the end.
SETTING THE BROOK TO WORK.
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
The brook had never done a stroke of work in its life. So long, at least, as Mart Benson could remember, it had gurgled across the foot of his father's garden, tumbling heels over head down the little fall in the middle, as if it knew it had got into some place that didn't belong to it, and was in a desperate hurry to get out.
Then it made a dive under the fence, into Squire Spencer's orchard, and then under another fence, and through a low stone archway across the river road.
That was the end of the brook, for the river let it right in without so much as saying, "How do you do?"
"It isn't more'n two feet across anywhere," said Mart to himself. "It isn't so much as that just above the fall, and it's a foot and a half below the top of the bank. I could make a dam there, and a flume."
Mart was a great whittler.
Mr. Jellicombe, the carpenter, used to say of him that when he wasn't whittling, it was because he had had to stop to sharpen his knife.
"Well," said Mart, in reply to that, "what's the fun of whittling with a dull knife? If you want a knife to cut straight and smooth, you've got to have an edge on it."
So there was always a pretty good edge on his, and it was curious what things he managed to carve out with it.
He had made a wooden chain out of a long square stick that Mr. Jellicombe brought to the house to mend a door frame with. He had made kites, walking-sticks, bats, wooden spoons and forks, a little wagon, and any number of other things, of which about all that could be said was that they gave him plenty of good whittling.
But Mart had been to the mill the day before, and had waited there two hours while his father was having a grist of corn ground. All those two hours had been spent by Mart with a shingle in one hand and his knife in the other, but at the end of them there was hardly a notch in the shingle, and Mart shut up his knife, and put it back in his pocket.
He had been watching the great water-wheel and the flume that brought the water to it from the pond. He had studied the dam, too, and had been thinking of the brook in his father's garden.
The more he looked at it now, the clearer he saw that it was high time for that brook to be doing something.
It was easy enough to gather flat stones and pile them in at the narrow place at the top of the fall. That was little more than a foot high, to be sure, but the dam would more than double it.
Then he begged a couple of old raisin boxes at the store where his father traded, and when the ends were knocked out of them, and they were firmly set in the top of the little dam, one behind the other, they made a good enough flume. The end of the foremost one stuck out beyond the stones, and the water came pouring from it beautifully.
It took all the rest of that day for Mart to get the brook penned in and compelled to run through the raisin boxes, for he had to keep on putting stones and sods and dirt behind the dam to strengthen it, as the water rose higher and higher. It would not do to make a pond of the garden, but so long as the brook did not overflow its banks it would do no harm. Sometimes it had run over in the spring, or after very heavy rain-storms.
The next day Mart hardly went near his new dam, and he was a very serious and busy boy indeed, considering that he was only thirteen.
A piece of wood had to be found first two and a half inches square, and about a foot and a half long. It took a great deal of work to shave down the four corners of that piece of wood till it had eight smooth sides all just alike. Then Mart was compelled to go over to Jellicombe's carpenter shop and put his piece of wood in a vise, so it would be held steady, while he took a saw and sawed a long groove, more than half an inch deep, in the middle of each one of those eight faces. Jellicombe told him he had done that job very well.
"Looks like a hub for something. Going to make a wheel this time?"
"I'll show you. May I take your inch auger and bore a hole in each end?"
"Go ahead. If you ain't kerful, you'll split yer timber."
Mart was careful then, but he had trouble before him. He had picked out a number of very straight shingles, and he was whittling away on these now as if he was being paid for it. He cut them down to six inches long, and shaved them at the sides, so that two pieces laid together were just a foot wide. With a little more whittling after that he fitted them all, one by one, into the eight grooves in his "hub," and his "water-wheel" was done. A proud boy was Mart, but he ought to have kept on being "careful."
"Look out!" said Mr. Jellicombe, as Mart rapped hard on one of the shingle pieces, to drive it in more firmly; but it was too late.
"Crack!" the hub was split from end to end.
"Got to go to work and make a new one," said Mart, ruefully.
"Guess I wouldn't. Just take a couple of two-inch screws, and screw that together again. It'll be stronger'n it was before."
That was a capital idea, and it only took a few minutes; to carry it into effect.
"Make your end pins of hard wood," said Mr. Jellicombe; "and shave 'em smooth. Then they'll run easy."'
That was easy enough, but one of those "endpins" was made of an old broom handle, and was more than a foot long.
"I see what you're up to," said the carpenter, with a grin. "You've made a right down good job of it, too. Grease your journals before you let 'em get wet."
