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$2.40a yearFrom this dateSubscriptions toWIDE AWAKEfor 1887 will bereceived at thenet price of only$2.40$2.40a year
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The magazine will be somewhat enlargedand improved in every particular—only anenormous increase in circulation making possible thewholesalereduction in price which is announced above.D. LOTHROP & COMPANY, Publishers, Boston, Mass.
Volume 14, Number 1.Copyright, 1886, byD. Lothrop& Co.November 6, 1886.
THE PANSY.
THE PANSY.
Girl walking down stepsBETTIE.
Girl walking down stepsBETTIE.
BETTIE.
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore.
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore.
YOUNG Joseph sat on the side of his bed, one boot on, the other still held by the strap, while he stared somewhat crossly at a small green paper-covered book which lay open beside him.
“A dozen of them!” he said at last. “Just to think of a fellow making such a silly promise as that! A verse a month, straight through a whole year. Got to pick ’em out, too. I’d rather have ’em picked out for me; less trouble.
“How did I happen to promise her I’d do it? I don’t know which verse to take. None of ’em fit me, nor have a single thing to do with aboy! Well, that’ll make it all the easier for me, I s’pose. I’ve got to hurry, anyhow, so here goes; I’ll take the shortest there is here.”
And while he drew on the other boot, and made haste to finish his toilet, he rattled off, many times over, the second verse at the head of this story.
The easiest way to make you understand about Joseph, is to give you a very brief account of his life.
He was twelve years old, and an orphan. The only near relative he had in the world was his sister Jean aged sixteen, who was learning millinery in an establishment in the city. The little family though very poor, had kept together until mother died in the early spring. Now it was November, and during the summer, Joseph had lived where he could; working a few days for his bread, first at one house, then at another; never because he was really needed, but just out of pity for his homelessness. Jean could earn her board where she was learning her trade, but not his; though she tried hard to bring this about.
At last, a home for the winter opened to Joseph. The Fowlers who lived on a farm and had in the large old farmhouse a private school for a dozen girls, spent a few weeks in the town where Joseph lived, and carried him away with them, to be errand boy in general, and study between times.
Poor, anxious Jean drew a few breaths of relief over the thought of her boy. That, at least, meant pure air, wholesome food, and a chance to learn something.
Now for his promise. Jean had studied over it a good deal before she claimed it. Should it be to read a few verses in mother’s Bible every day? No; because a boy always forgot to do so, for a week at a time, and then on Sunday afternoon rushed through three or four chapters as a salve to his conscience, not noticing a sentence in them. At last she determined on this: the little green book of golden texts, small enough to carry in his jacket pocket! Would he promise her to take—should she say each week’s text as a sort of rule to live by?
No; that wouldn’t do. Joseph would never make so close a promise as that. Well, how would a verse a month do, chosen by himself from the Golden Texts?
On this last she decided; and this, with some hesitancy, Joseph promised. So here he was, on Thanksgiving morning, picking out his first text. He had chosen the shortest, as you see; there was another reason for the choice. It pleased him to remember that he had no lambs to feed, and there was hardly a possibility that the verse could fit him in any way during the month. He was only bound by his promise to be guided by the verse if he happened to think of it, and if it suggested any line of action to him.
“It’s the jolliest kind of a verse,” he said, giving his hair a rapid brushing. “When there are no lambs around, and nothing to feed ’em, I’d as soon live by it for a month as not.”
Voices in the hall just outside his room: “I don’t know what to do with poor little Rettie to-day,” said Mrs. Calland, the married daughter who lived at home with her fatherless Rettie.
“The poor child will want everything on the table, and it won’t do for her to eat anything but her milk and toast. I am so sorry for her. You know she is weak from her long illness; and it issohard for a child to exercise self control about eating. If I had anyone to leave her with I would keep her away from the table; but every one is so busy.”
Then Miss Addie, one of the sisters: “How would it do to have our new Joseph stay with her?”
“Indeed!” said the new Joseph, puckering his lips into an indignant sniff and brushing his hair the wrong way, in his excitement; “I guess I won’t, though. Wait for the second table on Thanksgiving Day, when every scholar in the school is going to sit down to the first! That would be treating me exactly like one of the family with a caution! Just you try it, Miss Addie, and see how quick I’ll cut and run.”
But Mrs. Calland’s soft voice was replying: “Oh! I wouldn’t like to do that. Joseph is sensitive, and a stranger, and sitting down to the Thanksgiving feast in its glory, is a great event for him; it would hurt me to deprive him of it.”
“Better not,” muttered Joseph, but there was a curious lump in his throat, and a very tender feeling in his heart toward Mrs. Calland.
