CRESSY'S NEW-YEAR'S RENT.
BY L. A. TEREBEL.
Fred Hallowell was sitting at his desk in the Gazette office, looking listlessly out into the City Hall Park, where the biting wind was making the snowflakes dance madly around the leafless trees and in the empty fountain, and he was almost wishing that there would be so few assignments to cover as to allow him an afternoon in-doors to write "specials." The storm was the worst of the season, and as this was the last day of December, it looked as if the old year were going out with a tumultuous train of sleet and snow. But if he had seriously entertained any hopes of enjoying a quiet day, these were dispelled by an office-boy who summoned him to the city desk.
"Good-morning, Mr. Hallowell," said the city editor, cheerfully. "Here is a clipping from an afternoon paper which says that a French family in Houston Street has been dispossessed and is in want. Mr. Wilson called my attention to it because he thinks, from the number given, the house belongs to old Q. C. Baggold. We don't like Baggold, you know, and if you find he is treating his tenants unfairly we can let you have all the space you want to show him up. At any rate, go over there and see what the trouble is; there is not much going on to-day."
Fred took the clipping and read it as he walked back to his desk. It was very short—five or six lines only—and the facts stated were about as the city editor had said. The young man got into his overcoat and wrapped himself up warmly, and in a few moments was himself battling against the little blizzard with the other pedestrians whom he had been watching in the City Hall Park from the office windows.
When he reached Houston Street he travelled westward for several blocks, until he came into a very poor district crowded with dingy tenement-houses that leaned against one another in an uneven sort of way, as if they were tired of the sad kind of life they had been witnessing for so many years. The snow that had piled up on the window-sills and over the copings seemed to brighten up the general aspect of the quarter, because it filled in the cracks and chinks of material misery, and made the buildings look at least temporarily picturesque, just as paint and powder for a time may hide the traces of old age and sorrow. Fred found the number 179 painted on a piece of tin that had become bent and rusty from long service over a narrow doorway, and as he stood there comparing it with the number given in his clipping, a little girl with a shawl drawn tightly over her head and around her thin little shoulders came out of the dark entrance and stopped on the door-sill for a moment, surprised, no doubt, at the sight of the tall rosy-cheeked young man so warmly clad in a big woollen overcoat that you could have wrapped her up in several times, with goods left over to spare.
"Hello! little girl," said Fred, quickly. "Does Mr. Cressy live here?"
The child stared for a few seconds at the stranger, and then she answered, bashfully, "Yes, sir. But he has got to go away."
"But he hasn't gone yet?" continued Fred; and then noticing that the child, in her short calico skirt, was shivering from the cold, and that her feet were getting wet with the snow, he added, "Come inside a minute and tell me where I can find Mr Cressy."
The two stepped into the dark narrow hallway that ran through the house to the stairway in the rear, where a narrow window with a broken pane let in just enough light to prove there was day outside. The little girl leaned against the wall, and looked up at the reporter as if she suspected him of having no good intentions toward the man for whom he was inquiring. Very few strangers ever came into that house to do good, she knew. Most of them came for money—rent money—and sometimes they came, as a man had come for Mr. Cressy, to tell him he must go.
"What floor does he live on?" asked Fred.
"On the fifth floor, sir," answered the child. "In the back, sir. But I think he is really going away, sir."
"Well, no matter about that," said Fred, smiling. "I will go up and see him. I hope he won't have to go out in the storm. It is not good for little girls to go out in the storm, either," he added. "Does your mamma know you are going out?"
"Oh yes, sir! She has sent me to the Sisters to try to get some medicine."
"Is she sick?" asked Fred, quickly.
"Yes, sir," continued the child.
"What floor does she live on? I will stop in and see her."
"Oh, you'll see her! She's in the room, too."
"Then you are Mr. Cressy's little girl?"
"Yes, sir."
So Fred patted her on the head and told her to hurry over to the Sisters in Eleventh Street, and gave her ten cents to ride in the horse-cars; and then he opened the door for her, and as soon as she had left he felt his way back to the staircase and climbed to the fifth floor.
There he knocked upon a door, which was soon opened by a man apparently forty years of age, a man of slightly foreign appearance, with a careworn look, but with as honest a face as you could find anywhere.
"Is this Mr. Cressy?" asked Fred.
"Yes, my name's Cressy," replied the man. He spoke with so slight an accent that it was hardly noticeable.
"I am a reporter from the Gazette," continued Fred.
"Oh!" said the man. "Come in," and as he spoke he looked somewhat embarrassed and anxious, for this was doubtless the first time he had had any dealings with a newspaper. Lying on a bed in an alcove was a woman who looked very ill, and piled in a corner near the door were a couple of boxes and a few pieces of furniture. The stove had not yet been taken down, and some pale embers in it only just kept the chill off the atmosphere. Fred took off his hat, and led the man across the room toward the window.
"Have you been dispossessed?" he asked.
"Yes," said the man, "we must leave to-night."
"Why?" asked the reporter.
Cressy smiled in a ghastly sort of way.
"Because," he replied—"because I have not a cent to my name, sir, and the landlord has got it in for me—and I must go."
"Who is your landlord?" asked the reporter.
"Baggold—Q. C. Baggold, the shoe-man."
"How much do you owe?"
"Twenty dollars—two months' rent."
"Were you ever in arrears before?"
"Never."
"What's the trouble? Out of work?"
"Yes, sir, I have been. But I've got a job now, and I'll have money on the tenth of the month. But that is not it."
"What is 'it,' then?" continued Fred.
"Well, I'll tell you. I don't want this in the paper, but I'll tell you Baggold hates me. He knows the woman's sick, and he takes advantage of my owing him to drive me out. Do you want to know why? Well, I'll tell you. I worked for him for five years, sir, in his shoe-factory. He brought me over from France to do the fine work. He had a lawsuit about six months ago, and he offered me $500 to lie for him on the stand. I would not do it, sir, and when they called me as a witness I told the truth, and that settled the case, and Baggold had to pay £10,000, sir, for a sly game on a contract. Then he sent me off, and I've been looking for a job, and I've got behind, and I'm just getting up again, and here he is sending me out into the snow! To-morrow is what we call at home, in France, the jour de l'an—the day of the New Year, sir, and it is a fête. And the little one, here, always looked forward to that day, sir, for a doll or a few sweetmeats; but this time—I don't think she'll have a roof for her little head! I have not a place in the world to go to, sir, but to the police station, and there's the woman on her back!"
Two big tears rolled down the man's cheeks. Fred felt a lump rising in his throat, and he knew that if he had had twenty dollars in his pocket he would have given it to Cressy. But he did not have twenty dollars, so he coughed vigorously, and put on his hat quickly, and said:
"Well, this is hard, Mr. Cressy. I'll see what we can do. I must go up town for a while, and then I'll come back and see you. Don't move out in this storm till the last minute."
As he rushed down the stairs he met the little girl coming back with a big blue bottle of something with a yellow label on it. He stopped and pulled a quarter out of his pocket, thrust it into the child's hand, and leaped on down the stairs, leaving the little girl more frightened than surprised, as he dashed out into the snow.
He entered the first drug-store he came to and looked up Q. C. Baggold's address in the directory. It was nearly four o'clock, and he argued the rich shoe-manufacturer would be at his home. The address given in the directory was in a broad street in the fashionable quarter of the city. Half an hour later Fred was pulling at Mr. Baggold's door-bell. The butler who answered the summons thought Mr. Baggold was in, and took Fred's card after showing the young man into the parlor. This was a large elegantly furnished room filled with costly ornaments, almost anyone of which, if offered for sale, would have brought the amount of Cressy's debt, or much more.
