[to be continued.]
[THE SEA.]
BY CHARLES BARNARD.
I.
THE SEA.
Here is a view of the sea. In front is a splendid wave just ready to put on its creamy cap, and to fall over with a glorious roar upon the shore. How the spray will fly as the white water rushes up the beach with a soft hissing sound, or dashes over those brown rocks! Behind is the level floor of the water, and far away the sky and water meet at that beautiful line called the horizon.
Did you ever see the ocean? Have you been to that most wonderful place in the world, the sea-shore? If you live in the interior, and have not seen the salt-water, save all your spare pennies, and resolve that some day you will travel east or west, and look at least once in your lifetime upon the great and wide sea. Perhaps you have seen it. All the better. You know how the waves look, how the sea-birds skim over the water, how beautiful the sky and clouds that rest on the horizon, how sweet the air, what grand sights and sounds you may find where the land and water meet.
If you live near the sea, take this book in your hand, and let us go down by the water. If you live far away from the sea, look at the picture, and at any other pictures like it you can find, and try to remember what you read, that when some day you do see the real ocean, you may perhaps understand it better, and learn to love it as do all those who see it every day. First, be careful. Do not be disappointed. Do not expect too much. You can see only a mere speck of the sea at once. As you stand by the shore, the vast circle of water seems to be immense, yet it is only a very little space on the wide sea. It is this that disappoints people who see the water for the first time. They expect too much, so that they do not really understand it.
Look at the big wave just ready to break. Where did it come from? How long have these waves been pounding on the shore? How old is the sea? When did it begin, and what does it all mean? If you wait here a little while, you will observe that the waves are slowly coming nearer and nearer, or are moving off, leaving the beach bare. Taste the water. It is bitter and salt, like brine. These are strange things, and perhaps if you sit here by the water for a while, we may learn something of what they mean.
The world is like a splendid picture-book, full of stories more wonderful than any fairy tale. The boy or girl who has eyes to see can read this book as he walks over the great pages. The sea is one of the best pictures in the book, its history and its work the strangest story you ever heard. This water you see from the eastern shore of the United States is a part of the Atlantic Ocean. If an ocean steam-ship should sail straight away toward the horizon at a speed of three hundred miles a day, she would be ten days in crossing to Europe. Yet this ocean is only a long gulf between the continents. Outside of this gulf is the real ocean, covering three-fourths of the entire surface of the earth, or, as they measure it, about 146,000,000 square miles of water.
How old is the sea? Thousands of millions would fail to tell the number of years that the sea has covered the earth. Before there was any dry land, as we see it to-day, there was water everywhere. The land sprang from the sea. These waves helped to build up the hills and rocks. The tides helped to carve out the continents. Nearly all the surface of the dry land was once dissolved in the sea, just as to-day we find salt dissolved in the sea-water.
Men who have studied the sea and the land feel sure that at one time, so long ago no one can imagine the number of years, the world was red-hot, and all the water hung in thick clouds of steam above the melting rocks. Showers of scalding rain fell on the glowing earth, and gathered in ponds and lakes of boiling water. As the earth cooled, more and more water fell from the steaming sky, and slowly the pools grew larger and became united, until at last all the waters were gathered together in one place. Just as now salt is dissolved in the sea-water, so many of the elements of which the dry land is composed were dissolved in the hot seas, or were suspended as soft mud in the swift currents that flowed hither and thither under the cloudy skies where the sun never shone.
In time the rain ceased, and the blue sky appeared. Then more wonderful things happened. The muddy water began to grow clear and cool. The materials dissolved or suspended in the water fell down to the bottom and covered the floor of the sea, and a new kind of rock began to be made. The soft mud became hard and firm. Earthquakes tore up the beds of hardened mud, twisted them into new shapes, and lifted them above the water into the air. Then the dry land appeared. Rocky, rough, and wild, without trees or grass. Much of it was the remains of the older fiery days before there were any seas, but much also came out of the water, and was once dissolved in it, just as salt is now dissolved. Iron, silver, gold, limestone, chalk, and slate, with many other things that go to make the land, were once drifting about in those old oceans, or lay as mud upon the bottom.