It was very strange, in fact it was absurd, but all the time Joseph was pumping water, and filling pitchers, and bringing wood and doing the hundred other things needing to be done this busy morning, that chosen verse sounded itself in his brain: “He saith unto him, feed my lambs.” More than that, it connected itself with frail little Rettie and the Thanksgiving feast.
In vain did Joseph say “Pho!” “Pshaw!” “Botheration!” or any of the other words with which boys express disgust. In vain did he tell himself that the verse didn’t mean any such thing; he guessed he wasn’t a born idiot. He even tried to make a joke out of it, and assure himself that this was exactly contrary to the verse; it was a plan by means of which the “lamb” shouldnotget fed. It was all of no use. The verse and his promise, kept by him the whole morning, actually sent him at last to Mrs. Calland with the proposal that he should take little Rettie to the schoolroom and amuse her, while the grand dinner was being eaten.
I will not say that he had not a lingering hope in his heart that Mrs. Calland would refuse his sacrifice. But his hope was vain. Instant relief and gratitude showed in the mother’s eyes and voice. And Joseph carried out his part so well that Rettie, gleeful and happy every minute of the long two hours, did not so much as think of the dinner.
“You are a good, kind boy,” said Mrs. Calland, heartily. “Now run right down to dinner; we saved some nice and warm for you.”
Yes, it was warm: but the great fruit pudding was spoiled of its beauty, and the fruit pyramid had fallen, and the workers were scraping dishes and hurrying away the remains of the feast, while he ate, and the girls were out on the lawn playing tennis and croquet, double sets at both, and no room for him, and the glory of everything had departed. The description of it all, which he had meant to write to Jean, would have to be so changed that there would be no pleasure in writing it. What had been the use of spoiling his own day? No one would ever know it, he couldn’t even tell Jean, because of course the verse didn’t mean any such thing.
“But I don’t see why it pitched into a fellow so, if it didn’tbelong,” he said, rising from the table just as Ann, the dishwasher, snatched his plate, for which she had been waiting. “And, anyhow, I feel kind of glad I did it, whether it belonged or not.”
“He is a kind-hearted, unselfish boy,” said Mrs. Calland to her little daughter, that evening, “and you and mamma must see in how many ways we can be good to him.”
Pansy.
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THREE little boys talked togetherOne sunny summer day,And I leaned out of the windowTo hear what they had to say.“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”One of the little boys said,“Was a bird in grandpa’s garden,All black and white and red.”“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”Said the second little lad,“Was a pony at the circus—I wanted him awful bad.”“I think,” said the third little fellow,With a grave and gentle grace,“That the prettiest thing in all the worldIs just my mother’s face.”—Eben E. Rexford,in Good Cheer.
THREE little boys talked togetherOne sunny summer day,And I leaned out of the windowTo hear what they had to say.“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”One of the little boys said,“Was a bird in grandpa’s garden,All black and white and red.”“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”Said the second little lad,“Was a pony at the circus—I wanted him awful bad.”“I think,” said the third little fellow,With a grave and gentle grace,“That the prettiest thing in all the worldIs just my mother’s face.”—Eben E. Rexford,in Good Cheer.
THREE little boys talked togetherOne sunny summer day,And I leaned out of the windowTo hear what they had to say.
THREE little boys talked together
One sunny summer day,
And I leaned out of the window
To hear what they had to say.
“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”One of the little boys said,“Was a bird in grandpa’s garden,All black and white and red.”
“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”
One of the little boys said,
“Was a bird in grandpa’s garden,
All black and white and red.”
“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”Said the second little lad,“Was a pony at the circus—I wanted him awful bad.”
“The prettiest thing I ever saw,”
Said the second little lad,
“Was a pony at the circus—
I wanted him awful bad.”
“I think,” said the third little fellow,With a grave and gentle grace,“That the prettiest thing in all the worldIs just my mother’s face.”—Eben E. Rexford,in Good Cheer.
“I think,” said the third little fellow,
With a grave and gentle grace,
“That the prettiest thing in all the world
Is just my mother’s face.”
—Eben E. Rexford,in Good Cheer.
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Idrop I
IT was the day before Thanksgiving. Cold weather had come on early. The ground had been frozen solid for several days, and the country roads were “smooth as glass”; so Grandpa Kirke said when he came home from the post-office Tuesday afternoon. “But I shouldn’t wonder if we were to have snow before morning,” he added. And at this the little granddaughter Lucy L. clapped her hands gleefully. The boy Whittier said nothing, but presently a noise was heard up in the wood-house chamber, and Mrs. Kirke said in a startled tone, “What’s that?”
Grandpa stepped to the door and called, “Whittier!”
two children taking to man with bicycle“GRANDMA KIRKE MIGHT GIVE YOU A BREAKFAST.”
“GRANDMA KIRKE MIGHT GIVE YOU A BREAKFAST.”
“Sir?” responded the boy quickly.
