Mental Heeler
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Oh, what a naughty, ignorant, amusing, hypocritical, pathetic world it is! I tuck the note in my pocket to brighten the day for Helen, and we pass on.
As we progress we gather into our train Levi, Jacob, David, Moses, Elias, and the other prophets and patriarchs who belong to our band. We hasten the steps of the infant Garibaldi, who is devouring refuse fruit from his mother's store, and stop finally to pluck a small Dennis Kearney from the coal-hod, where he has been put for safe-keeping. The day has really begun, and with its first service the hands grow willing and the heart is filled with sunshine.
As the boys at my side prattle together of the "percession" and the "sojers" they saw yesterday, I wish longingly that I could be transported with my tiny hosts to the sunny, quiet country on this clear, lovely morning.
"The boys at my side prattle together."
I think of my own joyous childhood, spent in the sweet companionship of fishes, brooks, and butterflies, birds, crickets, grasshoppers, whispering trees and fragrant wild flowers, and the thousand and one playfellows of Nature which the good God has placed within reach of the happy country children. I think of the shining eyes of my little Lucys and Bridgets and Rachels could I turn them loose in a field of golden buttercups and daisies, with sweet wild strawberries hidden at their roots; of the merry glee of my dear boisterous little prophets and patriots, if I could set them catching tadpoles in a clear wayside pool, or hunting hens' nests in the alder bushes behind the barn, or pulling yellow cow lilies in the pond, or wading for cat-o'-nine-tails, with their ragged little trousers tucked above their knees. And oh! hardest of all to bear, I think of our poor little invalids, so young to struggle with languor and pain! Just to imagine the joy of my poor, lame boys and my weary, pale, and peevish children, so different from the bright-eyed, apple-cheeked darlings of well-to-do parents,—mere babies, who, from morning till night, seldom or never know what it is to cuddle down warmly into the natural rest of a mother's loving bosom!
Monday morning came and went,—Monday afternoon also; it was now two o'clock, and to my surprise and disappointment Patsy had not appeared. The new chair with its pretty red cushion stood expectant but empty. Helen had put a coat of shellac on poor Johnny Cass's table, freshened up its squared top with new lines of red paint, and placed a little silver vase of flowers on it. Our Lady Bountiful had come in to pay for the chair and see the boy, but alas! there was no boy to see. The children were all ready for him. They knew that he was a sick boy, like Johnny Cass, tired, and not able to run and jump, and that they must be good to him as they had been to Johnny. This was the idea of the majority; but I do not deny that there was a small minority which professed no interest and promised no virtue. Our four walls contained a miniature world,—a world with its best foot forward, too, but it was not heaven.