THE LION'S RIDE.
The lion is the desert's King; through his domain so wide
Right swiftly and right royally this night he means to ride.
By the sedgy brink, where the wild herds drink, close crouches the grim chief;
The trembling sycamore above whispers with every leaf.
At evening on the Table Mount, when ye can see no more
The changeful play of signals gay; when the gloom is speckled o'er
With kraal fires; when the Caffre wends home through the lone karoo;
When the boshbok in the thicket sleeps, and by the stream the gnu—
Then bend your gaze across the waste: what see ye? The giraffe,
Majestic, stalks toward the lagoon the turbid lymph to quaff;
With outstretched neck and tongue adust, he kneels him down to cool
His hot thirst with a welcome draught from the foul and brackish pool.
A rustling sound—a roar—a bound—the lion sits astride
Upon his giant coursers back. Did ever King so ride?
Had ever King a steed so rare, caparisons of state
To match the dappled skin whereon that rider sits elate?
In the muscles of the neck his teeth are plunged with ravenous greed;
His tawny mane is tossing round the withers of the steed.
Up leaping with a hollow yell of anguish and surprise,
Away, away, in wild dismay the camelopard flies.
His feet have wings; see how he springs across the moonlit plain!
As from their sockets they would burst, his glaring eyeballs strain;
In thick black streams of purling blood full fast his life is fleeting;
The stillness of the desert hears his heart's tumultuous beating.
Like the cloud that through the wilderness the path of Israel traced—
Like an airy phantom, dull and wan, a spirit of the waste—
From the sandy sea uprising, as the water-spout from ocean,
A whirling cloud of dust keeps pace with the courser's fiery motion.
Croaking companions of their flight, the vultures whir on high;
Below, the terror of the fold, the panther fierce and sly,
And hyenas foul, round graves that prowl, join in the horrid race;
By the foot-prints wet with gore and sweat their monarch's course they trace.
They see him on his living throne, and quake with fear, the while
With claws of steel he tears piecemeal his cushion's painted pile.
On! on! no pause, no rest, giraffe, while life and strength remain!
The steed by such a rider backed may madly plunge in vain.
Reeling upon the desert's verge, he falls, and breathes his last;
The courser, stained with dust and foam, is the rider's fell repast.
O'er Madagascar, eastward far, a faint flush is descried:
Thus nightly, o'er his broad domain, the king of beasts doth ride.
Ferdinand Freiligrath.
[A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.]
BY JIMMY BROWN.
I have been in the back bedroom up stairs all the afternoon, and I am expecting father every minute. It was just after one o'clock when he told me to come up stairs with him, and just then Mr. Thompson came to get him to go down town with him, and father said I'd have to excuse him for a little while and don't you go out of that room till I come back. So I excused him, and he hasn't come back yet; but I've opened one of the pillows and stuffed my clothes full of feathers, and I don't care much how soon he comes back now.
It's an awful feeling to be waiting up stairs for your father, and to know that you have done wrong, though you really didn't mean to do so much wrong as you have done. I am willing to own that nobody ought to take anybody's clothes when he's in swimming, but anyhow they began it first, and I thought just as much as could be that the clothes were theirs.
The real boys that are to blame are Tom Wilson and Amzi Willetts. A week ago Saturday Joe Hamilton and I went in swimming down at the island. It's a beautiful place. The island is all full of bushes, and on one side the water is deep, where the big boys go in, and on the other it is shallow, where we fellows that can't swim very much where the water is more than two feet deep go in. While Joe and I were swimming, Tom and Amzi came and stole our clothes, and put them in their boat, and carried them clear across to the deep part of the river. We saw them do it, and we had an awful time to get the clothes back, and I think it was just as mean.
Joe and I said we'd get even with them, and I know it was wrong, because it was a revengeful feeling, but anyhow we said we'd do it: and I don't think revenge is so very bad when you don't hurt a fellow, and wouldn't hurt him for anything, and just want to play him a trick that is pretty nearly almost quite innocent. But I don't say we did right, and when I've done wrong I'm always ready to say so.