“Oh! you are there.”
“Coming in a minute; do you want anything?” said Whittier, and in less than a minute the boy appeared below stairs with his sled. “Looks pretty well to start on a second winter with!” he said, as he dusted and examined the treasure. “Say, Lucy Larcom, how will you like to ride to school on the Flyaway to-morrow morning?”
Grandma laughed, and said, “You seem to be counting on snow, for sure.”
“But you know grandpa said maybe it would snow, and when grandpa says maybe, it most always comes so,” said Lucy.
Sure enough snow lay on the ground, pure and white, to the depth of several inches when they looked out that morning before Thanksgiving Day. The children could scarcely be prevailed upon to eat their breakfast, so eager were they to get off to school with the Flyaway. Grandma said:
“This won’t last long; snow that falls upon frozen ground never stays. It is the snow that comes in the mud that makes sleighing to last.” This somewhat chilled their expectations, butLucy concluded that the snow would last until recess, anyway. As the two started off grandma, watching them from the window, said with a sigh, “How much Whittier looks like our John at his age!”
“God forbid that he should grow up to remind you of John!” replied Mr. Kirke, almost bitterly.
Mrs. Kirke washed the dishes and tidied the room in silence, then stepping to her husband’s side she laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said softly, “Joseph, to-morrow is Thanksgiving Day!”
“Well?”
“I have made the pies and the pudding and the plum cake that John always liked so well, and now if John should come home?”
“Well?” this time the monosyllable was spoken a trifle less impatiently.
“If he should come home you would receive him? Remember, Joseph, John is our first-born.”
“’Tain’t no ways likely he’ll come!”
“I don’t know; someway I’ve been thinking lik’sanyway he’ll be thinking about the old home when Thanksgiving comes round. Anyway, I’ve made them things for him, but then,” she added, more to herself than to her husband, “I’m always ready for him. The bed is always made up for him, and there is always something cooked that he likes.”
Meantime the children had gone on their way, Whittier drawing his sister upon the Flyaway, bending all his energies to the task, for the sledding was not very good, so it happened that Lucy was the first to spy a strange sight for that part of the country.
“Look, Whitty! what is that coming?” exclaimed his sister.
Then Whittier stopped, and Lucy in her excitement jumped off the sled and stood beside him, half-frightened.
“Why, that must be one of them things they call a bicycle!” said the boy; “I’ve read a lot about them, and Tom Green saw one in Galway when he was over there staying with his uncle. I guess this is the first one ever got around this way. My! how he skims along. But I wish he would stop, so we could see the machine better.”
As if divining the boy’s wish, the bicyclist came to a stand-still and dismounted as he reached the place where the children waited.
“Halloo, my boy! How’ll you swap? I think I’d like to go coasting this morning; those hills over there look as though they might give a chance for some sport.”
“Say,” continued the stranger without giving Whittier a chance to speak, “do you s’pose a fellow could get a breakfast anywhere around here?”
“I don’t know,” replied Whittier slowly. “I guess, though, that grandma would give you some. I’ve heard her say she never could find it in her heart to turn a tramp away because maybe uncle John might be wanting something to eat and she would want somebody to give him a meal.”
The stranger stooped down and seemed to be brushing the snow off the wheel, and when he spoke it was in a very quiet tone:
“Where does grandma live, and what is her name?”
“Her name is Grandma Kirke, and she lives over there in the white house you see by the red barn.”
“And is there a Grandpa Kirke?”
“Of course! we’d have to have a grandpa or we couldn’t get along, could we?” said Lucy, startled out of her shyness at the thought that there could be a house without a grandpa.
“There is just Grandpa and Grandma Kirke and us,” said Whittier; “we used to have an uncle John, though Lucy Larcom and I came here after he went away. He has been gone five years, but you better not say anything about him if you go there, because it always makes grandma cry.”
“And does grandpa cry?”
“No; he only looks sober, but I guess he feels awful bad about uncle John, for he says it was rum that made him go off, and grandpa hates rum like poison. He won’t have even cider in the house, and he always votes against rum too.”
“And don’t grandma make currant wine and keep it in the cellar for Thanksgiving and Christmas?” asked the stranger.
“My! no! grandma hates everything that has alcohol in it. She wouldn’t have it anywhere around; but she will give you a cup of coffee, I guess.”
“And you think she would be glad to see John?”
“I know she would!” Then as a thought flashed into his mind, the boy said suddenly, “Say, if you go riding around the country much on that machine maybe you’ll come across my uncle; if you do, just tell him grandma keeps things all ready for him, ’specting him to come, will you?”
“All right, I will; good-by!” and mounting his wheel the stranger rode off towards the little white house which Whittier had pointed out. “As if I didn’t know that house and every room in it!” he said, talking to himself. “And so grandma keeps things ready for her wandering son!” and here he lifted his hand to brush away something from his cheek.
