"How big is your trunk?" Page 88."How big is your trunk?" Page 88.
Mr. Lincoln had a big heart. It never bothered him to stop long enough to do a kindness. One bitterly cold day he saw an old man chopping wood. He was feeble and was shaking with the cold. Mr. Lincoln watched him for a few minutes and then asked him how much he was to be paid for the whole lot. "One dollar," he answered, "and I need it to buy shoes." "I should think you did," said the lawyer, noticing that the poor old man's toes showed through the holes ofthose he was wearing. Then he gently took the axe from the man's hands and said: "You go in by the fire and keep warm, and I'll do the wood." Mr. Lincoln made the chips fly. He chopped so fast that the passers-by never stopped talking about it.
Abraham Lincoln was known to be honest, unselfish, and clear-headed. He had grown very wise by much reading and study. Finally the people of the United States paid him the greatest honor that can come to an American. They made him President. Yes, this man who had taught himself to write in the Kentucky log cabin was President of the United States!
As President, Mr. Lincoln lived in style at the White House. But he was just the same quiet, modest man that he had always been. He was busier, that was all.
When President Lincoln spoke to the people, or sent letters (messages, they are called) to Congress, every one said: "What a brain that man has!" But he used very short, simple words. Once he gave a reason for this. He said it used to make him angry,when he was a child, to hear the neighbors talk to his father in a way that he could not understand. He would lie awake, sometimes, half the night, trying to think what they meant. When he thought he had at last got the idea, he would put it into the simplest words he knew, so that any boy would know what was meant. This got to be a habit, and even in his great talk at Gettysburg the beautiful words are short and plain.
One day when Lincoln was running the ferry-boat for the man I have spoken of before, he saw at one of the river landings some negro slaves getting a terrible beating by their master. He was only a boy, but he never forgot the sight, and one of the things he brought about when he became President of the United States was the freedom of the black people.
There are a great many lives and stories about Lincoln which you will read and enjoy, and it is certain that the more you know of this great man, Dear "Honest Abe," the better you will love him.
Small Robert Lee, of Virginia, aged five, was playing one day with another boy of his own age, whose mother was visiting Mrs. Lee. The Lees had lived for two centuries in the beautiful brick mansion, "Stratford," on the Potomac River. While the boys played on the veranda, there was the sound of busy feet inside the house, and an air of bustle and hurrying to and fro. Robert knew the cause of this and was feeling very happy. His father, Colonel Robert E. Lee, was coming home from Mexico, where he had done brave things in the Mexican War. The story of this had been in the papers, and though Robert had not seen his father for two years and sometimes could not remember just how he looked, he knew from the way people mentioned Colonel Lee's name that he was a man to be proud of.
When Eliza, Robert's black mammy, calledhim in to be dressed, there was trouble. He would not wear what she had ready for him. He was the Colonel's namesake, and if his father was coming home, nothing was nice enough but his best frock of blue and white.
Small Robert had his way about the frock. His hair was freshly curled, and he rushed down to the broad hall, where the family were waiting for Colonel Lee. The lady visitor had pinned a rose in her hair, and the other little boy had been dressed in his prettiest clothes. Pretty soon there were shouts of "Here he comes—here he comes!" and they could see Colonel Lee, in a handsome uniform, riding his chestnut horse, Grace Darling.
He sprang from the horse and up the steps, and when he had greeted the older ones, he sang out: "Where's my little boy—where's Robbie?" He seized the child nearest him and kissed him half a dozen times.
But it wasn't Robert that he kissed. It was the other boy!
For a minute Robert cried, but his father had plenty of kisses for him when he foundwhat a mistake he had made, and he whispered something to Robert that made everything all right. There was a mustang pony on the way from Mexico for his little son!
This pony was pure white. A faithful Irish servant taught Robert to ride in a short time, and he was the proudest boy in the world when he rode out on Santa Anna beside his father on Grace Darling. Robert bragged a good deal to his playmates about Grace Darling, because she had carried his father all through the Mexican War and had the scars of seven bullets on her sides.
Colonel Lee loved animals and taught all his children to be kind to their pets. When the family lived in Arlington, "Spec," a lively black and tan terrier, went everywhere with them, even to church. Colonel Lee thought he made the children restless, so one Sunday, when they started for church, he shut Spec in a chamber in the second story. Spec looked out of the window for awhile. It was open, and he soon made up his mind that he would rather be with his friends. So he jumped to the ground, ran as fast as he could,and walked into the pew just behind the family. After that he was allowed to go to church every Sunday.
Colonel Robert E. Lee was a very handsome man. When he and Mrs. Lee were going out in the evening, the children always begged to sit up and see them start. They never saw any man or any picture of a man they thought so beautiful as their own father.
General Lee was not just a good leader of soldiers; he knew how to make everyone mind, and although he was the best playmate his children had, he was very firm with them. No slipshod ways were allowed in his house. No, indeed! If his boys and girls were not tidy about their clothes, faithful in their lessons, polite, and truthful, they found their father stern enough.
When their father was so quick at sports and games and could plan such perfectly splendid holidays, it did seem pretty hard to the Lee children that he was so often sent away on war duties. But wherever he was, he found time from his military affairs to write long letters to his children, and thesewere so playful and told of so many strange things that it partly made up for his absence. The neighboring playmates used to watch for those letters almost as eagerly as the family, and probably they envied the Lee children sometimes when their father came for a visit, wearing some new honor or title. For as he was wise and good and brave, he did not fail to rise higher and higher in rank. His father had been a general under George Washington and had taught his son that there is no grander honor for a man than to defend his country. And in order that Robert should make a fine soldier, he had been trained at West Point. When he had proved how keen and skilful he was, Abraham Lincoln, then president of the United States, asked Robert E. Lee, who had become a general, to take command of all the armies of the Union.
