Mr. Peterkin suggested that the mail was about in, and perhaps he should have a letter, and then they could use the envelope to write upon. So they all went to the post-office, and the little boys had their india-rubber boots on, and they all shouted when they found Mr. Peterkin had a letter. The postmaster inquired what they were shouting about; and when they told him, he said he would give Solomon John a whole sheet of paper for his book. And they all went back rejoicing.

So Solomon John sat down, and the family all sat round the table looking at him. He had his pen, his ink, and his paper. He dipped his pen into the ink and held it over the paper, and thought a minute, and then said, “But I haven’t got anything to say!”

Lucretia P. Hale.

June laid down her knives upon the scrubbing-board, and stole softly out into the yard. Madame Joilet was taking a nap up stairs, and, for a few minutes at least, the coast seemed to be quite clear.

Who was June? and who was Madame Joilet?

June was a little girl who had lived in Richmond ever since she could remember, who had never been outside of the city boundaries, and who had a vague idea that the North lay just above the Chickahominy, and the Gulf of Mexico about a mile below the James. She could not tell A from Z, nor the figure 1 from 40; and whenever Madame Joilet made those funny little curves and dots and blots with pen and ink, in drawing up her bills to send in to the lodgers up stairs, June considered that she was moved thereto by witches. Her authority for this theory lay in a charming old woman across the way, who had one tooth, and wore a yellow cap, and used to tell her ghost stories sometimes in the evening.

Somebody asked June once how old she was.

“ ’Spect I’s a hundred,—dunno,” she said gravely. Exactly how old she was nobody knew. She was not tall enough to be more than seven, but her face was like the face of a little old woman. It was a queer little face, with thick lips and low forehead, and great mournful eyes. There was something strange about these eyes. Whenever they looked at one, they seemed to cry right out, as if they had a voice. But no one in Richmond cared about that. Nobody cared about June at all. When she was unhappy, no one asked what was the matter; when she was hungry, or cold, or frightened, Madame Joilet laughed at her, and when she was sick, she beat her. If she broke a teacup, or spilled a mug of coffee, she had her ears boxed, or was shut up in a terrible dark cellar, where the rats were as large as kittens. If she tried to sing a little in her sorrowful, smothered way, over her work, Madame Joilet shook her for making so much noise. When she stopped, she scolded her for being sulky. Nothing that she could do ever happened to be right; everything was sure to be wrong. She had not half enough to eat, nor half enough to wear. What was worse than that, she had nobody to kiss, and nobody to kiss her; nobody to love her and pet her; nobody in all the wide world to care whether she lived or died, except a half-starved kitten that lived in the wood-shed. For June was black, and a slave; and this Frenchwoman, Madame Joilet, was her mistress.

Exactly what was the use of living under such circumstances June never could clearly see. She cherished a secret notion that, if she could find a little grave all dug out somewhere in a clover-field, she would creep in and hide there. Madame Joilet could not find her then. People who lived in graves were not supposed to be hungry; and, if it were ever so cold, they never shivered. That they could not be beaten was a natural consequence, because there was so much earth between, that you wouldn’t feel the stick. The only objection would be leaving Hungry. Hungry was the kitten. June had named it so because it was black. She had an idea that everything black was hungry, in the nature of things.

That there had been a war, June had gathered from old Creline, who told her the ghost stories. What it was all about she did not know. Madame Joilet said some terrible giants, called Yankees, were coming down to eat up all the little black girls in Richmond. Creline said that the Yankees were the Messiah’s people, and were coming to set the negroes free. Who the Messiah was June did not know; but she had heard vague legends from Creline of old-time African princes, who lived in great free forests, and sailed on sparkling rivers in boats of painted bark, and she thought that he must be one of them.

Now, this morning, Creline had whispered mysteriously to June, as she went up the street to sell some eggs for Madame Joilet, that Massa Linkum was coming that very day. June knew nothing about Massa Linkum, and nothing about those grand, immortal words of his which had made every slave in Richmond free; it had never entered Madame Joilet’s plan that she should know. No one can tell, reasoned Madame, what notions the little nigger will get if she finds it out. She might even ask for wages, or take a notion to learn to read, or run away, or something. June saw no one; she kept her prudently in the house. Tell her? Non, non, impossible!

But June had heard the beautiful news this morning, like all the rest; and June was glad, though she had not the slightest idea why. So, while her mistress was safely asleep up stairs, she had stolen out to watch for the wonderful sight,—the mysterious sight that every one was waiting to see.

She was standing there on tiptoe on the fence, in her little ragged dress, with the black kitten in her arms, when a great crowd turned a corner, and tossed up a cloud of dust, and swept up the street. There were armed soldiers with glittering uniforms, and there were flags flying, and merry voices shouting, and huzzas and blessings distinct upon the air. There were long lines of dusky faces upturned, and wet with happy tears. There were angry faces, too, scowling from windows, and lurking in dark corners.

It swept on, and it swept up, and June stood still, and held her breath to look, and saw, in the midst of it all, a tall man dressed in black. He had a thin, white face, sad-eyed and kindly and quiet, and he was bowing and smiling to the people on either side.

“God bress yer, Massa Linkum, God bress yer!” shouted the happy voices; and then there was a chorus of wild hurrahs, and June laughed outright for glee, and lifted up her little thin voice and cried, “Bress yer, Massa Linkum!” with the rest, and knew no more than the kitty what she did it for.

The great man turned, and saw June standing alone in the sunlight, the fresh wind blowing her ragged dress, her little black shoulders just reaching to the top of the fence, her wide-open, mournful eyes, and the kitten squeezed in her arms. And he looked right at her, O, so kindly! and gave her a smile all to herself,—one of his rare smiles, with a bit of a quiver in it,—and bowed, and was gone.

“Take me ’long wid yer, Massa Linkum, Massa Linkum!” called poor June, faintly. But no one heard her; and the crowd swept on, and June’s voice broke into a cry, and the hot tears came, and she laid her face down on Hungry to hide them. You see, in all her life, no one had ever looked so at poor June before.

“June, June, come here!” called a sharp voice from the house. But June was sobbing so hard that she did not hear.

“Venez ici,—vite, vite! June! Voilà! The little nigger will be the death of me. She tears my heart. June, vite, I say!”

June started, and jumped down from the fence, and ran into the house with great frightened eyes.

“I just didn’t mean to, noways, missus. I want to see Massa Linkum, an’ he look at me, an’ I done forgot eberyting. O missus, don’ beat me dis yere time, an’ I’ll neber—”

But Madame Joilet interrupted her with a box on the ear, and dragged her up stairs. There was a terrible look on Madame’s face. Just what happened up stairs, I have not the heart to tell you.

That night, June was crouched, sobbing and bruised and bleeding, behind the kitchen stove, when Creline came in on an errand for her mistress. Madame Joilet was obliged to leave the room for a few moments, and the two were alone together. June crawled out from behind the stove.

“I see him,—I see Massa Linkum, Creline.”

“De Lord bress him foreber ’n’ eber. Amen!” exclaimed Creline fervently, throwing up her old thin hands.

June crept a little nearer, and looked all around the room to see if the doors were shut.

“Creline, what’s he done gone come down here fur? Am he de Messiah?”

“Bress yer soul, chile! don’ ye know better’n dat ar?”

“Don’ know nuffin,” said June, sullenly. “Neber knows nuffin; ’spects I neber’s gwine to. Can’ go out in de road to fine out,—she beat me. Can’ ask nuffin,—she jest gib me a push down cellar. O Creline, der’s sech rats down dar now,—dar is!”

“Yer poor critter!” said Creline, with great contempt for her ignorance. “Why, Massa Linkum, eberybody knows ’bout he! He’s done gone made we free,—whole heap on we.”

“Free!” echoed June, with puzzled eyes.

“Laws, yes, chile; ’pears like yer’s drefful stupid. Yer don’ b’long—” Creline lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper, and looked carefully at the closed door,—“yer don’ b’long to Missus Jolly no more dan she b’long to you, an’ dat’s de trufe now, ’case Massa Linkum say so,—God bress him!”

Just then Madame Joilet came back.

“What’s that you’re talking about?” she said sharply.

“June was jes’ sayin’ what a heap she tink ob you, missus,” said Creline, with a grave face.

June lay awake a long time that night, thinking about Massa Linkum, and the wonderful news Creline had brought, and wondering when Madame Joilet would tell her that she was free.

But many days passed, and Madame said nothing about it. Creline’s son had left his master and gone North. Creline herself had asked and obtained scanty wages for her work. A little black boy across the street had been sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes for some trifling fault, and they had just begun to beat him in the yard, when a Union officer stepped up and stopped them. A little girl, not a quarter of a mile away, whose name June had often heard, had just found her father, who had been sold away from her years ago, and had come into Richmond with the Yankee soldiers. But nothing had happened to June. Everything went on as in the old days before Massa Linkum came. She washed dishes, and scrubbed knives, and carried baskets of wood, so heavy that she tottered under their weight, and was scolded if she dropped so much as a shaving on the floor; she swept the rooms with a broom three times as tall as she was, and had her ears boxed because she could not get the dust up with such tiny hands. She worked and scrubbed and ran on errands from morning to night, till her feet ached so that she cried out with the pain. She was whipped and scolded and threatened and frightened and shaken, just as she had been ever since she could remember. She was kept shut up like a prisoner in the house, with Madame Joilet’s cold gray eyes forever on her, and her sharp voice forever in her ear. And still not a word was said about Massa Linkum and the beautiful freedom he had given to all such as little June, and not a word did June dare to say.

But June thought. Madame Joilet could not help that. If Madame had known just what June was thinking, she would have tried hard to help it.

Well, so the days passed, and the weeks, and still Madame said not a word; and still she whipped and scolded and shook, and June worked and cried, and nothing happened. But June had not done all her thinking for nothing.

One night Creline was going by the house, when June called to her softly through the fence.

“Creline!”

“What’s de matter?” said Creline, who was in a great hurry.

“I’s gwine to fine Massa Linkum,—don’ yer tell nobody.”

“Laws a massy, what a young un dat ar chile is!” said Creline, thinking that June had just waked up from a dream, and forthwith forgetting all about her.

Madame Joilet always locked June into her room, which was nothing but a closet with a window in it, and a heap of rags for a bed. On this particular night she turned the key as usual, and then went to her own room at the other end of the house, where she was soon soundly asleep.

About eleven o’clock, when all the house was still, the window of June’s closet softly opened. There was a roofed door-way just underneath it, with an old grape-vine trellis running up one side of it. A little dark figure stepped out timidly on the narrow, steep roof, clinging with its hands to keep its balance, and then down upon the trellis, which it began to crawl slowly down. The old wood creaked and groaned and trembled, and the little figure trembled and stood still. If it should give way, and fall crashing to the ground!

She stood a minute looking down; then she took a slow, careful step; then another, and another, hand under hand upon the bars. The trellis creaked and shook and cracked, but it held on, and June held on, and dropped softly down, gasping and terrified at what she had done, all in a little heap on the grass below.

She lay there a moment perfectly still. She could not catch her breath at first, and she trembled so that she could not move.

Then she crept along on tiptoe to the wood-shed. She ran a great risk in opening the wood-shed door, for the hinges were rusty, and it creaked with a terrible noise. But Hungry was in there. She could not go without Hungry. She went in, and called in a faint whisper. The kitten knew her, dark as it was, and ran out from the wood-pile with a joyful mew, to rub itself against her dress.

“We’s gwine to fine Massa Linkum, you an’ me, bof two togeder,” said June.

“Pur! pur-r-r!” said Hungry, as if she were quite content; and June took her up in her arms, and laughed softly. How happy they would be, she and Hungry! and how Massa Linkum would smile and wonder when he saw them coming in! and how Madame Joilet would hunt and scold!

She went out of the wood-shed and out of the yard, hushing the soft laugh on her lips, and holding her breath as she passed under her mistress’s window. She had heard Creline say that Massa Linkum had gone back to the North; so she walked up the street a little way, and then she turned aside into the vacant squares and unpaved roads, and so out into the fields, where no one could see her.

It was very still and very dark. The great trees stood up like giants against the sky, and the wind howled hoarsely through them. It made June think of the blood-hounds that she had seen rushing with horrible yells to the swamps, where hunted slaves were hiding.

