FATHER TIME'S DILEMMA.
BY RAJA.
There was a commotion in the moon. Father Time had the rheumatism in both legs, and could not move from his seat by the fire-place. This was a horrible state of affairs. For thousands upon thousands of years—nobody knows how many—he had never failed to make his visit to the earth, and now he was helpless; and what would be the result of a day's neglect of duty? Perhaps the world would come to an end; for with the end of Time, what else could be expected? At all events, his reputation would be ruined, and the bare idea made him writhe and groan.
"My dear, pray be more careful," said his wife, anxiously. "If you toss your arms about in that reckless fashion, you will certainly do some mischief. I have picked up your scythe seven times, and your hour-glass was just on the point of tumbling from the table."
"Let it tumble," growled Father Time, crossly. "If my reputation goes, what do I care for the hour-glass? Aïe! aïe! where do you suppose I took this rheumatism? Never dreamed that I could have it at my age, after all the draughts that I've been exposed to. It must have been that dreadful eclipse that made the air so chilly."
At this there went up such a howl from the Moon that all the inhabitants of Venus, which happened to be in the neighborhood, thought there was a thunder-storm. Father Time's billions and trillions of children had just come quietly into his room to ask how he felt, and when they heard their usually gentle parent express himself in such impatient tones they thought he must certainly be delirious, and wept aloud in anguish. He was rather ashamed of his burst of passion when he saw how they took it to heart, and hung his head for a while, upon which his wife tried to comfort him.
"It's almost time for Sol to go to earth, and how can he if I'm not with him? I shall go crazy if this state of things continues."
"Papa," cried two billion of his children, "why could not we take your place for to-day?"
"Oh yes," echoed all the rest; "we do so long to be useful!"
A gleam of hope lighted their father's gloomy face, but he looked a bit doubtful. "Are you sure that you know what to do and where to go? You have not my power of ubiquity; that is to say, you can not be everywhere at once as I am."
"But there are more than enough of us to go around," answered the children. "Each one of us will spend the day by the side of some mortal, and we are sure you will not be missed. As for old Sol, it will be easy enough to explain your absence to him. It is all his fault for letting himself be eclipsed."
"Very well, then, my dear children; go, and success attend you. Do not forget our family motto." He stretched out both his arms in blessing, and solemnly pronounced the words "Tempus fugit."
Earth's daylight had fled, and all its inhabitants were soundly sleeping. Father Time's children trooped back into his room, and a more dejected multitude was never seen before. With very few exceptions, they were all pale and tired and forlorn. He looked at them for a moment, and then a sly twinkle crept into his eyes as he said:
"What is the matter, children? Haven't you enjoyed your day on the earth?"
They raised their heads to groan an emphatic "No," and wearily let them drop again.
"Why, you have envied me my daily trip there for ages"—they gave a sigh in unison—"and never would believe me when I said it had its drawbacks."
They looked too crushed to answer, but finally one of them said, "I don't believe the people of earth would have dared to treat you as they treated us."
Father Time leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud. "Let me hear what they have done to you," he said. "You begin," nodding to the child who sat nearest to him, an attenuated little creature with hollow cheeks. She raised her head, and began, in a feeble voice:
"I am so weak that I can hardly speak, for I have had the most dreadful day that can be imagined. I took my place by a nice-appearing little boy, whose mischievous look and dancing eyes attracted me to him at once. At first I got on very well; he seemed to take a fancy to me. But after a while he grew careless, dropped his books, yawned and stretched. Then he began to get into mischief, and did more naughty things in the course of an hour than I imagined could be done in a day; and so matters went on from bad to worse. I felt myself wasting away, but he never once thought of me, never gave me another bit of attention, and I thought I should not live to get home. Finally, when his mamma came in, and wanted to know what he had been doing, the naughty child threw all the blame of his neglected duties on me; said that I was a 'hateful Time to go so fast,' and called me a hundred other unjust names. I am so tired!—so tired!"
Father Time smiled pityingly, and stroked his poor child's head.
"You have been terribly wasted, my dear; I know how unpleasant that is. But never fear; a good sleep will quite restore you.—What have you to say, my son?" to the next child.