But general Lee was much troubled in his mind. Just then there was danger of the northern and southern States fighting against each other. If the people of the different States should really grow so angry that theycame to blows, Lee felt he must stand by Virginia, because that was his father's State. Indeed, the Lees had lived there since 1642, and Robert Lee loved every inch of its soil. He felt sad enough when he found there must be fighting, but he could not accept Lincoln's offer, so he gave up his high place in the United States Army and took the post of Major-general among the Virginian soldiers.
Then the Lee family had to do without their father and chum for four long years. They had grown up by this time, and all their childhood pets were dead. Grace Darling's place was taken by Traveller, an iron-gray horse with black points. He was so large and strong it did not seem possible to tire him out. He carried General Lee all through the Civil War. He often went cold and hungry, but he loved his master and would come when he heard the general's whistle or call, no matter how far away he might be. The soldiers loved Lee, too, and they obeyed his slightest wish.
The Civil War was long and cruel, as all war is, and at the end Lee had to yield because his men were starving. But he is counted as one of the greatest generals known in history, and his fame will never die.
The little Robert E. Lee, who rode the mustang pony, is now a gray-haired man. He has written the life of his father and has told how General Lee became a college president after the War. The students loved their president as well as the soldiers loved their general, and they always felt proud of him as he went galloping past them on dear old Traveller after the duties were over for the day. Good old Traveller deserved a medal, if ever a horse did, for sharing the dangers of her gallant master, General Robert E. Lee.
Have you ever happened to see a book that cost a thousand dollars?
A man who loved birds and knew a great deal about them drew pictures of all the kinds to be found in our country, calling these drawings, when they were colored and bound togetherThe Birds of North America. It took four volumes to hold all these pictures, and each one of these books costs a thousand dollars. There were only seventy-five or eighty of these sets of bird books made, but you can see them in the Boston Public Library, the Lenox and Astor libraries in New York city, and at several colleges and private homes. Each one of these books is more than three feet long and a little over two feet wide, and is so heavy that it takes two strong men to lift it on to a rack when some one wants to look at the pictures. If you should look through all four books, you would seemore than a thousand kinds of birds, all drawn as big as life, and each one colored like the bird itself.
You may be sure it took the maker of these books many, many years to travel all over the United States to find such a number of birds. The man's name was John James Audubon. He slept in woods, waded through marshes and swamps, tramped hundreds of miles, and suffered many hardships before he could learn the colors and habits of so many birds. He always said his love for birds began when his pet parrot was killed.
It happened this way.
One morning when John James was about four years old and his nurse was giving him his breakfast, the little parrot Mignonne, who said a lot of words as plainly as a child, asked for some bread and milk. A tame monkey who was in the room happened to be angry and sulking over something. He sprang at Mignonne, who screamed for help. Little John James shouted too, and begged his nurse to save the bird, but before any onecould stop the ugly monkey's blows, the parrot was dead.
The monkey was always kept chained after that, and John James buried his parrot in the garden and trimmed the grave with shrubs and flowering plants. But he missed his pet and so roamed through the woods adjoining his father's estate, watching the birds that flew through them. By and by he did not care for anything so much as trying to make pictures of these birds, listening to their songs, finding what kind of nests they built, and at what time of year they flew north or south.
John James lived in Nantes, France, when he was a small boy, although he was born in Louisiana. His father was a wealthy French gentleman, an officer in the French navy, and was much in America, so that John James was first in France and then in America until he was about twenty-five, at which time he settled in his native country for good. Few men have loved these United States better than he.
John James did not care much for school.Figures tired his head. He loved music, drawing, and dancing. His father was away from home most of the time, and his pretty, young stepmother let the boy do quite as he pleased. She loved him dearly, and as he liked to roam through the country with boys of his age, she would pack luncheon baskets day after day for him, and when he came back at dusk, with the same baskets filled with birds' eggs, strange flowers, and all sorts of curiosities, she would sit down beside him and look them over, as interested as could be.
Some years later, when John James's father put him in charge of a large farm near Philadelphia, the young man bought some fine horses, some well-trained dogs, and spent long summer days in hunting and fishing. He also got many breeds of fowl. It is a wonder that with all the leisure hours he had, and the large amount of spending money his father allowed him, he did not get into bad habits, but young Audubon ate mostly fruit and vegetables, never touched liquor, and chose good companions. He did like fine clothes and about this time dressed rather likea fop. I expect the handsome fellow made a pretty picture as he dashed by on his spirited black horse, in his satin breeches, silk stockings and pumps, and the fine, ruffled shirts which he had sent over from France.
Anyway, a sweet young girl, Lucy Bakewell, lost her heart to him. Only as she was very young, her parents said she must not yet be married. And while he was waiting for her, he fixed over his house, and with a friend, Mr. Rozier, and a good-natured housekeeper, lived a simple, country life. You would have enjoyed a visit to him about this time. He turned the lower floor into a sort of museum. The walls were festooned with birds' eggs, which had been blown out and strung on thread. There were stuffed squirrels, opossums, and racoons; and paintings of gorgeous colored birds hung everywhere. Audubon had great skill in training animals and one dog, Zephyr, did wonderful tricks.
When Audubon and Lucy married, they went to Kentucky, where he and his friend Rozier opened a store. But Rozier did most of the store work, as Audubon was apt towander off to the woods, for he had already decided to make this book about birds. His mind was not on his business, as you can see when I tell you that one day he mailed a letter with eight thousand dollars in it and never sealed it! The only part of the business he enjoyed were the trips to New York and Philadelphia to buy goods. These goods were carried on the backs of pack horses, and a good part of the journeys led through forests. He lost the horses for a whole day once, because he heard a song-bird that was new to him, and as he followed the sound of the bird so as to get a sight of it, he forgot all about the pack horses and the goods.