Well, Joe and I watched, and last Saturday we saw Tom and Amzi go down to the island, and go in swimming on the shallow side; so we waded across and sneaked down among the bushes, and after a while we saw two piles of clothes. So we picked them up and ran away with them. The boys saw us, and made a terrible noise; but we sung out that they'd know now how it felt to have your clothes carried off, and we waded back across the river, and carried the clothes up to Amzi's house, and hid them in his barn, and thought that we'd got even with Tom and Amzi, and taught them a lesson which would do them a great deal of good, and would make them good and useful men.
This was in the morning about noon, and when I had my dinner I thought I'd go and see how the boys liked swimming, and offer to bring back their clothes if they'd promise to be good friends. I never was more astonished in my life than I was to find that they were nowhere near the island. I was beginning to be afraid they'd been drowned, when I heard some men calling me, and I found Squire Meredith and Amzi Willetts's father, who is a deacon, hiding among the bushes. They told me that some villains had stolen their clothes while they were in swimming, and they'd give me fifty cents if I'd go up to their houses and get their wives to give me some clothes to bring down to them.
I said I didn't want the fifty cents, but I'd go and try to find some clothes for them. I meant to go straight up to Amzi's barn and to bring the clothes back, but on the way I met Amzi with the clothes in a basket bringing them down to the island, and he said: "Somebody's goin' to be arrested for stealing father's and Squire Meredith's clothes. I saw the fellows that stole 'em, and I'm going to tell." You see, Joe and I had taken the wrong clothes, and Squire Meredith and Deacon Willetts, who had been in swimming on the deep side of the island, had been about two hours trying to play they were Zulus, and didn't need to wear any clothes, only they found it pretty hard work.
Deacon Willetts came straight to our house, and told father that his unhappy son—that's what he called me, and wasn't I unhappy, though—had stolen his clothes and Squire Meredith's; but for the sake of our family he wouldn't say very much about it, only if father thought best to spare the rods and spoil a child, he wouldn't be able to regard him as a man and a brother. So father called me and asked me if I had taken Deacon Willetts's clothes, and when I said yes, and was going to explain how it happened, he said that my conduct was such, and that I was bringing his gray hairs down, only I wouldn't hurt them for fifty million dollars, and I've often heard him say he hadn't a gray hair in his head.
And now I'm waiting up stairs for the awful moment to arrive. I deserve it, for they say that Squire Meredith and Deacon Willetts are mornhalf eaten up by mosquitoes, and are confined to the house with salt and water, and crying out all the time that they can't stand it. I hope the feathers will work, but if they don't, no matter. I think I shall be a missionary, and do good to the heathen. I think I hear father coming in the front gate now, so I must close.
[THEIR BEST SECRET.]
BY ELLA M. BAKER.
Two healthy, happy New England girls had been hunting for May-flowers all the morning. They had found them growing so pink and in such quantities that they were too busy filling their hands to notice the sudden shadow sweeping over the sky. Percy Shipley in her brown calico, her dark blue apron, and her log-cabin sun-bonnet, Reba Bradford in her gray calico, her red apron, and a sun-bonnet to match Percy's, knelt breathless on the warm turf, bewitched—and no wonder—by the pink and white beauties that smiled up at them from among the dead leaves, like babies just awakening in their pillowed cradles. So the dash of impetuous rain fell, without any warning, smartly on the two log-cabin sun-bonnets; but they only laughed merrily at it, sprang up, and ran for the nearest pine-tree. Reba pulled off her "blinders," as she called the sun-bonnet, while she ran. How black the cloud was growing! and against the cloud stood out all the more distinctly a low white steeple.
"Percy! Percy! run for the old church," cried Reba, wheeling about.
