| vol. iii.—no. 136. | Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. | price four cents. |
| Tuesday, June 6, 1882. | Copyright, 1882, by Harper & Brothers. | $1.50 per Year, in Advance. |
["SCRAP."]
BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE.
ome here, boys," said Mary Grey, closing the dining-room door very softly, and calling Ben and Lewis to her. Mary was their elder sister. She seemed a great deal older than the boys, for Ben was only nine, and Lewis six, while Mary was seventeen.
"A dear little brother is upstairs waiting to see you," said Mary. "And if you are good boys, nurse says you may hold him for a few moments in your arms."
Ben and Lewis began capering about with delight; but they followed Mary upstairs, very much impressed by the idea that they had a new member of the family to meet—a tiny wee boy, all their own little brother.
In Dr. Grey's house there is a big, sunny, peaceful room fronting an old-fashioned garden, and there it was that the little brother lay waiting in a pink and white cradle. Ben and Lewis went in very softly. They were very much afraid of old Mrs. Newman, the nurse; they were afraid the baby would cry; and yet there was in their minds a general impression that the new boy in the family would put them out of power. But at sight of the baby all such fears vanished. Such a mite of a thing! A dear little black head, a pair of bright, blinking eyes, doubled-up pink fists, and a dimple in one cheek. It was while the two boys stood looking at him for the first time that he was given the name which always clung to him in spite of his being christened Philip.
"Oh, Mary," Lewis exclaimed, in a soft tone, "I sha'n't mind him—he is only a little Scrap!"
I don't know just why it was, but from that hour no one seemed to think of calling him anything but "Scrap." Perhaps it was because he had such a dear little face that every one wanted to give him a pet name. Perhaps it was because he was so slimly built, and was always such a wee thing in spite of rosy cheeks and merry ways. But in any case the name clung to him.
When his mother died he was only a baby, but she already had called him by his nickname, and it was Mary, I think, who passionately declared he should know no other.
Ben and Lewis took Scrap in charge immediately. They thought it great fun to hold the little big-eyed baby, and feel that he was younger and weaker than they. But yet Scrap was a real boy. As soon as he could understand any sort of fun, which was very early, they taught him all their games, and they made him what they called their "Regiment." Ben and Lewis were Colonel and Captain of Scrap; and Scrap himself was well enough pleased with his subordinate position. Sometimes they played at what they called "Marching against the North Pole," and it was a curious thing that they always chose such very hot weather for this particular game. They wore blankets, and counterpanes, and old seal-skin caps, and they sat on the nursery stairs, covered with rugs, pretending they were in sleighs, on their way to the North Pole, while the perspiration streamed from their faces. It was usually Ben who, at a given moment, impersonated a singular character known as the "Iceberg Man," and who upset the whole company. Scrap, weighed down by bedding, generally fell asleep during this performance, and I must say that Ben and Lewis rather languished toward the end of it; but they never tired of playing at that game over and over again, until cold weather came.
Scrap had the measles about this time, and while he lay in bed Ben and Lewis occupied themselves writing bulletins of his progress, which were pinned to the dining-room door every morning, and were intended to be very helpful in their character. Scrap was by no means dangerously ill, but his seclusion filled the boys with a sense of horror. One of these bulletins ran as follows:
"No chainge for the better. Pulse is lite and he cries a good deal. Mary says he's got to be made to keep still."
Another:
"He kicked Mrs. Brown, and called her a cross old thing. Tong is bad and he wont kepe the kovers on him. Mary says he is orful to take kare of."
As the disease progressed, the bulletins became still more unpleasantly personal. One, written in very black ink, ran as follows:
"He put his Tong out at the doctor, and mary says we are afrade he is going to have the mumps and if he does wont there just be a time with him."
This "time" came to pass, for mumps set in, and poor little Scrap's seclusion left him a very white-faced, tired little person indeed. But after a time no more horrible bulletins had to be written about him, for all his sweetness of temper returned, and he played at being the "Regiment" again with great gayety.
SCRAP AND HIS KITTEN.
It was about this time that I one day heard a knock at my front door, and opening it myself, found Scrap standing very still, his eyes twinkling, and his little mouth trying not to smile. He had a wee kitten in a basket.
"Well, Scrap!" I exclaimed, "I'm glad to see you, dear. Where did pussy come from?"
"I find I don't need her," he said, soberly, coming in and sitting down, grave as a little judge. "She's a present for you. Do you think you like cats?"
"Not always," I had to answer in truth. "But that looks such a dear little thing! Where did you get her, Scrap dear?"
"The ashman gave her to me," said Scrap, with a little anxious frown. "As a general fact ashmen don't own kittens, at least so this one said they didn't; but he said if we didn't buy her he'd drown her in a bag, and I bought her with my penny; but I find I don't need her, and I thought you'd like her for a real truly present."