By and by his best friends said he acted like a crazy man. Only his wife and family stood by him. Finally when his money was gone, and there were two children growing up, things looked rather desperate. But Lucy, his wife, said: "You are a genius, and you know more about birds than any one living. I am sure all you need is time to show the world how clever you are. I will earn money while you study and paint!"
So Audubon traveled to seek out the haunts of still more birds, while Lucy went as governess in rich families, or opened private schools where she could teach her own two boys as well as others. She earned a great deal of money, and when he had made all his pictures and was ready to publish the books, she had nearly enough to pay the expense, and gave it to him.
"No," he said, "I am going to earn part of this myself. I will open a dancing class." He had danced beautifully ever since he was a child and could not understand how people could be so awkward and stupid as his class of sixty Kentuckians proved to be. In their first lesson he broke his bow and almost ruined his beautiful violin in his excitement and temper. "Why, watch me," he cried, and he danced to his own music so charmingly that the class clapped their hands and said they would do their best to copy him. By and by they did better, and before he left them, they quite satisfied him. And what was fortunate for him, they had paid him two thousand dollars. With this and Lucy's earnings, he went to England and had the famous drawings published. When they were done, he exhibited them at the Royal Institute, charging admission, and earned many pounds more.
Audubon was a lovable, courteous man, never too poor to help others, very modest and gracious. He adored his wife, and as his books (he wrote many volumes of his travels, which I hope you will read some day) brought in quite a fortune, the two, with their sons, and their grandchildren, spent their last days in great comfort, on a fine estate on the Hudson River.
When Robert Fulton was a little boy in Pennsylvania, he never minded being called to his lessons with his mother, for she was a famous Irish beauty, and Robert loved to look at her. She was good-natured too and told him far more interesting stories than he found in the lesson books. It was quite a different matter when Robert was sent, at the age of eight, to a school kept by Caleb Johnson, a Quaker gentleman.
With Mr. Johnson, Robert found lessons rather stupid affairs. He missed the stories his mother always wove in with the books they read together. Besides, Robert had taken some toys and old clocks to pieces, and he was busy planning how he could make some himself, if he but had the tools. Sometimes Caleb Johnson spoke to him two or three times before Robert heard him. The oldQuaker thought the boy was wasting precious time, so he feruled him every day.
This was way back, just before the Revolutionary War, and in those days every school-teacher kept a stout stick on his desk, called a ferule, with which to slap the naughty pupils' hands. The ferule always made the hand burn and sting, and if the teacher were harsh, he sometimes blistered a boy's hand. One time, after the Quaker had used the ferule on Robert until his own arm ached, he cried: "There, that will make you do something, I guess."
"But," answered Robert, "I came here, Sir, to have something beaten into my head, not into my knuckles."
Robert was keener on making things than on learning lessons. One morning he did not get to the schoolhouse until nearly noon, and Mr. Johnson exclaimed: "Now, Mr. Tardy-Boy, where have you been?"
"At Mr. Miller's shop, pounding out a lead for my pencil. I want you to look at it. It is the best one I ever had!" And the teacher had to admit that he never saw a better one.
Another time Robert told the Quaker teacher that he was so busy thinking up new ideas that he did not have any room in his mind for storing away what was in dusty books!
Robert loved pictures. There was a large portrait of his beautiful mother, painted by Benjamin West, which hung in the parlor, and he had often wished to try and make one like it. He had not been long at school before a seat-mate brought to school some paints and brushes belonging to an older brother. As the war was waging, the people had hard work to get luxuries or money to buy them with, so Robert quite envied the boy such a prize. He begged to try them, and he made such wonderful pictures, pictures so much better than any one else in school could make, that the owner gave the whole outfit to him.
About this time Robert was always buying little packages of quicksilver. He was trying experiments with it, but he wouldn't tell the other boys what they were. So they nicknamed him "Quicksilver Bob." Of course, the men in shops where firearms were madeand repaired were very busy. "Quicksilver Bob" went to these shops every day. The men liked him, and as he talked with them, he often made suggestions that they were glad to follow. "That boy will do something big some of these days," they would say to each other.
When Robert was fourteen, he met a boy who worked in a machine shop, by the name of Christopher Grumpf. This boy was eighteen, and his father was a fine fisherman who knew where the largest number of fish could be caught, and he took the two boys up and down the river in a flat-bottomed boat that was pushed along by the means of two long poles. The boat was clumsy, and this poling made the boys' arms ache. Robert kept thinking there must be a better way of getting that boat through the water. He went away to visit his aunt but worked all the time on a set of paddles and the model of a boat on which they could be built. He tried a set of these paddles on Mr. Grumpf's boat when he got home, and they worked so well that Mr. Grumpf never used the polesagain on his fishing trips. He found the paddles saved him from having lame muscles.
Robert and his playmates had fine times watching the two thousand troops stationed in Lancaster. These were British prisoners. Some of them were kept in the barracks, the officers lodged in private houses, and the Hessian troops (some of whom had their wives with them) lived in square huts of mud and sod. This colony of Hessians greatly interested the boys of the village, and Robert drew capital pictures of them, for he had been practising sketching and painting all his spare time. In fact, he decided, at the age of seventeen, to go to the city of Philadelphia and make a business of painting portraits and miniatures. For four years he lived there, earning a good deal of money and sending the greater part of it home to his mother.
Among the many pleasant friends he made in Philadelphia was Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Franklin and most of his wealthy patrons advised Robert to go to Europe and take painting lessons of Benjamin West. Before he went, Robert bought a farm for hismother and sisters. He never forgot to see that his mother was comfortable.