Mart's "journals" for his end pins to run in were two holes he bored in a couple of boards. When these were stuck up on each side of the lower end of his flume, and the water-wheel was set in its place, Mart took off his hat and shouted,
"Hurrah! the brook's at work!"
So it was, for it was rushing fiercely through the two old raisin boxes, and down upon the wide "paddles" of Mart's wheel, and this was spinning around at a tremendous rate.
"You've done it!"
"Is that you, Mr. Jellicombe? I didn't know you'd come."
"You've done it. Now what?"
"Why, I'm going to put another wheel on this long end pin, and set another one above it, and put a strap over both of them."
"Oh, that's it. Going to make a pulley and band. All right. It'll run. There's plenty of water-power. But what then? Going to build a mill?"
"Guess not. All I care for is, I've set the brook to work."
"Why don't you make it do something, then, now you've found out how?"
"Don't know of anything small enough for a brook like that."
"I'll tell you, then. There's your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and you can run that churn."
"Hurrah! I'll do it!"
There was a good deal of busy whittling before Mart finished that second job, but before two weeks were over there was butter on Mrs. Benson's dinner table which had actually been churned by the brook at the bottom of the garden.
HOW THE SECRET WAS STOLEN.
Benjamin Huntsman, a native of Lincolnshire, England, was the inventor of cast steel. The discovery was kept a great secret, and as the success it obtained was very great, many efforts were made to find out how it was prepared.
One cold winter's night, while the snow was falling in heavy flakes, and Huntsman's manufactory threw its red glare of light over the neighborhood, a person of the most abject appearance presented himself at the entrance, praying for permission to share the warmth and shelter which it afforded. The humane workmen found the appeal irresistible, and the apparent beggar was permitted to take up his quarters in a warm corner of the building.
A careful scrutiny would have discovered little real sleep in the drowsiness that seemed to overtake the stranger; for he eagerly watched every movement of the workmen while they went through the operations of the newly discovered process.
He observed, first of all, that bars of blistered steel were broken into small pieces, two or three inches in length, and placed in crucibles of fire-clay. When nearly full, a little green glass, broken into small fragments, was spread over the top, and the whole covered with a closely fitting cover. The crucibles were then placed in a furnace, and after a lapse of from three to four hours, during which the crucibles were examined from time to time, to see that the metal was thoroughly melted, the workmen lifted the crucible from its place on the furnace by means of tongs, and its molten contents, blazing, sparkling, and spurting, were poured into a mould of cast iron. When cool, the mould was unscrewed, and a bar of cast steel was presented.
The uninvited spectator of these operations effected his escape without detection, and before many months had passed the Huntsman manufactory was not the only one where cast steel was produced.
A JOLLY DAY IN THE PARK.
BY F. E. FRYATT.
"Hip, hip, hurrah! to-morrow's my birthday, Miss Eleanor," shouted Harry Lewis, bursting into my garden like a young hurricane. "Cousin Jack's coming over from New York, Nell's got a holiday, and father says if you'll decide and go with us, we may have a jollification somewhere."
"How delightful! Of course I'll go, with the greatest pleasure. Suppose we choose Prospect Park?"
"Capital! Miss Eleanor, good-by; excuse haste. I'm off to tell Nell, and hurry mother with the birthday cake and the fixin's."
Old Prob predicted fair weather, and he was as good as his word, for the sun shone in the bluest of skies, and the morning was fresh and breezy, when Nell and I stepped into an open car, followed by Harry, Jack, and the family lunch basket.
Every one looked happy, and even the car horses trotted briskly along the broad avenue to the Plaza as if they knew we were anxious to be there.
Arrived at the Park, the two boys put their wise heads together, and gallantly agreed that I should be captain of the party, a decision they shortly after announced in an important manner.
"Follow your leader, then," said I, helping Nell into one of the large phaetons standing near the entrance.
"All right," responded Harry, as the whip cracked, and away dashed the horses in fine style.
Now we swept past velvety fields and wood-crowned hills; now we rolled softly under arches of tremulous green; then through miniature valleys between blossoming heights; now through shadowy forests, and away again beside open meadows.
"How lovely!" cried Nell, rapturously, as one moment we caught the glitter of a distant lake, the next the twinkle of a reedy pool overhung with hazel and alder bushes.
Even the boys were stirred to delight, when, crossing a rustic bridge, they could look down and see a dashing cascade tumble and foam over mossy precipices, till it reached a stony basin below, where it lay golden and clear as a topaz.
