The Play-day Book: New Stories for Little Folks

by Fanny Fern

It was very easy work, and when he got through, the bills were sent to his father to pay. As to his lessons, his father had never said any thing about those—it was stupid work studying, well enough for poor men’s sons, whose fathers were not rich, and who would have to earn their own living, but all he was sent there for, was to learn to be a gentleman. His teachers reproved him for neglect of study, and Charley plainly told them it was none of their business to speak to a gentleman in that way; and when his tutor told him that he must not use such language to him, he knocked the tutor down with his gentlemanly fists. To be sure he was drunk when he did it, but the tutor did not seem to think much, even of that gentlemanly excuse, and so Charley was expelled—that is, sent away from college, and went back again to his father. Mr. Colt did not keep the store now; he had made so much money, making drunkards, that he could afford to sell out all his rum-barrels to another man, who wanted to get rich too, by breaking women’s hearts, and starving poor innocent children. Mr. Colt now lived in a fine large house, with great high stone steps like a palace, and a great bronze lion on each side of the door. There were beautiful sofas and chairs inside, and mirrors the whole length of the wall, from floor to ceiling. The carpets were as thick and soft as the moss-patches in the woods, and the flowers in them so beautiful that you hesitated to put your foot on them. Then there was silver, and cut-glass, and porcelain, and a whole army of servants, all bought with the poor drunkards’ money; and Mr. Colt walked up and down his rooms, and thought himself a good man, and a gentleman. Charley Colt thought it was all very fine when he came back from college. But what he liked better than any thing else was his father’s wine-cellar. He smoked and drank, and drank and smoked, and lolled around the streets to his heart’s content. One night he was brought home very drunk, by two policemen, who had found him quarreling in the street; his head was badly cut, and his fine clothes were soiled and covered with mud, and his hat was so bruised, that you could not have told what shape it was when it was made.

Old Mr. Colt was sitting in his handsome parlor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, reading the evening paper, when the policemen rang at the door; hearing a scuffling in the entry, he opened the door of the parlor and there was his son, bruised, ragged, dirty, bleeding, and dead drunk.

Old Mr. Colt had often seen other men’s sons, whom he had helped to make drunkards, in this condition, without being at all troubled by it; but his own son—his fine handsome Charley—his only child—to look so beastly—to be so degraded—ah, that was quite another thing. His brain reeled, his knees tottered under him, his hand shook as if he had the palsy; then, for the first time in his life, he knew the misery he had brought to other firesides, other happy homes. All that night he walked up and down the floor of those splendid rooms; now he remembered the poor women who used to come to his shop to coax home their drunken sons and husbands, and all the fine furniture in his rooms seemed to be stained with their tears; now he remembered an old gray-haired man, who prayed him with clasped hands never to sell his son another drop of that maddening drink; and then there seemed to come a hand-writing on the wall, and this it was: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you again!” and the wretched old man bowed his head upon his breast and said, “Oh, God, thou art just!”

ALL ABOUT HORACE.

Now what is that little boy crying for? A rocking-horse? Some marbles? A bat and ball? A pair of skates? What a curious-looking boy he is! Thin, small, stooping, awkward; but what clear blue eyes; and what a singularly sweet innocent expression in his colorless face. Every body hates to see him cry, because every body loves Horace. His father and mother are poor, hard-working people, and have other children beside him to take care of; and each one must do something toward helping support the family, too. Horace’s mother works in the field, hoes, rakes up the hay, plants, and digs, just like his father: perhaps you think she must get so tired doing all this, and in door women’s work beside, that she could have no time at all to attend to her little boy, Horace. Don’t you believe it; women in those days were made of better stuff than most of the women of our day. Horace’s mother could not have planted potatoes or raked hay, in corsets or a hoop-skirt. She could not have done it had she lived on cake, cordial, pies and confectionery. She could not have done it had she slept in close, heated apartments. She did none of all those foolish things. Neither was she cross or ill-tempered, nor did she beat and push little Horace round and tell him that he was always in the way, as some poor, tired, hard-working women do; not she—she was the merriest, jolliest, funniest, story-telling-est woman you ever heard of; went singing after the hay-cart, singing to the plow, singing to the barn-yard, singing to dinner, and singing to bed. That robbed labor of half its weariness, and winged the feet of every body about her; so little Horace was not afraid to follow his mother about. No matter how busy she was, she always found time to speak a pleasant word to her fair-haired little boy. And such stories as she told him, and such “a lot” of them, fairy stories, and “old legends,” why, she was as good as a whole library of child’s story-books; and better too, because half of those are written either so that children can not understand them, or so babyish as to disgust them. She was better than any story-book, you may be sure, and Horace would have run his legs off for her any day, as well he might.