"Look at me," moaned the one questioned. "I am one mass of bruises from head to foot. I can hardly walk. I was never so treated in my life."
"What has happened to you?"
"I went into the house of a child who seemed very fond of study, and whom I thought would be very pleasant company. Stupid little thing!"—with a burst of rage—"she began to practice her music, and that moment I felt a sharp pain; she set to work beating me with all her might and main, great irregular thumps, now on my head, now on my shoulders, until I thought I must scream. I did groan and moan; it was all of no use, for she went on, as it seemed to me, forever. By-and-by her teacher came in, and that was better, for although he beat me, it was in an entirely different way, that did not hurt at all. It was as if he were caressing me. But the little vixen, belabored me again, and I am all black and blue."
"Never mind, poor boy," said Father Time. "You will be all right to-morrow; but I have had enough of such beatings to sympathize with you fully."
"They have neither of them suffered as much as I," remarked a third young Time, in a pathetic, subdued voice, "for they at least were abused in an open sort of way; but I have been mortified beyond conception. Shortly after my arrival in the world I entered the house of a respectable middle-aged woman: you know I have always been fond of associating with my elders, and I thought that I should be likely to learn something from her which might be of use to me."
"Quite right, my child," said Father Time, nodding his approval.
"But there never was a greater mistake," continued his son. "From morning until night that same respectable middle-aged lady has done nothing but attempt to hide me, as if I were something to be ashamed of; I, a scion of the oldest house in existence; I, a Time with a pedigree which goes farther back than Adam, though it consists of only one generation besides my own." (He said this with such pride that the trillions of dejected Times for one second really straightened themselves with family feeling.) "The first thing that she did was to cover my face with the most disgusting paint and powder that were ever invented, sighing all the time about wrinkles, crow's-feet, and the ravages of time. Then she put on some untidy mess of hair all over my forehead, and into my very eyes, after which she dressed me in a style which made me blush under the paint. Such furbelows! such gew-gaws! Then followed visits and conversations. She giggled; she simpered; she talked to me and of me as if I were a babe in arms; why, she talked like Mother Goose herself, and Father Gander, and the whole family of geese," indignantly. "I declare it made my blood boil."
Father Time looked grave. "I know thousands of such women," he said, "who are ashamed of their acquaintance with us. Very foolish of them, since they can not possibly cut us, and since, if they only knew it, there is no alliance in the world more highly respectable. Cheer up, my dear. You have nothing to be ashamed of.—And now tell me your experience," to a fourth young Time, who was holding his head with both hands, and groaning in agony.
"I am tired almost to death, if a Time could die," was the reply. "I have been with a poet."
"Good things in their way," remarked his father.
"But this one wasn't a good one, though he thought himself so. And the worst of it all was that he insisted upon writing an ode to Time. Before the day was over I almost wished that you, my dear father, had never existed."
"I know the man you mean," said Father Time, gravely; "he lives in every town on the globe, and is the greatest time-waster on record. You look thin with the fatigue.—Why, why, what is this?"
A beautiful child stepped up before Father Time, and smiled in answer to his exclamation.
"Don't you know me, papa?"
"Are you—is it possible—can you be one of my children? What has happened to make you so lovely?"
"I have been improved," was the answer. "I have never had a happier day in all my life."
Her brothers and sisters looked up in amazement.
"Yes, I think I am the only one of us all who has been fortunate to-day. I went into the house of the dearest child in all the world. Why, the first thing that she did was to kiss and pet me, and say, 'Dear Time, let us see how we can help each other to-day.' From the moment I came until the moment I left she never faltered. In the first place, she studied her lessons with great diligence—"
"Ah!" said Father Time, "that is what makes your eyes shine so brightly."
"Then she played with some little friends, and was always sweet and gentle with them. She talked so cheerfully and lovingly—"
"That is what gives your lips that lovely smile," said Father Time again.
"She helped them in various little ways; picked up one when she fell, fetched some toys to amuse another—did all she could to make them happy. And when I left her this evening, she was as much improved as I. Do you wonder that I have had a happy day?"
"No, indeed," replied Father Time, while his children cried, in chorus,
"Oh, I wish there had been more like her!"
