Moonshine.—[Page 132.]

STORIES AND BALLADS
FOR YOUNG FOLKS.

By ELLEN TRACY ALDEN.

(Copyright, 1879.)

NEW YORK:
AMERICAN BOOK EXCHANGE,
Tribune Building.
1880.

CONTENTS.

NEIGHBOR EDITH.

The north-west wind, driving feathery flakes of snow before it, heaps up gray masses of cloud over the sunny afternoon, and then, as if bent on subduing what cheeriness remains among the shadows it has brought, howls dismally down the chimneys, moans at the casements dismally. The Lieutenant throws himself down on the lounge, and draws a long sigh. Kate slips quietly out of the room, catches up her shawl and hat from the rack in the hall, and her brother, hearing her go down the steps into the street, wonders where she is bound for, and why she didn’t say something about it, and then falls back into his gloomy reverie.

“It may be ‘sweet for one’s country to die’; but to live on, a shattered, helpless wreck”—and, at the thought, he gripes the curving frame of the lounge with his one hand, and his firm-set lips quiver; when, suddenly, without the faintest footfall to indicate the approach of any one, two little arms creep about his neck, and between silvery peals of laughter a shower of kisses falls over forehead and sightless eyes, on either cheek, on nose, mouth and chin. “There!” cries a childish, laughing voice, “I surpized you, didn’t I? Ha, ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha!” echoes the Lieutenant, coming directly from a horizontal to a sitting posture, his arm around the wee mite, “so you did ‘surpize’ me, midget. And where did you come from? Did you drop out of the sky?”

“Out of the sky!” repeats the little maiden, with a great deal of scorn and emphasis. “Why, I comed right from our house! Katy comed after me, and we went round to the back door, so you wouldn’t hear, and then Katy took off my shoes, and I comed up on tiptoe in my stocking-feet. Ha, ha! I surpized you, didn’t I? I’m go’n to ’gin!” and away she rushes across the room and back against him, pell-mell, arms about his neck, and kisses raining all over his face. “There! how do you like it?” and the room rings with her musical laughter—in which the Lieutenant once more joins, with—

“My dear young lady, I must confess that I haven’t the least objection to the proceeding.”

“Young—la-day!” is the slow and scornful rejoinder; “young la-dy! Why, I’m a little girl!”

“Why, so she is, just a mere baby.”

“A ba-by! (the italics are to mark the emphasis) I’m four-years-old big! I’m no ba-by! Willie’s the baby. He’s got a new tooth! That makes three—six—five! He’s got five teeth!”

“You don’t say! And what is this Edith has in her hands—a doll?”

“Yes, it’s my dolly.”

“What curly hair she has. And this ruffled affair—is it an apron?”

“An a-pron! It’s an over-skirt!”

“Oh, I beg pardon! an ‘over-skirt,’ is it? So she’s a fashionable doll. What might be her name?”

“Guess.”

“Keturah?”

“No.”

“Jerusha?”

“No.”

“Mary Ann, Sacharissa, Sophia, Clarissa, Joan, Melissa, Eloise, Elizabeth, Jane—”

“No-o-o-o-o!”

“Victoria, Eugenia, Augusta, Paulina, Virginia, Aurelia, Geraldine, Mollie—”

“Yes! Mollie! that’s what it is; but none of your other old—elephants. There, you’re laughing! You knowed what it was all the time; you was only pertendin’. You’ve seen my dolly before.”

“Where’s Katy?”

“She stayed down-stairs to pop some corn for me and you.”

“Shall we go down and see her do it?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” And the Lieutenant, rising, manages to shift little dot up to his shoulder. “There, now, you’re a feather on top of a barn-door.”

“You’re not a barn-door!”

“What am I, then?”

“You’re my brave captain boy.” (That was in a whisper.)

“Shall I tell you what you are? You’re my little angel.” And, holding her carefully, he goes down the stairs, feeling his way, now and then, with the remnant of an arm in his dangling right sleeve.

“I’m almost through,” cries Kate, from the kitchen, her face all aglow with the heat. And Edith, from her lofty perch, watches the few yellow kernels that are nearly lost sight of in the bottom of the wire corn-popper, after a shake or two over the hot coals, suddenly—“Snap, snap, snap!” and look! it is full to the brim with something white and savory, which, seasoned with salt and the least bit of butter, she deals out (with great fairness and impartiality) to herself and her “captain boy,” after they have gone up-stairs again. By and by a thought strikes her.

“Katy, my doll hasn’t got any apron.”

“Why, so she hasn’t. We’ll have to make her one, won’t we?” And a box of ribbons and laces and pieces of silk is produced from somewhere, and the two sit down on the floor near the Lieutenant’s chair, talking all the time and planning out this wonderful apron.

“Now which of all these colors does Edie like best?” asks Kate.

“Well, I think the red’s the nicest.”

So an apron (with pockets, observe!) is soon manufactured out of a bit of a broad scarlet sash, and braided, too, with white silk braid; and straightway on it goes, in feverish haste (one is anxious to study the effect, you know), over the stylish (but serene) Mademoiselle’s black satin gown. (The effect isn’t bad.)

After due admiration from Edith, some other diversion is in order, and a book of engravings is brought for inspection. As the leaves are turned for her she glances for an instant at one picture after another, giving the word to proceed; but they finally come to something over which she pores a long while—so long that Kate is passing to the next without waiting for the “Go on” from little Miss, when the latter immediately takes the book into her own hands, returns to this picture, and continues to gaze at it. “What does it mean?” at length she asks.