It could not have been a fly that frosty morning, could it?
I have not space to tell you of the stranger’s reception at the farmhouse. There must have been joy in heaven over the returning repentant prodigal; and what a Thanksgiving that was! When the next day the sons and daughters gathered for the feast, and found this long-absent brother returned, their cup of joy and thanksgiving seemed to overflow. But I want to tell you of a bit of talk that took place when uncle John had gathered the children all about him in the afternoon.
They were examining the bicycle, and he had been telling them some incidents of his long journey, when suddenly he said, “Now, children, you think this is a nice thing, and you boys quite envy your old uncle its possession, don’t you?”
“Not quite that, I guess,” replied one of the older boys, “but I’d like to own one.”
“Well, perhaps your father will buy this; I want to sell it.” At this they all looked aghast to think their uncle would be willing to part with such a treasure.
“Just let me tell you something, boys,” he continued; “I am forty years old, and all I possess in the world is this bicycle and a very few dollars which I have earned since I became a sober man. I have thrown away the best part of my life. Here are my brothers with comfortable homes all their own, and I with nothing, and all because of rum! and I began by drinking cider over there at the mill. Boys, let it alone; don’t begin, and you will never be the slave of rum.”
“But, uncle John,” said one, “you are not a slave any more.”
“No; but I shall carry the marks of my fetters to the grave. I tell you it hasn’t paid. Forty years old, and nothing to show for my life! Sign the pledge, boys; sign the pledge, and you will not have to say that when you are forty years old. I trust you will have something more than a bicycle to show for it.”
Faye Huntington.
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“SOMETHING for me, dear mamma, write!”Came with her kiss and sweet “good-night!”So thinking, with a mother’s love,Of all that waits below, above—Each upward step, each earthward snare,I breathe for her a mother’s prayer.Father, I ask not cloudless dayTo shine o’er all the untried wayAppointed for these tender feetEre they may walk the golden street;Whate’er the path Thy love assign,Hold fast this little hand in Thine.I dare not say for this young heartSo much of earthly bliss impart;From thine it caught its earliest thrill,Each throb but answers to Thy will,So in Thy tender love I rest—Whate’er betide, Thou knowest best!Not wealth I crave, its unseen “wings”Rank it amid earth’s baseless things;Not on the scroll of worldly fameI ask to write this well-loved name;One book I know than all more fair,The “Book of Life,” oh! write it there.Saviour of little ones, I bringTo Thee this priceless offering,This one sweet lamb, nor let her strayFar from thy heavenly fold away;“By the still waters” cool and sweet,“In pastures green” oh! guide her feet.
“SOMETHING for me, dear mamma, write!”Came with her kiss and sweet “good-night!”So thinking, with a mother’s love,Of all that waits below, above—Each upward step, each earthward snare,I breathe for her a mother’s prayer.Father, I ask not cloudless dayTo shine o’er all the untried wayAppointed for these tender feetEre they may walk the golden street;Whate’er the path Thy love assign,Hold fast this little hand in Thine.I dare not say for this young heartSo much of earthly bliss impart;From thine it caught its earliest thrill,Each throb but answers to Thy will,So in Thy tender love I rest—Whate’er betide, Thou knowest best!Not wealth I crave, its unseen “wings”Rank it amid earth’s baseless things;Not on the scroll of worldly fameI ask to write this well-loved name;One book I know than all more fair,The “Book of Life,” oh! write it there.Saviour of little ones, I bringTo Thee this priceless offering,This one sweet lamb, nor let her strayFar from thy heavenly fold away;“By the still waters” cool and sweet,“In pastures green” oh! guide her feet.
“SOMETHING for me, dear mamma, write!”Came with her kiss and sweet “good-night!”So thinking, with a mother’s love,Of all that waits below, above—Each upward step, each earthward snare,I breathe for her a mother’s prayer.
“SOMETHING for me, dear mamma, write!”
Came with her kiss and sweet “good-night!”
So thinking, with a mother’s love,
Of all that waits below, above—
Each upward step, each earthward snare,
I breathe for her a mother’s prayer.
Father, I ask not cloudless dayTo shine o’er all the untried wayAppointed for these tender feetEre they may walk the golden street;Whate’er the path Thy love assign,Hold fast this little hand in Thine.
Father, I ask not cloudless day
To shine o’er all the untried way
Appointed for these tender feet
Ere they may walk the golden street;
Whate’er the path Thy love assign,
Hold fast this little hand in Thine.
I dare not say for this young heartSo much of earthly bliss impart;From thine it caught its earliest thrill,Each throb but answers to Thy will,So in Thy tender love I rest—Whate’er betide, Thou knowest best!
