L'Envoi.
As one goes over this world of ours
One frequently finds a Jeremy Black,
Who overrates the natural powers
The Fates have granted him—somewhat slack.
Those people who build, though they may not know it,
A horn so large that they never can blow it.
[WAS THE DAY A FAILURE?]
BY KATE R. McDOWELL.
Had you known the Oliver family, many things would have shown you that Fourth of July was near at hand. Especially did the Oliver wood-shed herald its approach. That heap of tin cans in the corner had accumulated by Maggie the cook's promising the boys that she would open all winter the vegetables, soups, and fruits with greatest care, and see that not one of the cans found its way into the ash-barrel.
"We can't have too many," said Hugh, taking one from the pile; "for you know we all agreed that sending them up was the most fun of all last year. How we did keep them whizzing!"
In another corner stood a good-sized hand-cart.
"Halloo!" exclaimed Hugh; "you've got that on hand in good season. Now are you sure of the place, Dug? If we go so very early, it may be rather dark, you know."
"Oh, I can find it. I was there with Eugene the day before he went away. It's where a basket shop used to be, and the chips are in piles, some of them three feet high. We couldn't ask anything better—ash, too, regular blazers. They'll make a glorious bonfire."
"And as we are going in to Boston in the evening to see the fire-works, why, we must have it early as we can in the morning," remarked Hugh.
The next morning, as Douglas fancied himself on the point of lighting a huge fire-cracker that was to send up an enormous can with a picture of thirty-eight tomatoes on it, Hugh substituted a sound shaking for the expected explosion.
"Hush," said he, in answer to Douglas's remonstrances. "It's been raining."
"Raining!" repeated Douglas, in a tone as though rain on the Fourth of July were an impossible occurrence, and as unseasonable as a snow-storm. "Raining!"
Five minutes later, Hugh and Douglas were out of sight and hearing, as, each with a hand on the cart, they ran lightly down the hill, and turned off at the first side road, walking and running by turns until Douglas announced, "Here we are!"
"And so evidently is somebody else," added Hugh, as two little figures were noticed by the chip pile, rapidly filling a large basket.
"They've come!" the boy had just whispered to his sister.
"Halloo!" cried Douglas. "Goin' to celebrate?"
"No, sir," in a girl's voice; "we uses 'em, sir."
Whether the announcement that any one could be gathering chips without intention of celebrating was a revelation to Douglas, or whether the "sir" pleased him, is uncertain, but something had the effect of making him ignore Hugh's "Do come ahead, Dug, and help fill," as, suiting action to word, his brother threw an armful of the light wood into the cart.
"You don't get up so early as this every morning?" queried Douglas, with surprise.
"Only since the day we heard you and another talk of coming here to get wood for to-day. Since then we've worked pretty steady," said the girl, with a weary smile.
"Hear this, Hugh, will you!" cried Douglas. "They overheard Eugene and me planning to come here, and we're taking their wood."
"Oh no, you're not," said the girl, quickly. "It's nobody's but those as gets it."
"Of course, Dug," frowned Hugh, impatiently. "Don't stand talking there. Come on and fill, can't you. They've probably their wood-house crammed by this time, anyway."
"Oh no," said the girl, turning to Hugh. "It's so far, sir. We can't lug more nor ten baskets a day."
"Far!—where?" still questioned Douglas, as Hugh went to work again.
"You'll see when the fog lifts. The red cottage by the brook."
"What! not 'way down by the mill?"
"Yes, sir," said the girl, as she shook the basket, and piled some more chips on top. "Come, Dick, this is your side," and off they started in the light rain that was beginning to fall.
"Poor little things," said Douglas, "I haven't the heart to take their wood," and he threw some chips indifferently into the cart. "Oh, Hugh, I've a plan," and his face lit up. "Let's give 'em a lift—this cartful; will you?"
Hugh deliberated. It was raining. The bonfire might as well be given up. As the cart was filled, the mill children might as well have it. He only wished it had been his plan instead of Douglas's.
It seemed but an instant later that the chips were shaking merrily in the cart, as the boys started to overtake the little laborers; and they were not entirely quieted when both children were carefully lifted to a seat and told to hold on firmly.
"Ain't it splendid!" whispered Dick Ransom, loudly, to his sister. "Now I can play on me bones and hunt fire-crackers all day; can't I, Jinny?" almost losing his hold in delight at thought of a holiday. "Oh, ain't it splendid! We're 'goin' as fast as Dr. Phisterer, ain't we, sis?"
Jenny smiled. "Won't granny be pleased?" was all she said, while the chips seemed to dance again at her thought.
As you may have guessed, more than one load found its way to the red cottage that morning. Three times did the Oliver boys heap the cart, and three times did little Dick Ransom fancy he was Dr. Phisterer as he sat perched up on the chips, having the best Fourth of July he had ever known.
