[See double-page illustration.]
Boys and girls now travel so much and so far that no doubt a great number of "Harper's Young People" will have an opportunity to see these fine little fellows, perhaps some pleasant day next summer. Mr. Morris has drawn them just as they are leaving their school for their weekly parade.
This school is in Chelsea, England, and is for the support and education of seven hundred boys and three hundred girls, whose fathers have either been killed in battle or died on foreign stations, or whose mothers have died while their fathers were on duty in foreign lands. The school is a fine building of brick and stone, and the front entrance, out of which you see the boys filing, has a spacious stone portico, supported by four noble pillars of the Doric order, the frieze bearing the following inscription: "The Royal Military Asylum for the Children of Soldiers of the Regular Army."
The Asylum is inclosed by high walls, except before the great front, where there is an iron railing. The grounds connected with this part are beautifully laid out in flower and grass plats, and shaded with fine trees. Attached to each wing are spacious play-grounds, as well as a number of covered arcades. In the latter the children play when the weather is too wet or cold for open-air exercise.
All the domestic affairs are regulated by Commissioners appointed by the Queen's sign-manual, and the officials consist of a commandant, adjutant, and secretary, chaplain, quartermaster, surgeon, matron, and various other persons; for everything about the school is conducted according to military discipline.
The boys are taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and after they are eleven years of age they are employed on alternate days in works of industry. Five hours daily in summer and four in winter is the time required of them, and in this short period they make every article of clothing they require for their own use. About one hundred boys work as tailors, fifty each day alternately; about one hundred are employed in a similar manner as shoe-makers, capmakers, and coverers and repairers of the school's books. Besides, there are two sets or companies of knitters and of shirtmakers, and others who are engaged as porters, gardeners, etc. Everything is done by those who work at the trades, except the cutting out. This branch, requiring experience, is managed by old regimental shoe-makers, tailors, etc., who, with aged sergeants and corporals and their wives, manage the affairs of the institution.
The school also furnishes its own drum and fife corps and a very fine military band, the players, of course, devoting a proper proportion of their time to the practice on their instruments. Friday is the best day on which to visit the school, for on that day the entire force is turned out for a dress parade. The boys are then dressed in full uniform—red jackets, blue trousers, and little black caps—and with their flags flying, drums beating, and band playing, they march to the parade-ground, where they give a fine exhibition drill. After the parade they are trained in various difficult and skillful gymnastic exercises.
There is no compulsion on any boy to join the army; but when any regiment is in want of recruits, a notice is placed in the school-rooms, and any boys above fourteen years of age who wish to go into the army are allowed to join that regiment. For those who prefer trades or other occupations situations are provided, and if at the end of a certain number of years they can produce certificates of good conduct from those who employ them, they are publicly rewarded in the chapel of the institution.
The girls, in addition to the usual branches of a good common-school education, are taught needle-work of all kinds, and fitted for lady's-maids, dressmakers, cooks, and the various higher positions of household services. Their dress is uniform, and consists of blue petticoats, red gowns, and straw hats.
The school is supported by an annual grant from Parliament, and by the gift of one day's pay in every year from the whole army.
"MAMMA KNOWS HOW."
The awful fact is beyond a doubt,
The cage was open, and Dick flew out.
"What shall I do?" cries Pet, half wild,
And Nurse Deb says, "Why, bress you, child,
I knows a plan dat'll nebber fail:
Jes put some salt on yer birdie's tail."
"Why, you silly old nurse, 'twould never do;
That plan is worthy a goose like you.
What! salt for birds. No, sugar, I say;
I'll coax him back to me right away."
But wicked Dick, with his round black eyes,
He wouldn't be caught in this gentle wise.
Mamma comes in, and she sees the plight;
It will take her wits to set it right:
That big bandana on Deb's black head,
Ere Dick can jump, 'tis over him spread;
Then two soft hands they hold him fast:
The bright little rogue is caught at last.
As into his cage the truant goes
Pet says, "Now, nurse, I do suppose
That salt and sugar, though two nice things,
Are not a match for a birdie's wings;
And, Deb, I think we must just allow,
When a thing's to be done, mamma knows how."
"SONS OF THE BRAVE."—From a Painting by P. R. Morris, A.R.A.—[See Page 767.]
THE KING JACK-O'-LANTERN.
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
"There, boys, that's the pumpkin."
"That'll do, Phil; but what'll your father say? Doesn't he mean to take that pumpkin to town?"
"Well, no, I guess not. Anyhow, he said I might have it."
"Did you tell him what it's for?"
"Of course I did. Only I guess he guessed near enough that I didn't mean to make any pies."
"What did he say, Phil?"
"Why, he laughed right out—it's easy to get him laughing—and he said if we could invent anything ugly enough to scare the Sewing Society, we might have a cart-load of pumpkins, if we'd see that they were pitched into the big feed kettle after we got done with them, so they could be boiled for the cows."
"Isn't that a whopper, though! Biggest pumpkin I ever saw. Let's go right at it."