I dare not say for this young heart
So much of earthly bliss impart;
From thine it caught its earliest thrill,
Each throb but answers to Thy will,
So in Thy tender love I rest—
Whate’er betide, Thou knowest best!
Not wealth I crave, its unseen “wings”Rank it amid earth’s baseless things;Not on the scroll of worldly fameI ask to write this well-loved name;One book I know than all more fair,The “Book of Life,” oh! write it there.
Not wealth I crave, its unseen “wings”
Rank it amid earth’s baseless things;
Not on the scroll of worldly fame
I ask to write this well-loved name;
One book I know than all more fair,
The “Book of Life,” oh! write it there.
Saviour of little ones, I bringTo Thee this priceless offering,This one sweet lamb, nor let her strayFar from thy heavenly fold away;“By the still waters” cool and sweet,“In pastures green” oh! guide her feet.
Saviour of little ones, I bring
To Thee this priceless offering,
This one sweet lamb, nor let her stray
Far from thy heavenly fold away;
“By the still waters” cool and sweet,
“In pastures green” oh! guide her feet.
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R. M. Alden(Editor).
Greetingto all the Pansies! In this Department we are to have news from Churches, Sunday-schools, Mission Bands, and all such things. And we want to invite all the Pansies to contribute some news. If your Sunday-school or Mission Band has had an entertainment, write and tell us about it, or tell us about what you did last Christmas, Easter, or Children’s Day. Address, R. M. Alden, Winter Park, Orange County, Florida.
Greetingto all the Pansies! In this Department we are to have news from Churches, Sunday-schools, Mission Bands, and all such things. And we want to invite all the Pansies to contribute some news. If your Sunday-school or Mission Band has had an entertainment, write and tell us about it, or tell us about what you did last Christmas, Easter, or Children’s Day. Address, R. M. Alden, Winter Park, Orange County, Florida.
THE Arabic Bible is completed, and is said to be selling at a great rate, in Alexandria, Egypt.
Theroom in which the infidel Voltaire once predicted the speedy overthrow of Christianity, is now used as a Bible depository.
Threemissionaries have been recently murdered: Rev. John Houghton and wife of Golbanti, East Africa, and Bishop Hannington.
Notlong ago, a Mr. Green, president of a temperance society of England, destroyed the contents of his wine-cellar, valued at three thousand dollars.
Weare glad to hear that the government of Japan has forbidden the lecturing against Christianity, by “Yaso Taiji,” or Jesus opposers, believing it to be damaging to the country.
Wehear of a church in Iowa which is very new, and not yet furnished. Just now the Sunday-school scholars are seated on rough boards resting on boxes. But this is a good beginning.
A littleover twenty-five years ago Sunday-schools were introduced into Sweden. Now there are two hundred thousand Sunday-school scholars and twenty thousand teachers in the country!
Thereis a saloon in the city of Cincinnati, called “The Spider Web,” with a picture on the sign of a spider in his web. How appropriate this is, when the business of the saloon is to entangle men’s souls and bodies!
Beforethe war, a slave was beaten terribly by his master for being “religious,” and the cruel man afterward exclaimed: “There! what will your religion do for you now?” “It will help me to forgive you, Massa,” was the reply.
A ministerof Kansas said that he once took into the church, at one communion service, a Chinaman, a colored man, two Germans, an Irishman and some Americans. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.”
TheSocieties of Christian Endeavor, among the young people, are growing, all over the country. There is a thriving one in a little church in New York State, of which we know. They recently gave a “lawn party” and raised money to fresco, paint, carpet, and partially seat the chapel of the church. They also have an “envelope fund,” and each member brings weekly some regular amount. Half of this goes to regular church expenses, and half to anything for which they vote to use it.
InSouthern Ohio last spring there was a little brick church, the wall-paper of which had peeled off. The walls were dirty, the matting in the aisles was dirty, the seats were ugly, and the chandeliers hung from the ceiling by ropes. The people were discouraged, and thought nothing could be done. But some money was raised, and the walls were re-papered, the seats oiled and grained, a new carpet put down, the chandeliers hung nicely, and now such a pretty little church as it is! If you could have seen it the Sunday before it was fixed, and the Sunday after, you would have thought it a wonderful transformation, indeed.
Rev. Mr. Meade, of New York State, who has been in the temperance work among the colored people of the South, says he was present at a conference of their church, when the ministers were bringing up the money from the churches. One man brought “all de money he could raise,” and then took a shining silver dollar. “Dat,” said he, “is from me, for de home missionary cause. And dat,” taking out another, “for the foreign missionary cause. And,” turning to Mr. Meade, “if I had another cent, I’d gib it to you, for de temperance work, but I have to walk home thirty miles now, widout money to pay my fare.” Mr. Meade gave him a chance to bring up a package from the depot, and he was delighted to earn twenty-five cents for “de temperance cause.”
large party mostly women and children and Chinese lanternsTHANKSGIVING NIGHT.