Who could refuse Scrap's offering, even though it entailed watching a little kitten that could not crawl?
"She doesn't know how to be sorry for me," he said, as he was leaving, having kissed pussy tenderly good-by—"but she is only a baby. I think," he added, looking at me with his earnest little way—"I think the ashman is her uncle."
Scrap early developed two talents; one was for running away, the other was for composing stories. The stories were most interesting, but the running away used to frighten the whole household. Scrap would be brought back from these expeditions a most dejected, tired little person. One day he wandered all over New York with a German band; another time he was found in an old woman's shanty, learning how to feed pigs. When he was remonstrated with he would listen very soberly, fixing his eyes on Mary's face, and watching her mouth with comical intentness; but unfortunately it was impossible to make him appreciate the dangerous character of his offenses. One day, after Mary had exhausted all her eloquence, and told him of every possible danger, he remarked, calmly:
"That wasn't half as interesting as the last time, Mary. You never told me a word about Charlie Ross. Begin with how he was let go out to play." Then his little eyes danced, and he added, with his quaint air: "Make it just as frightening as you can, and couldn't you put in something about bears? Just scare me awfully, and see if it won't do me good."
Soon after this a means of preventing Scrap's vagabondizing occurred. Dr. Grey decided to take all the children to Germany, and Mary told Scrap he would see far more there than he ever could by running away. So the family sailed one summer for Austria. It was when they were on the steamer that they discovered Scrap had hidden away in his pocket a tiny American flag. Ben and Lewis laughed at him dreadfully, but Scrap was not to be put down.
"Now, you boys," he said, with his most dignified air, "suppose they should take me for a German, don't you see? I'll just show them my 'Merikan flag."
This spirit moved little Scrap all the time he was abroad. He resolutely refused to mingle with German boys in any purely German sport, lest he should lose his position as a "'Merikan" among them. He would say, "I'll show you some of our 'Merikan games, if you can learn them."
In the little German town where the boys lived he became a sort of small leader, older boys quite giving way before his manly assertion of authority. Among others, Scrap played with some young German Princes, whose rank in their own country entitled them to rule in all the games. This puzzled and bothered Scrap. One day he withdrew from a game, calmly remarking: "Perhaps you didn't know—I am a 'Merikan Prince."
After that Scrap's power never was contested. All that winter he went on writing his funny little stories, or telling them to the other boys. I do not know just whence Scrap's stories came, nor how they were made up, but I will quote from one which lies before me.
"William and Billy were two brothers, and they lived with their father and mother. Their father was named Mr. Holloway. He had been a very rich man, but now he had lost most of his money. He lost it through a chink in the wall. After that he kept his money on ice.
"'Come,' said William to Billy. 'Let us go down to the brook and fish.'
"So they went.
"'Hi-i!' said Billy, 'I've found a penny.'
"He then found a very large smooth rock to lay it on before they began to fish.
"They meant to catch a whale, but they tried for little fishes first. William caught one little one, and laid it on the rock. Presently they heard the fish screaming and yelling, and they went to the rock, and saw the penny was gone. They knew the fish had swallowed it, for he kept on screeching so. They took him up and jiggled him by the tail, and the penny dropped out. At last they caught a whale, and carried him home with the little fish. Mr. and Mrs. Holloway thought they would like to go to that same brook and fish. So, early the next morning, they went. They worked all day, and William and Billy had two pieces of pie for dinner all alone. And what do you think? When Mr. and Mrs. Holloway came home they had only caught one skinny, miserable little thing, and William and Billy sat down and roared laughing."
Scrap asked Mary if she thought any one would like to publish this story. He said it wasn't truly true, but he had it in his head just as if it was true. He said the German boys liked it; but he knew they were sorry William and Billy were Americans.
Scrap began a museum about this time, and when you paid a penny and went in to see it, you were treated to a tepid drink which he called "lemarade," and which made you feel very uncomfortable almost at once. Scrap mixed it in a bottle, and kept it under his little pillow, except on "museum days." This museum was a source of great joy to the round-faced German boys. It contained a variety of articles brought from America. One was a piece of horseshoe, which Scrap labelled "An American's bone."
He had some old teeth; a broken pistol; an ancient army hat of his father's; varieties of buttons; a few dried flowers, labelled, "From Central Park, United States of 'Merica"; a piece of marble with which, Scrap said, "any one could plant a whole tombstone" (he believed they grew); and finally a number of old postage stamps. Quantity seemed to be mainly Scrap's object. When, you got tired of looking, the "lemarade" 'was again handed around.
After a few exhibitions of this valuable collection, it seemed to occur to Scrap that the affair needed life and animation. So he instituted a dance 'midway in the performance. It was done with great gravity, and dear little Scrap's feet were so large that they made every movement funny. Somehow, although it was meant as a diversion, that dance was so pathetic no one could smile naturally, and Scrap himself seemed to consider it a dignified affair.