Then the waves began to work, tearing and rending the rocks, knocking off bits and pieces only to throw them about in every tide, grinding and rolling them together in the surf, and then appeared that strange thing under your feet—the sand. Pools and little bays were formed on that old shore, and the sand and mud settled in quiet corners. The rain fell on the soft mud, and every drop left its little mark where it fell. To-day we can see this very mud turned to stone with every splashing rain-drop printed on it. These pools and bays afterward became dry land, only to be turned over, twisted, and bent out of shape by earthquakes, or torn up by floating icebergs drifting on those ancient seas.
This has been the work of the sea—to create the dry land. To-day, even while you are looking on, the sea is at work. The waves are always tearing down and building up. The water holds countless millions of living creatures, each in its tiny shell. Each one drinks the water, and extracts from it the lime he uses to build his house. Millions of these creatures die every day, and their tiny houses sink down like a white snow-storm of shells and skeletons to the bottom of the ocean. Deep under the Atlantic these shells cover the bottom with a soft mud called ooze. Perhaps this ooze will in some long-distant time be lifted above the sea to form a new dry land, just as ages ago the bones of other creatures made vast ranges of hills along the shore.
The water is the great land builder, and these waves are the hammer with which it grinds and pounds the rocks into sand. The tides and currents shift the sand about, making new beaches where the birds gather to find their food, and children come to play. Day by day, summer and winter, the work goes on. The sea is never idle, never hurries, never stops. The beach to-day is different from yesterday. To-morrow it will be different still. You may not see the change, but the change goes on, and will go on for countless years on years to come.
[MAX RANDER'S WAR STORY.]
BY MATTHEW WHITE, JUN.
It was a year ago last fall. I was only eleven then, and we were all travelling over in Europe—father, mother, Thad, and I.
Thad's my little brother, you know, two years younger than I am.
Well, we had been to London, with its jolly cabs, and to Paris, with its funny sewers, and were on our way back from little Switzerland, with its big mountains, when father took it into his head to stop for a week in a poky old town somewhere in Germany.
Here we staid at a dreadfully quiet hotel on a narrow street, which Thad called an alley; but father liked it because it was right opposite a house where he used to board in a professor's family when he was a boy.
We had been in this dismal place for three or four days, when one morning mother woke up with one of her nervous spells, so instead of our all going off for a long walk in the country, father staid home with mother, and sent Thad and me to take a stroll through the streets near the hotel, where there was not any danger of our getting lost.
Well, we started out and walked twice around the market-place, stood gazing for five minutes at some dusty cakes and candy in the confectioner's window, and spent ten minutes more in watching the German boys play their stupid games during recess at the Gymnasium, which is not a gymnasium at all, but a grammar school. Then when they all went back to their books again, we were left out in the roughly paved street with no sidewalks, nobody in it to look at, no horse-cars to ride on, and the sun shining as brightly as if we were having a jolly good time, and were hoping it would not rain.
"Oh, how these stones hurt my feet!" exclaimed Thad, when we had stumbled along in an aimless sort of way for a block or so. "Let's go out in the country." And into the country we went, keeping on in the same street until it changed from a street into a road on which we had never been before, with tall trees in a straight line on each side of it, and nice green grass all along the edge.
I was pretty positive, to be sure, that father would not have approved of our going outside the town, but what else could we do to amuse ourselves?
"It's better than bothering mother, anyway," I finally decided; and so we walked and ran, played tag and counted trees, until we grew tired, when, spying a nice shady spot under the brow of a hill, I told Thad that we had better rest there awhile before starting back again for dinner.
"It's a valley, isn't it, Max?" observed my brother, as we stretched ourselves out beneath a large tree. He had just begun the study of geography, and feeling that I should never neglect any opportunity of training his young mind in useful knowledge, I at once began to point out all the geographical divisions within view, and was much encouraged by the respectful attention Thad appeared to pay, until I suddenly discovered that he was asleep.
"Poor little chap!" I muttered; "I wonder if I oughtn't to wake him up;" and while I was trying to guess whether we had come one mile or three, in order to reckon how long it would take us to return to town, I—well, I must have fallen asleep too, for the blue sky, and the green grass, and the yellow sun finally got so mixed up in my mind that I wasn't sure of any one of them, and then all was a blank, as authors say in books when they don't exactly know how to describe a person's feelings in an upset or a runaway.
Well, I lay there in that sort of a hollow place in the bank, with the tree in front of me, and Thad at my side, for an hour or two, I guess.