Away they flew, dashing through the alders, dodging under the birches, never minding the clinging blackberry vines, the low huckleberry bushes, the bit of bosky swamp. The rain, as if it were running after them, pattered faster and faster. It was in a delightful panic of haste and heat that they brought up finally on the narrow stone steps of the old church, and drew a long breath under the ugly little portico with half its supporting pillars fallen out. Not another house was in sight; the road in front had ridges of grass through the very middle, saucily making themselves at home where it was plain horses did not often claim right of way nowadays. Ever since Reba and Percy could remember—indeed, long before that—the old church had stood just so, only growing more forlorn year by year, seeming to be forgotten by everybody. As the new village sprang up among the valley mills, the new churches were built there, and the low-roofed houses one by one crumbled away, which the Shipleys and Bradfords of fifty years ago had known in their prime.
"Let's get in if we can," said Reba, boldly.
"It don't look as if we could," Percy answered, doubtfully.
AT THE DOOR OF THE OLD CHURCH.—Drawn by Jessie Curtis Shepherd.
But nobody cared now to lock the disused door. At the united eager push of the two girls, it opened in a rusty, rheumatic way, not widely, but far enough for them to squeeze in.
"There!" said Reba. She pushed forward, sank on the pulpit stairs, and shook the water from her sun-bonnet.
"There!" echoed Percy, with a great sigh. She deposited the old brown egg basket full of the May-flowers that looked so pearly among the wealth of thick green leaves, took off her "blinders" also, and sat down in the nearest pew. They were both so out of breath that they said no more at first.
The longer they kept silent, the more still and solemn seemed the empty place. Dusty, indeed, littered, and defaced, it all was. Thick, dingy cobwebs hung from the pulpit; a gray hornets' nest showed in one lofty corner; the pulpit stairs were broken; many of the pews were gone entirely; splinters of board and laths, stray leaves of hymn-books, a tuning-fork, a broken lamp, fragments of mortar, and varied rubbish, strewed the uneven floor. In spite of all that, it was still a church to Percy. With reverent eyes she looked up at the pulpit, where the minister used to stand, at the gallery, where the singers' seats used to be. She wondered who used to sit in this very pew years and years ago; she wondered if the clothes they wore, their Sunday best, looked like the queer bonnets and gowns that Aunt Bethiah kept laid away in her old locker. When Reba said, "Percy," she started, half shocked, as though somebody had called out her name in service-time.
Reba, meanwhile, had been just as busy thinking, but her thoughts had been very different ones.
"Percy Shipley," said she, solemnly, "I've thought of something perfectly splendid."
"You have? What is it?" asked Percy, expectantly.
Reba was exploring the cobwebby pulpit. She leaned over the edge, and said, in a low, impressive voice, with a flap of the damp sun-bonnet toward Percy, who rose eagerly in her pew to listen: "Nobody uses this church. Let's you and I use it."
"What! preach in it?" gasped Percy.
"No, no," said Reba, laughing until the sun-bonnet fell out of her hand, and went tearing through the cobwebs, "but have it for our place, don't you see? to keep house, and tell secrets, and have a lovely time in. Oh, Percy! wouldn't it be grand?"
"Oh, Reba! would you dare?"
The soft, clear eyes, full of wonder and appeal, in Percy's pew, lifted up wide open toward the great black ones of Reba looking down from the pulpit. The dark ones, with a flash of excitement in them, never wavered.
"Dare? yes, indeed, I'd dare for both of us if there were anything to be afraid of. But there isn't, Percy. Why, nobody comes here; it's out of everybody's sight. We won't tell a soul; and as for asking leave, no one owns it, so there's no one to ask. And we can't hurt it." The pulpit spoke with authority and slight impatience. The pew replied gently but persistently.
"It would be the greatest fun, and it's just like you to think of it, Reba; I only mean that perhaps it would be wrong to play and make good times here. Remember, it's a church, Reba."
"Well, let's remember it's a church," answered the pulpit, meeting the scruples with a ready argument as skillful as any that may have proceeded from it before: "let's agree, to begin with, that we'll always behave when we're here, and just run outside if we want to be cross, or selfish, or anything not fit for a church. We won't do anything here that we'd be ashamed to do if we remembered its being a church. That will make it all right, for I'm sure, Percy, a church is the very place to be good in."