Robert had been thinking for years how fine it would be if boats did not have to depend on sails but could be sent through the water by steam. Over in Europe he met a lord who was making plans for canals, and while talking with him he grew more interested than ever in ways of traveling by water. So although he painted enough portraits to lay away money for a rainy day, he studied all the rules for building canals and about the machinery that goes in boats. Certainly he was busier than when, as a boy, he told Caleb Johnson there was no time for dusty books when his mind was holding so many new ideas, for he learned three or four languages, invented the first panorama ever shown in France, a machine for cutting marble, another for twisting rope, and a torpedo boat to be used in warfare.
Only you must not think that because he had so many clever notions about the implements of war he believed in nations killing each other off—no, indeed. He stood forpeace more than a hundred and fifty years ago, before there was so much said and done to encourage it. He said: "The art of Peace should be the study of every young American!"
He stayed seven years in France and was pointed out wherever he went as "that talented young foreigner." He lived most of the time with an American gentleman, Mr. Joel Barlow, and his wife. They were very fond of Fulton and believed that the experiments he was trying,—to make vessels go by steam, would prove a success. They nicknamed him "Toot," because every evening, in his room, he was running a tiny model of a steam-engine across his work table, which gave shrill whistles now and then.
For as much as thirty years men in Europe and America had been trying to make vessels run by steam when Fulton finally succeeded in doing it. He built a boat which was fitted with a steam-engine and gave it a trial on the river Seine. Something broke, which let the vessel down on to the river's bottom, but Fulton soon had another puffing its way upand down a section of the Seine, while the people on the banks cheered and wondered.
Fulton returned to America and built a steamer which he intended to run on the Hudson River. He named it theClermont, but it was generally spoken of as "Fulton's Folly" by the crowds who watched its building. The loungers who stood about jeering at the inventor were so disrespectful as they watched the last few days' work that Fulton feared they would smash it in pieces and hired a guard to protect it.
It was four years after Fulton had shown the model boat on the Seine, in France, that he started theClermontup the Hudson River, in his own country. There were not thirty people in New York city who believed the steamer would go a mile in an hour. A few friends went aboard with the inventor, to make the trial trip, but they looked frightened and worried. TheClermontwas a clumsy affair; its machinery creaked and groaned; no whistle seemed to work, so a horn was blown whenever the boat approached a landing. The crew carried on enough wood ateach landing to last till they reached another. This wood was pine, and whenever the engineer stirred the coals, a lot of sparks flew into the air, and black smoke poured from the funnel. The crews on the ordinary sailing vessels were afraid of this strange craft that went chugging by them, and some of the sailors were in such a panic that they left their vessels and ran into the woods, declaring there was a horrible monster afloat on the water.
Well, theClermontproved a great convenience on the Hudson River. It ran as a packet boat for years, and Fulton built other steamers. He realized that it would mean a great deal to America if some quick, cheap method of carrying people and freight along the great Missouri and Mississippi rivers could be used. His invention of the steamboat has given him the name of the "Father of Steam Navigation," and it has been a blessing to the whole world.
Besides being a wonderful inventor, Robert Fulton was a polished gentleman. He was tall and handsome, like his mother, as gentleas a child, and he had a charming way of talking, so whether he spoke of America, France, steamboats, or pictures, there was always silence in the room.
Think of the old Quaker teacher, Caleb Johnson, trying to ferule a few ideas into Robert Fulton's head! No doubt Mr. Johnson was worried, but Robert's head proved to be an uncommonly wise one.
It was quite a while before you and I were born that a boy by the name of George Peabody lived in Danvers, Massachusetts. He had such good lessons in school that his teachers rather thought he would go to college, but one day he took his books out of his desk and said he must leave school and go to work, because his mother was very poor. The teacher said: "We shall miss you, George, and hope you will have much good luck!"
George was only eleven when this happened. He was a round-faced, plucky, little fellow, with the good manners that generally go with a kind heart, and there wasn't a lazy bone in his body. Mr. Proctor, the grocer, thought he was just the kind of a boy he needed in his store. So he hired him.
Right away the housekeepers in Danvers agreed that George Peabody was the nicest grocer-boy they ever saw. They said to eachother it was worth the walk to the store to have him hand out their packages with his sunny smile, his pleasant words, and polite bow. When he carried the heavier things, like a bag of meal, or a gallon of molasses home for them, they would coax him to rest awhile and eat some fruit or cake. They all liked to talk with him.
George stayed with Mr. Proctor four years. Then he went to Vermont to help his grandfather. Mr. Proctor almost cried when he saw the big stage-coach rattle away in a cloud of dust, while the boy who had been so faithful to his duties waved good-by with his handkerchief as long as he could see.
When George was sixteen, he joined his brother David, who had a store in Newburyport. The young people in this old sea-port town made friends with him at once. They asked him to every fishing-party and picnic they had, but he was usually too busy to go, for besides selling goods all day, he often wrote cards in a clear, neat hand, in his room evenings. He spent almost nothing on himself, but was as happy as could be when hisletters to his mother held more money than usual. His being poor did not matter. The rich boys in Newburyport were glad to pay his share in games and excursions any time he could take a holiday, just for the sake of having his lively company.
A fire destroyed David's store, and George had to make a fresh start in Georgetown. It was the same story there. It was no time at all before the mayor of Georgetown said to the doctor and the minister: "I tell you, George Peabody is a comfortable person to have round!"
At twenty George did not have a dollar of his own, but after the fire plenty of men offered to lend him money, and he kept on working in his happy way until he was thirty-five, when he found himself rich enough to go to London and not only have stores but to open a bank, too. Then Englishmen began to find out what a comfortable man George Peabody was to have round. He had no wife and lived rather simply himself, but was glad to spend a great deal on other folks. He found the working men lived in filthy, unhealthy places, so he built a great square—almost a little village—of neat, pretty, working men's homes. (In his will he left the poor of London half a million dollars.) Then, when it was feared that Sir John Franklin, the great arctic explorer, was lost, and there was need to send men to search for him, George Peabody said: "Let me help—I'll fit out a ship," and he paid for everything that went aboard theAdvance. You understand, now, why you find on the geography maps a point, way up north, called Peabody's Land!