“I reckon ’tain’t on’y little ways, Hungry,” she said with a shiver; “we’ll git dar ’fore long. Don’ be ’fraid.”

“Pur! pur-r-r!” said Hungry, nestling her head in warmly under June’s arm.

“ ’Spect you lub me, Hungry,—’spect you does!”

And then June laughed out softly once more. What would Massa Linkum say to the kitty? Had he ever seen such a kitty as that in all his life?

So she folded her arms tightly over Hungry’s soft fur, and trudged away into the woods. She began to sing a little as she walked, in that sorrowful, smothered way that made Madame Joilet angry. Ah, that was all over now! There would be no more scolding and beating, no more tired days, no more terrible nights spent in the dark and lonely cellar, no more going to bed without her supper, and crying herself to sleep. Massa Linkum would never treat her so. She never once doubted, in that foolish little trusting heart of hers, that he would be glad to see her, and Hungry too. Why should she? Was there any one in all the world who had looked so at poor little June?

So on and away, deep into the woods and swamps, she trudged cheerily; and she sang low to Hungry, and Hungry purred to her. The night passed on and the stars grew pale, the woods deepened and thickened, the swamps were cold and wet, the brambles scratched her hands and feet.

“It’s jes’ ober here little ways, Hungry,”—trying to laugh. “We’ll fine him purty soon. I’s terrible tired an’—sleepy, Hungry.”

She sat down then on a heap of leaves to rest, and laid her head down upon her arm, and Hungry mewed a little, and curled up in her neck. The next she knew, the sun was shining. She jumped up frightened and puzzled, and then she remembered where she was, and began to think of breakfast. But there were no berries but the poisonous dog-wood, and nothing else to be seen but leaves and grass and bushes. Hungry snapped up a few grasshoppers, and looked longingly at an unattainable squirrel, who was flying from tree-top to tree-top; then they went slowly on.

About noon they came to a bit of a brook. June scooped up the water in her hands, and Hungry lapped it with her pink tongue. But there was no dinner to be found, and no sign of Massa Linkum; the sun was like a great ball of fire above the tree-tops, and the child grew faint and weak.

“I didn’t ’spect it was so fur,” groaned poor June. “But don’ yer be ’feard now, Hungry. ’Pears like we’ll fine him bery soon.”

The sun went down, and the twilight came. No supper, and no sign of Massa Linkum yet. Nothing but the great forest and the swamps and the darkening shadows and the long, hungry night. June lay down once more on the damp ground where the poisonous snakes hid in the bushes, and hugged Hungry with her weak little arms, and tried to speak out bravely: “We’ll fine him, Hungry, sure, to-morrer. He’ll jes’ open de door an’ let us right in, he will; an’ he’ll hab breakfas’ all ready an’ waitin’, ’pears like he’ll hab a dish ob milk up in de corner for you now,—tink o’ dat ar, Hungry!” and then the poor little voice that tried to be so brave broke down into a great sob. “Ef I on’y jes’ had one little mouthful now, Hungry!—on’y one!”

So another night passed, and another morning came. A faint noise woke June from her uneasy sleep, when the sun was hardly up. It was Hungry, purring loudly at her ear. A plump young robin lay quivering between her paws. She was tossing it to and fro with curves and springs of delight. She laid the poor creature down by June’s face, looking proudly from June to it, saying as plainly as words could say, “Here’s a fine breakfast. I got it on purpose for you. Why don’t you eat, for pity’s sake? There are plenty more where this came from!”

But June turned away her eyes and moaned; and Hungry, in great perplexity, made way with the robin herself.

Presently June crawled feebly to her feet, and pushed on through the brambles. The kitten, purring in her arms, looked so happy and contented with her breakfast that the child cried out at the sight as if in sudden pain.

“O, I tought we’d git dar ’fore now, an’ I tought he’d jes’ be so glad to see us!”—and then presently, “He jes’ look so kinder smilin’ right out ob his eyes, Hungry!”

A bitter wind blew from the east that day, and before noon the rain was falling, dreary and chilly and sharp. It soaked June’s feet and ragged dress, and pelted in her face. The wind blew against her, and whirled about her, and tossed her to and fro,—she was such a little thing, and so weak now and faint.

Just as the early twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows began to skulk under the bushes, and the birds gathered to their nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to get to her feet again.

But somehow June felt neither troubled nor afraid. She lay there with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests, listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never understood the words, but the music came back like a dream. She wondered if Massa Linkum ever heard it. She thought he looked like it. She should like to lie there all night and listen to it; and then in the morning they would go on and find him,—in the morning; it would come very soon.

The twilight deepened, and the night came on. The rain fell faster, and the sharp wind cried aloud.

“It’s—bery cold,” said June, sleepily, and turned her face over to hide it on the kitten’s warm, soft fur. “Goo’ night, Hungry. We’ll git dar to-morrer. We’s mos’ dar, Hungry.”

Hungry curled up close to her cold, wet cheek—Hungry did not care how black it was—with a happy answering mew; but June said nothing more.

The rain fell faster, and the sharp wind cried aloud. The kitten woke from a nap, and purred for her to stir and speak; but June said nothing more.

Still the rain fell, and the wind cried; and the long night and the storm and the darkness passed, and the morning came.

Hungry stirred under June’s arm, and licked her face, and mewed piteously at her ear. But June’s arm lay still, and June said no word.

Somewhere, in a land where there was never slave and never mistress, where there were no more hungry days and frightened nights, little June was laughing softly, and had found some one to love her at last.

And so she did not find Massa Linkum after all?

Ah!—who would have guessed it? To that place where June had gone, where there are no masters and no slaves, he had gone before her.

And don’t I suppose his was the first face she saw, as she passed through the storm and the night to that waiting, beautiful place? And don’t I suppose he smiled as he had smiled before, and led her gently to that other Face, that thorn-crowned Face, of which poor little June had known nothing in all her life. Of course I do.

E. Stuart Phelps.

Yes! that’s all very true. I have been there, and I know; and I couldn’t have described it any better myself. But, between you and me, if Mr. Longfellow had had to make his way out there as I did, he never could have written this beautiful poem of Hiawatha. So, on the whole, I am quite glad Mr. Longfellow had the wings instead of myself. As for me, I was jerked and twitched all the way from Long Island Sound to the Big-Sea-Water.

My easiest position was being tied by the legs to the handle of the lunch-basket,—head downward to be sure, but then it steadied me a little. Most of the day I was being sat upon by grandmamma, or dropped here and there on the car floor by mamma, to be pranced over by crazy men, women, and children, or jammed into “Hoppergrass’s” pocket (didn’t I tell you before that Queenie had—nobody knew why—given that odd name to her auntie?) and all the time being hunted for and snatched at by Queenie, while the terrible giant who was flying away with us snorted and roared, and tossed us about at his will, without rest day or night.

At night I was supposed to be sweetly asleep in Queenie’s arms, but I was just smothered. One horrid night I remember particularly, because a great boot came crashing down upon me from the berth above, and then I had to lie under it all night. And when, after a long search by grandmamma and “Hoppergrass” and mamma and the steward and several interested strangers, the big boot and I were discovered tightly squeezed together in the sleeping Queenie’s arms, O, that was considered a great joke, although I was crushed to that degree that, if I had been made of such poor stuff as those that laughed at us were, I should have been nothing but jelly,—and Queenie didn’t like their laughing any better than I.

Among the Buckeyes we took breath a moment, and there I found one of my own species, and also a new name for myself. My brother (whose name was Jimmy) and I were as like as “two peas,” they said. Perhaps so; all I can say is that the other “pea” wasn’t a beauty. But then he was loved dearly by two dear little curlyheads, and they and Queenie weighed and measured and compared us together, till I hardly knew which was which, and not at all which end my tassel was on. But, trying as this was, it was greatly better than the horrible roaring monster who came back after us, and caught us away again toward the sunset.

Now, what do you suppose I had brought away with me from the curlyheads’ house? Why, the name of that man and brother I saw there,—“Jimmy.” Queenie wasn’t going to be outdone by a pair of bright-eyed westerners, so, if their Jack was Jimmy, her Jack must be Jimmy-Jack. And Jimmy-Jack has been my name ever since, except when she loves me never so dearly, and then it’s “MY Jimmy-Jack,” and that “my” weighs more than you could ever lift.

But there comes an end to all things, even to a trip across the United States of America. And so we awoke one morning in good old Nokomis’s wigwam, from which we looked down upon Gitche Gumee for many months.

Of course Queenie and I felt as much at home here as anywhere, for hadn’t we each other?

Old Nokomis had a beautiful new red pocket-handkerchief (Queenie knew better than to call it “ponhanfuss,” as her mother did before her,—O yes, she always said, and says to this day, “pockyhanfuss,” as distinctly as you could!) which Queenie borrowed at once for a blanket for me, as also a little rocking-chair, in which she soon sung me fast asleep. She was just twenty months old now, and getting very fond of Mr. Tennyson’s poetry; so the people needn’t have laughed so much when she unrolled the “pockyhanfuss” and kissed me awake, and then with her red lips folded into the tiniest of rosebuds, and her eyes expanded into the biggest of violets, gazed lovingly at me, and cooed out, “Good mornin’, darlin’! Pitty well?

As if big thumbs, and crooked noses, and being “queer in the legs,” kept one from being a “darlin’ ” and a “birdie” to a loving heart! That comes, again, of not having the sense well knit into you in the beginning, but “growing up just as it happens.” I am so sorry for people!

What lovely days those were! November, the “Moon of Snow-shoes,” had come, and yet the skies were bright and warm, and as yet underfoot there was only shining snow-white sand,—sand so deep and clinging that it would take all the spirit out of Flora Temple, and makes one long for seven-league boots. Ugh! how we used to go plodding wearily through the sand-drifts, whether we walked or drove! But every day Queenie and I were taken out in her little carriage to spend the long mornings in that wonderful air; and when once we had fought our way through the sand to the old pine forests, or the shore of the Big-Sea-Water, our troubles were over. On the beach there was, to be sure, the same white shining sand; but the busy waves had moulded it into beautiful marble, inlaid with an ever-changing mosaic of many-colored pebbles. Here we loved to sit and watch the solemn march of the waves, and the idle little ripples climbing playfully over their shoulders as they came and went. Two or three times each day the ocean (whose water is as pure and sweet as any mountain-brook) was disturbed by the “Canoes of Thunder” hastening to and fro before winter should seal up the harbors, leaving with us cargoes of green-groceries, and carrying away nothing but stones. For we were now in a land where little beside iron and copper can grow,—where the children read of our common fruit and shade trees with as little idea of how they really look as you have of the fig-trees of the Garden of Eden! Isn’t that sad? Why, Miskodeed (she takes “Our Young Folks,” so I dare not say half that I long to say about her own sweet self, or give her own sweet name) has a dear little brother whom Queenie called “Peckett,” who, when he was five years old, went sailing down Gitche Gumee in one of these great “Canoes of Thunder” which I and Mr. Longfellow have already told you about. When they passed into the Sault Sainte Marie, the shores came near to greet them, waving boughs of green with red and golden fruit.

“Look! look!” cried Peckett’s mamma, pointing to the beautiful orchards; “see what you never saw before,—apples growing.” The little fellow’s eyes grew very big as he stared at the wonderful sight.

“Ap-apples?” he stammered out at last, “do apples grow on trees? I thought they always grew in barrels!”

But we who lived upon Gitche Gumee had our laugh when we saw tourists from the great apple-country below rushing off the canoes, as soon as they touched our shore, to scramble up armfuls of common stones or bits of coal which happened to be lying around, and steaming off again with their “specimens.”

But although nothing green was to be seen from our windows but pines and spruces and firs, yet the “shining Big-Sea-Water,” always changing, and always beautiful, swept away all regrets for the “leeks and onions” (you see I was from Connecticut) we had left behind us.