“Had I better tell her?” Kate, in an under-tone, questions of her brother. “It’s Gustave Doré’s ‘The Deluge’—people and wild beasts huddled together upon a rock rising out of the waste of water, and the great, lashing waves reaching up for them greedily, like wide-mouthed monsters. Odd, isn’t it, that she should notice it so, among so many more attractive prints? She wouldn’t be likely to comprehend if I were to explain, would she? Good, there goes the tea-bell!” And Kate closes the book, glad of an excuse to escape telling the story of the flood to this blithesome little being, whom, she has a dim notion, it might give bad dreams.

Seated at the supper-table, and elevated to the common level by aid of three sofa-cushions, Edith for a few moments bestows particular attentions upon a sauce-plate of canned peaches, to the utter disregard of more substantial food. After which she sits back in her chair, and, inclining her head toward her hostess, whispers—

“Some of the cake, if you please.”

“But you haven’t eaten your bread and butter yet; eat that first, and then you shall have some cake.”

“I want it now,” responds the small person, with much firmness, and is directly supplied with the desired article—a measure which might meet with protest if Edith’s mamma were present. No, it wouldn’t, either, come to think of it, for Edith’s mamma knows what are Kate’s ideas concerning sweetmeats. Has she not, on a similar occasion, heard her express herself after this manner?—

“If unfeeling people will persist in denying dainties to the wee folks, they may just keep the stuff out of sight. Set it right where the poor little things can watch it with wistful eyes, and then pass it around to the favored few, but for them—‘No, you can’t have any. It isn’t healthy for you!’ If grown-up people can’t deny themselves such things, they haven’t any right to expect the children to. To require children to show more strength of character than they have themselves!—oh, it’s a downright shame! And then, leaving open the places where the forbidden fruit is kept, and when the midgets climb up the closet-shelves and take a bite, on the sly, finding fault with them! Leading them into temptation (and isn’t that what responsible people even pray to be delivered from?) and then, when the poor little things fall into the very trap they have set, finding fault with them, and lecturing them, and all that nonsense! Oh, it’s a cruel shame!”

The speaker, you see, is the children’s zealous advocate; and, little people, if ever there is anything you especially covet, or if ever you get into trouble, just go to her. She will plead your cause with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, and such withering eloquence that the stern household judges will not fail to relent.

But it is after dark, and the snow is falling heavily, and mamma will want her little Edith home. So Kate sets forth with her small charge, well wrapped and protected from the cold—although they have but a few steps to go, as Edith lives in the next house.

When Kate returns, her brother’s voice greets her from the parlor with—

“Sukie, heard of the last new poem?”

“No. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s an epic!—a grand affair—second only to the Iliad!”

“Strange I haven’t heard of it, isn’t it?”

“No, not so very; it hasn’t come out yet.”

“How did you hear of it? Some one been in while I was gone?”

“Yes.”

“Do tell me, what is it about, and who is it by?”

“It’s about a child, I believe—but modesty forbids my mentioning the name of the author.”

“Ah, you old rogue, I see what you’re driving at!—you’ve been having a call from the Muse.”

“Rather from some poor vagabond tricked out in her cast-off mantle, you mean.”

Kate goes and stands behind the high-backed arm-chair, and toys with her brother’s jetty locks. (Are they not her pride and consolation—those clustering curls? Not all the flying bullets, and slashing sabres, and ruthless cannon-balls could rob him of those—no, nor the weary, wasting sickness that followed the privations and exposure, and left him—blind.) “Come, now, Wallie, stop joking, and let me have the verses, won’t you?”

And so this is what “Wallie” says about

“NEIGHBOR EDITH.”

Alas! I cannot see what hue her eyes are,

Nor yet the color of her silken hair;

Tho’—thought consoling!—if I could, I fear me

She’d be less lavish with her kisses rare.

I know her lips are dewy as the rose-bud

When first it wakes, the flush of dawn to greet;

Her breath it fans my face like early zephyr

Up from the Southland roving, warm and sweet.

Her bird-like voice in simple, childish chatter,

No better music need you care to hear—

Unless it be the music of her laughter,

Like rillet, gurgling now, now tinkling clear.

And when, in short-lived moods of thoughtful silence,

You feel her tiny form against you lean,

Or when anon her dainty, dimpled fingers

Come creeping trustfully your own between,

Somehow there’s soothing in the touch, you fancy,

A secret charm for sending grief astray:

I half believe she is a born magician—

This wee, wee elf the wind could blow away.

And that is Edith, that is neighbor Edith,

Our winsome friend the other side the stile.

When we’re sad-hearted and the days are dreary,

We go and borrow her a little while.

CASTLE MARVEL.

“Heigho-ho!” yawned Harry, who had dropped in one evening, and curled himself up in his favorite nook, the chimney-corner. “I wish books had never been invented, or schools either, for that matter. I’ve been digging away at one of Æsop’s fables for the last two hours, and I can’t make any sense out of it at all. It’s a lot of stuff about some doves and hawks that got to fighting; but whether the doves eat up the hawks or not, how’s a fellow going to find out? And I got stuck in my algebra, too, and I sha’n’t have a single decent lesson to-morrow, and then old Williams’ll give me a lecture and a zero, and—well, a fellow gets disgusted with that sort of thing for a steady diet. Oh, I tell you I’ll be glad when once I’m out of school, and the pesky business is done with! What’s the use of it, anyhow? I wish I didn’t have to go another day.”