On and on we sped, past new wonders of blossoming groves and ferny hollows, to the end of our ride.
Which way to turn, after we left our basket at the Lodge, we knew not. Labyrinthine walks met us in every direction, leading to bowers and dells and wildernesses innumerable.
"Let us take the nearest," said I; and away we went, tripping it gayly, till the path ended unexpectedly at the loveliest bower imaginable, all hidden with clambering vines and shrubbery, from which peeped out a thatched roof, with two odd little peaks, surrounded by bird-houses.
Past its pretty arches, as we sat on the rustic seats, we could look upon acres of velvety meadow, dotted with wild flowers, and gay with groups of pleasure-seekers.
Near by, Madam Nurse trundled Miss Baby; yonder, a company of girls played at "bean bags"; further on, the croquet-players were busy with mallets and balls; while passing to and fro were troops of school-children making the most of their weekly holiday.
"Listen!" cried Nell, suddenly, as sounds of music were borne to us on the breeze.
"It's 'Nancy Lee'; go for it!" shouted Harry, leaping over the railing, and darting across the meadow.
"Come on; follow the sound, girls," cried Jack, bounding after him.
Nell and I take the path sedately, "hastening slowly," for we can not help stopping to listen to the soft twitter of the birds, to admire the golden laburnums; we even wait to let a sparrow hop leisurely down the walk before us.
We have had time to spare, for when we arrive in sight of the "merry-go-round" in its pretty pavilion, the musical history of Nancy Lee is still being repeated.
But a pretty vision greets us. Whirl, whirl, whirl, flies a magic ring of boys and girls, with their fluttering ribbons, bright eyes, and tossing curls.
Click, click, clash a score of shining blades, as the eager riders, with parted lips, lean forward and try to pick off the rings from a projecting bar.
Now the music begins to die away; the circle moves slower, and slower, and slower.
"Count your rings!" shouts the man in charge. "The biggest number wins the free ride."
"Sixteen, eighteen, twenty," calls out Harry, triumphantly, adding, as he spies Nellie, "There's my sister; give her a ride."
Nothing loath, Nell is strapped on a gray pony, and waits impatiently for the music. The seats fill, the organ sounds forth, "I'm called Little Buttercup," and away they float as light as feathers.
"It is well they're so merry," groans the poor horse beneath them in the cellar, as he treads his weary beat; "they'd find it a sad-go-round if we changed places."
The noon hour strikes; the merry-go-round man is mortal, and wants his dinner, which reminds us that it is time to send for the lunch basket.
Choosing a lovely spot under a spreading elm in the meadow, we lay the cloth, set out our luncheon, brew a pitcher of fine lemonade, and sit down, the merriest of merry parties.
In the midst of our entertainment four uninvited but welcome visitors make their appearance. Guess who they are.
A toad came first, and sat blinking at us with the funniest airs imaginable. Then a robin-redbreast and two sparrows edged their way up to our table with great caution, winked at us with bright eyes, concluded we were trustworthy, and ventured to peck at the crumbs we scattered for them.
PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN.—Drawn by L. W. Atwater.
Gathering up the remnants of our feast, we wended our way to a pretty summer-house overlooking a small lake, in which sported a multitude of gold-fish, a pair of swans, some geese, and a bevy of ducks with lovely rings of red, purple, and gold-green feathers about their necks.
Here Nell and the boys found fine sport throwing crackers into the water, and watching the ducks and fishes rush for them, but came away in high disgust because one old drake gave the ducks and fishes hardly any chance at all, but darted and dived and bobbed about so fast that he grabbed a dozen pieces to their one.
"Good-by, old greedy; hope you'll never come up again!" cried Jack, moving away, as the nimble fellow dove head-first till nothing but his funny tail flirted above the water.
A peep at the deer, pony-rides for the boys, and a drive in the goat-carriage for Nell, varied our ramble to the Aerial Skating Rink, which we found on the other side of the Park.
As we came in sight of the elevated square of asphalt pavement, with its gay cavalcade of skaters flitting to and fro inside the railings, the boys hurrahed with delight.
"It's perfectly glorious; let's try it," shouted Harry, bounding down the hill-side, followed closely by Jack.
"I could do that too," said Nell, imitating the movements of the skaters.
"You shall try," replied I; and a minute later we were inside the square, bargaining for a lesson on the odd three-wheeled triangular arrangement, with its horse's head and handled reins.
"Plant your feet firmly on this brace," said the instructor, showing Nell the iron bar; "hold the reins well in hand, bend your right knee, and strike out with your foot as if skating; now your left; and away you go."