As the Oliver family was breakfasting it commenced to rain hard.
"The day is going to be a perfect fizzle," announced Hugh. "It'll be no fun staying out; besides, nothing will go off. Imagine being cooped in the house all day!"
The twins looked disconsolate.
"Cheer up," said Douglas. "We can put off some torpedoes in the attic if it comes to the worst; and, best of all, we'll be back with the two Wills in less than no time, and they always think up something."
The boys were at the station soon after, Hugh keeping two bombshells in readiness to be fired the moment the two Wills got off the train.
"I'll signal," said Douglas, his eyes on the off-coming passengers; but he had no need, for there was no Will Edson and no Will Hammond aboard.
"Missed the train," decided Douglas, a shadow on his usually happy face. "Let's see if there's a telegram. Good! there is," as the operator handed him an envelope.
Both read it, and each looked blankly at the other.
"Well, I never thought of their not coming."
"A perfect fizzle," said Hugh, pocketing the bombshells with a frown of disappointment. "The whole day—just as I told you."
"We may as well go home"—in Douglas's voice, but without its usual ring, as they slowly left the waiting-room.
"We mustn't let the weather get the best of us," said Douglas, as they reached home. "We can at least give the others a good time."
So they went up stairs, and played nine-pins with the boys, and were targets for their torpedoes, until the attic rang with merry shouts.
"The little ones are having quite a day, after all," thought Mrs. Oliver, a pleased smile on her face, "and Bridget at last has that long-promised morning out."
Another disappointment came with dinner—a dispatch from Mr. Oliver, stating that he was called on urgent business out of Boston, and preferred the boys did not come into town alone.
"That caps the climax," said Hugh, abruptly leaving the table. "And it's clearing up, too. I should think papa might take one holiday in the year for a change."
The boys had their heads together after dinner. Hugh had made up his mind to accept the situation; indeed, he had done more than that in going on with the train of thought that Douglas's unselfish suggestions of the morning had opened to him.
"Why, it's a splendid idea, Hugh," Douglas was saying. "Maggie will get us cloths and water, and we'll lock the library doors."
"They're fixin' the magic lantern," said the twins, as the children stood three or four deep outside the door.
"P'r'aps tabberlows," ventured little Edith, remembering her success at the Child's Hospital benefit, and determining to stay within call all afternoon.
"Listen," advised the twins.
"Shakspeare here," they heard in Hugh's voice, "and Dickens there. That's just exactly as they were."
"It's tabberlows," sobbed tired Edith on nurse's shoulder, as they all went up for an afternoon nap.
"Yes," said the twins, as they toiled up the stairs after her. "We remember that very one."
It was about four o'clock when Mrs. Oliver came to the door. "What is going on?" she inquired. "Can not you let me in? I've some news for you."
"We're just about through," they called, and a moment later opened the door.
The mother's face expressed just the surprise and pleasure the boys had looked for.
"If you knew how I had been dreading it," said Mrs. Oliver, after they had talked it all over, "I could give you some idea of the relief I feel. I'd been thinking that I must send for Mrs. Sanleitner, and give a day right up to it, have every book taken out, the shelves dusted, and—But you've done it all," her eyes again on the boys' work of a few hours past; "and now that the children are asleep, Bridget can come in with her chamois, and polish the doors."
"Yes, do have her," urged the boys, "and give papa a thorough-going surprise."
"To match the one I have for you," said Mrs. Oliver. "Dr. Phisterer has been here, and asked if I had two boys that would answer to his description, and I had to confess I had. He then went on to say that he and Freddy were going into town at half past four, and asked if he might take charge of my boys as well."
"You don't mean it! Hurrah!" they cried, waving their dusters. "Hope he'll take the bays; they're awfully fast."
"I don't care what he takes, so long as we get in town in time for the fire-works. Dr. Phisterer evidently thinks it is going to clear."
"Clear!" exclaimed Mrs. Oliver, throwing open the blinds. "You're so shut up in here, you don't know the state of the weather."
The sun had come out.
"I wonder if we'll have time— But there he is this minute;" and Douglas rushed out on the piazza, calling, "Dick! Dick!"
The boy approached slowly, his hands behind him. "It's one as has been used," he said, producing a fire-cracker he had picked up in the yard.
"I didn't call you for that," said Douglas, hurriedly. "Didn't know you had it. Here are some good ones—wait; these too. Give some to—"
But two bare feet were flying in the air. The putting into Dick Ransom's hand of three unopened packs of crackers had deadened his sense of anything else. He gave a sort of a whoop as he darted down the mill road, which had the effect of rousing the neighborhood, and of making scores of flying feet the principal things to be seen.
The Oliver boys talked in something of this strain when they got back from town that night:
"Didn't those horses fly!"