“But the time would be apt to hang pretty heavily on your hands, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, I’d find plenty to do to fill up the time, never you fear! Now all these splendid days, along back, when I ought to have been down at the rink, skating, and there I had to sit in that stupid old schoolroom, moping over a desk! It makes me mad to think of it. But I came over—I got so tired studying. I thought maybe you’d have some story or other to tell, Lieutenant.”

“A story; what is there you haven’t heard, I wonder? I’m afraid my stock of stories has about run out. Let me see, though,—have you ever heard about Castle Marvel?”

“A castle! that’s the kind I like—about castles! no, I never heard it.”

“Well, this was a famous castle that stood upon a high mountain, and that people sometimes went to see. Among the rest, there went from a certain city a company of youths. Now, their route lay across a sunny plain that was like a very fairy-land; flowers covered it with every hue of the rainbow, and over these hovered clouds of golden-winged butterflies; and in the shady groves zephyrs sang and birds caroled as never sang zephyrs or caroled birds anywhere else.

“And, so, many of the youths tarried, saying, ‘It is pleasant here; let us gather roses;’ or, ‘Let us chase butterflies;’ or, ‘Let us lie down under the wide-spreading branches, and listen to the music overhead.’ The others, hastening onward, reached, at length, the foot of the mountain, and began to ascend. But to climb this mountain was by no means an easy task; for, while in some places it was very steep, in others a perpendicular and seemingly impassable wall would confront the weary traveler; and there were chasms, too, which must be crossed; but over most of these bridges had been built; and where the way was steep and slippery steps had been hewn among the rocks; and up the granite walls places had been cut for hands and feet; and all this had been done by travelers who had previously ascended—aye, with untold hardships, and often at the risk of their lives. But now, in climbing, so had the way been opened before them, these youths met with no peril, only with labor and weariness, here and there. And yet, ever, as they toiled upward, would one and another turn back, discouraged, to rejoin the comrades below, declaring that the sight of the castle was not worth so much pains.

“Now to these pleasure-seekers in the flowery meadows after a time returned the venturesome few who had succeeded in gaining the summit, and they were greeted with loud cries of astonishment—for behold, their faces shone wondrously, flooded as if with light, and they seemed like beings from another world.

“‘Tell us, what have you seen, or what have you heard, that your countenances should be thus altered?’ demanded the curious throng.

At last, as he emerges from the shadows of a dark defile between high mountains.—[Page 156.]

“‘Ah, friends,’ replied the others, ‘would that we might tell you the half of what we have seen, the half of what we have heard. Truly marvelous is this castle which we have visited, and beyond the power of words to describe. We may, indeed, relate to you how, from its windows, we beheld the fair earth, from pole to pole, spread out before us in new and undreamed-of beauty; how we found secret stairways which led us to the burning heart of this same earth; how, through mysterious passage-ways, we were guided to the silent and strangely-peopled valleys of the sea; how, by tower and turret, we mounted to dizzy heights, from whence we could peer in among the stars, and catch a glimpse of the glory lying beyond; how all the way, from lowest foundation-stone to loftiest pinnacle, they who went up before us had carved inscriptions, revealing in what manner the world has fared—even from its creation; how, passing to and fro, our questions were answered, our doubts were quieted, and we were filled with such delight as is only known to them who go up thither—this much, and more we may relate, and yet but a faint idea will you have of that mighty structure. Oh, friends, so vast it is, so wide, so high,—so deep down extend its massive walls, that, though one should wander a lifetime within its gates, still many portions would be unknown to him; so free and open to all it is, that whoever will may abide there, continually feasted and royally entertained; so magnificent it is, that whether you go up or down, whether you follow corridors that lead on, and ever on, or loiter in spacious treasure-halls, golden is the ceiling, crystal is the pavement, riches and splendor meet you at every turn, and you tread upon diamonds which are yours but for the picking up; and what is most marvelous about the castle is this—the more of these rare jewels that are gathered and carried away, the more remain.’

“Then the idlers, seeing their companions laden with precious gems, sparkling in the sunlight, could not doubt the truthfulness of this report; and they said: ‘Let us go up also, to be enriched, and to see those wonderful sights.’ But when they began to climb they discovered that their strength had departed, and that their eyes were dimmed so that they could not find the path; and they now first became aware of how the years had flown while they had been lingering among the pleasant fields, and that in the feebleness of age they were no longer able to mount upward. And they sat down and wept with regret, and nevermore ceased sighing, because of the years they had wasted below.”

“There’s a Hæc fabula docet to that story, I suspect,” said Harry, good-naturedly, after staring awhile at the fire. “But I’ll forgive you, as it’s the only one of that sort I ever heard you tell.”

A MAY MORNING.

It is one of those first bright, pleasant days, so welcome after the rains and clouds that follow the long siege of winter. With the sunbeams so warm, and the air so soft and balmy, who can choose to stay indoors? The Lieutenant draws his chair out to the porch, and is presently joined by Harry, who mounts the railing and proceeds to relate an adventure he had the other night.

“You see we were out on the lake, fishing—a lot of us, and we’d caught about a dozen trout, when up come a storm—a regular gale. Boat capsized; out we went into the water. Rain pouring down in torrents, and so dark you couldn’t see your hand before you. Tell you we had to swim for it. But we got ashore at last, and they took us in at a house close by, and dried our clothes for us, and gave us some supper, and we had a regular jolly time of it, after all.”