Sure enough, off shot Nell, managing to keep up a tolerable speed, then slacking, then increasing, then coming to a dead halt, as Jack, shouting, "Clear the track!" bore down on her car, almost upsetting it.
"A miss is as good as a mile," screams Harry, flying by on the other side, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.
"Strike out, little girl!" cries a lad, giving Nell's car a push, and sending her speeding along. In and out, around and about, they fly, like mimic charioteers, until, fairly exhausted, they are willing to stop, and go over to the Rotary Yacht, whose snow-white wings are visible from the hill-top.
A pleasant walk across the sloping meadow and along by the side of a small lake brings us to this novel boat, which is merely a great hollow ring of seats, with oars and rowlocks for calm, and sails for breezy, weather.
We step in and sit down; the wind, coming in soft puffs from the south, sends us floating around and around with a dreamy, restful motion that our tired little charioteers thoroughly appreciate as they lean back and trail their hands idly through the cool water.
"Come, come," said I at last, "wake up for our row on the lake, sleepers, and then heigho for home and supper!"
"I was only fooling, Miss Eleanor; I'm fresh as a lark," cried Harry, leaping nimbly out on the platform.
"So am I," said Jack, lending a hand to Nellie.
"The Rotary Yacht will do for a rest, but this is what I call life," exclaimed Harry, as later he and Jack, with even sweep of the oars, sent our pretty boat skimming over the waters of the lake.
Now we sped around curving shores, and past grassy capes; now we skirted fairy islands and reedy shallows; then under hollow bridges, that gave back jolly echoes to Nell's laughter and the dip of the oars.
"Quick, quick—quick, quick," screamed a bevy of ducks, hurrying to shore, as we rounded a woody bend in the lake, and came upon them with a rush that sent the water in diamond showers over their backs.
"Tirra-la, tirra-la," whistled a wood-thrush in the grove; "tirra-la, tirra-la," answered another.
"Ah! that's a warning, children; he sings at sunset. See the light shooting gold green through the trees; that means that our happy day is over. And there's another sign; look over your right shoulder—the new moon."
"Tu-whit, tu-whoo, good-night to you," hooted an owl, as we turned our boat homeward.
"Don't be alarmed; we are going," sighed Harry, half sad that the jolly day at Prospect Park was ended.
A BATTLE ON THE BUFFALO RANGE.
Between the half-breeds who form a large portion of the population of the settlements of the Northwest, along the Red River of the North, and their neighbors, the Sioux, exists a bitter enmity. Peace is seldom declared between them, and when parties of Sioux and half-breeds meet, bloody battles are the result.
Although the half-breeds are more civilized than the Indians, and live in villages, generally near the forts or trading posts, they depend largely upon buffalo-meat for their winter food, and upon buffalo-robes, for which the traders give them guns, powder, shot, blankets, tea, coffee, sugar, and other necessaries and luxuries of their life. To obtain this meat and these robes they organize grand buffalo hunts every summer and fall, each of which lasts for several months, and in which hundreds of men engage. The hunters travel from their homes to the distant hunting grounds on horseback; but they take with them long trains of very curious-looking ox-carts, in which the women and children, who go with their husbands and fathers on these long trips, ride, and in which the buffalo-meat and hides are carried home.
The ox-carts, or "Pembina buggies," as they are often called, are very strong and clumsy, and are made entirely of wood, generally by their owners. The wooden wheels, turning on the ungreased wooden axles, make the most horrible creaking and groaning; and when, as is often the case, several hundred or a thousand of these carts are in one train, the noise they make can be heard for miles.
Each cart is drawn by a single ox, attached to the rude shafts by a simple and home-made harness of rawhide, with the aid of which the patient beast draws a load of a thousand pounds for hundreds of miles, at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a day.
As they approach the buffalo range, where they expect to find their game, the hunters know that at any moment they may run across hunting parties of the Sioux, and for them they keep a sharp look-out night and day.
Some years ago a brave hunter by the name of Jean Bedell, whose home was in Pembina, joined one of these great hunting parties, taking with him his wife and their little child, a baby of but a few months old. The party to which Jean belonged was so large that they had but little fear of Indians, and did not guard against being surprised by them as carefully as usual.
One morning as the brigade broke camp, and the long line of carts moved slowly away toward Devil's Lake, which could be seen gleaming in the distance, and near which the hunters felt sure they would find buffalo, Jean Bedell found that a portion of his harness had given out, and he must stay behind and mend it. He had just finished his task, and started on after the carts, the groaning and screeching of which could still be heard in the distance, when other and more terrible sounds, borne clearly to his ear, caused him to come to a sudden halt.