The Englishmen took a strong liking to this sociable American who had settled among them, and it was thought a great treat to go round to his rooms in the evening and have a game of backgammon or whist after a jolly dinner, at which Mr. Peabody always told funny stories. He had a fine memory and a real gift for story-telling. He loved music and was delighted when people would sing Scotch songs for him.
Living in England many years did not make Mr. Peabody love America any the less.When the great Crystal Palace was built in which to hold a sort of World's Fair, there were to be shown samples of things made by different countries. The papers were full of talk about this grand affair. One morning Mr. Peabody opened his paper at the breakfast table and read an article which ridiculed the looks of the rooms or stalls set apart for American products. I tell you it did not take him long to eat his breakfast. He said: "I guess I'll see about this. I guess my own country is not going to be made fun of!" He did not abuse the man who wrote the article, but he went right to the Crystal Palace to find out how our things did look. He knew the minute he got there that our agents did not have money enough to work with. So he just opened his purse and wrote letters and offered advice, until in the end the American stalls were decorated in exquisite taste, and when there were such things shown as Powers's "Greek Slave" (a wonderful statue), the very useful reaping machine of McCormack's, Colt's revolvers, and the printing press of Hoe, with many other interestingthings, the visitors to the fair agreed that few countries had more to their credit than America. Then the English papers behaved very handsomely and spoke so well of our exhibit that I expect if George Peabody read the last article at his breakfast table, he may have chuckled to himself and said: "I'll risk America every time!"
He noticed, while at the fair, how well the Crystal Palace was suited for large gatherings (it is mostly of iron and glass—with two immense, glittering towers) and decided he would give a big dinner on the Fourth of July to all the Americans in London. This dinner proved a grand affair. The Duke of Wellington and many famous English people were present. It was such a success that ever after, as long as he lived, George Peabody gave a Fourth of July dinner in Crystal Palace.
Queen Victoria so deeply esteemed Mr. Peabody that she sent a message to him that she wished to make him a baronet, and confer the Order of the Bath upon him. And what word do you suppose he sent back? Why, he said: "I am going over to America prettysoon to visit the town where I was born, and as I do not care one bit about titles and such things, but do value your interest and friendship, I wish you would just write me a letter which I may read to my friends in America, who love you as I do!" The queen wrote a long, affectionate letter to him, saying what a blessing he had been to England, and asked him to accept her portrait.
So when Danvers, a part of which had been set off into a new town by itself and named Peabody (for the faithful grocer boy, who had become the rich banker) was to have its hundredth birthday, George Peabody crossed the ocean to be there. He gave to his native town a free library and lecture hall and the portrait of Queen Victoria. This miniature was so set with gold and jewels as to cost fifty thousand dollars! The queen's letter is kept there to this day.
Mr. Peabody gave money for museums at Yale and Harvard, an Academy of Science at Salem, a memorial church at Georgetown, the birthplace of his mother, and large sums of money for schools in the South, because herealized that after the Civil War there would be much disorder and poverty. Some men could not have kept perfectly friendly with two countries, but Mr. Peabody loved both England and America and in all he did and said tried to bind the two nations together. The very last time he spoke in public was at the National Peace Jubilee in Boston.
When George Peabody died, the queen wanted him buried in Westminster Abbey, and when she found he had left a request to be taken to America, she sent a ship, theMonarch, across the Atlantic Ocean with his body.
A good many lives and stories have been written about George Peabody, and he has earned several names like The Great Philanthropist—The Merchant Prince—the Ambassador of Peace—the Friend of the Poor—and so forth, but none fit him any better than the saying: "He was a comfortable man to have round!"
Before New England became such a busy, hurried sort of a place—say a hundred years ago—its men and women had time to listen to sermons that were more than an hour long, or to lecturers who talked three or four hours. When a public speaker used very fine words and could keep the people who listened to him wide awake and eager to hear more, he was called a great orator. An orator who dazzled our grandfathers and grandmothers was named Daniel Webster. He has been dead a long time, but the public speeches he made will never be forgotten.
Down in the business part of Boston can be seen, on a large building, a tablet which reads "The Home of Daniel Webster." On the terraced lawn of Massachusetts' State house stands a bronze statue of Daniel Webster. And in old Faneuil Hall, Boston (which is called the Cradle of Liberty), there is ahuge painting, as long as—well—as long as a street-car, which is called "Webster's Reply to Hayne." In this picture there are the portraits of one hundred and thirty senators and other men, but all of them are watching Daniel Webster. This is a picture well worth seeing, and Webster was well worth hearing.
Daniel Webster was born in New Hampshire. When he was a year old, his parents moved onto a farm which they called "The Elms" on account of the fine old trees which grew there. The older Webster boys did all kinds of heavy work, but as Daniel was not very strong, he was petted, and as he grew up, was asked to do only very light work. He rode the plow horse in the fields, drove the cows to pasture, and tended logs in his father's sawmill. When he was sent to do this last, he always took a book along, because it took twenty minutes for the saw to work its teeth through one of the tree-trunks, and he could not bear to waste all that time. He learned to read from his mother and sister almost as soon as he could talk, and he pored over the Bible for hours at a time.
Daniel's father kept a tavern, besides carrying on his farm. The teamsters who got their dinners there used to ask Daniel to read to them. His voice was deep and musical, and he gave such meaning to the words of the Bible that they thought him a wonder. His eyes were like black velvet, and his hair was as black and shiny as the feathers of a crow. Every one called him "little black Dan."