“Yes, I heard about that excursion of yours from another source, and about a boy by the name of Harry who saved another boy from drowning.”

“No! did you, though? Well, you see he didn’t know much about swimming, and it was my doings, his going with us, and if anything had happened to him I’d have been to blame. But, I tell you, I thought one time there we were both goners, sure. Hallo, Edith!”

“See my new hat!” she cries, climbing up the steps. “I and mamma bought it down street this very morning. See, it’s all trimmed with blue ribbons!”

“Yes, it’s really pooty. There comes Marie Maross with her instruction book; she’s been taking a music lesson. Say, Marie, come in and sit down, won’t you? You look tired. Professor cross this morning?”

“Yes,” responds Marie, readily accepting the invitation. “He says I don’t half practice my lessons, and it’s no such thing! I practiced a whole half an hour yesterday, and on those wretched scales, too! they’re enough to drive one distracted.”

Harry glares at the gate-post as if it were the professor himself, and he is about to express, in strong terms, his poor opinion of professors of music generally, when—

“Che! cheree! cheree! te-hee, hee, ha, ha, ha!” laughs Robin Redbreast among the budding branches overhead. What is he cocking his shrewd black eye at the two on the steps below for?—looking for all the world as though he had seen them before now—passing notes to each other in that “horrid old school-room,” when “Old Williams” wasn’t watching.

But hush, you, Sir Robin, and hush, every one. Marie lifts her hand to impose silence; for, see, there is a wee gray sparrow prospecting about a moss basket hanging in the porch, evidently in search of a good building site.

But here comes the mail-carrier, who cannot stop for such trifles. As he rapidly approaches Mrs. Sparrow flies away.

Kate, who has been setting out tulip-bulbs in her flower-beds in the back-yard, comes to look over the letters. This one, from a small boy, she reads aloud:

Deer Cozen Kate

an Walter i can’t find ennything but this led pencil to rite with fur they’re housecleening an the inks all spillt on the carpit an the pens lost an the paper lockt up in the riting desk an nobody can find the kee and Briget shes cross she sez ive got to stop running all over the flore whare she scrubd it and so i tore this page out of my gografy whare it isnt printid i most made a bote to sale on our pond fur its chuckfull ov water an somebody swept it up an thru it into the fire when I get to be a Man an have a house ov my own I wont have enny housecleening going on never.

Bob.

“Them’s my sentiments exactly,” says Harry. “It’s been just so at our house now for a week. Everything’s topsy-turvy, and you can’t find a place to rest the sole of your foot. And cross? my! I thought Ann would take my head off, this morning, when I tumbled against her mop-pail and tipped it over.”

“Will you please give these to Mr. Walter?”

It is bashful little Bessie, on her way home from a ramble in the distant wood, who whispers in Kate’s ear, as she offers a bunch of spring beauties gathered there, and blossoms plucked from a wayside apple-tree. Mr. Walter receives them with a smile of recognition, for who does not love the odor of apple-blossoms?

The blushing Bessie is straightway reassured and gratified by the following fable improvised for the occasion:

Once on a time, in early dawn of summer,

Among the trees the question chanced to rise—

“Which of us is the fairest, the most comely?”

A towering pine tree boasted in this wise:

“Behold me, all ye puny ones, behold me!

Look at my shoulders reaching to the sky!

Look at my tasseled mantle—green forever!

How can ye doubt or question?—here am I!”

A stately elm tree upward gazed a moment,

In acquiescence bent her regal head:

“Aye, thou art tall and gayly decked, my brother,

But I have more of symmetry,” she said.

A languid willow, musing, softly murmured:

“Yes, shapely is the elm, and tall the pine;

But see, oh, friends (she made a sweeping courtesy),

You must admit that gracefulness is mine.”

“Ah, well, that’s not the point,” replied a maple;

“’Tis not of grace we’re talking, not at all;

And as for form, why, I am well proportioned:

And as for height, why, one may be too tall.”

“Hold!” cried a tulip tree; “am I not shapely?

And illy would the pine tree’s tassels green

Compare with these broad leaves, so smooth and shining,

Or with the bells of bloom that swing between!”

“Conceited fools!” a gnarly old oak grumbled;

“Bragging of your fine clothes and shape and length!

Bah, with your silly prate and idle prattle!

There is most beauty where there is most strength!”

At that a plain, ill-favored tree took courage,—

“And I, too—I am rugged! I am stout!”

The little saplings sidelong glanced and giggled,

The grown-up trees did toss their heads and shout;

And, one and all, they laughed and laughed together,

And, one and all, together did they say:

“Oh, listen! ugly scrub lays claim to beauty!

Who ever heard the like before to-day!”

But Mother Nature frowned at their derision,

Seeing the humble tree with grief downcast;

Her wand she lifted—lo! the slighted claimant

In comeliness all other trees surpassed!

A downy robe the knotted limbs enveloped,

In folds whose fragrance thrilled the wond’ring air—

A robe of pale, rose-tinted blossoms woven!

Amazed and breathless did the scoffers stare.

And, one and all, they turned from jest and laughter,

And, one and all, together whispered they:

“Behold, behold the garment of our brother!

Who ever saw the like before to-day!”

Since then, alway, in early dawn of summer,

Dame Nature lifts her wand the trees to shame

Who envy him that wears the apple blossoms

And wish they had not mocked his modest claim.