Queenie and I liked, better than even our rides to the beach, to go into the great pine forests, particularly as the winter came nearer. A camp was chosen in some snug nook, sheltered from the wind, and carpeted with the soft brown leaves of the pine. Papa made a fire as quickly as he could with mamma and Queenie to hinder him,—sure to bring gnarled branches that wouldn’t fit, and green moss that wouldn’t burn!—and there we sat and toasted ourselves (and apples, when we could get them), or wandered about in search of curious mosses and fungi. O, how still the great forest was, and how alone were we! Here and there on a leafless old pine high above us hung great fungus bells, silver white or golden brown, perfect in form, but never rung in our hearing; Queenie was the only bird whose voice we heard; not even a squirrel peeped at us; everybody who loved us was more than a thousand miles away, and yet we were so happy, so happy!

All this was Queenie’s play-time, and when bedtime came I am sure there was never a better baby. She had been used to having half a dozen people to tend and pet her, but now she was far away in the ends of the earth, with only mamma to serve her, whose hands were pretty busy otherwise. So, as if she understood it all, and wanted to help mamma, she almost made it easy to put her away by herself in her snug nest in the cold, dark room every night at half past five o’clock. She was as sweet and merry over it as if the room had been bright with angel playfellows; and perhaps it was, and it was with them she talked so gayly. It seemed, indeed, as if the little tongue could not keep still; and often in the middle of the night we would hear queer twitterings, and rollicking little laughs, and altogether more Dr. Watts, and Mother Goose, and Mr. Tennyson than was seasonable. Only one thing vexed her. You must know that all the country inland from Gitche Gumee belongs to the Gnomes,—very powerful and very rich, but man is tearing away their treasures from them more and more every year. Crossbill (I shall tell you about him by and by) told me that, being of a retiring disposition, he had more than once been driven to a change of residence by the coming of man into these solitudes to fight awful battles with the spirits of the earth over their heaps of ugly stones. And when man has conquered, he makes off with the spoil to the shores of Gitche Gumee, and delivers it over to his slaves (just such monsters as that which dragged us thither), who fume and writhe and grind day and night for their taskmasters, making the rough, dingy stones into flaming bars of iron and glowing masses of copper. Now at midnight these monsters began to shriek and growl for their breakfast; and when Queenie was waked by this din, I could not blame her for crying out piteously, “Don’t! Don’t! Makin’ me trouble! Get away, ole sing, makin’ me cough cry!” She was always undressed in papa’s study, and looked very lovely when made into a little boy by her rose-colored flannel “jackaloons” (that was her funny little uncle Charlie’s name for his first jacket and trousers,—he went to Heaven before they were outgrown!) which were her night-clothes in that cold country; and then, wrapped in “Aunt Myla’s callidge-blanket,” the little one would nestle in mamma’s arms (as I in hers), who crooned as best she could old songs for a few precious minutes. One of her favorites was, “O, do not be discouraged, for Jesus is your friend,” but we found out that she had been a little mistaken about the chorus (“He will give you grace to conquer, He will give you grace to conquer”); for she said one night, “Don’t want mamma sing ‘Gie gace to Uncle Willy’ any longer,—want mamma sing, ‘Gie gace Auntie Fanny,’ now!”

It was on Thanksgiving day that she first said her little prayer all by herself; and this is the way she said it, ending it with a funny flourish, as you will see:—

She was a very polite little girl, and said, “ ’Cusey me, papa, goin’ in!” when she wished to pass between him and the fire, and always “Kahken!” when anything was given her. One night, as she lay down in her crib, she said, “Kahken Gogon” (Thank God) “gie mamma Essel!” And now I have let the tip of a “cat out of the bag.” Queenie’s real name was Ethel, but she and her mamma had so many names that they hardly knew what to call themselves, only the baby had a choice. “Don’t ye call me ‘Punbabes,’ papa!” “What shall I call you?” “Essel.” “What else mustn’t I call you?” “ ‘Mutunsbabes’ and Nebbernezer’ and ‘Ole Splen’id.’ ” But, dearie me! she was shorn of part of her splendor one day. She had been allowed to stray away toward Old Nokomis’s quarters (I call our dear good old Indian cook Nokomis for fun), which were full of fascinating things,—partridge and grouse wings stretched on the walls, which Nokomis afterward made into pretty fans; beaver-tails, which she dried for tobacco-pouches; snow-shoes (which mamma supposed were fishnets, until they appeared to her, as she sat at her window one day, strapped to the feet of a rash young man, who, not being used to such wide-spreading skates, found himself suddenly standing on his head in a snow-drift); and, strangest of all, hung from the rafters was a “pappoose,”—the dear little sick baby, securely strapped into a blanket or basket, as was convenient, which anybody who came by was expected to set swinging. The patient little creature! Her bright eyes and pale, thin face might be seen peering over the edge of her hammock in that busy kitchen at almost all hours of day and night.

But I must go back to Queenie. She had been out of our sight about five minutes, when the kind lady who took care of us came leading her in, saying, “What will you do, when you see what my little girl has been doing to your baby?”

What had she done? Why, she had waylaid her on her way to see the baby in the basket, and coaxed her to sit down in her little chair, and have a towel tied round her neck; and then, with Nokomis’s big shears, nearly as long as she (for she was herself a little rolly-poly only three years old), she had clipped Queenie’s hair as if it had been so much lamb’s wool! But little rolly-poly didn’t know any better, and we were all too thankful that the big baby hadn’t snipped off the little baby’s ears, or cut off her head, with the great, sharp shears, to mind much about the rags and tatters into which her soft golden locks had been nibbled. Besides, it didn’t make so much difference as it might, because Queenie was given to wearing over her head any “pockyhanfuss,” or towel, or duster, which happened to be within her reach, and introducing herself as “I Wohman-girl, mamma!” (she was very fond of the pictures papa and mamma had brought her from Rome of pretty girls with the white panno on their heads) or “I Keen” (Queen) “in the May!”

Where was French Minnie all this time? O, she was smiling as sweetly as ever, but wasting away, day by day, in sad decay. Isn’t that poetry? If anything could make me a poet, Minnie could; for—I might as well confess it—I loved her. Yet I never could be comfortable with her. Queenie never guessed this, and liked to stretch my lank arms around Minnie’s white neck, and lay her beautiful crèped hair against my tough old whiskers. O, how big my thumbs felt then!

The Paris beauty was never made for frontier life, and it just killed her. If Miss Alice had only knit her!

Christmas eve (a year ago, I mean) Queenie woke and sung the Angels’ Cradle-Song. “ ‘Goly be to God!’ Why, I singin’! No,—can’t sing,—got bone—in—back!”

She had hung her little stocking against the chimney, in sweet faith that something good would come of it, before she said good night. Can you guess what a precious sight that same waiting little stocking was to papa and mamma, as they thought of the last Christmas eve, when they had been listening to the “Shepherd’s Song” in St. Peter’s, far away from their darling, and of the year to come, when—that should have befallen which God willed?

But that was no sad Christmas; I doubt if there were many happier places in all the world than that homely chimney-corner at the North Pole. It was now no longer true that all who loved us were more than a thousand miles away. Ah, no! “The wilderness had budded and blossomed like the rose” for us. Loving eyes, helpful hands, and friendly voices all about us

Lest my Indian quotations should lead you into the same blunder into which some of your big brothers and sisters have already fallen without my help, I would state in black and white, that, instead of finding wampum and war-paint and whooping savages, as I am afraid I had expected, I found dear, blessed New England in miniature on that far-away shore.

Among these welcoming friends were two who had come on the same quest with ourselves, and who dwelt under the same roof. They made a great pet of our Queenie, and she loved them dearly, and was very particular to call one “Missiehomes” and the other “Missiehomes,” which I have no doubt sounded like two different names to her.

These friends were also much interested in the little stocking that Christmas eve; and it was found necessary, by Santa Claus and his council, to piece on one of papa’s extra-length stockings, in order to make room for the gifts. I was seated on one side of the chimney, with my arms folded, and the big stocking, with the little one inside, holding on to my tassel for support (by means of a crooked pin); and Mademoiselle Minnie on the other, with her lap full of bonbons, thinking how gay the Palais Royale must be to-night, but smiling sweetly all the while; and there we kept guard all night. Long before he reached you, children of the sunrise,—for you know he comes from the North,—I saw Santa Claus; but I’m not going to tell! I also saw “Missiehomes” creep in and out, after the house was still,—to say nothing of a whole family of pretty brown mice, who came pattering shyly up to us, one by one, in hope we were something good to eat. When Queenie waked in the morning, she heard the little Hair-cutter and the sweet Paleface who lived in the basket playing with an india-rubber doll, which set up to cry, but only squeaked, and so Queenie called out, “Dere, Jimmy-Jack! oo ’re playin’ my ball Uncle Willy gave me!”—which I never did at all, but was at my post; and all I have to say is, that I hope that Atlas, who holds up the world on his head, has a stiff neck, and a bone in his back; which I haven’t. But there Queenie found me when she came in, with shining eyes, to see if “Santa Caws put somepin in de chimney forler.” Of course he had! I remember distinctly that there was a new doll, so stiff, poky, and prim that she stared Minnie out of countenance, and finally frightened her into a fever-and-ague, which shook her beautiful head fairly off her shoulders, and rolled it across the floor, to our baby’s great distress, who wouldn’t touch her again for days, although mamma and Dr. Spaldings-glue soon cured her. Then, beside a great many other things, there was a set of china, which seemed to have no end of pieces. Nobody could take down a book from the library (all our books had been sent out to us to make us feel more at home) without rattling out a dish; papa always found a teapot or so deposited in his boots whenever he tried to put them on; and all the chairs had their old-fashioned posts capped with teacups, and their seats cushioned with plates, ready to receive our guests.

On Christmas morning we took our sleigh-ride as usual, for long before this the snow had overtopped the sand-drifts. You would have laughed to see us as we set forth on these daily drives. Thanks to Miss Alice, I was all ready to go at a moment’s notice (I often wore Queenie’s “dessin’ sack” or a “pockyhanfuss,” but this was only ornamental); but such an ado as the unknit bipeds had to make with fur caps and gloves and robes and beaver coats and Mackinaw blankets, and German socks and “shoe-packs” and moccasins, before they could pile into the awkward old sleigh, and go plodding over the dreary roads. Fortunately for us, the usual quantity of snow did not fall that winter; so we were not obliged to alight whenever we met another vehicle, to avoid being upset in the narrow paths, which is the frequent fate of sleigh-riders in that country. We were never at a loss to know in what direction to drive; for there were only two ways possible, and the way we didn’t go yesterday we went to-day.

Queenie liked to drive toward the Gnome-country, because we had to pass through a snarl of huts, huddling together in that awful solitude, and out of each of these huts there always rushed at us a squealing pig, a hissing, whizzing flock of water-fowl, three or four snarling curs, and an elfish child or two,—all making the most indescribable racket, which greatly refreshed the little girl, and helped her on to the next station,—a strange city whose silent streets were lined with gigantic hives, within which swarms of fierce fires toiled day and night making charcoal instead of honey; or to that other mysterious enclosure, from which no horns and hoofs that went in ever came out to tell tales of what was done, and over which there was always sitting in council a great assembly, in dull black, quarrelling and gossiping as we went by; but we were no wiser for the secrets betrayed, because we didn’t understand the Crow language. But I liked the other drive better. It followed the shore of Gitche Gumee, along which the pines marched in ghostly procession, wearing “ermine too dear for an earl,” where grotesque roots and rocks made odd faces at us from under their white caps, and where sometimes we saw such mighty waves come crashing over the “icebergs” (that is what they call the heavy hoar fringe which festoons the coast in winter) as are rarely seen on the sea-coast. A little off shore was a beautiful fairy-vision, which we could also see from our study windows. Jack Frost had taken a fancy to be an artist, and had seized a beautiful little island just dripping from its bath, and frozen it into a glorious piece of statuary, which three weird figures, veiled in purest white, guarded all winter long. You cannot imagine what a beautiful picture this made in the sunlight, with its framework of dazzling blue.

But on Christmas day we drove toward the Beehives. Papa, mamma, Queenie, and I on one seat, and “Missiehomes” and “Missiehomes” opposite us. Ah, “Missiehomes”! (alas! he is the only witness left, and he is far away in old Dublin), don’t you remember how bright Queenie’s cheeks and lips and eyes were that frosty day, when the mercury dropped below zero only to send her spirits the higher? Many a time during this Arctic winter the little frail flower was exposed to a temperature far lower than that even, only to grow the rosier and sweeter. But really, in that wonderful climate, after one gets down to zero one might as well go fifty degrees lower! Let me tell you a story which I believe, and you may, if you can. There was a good old lady in Massachusetts, whose children went to live far up on the shore of Gitche Gumee. She sat (wrapped in the horrible wet blanket of an east wind) shivering and weeping over the terrible cold to which her children must be exposed, until she could bear it no longer, but made up her mind to go and freeze with them. So she went; and one day in midwinter, after she had been out in the yard feeding the chickens, with only a light summer shawl over her shoulders, she asked her son-in-law, as she came in, “John, when does your cold weather begin here?”

