Do you ever think how much work a little child does in a day? How from sunrise to sunset, the little feet patter round—to us—so aimlessly. Climbing up here, kneeling down there, running to another place, but never still. Twisting and turning, and rolling and reaching, and doubling, as if testing every bone and muscle for their future uses. It is very curious to watch it. One who does so may well understand the deep breathing of the rosy little sleeper, as with one arm tossed over its curly head, it prepares for the next day’s gymnastics. Tireless through the day, till that time comes, as the maternal love which so patiently accommodates itself hour after hour to its thousand wants and caprices, real or fancied.
A busy creature is a little child. To be looked upon with awe as well as delight, as its clear eye looks trustingly into faces that to God and man have essayed to wear a mask. As it sits down in its little chair to ponder precociously over the white lie you thought it “funny” to tell it. As, rising and leaning on your knee, it says, thoughtfully, in a tone which should provoke a tear, not a smile—“I don’t believe it.” A lovely and yet a fearful thing is that little child.
THE USE OF GRANDMOTHERS.
A little boy, who had spilled a pitcher of milk, stood crying, in view of a whipping, over the wreck. A little playmate stepped up to him and said, condolingly:—Why, Bobby, haven’t you got a grandmother?
Who of us cannot remember this family mediator, always ready with an excuse for broken china, or torn clothes, or tardy lessons, or little white fibs? Who was it had always on hand the convenient stomach-ache, or headache, or toothache, to work on parental tenderness? Whose consoling stick of candy, or paper of sugar plums, or seed-cake, never gave out; and who always kept strings to play horse with, and could improvise riding whips and tiny kites, and dress rag-babies, and tell stories between daylight and dark to an indefinable amount to ward off the dreaded go-to-bed hour?
Who staid at home, none so happy, with the children while papa and mamma “went pleasuring?” Who straightened out the little waxen limbs for the coffin when papa and mamma were blind with tears? Who gathered up the little useless robes and shoes and toys, and hid them away from torturing sight till heaven’s own balm was poured into those aching hearts? “Haven’t you got a grandmother?” Alas! if only our grown up follies and faults might always find as merciful judgment, how many whom harshness and severity have driven to despair and crime, were now to be found useful and happy members of society!
THE INVENTOR OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
Did you ever ride in an old-fashioned stage coach? cramped in your back, cramped in your legs, with a “crick” in your neck, while you were packed in, and strapped in so closely that it was next to impossible to move a toe or a finger? Was the day hot and dusty, and had the tired horses hill after hill to crawl and climb up? Was some fellow-passenger’s knee boring a hole in your back, and did you bump, and thump, and bob about, hour after hour, unable to sleep, and too weary almost to live, till, when you drew up at last to some little country tavern, before which Lafayette or Washington hung creaking on a sign, with John Smith’s Hotel underneath, you didn’t care whether you ever got out or not; whether you ever ate, or drank, or laughed again; whether your trunk was safe, or lost on the road, miles back? Well, if you have not experienced all this, perhaps your father or mother, or uncle, or aunt have; and they will tell you that is one of the slow methods in which people used to travel before railroads and cars were invented. Ah, but, you say, stages were safer than railroad cars! Were they? They never tipped over, I suppose, or rolled over a precipice of a dark night, or had defective wheels, or drunken drivers, or balky horses, or any thing of that sort. And if anybody was very sick, or dying, at a distance, they might not have been buried weeks, I suppose, before one could reach them.
Well, people after a while thought they might travel faster than this, and quite as safely, too.
George Stephenson, the great Railway Engineer, was one of the first who thought this, and worked hard, and long, to make it possible. I want to tell you about him, because it seems to me quite beautiful that a poor, uneducated boy, as he was, should have brought so great a thing to pass. I rejoice in it, because I love to think that in our country our most useful and best men have, many of them, been very poor and humble when young; and because I want every boy who reads this to feel encouraged to try what he too can do, instead of folding his hands and saying, “oh, what’s the use? I was born poor, and I shall die poor; I’m ignorant, and I shall die ignorant. Who cares what becomes of me?” I tell you I care for one, and if nobody cared, you ought to care yourself. It is very certain, if you don’t care yourself, that nobody can do much for you. Well, George Stephenson was the son of a poor collier, in England. He was the second of six children, for whom their father and mother worked hard to find bread and butter. Little George lived like other working people’s children: played about the doors, went bird’s nesting now and then, or of errands to the village; and as he grew bigger, carried his father’s dinner to him when at work; or helped nurse his brothers and sisters at home; for in a poor man’s house, you know, every little hand and foot must do something in the way of helping. As to school, none of them thought of such a thing; it was as much as they could do to keep a roof over their heads, and something to eat and drink. Dewley Burn was the name of the place where the one-roomed cottage stood, in which George was born; and near which his father was employed, to tend the engine-fire near the coalpit. Robert Stephenson, George’s father, was a kind-hearted, pleasant man. You may know that, because all the young people of an evening used to go and sit round his engine-fire while he told stories to them; sometimes about Sinbad the Sailor; sometimes about Robinson Crusoe, and often something which he himself “made up” to please them. Of course “Bob’s engine-fire” was a great place. No stoop of a village tavern on “muster day” was ever more glorious to happy urchins. You can almost see the picture; the bright fire blazing, and rows of bright eyes glistening in its light, some black, some blue, some gray; curly locks and straight locks, slender lads, and fat lads; some with chins on their palms, and elbows on their knees, some flat on their backs or sides, on the ground; and all believing every word of Bob’s, as you now do storybooks, which they would have given their ears to get hold of, though I have my doubts, if they are better, after all, than were “Bob’s stories.” Now you are not to think because George’s father worked as a collier, that he had no love for beautiful things. On the contrary, he used to take nice long, breezy summer walks, whenever he got a chance, with his little son. And when George had grown up to be a man, and long after his good father’s white head was under the sod, George used to speak often of his lifting him up to look into a black-bird’s nest, and of the delight and wonder with which he gazed at the little peeping creatures for the first time. I dare say your father and mother can tell you some such little thing which they remember about their childhood’s home, which stands out in their memory now, from the mist of years, like a lovely picture, sunny and glowing and untouched by time.