UNTIDY MARY.
“Oh, Mary, Mary, how your room looks! Books, scissors, pincushions, spools, dresses, shoes and stockings, all lying pell-mell upon the floor. One would think your bureau-drawers had been stirred up with a pudding-stick; and as to your closets, it makes me quite sick to peep into them. “You cleaned it up?” Yes, I know you did, about a week ago, and ever since, after having used any thing, you have thrown it down just where it came handiest, instead of putting it in its place. You are only a little girl—I know that, too; but women are made out of little girls, and wives and mothers out of women; and most likely as you keep your room now, and all your little property in the way of books and toys, just so you will keep your house when you are mistress of one. That’s why I speak to you about it. That’s why it is so important you should learnnowto be tidy and neat.”
Now I will tell you what I would like you to do. It does not matter to me whether you have plenty ofservants in the house or not. I would like you to make your own bed every morning. Notspreadit up, butmakeit up. You may need help to turn over your mattress, but that done, the rest is easy. Then I would like you to sweep your room. Then I would like you to dust it. Then I would like you to place every article in the room where it would look best and prettiest. Then wind up all your spools of cotton, and disentangle all the odds and ends in your work-basket. Now I am ready to sit down in that chair opposite, and tell you a story. If you think I could have done it just as well while things were in such disorder, you are mistaken. I would have swept and dusted it myself first. What is the story to be about? Don’t be in a hurry. I have to do every thing after my own fashion, and I have not got through with what I had to say yet. Just look round your room. Don’t you feel a pleasure in seeing that nice smooth bed without a hump in it? and those nice smooth pillows set up against the head-board? Does not your looking-glass look better, now the fly-specks are wiped off? and the rounds of your chairs and your bureau, for being dusted? does not your wash-bowl look better emptied of its dirty water, with the pitcher set in it, and the nice white towel spread over? do not your dresses look better on the closet-pegs than on the floor,and your bonnet in its band-box instead of on a chair? and does it not give you pleasure that you know how to wait upon yourself, without jerking the bell-wire for a poor tired servant to do it for you? “Yes?” That’s right. Now I will tell you the story.
Once on a time.
No, that won’t do, every body begins a story that way.
When I was a little girl I—that won’t do either, because it was such a while ago that perhaps you will think I can’t remember correctly. Nonsense, supposing I couldn’t, a story is a story, isn’t it? You need not laugh.
When I was a little girl, children used to “go to catechize,” as they called it then,i.e., the minister, once a month, collected all the children of his church, in a vestry, to recite the lessons he had given out to them, in the catechism. Some of the answers in this catechism were long, and all of them difficult for a child to understand. Now there was one defect (if you choose to call it so) about me, which has stuck by me ever since. It is next to impossible for me to commit to memory any thing I do not fully understand. To be sure, when I stated my difficulty, they explained it; but the mischief was, that the explanation was often harderstill to comprehend than the thing explained; now you see why I used to dread “catechism afternoons.” Most of the girls had the parrot-faculty of rattling off the answers in a manner, to me, truly astonishing and discouraging. Then I had a very thin skin, and a very distressing habit of blushing through it, when spoken to, of which I was very much ashamed; added to this, every little girl who was called upon to answer a question, had to stand up and look “the minister” in the eye, while she did it. See now what a double and twisted distress there was about it. Then all the parrot-girls called me “stupid.” Now I knew that I wasnotstupid, but that was small comfort when every body thought so. I thought it over and cried about it, and thumbed my catechism, thinking perhaps that was the way to “have it at my finger ends,” as people often say; and then I cried again, for that word “stupid,” troubled me. Now the very next lesson contained a very long and very hard answer, that I was very sure, for that reason, would come to me. I read it over; it might as well have been Greek or Latin for all I could make of it. No, it was of no use, I never could learn it, that point was settled. I shut up my catechism and folded my hands; perhaps they were right, after all, perhaps I was “stupid,” and I cried again.
No, I wasnotstupid. I sprang up and wiped my tears away; I looked in the glass, my face was not handsome, certainly, but it was not a stupid face, it was as bright as the faces of those parrot-girls, at any rate; well I just locked the door, and sat down on a cricket very resolutely, in the middle of the room, opened the catechism, laid it in front of me, then with my elbows on my knees and my fingers in my ears, to keep out all sounds, I studied away as if my life depended on it; the butterflies flew into the window and folded their bright wings, but it was of no use—the swallows twittered at me, “Never mind your catechism, only look at us;” but I took no notice of them. The flies lit on the end of my nose, I took my fingers out of my ears, gave them a good cuff and began to study again; a little mouse blinked his black eyes at me, from the closet-door, but I was neither to be frightened or coaxed away from that catechism.
I said nothing about my learning it to any body, but all dinner time I kept muttering it softly over to myself. Well, three o’clock came, and so did the big girl who always went with me “to catechize,” and who always knew her lesson, to every comma and semicolon, and thought me the greatest little dunce who ever wore a pinafore. Well the vestry was full when we got there,as usual, of rows of children on rows of benches, in their “go to meetin’” bonnets and shoes, with their pocket-handkerchiefs and catechisms, waiting for the minister.
By-and-by he came, took off his black hat, set it under the spindle-legged table, pulled off his black gloves, put them in his black hat, seated himself in the big leather arm-chair, used his handkerchief twice, looking round over the benches the while to see if any lamb of his fold was missing, and then opening the catechism and glancing over its passages, asked the question the answer to which I had been studying all the day, then he paused and glanced round the room to select the little girl whom he intended should answer it. I watched his black eye, and it was a very beautiful one, pass by all the Susans and Janes and Claras and Lucys and finally, rest on me, as I knew it would.
To my astonishment, I did not feel myself blush, or tremble as usual; and when he said, “Susan, can you answer this question?” I stood erect, and was about to begin, when the big girl who came with me, thinking I was about to make a fool of myself, and disgrace her, jumped up too, and said, “I am sure she can’t say that long one, sir.” Not deigning to notice the interruption, and fixing my eye on a peg in the wall, I went straight through the long answer like a well-trained locomotive,never stopping to take breath till I had jerked out the last syllable.
Did I ever blush after that? Not I. Did I hold up my head while there? To be sure I did, but when I sat down, Clara jerked my sleeve, and said, pouting, “You are the oddest, most provoking little thing I ever saw, and nobody ever knows what you are going to do next. I never felt so silly in all my life; it is the last time I will come to catechize with you.” But one thing is very certain, those parrot-girls never called me stupid afterward, and what was worth a mine of gold to me, when I went out of the vestry, the minister laid his hand of blessing on my head, and, gave me a smile, I am sure, as radiant as the one he now wears in heaven.