"Isn't Dr. Phisterer splendid!"
"I never knew Fred was so nice a fellow."
"Will you ever forget the surprise of the two Wills as we dashed by the Edson's?"
"'Twas rich; and then our meeting father before we'd gone a mile."
"And with Colonel Yale! I thought of the library right away."
"So did I; and you heard how delighted papa was; said he'd been thinking all the way out if he'd only attended to having those books straightened; for Colonel Yale has one of the finest collections, you know."
"Oh yes; but do you know," interrupted Douglas, "that we haven't yet touched upon the best thing of all?"
"What do you mean?" asked Hugh.
"Why, when they put off that big piece of 'General Washington on his Horse,'and the crowd were all 'Ohs' and 'Ahs' over it, I thought, 'If mamma could only be here!' for 'twas so much grander than I expected; and then to look up, and see not only her, but papa and Colonel Yale, each holding up one of the twins, why, I just joined in the hip-hip-hurrah with all my might."
"The twins' verdict of the day wasn't bad?"
"What was it?"
"That they didn't believe anybody could ever have a better Fourth o' Ju' New-Years."
GRANDPA'S DRUM.—Drawn by J. E. Kelly.
YOUNG SOLDIERS.—"CHARGE BAYONETS!"
[FOURTH OF JULY IN KERIM.]
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
"Now, you boys, what on airth are you a-doin' with that there ellum?"
"Is that you, Squire Garnsey?" responded a very youthful voice from the darkness, many feet above the pile of rubbish at the foot of the tree, and against which more was at that moment heaping. "Now, Squire, don't you think this dead wood has stood here long enough?"
"What are you a-doin' with it?"
"We're going to let all Kerim know Fourth of July's come, quick as it strikes twelve."
"That's it, is it? I declare! what a swarm of 'em there is, and how they do work! Never saw the like of it. It's a fact, though, that old dead ellum's been an eye-sore on the green these three year."
It was not far from the centre of the broad but somewhat ill-kept open space in the middle of the village of Kerim, and the fact of its deadness may have been due to its use as a hitching-post for country people coming to church on Sundays, and for the academy boys to try their knives on of week-days. It was about thirty feet high, but it had never borne any fruit. Elms rarely do, but there were boys enough in that one now.
"Squire Garnsey," piped another voice at his elbow, "they're a-greasin' the tree so's it'll burn good."
"I declare! And I kem out here on purpose to put a stop to bonfirin'. It'll make the tallest kind of a blaze, it will."
He was a tall man himself, and broad-shouldered, and grim-faced, but he was puzzled for once. What should he do? All the great men of Kerim had solemnly decided that there should be no Fourth of July that year; no fire-works; no bonfires; no parade; no cannonading; no anything. People with too much patriotism were free to go over to Plumville, three miles east, and join the goings on there; but Kerim was to be a quiet village all day.
The boys had not been taken into that council of great men. Not one of them had been permitted to utter his voice in it; but they all uttered as much voice as they had as soon as the tyrannical decision was made public. Even now another of the shadowy speakers in the dead elm-tree defiantly announced:
"Yes, sir. We've been a-gatherin' of grease and tar and things these three weeks. It's after 'leven o'clock, now. Just you wait and see."
"I declare! Here's another lot of 'em comin'. There's a heap of public spirit into our boys. My grandfather he fit at Bunker Hill. I say, boys?"
"No, we won't. It's pretty nigh greased now, and the branches are tied full of things. It'd be a shame not to fire it off."
"So it would—so it would. Washington was a great man. I say, boys, there's a half-bar'l of tar over in my wood shed, and it's more'n a quarter full. If you'd git it, and paste the trunk of that ellum with tar—"
"Hurrah for Squire Garnsey!" shouted a pretty deep voice near him. "That's the talk. We're going to have a celebration tomorrow, Squire. None of our boys are going over to help the Plumvillains have a good time."
"I like that. I'm for home industry myself."
Four boys and a wheelbarrow were already on a clean run toward the Squire's front gate, across the green; but just then the sharp piping note at his elbow broke out again with, "Yes, sir; and Mr. Mortis is going to give us a 'dress, and Bill Allen's going to read the Decoration of Inderpendence."
"Good!" again remarked the Squire. "I don't know exactly what to make of myself, and I don't know what folks'll say, and somehow I feel as ef I was beginnin' not to keer. Boys, it'll be Fourth of July in less 'n half an hour."
"We're 'most ready. We've kept still about it, Squire, but we've laid up stuff to burn, we have."
The pile at the foot of the old elm looked like it, and no one could guess how they had daubed the branches. That, too, was nothing to the way they daubed the trunk of it after the tar came.
"Look a-here! how are we to get down? We can't climb over all that tar."
