Chapter II.
TOBY RUNS AWAY FROM HOME.
Toby could scarcely restrain himself at the prospect of this golden future that had so suddenly opened before him. He tried to express his gratitude, but could only do so by evincing his willingness to commence work at once.
"No, no, that won't do," said Mr. Lord, cautiously. "If your uncle Daniel should see you working here, he might mistrust something, and then you couldn't get away."
"I don't believe he'd try to stop me," said Toby, confidently; "for he's told me lots of times that it was a sorry day for him when he found me."
"We won't take any chances, my son," was the reply, in a very benevolent tone, as he patted Toby on the head, and at the same time handed him a piece of pasteboard. "There's a ticket for the circus, and you come around to see me about ten o'clock to-night. I'll put you on one of the wagons, and by to-morrow morning your uncle Daniel will have hard work to find you."
If Toby had followed his inclinations, the chances are that he would have fallen on his knees, and kissed Mr. Lord's hands in the excess of his gratitude. But not knowing exactly how such a show of thankfulness might be received, he contented himself by repeatedly promising that he would be punctual to the time and place appointed.
He would have loitered in the vicinity of the candy stand in order that he might gain some insight into the business; but Mr. Lord advised that he remain away, lest his uncle Daniel should see him, and suspect where he had gone when he was missed in the morning.
As Toby walked around the circus grounds, whereon was so much to attract his attention, he could not prevent himself from assuming an air of proprietorship. His interest in all that was going on was redoubled, and in his anxiety that everything should be done correctly and in the proper order he actually, and perhaps for the first time in his life, forgot that he was hungry. He was really to travel with a circus, to become a part, as it were, of the whole, and to be able to see its many wonderful and beautiful attractions every day.
Even the very tent ropes had acquired a new interest for him, and the faces of the men at work seemed suddenly to have become those of friends. How hard it was for him to walk around unconcernedly; and how especially hard to prevent his feet from straying toward that tempting display of dainties which he was to sell to those who came to see and enjoy, and who would look at him with wonder and curiosity! It was very hard not to be allowed to tell his playmates of his wonderfully good fortune; but silence meant success, and he locked his secret in his bosom, not even daring to talk with any one he knew lest he should betray himself by some incautious word.
He did not go home to dinner that day, and once or twice he felt impelled to walk past the candy stand, giving a mysterious shake of the head at the proprietor as he did so. The afternoon performance passed off as usual to all of the spectators save Toby. He imagined that each one of the performers knew that he was about to join them; and even as he passed the cage containing the monkeys he fancied that one particularly old one knew all about his intention of running away.
Of course it was necessary for him to go home at the close of the afternoon's performance, in order to get one or two valuable articles of his own—such as a boat, a kite, and a pair of skates—and in order that his actions might not seem suspicious. Before he left the grounds, however, he stole slyly around to the candy stand, and informed Mr. Job Lord, in a very hoarse whisper, that he would be on hand at the time appointed.
Mr. Lord patted him on the head, gave him two large sticks of candy, and what was more kind and surprising, considering the fact that he wore glasses, and was cross-eyed, he winked at Toby. A wink from Mr. Lord must have been intended to convey a great deal, because, owing to the defect in his eyes, it required no little exertion, and even then could not be considered as a really first-class wink.
That wink, distorted as it was, gladdened Toby's heart immensely, and took away nearly all the sting of the scolding with which Uncle Daniel greeted him when he reached home.
That night, despite the fact that he was going to travel with the circus, despite the fact that his home was not a happy or cheerful one, Toby was not in a pleasant frame of mind. He began to feel for the first time that he was doing wrong; and as he gazed at Uncle Daniel's stern, forbidding-looking face it seemed to have changed somewhat from its severity, and caused a great lump of something to come up in his throat as he thought that perhaps he should never see it again. Just then one or two kind words would have prevented him from running away, bright as the prospect of circus life appeared.
It was almost impossible for him to eat anything, and this very surprising state of affairs attracted the attention of Uncle Daniel.
"Bless my heart! what ails the boy?" asked the old man, as he peered over his glasses at Toby's well-filled plate, which was usually emptied so quickly. "Are ye sick, Toby, or what is the matter with ye?"
"No, I hain't sick," said Toby, with a sigh; "but I've been to the circus, an' I got a good deal to eat."
"Oho, you spent that cent I give ye, eh, an' got so much that it made ye sick?"
Toby thought of the six pea-nuts which he had bought with the penny Uncle Daniel had given him; and, amidst all his homesickness, he could not help wondering if Uncle Daniel ever made himself sick with only six pea-nuts when he was a boy.