Presently Mr. Baggold came into the room. He was a short man with a bald head and a sharp nose, and his small eyes were fixed very close to one another under a not very high forehead.
"I am a reporter from the Gazette," began Fred at once. "I have called to see you, Mr. Baggold, about this man Cressy whom you have ordered to be dispossessed."
"Ah, yes," said Mr. Baggold, smiling. "My agent has told me something about this matter, but I hardly think it is of sufficient importance to be of interest to the readers of the Gazette."
"The readers of the Gazette," continued Fred, "are always interested in good deeds, Mr. Baggold, and especially when these are performed by rich men. I came here hoping you would disavow the action of your agent, and say that the Cressys might remain in the room."
"Nonsense!" replied Mr. Baggold, "I cannot interfere with my agent. I pay him to take care of my rents, and I can't be looking after fellows who won't pay. This man Cressy is in arrears, and he must get out."
"But his wife is sick," argued Fred.
"Bah!" retorted the other. "That is an old excuse. These scoundrels try all sorts of dodges to cheat a man whom they think has money."
"This woman is actually sick, Mr. Baggold," said Fred, severely, "and to drive her out in a storm like this is positive cruelty."
"Cressy has had two weeks to find other quarters, and to-morrow is the first of the month. I can't keep him any longer."
"Yes, to-morrow is the great French fête-day, and you put Cressy in the street."
"My dear sir," returned the rich man, "I cannot allow sentiment to interfere with my business. If I did I should never collect rents in Houston Street. And, as I told you before, I do not see that this question is one to interest the public. It is purely a matter of my private business."
"Very true," replied Fred; "but I don't think it would look well in print."
This statement seemed to startle Mr. Baggold a little, and Fred thought it made him feel uncomfortable. There was a brief silence, after which the rich man said:
"It would depend entirely upon how you put it in print. To tell you the truth, I am not at all in favor of these sensational articles that so many newspapers publish nowadays. Reporters often jump at conclusions before they are familiar with the facts of a case, and it makes things disagreeable for all concerned. Now, if you will only listen to me, sir, I think we can come to an understanding about this Cressy matter. I don't want anything about it to get into the papers—especially now. I have many reasons, but I cannot give them to you. Yet I think we can come to an understanding," he repeated, as he looked at Fred and smiled.
"How?" asked the reporter.
"Well," drawled Mr. Baggold, "there are some points that I may be able to explain to you. Of course I don't want to put you to any trouble for nothing. If it is worth something to me not to have notoriety thrust upon me, of course, on the other hand, it might be worth something to you to cause the notoriety. But just excuse me a moment."
Mr. Baggold arose hastily and stepped into a rear room, apparently his library or study.
"H'm," thought Fred to himself. "This old chap talks as though he were going to offer me money. I'd just like to see him try! I'd give him such a roasting as he has never had before! Some of these crooked old millionaires think that sort of thing works with reporters, but I'll show him that it does not. I have never known a newspaper man yet that would accept a bribe."
And as Fred mused in this fashion, Mr. Baggold returned. He bore a long yellow envelope in his hand.
"Here," he said, "are some papers and other things that I should like to have you look over before you write the article. I think they will influence you in your opinion of the matter. I am sorry I cannot tell you any more just now, but I have an appointment which I must keep. Take these papers and look them over at your leisure, and if you find later this evening that they are not satisfactory, I will talk with you further. Good-afternoon, sir. I hope you will excuse me for the present."
And so saying he handed the envelope to Fred, bowed pleasantly, and left the room. Fred had been standing near the door, and so he put the envelope in his pocket and went out. He walked a few blocks down the street, and went into the large hotel on the corner in order to get out of the storm and to find some quiet place where he might look over Mr. Baggold's documents. He was very curious to see what they could be. He found a seat in a secluded corner of the office, and there tore open the envelope. To his disgust, it contained three ten-dollar bills, and a brief note, unsigned, which read,
"The accompanying papers will show you that the matter we spoke of is not of sufficient importance to be published."
Fred Hallowell was furious. This was the first time in his brief career as a newspaper man that anything like this had happened to him. He grew red in the face, his fingers twitched, and he felt as if he had never before been so grossly insulted. As he sat in his chair, fuming and wondering what he should do, Griggs, the fat and jolly political reporter of the Gazette, came up to him and said, laughing,
"Well, you look as if you were plotting murder!"
"I am—almost!" exclaimed Fred, and then he told Griggs all about what had happened.
Griggs listened patiently, and at the end he chuckled to himself, and said: "Well, Hallowell, don't waste any righteous wrath on any such stuff as that Baggold. I'll tell you how to get even with him." And then he talked for twenty minutes to the younger man.
At the end of the conference Fred smiled and buttoned his coat, and hastened back to Cressy's room in Houston Street. He found a Sister of Charity there nursing the sick woman. Cressy came to the door, pale and eager.
"Well?" he said, nervously.
"Oh, it's all right," returned Fred, laughing. "I have just seen Mr. Baggold. He said his agent was perfectly right in having you dispossessed, because that was business; but when he heard what I had to say, he gave me this money." And here Fred handed out the thirty dollars. "It is for you to pay the agent with, and then you can keep your room, and you will have ten dollars besides."
Cressy was speechless. The sick woman wept softly. The Sister said something in Latin, and the little girl just looked; she did not understand what it was all about.
"You see," said Fred to Cressy, "I suppose Mr. Baggold does not want his business to be interfered with by his sentiment." And before Cressy could reply the reporter had slipped out of the door, and in a moment was hurrying down town to his office.
The next morning—New-Year's morning—the Gazette contained a pretty little story of how a rich man, who had heard of the distress of a tenant, put his hand in his own pocket and paid his tenant's rent to himself, so that the new year would begin well for him by having rents coming in at the very opening of the twelvemonth.
"I'll bet Baggold was surprised this morning when he read that," gurgled the genial Griggs; "but it will do him more good than ten columns of abuse and exposure. So here's a Happy New Year to him!"
[A CURIOUS ADVERTISEMENT.]
When the British nation built its famous military railroad that extends through the northwest provinces of India, the natives established at or near the many stations little restaurants and retreats for travellers. Recently a native bought one of these rooms from its owner, and wishing to advertise himself and his new acquisition as much as possible, issued the following notification to his present and prospective patrons:
"Begs to say that from the 1st of October, 1893, I am in charge of the above from the other man who was manager here for few years. Flesh of club and store Calcutta is supplied here, for Butter and Milk Cows live here; if 8 gentlemen eat on one table they can get english things, Bread and Sweet maker is present here. All things are new and fresh than before, if any gentleman will give great Tiffin or dinner, or supper a etc. then he will make the management very well and the charge will be less and the cook is of the first class, every gentlemen can get rest like his own will, the railway station is on the few feet from here, and wine can also be supplied."
[THE TWELFTH-NIGHT PARTY.]
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
"Very jolly, isn't it?" was Bessie's criticism, as she gave a series of satisfied little pats to the skirt of her dress.
"Do you really think there is any one here we know?" was the reply.
"Why, of course there is! the costumes change everybody." But her friend Hortense looked bewildered, notwithstanding the hopeful words, as clouds of Valenciennes lace floated off down the stairs, and the two young girls were for a moment alone in the dressing-room.
