Hark! there is a bird singing—the first one I have heard this spring. How can you expect me to sit looking this stupid sheet of paper in the face, when that pretty bird is calling me out-doors, with all his sweet might? I have a great mind to throw my inkstand right out of the window! No I won’t; it might hit that bent old woman, who is raking the gutter with her long iron poker. Oh, it is hard enough for young people to be poor; but to be poor, feeble, and gray-headed—oh, ’tis very sad! The young heart is always hopeful; it can bear a great deal of discouragement; it leaps to a bird’s sweet trill, or a patch of green grass, or a bit of blue sky, although its owner may be covered with rags, and knows not where he shall get his next meal, or find his next night’s shelter.
The other day, I saw two little bits of girls, with tangled hair, dirty skins, bare legs, and ragged skirts, crouching down upon the pavement, and clapping their little tan-colored hands, because they had found—what do you think? A diamond? No—they never saw such a thing; though could they have seen their own eyes just then in a looking-glass, they might have found out how diamonds look. Had they found a sixpence or a shilling? No, I think by their appearance, they might never have seen so much money. “A London doll, with blue eyes, and red checks, and flaxen curls?” No; all the dolls they ever saw were made of old newspapers rolled up. What then? Why, two little blades of grass, that even the mayor, aldermen, and Common Council could not keep from struggling up through the pavement, to tell those poor little children that spring had come. No more little shivering toes and fingers, no more imprisonment in a dark, damp, underground cellar room, gloomy enough to chill even the light, hopeful heart of a little child. No, indeed! Oh, but they were lovely, those two tiny blades of grass! and the children lay flat down on their stomachs upon the pavement, and called it their “little garden,” and kicked their poor thin calves up in the air, and were happier with their treasure, than many a rich man, worth millions, with his hot-house and conservatory full of costly flowers and mimic fountains, whose beauty he scarce notices, for thinking of some great ship of his, off on the water, and trembling for fear she may be lost, with her rich freight of silks and laces.
“Get out of the way, there,” growled a pompous old gentleman, with a big waistcoat, and a gold-headed cane, thrusting the two children rudely aside, as he strutted past; “Dirty little vagabonds—ought to be sent to ‘the Island.’ Pah!” “Yes—off with you,” said the policeman, bowing low before the gold-headed cane and the golden calf who carried it; “off with you, d’ye hear?”
“He has trod on our pretty garden,” whimpered the distressed little things, looking back; “he has spoiled our garden,” and they rubbed their dirty little fists into their eyes.
“Dis—gust—ing,” replied a lady, whose flounces the children had run against in their endeavor to “get out of the way.” Poor things—ever since they were born they had heard nothing but “get out of the way;” they had begun to think the world was not intended for children. Ah! but another lady who is coming along, and who has watched the whole scene, does not think so.
“Would you like this—and this?” said she, putting in their hands two of those delicious little bouquets, sold by the flower-girls of New York.
A shilling to give so much happiness! Who would have thought it? How the smiles drank up the tears on those little faces? Was there ever any thing so beautiful as those forget-me-nots? See those little bare feet trip so lightly home with them; now they crawl down into the dark cellar room. Comfortless enough, is it not? Their mother stands wringing out her husband’s red-flannel shirts, at the wash-tub; both children begin at once to tell about “the lady who gave them the flowers,” and their mother wipes the suds from her hands, and gets an old cracked mug, and places the violets in it, up against the dingy window-pane; and now and then she stops to smell them, for she has not always lived in the dirty, close, dark alleys of the city, and the odor of those violets brings the tears to her faded eyes, once as blue as they; but she must not think of that; and bending over them once more, with an “Ah me!” she goes back again to her work: for well she knows that by-and-by a step will be heard stumbling down those stairs, and a man’s voice—not singing, cheerily, because his home, his wife and children are so near, but cursing—cursing that patient, toiling woman, cursing those half-starved innocent little girls. Oh, what could have turned that once kind man into such a cruel brute? Ask him, who, for a few paltry pence, sells the Rum that freezes the hearts of so many little girls’ fathers, and sends their patient, all-enduring mothers weeping to the grave!
OURS; OR, A LOOK BACKWARD.
Yes, Swissdale was ours! The title-deeds were “without a flaw,” so lawyer Nix informed us. Ours—the money was paid down that very day. Those glorious old trees were ours; tossing their branches hither and thither, as if oppressed with exuberant animal life; or stooping to caress the green earth, as if grateful for its life-sustaining power. Ours were the broad sloping meadows, dotted with daisies and clover, waving responsive to every whisper of the soft west wind; ours were the dense woods, which skirted it, where the sentinel squirrel cocked up his saucy eye, then darted away to the decayed tree-trunk, with his smuggled mouthful of acorns; ours the pretty scarlet berries, nestled under the tiny leaves at our feet; ours the rose-tinted and purple anemones, whose telltale breath betrayed their hidden loveliness; ours the wild rose, fair as fleeting; ours the green moss-patches, richer than courtly carpet, trod by kingly feet; ours the wondrously fretted roof, of oak and maple, pine and chestnut, now jealously excluding the sun’s rays, now by one magic touch of their neighborly leaves, making way that their bright beams might crimson the heart of some pale and tremulous flower, languishing like a lone maiden for the warm breath of Love. Ours were the robins and orioles, sparrows and katy-dids; ours the whip poor-will, wailing ever amid marshy sedge, where the crimson lobelia, more gorgeous than kingly robes, defied the covetous eye, and timorous foot. Ours the hedges, tangled with wild grape, snowy with blossoming clematis, woven with sweet briar, guarded by its protecting thorns. Ours the hill-side; where the creeping myrtle charily hid under the tall grass its cherished blue-eyed blossoms; ours the gray old rocks, whose clefts, and fissures, the golden moss made bright with verdure; ours the valley lillies, ringing ever their snow-white bells for the maidens’ bridal. Ours the bower-crowned, vine-wreathed, hill-summit, whence with rapt vision we drank in that broad expanse of earth, and sea, and sky, in all its waving, glowing, sparkling, changing, glorious beauty!—one perpetual anthem to Him, who hath neither beginning nor end of days.
Ours was the little blue-eyed one, who, though of infant stature, measured thought with angels; and with finger on hushed lip and lambent eyes, listened to voices, alas! all unheard by us, that were wooing her fragile form away.