As no one paid any further attention to Toby, he pushed back his plate, arose from the table, and went with a heavy heart to attend to his regular evening chores. The cow, the hens, and even the pigs, came in for a share of his unusually kind attention; and as he fed them all, the big tears rolled down his cheeks, as he thought that perhaps never again would he see any of them. These dumb animals had all been Toby's confidants; he had poured out his griefs in their ears, and fancied, when the world or Uncle Daniel had used him unusually hard, that they sympathized with him. Now he was leaving them forever, and as he locked the stable door, he could hear the sounds of music coming from the direction of the circus grounds, and he was angry at it because it represented that which was taking him away from his home, even though it was not as pleasant as it might have been.
Still, he had no thought of breaking the engagement which he had made. He went to his room, made a bundle of his worldly possessions, and crept out of the back door, down the road to the circus.
Mr. Lord saw him as soon as he arrived on the grounds, and as he passed another ticket to Toby, he took his bundle from him, saying as he did so, "I'll pack up your bundle with my things, and then you'll be sure not to lose it. Don't you want some candy?"
Toby shook his head; he had just discovered that there was possibly some connection between his heart and his stomach, for his grief at leaving home had taken from him all desire for good things. It is also more than possible that Mr. Lord had had experience enough with boys to know that they might be homesick on the eve of starting to travel with a circus; and in order to make sure that Toby would keep to his engagement he was unusually kind.
That evening was the longest Toby ever knew. He wandered from one cage of animals to another; then to see the performance in the ring, and back again to the animals, in the vain hope of passing the time pleasantly. But it was of no use; that lump in his throat would remain there, and the thoughts of what he was about to do would trouble him severely. The performance failed to interest him, and the animals did not attract until he had visited the monkey cage for the third or fourth time. Then he fancied that the same venerable monkey who had looked so knowing in the afternoon was gazing at him with a sadness which could only have come from a thorough knowledge of all the grief and doubt that was in his heart.
TOBY AND HIS NEW FRIEND—Drawn by W. A. Rogers.
There was no one around the cages, and Toby got just as near to the iron bars as possible. No sooner had he flattened his little pug-nose against the iron than the aged monkey came down from the ring in which he had been swinging, and, seating himself directly in front of Toby's face, looked at him most compassionately.
It would not have surprised the boy just then if the animal had spoken; but as he did not, Toby did the next best thing, and spoke to him.
"I s'pose you remember that you saw me this afternoon, an' somebody told you that I was goin' to join the circus, didn't they?"
The monkey made no reply, though Toby fancied that he winked an affirmative answer; and he looked so sympathetic that he continued, confidentially:
"Well, I'm the same feller, an' I don't mind telling you that I'm awfully sorry I promised that candy man I'd go with him. Do you know that I came near crying at the supper table to-night; an' Uncle Dan'l looked real good an' nice, though I never thought so before. I wish I wasn't goin', after all, 'cause it don't seem a bit like a good time now; but I s'pose I must, 'cause I promised to, an' 'cause the candy man has got all my things."
The big tears had begun to roll down Toby's cheeks, and as he ceased speaking the monkey reached out one little paw, which Toby took as earnestly as if it had been done purposely to console him.
"You're real good, you are," continued Toby; "an' I hope I shall see you real often, for it seems to me now, when there hain't any folks around, as if you was the only friend I've got in this great big world. It's awful when a feller feels the way I do, an' when he don't seem to want anything to eat. Now if you'll stick to me, I'll stick to you, an' then it won't be half so bad when we feel this way."
During this speech Toby had still clung to the little brown paw, which the monkey now withdrew, and continued to gaze into the boy's face.
"The fellers all say I don't amount to anything," sobbed Toby, "an' Uncle Dan'l says I don't, an' I s'pose they know; but I tell you I feel just as bad, now that I'm goin' away from them all, as if I was as good as any of them."
At this moment Toby saw Mr. Lord enter the tent, and he knew that the summons to start was about to be given.
"Good-by," he said to the monkey, as he vainly tried to take him by the hand again; "remember what I've told you, an' don't forget that Toby Tyler is feelin' worse to-night than if he was twice as big an' twice as good."
Mr. Lord had come to summon him away, and he now told Toby that he would show him with which man he was to ride that night.
Toby looked another good-by at the venerable monkey, who was watching him closely, and then followed his employer out of the tent, among the ropes and poles and general confusion attendant upon the removal of a circus from one place to another.
[to be continued.]
[CAMBRIDGE SERIES]
OF
INFORMATION CARDS FOR SCHOOLS.[1]
No. 4.—About Jack Frost.
BY W. J. ROLFE, A.M.