Daniel read everything he could find, and could recite whole poems and chapters of books when he was quite small. At a country store, just across the road from his father's tavern, he bought a cotton pocket-handkerchief on which the Constitution of the United States was printed. After looking at the eagles and flags which were printed as a border, he sat down under one of the giant elm trees and learned by heart every word printed there.
Daniel liked to wander along the banks of the Merrimac River, and as he played in the fields and woods, he learned a great deal about animals and plants. Robert Wise taughthim to fish for the salmon and shad that were plenty about there. Robert Wise was an old English sailor, who lived with his wife in a cottage on the Webster farm. He told Daniel famous stories of the strange countries he had sailed to. This man could not read, so he felt well repaid for carrying little black Dan on his shoulder, or paddling him up and down streams half a day at a time, if the boy would go after supper to his cottage and read aloud to him from books or newspapers.
Daniel loved all outdoor beauty, the sun, moon, and stars, the ocean, and the wind. In almost every one of the great speeches that he made, as a middle-aged, or old man, he mentioned them.
In the state of New Hampshire, when Daniel was a boy, teachers and schools were scarce. A man or a woman would teach a few weeks in one town and then move on to another. They were called traveling teachers. This was done because there were not anywhere near enough teachers to go round, and it was thought only fair that each little village or town should get its few weeks.Daniel followed these traveling teachers a long time every year, sometimes walking two or three miles a day, at other times boarding away from home. Nothing was taught in these schools but reading and writing. Daniel was an almost perfect reader but a poor writer.
One of Daniel's teachers wanted his pupils to know good poems and chapters of books by heart. He offered a prize—a jack-knife—to the one who should learn the most verses from the Bible. One after another was called upon to recite. They had found it rather hard, and many of them had learned but eight or ten verses at the most. When it was Daniel's turn, he recited chapter after chapter. He kept on and on until it was time for the teacher to dismiss school. Mr. Tappan said: "Well, there is no doubt you deserve the prize. How many more chapters did you learn?"
"Oh, a lot more," answered Dan, laughing.
After Daniel was twelve, he began to grow stronger and did his share of work on the farm. One day when he was helping hisfather in the hayfield, Mr. Webster said: "Daniel, it is the men who have fine educations that succeed in this world. I do not intend that you shall be a drudge all your days. I am going to send you through college."
He rode there on horseback. Page 129.He rode there on horseback. Page 129.
Daniel was so pleased at this that he sat right down on the hay and cried.
When Daniel was fitting for college at Exeter, he was about the brightest pupil there, but it did seem funny that the boy who was to one day be a great orator could not then declaim or recite before the school. He would learn the nicest pieces and practise them in his own room, but when he stood up before all the scholars and teachers, his courage left him. Sometimes, when his name was called, he could not rise from his seat. He was very much ashamed of himself and shed a good many tears over his shyness. But he persevered and finally did better than any of the boys. There is nothing like trying things enough times.
When Daniel went to Dartmouth College, he rode there on horseback, carrying hisfeather-bed, blankets, clothes, and books on his horse. He was still such a dark looking person that the students thought he was an Indian.
Daniel studied law and made very fine pleas in the courtrooms. He was a senator in Congress, a secretary of state, and a public speaker who was admired in England as well as in America.
Mr. Webster had a wife and children. He bought a large estate at Marshfield in Massachusetts, where the family spent many summers. He loved children and animals, was kind to the poor, and bought the freedom of several slaves. He was very neat in dress. His favorite costume for court and senate was a blue coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat, and black trousers.
Daniel Webster always liked to look up old friends and was never cold or haughty to any one. Once when he was going through the West, making famous speeches in the different cities, a man crowded forward to speak to him, saying: "Why, is this little black Dan that used to water my horses?"The dignified orator did not mind a bit. "Yes," he laughed, "I'm little black Dan grown up!"
Daniel was a good son to the father, who had tried hard to make him a fine scholar. Only once did he disappoint him. That was when he refused to be clerk of court. When his father begged him to take that place, he said: "No, father, I am going to use my tongue in courts, not my pen. I mean to be an orator!" He proved to be one of America's great ones.
Augustus St. Gaudens was a sculptor. He made wonderful figures of our American heroes. No matter how often we are told of the brave deeds of Lincoln, Sherman, Shaw, and Farragut, we shall remember these men longer because of St. Gaudens's statues of them.
Although Augustus was the son of a French shoemaker, named Bernard Paul St. Gaudens, and a young Irish girl of Dublin, who lost her heart to Bernard as she sat binding slippers in the same shop where he made shoes, we call him an American, for a great famine swept Ireland when little Augustus was only six months old, and the young parents sailed to America with all haste. They landed in Boston, where the mother and baby waited for the father to find work in New York. He soon sent for them, and as Augustus and his two brothers grew up in that city andalways lived in this country, he seems to belong to us.
Shoemakers, as a rule, are not rich men, and Mr. St. Gaudens did not pay very strict attention to his work, for he joined so many societies and clubs that these took his time. His patrons would never have had their shoes made or mended if he had not hired help. Then, also, his sons learned to cobble shoes very young.
Before Augustus went into his father's shop to work, and when he had a good many hours out of school, he found the busy streets of New York exciting enough. He was laughing and merry, so that he made friends from the Bowery to Central Park. He had only to sniff hungrily at the bakery to have the good-natured German cook toss him out brown sugar-cakes, and if he fell off the wharves, or ran too near big fire-engines, some kind policeman rescued him. He was not a bad boy. Probably the worst thing he did was to join some other boys in the string joke. They used to tie strings from the seats of the bakery-wagons to the posts of highstoops and watch these strings knock off hats as men hurried by.