“Why, mother,” said John, as he led the astonished old lady out to his thermometer, which stood at -45°, “that would do pretty well for a ‘cold snap’ in Boston,—wouldn’t it?”

But to our Christmas drive. As two of our party were forbidden to use their voices in the keen air, it soon grew very still, and Queenie’s head began to droop on mamma’s shoulder as she begged, “Sing tula! sing tula!” (to her). And when mamma had piped a little song or two, she heard the darling whisper dreamily, “Now I lay me down aseep”; and, sure enough, she was fast asleep! After a while we stopped at a little German inn, all alone out in the snows. No living thing was to be seen about the premises, but “Missiehomes” discovered through the window such a pretty sight that we all tumbled out to see it. The blinds were all up, and there on the homely table was a box in which stood a beautiful Christmas-tree. Beneath it was an empty cradle, and its boughs were hung with pretty toys and sweet-cakes and candies in all manner of odd shapes; so, doubtless, bright eyes and merry feet had danced about it very recently; but not a sign of life appeared, and mamma said it made her feel as she did when she walked among the deserted homes in Pompeii.

On our way home, Queenie must needs have a “Kissmas-tee” too; so “Missiehomes” plunged through the deep snows, and brought her a beautiful bough, on which there was a real, true bird’s-nest. If you can think of anything which didn’t sooner or later find its way into that nest, after it was set up in our study, I’d like you to mention it! It was a real magpie’s nest for “pickings and stealings.” As for me, I had to sit in it many a long hour, with a general order to “lay eggs”!

Queenie closed this, her second Christmas, by opening a copy of the “Pickwick Papers” on the sofa, and, making me kneel down before it with her, she said, “Now Essel’s goin’ to say pares. O Lor, O Lor, pay my soul to take. Amen. O Lor, O Lor, bess my soul!” I didn’t succeed in kneeling much better than I did in laying eggs; but Minnie’s joints had grown so loose that it was very easy for her. Queenie just seated her against the wall, and then twisted her face around behind. She was kept in that posture most of the time, poor soul! for Queenie didn’t enjoy her so much now that her dimpled toes and fingers were so sadly bruised, and her dainty head apt to roll off like a foot-ball, to say nothing of missing her pretty white curls, which I was made to wear very often. How sad it made me to be rigged out like an English barrister in Minnie’s wig, I cannot tell you; for, besides the pain of the pin which fastened it on my head, I only loved her the more as her beauty faded, and longed to give her some of the hardy endurance of my homely old frame, and could not bear to be made fine at her expense.

On New Year’s morning, Queenie wished Minnie and me and her dancing “Jim Crow” a “Happy New Year”; and then, fluttering before her grandpapa’s picture, she cried coaxingly, “I gie oo happy New Year, Ganpa Tild! Tome down, show me Goosey Ganner pitcher-book!” But he couldn’t come, though he ached to.

She had an odd tea-party on this day. She had made a great bugbear for some time of two little Parian busts, which she called “Missershakespull” and “Missieluser” (“Missie” because of his sleek hair, perhaps). She wouldn’t even venture into that part of the study in which they stood, so it became quite troublesome. So while sweet Miskodeed (we could not ask that Queenie should be any lovelier in body and soul when she grows to be twelve years old than is this northern blossom) was devoting part of her holiday to giving Queenie a ride in her own little sleigh, mamma arranged a little entertainment. A thick book served for a table, which she spread with as many of Queenie’s dishes as could be collected at short notice, considering the little girl’s loose notions about a china-closet. For guests at this feast, mamma set down “Missershakespull,” “Missieluser,” Minnie, and me. The bugbears looked anything but awful when their noses were brought on a level with ginger-snaps and pop-corn; and around “Missieluser’s” neck was tied a bright scarf of Minnie’s, which gave him quite a smart air, more like one of the family. So Queenie, when she came in, was only taken aback for a moment, and soon ate up all “Missershakespull’s” pop-corn from under his very nose in the most friendly manner, and, to wind up, was carried up stairs to bid dear “Missiehomes” good night, with both bugbears hugged tight in her arms.

Queenie was trying very hard to learn to turn out her toes properly. She would take hold of one foot with both hands, and set it down on one side of the room, and then lift the other in the same way, as far off as it would go toward the other side. This cost her a good many tumbles. She always had a model before her, for good old Nokomis made “jumbles” every week, and out of the oven was sure to come for the little girl (who never tasted a bit of cake in her life) a prim little brown damsel, done to a turn, who turned out her toes in the most pointed manner. Queenie became very particular about the toes of everybody else. “Turn out oore toes, Moolie-Cow!” she often said, when she met a cow in her walks or drives. We had a wise, kind medicine-man, whose great experience had taught him that “air, diet, and exercise” are the best medicines,—with a little “peppermint and rhubarb” by way of change (it was even said that he once, from force of habit, made this same prescription for a broken leg, and cured his patient). We all loved him, and watched for his cheering visits. One day, during his call, Queenie sat in mamma’s lap watching him. “Take some newbarb, Minnie!” she cried out, suddenly. “Jimmy-Jack! oo need some newbarb!” which made us all feel very funny. As soon as he rose to go, she said, “Put on oore hat,—that’s right! Take some newbarb! Turn out oore toes!” The next day she was a little fretful herself, and mamma drew on a long face, and said, in a crying tone, “O, do be pleasant, Ethel, or mamma will lose all heart, so she can’t take care of you all.” “Does oo need some pettermint and newbarb, mamma?” was all the sympathy she got from the little wag.

But she usually took nice care of mamma. One day something happened at which mamma exclaimed, “O mercy!” “Don’t say ‘O mercy,’ mamma; I would nit.” (She always said would, did, and could “nit” for not.) “Say Goly be to God!” The hours when mamma read aloud to papa seemed very long to her; but the darling will be glad to hear some day how patient and sweet she was when she was too young to understand the need.

But she could only be reconciled to mamma’s writing-desk by a seat in the writer’s lap, from which post she made very critical remarks. “Sall me vip oo coz oo writin’ naughty?” “O naughty mamma! oo mustn’t make poosey-cats’ tails.” (The printer will see the point of that!) “Papa sall vip oo. There’s a nice tails!” But she soon learned to use a pencil herself, and wrote charming letters to the dear ones far away. Here is one which mamma copied at the time, it sounded so nice when the darling read it:—

One of her favorite songs was

and so she thought it would make a very pretty name for her darling grandmamma. When she is old enough to know the story of her country, and of her own father’s life, she won’t say she doesn’t like a soldier any more.

And now she was going to be two years old! Her uncle “Nolly” had come to be with us, and his birthday present was a large Noah’s ark. Dear me, what a procession there was over papa’s big study-table! There were Noah and his three sons and all their wives, and a stiff old gentleman in the Prussian uniform, who made himself very much at home, although he wasn’t expected; and all manner of beasts and birds and bugs, from a stout pair of elephants with their trunks fastened on genteelly with red sealing-wax, down to four pert little tadpoles,—a hundred and one animals all told,—and two or three cats on the roof as natural as you please. But such a “dispersion” followed, the like of which was never seen before. The elephants had to trot off at once to the top of a bookcase, in most undignified haste, because Queenie considered them more awful than ever “Missershakespull” had been. As for the rest, they scattered in all directions on Queenie’s errands. The bird’s-nest was always full of lions and peccaries and weasels, and the teapots and sugar-bowl overflowed with smaller fry; and everybody who came in was made miserable by crunching under his feet heads and wings and tails without number. But still they seemed to increase and multiply faster than they were destroyed, and I should think there were as many as one hundred and two lying on the nursery floor at this present moment. But one day there was a great disappearance. Noah and all his family were missing, except the old Prussian, who hadn’t a word to say for himself or anybody else. In the afternoon, mamma happened to pick up poor dear Minnie, and it was as if she had sprung a watchman’s rattle. Such a rumbling and clattering. And when her head was taken off, out tumbled, helter-skelter, head over heels, the lost tribe,—“Misser” Noah and “Missie” Noah, and all the little Noahs, and half their live-stock. After this, poor Minnie seemed to be used as a sort of town residence by the family when they were tired of the water; but she smiled just as sweetly.

About this time “Missiehomes” brought home to Queenie three little birds in a cage. They were from the depths of the forest, and had never seen even the outside of a house before, probably. A friendly Indian had snared them for him, and brought them in when he came flying over the untrodden country on snow-shoes, with his load of furs and partridges and what-not strapped across his forehead, and a fierce wolf’s head in his hand, for which he was sure of twenty dollars bounty.

Only one of these birds could bear the confinement, and that was my friend the crossbill. He told me many a story of beaver-dams, and sugar-camps, and deer-hunts, which I haven’t time to repeat. One anecdote of his own family connection I must tell you. His sister had married late in the season, and built a house in the top of a tall old pine. She had four as promising little crossbills as ever peeped, born in February,—think of that, with the thermometer -30° and lower! They were just beginning to be covered with soft down, when a woodman came, and, never suspecting what mischief he was doing, cut away at the trunk of the old pine till it fell with a great crash; but her house was built so thoroughly that not a timber was jostled, and the nestlings were all unharmed. The woodman took them home with him, and, when their uncle left the region, they were all doing nicely. It was wonderful how soon this wild creature made himself at home among us. After two days he became so tame that he hopped about the library, and made himself very free with Minnie’s toes and my tassel. The trouble soon was to keep away from him. He used to perch on Queenie’s head, but she was too restless to let him stay long, and he liked best to ride about from room to room on mamma’s shoulder. His little toes felt very queer, but we all loved the little creature. It was very curious to see him tear out the seeds of the pine-cones. His beak was made on purpose for this,—its two parts twisting over each other, so he could wrench out the sweet heart from the stiff husk. But he was also very fond of canary and hemp seed. Such luxury was too much for his simple nature; and so one day he just rolled over on the carpet and died, to the great grief of the household, except Queenie’s “Uncle Doctor Nolly,” who wanted his bones for a “specimen.” He had only one enemy (the crossbill had), and to him he never would be reconciled. This was his own image in the glass. Whenever he caught sight of this, his wings would flutter, and his body swell, and his feathers ruffle, till he was twice his natural size; and a fierce battle would follow, which he had, of course, all his own way, but from which he never seemed to get any satisfaction. And what do you think our baby named her little crossbill?—why, “Santa Claws,” out of her own funny head!

“Missiehomes” soon found another pet for Queenie. “Tail-in-air the children call him,”—so Mr. Longfellow says. He was the very smallest red squirrel that could be made and hold life. He was mostly tail and eyes. But he was no tamer the last day of his stay with us than the first. He would quiver, and shrink into the least bit of a fur ball, when any one came near him. Uncle “Nolly” thought “Santa Claws’s” cage would make a nice house for him, as the wires were very near together; but no sooner was the cage door shut upon him than “Tail-in-air” was flourishing on the top of a bookcase! and that was the last we saw of him for many a day; only the nuts which were left about the corners of the room for him disappeared, so we knew he must be hiding behind the books.

There was now rare sport on the ice, and graceful skaters in bright costume flitted between the shore and the Fairy Island. Queenie could look down upon the gay scene from “Missiehomes’s” parlor, where she loved dearly to stay; and sometimes we varied our regular drives by an excursion over the ice. But this we did not enjoy very much, for the ice had a way of vanishing out of the harbor without giving fair notice, so one might skate till midnight by the light of the moon (which nowhere shines more brilliantly), and wake next morning to see only blue water.

And now there came a moment when the great hope which had brought the little family to Gitche Gumee went out at noonday in darkness; and Queenie was only waiting for the ice to vanish, with no danger of return, to go back whence she came. But although we heard that the time of birds had come about our old home, yet no sign of spring appeared, except as the roads grew more impassable, so that the mails had to be brought on the backs of men for a distance of one hundred and twenty miles. Until the year before, all winter communication between the little colony and the great world had been by means of dog-teams.

