The Snow Drift.
There was once a boy who kept all the cents that were given to him, till he had laid up two dollars. I can hardly tell the reason why it was so, but Dick Liston really found as much pleasure in putting his cents into a box as most children do in buying sweetmeats with theirs.
The reason was probably this: in the first place, we like to feel that we have it in our power to buy anything; to gratify our wants and wishes; to buy things, not only for ourselves, but for others. The feeling of this power is a very agreeable feeling; and the possession of money gives it to us.
But Dick had another motive, added to this. His father owned a few sheep, and Dick wished to own one himself. So he laid by his money till he had amassed two dollars; he then bought himself a sheep. What pleasure he did take in feeding his own dear sheep! He called her Nan; for everything is dearer, if you give it a name.
Well, Nan must have the best potatoes, and the best turnips, and the sweetest hay,—for it was now winter, you know. She learned to know Dick, and as soon as she saw him, she would gallop to him, expecting of course to get some nice tit-bit. She was seldom disappointed. Thus a great friendship grew up between Nan and Dick.
But, now a new event came to pass. Nan had a lamb! Dick was in a perfect flurry of joy. He ran to his mother to announce the happy circumstance. He flew to his brothers and sisters, to unburthen his bosom. He told the cat of it—he told the dog of it—and away he flew to tell his neighbor, Jack Fletcher, of it. He then went back, boiled some potatoes, and fed Nanny.
Every morning Dick was up bright and early, to feed his sheep and lamb. The latter grew apace. In three days he shook his tail; in a week he nibbled a straw; in a fortnight he leaped and frolicked like a kitten. Each of these events marked an epoch in Dick’s heart, and was duly narrated to mother, brother, sisters, and playmates.
At last, March came, with signs of an early spring. The snow had fled. The sun shone warm and smiling. The blue-birds took it for spring; the hens cackled in the barnyard; the geese gabbled in the brook; the robins began to build their nests; the gardener sowed his lettuce, pepper-grass and peas.
Old Nan was also taken in by the fair show of spring. She went with her lamb to a distant hill-side, where the green grass had sprung up. Here she nibbled for a time, and at evening lay down to rest, her infant lamb at her side. They went to sleep, for the air was mild, and the moon shone bright.
But, by-and-by, the clouds covered the sky; a light rain began to fall. The wind changed to the north-east, and the air became cold. The drizzle was converted into snow, which soon fell thick and fast. The old sheep began to feel alarmed, but it was dark, and she did not like to travel across the woods and fields, to her home, at midnight. So she lay still.
But the storm continued. The air was full of snow, and in the morning it was a foot deep. Dick looked out of the window, and, anxious for his sheep and lamb, ran out to the barn. He could not find them. He looked in this place and that, but he could nowhere discover them. At length, with tears in his eyes, he ran back to the house, and told his sad story. Having taken breakfast, he and his brothers went to look for Nan. All the forenoon they spent in the search, but it was vain. The day passed, and the storm increased.
(To be finished in our [next].)
MERRY'S
MUSEUM.
APRIL, 1843.
Vol. V. No. 4.
The Seasons.
WINTER.
Winter is a noisy, blustering, bustling season, though in general he keeps himself cool. Even as early as November he seems already impatient to begin his sway. If you leave a door ajar, he slams it wide open and comes puffing in, and blows the newspaper into the fire, oversets the clothes-horse, and cuts sundry other capers of the sort. He takes advantage of every still night to steal into the garden and pinch off the heads of the flowers. He mounts every black cloud, and from it sends down a flurry of sleet, hail or snow. In December he clutches the reins of government, and in a few days,
——congeals every brook,
That murmured so lately with glee,
And places a snowy peruke
On the head of each baldpated tree;
* * * * *
And a black wreck of clouds is seen to fly
In broken shatters through the frighted sky.
SPRING.