I am sorry that I can not tell you more about dear little Scrap's doings. His active, merry, earnest ways seem to have filled all that German winter. He organized all the games of the neighborhood, and was the leader in everything. All the time he had certain quiet hours in which, dear baby that he was in years, his education went on—his funny little education! He wrote and read and spelled, and he did the most astonishing little sums.
One snowy March day Scrap fell ill. His longing to see America once more grew positively painful. He kept his desk near him, and continued his "museum days," always handing around "lemarade" at the usual intervals, and promising us new dances when he got well.
The boys used to make a circle around his bed, and it seemed to worry them that at times they had been cross or rough with Scrap. Unless he was very weak, he would always tell them stories. His little face grew very white and wistful-looking, and his voice very tired, and I think if any one had had the heart, those museum days would have been interfered with, for he entered into the spirit of them so keenly that they left him very weary.
At last he gave them up of his own will. He found he could not enjoy them; but he kept his little flag close at hand. One afternoon, when it was snowing outside, and everything in-doors was very still, and Ben was asleep in a chair by the fire, Scrap touched his sister Mary with one little feverish hand, and said:
"Molly, isn't it 'Merika yet?"
Mary had tears so thickly in her eyes, she bent her face that Scrap might not see them. The dear little face on the pillow was watching hers anxiously.
"It will be very soon, my darling."
Scrap moved about restlessly for a moment, tracing a pattern on the wall with one little finger. It grew tired so soon. When he turned his face again to Mary, he said, with his old quaint air, and jealously holding his little flag, "Won't I always be a truly 'Merikan, Molly?"
They re-assured him on this point, and he fell asleep quite comforted. The dear little Scrap! He scarcely spoke again. The next day's wintry dawn saw him in his last slumber. The little flag he had so treasured as the symbol of his native land was held so closely in his fingers that they would not move it. His little friends came in to see him for good-by, and Mary and Ben and Lewis talked of the day when he had first come to them, lying in that pink and white cradle over the sea. Would the room look the same ever again? Ben wondered. Lewis talked of how Scrap had loved the garden.
When they kissed him for the last time, and laid him to rest, the bit of color and the faded stars went with him. His dear little face wore its sweetest look. The flag was clasped on his bosom, and winter flowers were lying all about him.
[WAVE AND SAND.]
BY CHARLES BARNARD.
I have now told you something, at three different times, about the sea, the rocks, and the waves. You remember we looked at these things, and tried to learn something of the way in which the winds and waves have worked together to carve out the rocks and the dry land. There is nothing like seeing a thing for yourself, and those boys and girls who live near the eastern shore of the United States, between New York and Florida, can easily visit one of the strangest of the strange works done by the sea.
Along the whole south side of Long Island, beginning at Montauk, all along the Jersey shore, away down past Little Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, Cape Hatteras, and the low sandy shores of the Carolinas and Georgia, to the Florida Keys, is a most singular beach, built up by the sea. The odd thing about this thousand-mile beach is that it appears about to move away. It is continually walking along the coast, up or down, or forward and backward, as if restless and tired of staying in one place.
At one time it may have great holes cut through it, and at another time it creeps along and closes up the gaps, and alters the whole character of the country behind it. Its queer habit of creeping along the shore in certain places has given such parts the name of travelling beaches. Really, I suppose, there are no beaches in the world that do not travel about at some time. They are all restless things, and while we may not see them move, we feel very sure they can and do travel for miles wherever the winds and waves compel them. People who live on these travelling beaches try to stop them by building heavy stone walls, or by driving rows of piles across them. They do not seem to care much, and in some places the sand and rolling pebbles climb over the walls, and travel on very much as they please. Coney Island is one of these travelling beaches, Rockaway is another, Sandy Hook is part of another.
The only thing that can stop one of these creeping beaches is a river. The Hudson River, flowing out of New York Bay, breaks the beach in two between the Highlands of Navesink and Long Island. There has been a big fight here between the beach and the river. Coney Island has crept out like a crooked finger from the east, and Sandy Hook has travelled up for several miles from the south. If the river were not the strongest, the beaches would creep out from each side and grow right across the great bay, and Sandy Hook would touch Coney Island. Then, in place of the wide bay open to the sea, there would be a long beach, with the ocean on the outside and a fresh-water lake on the inside.
All the rivers that flow east from the mountains in the Eastern States below New York Bay have had to fight with this creeping beach before they could escape into the sea. In some places the beaches have crept right across the streams, and compelled them to turn aside and go another way.
NEW JERSEY COAST SOUTH OF SANDY HOOK.