Sundays were gala days. If the sun shone, all the boys in the neighborhood went over to New Jersey on the ferry-boat. Augustus's father always gave him and his brothers five cents each. Two cents took a boy over to New Jersey, two cents brought him back, and there was the other cent for candy or gum. It was good sport to chase each other through the green fields, hunt birds' nests, and climb trees, but the best fun came on the way back, when the boys sat in a long row at the front of the boat, letting their legs dangle over the edge, watching the life on the river.
When Augustus went to school, at the age of ten, he did more drawing on his slate than arithmetic. How the pupils craned their necks to see his pictures! He did not draw just one man, a bird, or a single house, but whole armies shooting guns and cannon. These soldiers looked alive. On his way home, Augustus was apt to draw charcoal sketches on every white house hepassed. The sketches were fine, but the housekeepers scolded. Few people noticed the real talent of the boy, but one old doctor became much excited and urged Augustus's father to let him study art. His father had seen very lifelike pictures of his own workshop and cobblers which Augustus had drawn, and agreed that he would do what he could to help him. Only Augustus must for a few more years earn money for the family. So while he went to a night school for drawing lessons, he cut cameos through the day.
My, but the man who taught him cameo cutting was cross! Augustus was scolded and driven to work faster all day long.
In spite of the terrible rages into which this stonecutter would go, he was very artistic, and Augustus learned how to cut wonderful heads of dogs, horses, and lions, for scarf pins. He made hundreds of lions' heads, and twenty years later, when he was helping his brother model the lion figures for the Boston Public Library, his hands fairly flew, he knew all the lines so well.
When Augustus went in the evenings tothe drawing classes at Cooper Union, he began drawing human figures and was so eager about his art that he would have forgotten to eat or sleep if his mother had not watched him. As he grew older, he loved art more and more. The only thing else that attracted his eye was the city-full of soldiers, at the beginning of the Civil War. He read the bulletin boards, heard groups of men telling about battles, and his heart ached with love for America. He wanted to go to war to show that love. But his father was now sure that Augustus was a genius and insisted upon his going to Europe to study. The father could not give him much money, hardly more than enough to get him across the ocean, but he could cut cameos to pay for his lessons.
Augustus stayed in Paris a year. He made friends among the artists just as he had made them when a child in New York. Then he worked four years in Rome. He had a hard time there and grew thin for want of food and sleep, but he was as eager as ever and worked faster and harder than before.People began to visit his studio and always went away full of praise for the talented young man. Rich Americans visiting in Rome urged him to return to this country. They gave him orders, and he finally came back to America, where he was kept busy on busts and medallions until he began to have orders for monuments of great Americans. This was work he liked. He loved America, and he was proud of her heroes. Perhaps he loved Abraham Lincoln best of all. He had seen Lincoln a good many times, and he had read and studied about his beautiful life until every line of that man's face and figure was clear in his mind. Still, when he was asked to make a statue of Lincoln for the city of Chicago, he worked on it many years. On his statue of General Sherman which stands in Central Park, New York, he labored eleven years. On the beautiful Robert Gould Shaw monument which stands in front of the State House in Boston, he spent twelve years. This does not mean that he stood with clay in his hands all this time, but that from the time he began to plan what he would drawinto the statue, what size it ought to be, and whether the man should be standing or sitting, until it stood all finished, he thought and worked a long, long time. His work is almost perfect, and fine work always takes time and patience.
When busy on the Gould Shaw monument, St. Gaudens often stood on a scaffolding ten hours at a time in the hottest summer days, not eating anything but an apple. He was so eager over his work that he did not want to lose a minute. But he had some fun as well. The horse he used as a model used to get terribly tired of standing so long and would snort and prance and paw the ground until it took several men to hold him. And some of the negroes who posed nearly fainted when they saw St. Gaudens make faces that looked exactly like them with just a few pinches of his fingers on the soft clay. They thought he was in league with Satan, they said. When you see this monument, you will notice how brave Colonel Shaw looks, riding on his large horse, and how eagerly the colored troops march behind him.
St. Gaudens was very fond of Phillips Brooks, the good Bishop, and because of their friendship, his statue of Brooks at Trinity Church, Boston, is so like the man that you almost expect to hear him speak, as you stand before it. St. Gaudens had been to concerts with Bishop Brooks, had heard him preach, had seen him merry and sad, knew how unselfish he was, and how much he liked to cheer people up, and somehow managed to make his statue tell us all these traits. There is no doubt St. Gaudens was one of the world's great sculptors, but he would never have been great if he had not loved his art so well that he could go hungry, cold, and tired year after year for the sake of learning it. And he was great because he was so determined to do his work over and over again until he felt it was just right. He always urged students to do the same. "You can do anything you please," he often said; "it's thewayit's done that makes the difference."
Besides becoming famous, the shoemaker's son was happy and rich in the end. He had a wife and a son who, among other books,has written a life of his father. From this book and by the stories St. Gaudens's friends tell of him, we know that the sculptor was a gentle, loving man who tried to help the world to be better and wiser. It will not matter whether it is the statue of Sherman, Logan, Lincoln, or Shaw by St. Gaudens that you are fortunate enough to see; it will be the way any piece of his is done which makes it so beautiful, and which makes Americans glad that almost every bit of his work has stayed in this country.
Concord, Massachusetts, is one of the New England towns that everybody likes to visit. When tourists reach Boston they usually make a point of going to Concord, either byelectricor steam train, because they have read about its famous battle ground, where the first British soldiers fell in the great Revolutionary War, and because they want to see the very house in which Louisa May Alcott wroteLittle Women, and the homes of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau.
Henry Thoreau, who was born in Concord, loved the town so well that he spent most of his life tramping through its fields and forests. You might say the business of his life was walking, for he never had any real profession, and he walked from four to eight hours a day—across lots, too. He used to say roads were made for horses and business men. "Why, what would become of us," he wouldask, "if we walked only in a garden or a mall? What should we see?"
