From this day, a new life was begun in Hans’s house. There he sat at his work; there sat his wife by his side; aiding and contriving with a woman’s wit, a woman’s love, and a woman’s adroitness. She was worth ten journeymen. Work never came in faster; never gave such satisfaction; never brought in so much money; nor, besides this, was there ever such harmony in the house, nor had they ever held such delectable discourse together. There was nothing to conceal. Hans’s thoughts flowed like a great stream; and when they grew a little wild and visionary, as they were apt to do, his wife smoothened and reduced them to sobriety, with such a delicate touch, that, so far from feeling offended, he was delighted beyond expression with her prudence. The fifty dollars were raised in almost no time; and, as if prognostic of its becoming the seed of a fortune, it came in most opportunely for purchasing a lot of cloth, which more than trebled its cost, and gave infinite satisfaction to his customers. Hans saw that the tide was rapidly rising with him, and his wife urged him to push on with it; to take a larger house; to get more hands; and to cut such a figure as should at once eclipse his rival. The thing was done; but as their capital was still found scanty enough for such an undertaking, Mrs. Nadeltreiber resolved to try what she could do to increase it.
I should have informed the reader, had not the current of Hans’s disasters ran too strong for me, that his wife’s parents were dead, and had died without giving her any token of reconciliation—a circumstance which, although it cut her to the heart, did not quite cast her down, feeling that she had done nothing but what a parent might forgive, being all of us creatures alike liable to error, demanding alike some little indulgence for our weaknesses and our fancies. Her brother was now sole representative of the family; and knowing the generosity of his nature, she determined to pay him a visit, although, for the first time since her marriage, in a condition very unfit for traveling. She went. Her brother received her with all his early affection. In his house was born her first child; and so much did she and her bantling win upon his heart, that when the time came that she must return, nothing would serve but he would take her himself. She had been so loud in Hans’s praise, that he determined to go and shake him by the hand. It would have done any one good to have seen this worthy mountaineer setting forth, seated in his neat, green-painted wicker wagon; his sister by his side, and the child snugly-bedded in his own corn-hopper at their feet. Thus did they go statelily, with his great black horse drawing them. It would have been equally pleasant to see him set down his charge at the door of Hans’s house, and behold with wonder that merry mannikin, all smiles and gesticulation, come forth to receive them. The contrast between Hans and his brother-in-law was truly amusing. He, a shadow-like homunculus, so light and dry, that any wind threatened to blow him before it; the bergman, with a countenance like the rising sun, the stature of a giant, and limbs like an elephant. Hans watched, with considerable anxiety, the experiment of his kinsman seating himself in a chair. The chair, however, stood firm; and the good man surveyed Hans, in return, with a curious and critical air, as if doubtful whether he must not hold him in contempt for the want of that solid matter of which he himself had too much. Hans’s good qualities, however, got the better of him. “The man’s a man, though,” said he to himself, very philosophically, “and as he is good to my sister, he shall know of it.” Hans delighted him every evening, by the powers of his violin; and the bergman, excessively fond of music, like most of his countrymen, declared that he might perform in the emperor’s orchestra, and find nobody there to beat him. When he took his leave, therefore, he seized one of Hans’s hands with a cordial gripe that was felt through every limb, and into the other he put a bag of one thousand rix dollars, saying, “My sister ought not to have come dowerless into a good husband’s house. This is properly her own: take it, and much good may it do you.”
Our story need not be prolonged. The new tailor soon fled before the star of Hans’s ascendency. A very few years saw him installed into the office of Bürgermeister, the highest of earthly honors in his eyes; and if he had one trouble left, it was only in the reflection that he might have attained his wishes years before had he understood the heart of a good woman. The worshipful Herr Bürgermeister, and Frau Bürgermeisterin of Rapps, often visited their colossal brother of the Böhmerwald, and were thought to reflect no discredit on the old bergman family.
[From Dickens’s “Household Words.”]
LITTLE MARY.—A TALE OF THE IRISH FAMINE.
