The Crooked-Nosed Philosopher.
"There was once a man," he said, "with a nose so long that it reached half way round his head, and thus the point was continually behind him. This not unnaturally caused him a great deal of trouble, but in the end was the means of his good fortune, as you shall hear. For once, as he sat reading, he felt something on the end of his nose, and turning round his head he saw a fly sitting on the point of it."
"Saw a fly on the point!" interrupted King Jollimon. "What do you take me for, that you thus try to impose such stories on me? Can a man see what is behind him?"
"Certainly, if he turns round," answered the traveler, quite unmoved.
"If he turns round!" repeated the king, in a rage, "can one see the back of his head? I have turned round, but I never could see my back."
"That is because your majesty always looks away from it," replied the other. "If you would turn round and look toward the back of your head, you would undoubtedly see it."
"Do you presume to dispute with me?" screamed his majesty, getting very red in the face. He felt sure he was right, but he could not answer the traveler's argument. "Do you presume to dispute with me?" he repeated. "Get out of my sight, and if one of you three vagabonds, with your trumpery stories, is found in all the kingdom of Jolliland by sunset to-morrow, I'll have every man of you beheaded three times over. A man see his back, indeed!"
And thus it happened that the tale of "The Crooked-Nosed Philosopher" was never concluded, which was the greater pity, since, if the end was like the beginning, it must have been a very marvelous tale.
SOMETHING IN THE OLD CLOTHES LINE.
By Paul Fort.
When I look at pictures of people of old times, I often think what a curious thing it is that the only apparent difference between them and the people of the present day is to be seen in their clothes.
If we could take a dozen or so of ancient Greeks and Romans; some gentlemen and ladies of the middle ages; a party of our great-grandfathers and mothers, and some nice people who are now living in the next street, and were to dress all the women in calico frocks and sun-bonnets, and all the men in linen coats and trousers and broad straw hats, with their hair cut short; and were then to jumble them all up together, and make them keep their tongues quiet, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a committee, unacquainted with any of the party, to pick out the ancients, the middle-agers, or the moderns.
Lady Jane Grey, or Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, or Helen of Troy, would not look unlike the other women in sun-bonnets and calico frocks; and while there would be a greater difference in the men, whose nationality might show more strongly, Christopher Columbus, Nero, and Marco Bozzaris would be pretty much the same kind of fellows as the other men of the party.
It is certainly a fact that there are a great many more points of strong resemblance between the people of past ages and ourselves than most of us suppose. It is often very surprising, when reading of the domestic life of the past, to see how precisely similar, in some respects, it was to our own. And, as I have said, the people looked, with the exception of their clothes, very much as we do—meaning by "we" the people of the present day, all over the world.
In 1876, at the Centennial Exposition, I saw a marble bust—life size—which was a portrait of a lady of ancient Rome. There was only the head and neck, the hair was dressed very plainly, and it was astonishing how well that bust would have answered for the portrait of a lady of Thirty-fourth street, New York, or the wife of a gentleman in Springfield, Ohio. The head and face were just such a head and face as I had often seen, and the countenance even seemed familiar to me.
But dress makes all the difference in the world. Had I met that lady attired in her flowing Roman garments, with her golden head-dress and her sandaled feet, I should have had no thought of Thirty-fourth street, or Springfield, Ohio.
And so down the whole line of ages you can tell, pretty nearly, when a man or a woman lived, if you can but get an idea of his or her clothes.
The next thing which strikes most of us when looking at the pictures of old-time people, is a feeling of wonder how they ever could have been willing to make such scarecrows of themselves.
To be sure, we are willing to admire the flowing robes of Greece and Rome, although we feel quite sure that our style of dress is much more sensible, and we have an admiration for a soldier clad in armor, as well as for the noblemen and gentry who figured, some hundreds of years ago, in their splendid velvets and laces, their feathers and cocked hats, and their diamond-hilted swords.
But, as a rule, the garments of our ancestors appear very ridiculous to us. If we did not have good reasons for belief to the contrary, we should be very apt to consider them a set of fools.
It even seems a little wonderful that people should be able to invent such curious fashions of dressing themselves.
Think, for instance, of the wife of Jean Van Eyck, a celebrated old Dutch painter, who was willing to dress her hair so that she looked like a cat, and, moreover, had her portrait taken in that style, so that future generations might see what a guy she was!
Yes, the picture painted over five hundred years ago hangs to-day in the Academy of Bruges, and the staidest little Belgians laugh when they look at it. You may see it yourselves some day, but, if not, you can at least enjoy this excellent copy, which has been engraved for St. Nicholas from a photograph of the painting. If you look at her face, you will see that in feature she is very much like an ordinary woman of the present day. There is nothing at all distinctive about her countenance. As far as that is concerned, she might just as well have lived now as at any other time.
But if she were to appear in an ordinary evening company dressed in the style in which you see her in the picture, the difference between her and the other ladies would be very striking, to say the least.
THE WOMAN WHO LOOKED LIKE A CAT.
The curious methods of dress in olden times were so many, and were of such infinite variety, that I cannot even allude to them in a little article like this; but you cannot look at very many pictures of the people of by-gone days without seeing some costume which will appear quite funny, if not absolutely absurd.
You need not go very far back either. What could be queerer than the high coat-collars of some of your great-grandfathers, which came up under their ears, while their throats were wrapped in fold after fold of long cravats—or else encircled by a hard, stiff stock,—and the hind-buttons of their coats were away up in the middle of their backs!
But perhaps your great-grandmothers, with the waists of their gowns just under their arms, with their funny long mittens and their great calash bonnets, were just as queer as their husbands.
Now the question comes very naturally to us: Why did these people, as well as the people who came before them, dress in such ridiculous fashions? We know that many of them were very sensible folk, who knew how to do many things as well as we can do them, and some things a great deal better. Mentally and physically the most of them are not surpassed by the people who live now. Then why did not they know enough to dress sensibly and becomingly as we do?
In reply to this I will say that your great-grandfather and your great-grandmother, unless they belonged to some religious sect which regulated the clothes of its members, would have dressed exactly as your father and mother now do, if it had been the fashion in their day.
And if you had seen their portraits, dressed in clothes of the present day (which, had those old people worn them, would have been out of fashion long before you were born), you would have thought they looked perfectly ridiculous.
The truth of the matter is, that with a great many of us the attractive and desirable qualities of clothes depend entirely upon their relations to the current styles or fashions. We think everything unbecoming and ugly excepting those styles; and no matter how absurd the present fashion may be, there are not ten persons out of a thousand who, when they become used to them, do not admire them and follow them to the extent of their ability.
There are few of you who are not old enough to remember fashions of dress, which at one time you and every one else considered very stylish and becoming, and which now would make a perfect fright of any one who would be bold enough to wear them.
Indeed, were a fine lady to make her appearance in the streets of one of our large cities dressed in the hoops and wide skirts in which she was so fashionable and attractive a few years ago, the street boys would hoot her, and she might walk about all day without meeting a single person who would think that there was anything whatever to be said in favor of such a costume.
Of course, some fashions are uglier and more absurd than others, and it is not strange that we wonder how sensible people could have endured them; but if these very styles were to become fashionable again, most of us would adopt them.
If, in a few years, it should become the fashion for ladies to dress their hair like that of the good wife of Jean Van Eyck, I feel quite certain that nearly all the fashionable ladies you know would go about looking very much like cats. This may seem a libelous assertion; but if you will keep a watch on the fashions, I think you will find I am correct, provided the Van Eyck style comes up.
TOMMY'S DREAM; OR, THE GEOGRAPHY DEMON.