Here is a map showing one place where long years ago there was a strange fight between the creeping beach and two poor little rivers. The place is on the New Jersey shore not far from New York. At the bottom of the map is a part of the Shrewsbury River. Just north of it is another and larger stream called the Navesink. Still farther north are the high hills called the Highlands of Navesink. In front of these two streams and the hills is a narrow strip of beach, and outside of this is the Atlantic Ocean. There is a carriage-road and a railroad on top of the beach, and from the car windows you can see the surf breaking on one side, and the still waters of the two rivers on the other side. It is so narrow that often the sea breaks entirely over it, and in the summer-time you can walk from one side to the other in less than two minutes. To the north this beach extends to Sandy Hook, and to the south it stretches for hundreds of miles, with here and there a break, as at the Chesapeake or at the Delaware Capes, far down to Florida. Pine-trees grow on it here. Far away to the south the wild palmetto, the orange-trees, and the bananas grow along the shore.
The strange thing about the place shown on this map is found just where the two rivers meet. A long time ago—so long that no one can tell when it may have happened—the rivers ran into the sea just where the beach is now. Where the hotels and cottages stand was once deep water. There are two ways in which this may have happened: it may have been a storm that threw up a bar across the river's mouth, or the creeping beach may have slowly pushed its way along and closed it up. It may have been both the storm and the creeping sand. At any rate, we may feel pretty sure the river was dammed up, and the water, finding no other outlet, turned to the north, and burst through into Sandy Hook Bay. It cut a path along the front of the hills, and there we find it to-day, a narrow river running to the north between the beach and the high-lands. Steam-boats pass up the Navesink River this way, and a bridge has been built over the stream to the beach. All this, as it is to-day, is shown on the map.
This creeping motion of the beach is very curious. The waves when the wind blows from the south or southeast strike the shore obliquely; that is, instead of rolling in "broad-side," as the sailors would say, or squarely in front, they strike at an angle. One end of the wave strikes the bottom first, and the breaking surf seems to run along the beach, instead of falling all at once, for some distance. The waves, as you have seen, push the sand along before them, and so it happens that these southeast waves drive the sand along as well as up the beach. The sand slides and rolls toward the right, or north, and the beach is said to creep or travel. If there is an opening in the beach, the waves push the sand from the south into the opening, and it grows out into the deep water just as you saw in the picture of the sand-bar. This beach has already crept three miles out into the water, and made Sandy Hook.
One thing is quite certain. There was at one time a deep channel through the beach just here. At one time not many years ago a storm broke through the beach, and a ship, losing its way, ran in there, and was wrecked. Not a trace of the old hull can be found now. The beach long ago crept over the place, and to-day the sand makes a solid strip of land there, just as we see it.
Look at the map again. Opposite the two rivers, outside the beach, you see a curious tongue or spit running out from the shore. This is under water, out of sight. The United States Coast Survey sent their boats all over this place, and measured the depth. The numbers on the map show the depth of the water in feet. Just here it is shallow. A little farther north, directly opposite the two rivers, it is much deeper. Again, farther along, there are more sandy spits and bars running out under water. This shows that at one time there was a deep channel here between the two shoals. It is fair to suppose this deep place was the old mouth of a river. It is said there are even some old teeth left in it yet, for on the southern spit is a buoy that marks a dangerous place called the Shrewsbury Rocks. All these things tell us that at one time these two rivers ran into the sea where now the beach stands, and that the waves and the creeping sand got the best of the rivers, and altered the whole face of the country hereabouts. Where once was an inlet and a swift river is now a beach and a broad shallow-stream, lined with marshes, and slowly filling up with salt grasses and soft mud washed down from the red soil of the hills. What will happen next may be quite as strange as that which has gone before.
Not long ago I sailed for three days and nights along the coast from New York to Savannah. By day we could see from the steamer's deck trees and buildings, bath-houses, fishing-houses, and tall light-houses standing on the western horizon, as if planted in the water. They were on this same low beach that extends for a thousand miles along our coast. Behind the beach for nearly all the way there is still water, in lagoons or great swamps, in narrow streams ashore, or in great inland seas like Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. At one place in Florida there is a strange stream called the Indian River that flows for a hundred miles just behind the beach, close to the sea, before it finds a way out into the ocean. In many places steamboats pass along the coast for long distances behind this sandy fringe that lines the shore. Still more curious is the low land behind the beach and the still water. It stretches like a vast plain, growing wider and wider toward the south, far down to Florida. It is covered with pine-trees, and in some places it is called the Pine-Barrens, and at other places the Piny Woods Country.
The waves and the creeping beaches have been at work a long time, just as they are at work to-day. There will always be a struggle between the rivers at these queer travelling beaches, but which will be the victor and what will grow out of it all nobody can tell. It makes no difference after all. Some one may have his pretty house torn down by the waves, and steamboats may have to change their routes; but the Fatherly Goodness that controls these things will do what is best for the sea and the land and all His children.