THANKSGIVING NIGHT.
Volume 14, Number 2.Copyright, 1886, byD. Lothrop& Co.November 13, 1886.
THE PANSY.
THE PANSY.
baby looking at self in mirrorANOTHER BABY!
baby looking at self in mirrorANOTHER BABY!
ANOTHER BABY!
By Pansy.
M
MARGARET was washing the dishes; making a vigorous clash and spatter, and setting down the cups so hard that had they been anything but the good solid iron-stone which they were, they would certainly have suffered under the treatment.
Margaret was noisy in all things, but to-day the usual vigor of movement was manifestly increased by ill humor. There was an ominous setting of a pair of firm lips, and all her face was in a frown. The knives and forks, when their turn came, seemed to increase her ire. She rattled and flung them about with such reckless disregard of consequences that there landed, presently, a lovely tricolored globe of foam in the centre of John’s arithmetic, over which he was at this moment gloomily bending.
“Look here,” he said, half fiercely, half comically, “quit that, will you? This thing is dry enough, I know; but it will take more than soap suds to dampen it.”
“Take your book out of my way, then. What do you s’poseshewould say to its being on the table and you bending double over it?”
“She may say just exactly what she pleases. It will stay on the table until I get ready to take it off.”
“O yes! you’re very brave until you hear her coming, and then you are as meek as Moses.”
“Now I say, Mag, that’s mean in you, when you know well enough that all I’m after is to try to keep the peace.”
“Peace! there isn’t enough of that article left in this house to make it worth while to try to save it. I’m sick to death of the whole thing.” And the knives bumped about against a plate in the dish-pan with such force that the plate rebelled and flew into three pieces in its rage.
“There goes another dish!” exclaimed West, from the window corner where he was busily whittling; “that makes the seventeenth this week, doesn’t it? Mag, you are awful, and no mistake.”
Then Margaret’s face flamed and her angry words burst their bounds: “I wish you would just mind your own business, Weston Moore! You think because you are eighteen months and seven days older than I, that you can order me around like a slave.”
“Whew! bless my eyes! How you do blaze out on a fellow! Who thought of ordering you around? I should as soon think of ordering a cyclone. I was only moralizing on the sweet and amiable mood you were in, and the nice comfortable times we have in this house.”
“Well, you may let my moods alone if you please; and my dishes too. I’ve a right to break them all if I choose, for all you. I’d rather blaze up in a rage, than be an everlasting tease and torment, like you.”
“Father’ll have a word to say about the dishes, I fancy, my lady; you might now and then think of him: he isn’t made of gold, I s’pose you know, and dishes cost money.”
“I do think of him a great deal oftener than you do, you great lazy, whittling, whistling boy! If it wasn’t for him I’d run away, and be rid of her and you, and all the other nuisances, dishes and all.”
She paused in her clatter long enough to dash away two or three great tears which were plashing down her hot red cheeks.
“As to that,” said the whittler, as he slowly closed his jack-knife, “perhaps you better seriously consider it. I’m not sure but it would be more comfortable for all concerned; especially the dishes.” Then he spied the tears; and seizing upon the dish towel which had been angrily flung across the back of a chair, he rushed toward his sister, exclaiming: “Here, let me wipe away those briny drops.”
Margaret’s hands were in the dishwater again, but she drew them forth all dripping with the greasy suds, and brought the right one with a resounding slap, about the curly head of the mocking boy.
Just how he would have received it will not be known; for the sudden jerk backwards of the left arm, came against the full dish-pan, already set too near the edge of the table, and over it went, deluging table, floor, and Margaret’s dress not only, but pouring a greasy flood over the rows of bread tins carefully covered, and set in a sheltered corner for the dough to rise.
Margaret’s exclamation of dismay was suddenly checked, and the angry color flamed back into her eyes as the door leading into the hall opened, and a woman appeared on the scene—a tall, pale woman in a plain, dark, close-fitting calico dress, without a collar, and with dark, almost black hair combed straight back from a plain face. She gave a swift glance at the confusion, and took in the situation.
“Quarreling again! I might have known it. Were you three ever together in your lives, without it? John, let the book alone until it dries; if it had not been on the kitchen table where I told you never to have it, the dishwater wouldn’t have ruined it. And the bread too! I declare! This is too bad!” These last words came in detached sentences as the extent of the misfortune grew upon her.
A quick snatch of the carefully tucked cloth, now holding little pools of dishwater, a comprehension of the utter ruin of the many loaves of bread, and she turned upon the wrathful girl:
“Margaret, go upstairs this minute, and don’t venture down again until you are called. I’m sure I wish you need never come.”
“You can’t begin to wish it as I do.” This was Margaret’s last bitter word as she shot out of the door.
