WHIPPOORWILL.
Unseen in the thicket a lone little bird
Cries over and over the sorrowful word,
Till the children, whose sweet lisping prayers have been said,
Turn over, half waking, and call from their bed,
"Do make that bird stop calling down from the hill
His mournful old story, Whip, whip, oh! poor Will."
What could Will have done in the days long ago
That this bird's great-grandfather hated him so?
Did he rifle a nest, did he climb up a tree,
Did he meddle where he had no business to be?—
When we find out, dear children, what 'twas Katy did,
The secret with those funny wood gossips hid,
We are likely, and not before then, to discover
The rune that the poor little songster runs over,
Who, hour by hour, up there on the hill,
Calls mournfully, urgently, Oh! whip poor Will.
MODERN WHALING.
It is natural enough that the Norwegians should be the most expert people in capturing whales. They live in their cold country up near the best whaling-grounds in the world, except, perhaps, the regions about the northern part of Alaska. For centuries the old Norsemen have been good whalers and famous at throwing the harpoon, but it was left for a famous, perhaps the most famous, whaler the world has known to discover a weapon which made the old hand-thrown harpoon a back number. The man was a Norwegian called Svend Foyn, and an account of his life would make an interesting and exciting story of adventures, escapes, dangers, and finally riches.
Old Svend, who died not long ago at an advanced age, was a cabin-boy when he was eleven years old, and did not have enough money to keep him ashore a month. He used to sail in different kinds of vessels in his early days, keeping his eyes open, and watching to learn what there was for a cabin-boy to learn. This was in 1820. Gradually, as he grew older, he began to save a few krone here and there, and when he came ashore after a long trip he would take as much of his wages as he could possibly spare and put them in the bank at home in Jönsberg. But it was slow work, and he was little more than a cabin-boy in 1845, except that he was thirty-six years old and had a neat little sum in the bank. Then the idea came to him to buy a little vessel of his own, and try to make for himself the profits he saw others making out of his own and other men's services.
He scraped together all he had or could raise, and bought a brig, and in a very short time he had made a big catch of seals in the north, and had $20,000 in the bank, besides the brig in the water. Svend seems to have had all the shrewdness for which Norwegians have long been famous, and much of the daring and self-reliance of the same great race. For he started in 1863, with a little steamer which he had bought, to the whaling-grounds, and tried to harpoon whales.
This did not seem to succeed very well, and he made up his mind that spearing whales with a harpoon thrown by the hand of man was a doubtful thing. He went to work, therefore, to think of something more powerful and more certain in its aim than a man's arm, with the result that he invented a harpoon which was fired from a gun, and which carried along with it a shell that exploded inside the whale's vitals and almost invariably killed it at once. This harpoon-gun is now used all over the world, and has made whaling a wonderfully profitable business.