Carl and the Cotton Gin

by Sara Ware Bassett

Mrs. McGregor paused to put a length of silk into her needle.

"Long ago," began she, "before there were ships and trains, to say nothing of automobiles and aeroplanes people had to stay at home in the places where they happened to be born. Of course they could go by coach or on horseback to a near-by city, but they could not go far; nor indeed did they think of going because they did not know there was anywhere to go. Nobody did any traveling in those days and as a result there were no maps or travel books to set you thinking you must pack up your traps to-morrow and start for some place you never had seen. But by and by the compass was invented, larger and better ships came to be built, and men got the idea the world was round instead of flat (as they had at one time supposed), a discovery that comforted vastly the timid souls who had always been afraid of falling off the edge of it. Therefore, when it was at last proved that should you sail far, far away your ship, instead of dropping off into space, would circle the great ball we live on and come home again, some of those who were brave, adventurous, and had money enough set out on voyages to see what there was to be seen in other lands than those they had been brought up in. Frenchmen thought it would be a grand thing to discover new countries for France; Englishmen wanted new territory for England. So it was all over the world. Thus this one and that one began to travel."

"Just as Columbus came to America, Ma," put in Tim.

"Exactly, dear," nodded his mother. "Now you can imagine what a hero such a traveler became; how people admired his daring; and how half of them wished they were going with him and the other half rejoiced that they weren't. And when he came back there was great excitement to hear where he had been and what he had seen! Every word he spoke was passed from mouth to mouth, each person who repeated it adding to the story until it grew like a snowball. And as was inevitable the more raptly the populace listened the more marvelous became the stories."

"Like Jack Murphy when he gets home from the circus," put in Tim.

"Yes, very much like Jack Murphy, I am afraid; only sometimes these travelers really believed the tales they told. Sometimes the stories had been passed on to them by the natives of the strange countries they visited, and how could they know that all which was told them was not true? Such a tale was the legend of the Tartary lamb."

"Tell it to us, Mother," urged Mary.

"Well, it actually isn't much of a story, my dear. You see, when the travelers from England, France, and other western countries went to the East for the first time, they saw cotton growing, or if they did not really see it, they heard there was such a thing. Now cotton was entirely new to the voyagers and it seemed unbelievable that such a plant could be. Some of the eastern natives told the visitors that in each pod grew a little lamb with soft, white fleece. Orientals were very ignorant in those days. The Tartars went even farther and said the lamb bent the stalk he lived on down to the ground and ate all the food within reach; and when he had nibbled up all the grass and roots around him he died, and then it was that people took his fleece and twisted it into thread, which was woven into garments. Thus the legend became established and the belief in the Tartary lamb became so firm that for several hundred years people even in England thought that in the Far East there grew this wonderful plant with a vegetable lamb sprouting from the top of it."

"How silly of them!" sniffed Carl.

"No sillier than lots of the things we now believe, probably," replied his mother. "Aren't we constantly discovering how mistaken some of our cherished beliefs were? That is what progress is. We learn continually to cast aside outgrown notions and adopt wiser and better ones. So it was in the past. The world was very young in those days, you must remember, and people did not know so much about it as we do now. And even we, with all our wisdom, are going to be laughed at years hence, precisely as you are laughing now about those who believed the story of the Tartary lamb. Men are going to say: 'Think of those poor, stupid old things back in nineteen hundred and twenty-three who believed so-and-so! How could they have done it?'"