John stood dolefully surveying his soaking arithmetic, and his great sheet of now ruined examples, carefully worked out. The woman was already tucking up her calico dress ready for work, but she had a message for him.
“Nowyougosomewhere; don’t let me see you until dinner time. And mind, I shall tell your father you have disobeyed me again.”
As for Weston the tease, he had slipped swiftly and silently from the room with the entrance of the mother.
Yes, she was their mother. At least, she was their father’s wife, though none of the three had ever called her by the name of mother. A curious position she held in the home, bound by solemn pledge to do a mother’s duty by these three children, yet receiving from none of them a shred of the love, or respect, or true obedience, which the name mother ought to call forth.
Poor Mrs. Moore! I do hope you are sorry for her. Sorry for the children, are you? Well, so am I.
Indeed it is true, they every one need pity and help. The question is, Will they get what they need?
Upstairs, angry Margaret made haste to remove her much soiled dress, eyes flashing, and cheeks burning the while. Something more than the scenes we watched in the kitchen had to do with Margaret’s mood.
A green and prickly chestnut bur came whizzing into the room, landing in the middle of her bed.
It called forth an angry exclamation. Here was some more of that tormenting West’s work. She would not stand it! She made a rush for the window, but a low, merry laugh stopped her. This was not West’s laugh.
“Well,” said Hester Andrews, from under the chestnut-tree, “can you go?”
“No; of course I can’t. I should think you might know without asking. Do I ever go anywhere now days?”
“It is just too mean for anything!” declared Hester. “What reason does she give this time?”
There was a peculiar emphasis on the word “this,” which was meant to indicate that here was only one of the numberless times in which Margaret Moore had been shamefully treated, Margaret answered the tone as well as the words.
“Oh! father says he can’t have me out so late in the evening; it isn’t the thing for a little girl, and he doesn’t approve of sail boats, anyway. As if I didn’t know where all that stuff came from!”
“The idea! I declare, it’s a perfect shame. Wouldn’t you like to see your own mother keeping you at home from places, and treating you like a baby, or a slave, as she does?”
“Don’t you speak my mother’s name the same day you dohers,” said Margaret, with fierce voice and flashing eyes.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t wonder that you feel so,” was Hester’s soothing answer. “I’m just as sorry for you as I can be; I wonder sometimes that you don’t run away. Every one says it comes harder on you, because you are a girl: the boys can keep out of her sight. O Mag! I’m so sorry you can’t go. Ifyourmother were only here, what lovely times we could have?”
And this was the help which Margaret’s mostintimate friend brought her! In point of fact, these two knew no more of what the mourned mother would have done, than did the squirrels up in the chestnut-tree. She had been lying in the cemetery for a year when Hester Andrews’ family moved into the town, and Margaret was only a busy little elf of not quite six, when she received with gleeful laughter her mother’s last kiss. What did she know how the mother would treat the thirteen-year-old girl’s longings for sail boats and evening parties?
Downstairs, Mrs. Moore left to solitude and bitter thoughts, worked with swift, skilled fingers, and set lips. Not long alone; some one came to help her—a sister, married, and living at ease in a lovely home only a few streets away; a younger sister who was sorry, so blindly and unwisely sorry for the elder’s harder lot, that she could not keep back her words of indignant sympathy.
younger woman standing in front of older seated woman“SOME ONE CAME TO HELP HER.”
“SOME ONE CAME TO HELP HER.”
“It’s a shame!” she said, “just a burning shame, the way you are treated by those children. The idea of your being down on your knees mopping up the musses which they have made, on purpose to vex you. If I were you, Sophia, I wouldn’t endure it another day. It is a wonder to me that their father permits such a state of things. Henry and I were speaking of it last night.”
“Their father doesn’t know the half that goes on,” Mrs. Moore said, speaking quickly in defence of her husband. “What is the use? We live in an uproar all the time, as it is. And after all, Emma, they are his children.”
“I don’t care. You are his wife. You owe something to your self respect. Henry thinks so too; he thinks it is a shame. Why do you go on the floor and clean after them? Isn’t that girl as able to mop up her dishwater as you are?”
Mrs. Moore wrung the wet, greasy cloth with a nervous grip, letting some of the soiled drops trickle down her arm, in her haste, and answered with eyes that glowed:
“To tell the truth, I would scrub the floor after her all day, for the sake of getting her out of my sight for an hour.”
And this was the help Mrs. Moore received.
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VARIOUS exclamations greeted Nell Erwin as she entered the schoolroom and drew out her work—a coarse gray woollen sock.
It was “Fancy Friday” at Daisy Hill Seminary—something peculiar to the place. Three Fridays out of the month were spent in the customary elocutionary exercises, but the afternoon of the fourth was spent in a cosey, informal way, the girls, both day scholars and boarders, bringing their fancy work, and Madam Lane reading to them from some standard work.