But listen—will you?—to this score of lads and lasses, Bessie’s companions (freed from school, for it is Saturday), who, laden with wild flowers and mosses and ferns, have meanwhile established themselves on the steps, and are chattering like a flock of blackbirds:

“Oh, we’ve had lots of fun, and I’m awfully tired. Will you believe it? I ran over a snake! Dear me, how scared I was!” (A girl, of course.)

“Sho! you needn’t have been afraid of such a harmless little snake as that; I’d just as soon take it up in my hand as not!” (A boy, of course.)

“Why didn’t you, then? Ha, ha! I’d like to have seen you.”

“See, Marie, what a pretty toad-stool I found, all scarlet inside; and Fred, he’s got a lot of snail-shells in his pocket.”

“If I’d only had a gun along I could have popped over two or three red squirrels.”

“Oh—h—h! it would be cruel to kill the dear, sweet, cunning little creatures.”

“Don’t be alarmed, puss; he couldn’t fire off a gun to save his life.”

“Oh, the quantities of Bobolinks we saw in the meadows! If you could only have heard them sing—”

Ting-a-ling,

Ting-a-ling, ling.

Everybody stares at the apparition. He has stolen a march upon them—that little tawny Italian, down there in the street, gazing up at the merry group, with a weary sort of smile, as his slender fingers toy with the strings of his instrument, bringing forth many a plaintive air. Soon the music ceases, and the tattered hat is passed around. But he may not go yet; his audience is clamoring for a song. “An Italian song,” cries Marie. And so, to the accompaniment of his guitar, he sings in his native tongue a little ballad which runs something after this fashion:

Wandering, wandering all the world over,

Hither and thither, and to and fro,

Free as the wind—the rollicking rover,

Lightly humming and thrumming I go.

Free as the wind to linger and tarry,

Free as the wind to hasten afar,

All my wealth in my hands I carry—

Look, behold it—my gay guitar!

Gold and houses and lands encumber,

Never king, in his palace high,

Slumber’d as sweetly as I slumber,

Under the clear, unclouded sky.

Free as the wind, the rollicking rover,

Little of trouble or care I know,

Wandering, wandering all the world over,

Hither and thither, and to and fro.

And off he goes with his merry song, and his weary smile, and his pockets jingling with pennies; and is succeeded by a fair-haired Norwegian, with a basket on his head, crying, “Oranges, oranges!”

Harry rushes down, and buys him out of the stock in hand, and before any one has time to protest, begins to treat the assembled company. So it was for this feast that the round, golden fruit has been, all these months, basking and ripening and gathering fragrance and sweetness from the rays that gladden a land of perpetual summer.

“What’s this—a picnic?” asks a gentleman in uniform, who has come to call upon the Lieutenant. The youngsters follow with their eyes the blue coat and bright buttons disappearing through the open doorway, then they slowly disperse; and Ponto, the great shaggy Newfoundlander, is left alone, dozing upon the mat. And the wee, gray sparrow returns with a wisp of horse-hair, and commences to build her nest.

PATCHES AND PERSEVERANCE.

“There goes Patches!”

“Hallo, Patches!”

Sitting in the porch, in the twilight of a June afternoon, Kate overhears those cruel taunts. “Oh-h-h!” she exclaims in smothered indignation, the hot flush mounting up her forehead.

“What is it, sister?” asks the Lieutenant.

“Oh, Walter, there are some boys down there in the street, calling names at a little newsboy, and making sport of his poor, patched clothes. And he looks so downhearted and discouraged—poor little fellow! Oh, it’s too bad! I wish you could say something to him to comfort him. Mrs. McAllister was telling me about them the other day. His mother is a widow and does washings, and there are other children—he the eldest; and he is so kind and thoughtful, and does everything he can to help her; goes around town, out of school-hours, running on errands and carrying newspapers. I know what I’ll do”—but her plan for a new suit of clothes is suddenly broken in upon by the boy approaching, and handing her the evening paper, damp, just from the press.

“How many more of those have you to deliver?” Walter inquires.

“Only about a dozen.”

“Well, when you get through, and if you are not otherwise engaged, I’d like to have your company for a walk. You see,” he adds, with a smile, “I haven’t any eyes, myself, to find the way with; and it’s such a fine evening I believe I’d like to go—yes, as far as the Park.”

The boy looks up into the blind man’s face, Kate thinks, as if he would be willing to go to the ends of the earth with him.

“Yes, sir, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he says, hurrying away.

In one corner of the Park there is a shady, secluded nook—a clump of trees all overgrown with vines, with rustic seats underneath. As Walter and his companion rest there after their long walk, the moonbeams shining softly down between the leaves, all at once a sob breaks the stillness, followed by another and another, and then they come thick and fast. Now the Lieutenant does not ask, “What’s the matter, little boy?” as a great many thoughtless people would; for he remembers very well that one doesn’t like to be asked such questions when one is crying. Besides, doesn’t he know what the matter is? He can picture to himself the wearisome life the poor child leads—ill-fed, ill-sheltered, ill-clad, half the year pinched with hunger and cold, half the year breathing the close, pent-up air of some wretched tenement—in his brave struggle to help his widowed mother, not always able to find work; knocked about by ruffian newsboys, sneered at by thoughtless schoolmates, little heeded or noticed by anybody; till he looks downhearted, as Kate says, and the very tones of his voice are grown dreary and sorrowful. Thinking of all this, the Lieutenant cannot sit there like a block of stone, and listen to those stifled sobs. So, as there is nothing to be said, he leans over, and with that one arm of his about the slight figure, draws it close to his side.