The sounds that so startled him were quick shots, almost as steady as volleys of musketry, and the terrible yell with which the Sioux charges upon his enemy. Far down the valley the hunter could see sharp flashes of fire pierce the cloud of dust that hung over the train of ox-carts, and the dark mass of Sioux warriors charging down the hill-side, lashing their ponies, firing and yelling as they went.
CUT OFF.—Drawn by W. M. Cary.
Alone, and cut off from his companions, with his wife and baby to protect, Jean Bedell had nothing to do but lie down, with his trusty rifle in hand, powder and bullets by his side, and wait, determined to sell his life as dearly as possible if worst came to worst.
For hours the hunter watched the fight, while his wife crouched in the bottom of the cart, with her baby in her arms. He could see that the carts had been formed in a semicircle, and from behind them his comrades withstood charge after charge of the Indians, who would dash up to the barrier of heavy carts, pour in a volley, and sweep away beyond rifle range, until their own guns were reloaded.
At last, late in the afternoon, the battle came to an end. The Indians, finding it impossible to drive the hunters from behind their barrier, suddenly withdrew, and taking their dead with them, disappeared over the hill down which they had dashed in the morning. They might make another attack, but for the present all was safe, and Jean Bedell might rejoin his friends. When he reached them, he found that though they were rejoiced to have driven off the hated Sioux, their joy was mingled with much sorrow, for there were many dead to be buried, and many wounded to be cared for. Among the dead were several of the little children, to whom stray bullets had found their way; and when Jean Bedell and his wife saw the poor little bodies, they were very thankful that, on account of a broken harness, their own darling baby had been kept at a safe distance from the terrible battle.
[Begun in Harper's Young People No. 24, April 13.]
THE STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.
BY EDWARD CARY.
Chapter VIII.
I have said that the work which President Washington had to do was quite new to the country. The people had been used to having all their affairs attended to in their own States. None of the States was very large. Some of them were very small, compared with what the States are now, so that the public men in each were known by a greater part of the people than they now are. Then distance seemed greater than it does now. It took nearly as long to go from Boston to New York as it now does to go from Boston to California; there was no telegraph any more than there were railways and steam-boats, and news travelled as slowly as men did themselves. You can see that it was harder for people in Georgia or New Hampshire to know what was going on in New York than it is now for people in Oregon or Florida to know what is being done in Washington. Where there is ignorance there is always more distrust and doubt. Men found it not easy to give up public business to a Congress, far away, that they did not know much about. Washington set himself earnestly at work to try and have things done so carefully, so honestly, and so wisely, that the people would learn to trust the national government, and live happily under it.
The national government had been meant especially to do three things: First, to raise money and pay the debts of all the States; second, to see that the country was rightly dealt with by other countries, and that other countries were justly treated by our own; and third, in a general way to do for the common good what no one State could do by itself.
The government has now for nearly a hundred years done this work very well, and that fact is largely due to the way George Washington began it. He was President for eight years.
It would not be easy to tell all the things he did in that time which have had a good effect ever since, but it will be well to remember a few of the principal ones. He always insisted on the full and honest payment of the public debt, that is, of money borrowed by the government to carry on the war, and so forth. He believed that a nation must keep its word as much as a man must, if it expects other people to deal fairly with it.
In order that the government might pay its debts, it was necessary for it to get money from the people by taxes, and President Washington showed very early that no man or set of men were to be allowed to refuse to pay a fair share of these taxes, as fixed by law.
The people chose the Congress, and the Congress decided how the taxes should be paid. When that was done, there must be no further dispute about paying. If the people did not like the laws Congress made, they could elect men to Congress who would change the laws, but until the laws were changed in this way, they must be obeyed.
A large number of persons in the State of Pennsylvania refused to pay a tax ordered by Congress, called an excise tax, which was a certain sum on every barrel of whiskey made in the country. When Washington learned of this, he sent word to these people that if they did not obey the laws, he should have to compel them to; and as they took no notice of this warning, he got together an army of 16,000 men, and sent it into the State. This soon settled the trouble, and there has never been any attempt, on a large scale, to resist a tax law in the United States since then.
It is easy to see that Washington knew better than to do such a thing by halves. He sent so large an army that to fight against it was hopeless, and so there was no fighting.
It would have been well for the country if this wise example had always been followed.