LENA.
Lena is the name of the little friend of mine I am going to tell you about. You may see by the picture that she is not an English child, nor does she belong to the class which we call gentlefolk. Lena is German, and the daughter of a fisherman; nevertheless she is one of my dearest little friends. She lives in a cottage on the banks of the river Rhine, a short distance from the city of Coblenz. Her father earns his living as a boatman and fisherman upon the river; her mother takes care of the cottage, of their only child, and of the poultry: she finds plenty of time for making lace besides. I will tell you how I came to make little Lena’s acquaintance.
I passed one summer not long ago at Coblenz, at a villa on the banks of the river just outside the city. One evening, after a very hot day, I wandered a little way along the road by the side of the great beautiful river. I watched the lights gradually appearing, like fireflies in the distance, in the windows of the old castle or fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, which crowns a rocky hill on the opposite bank; and I watched, too, the lights and shadows borne on the breast of the swift river beneath. I stood looking at the restless ever-flowing water, comparing the river in its course to my own life, or to the lives of others; and thinking many thoughts which you, my little readers, would hardly understand.
At length my meditations were disturbed by a woman who came out of a cottage close by, and who, walking to the edge of the bank, there sat down, threw her apron over her head, and began to cry bitterly. It seemed as if she had come out of the cottage on purpose to have a good cry without disturbing some one within. After a moment’s hesitation, I went up and begged her to tell me what was the matter. She replied that her little girl was very ill with low fever, and the doctor had told her that very evening that he had scarcely any hope.
This woman was Lena’s mother. I asked her to let me see the child, whom I found flushed and restless, tossing from side to side in her bed. Poor little Lena! The cottage was near my own house, and I went every day after that to see her. Often did I watch part of the night by her sick bed while her mother rested. At length our little patient began to recover; and while she was still too weak to walk, she delighted to sit at the cottage door, and listen while I told her stories.
Now, besides the poultry about the cottage, Lena had a pair of white doves, and in one of my stories I had told her of a letter being sent by a carrier-pigeon. Lena took it into her head that one of her white doves should carry letters from her to me after I returned to England. One day, when she was almost well, I found her standing at the door of the cottage, with the dove perched upon her hand, and a letter tied round its neck. She had been trying if it would carry a letter to me to my house close by; but it had only wheeled round and round and come back again to her. She said sadly: “If it does not know how to take a letter that little distance, how will it ever take one to England?”
Dear simple Lena! she did not understand that pigeons will only return to places where they have lived; but we have managed to correspond without the help of carrier-pigeons. I have seldom seen a prettier picture than she presented that day, standing at the cottage door with the white dove upon her hand.