"Bessie, you look fine! And how clever of your mother to get you up so awfully smart! I was simply horrified when I learned your character. For you're Maria, the waiting-woman, aren't you?"
"Yes; but mayn't waiting-women wear pretty clothes? This frock's only lawn, and cost thirty cents a yard."
"Bah! the price doesn't count; it's the color and the way it's made," said Hortense, walking off to more effectively study her friend's costume; and again came the words, more slowly this time, "Yes, you look fine; your dress seems a veritable French flower-bed."
"Who are you, Hortense?" and a wounded look came into Bessie's eyes, while she added, "I think you might have told me, since you knew who I was."
A light laugh followed, and then the words, "I'm ashamed of you if you cannot guess; surely you've read Twelfth-Night?"
"I have never read any of Shakespeare's plays; mamma thinks I'm not old enough. I don't believe half the children here have read it."
"Then how have they known the way to dress?"
"Their mothers or big sisters have told them, of course. I know what Twelfth-night means, for mamma explained that it was an old festival held twelve days after Christmas, and that it was a season of revels, dances, and the most comic of ludicrous games. I wish we got more fun out of our holidays. Mamma says when she was a girl Christmas used to last all the week. You know her home was away down South; and if people could spare time for a week's fun then, why can't they do so now? Besides, mamma told me many of the English people still keep festivities going from Christmas until Twelfth-night. I don't believe in letting England get ahead of us, even if she has the word 'merrie' tacked to her. When you came in, Hortense, I thought you were a boy, and wondered how you got into this room."
These words proved very amusing, and Hortense craned her neck haughtily while she promenaded before the pier-mirror, saying: "So I look like a boy, do I? Well, that's good; precisely the way I want to look, for I am a boy to-night; I'm personating Viola, and I may as well explain. She made believe she was a boy, and called herself Cesario, and got a lot of fun out of it too. So I'm really Viola, but call me Cesario."
They had just come to a Twelfth-night party, given by a dear friend two years their senior, and, as may be assumed, there had been considerable chattering between the knots of girls, assembled in recess hours, about their comical clothes; but there had also been considerable secrecy, as no one seemed very desirous to tell what she was going to wear; then, too, the boys were unusually quiet, and everybody wondered whether they were to dance, play games, or what was to be done anyway.
Therefore it was with a mixture of curiosity and satisfaction that these two young people descended the staircase. Curiosity, because they were sure of a surprise, no matter how things were arranged, and satisfaction, because, as has been stated, they were quite satisfied with their own and each other's appearance.
Having reached the last step of the stairs, they were met by a very magnificently attired young man, whom they had hitherto known as their hostess's big brother; but to-night he was no less a personage than the imperious Duke of Illyria. He asked each her name; and escorting Bessie in first, because she was the taller, he presented her to his sister as Maria, and immediately afterwards Hortense, as Viola, or the page Cesario. The hostess took the character of the Lady Olivia, and wore the apparel befitting the daughter of a wealthy duke. Her dress was white chiffon over white silk, and was spangled with gold dust. She wore a long necklace of pearls, and strings of pearls kept back her wavy though high-dressed hair.
Notwithstanding the fact that Hortense and Bessie were sure of each other for company, they did feel considerably confused at the singular strangeness of the scene, for the large rooms were filled with young people who seemed almost to have come from another world, so oddly were they attired; and they certainly were a part of another century, country, and station. For so carefully the costuming had been done, that, in fancy, the older people, who were the hostess's mother, father, and two great-aunts, could well believe they were living about the year 1600, and that they formed a part of a great pageant, that the Lord of Misrule was about somewhere, and William Shakespeare also, and that Christmas was a Christmas worth having this year, for it was lingering so long and so happily. Therefore, when the older people were so much impressed with the odd sight of children coming in Twelfth-Night costume, it was no wonder that the children were not a little awed until woke up first by the didos of the clown, and then by a party of revellers covered with white masks and dominoes, who fantastically capered and danced before them; then it was the awed feeling passed, and the spirit of wildest jollity followed. These revellers were none other than a dozen of the hostess's particular friends, whom she had prepared so to do.
None of the Twelfth-Night characters were missing—indeed, they were prominently conspicuous. Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, of whom Sir Toby said, "Thou art a scholar"; Malvolio, correctly yellow-stockinged and cross-gartered; my most exquisite Sir Topas; the two sea-captains, one the friend of Viola, and the other of her brother; the lost Sebastian; Feste, the clown; and lords, priests, officers, musicians, servants, and attendants.
So when all had at last arrived, the parlor was a rare and charming sight. Such a mixture of color and fantasy! Lavender, pink, and yellow silk hose; powdered hair, and as white, curled, or wavy wigs; velvet satin-lined short cloaks, velvet or silk knee-breeches; dark blue and white sailor's dress; navy-blue clothed and brass-buttoned sea-captains, scarlet and gold-buttoned officers, black-robed priests; Swiss-embroidered or lace flounces, trained velvets, white jackets, natty costumes, furbelows of all sorts; as also tambourines, banjos, mandolins, violins, and all the other musical instruments that formed a part of this altogether gay people that composed the dramatis personæ of Twelfth-Night.
The house was large and richly furnished, a proper setting for Olivia, daughter of a duke; to add to the grandeur and lavish beauty, rare plants and masses of flowers had been effectively placed. Yards and yards of evergreen and laurel were twined in and out and around staircase and fret-work. Holly and bay-leaves were wound most generously around pictures and over doorways; and mistletoe, the plant that the ancients bought from the Druids to wear about the neck to keep away the witches, was suspended from every chandelier.
Early in the evening the sailors, sea-captains, and musicians disappeared, but with great hilarity soon returned, the sailors preceding, with the Captains at the head, drawing in the Yule-log. This was nothing more nor less than a rugged log, knotted at each end with long strong ropes, by which it was pulled. As they drew it, the sailors sang, the musicians accompanying:
"Welcome be ye that are here,
Welcome all, and make good cheer;
Welcome all another year,
Welcome Yule."
And this verse was sung over and over, until the Yule-log lay on the hearth-stone.
Of course all the children who were not on their feet at its entrance rose to receive it; and even the older people's voices joined with the others as the verse, being repeated over and over again, closed with all singing "Welcome Yule."
This song was followed by the masked game of "Twelfth-night Pie."
Two people—a boy and girl—each in grotesque apparel and with masked faces, walked in, rolling before them, on a wheelbarrow, an enormous pie. It was made after the fashion of a Jack Horner pie, being in a deep dish covered with diamond-dusted white paper, with tiny ribbons exposed.
The first performance was to roll the pie all around the room, and then to the centre, where the boy and girl sang:
"Who'll have a bird from this Twelfth-night pie?
Whoever guesses me may answer, I."
After this there was solemn stillness until the names were guessed; then the couple unmasked. The correct guesser then drew a ribbon; it proved to bring out a robin red-breast made of candy and stuffed with sugar-plums. As soon as the person drew it, the boy who rolled the barrow imitated a bird-song on a harmonica. This was easily effected, as it was the girl who presented the pie, and engaged the attention of the individual who was drawing; and, indeed, every one in the room was watching what was drawn, and therefore the boy for the moment was forgotten. He made believe something had been dropped, and, getting down back of the girl, sang at the time the bird was drawn, without detection. Ten of the others drew in a similar manner, the first ten to the right of the guesser; but the boy did not sing, except when he stood no chance of being caught.