By Laura E. Richards.
|
I hate my geography lesson! It's nothing but nonsense and names; To bother me so every morning, It's really the greatest of shames. The brooks, they flow into the rivers, And the rivers flow into the sea; I hope, for my part, they enjoy it, But what does it matter to me? Of late, even more I've disliked it, And more disagreeable it seems, Ever since the sad evening last winter, When I had that most frightful of dreams. I thought that a great horrid monster Stood suddenly there in my room— A frightful Geography Demon, Enveloped in darkness and gloom; His body and head like a mountain, A volcano on top for a hat; His arms and his legs were like rivers, With a brook round his neck for cravat. He laid on my poor trembling shoulder His fingers, cold, clammy and long; And fixing his red eyes upon me, He roared forth this horrible song: "Come! come! rise and come Away to the banks of the Muskingum! It flows o'er the plains of Timbuctoo, With the peak of Teneriffe just in view. And the cataracts leap in the pale moonshine, As they dance o'er the cliffs of Brandywine. "Flee! flee! rise and flee Away to the banks of the Tombigbee! We'll pass by Alaska's flowery strand, Where the emerald towers of Pekin stand; We'll pass them by, and will rest awhile On Michillimackinac's tropic isle; While the apes of Barbary frisk around, And the parrots crow with a lovely sound. "Hie! hie! rise and hie Away to the banks of the Yang-tze-ki! There the giant mountains of Oshkosh stand, And the icebergs gleam through the falling sand; ts on the palm-tree high, And the cannibals feast on bad-boy pie. "Go! go! rise and go Away to the banks of the Hoang-ho There the Chickasaw sachem makes his tea, And the kettle boils and waits for thee. We'll smite thee, ho! and we'll lay thee low, On the beautiful banks of the Hoang-ho!" These terrible words were still sounding Like trumpets and drums through my head, When the monster clutched tighter my shoulder, And dragged me half out of the bed. In terror, I clung to the bed-post; But the faithless bed-post, it broke. I screamed out aloud in my anguish, And suddenly—well, I awoke. He was gone. But I cannot forget him, The fearful Geography Sprite. He has my first thought in the morning, He has my last shudder at night. Do you blame me for hating my lesson? Is it strange that it frightful should seem? Or that I more and more should abhor it Since I had that most horrible dream? |
THE TOWER MOUNTAIN
By Gustavus Frankenstein.
II.
When I reached the crowd of monkeys who were making such a noise and were evidently in such trouble, I soon saw what was the matter. A very large monkey had his claws fastened in the back of a much smaller one, and was biting him in the shoulder—the little fellow shrieking, and the others dreadfully excited, yet hesitating to come to the rescue.
What are monkeys compared to a man? I rushed in, seized the ruffian by the throat, which loosened his hold upon the weaker party, and hurling him with all my force against the ground, broke his ugly skull upon the rock on which it struck.
Then, such a yell of delight as went up from that motley monkey crew! It was simply indescribable. This was immediately followed by an immense amount of jabbering, as they gathered in little groups, no doubt discussing the merits of the action and the valor of the hero. Doubtless the monkey I had slain was a great tyrant over the others, by reason of his superior size and strength, and they were congratulating one another upon their deliverance from his hated rule.
His last victim—poor little fellow!—I raised from the ground, washed his wounds, and, gathering some plantain-leaves, placed them carefully over the lacerated flesh, and bound them on snugly and firmly with strips of palm-leaf.
The little creature looked at me very affectionately, evincing by his expression the deepest gratitude.
As he was in a very sad plight indeed, I nursed and petted him until quite late in the afternoon, his companions not far off observing my movements with great interest. At last I said to the wounded monkey:
"Now, little fellow, go your way in peace. Take care of yourself, and you will get well. Good-bye!"
I took my basket and started up the hill. Occasionally I looked back to see what he was doing, and each time his gaze was fixed on me; and when I had entirely lost sight of him, I began to regret that I had not taken him with me and cared for him until he should get well.
Pippity, as I returned, was overjoyed to see me. He had certainly grown anxious at my long absence.
"Pippity," I said, "I shall not go down again into the valley for a long time. We have had cocoa-nuts enough lately; let us enjoy that which is around us."
But, after a couple of months had passed away, knowing that Pippity was very fond of the cocoa-nuts (and I, too, liked very much the milk they contained), I determined to go and get some more.
I was getting the nuts down from the trees as best I could, when, all at once, I was surprised at their falling around me fast and thick, and on looking up, there was a little monkey throwing them down! At first, I thought he was throwing them at me; but he stopped when he saw me looking up, and I went on gathering and putting them in the basket. Not one of them that had been thrown down had hit me, so I concluded that the monkey had no evil design, but that, on the contrary, he was trying to do me a good turn.
"That's a pretty good sort of monkey," I thought, "and I wouldn't mind meeting him any time I come down. He has saved me to-day considerable trouble."
Then, up the mountain I went, and got back home quite early, which seemed to surprise Pippity not a little.
The next time I went down, the same thing happened again; and so on for a number of times.
Once, after taking up my basket and starting for home, I noticed a little monkey (I thought it was the very one that had so kindly thrown me the cocoa-nuts) following me at some distance. The next trip I made, this occurred again, and this time the monkey kept following me nearer and nearer, until, finally, I heard at my heels a slight squeal, and on looking around there was the little creature.
"Why, monkey!" I exclaimed, "what in the world do you want?"
He stood there, trembling somewhat, I thought; but quickly he leaped on my back, and put his arms around my neck. I was a little frightened, at first; but, taking hold of his hands, I gently loosened his hold and brought him around in front of me, when, holding him out to view, I saw a scar on his shoulder.
"Oh! it's you, is it?" I cried. "Then it's you who have been throwing me the cocoa-nuts all this time. It's plain you haven't forgotten a favor." I set him on the ground. "Go, join your comrades, and, whenever you feel disposed to throw me cocoa-nuts, I shall always accept the kindness as a very great favor."
But monkey wouldn't go and join his comrades, and persisted in following me. I did not want to speak unkind words or use harsh measures toward him, although I tried everything I could think of to induce him to leave me; but all my efforts to get rid of him failed. He followed me home.
Pippity was a little surprised to see two individuals instead of one approaching, and eyed the stranger with much curiosity.
After we had partaken of refreshments, I addressed our guest in the following words:
"Monkey, since you have followed me, and seem inclined to join our society, I shall not object to your remaining, provided you behave yourself properly; and I have no doubt that my worthy friend to whom I have had the high honor of introducing you, will heartily second me in any effort looking toward your comfort and general well-being. You may make this your home, if it so pleases you. If you want to leave us to-morrow, go. If you would like to remain with us until death shall us three part, you are welcome."
I was curious to see how Pippity would treat the new-comer. It was to be expected that he would show some signs of jealousy, but his was a noble nature, and scorned to descend to such mean conduct. He and the monkey were almost immediately on the best of terms, at which I was much pleased, for I would not for a moment have endured any quarreling in my household.
When our cocoa-nuts were nearly all gone, I went down for some more. It was not long after this that, one fine day, the monkey was missing. Neither did he come back the next day. About noon, I said to Pippity:
"Pippity, we have but few cocoa-nuts left. To-morrow I shall go down and get another supply; and who knows but I may meet our friend the monkey? Although he was at any time at liberty to leave us if he liked, yet I confess I have a desire to know what has become of him. Perhaps some accident has befallen him."
While I was yet speaking, a cocoa-nut rolled into our house.
"Why, what's that?" I exclaimed; and, looking out, there was the little monkey, just without the entrance, in the very act of throwing a cocoa-nut into the cavern! Going toward him, I saw him catch one thrown to him by another monkey.
Now, here was a most singular performance, and one which certainly demanded investigation. Where did the second monkey get his cocoa-nut? I went toward him, and found that he caught a cocoa-nut thrown to him by a third monkey about fifteen feet beyond him.
As the nuts kept coming all the time, the sight was highly interesting.
To ascertain the true state of the case I went farther; found a fourth monkey, then a fifth, then a sixth; and as I proceeded I left one monkey only to find another farther on, all about fifteen feet one from the other, some perched on rocks, some on trees, forming a zigzag line down the mountain, all busily catching and throwing the cocoa-nuts in the most remarkably systematic fashion, There must have been sixty monkeys or more engaged in this delightful occupation.
I went back and found a large pile of the fruit in our house; and thinking we had enough for a long time to come, I would have liked to be able to make our little monkey understand that we wanted no more. The parrot had learned to discover my wishes very well, but with the monkey I supposed it would be a matter of some difficulty to make him comprehend me. He seemed to divine my thoughts, however, or else his own good sense came to his aid, for, almost immediately, he gave a little shriek, which the next monkey took up, and which went along the line until the sounds died away in the distance. After this a few more nuts rolled into the house, then the throwing and catching ceased, and the monkeys which had been in sight disappeared, with the exception of our little friend, who sprang, all elasticity and animation, into our domicile.
"Now, come, my little friend, sit up and have something to eat," I said. "You must be hungry after the expenditure of so much energy. We had given you up for lost; but now, after this evidence of your good-will toward us, we are satisfied that you really intend to remain with us."
I wished the monkey was able to relate to us how he managed to assemble so many of his friends, and to get them to act with such perfect accord; and how, in the first place, he could make them understand what he wished them to do. Of course, not being able to talk, he could give us no explanation of how the thing was brought about. I could therefore only form an opinion in the matter, which was as follows:
Our little friend was undoubtedly a great favorite with his fellows, and although he was as gentle as a kitten he was not without power, and his companions were ever ready to serve him out of sheer good-will. When, therefore, after he had been rescued from the ferocious monkey, his appreciation of a kind action naturally enkindled in him a desire to return the favor in some way, he threw me the cocoa-nuts from the trees; and, although I believe that from the first he felt an ardent desire to be near his benefactor, his natural modesty prevented his thrusting himself upon me without considerable preliminary skirmishing. His fellow monkeys, keenly sensible of his noble qualities, and happy in having got rid of the odious despot who had so long oppressed them, were only too glad to aid him in any reasonable and honorable project which might benefit the hero who had slain their hated ruler. But by what queer signs and by what sort of jabbering our little monkey had made his wishes known to his companions, only he and they knew.
I now took occasion to tell our four-handed friend that he must have a name.
"'Grilly' you shall be called," I said; "and, although you cannot utter our names, common politeness requires that you be informed of them. There is Pippity, the parrot, and here am I, Frank, the man."
As Pippity was a good scholar, while Grilly yet remained uneducated, it was a source of grief to me that the monkey continued in his deplorable ignorance in the midst of such enlightened society.
What was to be done?
Talk he could not. There was not the slightest use in making any effort in that direction, because nature had failed to furnish him with the organs needed for speaking articulately.
I had noticed frequently, when going down into the valley, a certain rock which fell in pieces by splitting off in smooth plates; and another kind which lay scattered about in small fragments that would make marks like chalk-marks. This substance was of a reddish color, and, on the purplish surface of the thin slabs of the harder rock, it made very clear, distinct lines.
On one of these slabs I wrote the alphabet in large letters, and began by teaching Pippity his A B C's. The next step was to instruct Grilly how to hold the pencil. Taking his hand in mine, I guided it in making the letters. He was rather slow at first in comprehending the science or acquiring the knack of tracing the letters; but continued application will accomplish wonders even with a monkey; and in a few weeks' time Grilly would make any letter at command. I got Pippity to call out the alphabet while Grilly wrote. Thus they taught each other—Pippity addressing the monkey's ear, and Grilly appealing to the parrot's eye.
After they were thus well grounded in the alphabet, I made them spell short and familiar words. I would spell the words to Pippity, and he would repeat them in a loud, clear voice to Grilly, whose province of course it was to write them in a bold, legible hand, whilst the parrot kept his eye sharply on the writing; and if, perchance, the monkey should make a mistake, it was expected of him to call out immediately—"Error!"
As Pippity had a great many phrases and a vast number of nouns at command, and began pretty rapidly to comprehend the science of English orthography, he was soon able to give out the words to Grilly without my help; though he did make some funny mistakes, for which, however, the poor bird was in no way responsible, but which made me laugh at him nevertheless.
TEACHING GRILLY TO WRITE.
It may seem strange to some that a monkey could be taught to write. With such persons I will hold no argument. All I have to say is: Get a monkey, and try it.
Grilly as well as Pippity became in course of time quite a fine scholar, and he, too, learned the names of the plants and many other objects which we found in our dominions. The two agreed very well, and the one furnished what the other lacked. The parrot could talk but not write; the monkey could write but not talk.
But it occurs to me that two such extraordinary characters deserve description.
First come, first served. The external appearance of Pippity was gorgeous in the extreme. His wings, green, red-spotted, were tipped with golden yellow, while the most delicate flush of iridescent colors suffused his back, neck and breast; his toes in pairs, two forward and two back, like those of all other parrots; a bill and tongue exactly formed for speech; eyes in observation keen; and a bearing dignified and commanding.
Grilly, of course, had not so gay an exterior; yet he had a handsome clothing of soft, fine hair; a gentle, intelligent eye; a head exceedingly well formed, round and full, with prominent forehead; handsome moustache and full stylish whiskers; an expression winning and full of animation; a carriage elegant and graceful; and, withal, he was astonishingly expert with tail and hands and feet.
The time now coursed smoothly and happily along, Pippity entertaining us with his lively prattle, and Grilly, full of his antics and his learning, affording a never-failing fund of amusement. Nor did he ever omit, when the supply of cocoa-nuts was about exhausted, to go down and assemble his tribe, who forthwith took their places up the height, passed the nuts one to another, and, when they deemed we had enough, dispersed to their own wild homes of sylvan shade.
One day Grilly was amusing himself turning over some stones that lay in a little heap in one corner of our vast chamber. I had always thought it strange that they were the only loose stones to be found either in the cavern or in the neighborhood, but had never troubled myself any further about them. Seeing Grilly busy with them, I thought I would join him in his work or sport, and in a little time we had the pile reduced to the floor. There, I saw, was a square slab, having on it certain characters and a drawing of a serpent held firmly in the talons of a condor. These symbols excited my curiosity not a little, and I noticed that the stone, which was about three feet square, was loosely resting in its place. I managed to pry it up, and found a dark cavity beneath. It was nearly square, but of its depth I could not judge, owing to the darkness. To satisfy myself on this point, I got a very long stem of one of those gigantic grasses that grow in the tropics, and, letting it down, found the hole to be about forty feet deep. I felt a great desire to descend into this pit, but dared not venture for fear of the foul and deadly air that might have to be encountered below. Such things as matches, of course, we had not, nor any fire whatever. I therefore delayed the experiment for several days, with the expectation that the air would improve considerably in that time. Then, by bracing my hands and feet against the sides, I descended slowly, and found the air good enough to breathe freely, which emboldened me to go to the bottom. There was just light enough to perceive that on one side was an opening about six feet in height, and somewhat more than a foot in width; and I could see rough steps leading down a slight descent. I followed them cautiously, until I came to a level place, which I found to be a passage about three feet wide and higher than I could reach.
It was so dark here that I could no longer see, when, feeling the rock on either side, I came to a place where there was a recess about three feet above the floor of the passage. Raising myself into this recess, I found it to be about four feet in height. This led back a considerable distance,—how far I never discovered,—and as I was groping about, being obliged to stoop all the time, I stumbled over something that rolled and rattled like a bone. I felt for it, and found it to be one, and with it were a number of others. As far as I could judge in the darkness, they were the skeleton of a human being.
How came these there? Was this a tomb?
I felt about for more relics, going hither and thither in the earnestness of quest, but found no more.
I had now been in this dungeon upward of an hour, and felt inclined to return as speedily as possible to the daylight. I searched for the place where I had got up from the narrow passage. I groped this way and that; and this had to be done with precaution, for who could tell where I might not step off suddenly and fall to some great depth? Yet I could find nothing that promised to lead me to the passage by which I had come.
Where was I? What was I to do? Remaining still would never do; to keep moving, moving, was the only course to pursue. I had, I knew not how, emerged from that low-roofed recess, and stood now in what seemed to be a vast chamber where there were neither sides nor roof. I hallooed that I might hear the echo from its walls, and perhaps in that way find them. I was startled, almost frightened, at the solemn mocking sounds that reverberated through the lonely cavern. I grew fearful of my own voice.
At last I sank down exhausted, and slept. I awoke, and groped about once more. This occurred again and again. How often I lay down to sleep I cannot tell. Sometimes I thought of the skeleton I had stumbled over, and wondered if my bones, too, would here find their resting-place. Then I thought of the grand, lofty mountain overhead. What a stupendous monument! But what would I not have given for deliverance from it!
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT BY OUR JAPANESE ARTIST
HOW TO MAKE AN ICE-BOAT.
By J. H. Hubbard.
The sport of sailing on the ice has within a few years attracted considerable attention on our northern rivers and lakes, and seems likely to increase. It is an amusement well adapted to big boys, being exciting, requiring skill, and certainly not more dangerous than skating. It is even more fascinating than yachting, without the danger which always attends the latter pursuit. A small ice-boat that a boy can build will sail ten to twenty miles an hour with a good wind. Some large ones, strange as it may seem, can sail, with a wind on the beam, actually faster than the wind which is blowing. This fact is attested by the highest scientific authorities.
Having seen some unsuccessful attempts at ice-boats by boys in various places, I propose to tell you how to build one, at a small expense, that will sail well, and give you a great deal of sport.
FIG. 1.
The directions and measurements here given are the result of careful experiments and some failures. Fig. 1 is an elevation, Fig. 2 a ground-plan of the frame, and Fig. 3 a section of a runner. Get a spruce plank, A, 12 feet long, 6 inches wide, 2 inches thick. This is the backbone of the structure. Cut near one end of it a hole two inches square to receive the foot of the mast.
Fig. 2.
Take two oak cross-bars, E E, 8 feet long, 4 inches deep, 2 inches thick. The cross-bars are bolted to A, one foot apart, the forward one a foot from mast-hole. This distance is best.
Next get one oak plank, C, 16 inches long, 3-1/2 inches deep, 2 inches thick.
The hard-wood piece, D, is for tiller, 4 feet long, 2 inches wide, 1 inch thick. This is to be set into the top of plank C, and fastened there with screws. To each end of it is attached a rope, which runs over a sheave fastened to the cross-bar, C D, and the ropes, l l, constitute the steering apparatus. Two boards, F F, each 11 feet long, 8 inches wide, 7/8-inch thick, are planed, and the edges matched together, at the stern. They are nailed to the plank, A, and the cross-bars, E E, as shown in Fig. 2. Four blocks, each 3 inches thick, must be put under them where they lie over the cross-bars. A board a foot long, 7/8-inch thick, must also be put under F F at the stern.
Six slats, G G, as long as may be needed, 2 inches wide, 7/8-inch thick, are nailed over A, and under F F.
The mast is a natural spruce stick, 13 feet long, shaved down to 3-1/2 inches at butt, 2-1/2 inches at the top.
The boom is 13-1/2 feet long, 2 inches thick at each end, and a little thicker in the middle. It is fastened to the mast by an iron eye, screwed into the mast, and a hook in the end of the boom. The sprit is 10 feet long, 1-1/2 inches diameter, shaved to 3/4-inch for 2 inches at each end.
The iron collar, i, through which the mast is inserted loosely, stands two feet above the top of plank, A. It is supported by three iron braces, h h h, and is bolted to the tops of them. The braces are 3/4-inch round iron, and bolted to the frame as shown.
Fig. 3.
The hind-runner block, C, is fastened to A by a strong iron, m, as shown in Fig. 1. It allows the runner to rock up and down, and to be turned sidewise by the tiller. A must be plated with iron top and bottom where m goes through, that the runner may not "wobble."
The construction of the runners, J J J, must be attended to with the greatest care, as upon these, in a great measure, will depend the success of your boat. Get a square bar of cast steel, 6 feet long, cut off 22 inches for third runner, and divide the rest in halves, across. Shape two forward runners and one hind one as shown in Fig. 1. The bearing surface is a right-angled edge, as shown in Fig. 3. This sharp edge holds the ice firmly without much friction. Holes are bored two inches up into the cross-bars, near their ends, and the runners driven in and fastened with rivets. After the runners are forged, they should be finished with a file and emery paper if not perfectly smooth. The front turn must be long and gradual like a skate, two-thirds the length, however, flat on the ice. The running edges should not be too sharp. They will project 2-1/2 or three inches below the bottom of the wood.
For the sail get twenty yards, three-quarters of a yard wide, of heavy drilling. The dimensions are: Head, 5 feet; foot, 13 feet; foreleach, 10 feet; afterleach, 14-1/2 feet. Make these measurements on a floor, and mark the outlines with a chalk-line. Cut the after-breadth first, and the others to match. Lap the breadths 1 inch. Allow an inch all around for a hem. The breadths should be basted before stitching. Put two rows of stitching where the breadths lap. Look out for puckering. Put a narrow hem clear around the sail. Then stitch a 3/8-inch rope around the hem. Make a loop at the peak to put the end of sprit into. Draw the rope tight along the boom, and fasten it through a hole in the end. Fasten the throat of sail tight to the top of the mast. Cut a number of short pieces of heavy twine, and lace the sail, at intervals of a foot, to the boom and mast. Fasten a becket or loop of rope at a suitable position on the mast, to set the heel of the sprit into. Rig main-sheet over two sheaves, as shown; it brings less strain on the boom, and clears the skipper's head in tacking. Make a good, large wooden cleat to belay it to.
The cost of materials will be about as follows:
Boards, plank and mast $5.00
Iron work 6.00
Twenty yards Drilling 2.75
Four single-sheave galvanized
pulley-blocks at 35 c 1.40
(May be omitted by using leather straps.)
Ropes, etc. 85
______
Total $16.00
A boat built as above will sail nearly as close to the wind as a good cat-boat. It is managed much the same. Don't turn too short in coming about. Jibe when you like without fear of capsizing. Your boat will carry three persons in a light wind,—more if it blows fresh. Rig it neatly, and try to make a finished thing all through. Your ice-boat will then be more than a boy's plaything, and will be admired by old and young.
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There once was a man with a child Who, the neighbors said, never had smiled; But the father said, "See! Smile in this way, like me, And then folks will know when you've smiled." |
DEBBY'S CHRISTMAS.
By Ella A. Drinkwater.
Most young people's Christmas commences the night before; so did Debby's. She had just settled down in Blanket street, and fallen into the sleep of tired, healthy girlhood, when she was aroused by her mother's irritable voice screaming up the stairway.
"Debby! Debby!" she called. "Get up quick and help me pick these turkeys. Your father's made up his mind to sell them dead weight, and we've got to pick them to-night, so he can take them to the hotel early in the morning. Do you hear me, Debby?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Debby, scrambling out of her warm nest to the square of rag carpet before her bed.
Four minutes later she felt her way down-stairs and opened the kitchen door into a room filled with steam, and the peculiar smell of scalded fowls.
"There's seven to do," her mother said, bending over the brass kettle on the stove to draw from it a dripping turkey. "Yours are all scalded. Go to work."
Debby buttoned on a large apron, seated herself with a tin pan in her lap containing a turkey, and then began quickly to pluck off its feathers, laying them to dry on a religious newspaper spread on the table beside her.
Mrs. Blanchard soon sat down at the other side of the table, and began to pick and talk as fast as fingers and tongue would allow.
What did possess Mr. Blanchard to change his mind, and give them so much extra trouble, she could not conceive; and selling them to Tate, too, when he might have made a quarter of a cent more a pound if he had let Morris have them. And then those hoop-poles! He might have made she didn't know how much if he had taken her advice, and kept them a week longer.
As for the potatoes, they had turned out so small, and the corn was so short in the ear, that the land only knew where the money to get them all something to wear was to come from. Not that she cared for dress, for hadn't she worn the same bonnet and shawl to church until she was ashamed to show her face there? As for the sewing society, she was a master hand at cutting and planning, and she could go as well as not, too, now that Debby was quite old enough to take care of the baby, and get the supper ready for her father and the boys; but not a step was she going to sit next Mrs. Williams with her black silk, and Mrs. White with her handsome alpaca, although their husbands' farms were no larger than Mr. Blanchard's; and for the life of her she could not understand why she should not dress as well when she worked twice as hard as they did.
To all of which Debby listened with a sinking heart and great sobs in her throat, wondering why they should be such an unhappy family when every one around them appeared so glad.
Did it really make people so happy, this Christmas-day that they talked so much about in Sunday-school? That was a beautiful hymn that they sung last Sunday; she repeated one verse softly to herself while the stream of her mother's talk ran on:
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"Jesus is our childhood's pattern, Day by day, like us, he grew; He was little, weak and helpless, Tears and smiles, like us, he knew; And he feeleth for our sadness, And he shareth in our gladness." |
With a comforted feeling she pushed back her hair with her feathery hand, heartily wishing that all the people who ate their turkeys would be comfortable, and have clothes to wear and go to sewing societies whenever they liked.
The clock ticked loudly, the fire died away while Mrs. Blanchard enlarged upon the trials of her life, and, despite the refrain in her heart—
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"And he feeleth for our sadness, And he shareth in our gladness"— |
Debby's eyes were as heavy with tears as with sleepiness when the last plump turkey lay on the table plucked of his feathers, just as the clock was striking eleven.
"Go to bed, child, and I'll clear up the mess," her mother said, when Debby sprang up and straightened herself with a long sigh. "I'm sure your father ought to give you something for keeping out of your bed so late, when he is sleeping as innocent as the baby this minute, I'll warrant."
As Debby had a way of only thinking her replies, her answer was to wash her hands at the sink and run upstairs with joyful feet, thinking, "How splendid it will be if he gives me some money; then I can spend it at the Fair to-morrow night."
But even rose-colored visions could not keep the weary child awake; she was not conscious of touching the pillow, and thought of nothing until the clock striking six awoke her to remember, with a thrill, that it was Christmas-day,—the day of the Fair.
But there would be no presents or merry greetings in her home, for she could not remember ever hearing either father or mother wish any of the family "Merry Christmas!" and a little candy on that day was among the dimmest pictures of her childhood.
"I'll make the fire, so that mother can sleep a little longer," she decided, lighting her candle, and beginning to dress with shivering alacrity. "And I'll be as helpful as I can all day, and perhaps father will give me some of the turkey money."
With shaking fingers she kindled the wood fire, and had the kettle boiling and the griddle heated for the cakes, when her mother came out of the bedroom, asking her what had wakened her so early, and telling her to dress the baby while she finished getting the breakfast ready.
Debby willingly brought the screaming baby out to the fire, where she washed and dressed him, soothing him with many motherly little airs. Sam and Jim ran down-stairs to hover over the red-hot stove; the father came in, bringing the pail of milk, stamping his feet, his beard white with his frozen breath; then they all sat down to breakfast by candle-light, and no one would have supposed, from their conversation, that they had ever heard of Christmas-day.
Immediately after breakfast Mr. Blanchard hurried away to dispose of his turkeys, taking the boys with him; Mrs. Blanchard heated the brick oven preparatory to a morning's baking, and Debby flew about as busily as the bee she represented, washing dishes, making beds, peeling vegetables, and tending the baby, lightening her labor with the thought of the money her father might possibly give her.
When it was time for him to return, she determined to keep in sight, as a kind of hint that some of the money should be given to her; not that she would ask him for it,—her askings were only for favors to the boys, made in much fear and inward shrinking; but she would just wait around and remind him by her presence that she had helped pick the turkeys.
But, with no understanding of the feverish anxiety that filled the heart of the little maiden who was moving briskly about the pleasant kitchen dishing up the dinner, Mr. Blanchard threw open the door with a chuckle. "Took every one of them and paid the money down," he announced, coming to the fire. "Got more than I expected, too, for his scales made them weigh more than ours, so I gained just thirty cents."
Debby thought that her heart stopped beating while she stood bewildered in the middle of the floor with a dish of potatoes in her hand, waiting to hear her father say that the extra money should be hers; but he merely asked if dinner were ready, and why she moved so slowly; guessed that sitting up so late made her lazy.
All her castles built of ice-cream, candy, pin-cushions, and fancy needle-books, fell to the ground with a crash as she set the dish on the table, leaving her with no appetite for dinner, not even for the first pumpkin-pie of the season.
She sat at the table absently tasting the savory pork stew, believing that no one else was ever as miserable as she, and that she should never feel like laughing again, when suddenly she remembered that she had twenty-four cents change left from the dollar that her father gave her to buy school-books, and she would—yes—she would give it to him as she was starting for the Fair, and perhaps he would say that she might keep it.
So she was all ready to laugh when Jim asked if the little boys in the big cities wore muzzles like the dog he had seen in town this morning, and when her mother asked if she would take pie, her "yes" was emphatic; for a world of trouble had rolled off her heart, and she was her hopeful self again.
After the dinner-dishes were washed, and the baby trotted away to dream-land, Debby stole up to her room to look over the dress she was to wear in the evening; as the ruffles in neck and wrists were fresh, she found there was nothing for her to do but brush it and lay it out on the bed. Still she lingered with an undefined feeling that it was Christmas-day everywhere else, and if she could only——
All the week, while seeing and hearing about the presents the school-girls were making, she had been full of vague longings to do something for some one; but she had neither money nor material, and was not at all sure how a present from her would be received by her father and mother. "Perhaps I might make a pin-ball," she thought, beginning to search through the old chest of drawers that stood at the foot of her bed.
In the lowest drawer were odds and ends that she had been collecting for years, and from one corner, carefully wrapped up, she drew a square of black cloth in which was worked in wool a bunch of rose-buds, pink, white and yellow, surrounded by their green leaves. A lady who had boarded with them the last summer had begun it for a pair of slippers, but after making two or three mistakes on it, had given it to Debby.
"I wonder if I could make it into a cushion for mother?" soliloquized Debby, turning it around in her red fingers. "Mrs. Williams said old flannel was good to stuff them with, and I can bind it with——" she leaned forward and picked among her bunch of faded ribbons. "There is nothing nice enough," she sighed; "but this green will have to do."
DEBBY AND THE ICE-CREAM
[SEE PAGE 227.]
Wrapping herself in a quilt she sat down on the rounded top of a hair-covered trunk, close to the frosty window, and cutting the cloth in the shape of a diamond, she sewed it together like a bag, filled it with flannel, and hurriedly stitched on the faded green ribbon as a binding.
These rosebuds were a wonderful work of art to Debby, and one of her great treasures; it would have been a "perfectly lovely cushion," she thought, if the binding had only been new and the silk with which she stitched it green instead of blue; and it was so delightful to make presents. Next year she would have a present for every one in the house; she wondered why she had never thought of it before.
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"And He feeleth for our sadness, And He shareth in our gladness," |
sprang from her heart to her lips, and she hummed it over and over all the three-quarters of an hour that she was at work. When the cushion was finished, she held it out in different positions, trying to decide in which it would look best when she should present it; and then she ran down-stairs, possessed with such a variety of feelings that she could scarcely speak when she opened the kitchen door.
Her mother was ironing, with her back toward her. Debby was glad that no one else was there.
"I've made you a Christmas present, mother," she said, timidly, laying it on the ironing-board.
"So that's what you have been doing in the cold so long," her mother answered, without pausing in her work. "Miss Holmes was a beautiful hand with her needle, and how she did fuss over that! But you might just as well have made it some other day; I was in no hurry for it. Put it in my bureau-drawer, and come and mend these blankets your father has just brought in. He thinks that we have so little to do that we can sew for the horses right in the midst of everything."
So Debby laid the cushion away, glad that it had met with no worse reception, and sat down in a corner near the stove to mend the coarse, dirty horse-blankets. She usually disliked it exceedingly; but her little attempt at making Christmas presents had so warmed her heart, and her head was so full of the Fair, that it did not now seem so uncongenial, and she was really surprised when the last stitch was taken.
"You are almost as handy with your needle as your mother," her father said, throwing the blankets over his shoulder to carry them to the barn.
"Now spring to, child, and set the table," her mother added, "and I'll rest a few minutes, for I feel as if every bone in my body was broken."
While Debby sewed, the bright sunlight on the green field of wheat and the brown, ridged field of corn-stubble visible through the one large window, had faded quickly away; and as she paused a moment to pick some shreds off her dress and glance out at the weather, all she could see was the dim outline of the woods, the dark forms of the hills rising behind them, and the cold, black wind-clouds piled high above them all.
Tea was ready and over at last, and then Mrs. Blanchard said, while she tried to quiet the screaming baby:
"Go and get ready for the Fair, child, and I will wash the dishes. I have a dreadful sideache, and I expect this young one will cry for an hour or two. But 'every dog must have his day,' and yours will be short enough."
With the cloud on her heart that always followed her mother's gloomy sayings, Debby went slowly up to her room to array herself in her last year's blue merino. But it was a pleasant figure to look upon that she tiptoed up to the glass to survey, and a round rosy face, with a little frown over the right eyebrow, that looked out at her with wistful eyes.
Drawing on hood and shawl, she went down-stairs and stood before her father with the money in her hand. He was seated at the table, bending over a large account-book, with Debby's frown deepened at the corner of his bushy eyebrow, and his fingers in his ears to shut out the baby's cries that reached him from the bedroom. As soon as she caught sight of what he was doing, Debby's hopes fell, for reckoning up the yearly expenses always made him cross for a week.
"Where are you off to now?" he asked, glancing up at her.
"To the Fair. The boys are there to come home with me. And here," her voice faltering, "is the change from the school-books."
"Don't stay late," he replied, turning away and dropping the precious money into his vest-pocket.
With a bursting heart, Debby stumbled out into the windy starlight and walked rapidly along the rough road, with her mittened fingers in her mouth to prevent her crying aloud.
How bitterly she wished she had never heard of the Fair! She was ashamed to go back into the house with no reason for returning, yet the thought of attending the Fair with no money to spend was torturing to her.
"There's Debby! Merry Christmas! Ride with us! Jump in, Debby!" called several voices, as a wagon full of boys and girls stopped beside her.
"I don't want to; I'd rather walk," answered Debby, swallowing her sobs.
"Walk, then!" replied Harry Williams, snapping his whip. "I guess you got a switch in your stocking this morning!"
Laughing thoughtlessly, the party rattled past her, leaving her crying harder than before. But a walk full of dread comes to an end some time, and Debby soon found herself at the entrance to the Fair.
Slipping in behind a group of men, she stood confused by the light and noise.
It was a grand and exciting scene to the little country maiden, this long, low room, trimmed with evergreens and flags, and illuminated by all the lamps in the neighborhood.
A table extended across each of three sides of the room. One, used for a supper-table, was filled with people eating and drinking noisily; on another was displayed the handiwork of the sewing society for the past year; and the third, which appeared the most attractive, was laden with cake, confectionery, and ice-cream.
Debby rubbed her swollen eyes, and was gazing about her in admiring astonishment, when her neighbor, Annie Williams, shouted "Merry Christmas" in her ear.
"Oh! Thank you," replied the startled Debby.
"Come and take off your things," suggested Annie. "You may put them with mine behind the apron and necktie end of the table. Mother tends that, you know."
Annie tucked the wraps carefully away, and then drew Debby through the crowd over to the stove, screened off in the corner behind the supper-table, where the good aunties of the village were heating their faces and spotting their Sunday dresses while cooking oysters and making coffee for the benefit of the church. But these ladies looked so annoyed by seeing the girls stand around the stove that Debby hurried away. Possibly they thought that the church would not be benefited by Debby's warming her fingers and toes.
Elbowing their way back, with arms clasped around each other's waist, they encountered and stepped on the toes of a big German boy, who convulsed them by pointing down at them with both forefingers, exclaiming: "See the two craz-z-z-y! See the two craz-z-z-y!" And Debby's laugh was as light-hearted as if she could buy everything in the room, and her mother had nineteen silk dresses.
"Now come and get some ice-cream," urged Annie, as they were pushed toward it. "I have had three saucers, and think it is lovely. I ought to be a judge, don't you think so?"
"Not now," said Debby, hastily. "I want to look at the needle-books your mother made."
"It's pokey over there! But I'll humor you, because it is Christmas," laughed Annie.
So they dodged under elbows, and slipped between young men and their sweethearts, until they reached the other end of the room, where Debby admired pen-holders with spiders and mice on them, cushions representing the old lady who lived in a shoe, and needle-books made like wheelbarrows, wondering if there had been anything at the Centennial more beautiful than these. But when a group of girls claimed Annie's attention, she eagerly seized the opportunity to slip away and sit on the bench behind Mrs. Williams's table.
"Tired so soon?" inquired Mrs. Williams, kindly. "But why didn't your mother come?"
"She didn't have—I don't mean—I mean she didn't speak of coming," stammered Debby, with burning cheeks.
"Never mind," replied Mrs. Williams, "you will have a good time, I know; and you must be sure to ride home with us."
Soothed by her sympathetic words, Debby almost forgot her troubles, and sat watching the moving picture with great amusement, until she espied her brothers helping Mr. Williams pass the saucers of cream.
"Oh, I hope they wont be tempted to take any," she thought, her heart full of a wordless prayer for them. But her anxiety was soon relieved by seeing Sam forcing his way toward her with a plate of cream.
"He gave it to me for helping," he whispered; "but you take it. Jim ate his right up."
"Eat it yourself, Sammy," she said, drawing back the hand she had stretched out for it. "I don't care so very much about it, because I am older, you know."
"Don't you, now, 'truly, truly, black and bluely, lay me down and cut me in twoly?'" he asked, with the air of a magistrate about to "swear" a witness.
"I would very much rather you should eat it," evaded Debby.
"Then I will," he answered, brightly, "for I do want it awfully."
"Eat it, then; but don't be tempted to take any," she cautioned.
"Catch me taking—I'm not a thief!" and he hastened away.
Debby was thirteen years old, but she could have cried for that ice-cream.
"Oh, here you are at last!" cried Annie, running up to her a few minutes afterward. "I couldn't imagine where you had got to. Now, just read my letter," placing a tiny sheet of pink paper in her hand. "That box all trimmed up at the end of the candy-table is the post-office," she explained, "and we give them five cents and ask for a letter. Just read mine."
Debby read, written in a large, clear hand:
"And shouldst thou ask my judgment of that which hath most profit in the world, For answer take thou this: The prudent penning of a letter."
"It's lovely!" was Debby's comment. "If I should have one, I wonder what it would be!"
"I'll run and get you one," volunteered Annie.
"No, no!" cried Debby, in terror. "I have no money to pay for it."
"Have you spent it all so soon?" asked Annie, curiously. "But we must go now and get our ice-cream; for, do you know, Mr. James has promised to treat all our class. So come along, for the more we eat the richer the church will grow."
"No," refused Debby, shaking off Annie's hand, "I wont do any such thing," and she shrank back into her corner.
"How queerly you act! You wont do anything I ask you," pouted Annie, turning away.
"I couldn't take it," Debby excused to herself. "I want it so much that I'd feel like a beggar in taking it from him. Annie can't understand, because she has bought it for herself, and will only eat it now for fun. I wish there was something for me to do."
Her thought was scarcely finished before it was answered by Mrs. White, in the handsome alpaca Debby's mother so admired.
"What am I to do with this child?" she asked, stopping before Mrs. Williams with a sleeping baby in her arms. "Phil wants me to go to supper with him, but what can I do?"
"I'll hold her," said Debby, eagerly. "I have a nice quiet place here."
"Much obliged, I'm sure," answered Mrs. White, placing the baby carefully in her arms.
With something to take care of, Debby grew so comfortable that when Mrs. White returned from supper she begged to keep the baby longer.
"Every one is so busy here that I'd like to have something to do, too," she said, arranging a paper so as to shade the baby's eyes from the light, remembering with a throb of gratitude the oranges Mrs. White sent her when she was sick last fall.
"If you don't really care to run about, it would be a great favor to me," returned Mrs. White, "for there are so many people here that I shall not see again for a year, and I want to speak to them all. But a baby is not the most convenient article to carry in a crowd."
The handsome alpaca disappeared, and Debby kept her guard for an hour, watching the young people who visited the post-office or joked over the neckties and aprons.
"Here's an industrious young lady who has had no supper," declared a bald-headed old gentleman, stopping before her with a large bell in his hand.
"I've had my supper," quickly answered Debby.
"I don't remember counting you at the table," he replied, wiping the perspiration from his forehead as he passed on, loudly ringing the bell.
"I didn't tell a story," sighed Debby, "for I've had my supper; but I'd like people to think I'd had it here. It looks so nice to sit at the table," she added, catching a glimpse of Annie's blue ribbons as she sat at the table next her brother.
"How thoughtless I have been!" cried Mrs. White, returning in a fluster. "I forgot all about you; you must be tired to death."
"Only a little tired," said Debby, "and I am so glad to do anything for you."
"Well, you must come and see me," invited Mrs. White, with her mouth full of pins, as she rolled the baby into a large shawl, "and perhaps I can find something for you to read."
But when Debby stood up she felt more stiff and tired than she had acknowledged, and, fearing that she had stayed too late, she hurried on her wraps, and with much persuasion induced her brothers to go home with her.
"It wouldn't do us any good to stay and see the auction," she reasoned, closing the door upon the noisy scene with a heart lighter than when she had entered it. "Now let us see how fast we can trot home in the moonlight."
Giving a hand to each of the boys, they walked swiftly toward the little red farm-house, where, although their parents had retired, a lamp and a bright fire awaited them.
The kitchen seemed very quiet after the hubbub they had left, with the clock on the stroke of nine and the cat asleep in the wood-box.
There were three pieces of pumpkin-pie on the table, left as a lunch for them, and these they ate, talking in whispers; and then Debby unfastened the boys' neckties, and followed them upstairs, too tired and sleepy to be very glad or very sorry about anything.
But as she snuggled down under the blankets, with the "merry din" still ringing in her ears, she thought:
"I have not made much Christmas for any one to-day, but, when I'm grown-up, wont I make Merry Christmas for little girls!"
THE COOLEST MAN IN RUSSIA.
(An Old Soldier's Reminiscence.)
By David Ker.
've seen many a brave man in my time, sure enough," said old Ivan Starikoff, removing his short pipe to puff out a volume of smoke from beneath his long white moustache. "Many and many a one have I seen; for, thank Heaven, the children of holy Russia are never wanting in that way; but all of them put together wouldn't make one such man as our old colonel, Count Pavel Petrovitch[1] Severin. It wasn't only that he faced danger like a man,—all the others did that,—but he never seemed to know that there was any danger at all. It was as good as a re-enforcement of ten battalions to have him among us in the thick of a fight, and to see his grand, tall figure drawn up to its full height, and his firm face and keen gray eye turned straight upon the smoke of the enemy's line, as if defying them to hurt him. And when the very earth was shaking with the cannonade, and balls were flying thick as hail, and the hot, stifling smoke closed us in like the shadow of death, with a flash and a roar breaking through it every now and then, and the whole air filled with the rush of the shot, like the wind sweeping through a forest in autumn,—then Petrovitch would light a cigarette and hum a snatch of a song, as coolly as if he were at a dinner-party in the English Club at Moscow. And it really seemed as if the bullets ran away from him, instead of his running from them; for he never got hit. But if he saw any of us beginning to waver, he would call out cheerily: 'Never fear, lads—remember what the song says!' For in those days we had an old camp-song that we were fond of singing, and the chorus of it was this:
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"'Then fear not swords that brightly shine, Nor towers that grimly frown; For God shall march before our line, And tread our foemen down.' |
"He said this so often, that at last he got the nickname among us of 'Ne-Boisya' (Don't fear), and he deserved it, if ever man did yet. Why, Father Nikolai Pavlovitch himself (the Emperor Nicholas) gave him the Cross of St. George[2] with his own hand (the St. George from the emperor's own hand—think of that!) at the siege of Varna, in the year '28. You see, our battery had been terribly cut up by the Turkish fire, so at last there were only about half a dozen of us left on our feet. It was as hot work as I ever was in,—shot pelting, earth-works crumbling, gabions crashing, guns and gun-carriages tumbling over together, men falling on every side like leaves, till, all at once, a shot went slap through our flag-staff, and down came the colors!
"Quick as lightning, Pavel Petrovitch was up on the parapet, caught the flag as it fell, and held it, right in the face of all the Turkish guns, while I and another man spliced the pole with our belts. You may think how the unbelievers let fly at him when they saw him standing there on the top of the breastwork, just as if he'd been set up for a mark; and all at once I saw one fellow (an Albanian by his dress, and you know what deadly shots they are) creep along to the very angle of the wall, and take steady aim at him!
"I made a spring to drag the colonel down (I was his servant, you know, and whoever hurt him hurt me); but before I could reach him I saw the flash of the Albanian's piece, and Pavel Petrovitch's cap went spinning into the air, with a hole right through it just above the forehead. And what do you think the colonel did? Why, he just snapped his fingers at the fellow, and called out to him, in some jibber-jabber tongue only fit to talk to a Turk in:
"'Can't you aim better than that, you fool? If I were your officer, I'd give you thirty lashes for wasting the government ammunition!'
"Well, as I said, he got the St. George, and of course everbody congratulated him, and there was a great shaking of hands, and giving of good wishes, and drinking his health in mavro tchai,—that's a horrid mess of eggs, and scraped cheese, and sour milk, and Moldavian wine, which these Danube fellows have the impudence to call 'black tea,' as if it was anything like the good old tea that we Russians drink at home! (I've always thought, for my part, that tea ought to grow in Russia; for it's a shame that those Chinese idolaters should have such grand stuff all to themselves.)
"Well, just in the height of the talk, Pavel Petrovitch takes the cross off his neck, and holds it out in his hand—just so—and says:
"'Well, gentlemen, you say I'm the coolest man in the regiment, but perhaps everybody wouldn't agree with you. Now, just to show that I want nothing but fair play, if I ever meet my match in that way, I'll give him this cross of mine!'
"Now, among the officers who stood around him was a young fellow who had lately joined—a quiet, modest lad, quite a boy to look at, with light curly hair, and a face as smooth as any lady's. But when he heard what the colonel said, he looked up suddenly, and there came a flash from his clear blue eyes like the sun striking a bayonet. And then I thought to myself:
"'It wont be an easy thing to match Pavel Petrovitch; but if it can be done, here's the man to do it!'
"I think that campaign was the hardest I ever served. Before I was enlisted, I had often heard it said that the Turks had no winter; but I had always thought that this was only a 'yarn,' though, indeed, it would be only a just judgment upon the unbelievers to lose the finest part of the whole year. But when I went down there I found it true, sure enough. Instead of a good, honest, cracking frost to freshen everything up, as our proverb says,
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"'Na zimni kholod Vsiaki molod'— |
(in winter's cold every one is young), it was all chill, sneaking rain, wetting us through and through, and making the hill-sides so slippery that we could hardly climb them, and turning all the low grounds into a regular lake of mud, through which it was a terrible job to drag our cannon. Many a time in after days, when I've heard spruce young cadets at home, who had never smelt powder in their lives, talking big about 'glorious war' and all that, I've said to myself, 'Aha, my fine fellows! if you had been where I have, marching for days and days over ankles in mud, with nothing to eat but stale black bread, so hard that you had to soak it before you could get it down; and if you'd had to drink water through which hundreds of horses had just been trampling; and to scramble up and down steep hills under a roasting sun, with your feet so swollen and sore that every step was like a knife going into you; and to lie all night in the rain, longing for the sun to rise that you might dry yourself a bit,—perhaps then you wouldn't talk quite so loud about "glorious war!"
"However, we drove the Turks across the Balkans at last, and got down to Yamboli, a little town at the foot of the mountains, which commands the high-road to Adrianople. And there the unbelievers made a stand, and fought right well. I will say that for 'em; for they knew that if Adrianople were lost, all was over. But God fought for us, and we beat them; though, indeed, with half our men sick, and our clothes all in rags, and our arms rusted, and our powder mixed with sand by those rogues of army-contractors, it was a wonder that we could fight at all.
"Toward afternoon, just as the enemy were beginning to give way, I saw Pavel Petrovitch (who was a general by this time) looking very hard at a mortar-battery about a hundred yards to our right; and all at once he struck his knee fiercely with his hand, and shouted:
"'What do the fellows mean by firing like that? They might as well pelt the Turks with potatoes! I'll soon settle them! Here, Vanya (Ivan)!'
"Away he went, I after him; and he burst into the battery like a storm, and roared out:
"'Where's the blockhead who commands this battery?'
"A young officer stepped forward and saluted; and who should this be but the light-haired lad with the blue eyes, whom I had noticed that night at Varna.
"'Well, you wont command it to-morrow, my fine fellow, for I'll have you turned out this very day. Do you know that not a single shell that you've thrown since I've been watching you has exploded at all?'
"'With your excellency's leave,' said the young fellow, respectfully, but pretty firmly too, 'the fault is none of mine. These fuses are ill-made, and will not burn down to the powder.'
"'Fuses!' roared the general. 'Don't talk to me of fuses; I'm too old for that rubbish! Isn't it enough for you to bungle your work, but you must tell me a lie into the bargain?'
"At the word 'lie,' the young officer's face seemed to turn red-hot all in a moment, and I saw his hand clench as if he would drive his fingers through the flesh. He made one stride to the heap of bomb-shells, and, taking one up in his arms, struck a match on it.
"'Now,' said he, quietly, 'your excellency can judge for yourself. I'm going to light this fuse; if your excellency will please to stand by and watch it burn, you will see whether I have "lied" or not.'
"The general started, as well he might. Not that he was afraid—you may be pretty sure of that; but to hear this quiet, bashful lad, who looked as if he had nothing in him, coolly propose to hold a lighted shell in his arms to see if it would go off, and ask him to stand by and watch it, was enough to startle anybody. However, he wasn't one to think twice about accepting a challenge; so he folded his arms and stood there like a statue. The young officer lighted the fuse, and it began to burn.
"As for me and the other men, you may fancy what we felt like. Of course, we couldn't run while our officers were standing their ground; but we knew that if the shell did go off, it would blow every man of us to bits, and it wasn't pleasant to have to stand still and wait for it. I saw the men set their teeth hard as the flame caught the fuse; and as for me, I wished with all my heart and soul that if there were any good fuses in the heap, this might turn out to be one of the bad ones!
"But no—it burned away merrily enough, and came down, and down, and down, nearer and nearer to the powder! The young officer never moved a muscle, but stood looking steadily at the general, and the general at him. At last, the red spark got close to the metal of the shell; and then I shut my eyes, and prayed God to receive my soul.
"Just at that moment, I heard the man next me give a quick gasp, as if he had just come up from a plunge under water; and I opened my eyes again just in time to see the fuse out, and the young officer letting drop the shell at the general's feet, without a word.
"For a moment, the general stood stock still, looking as if he didn't quite know whether to knock the young fellow down, or to hug him in his arms like a son; but, at last, he held out his hand to him, saying:
"'Well, it's a true proverb, that every one meets his match some day; and I've met mine to-day, there's no denying it. There's the St. George for you, my boy, and right well you deserve it; for if I'm "the coolest man in the regiment," you're the coolest in all Russia!'
"And so said all the rest, when the story got abroad; and the commander-in-chief himself, the great Count Diebitsch, sent for the lad, and said a few kind words to him that made his face flush up like a young girl's. But in after days he became one of the best officers we ever had; and I've seen him, with my own eyes, complimented by the emperor himself, in presence of the whole army. And from that day forth, the whole lot of us, officers and men alike, never spoke of him by any other name but Khladnokrovni ('the cool-blooded one')."
Note.—Two other versions of this story, differing somewhat in detail, are current in the Russian army; but the one in the text is the more probable, as well as the more generally received.