I am so glad this dear child does not know what dreadful thing has happened to his father, or his face would not be so sunny.
Next to this child is a lady. She is richly dressed and seems very cheerful. She is laughing and talking with the gentleman near her. She tells him she expects good news from her husband who is in Europe. But, see! There comes a letter for her, and there's a black border about it. She turns pale and trembles, and can hardly command herself enough to break it open. I wonder what it says; she has hurried away weeping and groaning.
And now the crowd presses on. The clerk says to this one and that, "Nothing for you!" "Nothing for you!" "Pass along there!" "Don't block up the way!" But there comes a rough-looking man. Wonder if he really expects any one will write him a letter.
Yet the clerk hands him out one, large and handsomely addressed. How astonished the man is. He blushes and shuffles away to a corner by himself, and after trying a long time he brings forth a great fine parchment. But, poor man! He can't read. He looks around the room for help. His eye rests upon me.
"Sir, will you be so kind as to give me the meaning of this paper? I'm a poor man without education, sir."
I take the large letter. It is from Europe, written by a lawyer, and it says that one of this man's relatives has died and left him five hundred pounds.
[A QUEER KIND OF SALT.]
THEY had been gathered around uncle Dick, who had just come back from the Old World.
The children all thought this a very queer name, all except Mary, the eldest, who thought she knew a little bit more than anybody else. She told her mother in triumph, that she "got ahead of Lucy Jones the other day, in geography, on the question: 'What is the Old World?'"
And little five-year-old Rose said that she "Fought it was queer it s'ould be older'n any ovver one; s'e dessed zis world was mos' sixty years old!"