Clint Burgess had his knife out, and was opening the big blade, but Prop Corning stopped him.
"Hold on, Clint. Let's practice on some of the little ones first. Besides, we don't want to carry the big one too far after it's done. We might drop it and break it."
"That's so," said Clint. "I say, Phil, where'll we go?"
"Up behind the corn-crib—close to the barn; best place in the world to hide 'em till we want 'em. The Sewing Society don't half get here till pretty near tea-time."
"We'll show 'em something."
"Teach the girls, too, not to laugh at fellows of our age."
"It's too bad. When a man gets to be thirteen, it's time they let him come in to tea."
That was where the rules of the Plumville Sewing Society were pinching the self-esteem of Phil Merritt and his two friends, and Phil's father and his uncle and his two grown-up brothers had gravely expressed their entire sympathy, even to the extent of furnishing unlimited pumpkins.
That was a large pumpkin. It had grown by itself in a corner of the corn field, where it had plenty of room, and, as Clint Burgess remarked when they were rolling it in behind the corn-crib, "it had just sat still and swelled."
Prop Corning was the best hand any of them knew of with a jackknife, and he knew all about jack-o'-lanterns; but they all had learned more by the time they had worked up four of the smaller pumpkins.
"They look more like big apples alongside that other."
"That's the King Pumpkin."
"That's it," shouted Prop. "We'll make the King Jack-o'-lantern. I'll show you! Phil, you run to the house for a big iron spoon."
"To scoop with? I know. The rind'll be awful thick."
So they found it; and the outer shell was so hard that Phil went to the tool-room after one of his father's small key saws and a gimlet.
"Now we won't break our knives, nor the shell either."
"Nor cut our fingers. But we must keep every piece of shell we cut out," said Prop. "I've got a big idea in my head."
"Big as that pumpkin?"
"Big as the whole Sewing Society. We want a piece out of the top first, about six inches square."
The top piece came out nicely, and it was a wonder what a mass of seeds and pulp was pulled out after it.
Then the spoon was plied till the boys all had a turn at getting tired of scraping, and then Prop Corning went to work with the little saw.
"I'll just cut through the rind," he said, "and we won't make a hole anywhere. We'll cut the pieces out so they'll all stick in again, and then we'll scoop the places thin from the inside—thin as we want 'em, and no thinner. When we come to light it up out here after dark, and try it, we can scrape any spots thinner if they need it."
"That's the way. You never know just how a jack-o'-lantern's going to look till after you've got a candle in it," said Clint Burgess, very seriously. "We must make this one so it would scare a cow if she'd been eating pumpkins all day."
"There," remarked Prop, "that round spot down there'll stand for his chin. Now for his mouth. We must make it turn up at the corners, and have teeth like a mill saw."
That was the hardest kind of a thing to do, and do it right; but Prop was a patient worker, and there was nothing to be said against such a mouth as he sawed for that pumpkin.
"He mustn't have too much nose. Two round holes at the bottom: they're his smellers. Then a long slit away up to above his eyes; that's the bridge of his nose, and they'll have to imagine the rest of it."
"Can we give him any cheeks?" asked Phil, doubtfully.
"Yes, but there mustn't too much light come through 'em. It's to be a Goblin King, and they always have most fire coming out of their mouths and eyes."
Clint and Phil both admitted that Prop was right about that, but they ventured to suggest, "He won't be a King worth a cent if we don't give him some kind of a crown."
"Crown? You wait and see. His teeth won't be anything to the crown we'll put on him. But I mustn't lose a square inch of the rind. He must have ears too—a half-moon on each side—and you can let any amount of blaze shine out there."
It was a long job of sculptor work; but when it was done the three boys could hardly take their eyes away from it. Not until Prop had carefully fitted back to their places all the pieces of rind he had sawed out.
There was nothing to be done after that but for Prop and Clint to go home and attend to their "chores," and for Phil to go after his cows; but the Sewing Society had an experience before it that evening.
It was just as Phil Merritt said it would be about their coming together, and his mother had never before seen him so cheerful and willing about doing all he could, and about not going in to tea with the rest. His father noticed it too, and he whispered to him, once, "Phil, did you take the pumpkin?"
"Don't let 'em know a word about it, father," said Phil, anxiously. "You'll see, by-and-by."
"All right, Phil. I'll wait."
He had to wait until about nine o'clock, and some of the ladies were almost ready to go home, when suddenly there was a great noise out by the front gate.
"What's that?"
"Dear me!"
"Something's happened!"
Whoever made that sound must have been dreadfully unhappy about something; they all felt sure of that—and there was a grand rush to the front door and the windows.
"Sakes alive!"
"What can it be?"
"Mrs. Merritt, there's somethin' awful a-stickin' on the top of one o' your gate posts."
So there was, indeed. Something very large and round, and that looked very dark in spite of strange, mysterious rays of light that crept out of it here and there.
The whole gate post looked like a wooden man without any arms, but with more head than would have answered for half a dozen such men.