At the present time she was in the midst of a translation of the Iliad, but I fear that in spite of Madam’s clear and beautiful rendition, “Jove, the cloud-gatherer,” “Juno, the ox-eyed,” and the other Homeric worthies, were less fascinating than “rick-rack” and “Kensington stitches.”
On this particular Friday, there was a brilliant display of fancy work. Helen Grant was embroidering a pair of slippers—splendid purple and yellow pansies; Lulu Fletcher a sofa pillow—a cluster of lilies on cardinal satin; Katie Lee was at work on an elaborate stand-spread; Mary Morse was crocheting a fleecy white shawl; Carrie Evans was making an applique bracket; a dozen or so girls were deep in the delightful mysteries of “crazy quilts”; and—but, dear me! I have not the time to enumerate all the beautiful things! Seats and desks were covered with a dazzling array of silks and worsteds.
So you see it was no wonder that Nell’s humble gray sock created such a sensation. However, though she blushed a little at the pleasantries of her mates, she took her seat and courageously set to work.
“Why, Nell! I thought you were going to bring that lovely foot-rest!” said Helen Grant. “You told me yesterday that you were going to finish it to-day. Have you it already done?”
“O no!”
“Then why under the sun didn’t you bring it instead of this solemn old sock!”
Nell blushed still redder, then she said hesitatingly, “Well, you see, girls, Ididthink I’d bring the foot-rest. In fact I had it all done up in my work-bag, and then I remembered that I would need a pair of scissors. So I went to mother’s work-basket, and, girls, in rummaging around there, I got an idea!”
“An idea in a work-basket! How very remarkable! Now I shall know where to go when I am obliged to write a composition and can’t think of anything to say!” said Maude Hasket.
“What I mean is this,” said Nell earnestly; “I found that work-basket full—yes, full to overflowing—with things to mend, make and fix! There were Billy’s mittens to mend; the baby’s petticoats to be shortened; buttons to be sewed on Kitty’s apron; a patch in Tom’s jacket, and all for my dear little mother’s one pair of tired hands! And all to be done this afternoon or evening! I tell you, girls, I felt ashamed when I looked at my own nonsensical piece of fancywork! And then and there I made up my mind to do something towards lessening the contents of that basket. So I grabbed up this sock, for I remembered hearing mother say only a few days ago that father needed a new pair. I’m not much of a hand at knitting, but I’ll do all I can this afternoon, working on the leg, and when I get home to-night, mother’ll show me about fixing the heel.”
There was a short silence.
Presently Maude said, “Well, girls, I dare say the most of us have mothers whose work-baskets are in the condition of the one Nell has described! I’ve no doubt that I can find one in my own home! There are six of us children—four younger than myself. It would take one woman’s time to keep our little Ben in anything like decent order! He is a veritable Peggotty for button-bursting! And sister Flo is almost as bad! She’s a perfect Tomboy! Tears regular barn-door holes in her apron!”
“Well, it’s pretty much the same at our house,” observed Maggie Gray. “Of course there are not so many of us, but still mother’s sewing, mending and darning about all the time.”
“And mine too!” said Laura Harris. “It was only last evening that I heard father ask mother if she wouldn’t go to the lecture with him, and she said she would like to very much, but couldn’t go, because she had to patch Jack’s trousers so that he could wear them to school the next day. And I sat there like an unfeeling wretch, working on a silly, good-for-nothing lamp-mat! And mother did look so tired and wistful, poor darling! Father seemed disappointed too. Now I might have offered to do the patching, and so given her a chance to go. It would have done her so much good!”
“Well,” said Maude briskly, “I guess we’re all in the same fix! We have been going on and doing our own sweet wills, and I for one propose that we make a change! Suppose we all agree to go to our respective mother’s mending-basket and get work from it for our next Fancy Friday?”
“All right! We will!” chimed the others.
Further conversation on the subject was put an end to by the entrance of Madam, Iliad in hand, and for the next hour, the girls were regaled by the account of Achilles dragging the body of Hector nine times around the walls of Troy.
“Four!” chimed the great clock in the hall.
“Young ladies, you are dismissed,” said Madam, closing her book. “Next time, I think we will have a little prose instead of poetry. It will be a change, you know. Good afternoon!”
“Prose instead of poetry,” Maude repeated as they put on their wraps. “And we’ll have the prose of sewing instead of its poetry, won’t we?”
And Nell answered by a wave of the gray woollen sock. “You dear old sock!” she whispered as she rolled it up, “how I did hate to bring you this afternoon, for I was so afraid the girls would make piles of fun! But it all turned out nicely, after all, and you had a mission, didn’t you, you humble thing!”
M. E. Brush.