"Stay up there," responded the deep tones of Mr. Mortis, the "speaker of the day" that was to be. "You'll look first-rate when you're lighted up."
"I declare!" exclaimed Squire Garnsey. "Boys, throw a rope around that lower limb. They'll have to come down sailor fashion."
So they did, and no less than seven boys, of different sizes, were compelled to make use of that rope. There was evidently a good deal of "public spirit" among the younger generation of the people of Kerim.
The older people, with the single exception of the broad-shouldered Squire, had gone to bed at a healthy hour that evening, well assured that for once no patriotic racket would disturb their open-windowed slumbers. A quieter village there was not in the whole United States until just before the town clock prepared for the duty of telling them it was midnight.
The clock got ready. So did the Kerim boys. Squire Garnsey remarked, "I'll walk away a little, boys, so's I can see it burn."
Then a dozen matches were scratched at the same moment, and as many wisps of tarred paper were lighted and put in positions to do the most good.
How they did flash up, and how the fire did run! It was well there were no boys in that tree.
Bang! bang! bang!
"If they haven't managed to git out three anvils!" remarked the Squire. "Hear them guns. Crackers, too. Tin horns. They're workin' a hoss-fiddle on the back fence. There never was sech a racket in this 'ere town before. No, nor sech a blaze either. It beats a house a-fire."
So it did, but there was no insurance on the old elm.
When the good and quiet people around that square, on all sides except the one where the meeting-house and the academy stood, sprang out of bed and rushed to their windows, you could have read print, if it were large enough, anywhere about the middle of the green. And every head out of every window had something special to say about "those boys."
Up shot the flame over the pile of boxes and barrels, and the heap of broken boards and fence rails; up the well-tarred trunk, with a fierce fizzing and spluttering, and then it sprang along the boughs, and mounted and mounted, until every head at the windows was compelled to remark, also, "What on earth's got hold of that there tree?—it burns as if it was rosin."
Fourth of July had come, and all Kerim knew it; but before breakfast-time it was equally well known that the boys were going to have a "celebration," with all the regular honors.
"Mr. Mortis?" said everybody; "why, he can't make a speech. Bill Allen? It ought to have been one of the trustees, or somebody."
Perhaps so; but the old folks had thrown the day away, and the boys had picked it up, and they worked at it like a swarm of bumble-bees.
By noon there was a big lumber wagon pulled out close to the spot where the elm-tree had been.
It was a curious fact, but there were numbers of other wagons pulled up near that one before two o'clock, and a good many of the Kerim people had unexpected visitors of country friends from beyond Kerim, who said "they'd a sight ruther stay and hear the home doin's than go on to Plumville."
There was public spirit in them, and the thing spread so fast that when two o'clock came, and Mr. Mortis climbed into the wagon, followed by Bill Allen, and as many more of the boys as could get in, every man in Kerim who thought himself at all eloquent envied them the very respectable audience gathered around the elm-tree ash heap and the "celebration."
Mr. Mortis was barely twenty, but he was studying law, and the boys had picked him out because, as Bill Allen said: "He's got more voice than a bull. What we want is noise."
They got it from Mr. Mortis, and the whole crowd got a big surprise with it, for the "'dress" was wonderfully good. Bill Allen, too, did his part well, and read the "Decoration of Inderpendence" as if it were something in which he took a personal interest. Old Squire Garnsey stepped right forward at the end of it to say,
"Bill Allen, you read that thing just prime."
"I didn't make it up, though."
"And, Mr. Mortis, I'm proud of you. All Kerim is. We'd no idee you could do it."
"I knew it was a good one," said Mr. Mortis, calmly. "It's one Governor Skyward made ten year ago. There wasn't any use of me trying to get up a better one, so I took his'n. Guess I made everybody on the green hear it."
That was precisely what he had done for the great speech of Governor Skyward, and it was more than anybody else had ever done for that crowd.
As for the boys, they had won the day. That is, they had kept it from the very minute it began—only there was no dead elm-tree left in the middle of the green.
"There'll be heaps of public spirit in Kerim after this," said Squire Garnsey to the other trustees; but they all shook their heads very solemnly, and made no reply.
[CHERRIES.]
BY EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER.
Who can tell how cherries grow,
From the blossoms' fragrant snow;
From the balls of green that hide
Under glossy leaves, spread wide,
Till they glisten, every one,
Red as rubies in the sun;
Swelling, warming, till they shine,
Filled with summer's rosy wine?
Five little babes in a basket,
Up on a swinging bough:
"Open your mouths," said the mother,
"Here is a feast for you now."
Mother and babies think it prime
That cherries ripen in robin-time.
Five curly heads at a window,
Watching the merry crew:
"Don't you wish we were birds in a nest,
So we could have some too?
Wings are better than legs to climb,
And robins are thickest in cherry-time."