Nobody in the house heard Prop Corning whisper at that moment across the front-door walk, "Keep down, Clint, keep under the bushes. We're all ready. Pull out his chin." And then he added, in a lower whisper, "Ain't I glad I brought along my kite-string?—we've used it 'most all up, but we can show 'em that King."
One of the ladies, a second later, gave a little scream, and exclaimed, "Look at it now!—it's on fire."
"Dear me!" added another, "it's got a mouth."
"And a nose."
"And a cheek."
"Oh, Deacon Merritt, eyes too."
There was a subdued chuckle down there among the lilac-bushes, as if somebody were listening to all that was said by the growing crowd on the front-door step, and another whisper went across the walk: "Clint, give him his right ear. The left sticks. I'm afraid I'll pull him off the post."
"There it is."
"Here comes mine too. Now for his crown. Jerk your half."
"Oh!" "Oh!" "Oh!" More than a dozen ladies of all ages said "Oh!" in the same breath, and Deacon Merritt himself exclaimed:
"Capital! capital! The boys have done it. It's by all odds the best jack-o'-lantern I ever saw in my life. It's a King Jack-o'-lantern."
EMBROIDERY FOR GIRLS.
BY S. H. W.
There is lying beside me on the table as I write a sampler, worked in pink, green, blue, and dull purple-red silks, on which I read these wise sentences, "Order is the first law of Nature and of Nature's God," "The moon, stars, and tides vary not a moment," and "The sun knoweth the hour of its going down." Below, inclosed in a wreath of tambour-work,[1] are two words, "Appreciate Time." Under the first four alphabets (there are five in all) comes the date, "September 19, 1823," and in the lower corner another date, "October 24," when the square was completed, with the name of the child who wrought it, long since grown to womanhood, and now nearly forty years dead, but there recorded, in pink silk cross stitch, as "aged eight years."
Fig. 1.
And these dainty stitches, set so exactly, assure me that the little girls for whom I write are not too young to embroider neatly. Will you let its two mottoes remind you that a few moments carefully used each day will make you as good needle-women as your grandmothers were, and that your work-boxes or baskets should be in such order that you can find your thimbles in the dark, and can tell each several shade of wool by lamp-light? But I leave you to apply the mottoes for yourselves.
If you are to begin work with me, will you buy a few crewel-needles, No. 5 or 6, and two or three shades of crewel of any given color, such as old blue, dull mahogany, or pomegranate reds, or old gold shading into gold browns? These are colors that will always be useful.
Fig. 2.
First, your wools must be prepared so they can be used in making tidies, or anything that must be washed. The best crewels are not twisted, and will wash; still, as you are never sure of getting the best, it is well to unwind your skeins, pour scalding water on the wools, and rinse them well in it, squeeze out the water, shake the wools thoroughly, and hang them up. When dry, cut the skein across where it is tied double, and with a bodkin and string, or with a long hair-pin, draw the crewel into its case. This case (see Fig. 1) is made by folding together a long piece of thin cotton cloth a foot wide, and running parallel lines across its width half an inch or so apart. When the wools are drawn in in groups—reds, blues, greens, yellows, each by themselves, carefully arranged as to shades—cut the upper end so you need not be tempted to use too long needlefuls, and there your wools are neatly put away, and soon you can distinguish any shade by its position in the case, no matter how deceptive the lamp-light may be. Still, you will not need your case till you have a dozen different colors. If you buy your wools at first by the dozen, which is the cheaper way, be sure that your pinks, blues, greens, etc., have, so far as may be, a yellowish tone. Remember that yellow is the color of sunlight, and that without it your work will look cold and lifeless; and always avoid vivid greens and reds.
Fig. 3.
First learn the stem stitch, and you can practice on any bit of coarse linen or crash. Draw a line with a pencil (see dotted line Fig. 2); then put your needle in at the back, bringing it out at 1; then put it in at 2, taking up on the needle the threads of cloth from 2 to 3, so making a stitch that is long on the upper but short on the under side of your cloth. The needle points toward you, but your work runs from you, and you put in the needle to the right of your thread. When you wish a wide stem, slant your stitches across the line; if it must be narrow, take up the threads exactly on the line, or you can make two or more rows of stem stitch where you wish the line broadened.
Stem stitch can be used by beginners in many ways. Squares of duck, fringed out on the edges, and overcast or hem-stitched, can have simple borders or stripes of any desired width worked in this stitch (see Fig. 3). You can draw the lines yourself with a pencil and ruler; those lines which slant in one direction may be worked in one shade, those slanting in the opposite direction in another shade. The heavier lines can be worked with double crewel, and these squares make very pretty tidies to protect the arms of chairs. Figs. 4, 5, and 6 are set patterns that can be used for borders upon doylies, towels, or table-covers. They should be worked with crewels, outlining crewels—exceedingly fine wools—or fine silks, according to the quality of the linen or other stuffs used. Stem stitch is the foundation of good modern embroidery, and we must not go on with the building until this foundation is laid.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 6.
