Think of this, dear children, when you pout to lay down an interesting story-book, when your mother calls you to do some necessary work; and don’t wait till the tombstone lies heavy on her breast before you believe that she knows better than you what is best for you.
RED-HEADED ANDY.
What should you do were your mother to fall down in a fit? stand still and scream? or run out of the house, and leave her lying half-dead upon the floor? Or, should you have what people call, “presence of mind?” that is, call for somebody to help her, and do all you could for her till they came. It is a great thing to have “presence of mind;” there are very few grown people who have it; there are plenty of people when a bad accident happens, who will crowd round the sick person, keep all the good fresh air away from him; wring their hands, say oh! and ah! and shocking! and dreadful! but there are few who think to run quickly for the doctor, or bring a glass of water, or do any one of the thousand little things which would help so much to make the poor sufferer better. If grown people do not think of these things, we certainly should not be disappointed if children do not; and yet, wonderful, though it may be, they are often quicker-witted at such a time than their elders. I will tell you a story, to show you that it is so.
Andy Moore, was a short, stunted, freckled, little country boy; tough as a pine knot, and with about as much polish. Sometimes he wore a hat, and sometimes he didn’t; he was not at all particular about that; his shaggy red hair, he thought, protected his head well enough; as for what people would think of it—he did not live in Broadway, where one’s shoe-lacings are measured; his home was in the country, and a very wild, rocky country, at that; he knew much more about chip-munks, rattle-snakes, and birds’-eggs, than he did about fashions; he liked to sit rocking on the top of a great tall tree; or standing on a high hill, where the wind almost took him off his feet; he thought the sunset, with its golden clouds, “well enough,” but he delighted in a thunder-storm; when the forked lightning darted zig-zag across the heavy black clouds, blinding you with its brightness; or when the roaring thunder seemed to shake the very hills, and the gentle little birds cowered trembling in their nests for fear.
Andy’s house was a rough shanty enough, on the side of a hill; it was built of mud, peat and logs, with holes for windows; there was nothing very pleasant there; his mother smoked a pipe when she was not cooking or washing, and his father was a day laborer who spent his wages for whisky and tobacco. No wonder that Andy liked to rock on the top of the tall trees, and liked the thunder and lightning better than the eternal jangling of their drunken quarrels. Andy could hear the hum of busy life in the far-off villages; but he had never been there; he had no books, so he did a great deal of thinking, and he hoped some day to be something beside just plain Andy Moore, but how or when, the boy had not made up his mind. In the mean time, he grew, and slept, and ate, and thought—the very best thing at his age that he could have done, anywhere, had he but known it.
There was a railroad track near the hut of Andy’s father; and Andy often watched the black engine, with its long trail, as it came fizzing past, belching out great clouds of steam and smoke, and screeching through the valleys and under the hills like a mad demon. Although it went by the hut every day, yet he had never wished to ride in it; he had been content with lying on the sand bank, watching it disappear in the distance, leaving great wreaths of smoke curling round the treetops. One day as Andy was strolling across the track, he saw that there was something wrong about it; he did not know much about railroad tracks, because he was as yet quite a little lad, but the rails seemed to be wrong somehow; and Andy had heard of cars being thrown off by such things. Just then, he heard a low distant noise; dear, dear, the cars were coming, coming then! He was but a little boy, but perhaps he could stop them in some way, at any rate there was nobody else there to do it. Andy never thought that he might be killed himself; but he went and stood right in the middle of the track, just before the bad place on it, that I have told you about, and stretched out his little arms as far as he could. On, on came the cars, louder and louder. The engineer saw the boy on the track, and whistled for him to get out of the way; Andy never moved a hair; again he whistled; Andy might have been made of stone, for all the notice he took of it; then the engineer of course had to stop the train, swearing as he did so, at Andy, for “not getting out of the way;” but when Andy pointed to the track, and he saw how the brave little fellow had not only saved his life but the lives of all the passengers, his curses changed to blessings, very quick. Every body rushed out to see the horrible death they had escaped, had the cars rushed over the bad track and tossed headlong down the steep bank into the river. Ladies kissed Andy’s rough freckled face, and cried over him; and the gentlemen, as they looked at their wives and children, wiped their eyes and said “God bless the boy;” and that is not all, they took out their porte-monnaies and contributed a large sum of money for him; not that they could ever repay the service he had done them; they knew that; but to show him in some way beside mere words, that they felt grateful. Now THAT boy had presence of mind. Good, brave little Andy! The passengers all wrote down his name, Andy Moore, and the place he lived in; and if you want to know where Andy is now, I will tell you. He is in college; and these people whose lives he saved, pay his bills and are going to see him safe through. Who dare say, now, when a little jacket and trowsers runs past, “It is only a boy!”