"This would be good fun for New-Year's night," said Hortense to the boy standing next to her.
"Good fun for any time, I should say."
The next game was called "The Messenger-Boy."
One of the girls, stepping up to the wall, pretended she was talking through a telephone and wanted a messenger-boy. In a few seconds a bell was heard, and the boy, having arrived, was ushered into the parlor. The boy had left the room before the game commenced.
The players were seated when the messenger entered. He said to the girl,
"I was ordered to come to you."
"Yes, I'm waiting."
"What for?"
"For you to do as I do."
Then the girl nodded her head, the messenger then nodded his head, and the girl, turning to her right-hand neighbor, said, "Do as I do."
This party then repeated the same words to her right-hand neighbor, and so on, until everybody was nodding. And so they continued from nodding to rocking until every one was laughing uproariously, and the game was obliged to end. The evening was an undeniable success.
[OUGHT A BOY TO GO TO SEA?]
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.
wo sorts of boys go to sea—one for love, the other for necessity. Those who go to it for love stand, perhaps, more in need of advice than those who are sent to it for a living. The young lover of the sea is nearly always a boy of lively imagination. He has read romances, he has watched the passage of a ship through an ocean sunset, he has haunted pier-heads and quay-sides; the creak of a block has fired his enthusiasm, the fabric of a squalid little butter-rigged schooner has despatched his spirit into distant purple seas studded with islands like emeralds, and perfumed with gales of Arabian sweetness.
This boy, to be sure, will be disappointed. A boy going on board a ship without a day-dream sulkily accepts the new conditions; he has no illusions which a ship can destroy. But no sooner has the young lover of the sea climbed over the ship's side than his fine imaginations vanish in the twinkling of an eye. The romance is gone, the tender coloring that distance lends has disappeared; the young sea-lover hears himself rudely bawled at; nobody shows him any respect or consideration; if he asks a civil question about his bed or berth the answer he gets may probably be a thrust in the ribs from the elbow of a drunken sailor. He is bewildered, without finding anything to fascinate him. On the fo'c's'le some noble hurricane chorus is timed by the pulses of the windlass pawls. Men dangling high aloft are shrieking to their shipmates below to "sheet-home!" The tug is manœuvring to catch hold of the tow-rope. The pilot is cracking his pipes in strong commands on the forecastle head. The very cook is full of business, and seems to find everybody in his way.
Much such is the scene of a ship leaving the docks of London river. There is no sentiment. Presently the young sea-lover begins to feel a little sick, and with sickness come heart-chill and the sense of friendlessness. But I would bid such a boy to be of good cheer, nevertheless, for by-and-by, when the roughnesses of the life are worn down by use and custom, he may find his old shore-going sentiments recur. He will fall in love with the tall white beauty under whose starry trucks he is floating towards countries which are strange and therefore wonderful to him. He may find the Captain equal to the expression of a civil word now and again; the mate may be good-natured enough to answer his questions occasionally. He may meet amongst the crew some plain, steady, respectable old sailor from whose conversation, practical advice, and teaching he will pick up more about his calling in a month than he could acquire in a whole round voyage from the mere mechanical routine of laying aloft or going below and standing a watch.
But illusion or no illusion, the boy who goes to sea must make up his mind to suffer from end to end a hard life. Some call it a dog's life. And depend upon it, there are a great many dogs who, if they knew how sailors fare and toil, would not exchange places with them even to be men.
I deal in this brief essay with sailing-ships because a boy must first serve an apprenticeship to tacks and sheets before he is qualified to serve in steam. In England a boy may pass three years of still-water seafaring life on board such training-ships, for example, as the Worcester or the Conway, and the service will be accepted as a considerable contribution towards the whole period required. The training-ship has, no doubt, certain features of merit. A boy may enter at a comparatively tender age. He is rescued from the violent hardships of the life and the temptations of the ports, and he is fairly equipped as a sailor when he goes to sea in earnest. It is a question, however, whether, if the sea be decided on as a career for a lad, it is not better to dismiss him heroically and at once, to acquire a knowledge of the real life in a ship sailing the ocean, than to keep him playing at sailor aboard a gigantic toy moored in a smooth stream.
But the question is that of earning a living. A boy comes to me and says, "Can I get a living by going to sea as a sailor?" I assume he is a lad of respectable antecedents, and that he has parents or "friends" who are willing to give him a start. I would tell him, first of all, that his going to sea—supposing him to be a lad of, say, fourteen years of age—would be cheaper to his parents than going to school. The boy would be bound apprentice for a fee in guineas—from twenty to fifty; one cannot talk positively on this head, as some owners take apprentices at much cheaper rates than others.
Now, to be sure, whilst my young friend is at sea as an apprentice he is not earning a living; but then he is at no cost to himself nor to his parents outside the premium and the outfit. Meanwhile he is learning a profession, and that means a great deal. He is finding out all about the intricacies of a ship's hull and rigging; he discovers how her cargo is stowed; some old salt in the crew will point out the difference between the screws and iron rigging of to-day and the dead eyes and the immensely thick shrouds of thirty years ago. He will take sights at noon, for his father will surely provide for his being instructed in the use of the sextant on board ship. A boy will not qualify for a Board-of-Trade examination by dipping his hand in the tar-bucket only; he will have to prove to the examiners that he knows how to find a ship's situation by several processes in the art of navigation. And the examiners will require a great deal more than that. But I should need a page of this publication to explain what is expected of a second mate before a certificate is granted to him.
When my young friend has successfully passed as second mate—he will not find it very hard—he will go to work for a chief mate's certificate. Meanwhile he is at sea as second officer, let us say of a small barque. On what wages? Shall I suggest twenty dollars a month? This is no liberal income; but it suffices to keep a man's sea-chest filled with good clothes, and all the while he is at sea and in harbor abroad he is maintained at the ship's expense. My young friend must think of that. Forecastle sailors complain of the poorness of their pay, and I have again and again said that it is miserable enough as a return for the services rendered; but Jack forgets one feature of his money-getting; what he receives, to use the commercial phrase, is net—his money is not taxed for what he has eaten and drunk, and for the use of his bedroom and sea-parlor. A man might step ashore and draw for his services thirty or forty pounds. If he is a careful man he will know what to do with as much of it as he can put away; and after several voyages there is no reason why he should not have saved money enough to establish himself in a little business, or to purchase an interest in some longshore or water-borne industry. But this refers to forecastle Jack, and I must recover the hand of my young friend.
He will naturally start with high ambitions. He will think of the fine berths which must be constantly falling vacant on board the grand Atlantic expresses through officers tumbling overboard or being left sick behind. Dreams of the Peninsular & Oriental Company, of the Cape Mail lines, of many services which need not be named here, will have haunted his young imagination; but for the most part he will find them but stars, which a man may see without being able to approach. I should say that it is only a little less difficult to secure a berth, in this age of interest and directors, on board of the great mail-steamers than it is to enter the royal navy. If I were my young friend I should not look very high, though. I should still think cheerily of the sea as a vocation. First and foremost it is the calling of and for a man. That is good. Hundreds of sailing-ships and of steamers crowd the docks and harbors, and whiten the sea with sail or wake. They are not necessarily P. & O.'s or White Star liners, yet they will yield a young fellow the chance he seeks; they will give him a living; they will find him posts of trust and command.
