HELEN’S “APRIL FOOL.”
“MAMMA, is an April fool different from any other kind of a fool?” cried Helen Palmer, rushing into the sitting-room on arriving home from school.
“Oh! good-evening, Mrs. Glenn,” she added, as she noticed a lady who sat sewing with her mother.
“What does the child mean?” exclaimed Mrs. Glenn, returning Helen’s nod, then looking her astonishment at Mrs. Palmer, who said: “What do you mean, Helen?”
“Why, the girls are all talking to-day about to-morrow being ‘April Fool Day,’ and they said a lot of things I don’t understand, about calling people ‘April fool.’ They all agreed to see who could make the most fools and tell about it Monday. They said I must too, and I didn’t want to tell them I did not know how to do it, or what it means.”
“You don’t mean to tell me, Helen Palmer, that you don’t know anything about April fool?” cried Mrs. Glenn, in surprise.
“No,” said Mrs. Palmer; “she doesn’t. This is her first year at school, you know; I have taught her at home, and in our country home she heard very little but what we told her. I never saw any sense or fun in the custom of fooling on the first day of April, and did not instruct her in it when I taught her of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, St. Valentine’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Decoration Day and Fourth of July.”
“But what is it?” insisted Helen.
“Well, my dear, it is a custom which I’ve read has come down hundreds of years, to send people on ridiculous errands on that day and call it an April fool. It is done all over Europe, and the Hindoos of India do exactly the same thing on the thirty-first of March. As I’ve always known it, people not only send others on foolish errands, but they often play practical jokes, silly and cruel, and actually lie to each other to fool them. It is a custom much better forgotten than kept.”
“I should think so,” cried Helen.
“But, mamma,” she continued, “what shall I do? The girls expect me to tell my share on Monday.”
“We’ll see, dear, by and by. Go and put away your things now.”
Mrs. Glenn went away after tea, and Helen began at once to coax her mother to tell her how to come up to the girls’ plans without doing anything silly or wicked.
“I think, if I were you, I would spend the day surprising people with something good. Do things to help or please, and when they show their surprise say ‘April fool!’”
“O, mamma! that will be delightful,” cried Helen. “Tell me some things to do.”
“No, my dear, that is your business.”
All that evening Helen was very thoughtful, and next day she was unusually busy. At night she declared she had never been so happy. Monday morning she met the girls, and they began to tell their jokes.
“I fooled everybody around the house,” said Carrie Andrews. “I filled the sugar-bowl with salt, and papa got a big spoonful in his coffee. You ought to have seen the face he made. He didn’t more than half like it, even when I called out ‘April fool!’ I sent George out to pick up a package of sand I had dropped near the gate. I rang the doorbell and got Ann to go to the door, and there I stood and said ‘April fool.’ I sent a letter to Louise, and tied mamma’s apron-strings to her chair.”
Helen listened in amazement, as one girl after another told of such silly tricks.
At last they turned to her. “Well, Helen, what did you do?”
“Oh! I fooled every one in the family, but I did a lot of new things,” said Helen.
“What were they?” cried the girls, in chorus.
“Well,” said she, in a low voice, “I got up real early, and crept softly downstairs and set the table in the dining-room, while Jane was starting breakfast in the kitchen. She ’most always has it set at night, but mamma and the sewing woman were using the long table to cut out goods when Jane went to bed. She was hurrying as fast as she could, and rushed in, and when she saw the table set she threw up both hands, and said: ‘Well, now, however did that table get set? Was it witches’ work?’
“Then I jumped out from behind the door and cried: ‘April fool!’
“‘So it is,’ she said; ‘an’ it’s a fine one you’ve given me; I’ll not forget it of you.’
“After breakfast mamma was just going to get Baby to sleep, and some one came to see her on business. She asked me to keep him till she could get back. I took him, and rocked and sung to him, and he went to sleep. I laid him down in his crib, and then hid to see what mamma would do. I heard her hurrying upstairs and into the room. Then she stopped and stared. I stepped up softly behind her and kissed her, and said, ‘April fool!’ She thought it was a nice one.
“Uncle Guy came in and asked mamma to mend his glove when she had time. As quick as I could I got my thimble and needle and silk and mended the glove; and when he came in again in a hurry and said: ‘Well, I can’t wait now for it to be mended,’ he drew it on and said, ‘Why, it is mended.’ Then I called out, ‘April fool, Uncle Guy!’
“‘O, you little rogue!’ he said; ‘I’ll pay you up.’
“Well, then I mended Frank’s sails to his boat when he started to do it and papa called him away, and”—
“What did you do for your father?” asked Marjie Day.
“Oh! papa said he must hunt up some papers in the library at lunch-time, so I looked them up and laid them on his plate, and when he said: ‘Why, how did these get here?’ I said: ‘April fool!’ And that’s all,” added Helen, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
“Well!” exclaimed Carrie Andrews, “if that don’t beat the Dutch.”
“Wasn’t it a good way?” asked Helen, almost crying.
“Of course, you little goose! but who else would ever have thought of it?”
“Mamma said she didn’t like silly jokes, and said I had better try surprising people with pleasant things. I like it so well I am going to do it every day in the year.”
“There’s the bell,” cried Belle Adams; “but hadn’t we all better try it?”
F. A. Reynolds.
ABOUT PHILADELPHIA.
BY THE PANSIES.