Day after day we watched and waited, somewhat as they did who sent out the raven over the world of water in the Bible story. At last, one morning, as Queenie was gazing out of the window, she suddenly exclaimed, “And the Beauteous Land!” She was fond of the song,—

and, sure enough, our little dove had discovered a sign of promise,—the head of an old sand-bank struggling through the snow. But still we watched and waited, until Uncle “Nolly” and “Missiehomes” began to bring in from their walks “Darlings of the Forest,”—the beautiful trailing arbutus, more perfect in leaf and blossom than mamma had ever seen it before, but it came too late.

Still we watched and waited; but by this time all the books had been packed away ready for the first “Canoe of Thunder” that should venture into our harbor; and this brought his shy highness “Tail-in-air” to terms. The empty bookcases were still standing, and Uncle “Nolly” with a cane could easily dislodge the little wild creature; but it wasn’t so easy to catch him. After he had slipped through “Missiehomes’s” fingers half a dozen times, one of Queenie’s crib-blankets was used as a trap. Then such a hurry-skurrying as there was about the room! and when “Missiehomes” was very sure he had caught him, and very carefully unrolled the blanket (while the squirrel’s box was held ready to receive him), suddenly the whisk of a tail would be seen on the other side of the room, and the chase would recommence. At last, however, he was fairly caught, and a bit of jeweller’s cotton given him for a blanket. His house was roofed with glass, so that he could not hide from us; but the next morning after he had taken possession, that little piece of cotton almost filled the box. The squirrel had carded and, hetchelled (isn’t that what your great-grandmammas called it?) it, until it was like a soft fleecy cloud all about him, keeping him warm, and hiding him from the gaze of the dreadful world without. But, though we feasted and coaxed him, he never would trust us; and one day when his house had been set out in the sunlight, and a little opening made in the roof to admit more air, we found only a heap of cotton and nut-shells when night came. Nokomis reported next day that a little bushy tail had been seen dodging in and out of her wood-pile,—and that’s all we know. Still we watched and waited until May-day came, and then for the first time for several months we heard the roar of the monster who had dragged us to this strange land, now so familiar and dear to us. The next day (leaving poor Minnie, wig and all, in the care of the little paleface in the basket) we said good by to Gitche Gumee,—not glad to go, O no! Queenie will know some day how near to heaven that blessed country lay last winter, and how like angels of love its people were to her and hers; and will repeat with all her heart the benediction,

Mrs. Edward A. Walker.

The shoes marched Princekin out of the hall, the birch rods coming behind, to a room where were a pair of hands hanging from the ceiling, that instantly boxed his ears, and told him to be a good boy, a net made of breeze, a loom of air, and four rules, written in large letters on the wall; but perhaps you would like to know how Princekin came there. Princekin was a curly-headed little boy, who loved his mother very much, and his sister tolerably, but was apt to be selfish and fly into a rage with everything about him, from his tool-box up; and, unluckily, on one of these occasions came along the giant that gets all the bad boys, and, in spite of what his mother and nurse could say, tucked Princekin in his watch-pocket, and carried him off.

Now this giant was two hundred and fifty feet high, and he wore a monstrous coat that flapped about his heels and that was full of pockets, and these pockets were stuffed full of naughty little boys like Princekin; so there was great crying, and rubbing of eyes and noses. The giant cared nothing about that, however, but strode along, smoking a monstrous pipe, till he came to the gate of a great castle, where he brought out a bell from his trousers-pocket, like the bells that hang in church steeples, and began to swing it to and fro, shouting, “Here are your bad boys for sale! Here are your fine bad boys! Thin and fat, large and little, here are your nice bad boys for sale!”

At the sound of all this ringing and hallooing, came out from the castle a giant as large as the first, and stumped heavily down the steps and out to the gate, with his hands in his pockets. This was the person that had the contract for supplying fairy-land with clouds, getting so many tons of honey-comb and dozens of fat cattle for every hundred clouds; and, being too lazy and clumsy to make them himself, he obliged all the poor little boys that he could catch to make them for him. Having, however, a fair number of boys on hand this morning, he was inclined to be critical, and pulled their curls, tweaked their ears, cracked their fingers, turned them about on the palm of his great hand, and held them up by their heels, without finding any to suit him.

“Fingers all thumbs!” he growled in a great gruff voice; “fingers all thumbs! mix everything up, rain-clouds and snow-clouds; never do in the world! I want a hand for fine work,—feathery clouds, and clouds with red and gold edges, and purple bars, and warranted to break up in hills and palaces, and crack off in islands and profiles. They like that sort of stuff in fairy-land; and my best hand ran away last week, and here am I with the lovely weather coming on, and hardly a sunrise or a sunset to my name! It is of no use, my friend,”—tossing up the boys in the air like pennies, and catching them again, half frightened out of their wits,—“there is not a single boy here that can do anything better than a raw fog, thick enough to cut with your knife.”

Then giant number one brought out Princekin, more dead than alive, and, holding him carefully between his thumb and finger, lest he should smash him, “What do you think of this?” he said, with a chuckle. “He is not used to work, and has never been made to mind; but he has brains and fingers, sir, that can do your work, or else call me a dwarf!”

“I’ll train him, then,” growled giant number two, sticking Princekin into one of his pockets, his little fat legs kicking frantically in the air, for he had fallen into the giant’s tobacco-box, and was wellnigh smothered. “I’ll make him mind. Come in and dine. I was just sitting down to a little stew of half a dozen calves or so, but I will have the cook throw on a few sheep for a quick broil, and I think we shall make out.”

So giant number one hung up his overcoat, boys and all, and went in to dinner; and giant number two, pulling out his tobacco-box, pulled out Princekin also.

“O ho!” quoth the giant, “are you there? It is time you were sent about your business. Shoes and rods!”

Up started from the corner a pair of little red shoes with golden heels, and a couple of birch rods, and came along the hall to the giant, clump, clump! swish, swish!

“Good,” said the giant. “Now, attention! Here is a new hand. Take him to room A No. 1, and look sharp after him. Here, you Princekin, put on those shoes; and be quick, sir, or it will be the worse for you.”

So Princekin, in a terrible fright, put on the shoes; and they marched him up, as we have said, to the top of the castle, where he stood staring, in a miserable way, at the rules on the walls; and this is what they said:—

Poor Princekin! To be tumbled out of his bed sound asleep, the next morning, on the hard stone floor, and be whipped all the time that he was trying to lace his shoes and button his trousers; and to weave on a loom of air, through which he was continually poking his clumsy little fingers,—it was very hard! The cloud-films were like so much thistle-down. If he made the least stir among them, away they all floated in the air, and he must follow, and watch till they settled again. At home, when he failed to build his blocks to suit him, or found his sister’s doll too big to sit in his go-cart, or was told to go back and shut the door, he was apt to say very crossly, “O dear!” “Of course!” “I don’t want to!” and so now he was apt to say, when he had woven a great cloud wrong side out, or made one too stiff, so that it would not break off into islands, “O dear! how tiresome!” and to begin to cry; when he was quite sure to have reason to cry in earnest; for the hands had a way of seizing him by the shoulders and marching him up and down the room very fast, shaking him vigorously, and boxing his ears, while the birch rods darted from their corner and swished about his head, bawling, “Now, will you try that again? now, will you try that again?” till he tingled with pain; and as he had a habit of being impatient, he was shaken out of breath, and tingling, and crying, about once an hour.

Then you know, according to Rule 3, he was to do his own sunbeam-catching; and, not knowing how to manage a net made of breeze and shadow, he used to stand at the window for hours, angling for sunbeams, while the merry little golden-jacketed fellows played at hide-and-seek in his curls, and turned somersaults under his very fingers, saying, “Don’t you wish you may get us? and don’t you think you could stand still now, and not fret to have your hair combed, if you could have your mother, instead of the birch rods, to dress you? and don’t you think you could keep your temper with your toys and your sister, if you had them, instead of cloud-films and a loom of air? and don’t you think you could try to be good if you had mamma to teach and kiss you, instead of hands that are boxing your ears all day long? and don’t you think you could stop your play now to wait on papa or mamma without grumbling, if you were not obliged to work all day at cloud-making, and never allowed to play at all?”

“Yes,” said Princekin, “but why don’t you talk to the giant who keeps us here, and is a great, ugly, selfish brute, and ever so much worse than I am?”

“How dare you?” bellowed the rods; and “You’ll catch it!” squeaked the hands; and in a twinkling Princekin was hustled, and shaken, and boxed, and beaten, till he lay on the floor red and smarting, and without breath enough even to cry. Meantime the pines outside had heard every word, and, being great gossips, they presently began to sigh, and rustle, and talk it over among themselves.

“Once on a time,” they said, “there was a Princekin six years old, and he had a sister three years old, so he was older and stronger than she; and once on a time, there was a giant three hundred years old, and two hundred and fifty feet high, so he was older and stronger than Princekin. And Princekin thought the nicest thing in the world was to have all the blocks, and the prettiest books, and make just as much noise as he liked, never mind about mamma’s head or the baby,—which was quite natural for a little boy; and the giant thought that tons of honey-comb and hundreds of fat cattle, plenty to eat and nothing to do, never mind about little boys’ aching backs and tired fingers, were the nicest things in the world,—which was quite natural in a great, greedy, hulking giant, two hundred and fifty feet high. And Princekin, being older and stronger than his sister, took her toys, and made her do what he liked; and the giant, being older and stronger than Princekin, took him and made him do what he liked. And Princekin, because mamma could not continually reprove and punish, often made her very uncomfortable; and the giant, because he could smash Princekin between his thumb and finger, made him all the time uncomfortable. Was there ever such a selfish Princekin? For the giant is only selfish with little boys, for whom he cares no more than for little mice; but Princekin is selfish with those he loves best!”

“Hullo!” said Princekin, opening his eyes wide; “why, that is just what mamma says. How do the trees know all about me? I wonder if I am as bad as the giant. I wish I was home anyhow; I am sure I would be good all the rest of my life.”

Just as he said that, came along the Shadow Elf. He is the pleasant old person that shuts up the flowers at night, tucks up the birds in their nests, chases the sunbeams up the hills to fairy-land, hangs out the stars, and keeps a sharp lookout for all good children that are lost or in trouble. He knows where these last are by the buzzing in his ears; and so he stopped short before the castle where Princekin was, and said to the giant, who sat on the steps, smoking, “You have a good boy in there. Bring him out.”

“No such thing!” answered the giant, gruffly; “I never have any good boys.”

“That is the boy,” said the Shadow Elf, pointing up at the window where Princekin, who had heard the talk, was peeping out. “Send him down, and don’t keep me waiting.”

“He is the worst boy in the whole lot,” growled the giant; “but, if you want him, you are welcome to him. Shoes, bring Princekin down”; for the giant knew that he must be civil to the Shadow Elf, or he would lose his fairy-land custom. So the Shadow Elf tucked Princekin in a corner of his mantle, and carried him home to his mother, who was very glad to get him; and they do say that he has improved so much, that he is down on Santa Claus’s list as a model boy.

Louise E. Furniss.

Mrs. Anna M. Wells.

IX.

A lively breeze was blowing over the little village of Rockdale, and in a lively way the tall trees were bending down their heads, and swinging to and fro as if they liked it; for the leaves were beating time and were singing joyously, and appeared to be saying all the while how glad they would be to keep beating time and singing on forever, if the wind would only please to be so good as to help them on in the merry business; and the tall grass and grain were shining in the sun, and rolling round in a very reckless manner, as if they meant to show off their great billows of green and gold, and make the staid and sober little waves that were ruffling up the surface of the bright blue waters of the bay quite ashamed.

“Ha, ha!” laughed our ancient friend, the Captain, when he saw what a day it was. “Ha, ha! what a day indeed!” and right away he began to call loudly for his boy, Main Brace,—“Main Brace, Main Brace, come here! Come bear a hand, and be lively there, you plum-duff, chuckle-headed young land-lubber, and waddle along aft here on your sausage legs.”

A feeble voice is heard to answer, “Ay, ay, sir,” from the galley,—“ay, ay, sir; comin’, sir, comin’ ”; and the plum-duff head and the sausage legs follow feebly in after the voice, looking surprised.