LITTLE NAPKIN.
I am sure I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Poor little “Napkin!” Of course you know that “Napkin” is Louis Napoleon’s little baby; perhaps you don’t know that his mamma does not nurse him herself. I wonder does she know how much pleasure she loses by not doing it? I wonder does she know how sweet it is to wake in the night, and find a baby’s soft little hand on her neck, and his dear little head lying upon her arm? I wonder does she know how beautiful a baby is when it first wakes in the morning, raising its little head from the pillow, and gazing at you with its lustrous eyes and rosy cheeks, so like a fresh-blown dewy flower? I wonder does she know how delicious it is to give the little hungry rogue his breakfast? No, no; poor Eugenia! poor empress! She knows nothing of all this. She has had all a mother’s pain, and none of a mother’s pleasure. She hires a woman to nurse and sleep with little “Napkin;” she never sees how sweet he looks in the bath, the water dripping from his round polished limbs; she never puts his little fat arms into the cunning little sleeves of his clean white robe, or puts his little foot, with its rosy-tipped toes, into the little warm stocking. I wouldn’t be the empress, no, not for all her beauty and diamonds, if I could not do all this for my little “Napkin.” The handsomest dresses in all Paris would not comfort me any if I knew Madame Baut, or Madame any body else, was giving my little Napkin his milk, instead of myself; no, indeed. I should be afraid, too, all the time, that some pin was pricking him, or that his frock-strings were tied too tight, or that Madame Baut, or whoever the nurse is, would—but what is the use of talking about it? I would not have any Madame Baut. What is the use of being empress, if you can’t do as you like, especially with your own baby? One might as well be a slave-mother. I had rather be that Irish woman yonder, hanging out her husband’s clothes in the meadow, while her baby creeps after her on all fours, picking butter-cups. Not nurse my own baby! Not wash him, dress him, or sleep with him? Ah, Monsieur Louis Napoleon, it is lucky I am not Eugenie. If you wanted your empress, I am afraid you would have to come to little Napkin’s nursery for her. “Happy as a queen.” It makes me laugh when any body says that; or happy as an empress, either. I don’t want half a dozen maids of honor to dress and undress me, and put me to bed. I don’t want them following at my heels whenever I walk in the halls, gardens, or drawing-rooms. I should go crazy at the thought of it. I should lock the door on the whole of them. I wouldn’t be dressed so many times a day. I wouldn’t have so much twisting, and braiding, and curling, and plaiting of my hair. I wouldn’t call my husband “Sire!” Sire! Just imagine it? How you would laugh to hear your mother call your father “Sire.” No, I would say, Napoleon, or Nappy (just as the whim suited me), suppose we put our little “Napkin” in the basket-wagon, and draw him to the Tuileries; and then I, the empress, would—but, thank goodness, I am not an empress. I am very sure if I were, I should get my head cut off.
Little Napkin had an uncle named Napoleon Charles, who died when he was very young. One day he was sitting with his mamma, Hortense, at a window of her beautiful palace, which looked out on the avenue. It had been raining very hard, and the avenue was filled with little puddles of water, in which some barefooted children were playing with little boats made of chips. The little Prince Napoleon Charles was beautifully dressed, and had more costly toys to play with than I suppose you or I ever saw in our lives, some of which were given him by his good, dear, beautiful grandmother Josephine, whom all France, and indeed every body who ever heard of her, loved. But the little Prince Napoleon Charles did not seem to care for the beautiful presents, nor his beautiful clothes, nor the splendid furniture of the palace, but stood looking out of the window on the avenue.
His mamma, noticing it, said, “So, my son, you do not thank your grandmamma for all her kindness and those pretty presents she sent you?”