One condition of the sea should be indicated by every one who offers advice to the young as to the life. I refer to the engine-room. When parents talk of sending their sons to sea, they seem to think only of the old traditional quarter-deck; they forget that amidships of the steamer is a well, filled with resplendent arms of steel, and with the innumerable machinery of perhaps the most marvellous and perfect of human inventions. The engine-room requires men. It must be fed with men of the workshops of the rivers, as the furnace is fed with coal from the bunkers. There is still a great plenty of sailing-ships afloat, and there will always be a demand for masters and mates for these vessels. But a boy intent on a sea life should be invited to dwell upon the liberal and popular side of it—the side where there is most abundance, where the pickings are fairly plentiful if seldom handsome. Now a steamer needs two sets of men, a crew for her fo'c's'le and a crew for her engine-room. They are perfectly independent of each other, and though no doubt the captain is master of the ship, it is often the engineer who, by virtue of his post of enormous trust and usefulness, subtly but certainly holds the real command.
The suggestion of the engine-room to a young lover of the sea might affect him with something like a shock; he wants to be on deck, to climb the masts, to behold the blue sea foaming to the horizon. But waiving all romance, if I am to be asked should a boy go to sea for a living, I am bound to annex the engine-room as a present considerable and ever-growing chance. The theoretical examinations are no doubt a little stiff (in the British royal navy they are simply man-killing, and I marvel that any young fellow is able to obtain even a third-class certificate, so numerous and abstruse are the subjects he is examined in; the merchant-service examinations are much easier), and there is plenty of hard work involved in the probationary term of labor in a shipwright's yard, but then the opportunities of employment are plentiful as compared with the chilling toil of seeking a situation in sailing-ships; the pay is, all round, better than the money received on the bridge or the quarter-deck. Socially, moreover, the marine engineer is fast lifting his head. Time was when, only a very rough class of men could be found for the engine-room. The tradition of roughness lingers. It is well known and complained of in British war-ships, that though the officers of the engine-room mess with the officers of the vessels there is a "feeling"; in a word the lieutenants and midshipmen have not yet got to regard the engineers as of themselves, as men as fully entitled to the same degree of respect as is exacted by the quarter-deck. But the lad who thinks of the sea as a profession, and who may lightly or seriously turn his thoughts to the engine-room, should consider that everyday witnesses the growing importance and dignity of the marine engineer. Science is asserting him. He has scarcely had time to declare himself. He is mainly hidden in the bowels of the ship, and is little seen, though the safety of the whole magnificent fabric is as much in his hands as in the captain's. Let us consider that there are plenty of people now living who remember the time when there was not a passenger steamship afloat. So the marine engineer still advances socially and commercially, while the master and mate of the sailing-ship walk in footprints as old as the red flag of Great Britain.
The profession of the sea, however, is so full of hardships, perils, and difficulties, that the friends of a lad should endeavor to make him as clearly understand it as a vocation as his unformed intellect will allow. He might be sent on a short excursion to sea as a sailor-boy; in his presence seafaring men might be consulted, and their words would weigh with him. The peculiarity of the sea is this, that when once adopted as a calling it generally unfits a young man for any form of steady, monotonous life ashore. Richard Dana used to say that had he remained another year on the coast of California he should have been a sailor forever. A lad, or rather the lad's friends, before deciding should, unless the little fellow be an enthusiast, weigh the chances of payment and promotion at sea with the opportunities a boy is likely to obtain ashore. Such is the stress of life nowadays that I do not think a serious consideration of chances ashore and afloat would tell very heavily against the sea. It is the life of a man, as I have said, and sailors are always wanted. And for my own part, I would rather be the master of a vessel on fifty dollars a month than the manager of a bank on two thousand dollars a year.
[MY REALM.]
BY ALBERT LEE.
When I was quite a little chap
They took me to the sea;
A broad-brimmed hat, a wooden spade,
And pail they gave to me.
They turned my little trousers up,
They stripped me of my socks,
And let me paddle in the waves,
And climb the weed-grown rocks.
I built great walls and fortresses
With parapets and moats;
I dug deep lakes and waterways
To sail my paper boats.
And thus I learned to love the sea,
The shells, the surf, the sand,
For, truly, all this seemed to me
A very fairy-land
Where I was king of all the shore
So far as I could see,
And Ocean was a docile thing,
Obedient to me.
For when I built a fort of sand
And gave it to the foe,
I called upon the tide to come
And wash the fortress low.
But when I knew the flood must turn,
I shook my little spade,
And drove the curling breakers back
As far as I could wade.
Oh, truly, for big sailing-ships
I think God made the sea;
But all the shore, the surf, the sand,
He made for little me.
[A PATRIOTIC ANSWER.]
Just after the war of 1776 an American frigate visited England. Her crew of gallant tars had been principally recruited from the fisheries, and some of them, it is to be acknowledged, did not compare favorably in appearance with the spick-and-span, jaunty English naval seamen, for the former were of all shapes and sizes, from the tall, round-shouldered, long-armed Cape Coder, down to the short, wiry members of the ship's company who hailed from various ports farther south, where less brawn was to be found.
One day the captain of the American ship paid a visit to the commander of a British man-o'-war at anchor in the same harbor. The coxswain of the gig was a great, lanky seaman, whose backbone was so rounded as to form a veritable hump. While the boat rested at the gangway of the visited vessel the English sailors gathered in the open ports and "took stock," in a rather disdainful fashion, of the occupants of the gig. At last one of the seamen on board the man-o'-war called down to the coxswain:
"'Ello there, Yankee; I soy, what's that bloomin' 'ump you 'ave on your back?"
The American sailor looked up and called back, quick as a shot: "That's Bunker Hill!"
[OUR SUBMARINE TORPEDO-BOAT.]
BY FRANKLIN MATTHEWS.
Within a year the United States will have a submarine torpedo-boat. It will be 80 feet long and 11 feet in diameter. It will use steam when running on the surface of the water, and when running under water it will use electricity. It will be capable of going nearly nine miles an hour under water for six hours. On the surface of the water the boat will be able to go just twice as fast. When running "awash," that is, with only a small turret sticking out of the water, the speed will be only one knot an hour slower than when running on the surface.
The submarine boat, as well as most of the other boats of a like character that have been experimented with for nearly 300 years, should more properly be called a diving-boat. Its purpose is to duck under water and remain there as long as may be necessary when its own safety is in danger. When it engages in a fight, it will begin its work by a series of dives before discharging one of its five torpedoes from the bow. Much as a stone may be made to go skipping across the top of the water, so this boat may be made to skip along underneath the water, coming occasionally to the top. Although it will remain underneath the water only six hours without coming up when it is being worked at its full capacity, it will be able to remain under the water for several days if it is simply necessary to keep out of sight for a long time. As fast as fresh air is needed a float with a hose attached is released, and when it reaches the surface of the water the electric motors suck down enough air in a few minutes to fill the tanks again, and the stay may be prolonged until the supply of water and provisions gives out.
The boat is known as the Holland submarine boat, because it is the invention of Mr. John P. Holland, who has been studying this problem for more than twenty years. In his experiments he has gone under water, for a stay of from a few minutes to several hours, more than fifty times. In spite of discouragements that would have made many a man give up, Mr. Holland kept on, until he convinced the government that his boat was not only feasible, but an absolutely necessary article in the equipment of an up-to-date navy. Other countries have submarine boats, but none of the boats has been fully successful; and if this vessel will really accomplish what it is expected to do, the United States will again show the world that it excels in naval ship-building.