The pew was convinced. Percy fairly clapped her hands, and cried, "It will be the very best secret we ever had, Reba!" as they helped each other enlarge upon the plan.
And I think myself that few girls have a nicer secret. With tidy housekeeping instincts that they had learned at home, Percy and Reba first set themselves to make the place as neat as circumstances would allow. They picked up the litter, and swept the floor over and over. Many a torn leaf of catechism and hymn-book they lingered to read over as they labored, imagining that they should find there something new and strange. They never did, and the catechism answers did not stay long in their memories; but a single couplet of one hymn that they found afterward they never did forget, perhaps because it was so associated with the sweeping of the old church. The line was this well-known verse,
"Who sweeps a room as by Thy laws
Makes that and the action fine."
As high as they could reach they rid the place of dust and cobwebs. Percy chose one square pew, and Reba another, to be peculiar personal property, in which to set up housekeeping, and many an imaginary comedy or tragedy they enacted in those pews, many an odd treasure came to be stored there with nobody to say, "Do take that rubbish off!" Oh! it felt grand to have so much room, so much airy, unused space, and to be able to trim up whenever they liked with evergreen branches, blossoming boughs, and all the lavish greenery they had patience to bring! Here they learned their lessons together; here they practiced each other on the "pieces" that were to be declaimed at school on exhibition-day. It was fine to see Reba ascend the broken stairs, and courtesying to Percy with a flourish, recite "Casabianca" or "We are Seven," until it would seem the very hornets' nest must be thrilled with her accents. Percy, somehow, never was willing, when her turn came, to occupy the same high place, but she used to be sure that she would make no mistake on exhibition-day if only she could have that same broken window, filled in with blue sky, to fix her eyes upon as she spoke.
She would not forget, nor let Reba forget, the compact they had agreed upon. To be sure, they were not often tempted to be cross or unjust to each other, but there did occur a crisis sometimes when one or the other would stop in the middle of an impatient word and run out of the church. Nearly always her companion would follow after; in the open air it would all be made up, and with arms entwined they would go peacefully back into the church again.
But there came a week when everything seemed to go wrong. It was intensely hot and dry. Reba complained fretfully that nothing but heat, dust, and flies came in at their windows. Percy declared that the hum of the hornets made her nervous.
"And, Reba," said she, "I don't think it's fair for you to disarrange the things in my part. You never used to do it."
"I haven't touched your things, Percy," retorted Reba, in a lofty tone; "and I shouldn't think you'd better say much, when you've been mussing over here in my pew the way you have."
"Why, Reba Bradford! what do you mean?"
"Why, Percy Shipley! you needn't pretend."
Reba's eyes flashed angrily; Percy's cheeks were all afire.
"Perhaps you know what you mean, Reba Bradford; I don't," said Percy, bitterly. "But I do know that the frosted cake my mother gave me, and that I saved to make a feast of with you, is all gone but a few crumbs, and nothing in my keepsake box is as I left it."
"And you don't know anything about the mottoes and sugar kisses I was saving up for you in my keepsake box, I suppose?" sneered Reba. "And you couldn't account for the way my gilt mug came broken here?"
"Do you dare to think I'd steal from you?" cried Percy, stamping her foot.
Oh, it was quite dreadful! They both forgot the place and their compact. I'm afraid they both called each other names, and the end of it all was that they marched off home different ways, one weeping angry tears, and the other vowing "never to speak to her again."
For three doleful days Reba did not go near the old church nor Percy's house. At the end of the three days she said frankly to herself, "If Percy should spoil all my things, and eat every sugar-plum I ever have, it would be better than this." She set off that very minute to go and tell Percy so. But Percy's mother met her at the door.
"No, dear, you mustn't come in," she said, kindly. "I know how you love Percy; but her fever seems pretty high, and you mustn't run any risk of catching it. Wait until she is better."