But I have not told you yet, what Horace was crying about. Well, it was because he had missed a word and lost his place in the class. You must know that Horace was a famous speller; but the best sometimes are caught tripping, and so it proved with him, and it mortified him so much that he could not choke the tears away. Now, perhaps you think the boys who got above him in the class were glad of this; perhaps you have known boys who have felt so. Horace’s schoolmates did not: they all loved him because he was so good and gentle, and when they saw how badly he felt, they refused to go above him: that dried up his tears very quick. There is nothing like kind words and deeds to dry up tears; try it, and you will see.

Little Horace’s fame as a speller (you must not think because he occasionally tripped at it, that this was not true, any more than that because there are some hypocrites that there is nothing in religion)—little Horace’s fame as a speller went all over the country. There was an old captain of a vessel who lived on a farm near, and who had heard of him; whenever he met the boy he would say, “Horace, how do you spell Encyclopædia?” or “Kamschatka,” or “Nebuchadnezzar.” Then he used to lend him books to read, and question him about them afterward, and I promise you that Master Horace was always able to answer any of his questions, for he did not read “skipping” as do some boys. The old captain was kind to Horace’s brother, too; and gave him a sheep, and a load of hay to feed the sheep on, one winter.

Horace found another friend, too, for good boys who are eager to learn, no matter how poor they may be, always get on somehow; this friend was a minister who used to teach him grammar, for the pleasure of teaching such a bright little fellow. Sometimes, to see whether he had understood what he had been taught, he would tell him wrong, but Horace could not be caught that way; when he had once understood a thing he stuck to it, and it was of no use trying to shake his belief in it.

Perhaps you are thinking that he was not good for any thing but study; there again you are mistaken. He was just as good at farm-work, and just as thorough as he was at study. Sometimes, when his father had set Horace and his brothers a task to do while he went away from home, his roguish brother would say, “Come, Hod, let’s go fishing!” Did he go? This was his answer, I want you to remember it, “Let us do our stint first!” Horace could play, too; he could catch more fish than all the other fellows put together; but shooting, which the other boys were so fond of, he disliked; when they went to murder a little bird or rabbit, he would lie down and stuff his ears full of grass till the murder had been done; he could not bear to hear a gun go off, and he could not bear to see these creatures killed. Why he did not feel so about fish seems strange to me, but then he was a strange boy altogether.

I dare say you wonder, when his friends were so poor, how he got books, and where, and when, he found time amid the farm-work to read them, and how he learned to read at all. I will tell you; you are not tired, are you? I am not. You see when he was only two years old, he used to lie on the floor with the big Bible, and pore over it, and pick out the letters, and ask questions about them. The fact was, the child taught himself; he could read at three years any child’s book, and at four, any book you could bring him; and what is funnier, at four years he could read a book up side down, or sideways as well as right side up. He learned all this, not because he was told to, but of his own accord, and because he loved it. The nearest school-house was a mile and a half from home, and when he was six, he began to go to it. Sometimes tremendous snowstorms would blow over the New Hampshire hills, where Horace lived, and many a little fellow was lost in the snow-drifts, or frozen to death. This did not keep Horace at home, and when he could not wade through the snow himself, he would mount on the shoulders of a good-natured schoolmate, who was stouter and bigger, and who would even pull off his own mittens, and draw them over Horace’s little hands to keep them from freezing. Do you think you would have taken as much pains as did Horace, to learn? or would you have clapped your hands when the noiseless snowflakes came sailing lazily down, because they would afford you an excuse for staying at home, to pop corn in the big old-fashioned fire-place.