The use of electricity in propelling boats and the power to compress air in tanks makes navigation under water a comparatively simple matter. Remaining under water is the easiest part of the task required of a submarine torpedo-boat. The essential things are that the boat must be speedy in diving and in coming to the surface, that some means of steering accurately must be devised, that the boat must be kept at a certain level in the water, that it must have good speed under the water, and that it must be able to discharge torpedoes safely under vessels which it is attacking. If the vessel is successful it will solve the problem of harbor defence, for no fleet would dare venture into a harbor knowing that one of these submarine boats was on guard.
TAKING AN OBSERVATION OF THE ENEMY'S FLEET.
Every boat, no matter what its object, must have a certain amount of buoyancy to make it float. This vessel has the usual amount for one of its size. In its hold are a certain number of air-tanks, in which are stored 30 cubic feet of compressed air at a pressure of 2000 pounds to the square inch. There are also 620 electric storage batteries for propelling the ship when the steam is shut off under water. Let us take the little vessel under water. We have been running along under steam on the surface and have seen the enemy. All the hatches are closed water-tight, and the Captain goes into a little armored turret. He gives the word to run awash. At once the valves in the bottom of the boat are opened, and certain apartments are allowed to fill with water. This sinks the boat at once so that only the turret is visible. The enemy is near and has seen us. It is necessary to dive. Quickly the word is given, and the smoke-stack is dropped down into the ship and a thick plate is clamped over it. The fires are banked, and the engine is disconnected from the screw, and the electric power is attached. An indicator tells the depth we have reached, and then the mechanism is set at the required depth, and we are soon skimming along under the water in absolute safety. The air in the tanks is being released as fast as we need a fresh supply, and we are dry and comfortable.
DAVID STRIKING GOLIATH.
The Captain decides that he wants to look around. He steers the boat up to within four feet of the surface, and then he pokes up out of the water what looks like a stove-pipe. Its real name is a "camera lucida." It is an arrangement whereby those inside the turret can get a good look around by means of mirrors. The Captain decides to go under again, and makes for his target. He is soon passing under a ship. The darkened water tells us so. He makes a short turn, or stops, and then backs away and gives a signal to discharge a torpedo. It leaves the boat with a rush, and in a few seconds there is a muffled roar. A great war-ship has been struck. It lurches and staggers. Pandemonium reigns on it, the order is given for every man to save himself, and in less than five minutes after the torpedo has been discharged a five-million-dollar battle-ship, the most powerful engine of destruction man ever made, is lying at the bottom of the channel, and the enemy has received a mortal blow. We come up to look around again. David has struck Goliath with a stone in the forehead and killed him.
How is the diving done? If you will look at the boat you will see at the stern two horizontal rudders. They stick out behind like the feet of a swan as it swims about a lake. When it is necessary to dive, these flat rudders are tipped down in the rear, and the ship is forced under at the bow at an inclination. When the required depth is reached the rudders are flattened out, so to speak, or held at the inclination to keep the vessel on an even keel, the tanks having been filled to overcome all but a very small reserve buoyancy. An automatic arrangement allows the water to press on a rubber diaphragm, and keeps the boat at an even depth. It is a great problem, however, to steer absolutely straight. It has been found that under water the mariner's compass is not trustworthy. Mr. Holland devised an ingenious arrangement to overcome this. There is a triangular drag floating just above the diving-rudders. It is necessary, when the boat is running on the surface, to put it on the exact course it is to follow just before the dive is made. The rudders are tipped, and then this drag comes into play. If the boat veers to the right or left this drag sways to the opposite side. It is so arranged that it works a lever that at once swings the steering-rudder of the ship to the side that will bring the boat straight on its course again.
Suppose, now, it is necessary to come to the top of the water at once, without waiting for the diving-rudders to steer us up. The compressed-air tanks can expel nearly twenty tons of water from the tanks at the bottom of the vessel in about two minutes, and the boat will rush to the top at once. Here is where the matter of buoyancy comes in. A problem that has also been solved in this boat is the ability to remain stationary at a certain depth under water. There is an anchor which is run from a drum at the bottom of the boat near the bow, and it will hold the boat in any position independent of current or tide. If it is desirable to remain in one position, and not at anchor, we must use two little "down-haul" screws. They are little screws such as propel a ship at the stern. An electric dynamo is set going, and these screws are turned in a horizontal position, and the small reserve buoyancy in the boat, amounting only to about 375 pounds, is overcome. When we are running under water the slight dip of the diving-rudders keeps us at the required depth.
RAMMING A MAN-OF-WAR.
There have been several devices to make a vessel go under water. The oldest, perhaps, has been the sudden filling of tanks by allowing the water to rush in. The water has to be expelled by air pressure. This method of diving and coming up consists of a series of bumping motions, and is very crude. Another method used was by "down-haul" screws. These were turned, and they simply bored holes in the water, like an auger in a board, and the boat had to go down in the water. After the boat got down there was no satisfactory way of regulating the depth, and the rise to the surface was always too abrupt. Propelling the boats under water until recently has been an unsolved problem. Sometimes chemicals have been used, and sometimes the stored-up heat of the engine has been tried. Electricity has solved this problem, and made it possible to stay under water six hours going at full speed. During this time the boat can go fully fifty miles without once coming to the surface. Should any accident occur, each member of the crew is supplied with a life-saving helmet, which is easy of adjustment, and by means of which he may float to the surface of the water in safety. A folding rubber boat may also be carried in the super-structure of the craft, so that there is very little danger of loss of life under the water. Mr. Holland has explored all New York Harbor, and he says that ladies have often asked him to take them down in his experimental boats.
The facility with which this vessel will do its work may be judged from the fact that when running on the surface of the water it can dive to a depth of twenty-five feet in twenty seconds. When running awash it can dive to a depth of twenty-five feet in ten seconds. It can come up as quickly as it goes down. It is supposed that the vessel will never need to go any deeper than forty feet, and having the ability to dive when attacked it will carry no guns.
Mr. Holland was a young man in Ireland during our civil war. He studied engineering, and was especially interested in the submarine boat that the Confederates used with considerable success, but with great loss of life to themselves, in the war. The splendid ship Housatonic of our navy was sunk off Charleston, South Carolina, by one of these boats. Mr. Holland came here in 1873, and two years later made his first experiment in going under water. He has kept at it ever since, and more than once has he given the pilots and skippers of New York Harbor a scare by suddenly causing to come to the top of the water some sort of a sea monster, the like of which no one ever dreamed, and the appearance of which could not be explained. One of Mr. Holland's boats was popularly known as the "Fenian ram," because he was practising in it in New York Harbor about the time of the celebrated Fenian uprising. He has lost one or two boats by the mistakes of some of his helpers, and on more than one occasion he has been in a ticklish situation, but he always came out all right, and finally mastered all the intricate problems connected with submarine navigation—problems that have engaged scores of men ever since Drebbell, a Dutchman, first tried the experiment in the time of James I. of England.