“Oh, you’re so good!” murmurs the tearful voice, as the lad rests his head against the friendly shoulder. “It’s that that makes such a baby of me. I can’t help it. Other folks ain’t like that. Other folks don’t talk to me pleasant about this and that as you did all the way. Other folks—oh!” and with that the slender form is shaken again with sobs.

“Ah, but those other folks who treat you so, you are going to make them sorry for it, some day.”

“How?” The dreary young voice is full of wonder.

“How? Let me tell you a little story. Years ago a young printer went to New York City to find work. He hadn’t any fine clothes, and scarcely any money, and I doubt if in all that great city there was a single person that he knew. After much searching he found something to do; and in the office where he was employed the other printers delighted in annoying him, playing jokes upon him, and daubing his light-colored hair with ink. I wouldn’t wonder if this sort of treatment made him feel sad and homesick, sometimes, and wish he was back again among the mountains where he came from. However, he paid little attention to it; he worked all day, faithfully, and at night he read and studied a good deal; and when he couldn’t afford to pay for a light to study by, he would take his book out by the street-lamp and study there—sometimes when it was cold, too. Wasn’t he persevering? Well, he worked, and read, and studied, and persevered, till he got to be an editor; yes, in time he became the most famous editor—or journalist, some would call it—the most famous one that ever lived. Last fall he died—this man who was once a penniless, friendless boy—and at the news of his death there was sadness all over the country; and, at his burial, thousands and thousands of people crowded those same streets where he used to read, shivering, by the lamp-light; thousands and thousands went to get a glimpse of his dead face, and wept over it, because he had helped them and they loved him and were sorry he was gone.

“Oh, was it Horace Greeley?” the lad whispers. (He has stopped crying now.)

“You have guessed.”

“I’ve thought, sometimes,” says the boy, presently, in a hesitating way—“I never told it to anybody before—but I’ve thought I’d like to be great, too, some time, to be a lawyer—and—and go to Congress—and—oh, I never told it to anybody before, because it’s foolish, I know, and they’d laugh at me. I can’t help thinking about it, though. But of course there’s no hope for me.”

“Ah, but there is, though! I doubt if our Vice-President thought there was much hope of his ever going to Congress when, in his youth, he was earning his livelihood in a shoemaker’s shop. But, you see, he kept pegging away; when it wasn’t at boots and shoes it was at books, at gaining knowledge, and making the most of the talents that were given him, working his way up, inch by inch, till he became congressman, surely, till now he presides over the Senate. And our President, at your age, little dreamed that he would ever be called upon to control a great army, to plan campaigns and sieges, to ‘fight it out all summer on this line,’ as you have heard about—persevering, you see—and so to put an end to the bloody war, and be chosen once and again to the highest office in the land—like Washington, long ago. Yes, it’s perseverance that does it. Did you ever hear of Cyrus Field, the man who brought the Old World and the New nearer together by his Atlantic cable? When he first proposed to do it, to send dispatches through two thousand miles of water, that seemed to every one a very absurd idea. But when his cable was finished and ready to be laid, then people began to be interested; indeed, they were really excited over it, and it was quite the fashion to wear attached to one’s watch-chain a bit of that gutta-percha cable, set in gold. But the cable, or telegraph, was a failure, after all; it didn’t ‘work.’ So people disbelieved once more, and lost interest in the enterprise, and took the bits of gutta-percha from their watch-chains, and put them away out of sight and of mind. And it fared with the experimenter just as it fared with those trinkets. But years passed by, and lo! one day, to everybody’s surprise, the President received from Queen Victoria a polite message that had taken but a few moments to cross the wide Atlantic. And now, you know, Europe and America can talk with each other almost as easily as you and I here, sitting side by side. For what had Cyrus Field been doing all that time that nobody took any notice of him? He had been making trial after trial, and failure after failure, and losing fortune, and, very likely, friends, but never losing hope. So he persevered—and succeeded, at last. And who does your history say discovered America?”

“Christopher Columbus.”

“Well, this Christopher Columbus of whom all the histories tell and everybody knows, he was only a sailor boy, once, roving about in the Mediterranean, with small chance of ever becoming noted. As little chance would it seem there was when, years later, he went from court to court, vainly asking aid to carry out his project. People had hardly begun, yet, to credit the notion that the world was round; and this tall, sad-eyed, white-haired, shabbily dressed stranger, with his maps and his charts, and his plans for sailing straight West to India, who was going to listen to him? Kings and queens were unwilling to see him or give him an opportunity to explain, courtiers ridiculed him, children in the street would point to their foreheads, as he passed by, and call out to each other, ‘Look at the crazy Italian!’ But often disappointed, always hoping and persevering, he stuck to his project, and finally, after eighteen long years of waiting and fruitless effort, he got the help he wanted and started on his voyage, and so found—not India, but America.”

And as the Lieutenant and his young guide walk slowly homeward through the silent, moonlit avenues, he speaks of Lincoln, of Herder, of Ferguson, of Beethoven, of Sir William Herschel, and of others who have risen from poverty and obscurity to honor and renown; many of them “self-made,” as it is called, toiling patiently and unaided up that steep hill where the laurels grow.

Kate hears the hopeful ring in the lad’s voice as he says “Good night” to his friend, and through the open window she sees the hopeful expression upon his face as he turns away, glancing down rather proudly at the jacket that is mended with pieces of many shades, and the boots that have been patched and patched again. “What can you have been saying to him, Walter?” she wonders. “Oh, if you could only have seen his face just now! He doesn’t look like the same boy.” And Walter musingly repeats those lines with which every “wide-awake” American boy and girl is familiar. For was it not Longfellow who wrote them?