ITS first name was Coaquenaque. I am glad they changed it to Philadelphia, because it is easier to pronounce; but I like Indian names. I went to Philadelphia once with my uncle. I think Broad Street is one of the nicest places in the world. I went to Germantown to see where Charlie Ross used to live, but I was so small I don’t remember very much about anything, only Broad Street. I’m going again next year, and I’ll look around and write you what I see.
John T. Robinson.
I went with father to Philadelphia three years ago; we staid near Washington Square; it is beautiful there. The trees are just splendid. Father told me it used to be a great burying-ground. I could not make it seem possible. A great many unknown soldiers, father said, were buried there; it was in Revolutionary times. How sad it must have been to live then! I like the little parks in Philadelphia that they call “squares.” I saw the place where they held the Sanitary Fair, when they roofed over the entire square, and let the trees stand as pillars.
Laura Creedmore.
One of the most interesting places I visited in Philadelphia was Mr. Wanamaker’s store. I did not know a store could be so large. It takes a hundred miles of steam pipes to heat it.
FRANKLIN STATUE.
My uncle has a fruit farm of ten acres, and I used to think when I walked around it that ten acres was pretty big; but there are over fourteen acres of floor to walk around in Mr. Wanamaker’s store! The different departments are fixed up beautifully. They have lovely parlors and dining-rooms and bedrooms all rigged up with beautiful furniture, to show people how to furnish their rooms, and every few days they change and give you another style. But the most interesting part of the store, to me, was the way the money is sent to the cashiers. There are eighty-one pay-stations in the store; then there is a central cash desk where twenty-five cashiers are busy all day long receiving the money that is brought to them through the tubes. The clerk at a pay-station takes the money you give him, and starts it in one of the pneumatic tubes, and away it shoots to the central desk on the second floor; a cashier there looks at it, sees what change is needed, and shoots it back. I don’t understand it very well, but I mean to. I am going to study the principles of pneumatic tubing, and Chris and I are going to have one to reach from my window to his. We are only about fifty feet apart. In Wanamaker’s they have seven miles of tubing to carry their money around. We took dinner at the Wanamaker Dairy, right in the store; it was jam full, and it will seat eight hundred people at once. Chris and I are going into partnership when we get to be men, and are going to have a store just exactly like it.
Henry W. Gilmore.
I went to Philadelphia last winter and attended Mr. Conwell’s church on Broad Street. It is very big—the biggest in the world, I guess—or maybe I mean in this country. It will hold thousands of people. Mother says she thinks Dr. Talmage’s church is bigger, but I don’t see how it could be. The people can’t all get in; they have to have tickets and be let in by a door-keeper. The singing sounds just grand. There is a very large choir, and the organ rolls and rolls. I liked Mr. Conwell almost better than any minister I ever heard, except my own, of course. Then I went to Sunday-school; hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children! I never saw so many together before. Of course I saw other things in Philadelphia, but what I liked the best was that church. It seemed so funny to see folks crowding into church on Sunday morning, and to have a big overflow meeting for those who couldn’t get in. Where I live they have to coax the people to come to church, and there’s lots of room always.
Fanny Pierce.
Once I went to “Old Swede’s” Church in Philadelphia. It is very old. There used to be a log church on the place where it stands; sometimes it was used for a fort. That was in 1677, but about three years afterwards the brick church was built, and that is the one I went to. In the churchyard are many very old graves, and some new ones. Some of the names on the grave-stones are so old I could not make them out. It seemed very strange to be in a church which was built almost two hundred years ago. Then we went to the queer little old house on Letitia Street where William Penn used to live. Great big buildings have grown up around it, and they make it look very odd. Then we went to the old London Coffee House; I had studied about that in my history, and I was disgusted to find it turned into a cigar store. It is a very queer old building. I saw the house where the first American flag was made; that is on Arch Street.
Helen Stuart Campbell.
VIEW OF INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA. (See “About Philadelphia.”)
My sister Helen has written all about old places and never mentioned Carpenter’s Hall! She says that is because she knew I would. I went there with father and Helen. I think it is one of the grandest places in Philadelphia. It is the “Cradle of American Independence.” That was where the first prayer in Congress was made the morning after Boston was bombarded. Before that some of the people had objected to having Congress opened with prayer, but after that morning nobody ever objected again. The inscription on the wall says it was here that “Henry, Hancock and Adams inspired the Delegates of the Colonies with Nerve and Sinew for the toils of war.”
Then of course we went to Independence Hall, where the second Continental Congress gathered, and saw the old cracked bell which rung on the first Fourth of July. Helen says there was a Fourth of July every year before that time; but I mean the first one which was worth having.
Robert Stuart Campbell.
I think the prettiest place in all Philadelphia is Fairmount Park. If I lived there I should want to stay in the park all summer. The drive out is just as lovely as it can be. We crossed the Girard Avenue bridge, which is a thousand feet long. You can walk or ride across, just as you please. There is a sidewalk on each side of the carriage drive sixteen feet wide, and beautifully paved. The railing around this bridge is trimmed with flowers, vines and birds, made in bronze. We saw the old house which was built by William Penn’s son. And we went to the Zoölogical Gardens and saw the bear-pits and everything; then there is a part called the “Children’s Playground,” which is lovely.
James Hurst.
THE LIBERTY BELL.
[The above are some of the gleanings from the many letters received. Wish we had room for more. We are greatly pleased with your efforts to help on this department of The Pansy. The main difficulty is, that many letters come too late to be of use. Notice the list of cities published in the December Pansy, and make a start three months ahead, then you will be sure to be on time.—Editors.]