The first partly successful boat of this kind seems to have been made in the time of our revolutionary war by a man named Bushnell, who lived in Maine. The boat could remain under water for half an hour, but the scheme of building them came to nothing. It will surprise most persons, probably, to know that the first really successful boat was made by our own Robert Fulton, the famous steamboat engineer. It was in 1800, and Fulton showed it to Napoleon Bonaparte in the harbor of Havre in 1801. He went down twenty-five feet in it, and remained there for one hour. Then he went down with four persons, and remained four hours. Compressed air was used for respiration in this boat. Various improvements have been made from that time to this. The crude boats of the civil war were displaced in the late seventies and eighties by those of fairly satisfactory working arrangements, and the Russian, French, and Turkish governments have built several, but they have lacked complete mastery of the problem of under-water navigation, such as this boat that we are now building is expected to display. By next summer the boat will probably be in service.
If the boat is successful it may make as great a revolution in naval warfare as the famous Monitor, built by Mr. Ericsson, did in the war of 1861. For what battle-ship would be proof against it? The biggest of all battle-ships would only sink quicker than smaller ones, and huge war-ships of all kinds would be nothing more than death-traps for all those aboard them. Another question of great importance is whether the guns of war-ships can be tipped sufficiently to strike the boat when it is anywhere near.
[TODDLETUMS'S NEW-YEAR'S DREAM.]
"Papa, I paid another visit last night."
"Another visit? Where did you go, Toddletums?"
"I guess I got a little sleepy after our big dinner. I got up among those spirit chaps in the sky that I played baseball with last summer, and was wondering what became of all the hours we use up during the year, so I thought I would ask them. When I got up there they were awfully glad to see me.
"The whole crowd were bowling, and they were using the tail of a comet for a bowling-alley. Papa I'm so sorry you couldn't see them, it was so funny. At the end of the comet alley they had a lot of things stuck up that looked like those glasses that cookie boils eggs by. One of the spirits told me they were the hours we used up during the year, and that it was their custom to meet every New-Year's eve to bowl them out of existence. As he was telling me, one big chap (say, papa, but those chaps are big!) grasped what they said was a baby world, and, swinging it, smashed down a lot of hours. Well, in a short time all the hours were gone except one. Then they stood around and waited, looking solemnly at a winking, blinking light in the distance that they said was my world. Suddenly every one lifted his hand and pointed at the last hour, and the biggest spirit seized a world, and when the last moment trickled down the glass, they dropped their hands, and he sent the ball smashing along the comet, and knocked out the last hour.
"Some of them rushed over to one side and began piling up what looked like cakes of ice. Every few seconds one chap sent a cake flying smash at our world. Those were the new hours. You see, time moves very quickly up there, and it takes a lot of work to keep the hours moving.
"They invited me to get on the comet and take a ride through the Milky Way. We all perched on it, and some one started it off, and we went skipping along faster than any bob-sled. In a few minutes we got into the Milky Way. After a while we got off and strolled up to a funny-looking world. It was made of pies, cakes, candies, and all sorts of good things mixed. When we stopped, all the spirits looked grave, and when one of them began to talk, I grew frightened.
"He said that when little boys from the world ate such things they were all saved and piled up here. Then if a little boy ate too much he would die, and come up here and commence all over again, and the moment he put the nice things in his mouth they immediately became bitter and nasty. They all looked hard at me when he said this, and shouted, 'Make Toddletums turn over a new leaf.'
"One of them commenced to blow, and a thin vapor formed, and then another blew rents into it, until I could make out the words, 'I promise to turn over a new leaf.'
"'Turn it over!' shouted the spirits; and it sounded like a crash of thunder.
"Well, they thought I'd get frightened at that, but I didn't. I just grasped the edge of that vapor leaf, and I was turning it nicely, when I woke up, and found myself wrapping the bed-sheet around me 'cause it was cold. But, papa, I guess I'll turn over the new leaf as I promised."
[THE MIDDLE DAUGHTER.]
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE MANSE.
"I am troubled and low in my mind," said our mother, looking pensively out of the window. "I am really extremely anxious about the Wainwrights."
It was a dull and very chilly day in the late autumn. Fog hid the hills; wet leaves soaked into the soft ground; the trees dripped with moisture; every little while down came the rain, now a pour, then a drizzle—a depressing sort of day.
Our village of Highland, in the Ramapo, is perfectly enchanting in clear brilliant weather, and turn where you will, you catch a fine view of mountain, or valley, or brown stream, or tumbling cascade. On a snowy winter day it is divine; but in the fall, when there is mist hanging its gray pall over the landscape, or there are dark low-hanging clouds with steady pouring rain, the weather, it must be owned, is depressing in Highland. That is, if one cares about weather. Some people always rise above it, which is the better way.
I must explain mamma's interest in the Wainwrights. They are our dear friends, but not our neighbors, as they were before Dr. Wainwright went to live at Wishing-Brae, which was a family place left him by his brother; rather a tumble-down old place, but big, and with fields and meadows around it, and a great rambling garden. The Wainwrights were expecting their middle daughter, Grace, home from abroad.
Few people in Highland have ever been abroad; New York, or Chicago, or Omaha, or Denver is far enough away for most of us. But Grace Wainwright, when she was ten, had been borrowed by a childless uncle and aunt, who wanted to adopt her, and begged Dr. Wainwright, who had seven children and hardly any money, to give them one child on whom they could spend their heaps of money. But no, the doctor and Mrs. Wainwright wouldn't hear of anything except a loan, and so Grace had been lent, in all, eight years; seven she had spent at school, and one in Paris, Berlin, Florence, Venice, Rome, the Alps. Think of it, how splendid and charming!
Uncle Ralph and Aunt Hattie did not like to give her up now, but Grace, we heard, would come. She wanted to see her mother and her own kin; maybe she felt she ought.
At the Manse we had just finished prayers. Papa was going to his study. He wore his Friday-morning face—a sort of preoccupied pucker between his eyebrows, and a far-away look in his eyes. Friday is the day he finishes up his sermons for Sunday, and, as a matter of course, we never expect him to be delayed or bothered by our little concerns till he has them off his mind. Sermons in our house have the right of way.
Prayers had been shorter than usual this morning, and we had sung only two stanzas of the hymn, instead of four or five. Usually if mamma is anxious about anybody or anything, papa is all sympathy and attention. But not on a Friday. He paid no heed either to her tone or her words, but only said, impressively:
"My love, please do not allow me to be disturbed in any way you can avoid between this and the luncheon hour; and keep the house as quiet as you can. I dislike being troublesome, but I've had so many interruptions this week; what with illness in the congregation, and funerals, and meetings every night, my work for Sunday is not advanced very far. Children, I rely on you all to help me," and with a patient smile, and a little wave of the hand quite characteristic, papa withdrew.
We heard him moving about in his study, which was over the sitting-room, and then there came a scrape of his chair upon the floor, and a creaking sound as he settled into it by the table. Papa was safely out of the way for the next four or five hours. I would have to be a watch-dog to keep knocks from his door.
"I should think," said Amy, pertly, tossing her curls, "that when papa has so much to do he'd just go and do it, not stand here talking and wasting time. It's the same thing week after week. Such a martyr."
"Amy," said mamma, severely, "don't speak of your father in that flippant manner. Why are you lounging here so idly? Gather up the books, put this room in order, and then, with Laura's assistance, I would like you this morning to clean the china closet. Every cup and saucer and plate must be taken down and wiped separately, after being dipped into hot soap-suds and rinsed in hot water; the shelves all washed and dried, and the corners carefully gone over. See how thorough you can be, my dears," said mamma in her sweetest tones. I wondered whether she had known that Amy had planned to spend the rainy morning finishing the hand-screen she is painting for grandmother's birthday. From her looks nothing could be gathered. Mamma's blue eyes can look as unconscious of intention as a child's when she chooses to reprove, and yet does not wish to seem censorious. Amy is fifteen, and very headstrong, as indeed we all are, but even Amy never dreams of hinting that she would like to do something else than what mamma prefers when mamma arranges things in her quiet yet masterful fashion. Dear little mamma. All her daughters except Jessie are taller than herself; but mother is queen of the Manse, nevertheless.