“Lives of great men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

“Footprints that perchance another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

Some forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.”

When, just before breakfast, Kate opens the door to look for the morning paper, what does she find lying there on the threshold beside it? Fresh water-lilies—the like of which are not to be found nearer than the lake—miles away. “He has been all that way and back, this morning! bless his little heart!” she exclaims, in astonishment, as she carries them to her brother, breathing a thousand sweetest “Thank-you’s,” from among their snowy petals. And you may be sure that those patched garments will soon be replaced by others nice and new.

KATE’S GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER.

“I’d like to know,” exclaims Marie, “if there weren’t any heroines as well as heroes in the time of the Revolution. Now down there in the Park to-day, while they were having their orations, and Mr. Higby got to talking about the Revolution—”

“Come now,” breaks in Harry, “you don’t mean to pretend you heard a word he said!”

“Indeed I do! I listened first-rate—along at first. Katy, mustn’t he stop interrupting? Well, all I was going to say was, that when he got to talking about the Revolution it was all about the forefathers that he got so eloquent, and never a word about the mothers! As if they weren’t patriotic, too, and of some account! Don’t you suppose they were?”

“Kate,” slyly observes her brother, “here’s another fine opportunity for you to hold forth on the subject of your great-great-grandmother.”

“Ah! just as though you weren’t every whit as proud of her as I am!”

“Oh, my! did you have a great-great-grandmother?” cries the enthusiastic Marie. “Do tell us about her.”

“Yes, do, Miss Katy,” says Harry, seconding the motion as he watches a sky-rocket shooting upward, leaving a gleaming train as it curves through the air. For this is the evening of the “Glorious Fourth,” and the speakers are all out in the porch, where a good view can be had of the display of fireworks down at the corner of the street.

“Well, then, Harry, you know about the battle of Cowpens, in South Carolina?”

“Yes, where the British thought they had won the day, sure, and Morgan brought up his dragoons, and they cut and slashed right and left, and put the Redcoats to flight, and took a lot of prisoners.”

“What are dragoons?” inquires Marie.

“Mounted troops—cavalry. Oh, but didn’t they pitch into ’em good with their swords! Wish I’d been there.”

“And then you know, Harry, how Cornwallis pursued Morgan, in hopes of recovering the prisoners; and how General Greene had to come to Morgan’s rescue. By the way, Walter, I don’t know exactly why, but somehow all I hear of Sherman in the last war reminds me of that General Greene.”

“And did your great-great-grandmother live around there anywheres?”

“Yes, Marie. But you mustn’t think of her as a grandmother at all, with gray hair and cap and spectacles; for she was only a young girl then. There’s a portrait of her painted a few years after. They have it at Uncle Robert’s—little Rob’s father, you know. There she sits, with her arms folded; and she wears a brocade silk, with much lace about the low neck and flowing sleeves; and her hair is combed straight up from the forehead over a roll, and coiled high at the back of the head, very much as the style is now—only I suppose it was all her own, for switches hadn’t yet been thought of.”

“And did she do something brave?”

“So the story goes. She was an orphan, you see, and lived with her uncle, who was a hot-tempered old Tory, and all his sons and daughters the same. But, perhaps because they weren’t as good to her as they might have been, she took it into her head to believe some other way—sympathized with the rebels, you know. But she took care not to let any one find that out, which no one was likely to, for she was so young, only sixteen—just two years older than you, Marie—people wouldn’t be questioning her about politics. Well, it was just at this time, when Cornwallis was chasing up Morgan, that there came one rainy evening to her uncle’s a small detachment of British troops, with some Americans belonging to Morgan’s force whom they had captured the day previous, and asked for lodgings for the night. Her uncle welcomed them heartily, and gave them a room where they could lock up their prisoners, and ordered Chloe, the black cook, to get up a grand supper for them. Grand? I don’t suppose it was what would be called a grand supper nowadays. I presume it consisted largely of game from the forest, venison, and the like—not much in the way of dessert and nick-nacks, you know. While the British were feasting in the dining-room, Kate—we may as well call her Kate, for I forgot to tell you that I was named after her—slipped into the kitchen, and managed, unseen, to fill a basket with some of that plentiful supper, and creep with it up a back stairway to the store-room or garret at the top of the house. Now the room where the prisoners were locked in was in the second story, and had no window; but in the ceiling there was a trap-door that opened into the garret. Kate raised this door—or rather, it was a mere piece of plank—and let down the basket by a rope. And the prisoners, looking up and catching sight of her friendly face by the light of the candle she held, were gladdened, you may be sure. Ah, poor fellows, and they were hungry, too; hadn’t had a mouthful for two days. (Indeed, they had been out in search of game. That was the way they happened to be caught.) ‘Was there any way under the sun for them to get out of there?’ they asked her. Yes; she told them of a way she had thought of, but they would have to be very still about it, and wait till everybody in the house had gone to sleep. Then she closed the door again, but she was careful to take the basket with her, lest the Red-coats might look in before retiring, and find it there and suspect something was wrong. They did look in, too. There were the prisoners, all secure. Then they locked and bolted the door again, and for further security stationed a guard outside. When Kate found out about the guard she trembled for her plans. But toward midnight she peeped into the hall and saw him nodding sleepily, for he and his comrades, as well as their officers, had been making free with her uncle’s wine. In those days it was the custom to keep quantities of wine even in private houses, and to use it freely at the table.”