Of course I don't know what went on around me during that time, so I sha'n't attempt to tell; all I know is that when I had the natural use of my senses once more, I heard such a horrible noise right over my head as nearly made me lose them again.
Bang, bang, bang, and boom, b-r-r-r, bang!
What on earth could it all mean? I rubbed my eyes and felt of my ears to make sure they were in good working order, and then ventured to peek out around the tree which I have said stood directly in front of the little hollow in the side of the hill which I had chosen for a resting-place.
Goodness! didn't my heart beat like sixty when I saw what it was that made the racket. Soldiers!
There they were, whole regiments of them, standing on the edge of the field opposite, just where it sloped down to form the valley Thad had spoken about.
He had been waked up too by this time, and when he saw the troops over there blazing away right for the spot almost where we were crouching, he looked pretty well scared, I can tell you.
"What are they doing, Max?" he asked, grabbing hold of my jacket, and squeezing up closer to me.
"I guess they're fighting," I replied.
"Who are they fighting with?" But just then another bang, bang, banging over our heads answered the question, and revealed to us the terrible fact that we were between two fires.
I won't pretend to say that I wasn't frightened, for I was, and I'll put it to any other fellow of eleven if he would not feel sort of trembly about the knees to wake up from a nap and suddenly find himself between two armies firing away at one another for dear life.
"But I didn't know there was any war here now," continued my brother, when there was a slight pause in the hostilities, as the newspaper writers say.
"Oh, you never can calculate on countries over here," I returned, as I wiped the perspiration from my forehead. "I s'pose the Emperor's got mad with France again, and they're going to kill off several thousand poor chaps, who don't feel mad a bit, to fix matters. Those are Germans over there; I can tell by the uniforms, so of course the French must be on our side. Now—" But at that instant the firing began again worse than ever.
The smoke filled the little valley in clouds, so we couldn't see how many men fell; and when it blew away, there was nobody lying on the ground, so we concluded they must have cleared the field of the killed and wounded under its protection.
Sometimes in the pauses of the shooting we could hear the captains and generals shouting, and the drums beating, and see the flashing bayonets, and the flags flying proudly.
"Perhaps they won't find us, after all," said Thad, during one of these peaceful lulls; and indeed I had already begun to indulge myself in the same hope, when what should the Germans do but rush down the opposite bank, and prepare to charge right for our tree.
On they came, plunging over stones and ditches, swords waving, bayonets flashing, fury gleaming from their eyes.
"Don't cry, Thad," I whispered, when there was only a few feet left between us and the advancing army. "Come, let's stand out in front of them, so they won't trample on us, anyway;" and summoning all my courage, I took my brother by the hand, and stepped out from behind the tree, facing the whole battle front.
As soon as the Colonel or Captain, whichever it was, caught sight of us, he shouted out at the top of his voice; but of course neither Thad nor I understood a word, although I supposed he was calling on us to surrender.
Thinking this a much more comfortable way of ending matters than by being put to the sword, I screamed out, as bold as I could: "If you please, sir, we're Americans, and I hope you'll whip the Frenchmen all to pieces."
I didn't expect he'd understand all I said, of course, although I was pretty certain of America's being nearly the same in German as in English.
But what do you think the man did? He said something to the soldiers; then turning to me, he pointed to an opening in the ranks he had caused to be made just in front of us, and at once understanding what he meant, Thad and I ran for it, never stopping until we had left the soldiers far behind us, when I thought it would be as well to call a halt, and consider as to the quickest way of getting back to the hotel, for it was by this time long after the dinner hour.
However, we managed to find the road after a while, and then we made for the town as fast as ever we could. Of course we got a scolding for having staid out so late; but when the story of the exciting adventure we had passed through was told, I felt sure we'd both be looked upon with more respect.
Well, father and mother listened breathlessly, and when I had finished I asked father if he had heard anything about the invasion of the French army. At that he broke out into the most frightful fit of laughter, and really for a minute I thought that my account of the danger Thad and I had been in had made him kind of hysterical (I always used to think it ought to be her-terical, as men don't often get that way), until he caught his breath long enough to say: "Oh, Max, Max! there wasn't any French army there. The whole affair was merely a sham battle between two of the German regiments for practice, and the only reason you didn't get hit was because the guns were only loaded with powder."