Amy went off, having with a few deft touches set the library in order, piling the Bibles and hymn-books on the little stand in the corner, and giving a pat here and a pull there to the cushions, rugs, and curtains, went pleasantly to begin her hated task of going over the china closet. Laura followed her.
Elbert, our seventeen-year-old brother, politely held open the door for the girls to pass through.
"You see, Amy dear," he said, compassionately, "what comes on reflecting upon papa. It takes some people a long while to learn wisdom."
Amy made a little moue at him.
"I don't mind particularly," she said. "Come, Lole, when a thing's to be done, the best way is to do it and not fuss nor fret. I ought not to have said that; I knew it would vex dear mamma; but papa provokes me so with his solemn directions, as if the whole house did not always hold its breath when he is in the study. Come, Lole, let's do this work as well as we can. Amy's sunshiny disposition matches her quick temper. She may say a quick word on the impulse of the moment, but she makes up for it afterward by her loving ways."
"It isn't the week for doing this closet, Amy," said Laura. "Why didn't you tell mamma so? You wanted to paint in your roses and clematis before noon, didn't you? I think it mean. Things are so contrary," and Laura sighed.
"Oh, never mind, dear! this won't be to do next week. I think mamma was displeased and spoke hastily. Mamma and I are so much alike that we understand one another. I suppose I am just the kind of girl she used to be, and I hope I'll be the kind of woman she is when I grow up. I'm imitating mother all I can."
Laura laughed. "Well, Amy, you'd never be so popular in your husband's congregation as mamma is—never. You haven't so much tact; I don't believe you'll ever have it, either."
"I haven't it yet, of course; but I'd have more tact if I were a grown-up lady and married to a clergyman. I don't think, though, I'll ever marry a minister," said Amy, with grave determination, handing down a beautiful salad-bowl, which Laura received in both hands with the reverence due to a treasured possession. "It's the prettiest thing we own," said Amy, feeling the smooth satiny surface lovingly, and holding it up against her pink cheek, "Isn't it scrumptious, Laura?"
"Well," said Laura, "it's nice, but not so pretty as the tea-things which belonged to Greataunt Judith. They are my pride. This does not compare."
"Well, perhaps not in one way, for they are family pieces, and prove we came out of the ark. But the salad-bowl is a beauty. I don't object to the care of china myself. It is ladies' work. It surprises me that people ever are willing to trust their delicate china to clumsy maids. I wouldn't if I had gems and gold like a princess, instead of being only the daughter of a poor country clergyman. I'd always wash my own nice dishes with my own fair hands."
"That shows your Southern breeding," said Laura. "Southern women always look after their china and do a good deal of the dainty part of the house-keeping. Mamma learned that when she was a little girl living in Richmond."
"'Tisn't only Southern breeding," said Amy. "Our Holland-Dutch ancestors had the same elegant ways of taking care of their property. I'm writing a paper on 'Dutch Housewifery' for the next meeting of the Granddaughters of the Revolution, and you'll find out a good many interesting points if you listen to it."
"Amy Raeburn!" exclaimed Laura, admiringly, "I expect you'll write a book one of these days."
"I certainly intend to," replied Amy, with dignity, handing down a fat Dutch cream-jug, and at the moment incautiously jarring the step-ladder, so that, cream-jug and all, she fell to the floor. Fortunately the precious pitcher escaped injury; but Amy's sleeve caught on a nail, and as she jerked it away in her fall it loosened a shelf, and down crashed a whole pile of the second-best dinner-plates, making a terrific noise which startled the whole house.
Papa, in his study, groaned, and probably tore in two a closely written sheet of notes. Mamma and the girls came flying in. Amy picked herself up from the floor; there was a great red bruise and a scratch on her arm.
"OH, YOU POOR CHILD!" SAID MOTHER, GAUGING THE EXTENT OF THE ACCIDENT WITH A RAPID GLANCE.
"Oh, you poor child!" said mother, gauging the extent of the accident with a rapid glance. "Never mind," she said, relieved; "there isn't much harm done. Those are the plates the Ladies' Aid Society in Archertown gave me the year Frances was born. I never admired them. When some things go they carry a little piece of my heart with them, but I don't mind losing donation china. Are you hurt, Amy?"
"A bruise and a scratch—nothing to signify. Here comes Lole with the arnica. I don't care in the least since I haven't wrecked any of our Colonial heirlooms. Isn't it fortunate, mother, that we haven't broken or lost anything this congregation has bestowed?"
"Yes indeed," said mamma, gravely. "There, gather up the pieces, and get them out of the way before we have a caller."
In the Manse, callers may be looked for at every possible time and season, and some of them have eyes in the backs of their heads. For instance, Miss Florence Frick or Mrs. Elbridge Geary seems to be able to see through closed doors. And there is Mrs. Cyril Bannington Barnes, who thinks us all so extravagant, and does not hesitate to notice how often we wear our best gowns, and wonders to our faces where mamma's last winter's new furs came from, and is very much astonished and quite angry that papa should insist on sending all his boys to college. But, there, this story isn't going to be a talk about papa's people. Mamma wouldn't approve of that, I am sure.
Everybody sat down comfortably in the dining-room, while Frances and Mildred took hold and helped Amy and Laura finish the closet. Everybody meant mamma, Mildred, Frances, Elbert, Lawrence, Sammy, and Jessie. Somehow a downright rainy day in autumn, with a bit of a blaze on the hearth, makes you feel like dropping into talk and staying in one place, and discussing eventful things, such as Grace Wainwright's return, and what her effect would be on her family, and what effect they would have on her.
"I really do not think Grace is in the very least bit prepared for the life she is coming to," said Frances.
"No," said mamma, "I fear not. But she is coming to her duty, and one can always do that."
"For my part," said Elbert, "I see nothing so much amiss at the Wainwrights'. They're a jolly set, and go when you will, you find them having good times. Of course they are in straitened circumstances."
"And Grace has been accustomed to lavish expenditure," said Mildred.
"If she had remained in Paris with her Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gertrude she would have escaped a good deal of hardship," said Lawrence.
"Oh," mamma broke in, impatiently, "how short-sighted you young people are! You look at everything from your own point of view. It is not of Grace I am thinking so much. I am considering her mother and the girls and her poor worn-out father. I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of the Wainwrights. Mildred, you might send over a nut-cake and some soft custard and a glass of jelly, when it stops raining, and the last number of Harper's Magazine might be slipped into the basket too—that is, if you have all done with it. Papa and I have finished reading the serial, and we will not want it again. There's so much to read in this house."
"I'll attend to it, mamma," said Mildred. "Now what can I do to help you before I go to my French lesson?"
"Nothing, you sweetest of dears," said mother, tenderly. Mildred was her great favorite, and nobody was jealous, for we all adored our tall, fair sister.
So we scattered to our different occupations, and did not meet again till luncheon was announced.
Does somebody ask which of the minister's eight children is telling this story? If you must know, I am Frances, and what I did not myself see was all told to me at the time it happened, and put down in my journal.