With the single exception of water, all substances expand, or become larger, when heated, and contract, or become smaller, when cooled. This is seen in metals better than in most other bodies. An iron ball which when cold will just pass through a certain ring will not do so after being put in boiling water. The tires of carriage wheels before being put on are heated in a fire, in order that their contraction in cooling may make them bind more tightly. On a railroad a little space is left between the ends of the rails to allow them to expand. If this were not done, their lengthening in hot weather would bend them outward or inward, so that they would not be exactly parallel, and this might be the cause of serious accidents. It has been proved that Bunker Hill Monument—a granite pile 220 feet high—is bent to one side by the expanding of the opposite side when the sun shines upon it; and similar changes must take place in every tower, or steeple, or other tall structure exposed to the sun's rays.
The least change in the temperature of any material produces a change in its size, though not in its weight; and if one part is heated or cooled more than another, the shape of the whole must be somewhat altered.
Water contracts until it is cooled down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit—that is, 40 degrees of our common thermometers, or 8 degrees above the freezing-point—and then it expands until it freezes. This is a wise provision of nature. If water kept on contracting with cold, it would begin to freeze at the bottom, where the coldest portions of it would settle by their weight, and this would go on until it was all frozen, so that in winter our lakes and rivers would become solid masses of ice. This would kill all fishes and other animals in the water, and all the heat of summer would not suffice to liquefy these great bodies of ice. As it is, the water begins to freeze at the surface, and the layer of ice keeps the water below it from freezing; for though the ice is itself cold, a wall of it will keep out the cold as well as a wall of stone or brick.
The force with which water expands in freezing is almost irresistible. The freezing of half a gill of water in a confined space will lift a weight of several tons. A thick iron bomb-shell filled with water will be split open by the freezing of the liquid as it would be by a charge of gunpowder. In winter the water-pipes in our houses are often burst by the freezing of their contents. In some parts of England advantage is taken of this property of water in the slate quarries. Large blocks of slate are placed where the rain will fall upon their edges. The water works its way between the layers, freezes, and splits the mass into thin plates.
Jack Frost has done a good deal of this rock-splitting on his own account. A large part of the soil of our world has been made by the freezing of water in the cracks and crevices of rocks. Mountains have thus been rent asunder and pulverized, and the work goes on every winter. And after the soil has been formed, it is broken up and crumbled by the action of frosts and thaws. Jack Frost is a good helper to the ploughman and the farmer.
He works also on a grander scale than this. In many parts of the earth, as you know, there are great rivers of ice called glaciers. They not only look like rivers, but they flow like them, though so slowly that we can not see the motion. In the course of a year they move only a few hundred feet, but with mighty force, grinding the sides and bottom of the valley as they go, breaking off huge masses of rock, and bearing them along, together with smaller stones, earth, and mud. Thus they are gradually tearing down the hills and filling up the valleys.
Ages ago vast glaciers swept in this way over a large portion of the Northern hemisphere, and in many places we can see how they ground and scratched the sides of mountains and surfaces of rocks on their way. The big stones known as "bowlders" that abound in many parts of the country were brought and dropped by these moving masses of ice, and in some cases we can tell just where they came from, perhaps hundreds of miles away.
On the other hand, some of Jack Frost's work is of the minutest and most delicate sort. With what exquisite patterns in ice he adorns the glass of our windows in winter! All that fine tracery is made up of tiny crystals, the lines and angles of which are more exact than a jeweller could cut them on a gem. Every snow-flake is a mass of such crystals, of many forms, yet all variations of one pattern. Let the flakes fall upon a piece of dark cloth, and you can sometimes see with the naked eye that they are regular six-pointed stars, but with a common magnifying-glass you can examine them much better. All ice is composed of these crystals closely packed together; and if a sunbeam is allowed to shine through a piece of it, the melting of the crystals makes the interior look as if it were studded with lovely little transparent flowers with six petals. In Russia a palace was once built of ice, and all the furniture and decorations were of the same material. It was very wonderful and very beautiful, but not so wonderful or so beautiful as the natural structure of the ice itself.
The change from water to ice is a familiar one to us, but to the ignorant natives of the tropics it seems almost like a miracle. It is only within a few years that ice has been imported into these tropical countries, and at first it was as great a curiosity as solid mercury or quicksilver would be here. This liquid metal, which is used in thermometers, does not freeze in our country, except very rarely in the coldest weather of the extreme north; but in the arctic regions this often occurs, and the solid mercury can be hammered and wrought like silver. Spoons might be made of it, but they would instantly melt if put into ice-cold water.
A FORECASTLE YARN.