That was a pleasant place where I was born, though ’twas only a thatched cabin by the side of a mountain stream, where the country was so lonely, that in summer time the wild ducks used to bring their young ones to feed on the bog, within a hundred yards of our door; and you could not stoop over the bank to raise a pitcher full of water, without frightening a shoal of beautiful speckled trout. Well, ’tis long ago since my brother Richard, that’s now grown a fine, clever man, God bless him! and myself, used to set off together up the mountain to pick bunches of the cotton plant and the bog myrtle, and to look for birds’ and wild bees’ nests. ’Tis long ago—and though I’m happy and well off now, living in the big house as own maid to the young ladies, who, on account of my being foster-sister to poor darling Miss Ellen, that died of decline, treat me more like their equal than their servant, and give me the means to improve myself; still, at times, especially when James Sweeney, a dacent boy of the neighbors, and myself are taking a walk together through the fields in the cool and quiet of a summer’s evening, I can’t help thinking of the times that are passed, and talking about them to James with a sort of peaceful sadness, more happy, maybe, than if we ware laughing aloud.
Every evening, before I say my prayers, I read a chapter in the Bible that Miss Ellen gave me; and last night I felt my tears dropping forever so long over one verse, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” The words made me think of them that are gone—of my father, and his wife that was a true, fond mother to me; and above all, of my little sister Mary, the clureen bawn[F] that nestled in her bosom.
I was a wild slip of a girl, ten years of age, and my brother Richard about two years older, when my father brought home his second wife. She was the daughter of a farmer up at Lackabawn, and was reared with care and dacency; but her father held his ground at a rack-rent, and the middleman that was between him and the head landlord did not pay his own rent, so the place was ejected, and the farmer collected every penny he had, and set off with his family to America. My father had a liking for the youngest daughter, and well become him to have it, for a sweeter creature never drew the breath of life; but while her father passed for a strong[G] farmer, he was timorous-like about asking her to share his little cabin; however, when he found how matters stood, he didn’t lose much time in finding out that she was willing to be his wife, and a mother to his boy and girl. That she was, a patient loving one. Oh! it often sticks me like a knife, when I think how many times I fretted her with my foolishness and my idle ways, and how ’twas a long time before I’d call her “mother.” Often, when my father would be going to chastise Richard and myself for our provoking doings, especially the day that we took half-a-dozen eggs from under the hatching hen, to play “Blind Tom” with them, she’d interfere for us, and say, “Tim, aleagh, don’t touch them this time; sure ’tis only arch they are: they’ll get more sense in time.” And then, after he was gone out, she’d advise us for our good so pleasantly, that a thundercloud itself couldn’t look black at her. She did wonders, too, about the house and garden. They were both dirty and neglected enough when she first came over them; for I was too young and foolish, and my father too busy with his out-door work, and the old woman that lived with us in service too feeble and too blind to keep the place either clean or decent; but my mother got the floor raised, and the green pool in front drained, and a parcel of roses and honey-suckles planted there instead. The neighbors’ wives used to say, ’twas all pride and upsetting folly, to keep the kitchen-floor swept clean, and to put the potatoes on a dish, instead of emptying them out of the pot into the middle of the table; and, besides, ’twas a cruel, unnatural thing, they said, to take away the pool from the ducks, that they were always used to paddle in so handy. But my mother was always too busy and too happy to heed what they said; and, besides, she was always so ready to do a kind turn for any of them, that, out of poor shame, they had at last to leave off abusing her “fine English ways.”
West of our house there was a straggling, stony piece of ground, where, within the memory of man nothing ever grew but nettles, docks, and thistles. One Monday, when Richard and myself came in from school, my mother told us to set about weeding it, and to bring in some basketfuls of good clay from the banks of the river; she said that if we worked well at it until Saturday, she’d bring me a new frock, and Dick a jacket, from the next market-town; and encouraged by this, we set to work with right good will, and didn’t leave off till supper time. The next day we did the same; and by degrees, when we saw the heap of weeds and stones that we got out, growing big, and the ground looking nice and smooth and red and rich, we got quite anxious about it ourselves, and we built a nice little fence round it to keep out the pigs. When it was manured, my mother planted cabbages, parsnips, and onions in it; and, to be sure, she got a fine crop out of it, enough to make us many a nice supper of vegetables stewed with pepper, and a small taste of bacon or a red herring. Besides, she sold in the market as much as bought a Sunday coat for my father, a gown for herself, a fine pair of shoes for Dick, and as pretty a shawl for myself, as e’er a colleen in the country could show at mass. Through means of my father’s industry and my mother’s good management, we were, with the blessing of God, as snug and comfortable a poor family as any in Munster. We paid but a small rent, and we had always plenty of potatoes to eat, good clothes to wear, and cleanliness and decency in and about our little cabin.