“Main Brace,”—begins the Captain.

“Ay, ay, sir,” responds Main Brace; and the plum-duff head lets fall its lower jaw, and looks amazed, the Captain is so much in earnest.

“Some bait, Main Brace! Do you hear, my lad? some bait! Be lively, boy, and get some bait; and then overhaul the Little Alice, and stand by to be ready when I come down. We’ll go a-fishing to-day,—do you hear, my boy? And we’ll have a jolly time,—do you hear that? So be lively now, and be off with your plum-duff head and your sausage legs. I tell you, away, away! for we’ll go a-fishin’. Away, away! for we’ll go a-sailin’, a-sailin’, a-sailin’. Away, away! for we’ll go a-sailin’,—a-sailin’ on the sea.”

And without another word the sausage legs made off with the plum-duff head, which had no sooner got outside the door than it began to let out in dislocated fragments, from a mouth that gradually expanded until it reached from ear to ear, “Away, away! we’ll go a-fishin’, a-fishin’, a-fishin’; away, away! we’ll go a-fishin’; away, away! we’ll all be jolly, jolly, jolly,—we’ll all be jolly”; and so on until the sausage legs had carried the plum-duff head and the refrain together so far down among the trees, towards the water, that all the other “jollys” and the “fishin’s,” and the rest of it, were blown clean away by the wind.

And off went the Captain, too, hurrying up to the top of the hill behind the cottage, as if the cosey little thing was all afire, and the dear old soul was running up for help; and when he reached the top of the hill, he began swinging round his old tarpaulin hat, making the long blue ribbons fairly whistle and speak, as if they would say, “Old man, old man, stop a bit, and take breath!—can’t you now? and say, what’s this all about, for goodness’ sake!”

But the old man knew well enough himself what it was all about; for he was signalling his little friends; and every circle of his big arm, and every shake of his long gray beard, and every swing of his old tarpaulin hat, seemed to sing out, “Hurrah, hurrah, for a jolly day! hurrah, hurrah, my children gay! hurrah, hurrah, let’s up and away upon the bright blue waters!”

By and by the children caught sight of the old tarpaulin hat and the blue ribbons and the Captain himself, all in this state of violent excitement; and down they bore at once upon the Ancient Mariner, as if he were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots, and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish fore-and-afters of the piratical pattern.

“Heyday!”—the old man never thought he had begun until he had thrown off a heyday or so,—“heyday, my hearties!” said the Ancient Mariner, as the children overhauled him,—“heyday, my dears! keep on that same course before the wind, and you’ll fetch up in the right port”; and so, without further ado, he hurried “my hearties” down to the beach, and aboard the yacht; and then very soon Main Brace (whose mouth had never left off expanding at the prospect of “a fishin’ ” and “a jolly day” generally) had the anchor away; and then the Captain spread the bright sails to the bright breeze; and there never was, since the world began, a merrier little party, in a merrier little craft, afloat upon blue water on a merrier day. Indeed, the day was so merry, and the craft was so merry, and the waves were so merry as they came leaping round the yacht, and the wind was so merry as it went whistling through the rigging, and the little party in the yacht were so merry, and everything and everybody was so merry, that it would be strange indeed if the fish were not merry too; and the finny creatures played round the pretty hooks, too merry by half to touch them; and then they came merrily up, and poked their heads out close to the top of the water, and stared at the merry-makers in the yacht, and they seemed to be whispering to one another, “O, what a jolly lot of coves they are, to be sure! O, don’t they wish they may catch us?—don’t they though?” and then they dropped down again to look at the pretty hooks; but only the sober-sided ones that had no idea of being merry went near enough to bite, and these got bitten in return; for, if the hook once got into their red gills, they found themselves jerked up before they could say Lobster, and then they found themselves bleeding and floundering in a basket, and heard merry voices shouting round them, to their great astonishment.

And of these sober-sided fishes who were so unfortunate as to have no idea of being merry, the Captain and his little friends caught as many as they wanted; and then the Captain called to Main Brace to “let the anchor go,” and then he said to his little friends, “Put away your fishing-tackle now, and come down below into the little cabin, and I’ll surprise you.” And, sure enough, he did surprise them,—quite as much, perhaps, as if some fairy queen had come, and called them to a fairy banquet; as much indeed, perhaps, as if they had themselves suddenly been turned to fairies, and were doing something that was never even dreamed of by mortal child before; for while they had been fishing, Main Brace had, by direction of the Captain, been building up a fire in the little stove, and in the very centre of the cabin he had set out a little table, and upon the little table there was spread the whitest little cloth, and on the cloth were set all round the daintiest little plates and knives and forks, and the neatest little napkins, and the cunningest little cups, that were ever seen. “And now,” spoke up the Captain, laughing all the while to see his little friends so much surprised, “fall to, fall to! for we’re going to have a jolly feast, or my name, isn’t Ancient Mariner, nor John Hardy either.” And the Captain poured out some fresh foaming milk into the cunning little cups, from a big stone jug; and he brought some fresh white rolls and some golden butter from a little locker; and soon afterward he drew from the little stove some dainty little fish, and dropped one, all crisp and hissing hot, upon each dainty little plate; and now for half an hour there was busy work enough for the dainty little knives and forks. The Captain’s little stove proved to be everything that one could wish for in that line; and the Captain’s style of cooking showed plainly enough, as William said, that “the Captain had not travelled round the world, and been an Ancient Mariner, for nothing.”

When the meal was over, and everything was cleared away, and the little cabin was once more in ship-shape order, William proposed the Captain’s health,—tossing back his head, and drinking a great quantity of imaginary wine from an imaginary glass. “Here’s to the health of Captain Hardy, Ancient Mariner, and other things too numerous to mention,—the jolliest Jack Tar that ever reefed a sail, or walked on the windward side of a quarter-deck! May Davy Jones be a long while waiting for him; and when he does go into Davy’s locker, may he go an Admiral!” And then the children all together “Hip, hip, hurrahed” the Captain, until the old man had nearly split himself with laughing at their childish merriment.

“And now for the story,” said the Captain, when the laugh was over. “What do you say to that?”

“The story,—yes, yes, the story,” shouted all the children, merrier than ever.

“Down here, or up on deck?”

“Down here, just where we are; it’s such a splendid place!”

“Then down here it shall be,” went on the Captain, right well pleased. “Down here it shall be, my dears, if I can only pick up the yarn again where I broke it off. Let me see”; and the old man put a finger to his nose, as he always did when he was thoughtful.

“Aha!” cried he, at length, “I’ve got my bearings now, as neat as a light-house in a fog. You know, my dears, when we left off last time, we had gone so far along with the story as that you could see that the Dean and I had got in soundings, as it were. We had seen the light-ship off the harbor, and were steering for it, so to speak. We had, by working very hard, and by persevering very much, and by using our wits as best we could, gathered about us everything that was needed to insure our present safety, and some things to make us comfortable. We had a hut to shelter us, and clothes to keep us warm, and fire to cook our food.

“But the winter was now coming on very fast, and we knew well enough what that was likely to be. The grass and moss and flowers were dead or dying; the ice was forming on the little pools, and here and there upon the sea; little spurts of snow were coming now and then; the winds were getting to be more fierce and angry, and every day was growing colder and more dark. We knew that the long winter was close upon us, and that the shadow of the night would soon be resting on us all the time. The birds had hatched their young, and quitted their nests, and were flying off to the sunny south, where we so longed to go, and so longed to send a message by them to the loved ones far away. It made us sad—O, how very, very sad!—to see the ducks so happy on the wing, and sailing off and leaving us upon the island all alone. Alone,—all, all alone! Alone upon a desert island in the Arctic Sea! Alone in cold and darkness! All, all alone!

“We made ourselves warm coats and stockings out of the skins of the birds that we had caught; and we made caps, too, out of them,—plucking off the feathers, and leaving only the soft, warm, mouse-colored down upon the skin. And out of the seal’s skin we made mittens and nice soft boots, or rather, as I might call them, moccasins.

“The ducks began to go away about the middle of August, as nearly as we could tell, but it was more than a month after that before they had all left the island. Meanwhile we had caught a great number of them,—two hundred and sixty-six in all; and we had collected, besides, ninety dozen of their eggs. These birds and eggs were all carefully stowed away in our storehouses of ice and rocks near the glacier.

“In the matter of food, we had, therefore, done very well; but we felt the need of some more blubber for our fire, and some warmer clothing than the birds’ skins. To supply this latter want, we tried very hard to catch some foxes; but it was a long time before we were successful,—not until all the ducks had gone away; for the foxes would not trouble themselves to go inside our traps so long as there were any young ducks to be caught, or eggs to eat. These traps were made of stones, and in building them I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me from my indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from my duties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, remembering how I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the same pattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly. When there were no longer eggs for them to eat, or ducks for them to catch, the foxes went into our traps, which we baited for them with flesh from the dead narwhal. The pelts of these foxes were thick and warm; and, by the time the weather got very cold, we had obtained a good number, and of them made suits of clothes at our leisure. There were two kinds of foxes,—one sort of blue gray, and the other quite white.

“As the weather grew colder, the little streams, which had thus far supplied us with water, all froze up; and we had now nothing to depend upon but the freshly fallen snow, which we had, of course, to melt. Thus you see how important it was that I should have found the soapstone in season, and made a pot of it, else we should not only have been obliged to go without boiled food, but likewise without water. As for the blubber for fuel, which we felt that we should badly need before the winter was over, we had great confidence that we should be able to catch some seals, though neither of us could imagine exactly how it was to be done. Happily for the present we were relieved from all anxiety by a dead walrus and a small white whale drifting in upon the beach during a westerly gale. The waves being very strong, they were landed so high up on the beach that there was little fear of their being washed away again.

“It was no easy matter to cut these animals up with our one jack-knife, since, before we could get it done, they had frozen quite hard. The temperature had gone down until it was already below freezing all the time; and very soon the snow fell quite deep, and was drifted into great heaps by the wind. The sea, soon after this, became frozen over quite solid all about the island, although we could still see plenty of clear, open water in the distance. There was one satisfaction, at least, in this freezing up of the sea, as we could walk out upon it, and go all around the island without having to clamber over the rough rocks.

“Now you have seen pretty much what our life was on the island, and how we were prepared for the winter. Well, the winter came by and by in good earnest, I can tell you. The sunlight all went away, and then, soon afterward, the autumn twilight went away; and then came the darkness that I told you is constant, in the winter, up towards the North Pole. The winter there is but one long night.”

Here William, who was, as we have seen, of an inquiring turn of mind, interrupted the Captain to ask how dark it was in this polar winter.

“Dark as midnight,” replied the Captain, promptly.

“Dark all the time, did you say, Captain Hardy?”

“Yes, dark all the time, my lad,—dark in the morning, dark in the evening, dark at midnight, dark at noon, dark, all the time, as any night you ever saw; only, everything being white with snow, of course that makes it look lighter than it does here, where the trees and the houses, and other dark objects, help along the blackness of the night, and make it more gloomy.”

“But what,” asked William, “did you do for light in this dark time, since you did not have a lamp?”

“Easy there, my lad,” replied the Captain; “I’m just coming to that, you see. Of course the darkness set our wits to working, and through our wits we got over this trouble as we had over many others. First we made an open dish of soapstone, and put some oil in it; and then we made a wick out of the dry moss, and set fire to it; but this was found to make so much smoke that it drove us out of the hut, and it was given up. But we did not throw away the dish, and after a while it occurred to us to powder the dry moss by rubbing it between the hands, and with this powdered moss we lined our soapstone dish all over on the inside with a layer a quarter of an inch thick. After smoothing this down all around the edge (this dish, which we called a lamp, was much like a saucer, only rougher and much larger), we filled it half full of oil, and again set fire to it all around the edge; and this time it worked beautifully,—smoking very little, and giving us plenty of light.”

“How cunning!” exclaimed the children, all at once.

“Rather so,” replied the Captain, “but hardly more so than the two little drinking-cups we carved out of the same kind of soapstone that we made the lamp and pot of.”

“It must have felt very queer, Captain Hardy,” said Fred, inquiringly, “to be in darkness all the time. I can’t imagine such a thing as the winter being all the time dark,—can you, Will?”