"Well," said the father, "now go to bed, you poor unfortunate creatures, and sleep off your woes. My rheumatism has disappeared, and I shall be able to go to earth myself to-morrow. Repeat our motto once more."
With one voice the trillions of children replied: "Tempus Fugit. Good-night."
[MY BEAR HUNT.]
BY ALLAN FORMAN.
It wasn't a regular bear hunt; that is, I didn't do nearly as much hunting as the bear did. I did not start out intending to hunt. He did. I went to get the butter, when— But I am getting ahead of my story. It was when I was about thirteen years old that my father took my brother and myself camping with him in the Adirondacks. We pitched our tent at the head of Little Tupper Lake. There was a spring of fine cold water not far back in the woods. So, after making our beds out of pine boughs, building a fire, and setting up the table, we went down to the spring, and put our butter—which was in a tin pail fitted with a water-tight cover—in it to keep cool.
All went well for the first few days. Father and brother Will (who was fifteen) shot a deer, so that we had plenty of venison. The guide caught a quantity of trout, and we were enjoying ourselves so thoroughly that we began to dread the time when we should have to return home.
"Can't we stay longer than two weeks?" I asked father one morning.
"We'll stay until the butter gives out," he replied, laughing.
The nearest place to get butter was twenty miles away, and as it was disappearing rapidly, owing to the appetites of growing boys, father had already warned us of the necessity of economy in that direction. We were, after that, very sparing in our use of butter, and it seemed, to bid fair to last longer than the promised two weeks. As the guide was preparing supper one evening, father said, "Will, I wish that you would go down to the spring and get some water; and, Charlie, you go too, and bring up some butter." It was a simple request, but thereby hangs the tale of my first and only bear hunt.
We started off, and soon came to the spring. The path led around it into a thicket of huckleberry bushes. Will proposed that we should pick some for supper. We plunged into the thicket, and soon were busy picking the delicious fruit. We had not been occupied in this manner very long when we heard a crashing in the bushes near the spring, and as we looked back, we saw a great black bear. He was not fifty feet away from us, and was gazing into the spring with a complacent air.
"He's looking at himself," said Will.
"See him grin," I replied, divided between fear and curiosity.
"Thinks he's handsome," whispered Will.
Bruin looked over in our direction with an annoyed expression, and we decided to suspend our remarks as to his personal appearance until some more convenient time—when he was further away, in fact. He continued to peer intently into the spring, and we were beginning to get impatient, when, to our horror, he slowly extended his paw, and without much trouble fished up our butter pail. He calmly seated himself on the ground, and taking the pail between his hind-paws, regarded it reflectively for a few moments. He seemed lost in thought. Then he smiled blandly, and slowly passed one of his strong fore-claws around the rim of the pail. He repeated the operation, while Will and I looked on in despair.
"Maybe he can't get the top off," whispered Will.
He had hardly spoken, when, with a slight rattle, the cover fell to the ground. Will groaned. The bear paused, looked puzzled, smelled the butter suspiciously, and sat looking at it with the air of a scientific investigator.
"He thinks that it is oleomargarine," whispered Will.
But no. If Bruin did for a moment doubt the integrity of our butter, his doubts had vanished; for with one sweep of his great tongue he transferred about two pounds of it into his mouth. Will groaned. Bruin paused, and to our excited imaginations looked in our direction, as if he would have liked some boy to eat with his butter.
We remained perfectly quiet while he finished the contents of the pail. He licked out the last particle, and then carefully turned the pail over and licked off the bottom and sides. After he had satisfied himself that there was no more, he rose and looked into the spring. He seemed discontented for a moment, but the recollection of his supper brightened him up, and casting a loving glance at the empty pail, he trotted off, "the best greased b'ar in the north woods," as our guide afterward remarked.
When he had gone a safe distance, Will and I sadly picked up the pail and walked back to camp. Father was getting uneasy, and had started to meet us. When we told him our adventure, he ran back to camp, and getting the guide, dogs, and his rifle, started in pursuit of the thief.
A little later we heard a shot, and before long father returned, bringing the bear's skin, and some choice pieces of his flesh for supper. Lack of butter compelled us to break up camp next day, and notwithstanding the beautiful bear-skin rug Will and I have in our room, we never quite forgave the thief who stole our butter.