Though winter seems impatient to begin his work, he is as loath to quit it. In March it is time for him to depart, but he may be compared to a crocodile, who, having paid you a visit and staid as long as he ought, pretends to go away: but while he puts his head and body out of doors, leaves his huge tail writhing, bending and brandishing behind. Thus, during March, winter’s tail is left to annoy us with squalls, gusts, tempests, rain, hail, snow. There often seems to be a strife between the seasons, spring and winter alternately getting the ascendency. But, after a while the latter finds his icicles melting away, and to avoid being reduced to a stream of water, he slowly retreats, first to New England, lingering along the Green Mountains, till, pursued by the Genius of flowers, he goes across Hudson’s Bay and hides himself behind the hills of Greenland, or creeps like a woodchuck, into Symmes’s Hole, till he can venture out again with safety.
One of the first and most delightful signs of spring is the return of the birds. The gentle bluebird comes first, with her liquid notes, chanting at early morn the glad tidings of the departure of winter. Then comes the robin, full of business; then the sparrow and the wren; then the woodpecker is heard drumming in the wood; and then the pigeons are seen shooting swiftly by in thousands; and then the wild geese,
——lone wandering but not lost,
high in the air, night and day, are heard and seen in their long journey to the lakes. Spring, indeed, is so full of pleasant things, that we are well paid for the wearisomeness of winter by its return.
SUMMER.
May glides gently into June, which is the most beautiful of all the months—
In fullest bloom the damask rose is seen,
Carnations boast their variegated dye;
The fields of corn display a vivid green,
And cherries with the crimson orient vie;
The hop in blossom climbs the lofty pole,
Nor dreads the lightning, though the thunders roll.
The vegetable world is all alive;
Green grows the gooseberry on its bush of thorn.
The infant bees now swarm about the hive,
And the sweet bean perfumes the lap of morn.
Millions of embryos take the wing to fly;
The young inherit, and the old ones die.
AUTUMN.
I have heard a person, who had travelled in different countries, say, that he would like to spend the spring in Italy, the summer in England, the winter in the island of Cuba, and the autumn in the United States. It is a season “when the moon stays longest for the hunter;” when
The trees cast down their fruitage, and the blithe
And busy squirrel hoards his winter store;
While man enjoys the breeze that sweeps along
The bright blue sky above him, and that bends
Magnificently all the forest’s pride,
Or whispers through the evergreens, and asks,
‘What is there saddening in the autumn leaves?’
In many minds, however, this season is associated with melancholy images, but they are such as bring pleasure, rather than pain. Who that has read the following lines, descriptive of the close of autumn, has not felt their soothing influence?
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead,
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread,—
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood,
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves—the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds with the fair and good of ours;
The rain is falling where they lie—but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
Thus I have given you a somewhat poetical view of the four seasons; and by what contrivance do you imagine that so much beauty, comfort and happiness are brought about? It is by mechanism, more ingenious, more wonderful than all the contrivances of man. I will try to make you understand this.
Let it be remembered that the sun is firmly stationed in the centre of a vast circle, called the earth’s orbit. The earth continues to whirl along in this orbit, going entirely round the sun once every year. It is kept in motion very much as a boy whirls an apple tied to a string around his head; as the apple cannot fly away from the boy on account of the string, so the earth cannot fly away from the sun on account of the attraction between the two, which operates as a string to tie the earth to the sun and keep it in its orbit.
Well; now imagine the earth moving around the sun once every year. But you must recollect that the earth is also whirling round every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, and this axis runs north and south. One end of the axis is called the north pole, and points always to the north; the other is called the south pole, and always points to the south. But it so happens, that at one time, this axis inclines more to the sun than it does at another. When the north pole is inclined towards the sun, the rays will fall more directly on the northern portions of the earth. This will cause summer at the north and winter at the south. And when the south pole is inclined towards the sun, it is summer at the south, and winter at the north.
Thus you see the rotation of the sun on its own axis every twenty-four hours produces day and night; and the annual movement of the earth around the sun, with the different inclinations of its axis to the sun, produces the wonderful changes of the seasons, which we have noticed.
Alexander and his Mother.—Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was of so very unhappy a disposition, that he could not employ her in any of the affairs of government. She, however, narrowly inspected the conduct of others, and made many complaints to her son, which he always bore with patience. Antipater, Alexander’s deputy in Europe, once wrote a long letter to him, while he was in Asia, complaining of her conduct; to whom Alexander returned this answer; “Knowest thou not that one tear of my mother’s will blot out a thousand such letters?”