But in the ceiling there was a trap-door that opened into the garret.—[Page 38.]

“Nothing of that sort going on nowadays!”

“I am sorry to say so, Harry, but I suppose there is; though not so generally the practice, I am sure—at least, not in this country. Well, Kate crept up to the garret again, by the same way as before, and she lowered a ladder—oh, so still!—to those six prisoners, and one by one they climbed up softly through the little trap-door in the ceiling—oh, it was just the least mite of an opening, hardly large enough for a person to crawl through; but then I suppose that one could manage to squeeze through a pretty small space for the sake of regaining one’s liberty—”

“That’s so!” says Harry, speaking, doubtless, from experience.

“Now, you mustn’t interrupt again!” says Marie; “just when they’re all climbing up, too; and I’m so afraid that sentinel there in the hall outside will hear! But, oh, Katy, when they’re all up in the garret how ever is she going to get them away from there? Won’t somebody wake up and hear while she’s getting them all down that back stairway?”

“No, they didn’t go down that way. You see this garret was used for a store-room for flour and groceries, and the like; for the place was so far from any mill or market, that when they sent to the nearest town they used to purchase all those things in large quantities. So, for convenience in storing away articles, a stairway had been built up against the outside of the house.”

“Oh, and there was an outside door to the garret! What a dear, delicious old house, with stairways and trap-doors, and everything all fixed just right to help those poor prisoners off!”

“Now, you mustn’t interrupt again!” says a mocking voice.

“Down they went, under the dripping eaves; but when they reached the ground and held a whispered consultation, it came out that they hadn’t the slightest idea in which direction to go to join their commander; for they were all from the north, and perfectly unacquainted with the country. ‘Could the kind young lady give them some directions?’ ‘I will go as guide,’ she said. So they helped themselves to the six chargers of the six British officers sleeping snugly under her uncle’s roof, and she mounted her little sorrel pony, and away they went, through the rain and the darkness—slowly at first, lest the trampling of the horses’ feet should be heard, which likely would have been the case but for the ground being softened by the rain; after that they dashed along swiftly over hills and through forests, for it was a wild, uncultivated region through which their route lay. After riding a few miles they reached a rapid stream, so swollen by the freshets which prevailed just then—it was in January—so deep and rapid that it was almost impossible for the soldiers, even on their stout war-horses, to ford it, for there was no bridge. Kate and her little pony would surely have been swept away. So, as she could go no farther, she told them as clearly as she could how they were to turn to the right at such a cross-road, and to the left at another, and to the right again when they came to a certain old church; and if they kept straight ahead when they came to a certain tall pine tree, standing all alone by itself, they would reach the place where they expected to find Morgan. (As he was on the move all the time they couldn’t be so sure about that.) So, with a ‘God bless you!’ from the leader, which all his companions echoed, they plunged into the roaring torrent, and she turned back through the forest—where there were fierce bears and panthers, mind you; but fortunately the rain kept them in their dens that night.

“When she reached home, all was as dark and silent as when she left; and when she peeped out again from her room, there was the guard nodding as before; but not really asleep. He hadn’t heard a sound. Poor fellow, the British Colonel and the rest were going to have him shot for sleeping at his post, when, next morning, they found the prisoners had gone and the horses too. How furiously angry they were! But, oh, the uncle! his eyes flashed lightnings, and his voice was like the thunder. Kate was wakened by his raging and storming, with all the black people up before him to be cross-questioned, and they declaring that ‘O massa, dey wouldn’ a-helped dem rebel trash away fur nuffin in de hull worl’!’ If they had, their lives wouldn’t have been worth much. Kate knew that, or she might have asked some of them to assist her. She meant to bear all the blame herself.”

“Wasn’t she a trump, though!”

“Yes, Harry; but she trembled like a leaf all the time, dressing herself in a hurry, and rushing out to confess before them all, and plead for the sentinel’s life. ‘Oh, he wasn’t a bit to blame! he didn’t go to sleep at all, for she looked to see! We were so still about it that, oh, he couldn’t hear! and oh, don’t kill him, don’t!’ And then she almost fainted away. But the angry old uncle was angrier than ever. He ordered her to her room, and never to show her face again. But just at this point, when all is clamor and confusion, and the poor, pale, frightened girl is being dragged off in disgrace to her chamber, the house is suddenly surrounded by the combined forces of Greene and Morgan (for they met yesterday, and have been nearer by all the time than was supposed), and led by the American Captain whom she released last night, in walks General Greene himself, to thank her for her brave deed; and when she is led to the window, all those soldiers—ragged, weak with hunger, as they are, footsore and weary with continual marching—at the sight of her, just toss up their hats (those of them who have any) and cheer, and cheer, and cheer. And the British Colonel and his men are prisoners themselves in about two seconds—”

“Oh, jolly!”

“And the mad old Tory uncle’s wine-casks have to be tapped again, while the rebel army there before his eyes drinks to his niece’s health.”

“Jolly, jollier, jolliest!”

“You might suppose there wasn’t enough to go around; but you must remember that it was not such a very big army. How large should you say, Walter?”

“Probably not a larger number than would be included in two what in our last war were considered good-sized regiments. Hardly that, for I believe Greene left quite a force behind at his post on the Pedee river, when he pushed across country to join Morgan; and his whole command united couldn’t have amounted to more than two thousand.”