When Mr. Thoreau started out for a long saunter in the woods, he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, stout shoes, and strong gray trousers that would not show spots too easily, and would stand tree-climbing. Under his arm he usually carried an old music book in which to press plants, and in his pocket he kept a pencil, his diary, a microscope, a jack-knife, and a ball of twine. He and a friend, William Ellery Channing, agreed that a week's camping was more fun than all the books in the world. Once they tried tramping and camping in Canada. They wore overalls most of the time, and wishing not to be bothered with trunks or suitcases, they tied a few changes of clothing in bundles, and each man took an umbrella. They called themselves "Knights of the Umbrella and Bundle."
The Thoreaus were rather a prominent family in Concord. There were six of them, all told. The father, Mr. John Thoreau, was a pencil-maker. A hundred years ago this was a trade that brought good money. Mr.Thoreau could turn out a great many pencils because all the children helped him make them. He was a small man, quite deaf, and very shy. He did not talk much. But his wife, Mrs. Cynthia Thoreau, who was half a head taller than he, could, and did, talk enough for both. She was handsome, wide-awake, and had a strong, sweet, singing voice. She took part in all the merry-makings and also in all the church affairs in Concord. She was bitter against slavery. She used to call meetings at her house to talk over ways of putting an end to it, and when slaves ran away from the South, she often hid them in her home and helped them get further away. She knew a great deal about nature, bought a good many books for her children, and was determined that they should have good educations. Henry, his brother John, and the two sisters, Helen and Sophia, all taught school. And Helen helped Henry earn money to go to Harvard College.
The whole Thoreau family were proud of Henry, and his mother never tired of telling what fine letters and essays he could write.She and Sophia went one day to call on an aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson's, Miss Mary Emerson, who was eighty-four. Mrs. Thoreau began to talk about Henry right away. Miss Emerson nodded her head and said: "Very true," now and then, but kept her eyes shut every minute her callers stayed. When they rose to go, Miss Emerson said: "Perhaps you noticed, Mrs. Thoreau, that I kept my eyes closed during your call. I did so because I did not wish to look on the ribbons you are wearing—so unsuitable for a child of God and a woman of your years!" Poor Mrs. Thoreau was seventy, and her bonnet was as bright and gay as it had been possible to buy, for she loved rich colors and silks and velvets. She did not mind Miss Emerson's rebuke a bit, but Sophia stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from laughing aloud.
When Henry was a boy, he used to delight in his Uncle Charles Dunbar, who paid the family a visit every year. Mr. Dunbar was not a worker like his sister, Cynthia Thoreau. He did not have any business butdrifted about the country, living by his wits. One of his favorite tricks was to pretend to swallow all the knives and forks, and a plate or two, at a tavern, and offer to give them back if the landlord would not charge for his dinner. He was a great wrestler and could do sleight-of-hand tricks. Henry used to watch him and ask question after question, and he learned how to do a few tricks himself.
Just as his mother hoped, when Henry grew up, he decided to be a writer. To be sure he taught school a while and gave lectures which people did not understand very well, for he had strange ideas for those times, but he wrote page after page, sitting in the woods, and liked that better than all else. He first wrote an account of a week's trip on the Concord and Merrimac rivers. This book did not sell very well, and one time he carried home from the publishers seven hundred copies that no one would buy, saying: "Well, I have quite a respectably sized library now—all my own writing, too!"
But four or five years later Thoreau built a hut on the shore of Walden Pond andlived there all alone, like a hermit, for two years. He did this for two reasons: because he wanted to prove that people spend too much time and money on food and clothes and because he wanted a perfectly quiet chance, with no neighbors running in, to write more books. He said he spent but one hundred dollars a year while he lived in this hut. He raised beans on his land, ate wild berries, caught fish—and "went visiting" now and then. I should not wonder if he often took a second helping of food, when visiting. To buy his woodsman's clothes and a few necessities, he planted gardens, painted houses, and cut wood for his friends. He wrote a book calledWaldenwhich tells all about these seven or eight hundred days he went a-hermiting, and after that, several other books. These sold very well. In all of them he was rather fond of boasting that he had found the only sensible way to live. "I am for simple living," he would say, and always was declaring "I love to be ALONE!" But sometimes people passing by the pond used to hear him whistling old ballads, orplaying very softly and beautifully on a flute, and they thought he sounded lonely. Although he makes you feel, when you read his books, that it is fine to roam the fields, sniffing the wild grape and the yellow violets, and that no one can find pleasure like the man who rows, and skates, and swims, and tills the soil, yet the question is bound to come: "Isa man all alone in a hut any better off than a jolly father in a big house, playing games with his children?"
Let me tell you, too, that after all Thoreau's talk about wanting to be alone, the last year he lived in the hut, he used to steal off, just at twilight, to a neighbor's house where there were little children. While they curled up on a rug, in front of the open fire, he would draw near in a big rocking-chair and sit for an hour or more telling them stories of his childhood. He would pop corn, make whistles for them with his jack-knife, or, best of all, do some of the juggling tricks, which he had learned, as a boy, from his uncle Charles. And one day he appeared at the door with a hay-rack to give them a ride. He had coveredthe bottom of the rack with deep hay, then spread a buffalo robe over the hay to make it comfortable. He sat on a board placed across the front and drove the span of horses, and as he drove, he told funny stories and sang songs till the children thought a hermit was a pretty good sort of a chum.
The hut went to pieces years ago, and only a pile of stones marks the place where it stood, but if you go to Concord, you will find a pleasant street named for Thoreau, and the house in which he lived the last twelve years of his life, half hidden by tall trees. And also you can read his books and learn how he enjoyed the woods and what beautiful things he found in them.