Reba gave a sob and hurried away, dreadfully shocked and frightened. Poor Percy! perhaps it was the sickness coming on that had made her so unlike herself that foolish day when they quarrelled. Reba instinctively hurried to the old church to cry by herself; and having arrived there, she did cry until every tear was spent. Her face was still buried in her apron, when there came echoing through the silent space a rough voice that said, pitifully, "Don't take on so; what is the matter?"
Reba was no coward, but she did give a great leap that brought her to her feet. A boy's face was peering over the gallery at her. It was a homely face, but a kind one. Reba was sure she had never seen it before.
"Who are you? What are you here for?" said she, sharply.
The boy laughed; then he grew sober at once. "I wouldn't tell you," said he, "if I didn't believe you're the 'pon honor sort. As 'tis, I'll tell you the whole truth, and trust you. If you shouldn't be 'pon honor, so much the worse for me. I'm running away."
"Running away from what?" questioned Reba, as sharply as before.
"From a bad master," said the boy, with a scowl, "and I was getting along very well till I hurt this foot of mine, not far from here. When I couldn't drag myself much further, I came in sight of this old church, and crawled in for the night. I was pretty hungry, and perhaps you won't blame me so much if I did rummage over your little traps down there in hopes of finding something to eat. I'm sorry I broke the mug; I hit it in the dark; and now you won't blame the other one, will you? I meant, any way, to clear her before I went."
"You've been here ever since?" cried Reba; "and do you mean to say you haven't had anything else to eat?"
"Oh yes," said the boy, cheerfully; "when I found I couldn't get along further till my foot healed, I hobbled out and found roots and berries quite near."
Reba loved adventures, and in Plumley adventures happened but rarely. She made much of this one, only longing for Percy to share it. How she enjoyed taking meat, bread, and fruit to the refugee in their own old church, tyrannizing over him, and making him bathe, bandage, and salve his injured foot just as she said, coaxing him to tell her the whole story of his hard life, and contriving a couch for him out of the few faded melancholy cushions to be found on the premises!
And when Percy was better, and able to talk, what a great thing it was to tell her all about the strange thing that had happened!
"He's just as much your boy as mine," declared Reba, magnanimously, "and I wouldn't do or say anything about him till you were well enough to tell what you think best, Percy. Everything about the old church is half yours, and more than half, and we'll remember better than ever after this, won't we?"
What Percy advised was that Reba's father should be told the whole story, and taken properly in his capacity of Doctor to see the lame foot.
"Well, well, certainly the most unexpected call I ever had in my life," said the Doctor, when Reba proudly escorted him to the old church. "Who'd ever have thought of finding a patient here?"
But he took the kindest interest in the friendless orphan, carried him in his carriage to his own house, and ended by liking him so well for his plain, blunt, manly ways that, when the foot was healed, he engaged him as office-boy.
As long as the old church stood, Bob Sheffield used to look at it with gratitude; and years after a bolt of lightning had destroyed it during one summer night, Percy in her new home at the West, Reba in her stately house in an Eastern city, loved to tell the children stories of the good times two little country girls used to have under the roof of an old deserted church out in the woods.
Most of our boys and girls are busy, happy, and well. Do you ever think what a glorious thing it is to be simply well—not to have a headache, or a pain, or the least bit of weariness, no matter how long you play, or how high you climb, or how far and fast you run? Half the fun and pleasure you have comes from the fact that you can go to sleep the moment your heads touch the pillow, and that when you awake in the morning, you wake all over at once, and spring out of bed, ready for anything that may be before you. If you do happen to be ill occasionally, there are always kind hands to care for you; and it gives you a good chance to find out what a loving father and mother you have, so tenderly they see to your wants. Even the doctor, with his shrewd face and droll manner, becomes dear to you when you are sick; and you always call him yours, in a new way, after you have taken his pills and powders, with mother's nice jam to take their taste away. So now, boys and girls, will you please read the letter a lady has asked us to publish, and make up your minds about helping along in the work she proposes?