“No, I can’t,” replied William,—“can you, sister Alice?”

“Yes, I think I can,” said Alice, quickly.

“Why, how’s that, my little dear?” asked the Captain, greatly interested.

THE AURORA BOREALIS.
Drawn by H. Fenn, from the Painting by F. E. Church.          [See Cast Away in the Cold, page 306.

“O,” said Alice, in her gentle way, “I’ve only to think of poor blind Joe going round with his little dog, begging from door to door, and never seeing anything in all the world,—no sun, no moon, no stars, nor any light to him at all. Poor Joe’s bright summer went out long, long ago; and both light and warmth were gone, never to come back, when Martha died! and all’s night to Joe,—and that’s how I know what it is to be in darkness all the time”; and as little Alice made this little speech about poor blind Joe, the beggar-man, her lovely face looked thoughtful beyond its years, and, as she finished, the Captain saw a tear stealing from her soft blue eye for poor Joe’s sake; and he caught her in his arms right off, without stopping to think at all what he was doing, and he kissed away the tear; and, as he did it, a much bigger one came tearing out of his own great hazel eye, and hurried down into his shaggy beard to hide, as if it were quite frightened at what it had been doing.

“Spoken like the little lady that you are, my dear,” broke out the Captain; “always thinking of the unfortunate. And you are very right, my child. Poor blind Joe’s darkness is much worse than ours ever was, up in the Arctic Sea, upon the lonely island,—far worse indeed, poor man! for you must know that the stars were shining brightly there upon us all the time; and then the moon came every month; and when it came, it came for good and all, and never set for several days; and then sometimes the aurora borealis would flash across the heavens, and clear away the darkness for a little while, as if it were a huge broom sweeping cobwebs from the skies, and letting in the light of day beneath the stars. O, what a splendid sight, it was!”

“O, tell us all about it, Captain Hardy, won’t you?” asked all the children with one voice.

“Of course, I will,” replied the Captain, “only I can do no sort of justice to that species of natural scenery, don’t you see? That’s a touch beyond John Hardy’s powers of description, as I can well assure you.”

The children all declared that they never could think anything beyond John Hardy’s powers, and they believed it, too.

“Well, well! Now let me see, my dears, what I can do for you. First, you, know the scientific chaps, especially my friend the Doctor, down in Boston, say that the aurora borealis is electricity broke loose, and tearing through the air, from pole to pole, for some purpose of its own. It can’t be caught, nor bottled up, as Franklin bottled up the lightning, nor analyzed,—and, in short, nothing can be done with it; and so it goes tearing through the skies, as I said before, from pole to pole, just where it likes. And when you go up beyond the Arctic Circle, you see it starting up from a fiery arch that stretches right across the sky before you; and from this fiery arch great streams of light shoot out, and then fall back again, and continue to come and go for hours and hours,—sometimes lasting for a little while, and waving to and fro like a silken curtain of many colors fluttering in the wind, and then again seeming to be phantom things playing hide and seek among the stars; sometimes like wicked spirits of the night, bent on mischief; and then again like tongues of flame from some great fire in some great world beyond the earth, making one almost afraid that the heavens will break out presently in a roaring blaze, and rain a shower of living coals and ashes on his head.

“And O, how bright the colors are sometimes! The great arch of light that spans the sky is often bright with all the colors of the rainbow, changing every instant. And from these flickering belts of light, great sheets and streams fly up with lightning speed,—green, and orange, and blue, and purple, and bright crimson,—all mingling here and there and everywhere above, while down beneath comes out in bold relief before the eye the broad, white plain of ice and snow upon the ocean, the great icebergs that lie here and there upon it, the tall white mountains of the land, and the dark islands in the sea; and then it dies away again, and the dark islands in the sea, and the tall white mountains, and the icebergs, and the white plain around, all vanish from the sight, and the mind retains only an impression that the icebergs, with all these bright colors reflected on them from above, had come from space and darkness, like the meteors, then to vanish, and leave the darkness more profound.

“And thus the auroral light and color keep pulsating in the air, up and down, up and down; and thus the icebergs seem to come and go; and the very stars above seem to be rushing out with a bold bright glare, and going back again as quickly, singed and withered, as it were, into puny sparks, and, utterly disheartened with the effort to keep their places in the face of such a flood of brightness, are at length resolved no more to try to twinkle, twinkle through the night.

“And that is all I can tell you about the aurora borealis, for that is all I know about it.”

“O, isn’t he a great one?” whispered William to Fred, who sat close beside him on the locker,—“isn’t he, indeed?—to say he can’t describe an aurora borealis, when he has blood, thunder, fire, and all creation on his tongue.”

“But,” went on the Captain, “in spite of this auroral light and the moonlight, the winter was dreary enough. At first we wanted to sleep all the time; and we had much trouble to keep ourselves from giving way to this desire. If we had done so, it would have made us very unhealthy and altogether miserable. We had to keep up our spirits, whatever else we did; and after a while, to help us with this, we got into regular habits; and we set a great clock up in the sky to tell us the time of day.”

“A clock up in the sky!” exclaimed both the boys; “why, Captain Hardy, how was that?”

“Why, don’t you see, my lads, the ‘Great Bear’ and all the other constellations of the north go round and round the polestar, which is right above your head; and it so happened that I knew the ‘Great Bear,’ and the two stars in its side called ‘the Pointers’ because they point to the polestar. Now these two ‘Pointers,’ going around once in the four-and-twenty hours, pointed up from the south at one time, and up from the north at another time, and up from the east and from the west in the same way; and thus you see we had a clock up in the sky to tell us the time of day, for we had an iceberg picked out all around for every hour, and when ‘the Pointers’ stood over that particular berg we knew what time it was.

“We should have got along through the winter much more comfortably if we had had some books, or some paper to write on, and pen and ink to write with; but these things were quite beyond the reach of our ingenuity. So our life was very monotonous; doing our daily duties,—that is, whatever we might find to do,—and, after wading through the deep snow in doing it, we came back again to our little hut to get warm, and to eat and talk and sleep.

“And much talking we did, as I can assure you, about each other, and our families and lives, and what great things we would do when we got away from the island. Thus we came gradually to know each other’s history, and thus there came to be greater sympathy between us, and more indulgence of each other’s whims and fancies, as we got better and better acquainted.

“The Dean had quite a story to relate of himself. He told me that he was born in the great city of New York. His father died before he could remember, and his mother was very poor; but so long as she kept her health she managed, in one way or another, to live along from day to day by sewing; and she managed, too, to send the Dean to school. She loved her bright-haired little boy so very, very much that she would have spent the last cent she could ever earn, could she only give her darling Dean a little knowledge that might help him on in the world when he grew to be a man. And so she stinted herself and saved, all unknown to her darling Dean; and she had not clothing or fire enough to keep her warm in the bleak winter, when the Dean was out, though she had a fine fire when the Dean came back. All would have been well enough if the poor woman had not, with her hard work and her efforts to save, become thin and weak, and then grown sick with fever; and now there was nothing for her but the hospital, for there was no money to pay for medicines, or doctor’s bills, to say nothing of rent and fire and clothes.

“And now for the first time the Dean began to realize the situation; and a vague impression crossed his mind, that the poor, pale woman, now restless with pain on a narrow bed in a great long ward of a dreary hospital,—his own dear mother, suffering here with strange hands only to comfort her,—had been brought to this for his sake; and when she grew better, after a long, long time, but was still far from well, he thought and thought, and cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, and wished that he might do something to show his gratitude, and make amends.

“By and by he got into a factory, and worked there early and late, until he too grew sick, and was carried to the hospital, and was laid beside his poor sick mother, on a narrow bed. But he soon got well again, though his mother didn’t, and then, all unknown to her (he could do nothing else) he went to sea as cabin-boy of a ship sailing to Havana; and he came back too; and with a proud heart beating in his little breast, he carried his little purse of gold and silver coins that the captain gave him to his poor sick mother; and then he went away again on the same ship, and came back once more with another purse of money, twice as big as the first; but the good captain that had been so kind to him, and rewarded him so well, fell sick, and died of yellow fever on the passage home, and the mate, who got command of the ship, being a different sort of man, disliked the Dean, and told him not to come back any more. And so the poor Dean didn’t know what to do; until one of his old shipmates met him in the street, and took him off to New Bedford, and shipped him as cabin-boy of the Blackbird; ‘and now here I am,’ said the poor little Dean, ‘and all the rest you know,—cast away in the cold, in this awful place, while my poor sick mother has no money and no friends in the world, and is thinking all the time what a wretch I am to run away and desert her, when, God knows, I meant to do nothing of the sort!’ and so the Dean burst out crying, and, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t help crying a little too.

“But the Dean was a right plucky little fellow, I can tell you; and so full of hope and ambition was he, that nothing could keep him down very long; and nothing, I believe, could ever make him despond for a single minute but thinking of his mother, sick and far away, without friends or money, lying on a narrow bed, all through the weary, dreary days and nights, in the weary, dreary ward of a crowded hospital. Poor Dean! he had something to make him cry, and something always to make him sad, if he had a mind to be; but what had I in comparison?—I, who had run away from home with no good motive like the Dean’s.

“After the recital of this story of the Dean’s, we were both very sad, until the Dean suddenly roused himself, and said, ‘Let’s go and look at our traps, Hardy’; and so we sallied out into the moonlight, and waded through the snow, to see if there were foxes in our traps. But to get outside our hut was not so easy a matter now as it was when we first built it; for, in order to keep the cold winds away, we had made a long, low, narrow passage, with a crook in it, through which we crawled on our hands and knees, before we reached the door.

“We walked all the way around the island, and visited all our traps, of which we had seventeen, but only two of them had foxes in them; the others were either filled with snow, or were completely covered over with it, for the wind had been blowing very hard the day before.

“And now, as we got farther and farther into the winter, we began to have some very strange adventures,—altogether different from anything I have told you of before; but you see the sun will soon be going down behind the trees, and we are a good long way from the ‘Mariner’s Rest,’ so ‘up anchor’ ’s the word now, my dears, and ‘under way’ again.”

And the merry little yacht was not long in carrying the merry little party over to the Captain’s favorite anchorage; and then they were all soon ashore, and after many merry and many pleasant speeches, our little friends parted from the Ancient Mariner once more, leaving him standing in the shadow of the great tall trees, with a string of fish in one hand; while Fred and William, with Main Brace to help them, and with merry Alice running on ahead, each carried off a string for their next day’s breakfast,—a trophy to be proud of, as they thought.

Isaac I. Hayes.

That little boy who went shrinking round the corner just now, Charley, whom you called “such a queer chap,” and whose frightened eyes you laughed at, has lived through a night that would have brought a frightened look into older eyes than his. If you care to hear his story, I can tell it.

In the wildest and least inhabited part of Michigan, on the shore of one of those beautiful inland lakes for which you know that State is noted, stood a log-cabin. It was a lonely spot, but it would have been hard to find a prettier or happier home; and it was here that Jimmy Bell was born; and here he and his little sister used to play for hours, on the long summer days, upon the beach of the lake, looking out into its clear depths, and watching the great white water-lilies, opening day after day on the cool waves.

Even in this far-away home the bugle-call was heard, and Jimmy’s father left his fields unplanted, and turned his face southward with a brave, though heavy heart; for he could not forget the happy days he had spent in his home by the lake, where his own hand had felled the trees to build the house which each year made dearer to him. But he knew thousands were making the same sacrifice with himself; and so, thinking only of what was at stake, he crushed all selfish regrets, and marched away. For three years he never saw the little ones or their mother. Then came a furlough, and he, with his comrades, turned homeward.

Jimmy, who was but four years old when his father went away, was now a bright little boy of seven, already feeling a deep interest in the letters from his father, that his mother used to read and cry over; and he was full of impatience for the time to come when he should again see the gay uniform that made war such a fine thing in his eyes. At last his father came, and Jimmy admired as much as ever the bright buttons and gilt cord and tassels which adorned his hat. He was very much taken, too, with his loud laughter, and could not imagine why his mother should have suddenly grown so quiet and sad, when only the day before she did nothing but smile and sing as she went about “making the house look pretty for poor tired papa.” He was sure that he had seen her crying out in the kitchen, when she did not know he was looking.

