How people come from far and near to see and to sail upon the beautiful river! And the children who are so blessed as to be born near it, and to play on its shores through all the happy young years of their lives, although they may go far away from it in the after years, never, never forget the dear and beautiful River Rhine.
It is only a few miles away from the Rhine—perhaps too far for you to walk, but not too far for me—that we shall find a fine large house, a house with pleasant gardens about it, broad gravel walks, and soft, green grass-plats to play upon, and gay flowering trees and bushes, while the rose-vines are climbing over the piazza, and opening rose-buds are peeping in at the chamber windows.
Isn't this a pleasant house? I wish we could all live in as charming a home, by as blue and lovely a river, and with as large and sweet a garden, or, if we might have such a place for our school, how delightful it would be!
Here lives Louise, my blue-eyed, sunny-haired little friend, and here in the garden she plays with Fritz and sturdy little Gretchen. And here, too, at evening the father and mother come to sit on the piazza among the roses, and the children leave their games, to nestle together on the steps while the dear brother Christian plays softly and sweetly on his flute.
Louise is a motherly child, already eight years old, and always willing and glad to take care of the younger ones; indeed, she calls Gretchen her baby, and the little one loves dearly her child-mamma.
They live in this great house, and they have plenty of toys and books, and plenty of good food, and comfortable little beds to sleep in at night, although, like Jeannette's, they are only neat little boxes built against the side of the wall.
But near them, in the valley, live the poor people, in small, low houses. They eat black bread, wear coarse clothes, and even the children must work all day that they may have food for to-morrow.
The mother of Louise is a gentle, loving woman; she says to her children: "Dear children, to-day we are rich, we can have all that we want, but we will not forget the poor. You may some day be poor yourselves, and, if you learn now what poverty is, you will be more ready to meet it when it comes." So, day after day, the great stove in the kitchen is covered with stew-pans and kettles, in which are cooking dinners for the sick and the poor, and day after day, as the dinner-hour draws near, Louise will come, and Fritz, and even little Gretchen, saying: "Mother, may I go?" "May I go?" and the mother answers: "Dear children, you shall all go together"; and she fills the bowls and baskets, and sends her sunny-hearted children down into the valley to old Hans the gardener, who has been lame with rheumatism so many years; and to young Marie, the pale, thin girl, who was so merry and rosy-cheeked in the vineyard a year ago; and to the old, old woman with the brown, wrinkled face and bowed head, who sits always in the sunshine before the door, and tries to knit; but the needles drop from the poor trembling hands, and the stitches slip off, and she cannot see to pick them up. She is too deaf to hear the children as they come down the road, and she is nodding her poor old head, and feeling about in her lap for the lost needle, when Louise, with her bright eyes, spies it, picks it up, and before the old woman knows she has come, a soft little hand is laid in the brown, wrinkled one, and the little girl is shouting in her ear that she has brought some dinner from mamma. It makes a smile shine in the old half-blind eyes. It is always the happiest part of the day to her when the dear little lady comes with her dinner. And it made Louise happy too, for nothing repays us so well as what we do unselfishly for others.
These summer days are full of delight for the children. It is not all play for them, to be sure; but then, work is often even more charming than play, as I think some little girls know when they have been helping their mothers,—running of errands, dusting the furniture, and sewing little squares of patchwork that the baby may have a cradle-quilt made entirely by her little sister.
Louise can knit, and, indeed, every child and woman in that country knits. You would almost laugh to see how gravely the little girl takes out her stocking, for she has really begun her first stocking, and sits on the piazza-steps for an hour every morning at work. Then the little garden, which she calls her own, must be weeded. The gardener would gladly do it, but Louise has a hoe of her own, which her father bought in the spring, and, bringing it to his little daughter, said: "Let me see how well my little girl can take care of her own garden." And the child has tried very hard; sometimes, it is true, she would let the weeds grow pretty high before they were pulled up, but, on the whole, the garden promises well, and there are buds on her moss-rose bush. It is good to take care of a garden, for, besides the pleasure the flowers can bring us, we learn how watchful we must be to root out the weeds, and how much trimming and care the plants need; so we learn how to watch over our own hearts.