You can imagine the feelings of his master as he afterward bound up his wounds, and when the innkeeper and his accomplices were handed over to justice, how tenderly he carried the dog in his arms till he reached his home; how the nobleman’s wife and children hugged and petted him, and made a soft bed for his wounded limb; and how the tears came into their eyes, whenever they thought how generously he had taken his revenge for being turned out of doors. Ah, it will not do for us to call those “brutes” whose daily lives put ours to shame!
One thing more, how surely the Eye that never sleeps, brings hidden wickedness to justice! and what humble agents, as in this case, are sometimes employed to do it, and how often those wretches who plan a murder or robbery with such wonderful skill, yet after all, overlook some little thread which they have left behind, which the law seizes hold of, and winds round their throats. Ah! it is only in seeming that sin prospers.
A QUESTION ANSWERED.
TO THE LITTLE GIRL WHO WRITES FOR MY INTERCESSION IN HER FAVOR, “BECAUSE HER MOTHER DOES EVERYTHING AS I SAY.”
Does she? Then I must be very careful what I say. I have had many letters from little girls, whose bright eyes I never shall see, begging me to say this, that, or the other thing, in print, that their mammas may see it, and so grant them the favors they desire. Now I don’t like to come between a mother and her own little girl. I should not allow any one to do that to me. I think I know more about my little girl than any one else can possibly know. I watch her closely, I know all her faults and all her good points, and I think I understand how to deal justly with both, though I may be mistaken. I have never “forbidden her to read tales or stories,” as you say your mother has you, because I think children should be allowed to read them at proper times, when they are good and innocent, no matter how “startling” and “wonderful” they may be. Studying is dry work, though necessary, and most schools, as now conducted, inexpressibly tedious to a restless, active child; and after school hours are over, and a good dinner has been eaten, and a brisk run has been taken out of doors for exercise, I think it does a child good to read a nice, bright story. I often bring storybooks to my little girl, and when I find any interesting anecdote in a big book I am reading, I turn down the leaf, that she may read it too, and we often talk it over, and sometimes she thinks very differently from me about it, and then I like to get at her reasons for doing so; and often she will use a big word to express herself that I doubt she knows the meaning of, although she has used it quite correctly, and when I say, “Now, what does that big word mean?” she says, “Oh, I can’t tell you, but I know it fits in there;” and so it does. Now I think this makes home pleasant for her, and I always fancy she is more willing to go back to her books and her lessons after it.
Now perhaps it is your fault that your mother has denied you “tales and stories.” It may be that you not only neglect your lessons altogether for them, but your home duties also—for even little girls can and ought to help their mothers at home in a thousand ways. Suppose you try getting your lessons, and doing whatever she wishes at home and at school, and then see if she is not willing you should read good, innocent stories. I think she would be, for every mother knows that her household duties go on much more smoothly and pleasantly if she occasionally takes a walk, or visits a friend, or reads a pleasant book, and surely this must be true of a little girl, after sitting many hours in a schoolroom, repeating words which often convey no ideas to her mind, sometimes because the teacher only makes it more misty when he tries to explain it; mamma, perhaps, thinking it is the teacher’s business, and the teacher thinking it is mamma’s fault, when the child complains to either; sometimes because the little brain is so overtasked, that its owner settles down into listless discouragement; sometimes because the air of the schoolroom is so bad as to stupefy both teacher and scholar. I often wish that when teachers see their pupils’ cheeks flush, and their heads droop, they would stop study, and read some interesting book aloud for half an hour. I am very sure that their scholars would study all the better after it. I don’t think a good story at proper times hurts any girl or boy. Childhood craves it, and, I think, should have it, and I hope many good men and women will continue to keep up the supply for them, and I hope that no little child, because I say this, will be so foolish as to think that eating cake all the time is better than to live on bread, and eat cake occasionally, for it is labor, after all, that sweetens amusement, when we feel and know that we have earned it. You know you can’t play all your life. You can’t read storybooks always. One of these days you must be an earnest woman, take care of your own house, tend your own little baby, who will look straight into your eyes and believe everything you tell it, right or wrong, as if God himself were speaking. This is very sweet, but it is very solemn too; you must prepare for this, and one way is never to neglect duty for pleasure. Labor first—amusement afterward.
THE NURSE’S DAY OUT.
We all know that “nobody is to blame” when a railroad accident occurs. The same is true of waking up a baby. Mothers know what delicate management is often required to lull baby to sleep. How many tunes have sometimes to be hummed, how many walkings up and down the floor, how many trottings, how many rockings, how many feedings, before this desirable event comes off. At last the little lids give promise of drooping, the little waxen paws fall helpless, the little kicking toes are quiescent, mamma draws a breath of relief, as she pushes her hair off her heated face, and baby looks as if nothing on earth could ever disturb its serenity. Won’t there? Tramp, tramp, tramp, comes the baby’s papa up stairs with a pair of creaking boots. Mamma rushes to the nursery door, with warning forefinger on her lips and an imploring “John, dear, the baby! it is the nurse’s day out—pray don’t wake her up.” “John, dear,” true to his sex, creaks on, and argues this wise, “My dear, I’ve often noticed that it isn’t that kind of noise that ever wakes baby.” Of course, mamma is too much of a woman not to know that a man is never mistaken even with regard to a subject he knows nothing about; but it strikes her that sometimes strategy is a good thing; so the next day she places his slippers below stairs in a very conspicuous and tempting position, trusting that his tired feet may naturally seek that relief. I say naturally, because she knows that he would as soon thrust his feet into two pots of boiling water as put them in those slippers, if he thought the idea came from a female mind, so naturally does the male creature hedge about his godlike dignity. Well, the baby is quieted and patted down again; when in comes its aunty, and begins to brush the lint off her dress with a stiff scraping sound. To a remonstrance she replies, “Just as if that noise could wake up baby;” and while she yet speaks, up go the little fat hands in the air, and the eyelids struggle to unclose, and mamma begins humming again “Yankee Doodle” or “Old Hundred,” saucy or sacerdotal, no matter which, it is all the same to Morpheus. This accomplished she creeps on tiptoe away from the bed, congratulating herself that now certainly she can get a breathing spell and time to change her morning dress. Just then “dear John” appears again, and wants something; a bit of string, or a bottle, maybe, but whatever it is, he is sure it is on the top shelf in the closet of that room; and though he is not going to use it immediately, he wants it found immediately because—he wants it! and because, though “impatient woman can never wait an instant for anything,” man is very like her in that respect, though he don’t see it. So the search is instituted, and down tumbles one thing and then another off the shelves, rattling and rustling and bumping, and finally it is discovered that “the pesky thing” isn’t there, but is down in the kitchen cupboard; this piece of information dear John conveys to his wife in a shrill “sissing” whisper, “because a whisper,” he says, how loud soever, “never yet woke up a baby!”
Just then the large violet eyes unclose and the little mouth dimples into a pretty smile of recognition, and “dear John,” whose attention is called to it, exclaims, peeping into the crib, “Well now, who’d have thought it?” and creaks off down stairs after his bottle or ball of string as calm as a philosopher; and then asks his wife at dinner “if she has mended that lining in his coat-sleeve that he spoke about at breakfast time.”