The month of furlough wore rapidly away, and once more he saw his father go out to battle.

In a little more than a year from that time, there was, you remember, a great rejoicing throughout the length and breadth of the North; for the war was over, and our dear soldiers were coming home, not on short furloughs, that kept us sad thinking how soon they would end, but “for good,” as Jimmy explained to his sister, while they sat on the shore of the lake, skimming pebbles over its smooth face.

One balmy evening in June, just as the sun was going down, Jimmy came home across the meadow, with his little pail full of the wild strawberries he had been gathering, when he was met by his sister, who came dancing towards him, and bade him guess who had come. Of course, there was but one who could come; and with a glad shout he ran as fast as his little bare brown feet could carry him homeward. O, they had a jolly supper that night, you may be sure!—laughing after each mouthful of strawberries at the funny stories of camp-life told by their returned soldier. After their supper was over, they all sat out on the porch, in the pleasant evening, and Jimmy, with his head on his father’s knee, watched the stars; and, although he was too young to understand it all, his heart was full of thankfulness that his father was not then sleeping in some far-off grave in the South.

The summer was gone, and autumn had come with its bright leaves and soft, dreamy days. The months just passed had not been very happy ones even to light-hearted little Jimmy; for in that time he had learned that his father was a drunkard,—that, during his wild, hard life as a soldier, he had been tempted beyond his strength to resist,—and that what had at first been taken to throw off the weariness and cold of a long, hard march, had at last become his bane. There were many sad days now in this little home by the lake.

One morning, after breakfast, his father took down his gun, and asked Jimmy if he wanted to go hunting with him. Of course, such an unexpected treat was only too readily accepted, and in high spirits Jimmy started off. His mother called him back to kiss him, and told him to be sure to have his father come home early. He promised, and ran gayly down the path which led to the lake, where they were to take the skiff, and row along the shore. They hunted all day, and Jimmy noticed with dismay how often his father drank from the flask he now always carried with him. It was almost dusk as they stepped into the boat to return. Everything was very still, just the little ripples breaking into white foam on the beach. It was rather lonely as they glided along in the deepening gloom, and Jimmy could not help contrasting the silence and darkness with the brightly lighted room at home, where he was quite sure there was a fire blazing on the hearth, for the season had grown chilly; and he thought how his mother was probably standing at the door, with Lizzie beside her, listening for the sound of their oars. He was recalled from his thoughts by the slowness of their progress, and, looking up, he saw that his father’s head was resting on his breast, as if in deep slumber. Only occasionally he would awaken long enough to give a few strokes of the oars, and then fall asleep again. Even while he watched, Jimmy saw one of his father’s hands relax, and the oar fall from it, and float off far beyond their reach. He sprang over to where his father was sitting, and tried to rouse him, to make him know their danger; but the only reply he got was a gruff demand to be let alone. Jimmy seized the remaining oar, and tried with all his strength to guide the boat. The wind was blowing fresh and cold, and the waves, which had a short time before been ripples, were every moment growing higher, rocking the little skiff roughly from one to another. His father swayed back and forth with the motion, or leaned heavily against him, so all he could do was to cling to him, and call for help; but they only drifted farther out, and no one heard.

Jimmy’s hands grew numb from holding the oar, and grasping his father’s arm, and just when he was making a last effort to waken him, the boat mounted a wave higher than any other, and Jimmy felt the arm he was holding slip from under his hand, and, as they sank back to their level, he saw his father reel over the boat’s side, and plunge down out of sight, far below the dark surface.

It seemed like a frightful dream to him; for, even as he stretched forth his hands to catch him the waters closed, and the great circle of ripples made by his fall were met by the waves and obliterated, and the lightened boat went dancing off, and he was alone on the lake.

Poor Jimmy watched in vain to see his father rise, and he called his name over and over again, but the echo was all that replied; he uttered a wild cry of despair, and the lake, shore, and sky faded from his sight. When he opened his eyes again, the moon was shining down upon him, and lighting the glistening water brightly, but he could not endure to look at it. He covered his face with his hands, and sank down in the boat. All night long he drifted, until, in the first light of morning, he was found by a party of neighbors who had been rowing over the lake, looking for his father and himself. As they neared home, he saw his mother standing on the beach, waiting for their return; and that was the last sight he remembered; for many weeks he lived the dreadful night over in a fierce fever. Then he grew well, but the recollection of it will never pass from his mind.

Do you wonder now that poor little Jimmy has frightened eyes?

Annie T. Howells.

DOUBLE ACROSTIC CHARADES.

A king and queen, of whom, while one was reigning in one country, the other reigned over another.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 28.

W. Wisp.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 29.

ENIGMAS.
No. 30.

I am composed of 8 letters.

My 2, 5, 6, is the noblest creation of God.

My 4, 3, 2, is a horned animal.

My 2, 1, 4, 7, is a place of traffic.

My 5, 4, 2, is part of the human body.

My 8, 5, 7, is part of a man’s apparel.

My 7, 5, 6, is an article used in tanning.

My 7, 1, 4, is a substance obtained from turpentine.

My whole is an imaginary flower.

Mildred Norton.

I am composed of 26 letters.

My 8, 16, 3, 18, was one of Noah’s sons.

My 26, 7, 12, 25, 13, 20, is a color.

My 5, 10, 18, 17, 15, 2, 21, 4, 5, 19, 22, is the name of a piece of music, and also of a piece of poetry.

My 1, 13, 11, 24, is a fierce animal.

My 23, 19, 9, is what the flowers could not spare.

My 6, 21, 9, is a direction given to oxen.

My whole is the title of a piece of music.

Mammoth Cave.

ARITHMETICAL PUZZLE.
No. 32.

I am a number composed of three figures.

What number am I?

Banny Buds.

ILLUSTRATED REBUS.—No. 33.

ANSWERS.

If E—n and E—a wish to know about the details of stage routine, we can do no better than to refer them to a book called “Footlight Flashes,” written by Mr. Davidge, an old actor. There are enough little topics about scenery, machinery, costume, study, rehearsal, performance, and management, to fill even a larger book than Mr. Davidge’s, and so we cannot possibly undertake to discuss them here. One thing is, however, to be ever borne in mind by those young people who, in the ignorance and ambition of their youth, are “stage-struck,”—that the actor’s profession is a tedious and laborious one, seldom very profitable and often very dreary. Of course there are persons of genius who make their way to fame and perhaps wealth; but genius, or even great talent, is very, very rare. Then there are lazy people, who shuffle along, and just manage to support life; but who would be one of these? The actor is no more to be envied than the soldier; for, although some few may be great and known in the world, most must toil and struggle, and suffer, must live and die poor and obscure. Actors frequently bear excellent characters, no doubt, but their path is beset with many temptations from which quieter lives are happily free, and they need the best principles and the greatest firmness to sustain them. Our correspondents must not be charmed by the tinsel that glitters over an actor’s life,—for, although that shine ever so bright, it cannot comfort, cheer, elevate or purify, and under it all the brain must study and the hands must toil as hard as though one were but an unnoticed worker in the quiet ways of home.

Edie D. frees her mind thus frankly:—

Would that all the ill-humor in the world could be so easily and amusingly disposed of!

Red Jacket. Write to D. Appleton & Co., Publishers, New York City, enclosing a stamped envelope for their answer, and you will undoubtedly receive all the information you want.

Charlie N. L. If the boy is not a good boy, you must break off from association with him, whether it is easy to do so or not.

Here’s a nice little letter, to be sure!

Alice D. Pussy Willow’s story is not all told yet.

Brownie. It is a fanciful way of showing how the children would manage things if they could carry out their own little dreams.

Greenie. Don’t be afraid, is the best cure for bashfulness. Make one bold start, and going will be easy enough.

M. D. F. Just such a question as yours has been answered here already.

Hautboy. “Sc.” in the corner of a wood-engraving stands for sculpsit, “engraved.”—The rebuses will not quite do.

Potomac. If you read the advertisements you will find out about the premiums.

Fannie F. If you think that we shall give any opinion that will disagree with that of your parents, you make a great mistake. It is your first duty, while you are a child, to conform to their wishes and meet their views.

Croquet Mallets. If you wish a guide to croquet, we must refer you either to the pamphlet published under authority of the Newport club (by Sheldon & Co., of New York, we think), or to that of Captain Mayne Reid.

Ethel. If Webster is the authority for spelling in the school which you attend, you can certainly conform to the rules of the school in respect to such words as centre. But you are still free, of course, to do as you like away from your class. If your parents prefer—rightly, as we think—to write centre instead of center, you can easily do so too; but in your school exercises you should follow the established custom of your teachers.

J. W. C. Probably not.

Emma and Laura. “Oliver Optic’s” real name is William T. Adams, and he lives at Harrison Square, in Dorchester, Mass.

John. Of course you may help yourself in making out the Shakespearian puzzles by reference to the play. It is for that reason that we name the scene: you cannot be expected to have Shakespeare by heart.

Mary S. P., F. B. E. (many thanks), B. Liss, I. J. B. (of the Rocky Mountains), Banny Buds, Sweet Clover (you were favored, indeed, to have so many Christmas gifts), J. L. N., P. W. S., Rebel, Evol, Alice M. R. (not yet, dear!), Clara (subject too long), L. M. C., Starr, Samuel M., Agnes B., H. V. H., Flora, Barley Brewster, A. B. Cash, Tubbs (good boy!), M. H. T., Ross Gray, Deshler W., Snow-Bird, Tom-tit, J. B. M. S. (“blot” is spelled with only one t), Enella (did you ever see a shadow “stretching a mile in length”?), Madge Wildfire. Thank you for your long letters and your offers of “Evening Lamp” material, one and all.

Some charming child-pictures have reached us, both pen-and-ink sketches and photographs, for which we cannot find a place, but which we do not like to return without a word of thanks. There is a sweet little “Baby May,” from New Jersey, and a “Lucy May,” from Pennsylvania, and a delightful “Little Botheration,” from Connecticut, and a “Little Boy,” from distant Nebraska, and ever so many more, to whom we can only give an uncle-and-auntly kiss, and a snug corner and gentle rock in the Letter Box, before sending them back to the shelter of their own cradles. We only wish the sheets of our magazine were wide enough to tuck all the babies cosily in that come wandering to our sanctum from far and near. We could quote many a bright saying from the rosebud lips of our tiny visitors, if their mammas were willing; but we are not quite sure of this.

A certain little “Birdie” wants to know the “real name of the lady who wrote the ‘Prudy’ books, so that she may ask her to write some more.” We think that “Sophie May” does not wish to have her true name known to the public, but we will tell her that “Birdie” lives in Michigan, and considers her books “the nicest she ever read”; and if she asks us, we will tell her, also, whose “birdie” it is, that she may herself give the desired information, if she will.

M. W. J. T. Trowbridge is the “right name.” Your verses are creditable for a beginner. Tell your brother that he must have grown old a little too fast, if he has lost his relish for childish simplicity. We hope that we shall never lose ours.

R. T. E. Jupiter and Venus were not actually “close together” a few weeks ago, but only apparently so. Their motions through the heavens brought them seemingly side by side, just as two people walking at a distance from you might seem to be “close together” when their paths brought them nearly into a line with your eye, thus,—

From A, B and C would look as if very near to each other, because their lines of light are almost parallel.

J. C. P. They are all too old.

M. S. B. Don’t try to write poetry until you know how to write prose. You spell badly, you do not punctuate, and you do not use capitals properly. If you desired an answer by mail, you should have enclosed an envelope, stamped and directed.

Espiègle. Thank you for showing the story.

Syntax. Your rebuses are almost good enough.

FeO, SO₃. “Good Old Times” is finished. It is customary, but not necessary, to send the whole sheet, if a letter is written on two pages only; in formal or elegant correspondence the whole sheet must be sent; in business communications it is well enough to economize in your paper.

J. W. You have the legend right, but it may reasonably be doubted whether there is any more truth in it than we gave in our answer to Tiny Tim.

Last month’s puzzle when translated reads, “Sweets to the sweet.” Now, what do you say to this one? If you wish for help, you may find it in the play of Henry VI., second part, Act III., Scene 3.

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.

[The end of Our Young Folks. An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls. Volume 4, Issue 5 edited by J. T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom]