WHAT SUSIE FOUND AT TOUGALOO.
(SEE FEBRUARY AMERICAN MISSIONARY.)
A roomful of girls of various sizes and complexions, all very much intent upon their work, and no one thinking just at that moment of a traveled fairy daughter, to adopt and love as her own, sent by a beneficent and tender-hearted northern "Fay." I doubt if Susie ever before saw so many "little women" laboring with needles and trying to set the troublesome stitches straight and even, to keep the thread from tangling and the seam clean. The results are far from perfection, but they are encouraging.
Some of the children wear thimbles, and some set them upon their desks and wiggle the needle through without their aid. Here is a child so tiny that no thimble in the box will serve her. She has a delicate face, with big brown eyes, and her fingers are the slenderest of appendages to her atoms of hands. Her sister, a year or so older, has a round, chubby face, with plump, dimpled, brown hands, but these fat fingers also must grow to the smallest thimble. Here is a quiet, modest little girl whose five baptismal names, Cynthia Ann Finetta Bloomfield Celeste, furnish her nothing prettier for every day use than "Lusty." She could not thread a needle or tie a knot when she joined the Hope Band, and the second year she wore one of the smallest thimbles with a bit of cloth inside for "chinking" to keep it on. Here Susie's sympathies are drawn out towards a thin, nervous-looking little Frances, who has a hand and foot crippled. She walks painfully along to her place and holds her work at a disadvantage in the poor little cramped left hand, but she likes to be there with the others.
Most of the heads are covered with little tight braids, on some heads standing at every angle, on some laid smoothly down, one braid tied to another. A few have their curly hair cropped close, and here is a little girl with a bushy mass overshadowing her lively face. She takes but a stitch or two until she goes up to the front and holds her work out for her teacher's inspection. Some time elapses before that lady can notice it and say, "That is pretty good, Lena; now go right on carefully." Lena returns slowly to her place, takes a stitch or two more and repeats the performance. When will the work be completed? O no, that is the way she used to do, but now—
A middle-sized "Topsy" comes pushing rudely forward, tossing her head and whispering disagreeable things to those she has to pass, and Susy hopes she will not be brought into any closer relations with her, when she happens to see her tenderly fondling a broken-armed, broken-legged dollie, while her work is being adjusted, and thinks somewhat better of her. There are several Lilies and Roses in this growing garden. The lilies are not white and the roses are not red, but more attractive and interesting to their teacher's eyes than the black pansies the flower gardeners labored so long to produce. Their teacher is fond of flowers and has her windows full, even in winter, but she does not smile upon them with such a heartful of affection as upon these, nor can those bask in the light of her merry face more freely. As her short, round figure moves down the aisle and back, and Susie gets a good look at her, she says to herself, "Why surely this is Mrs. Santa Claus! How glad I am!" and it is not a strange conclusion, for her figure and expression are like the poet's description of dear Saint Nick.
Here is a girl in one of the side seats a good deal taller than her teacher. Through the long, bright, warm summer she works in the cotton and the corn, alongside of father, brothers, uncles, men and women, boys and girls. Her hands are enlarged and roughened with toil, but she is taking pains to learn how to do this useful indoor work skillfully too.
There is a goodly company of these larger girls, but Susie does not feel any more afraid of them, nor of "the middle-sized bears and the wee tiny, small bears" than did little Silverhair in the nursery tale. She doubts, however, if these largest ones have not laid aside dollies, and thinks she must look among the "leaster" ones for the little step-mother who will respect her own little Fay-mother's request to "take good care of her." But when the sewing-lesson is ended and she notices one and another bring to light a little dollie-daughter to hug in her arms as she walks homeward, and sees the sociable interest of all the rest, she feels no further doubt about the mother-love in all these little Southern bosoms and resigns all care as to which one shall be hers, leaving the whole question to Mrs. Santa Claus.
Perhaps some day we may call upon her when she is fully domesticated in her new home. There will not be many comforts and conveniences in that home. Possibly when we ask for Susie, her mamma will draw a little old box from under the head of her bed, as once when I called upon one of these little girls and asked her if she had a doll. It had lost some of its limbs and it was dressed in odds and ends, tacked together by the untaught little mother, but when I set the dollie on my knee and pretended to drink tea out of one of the tiny toy cups set forth from the same treasure-box, you could not find a more hilarious little mamma anywhere, though you should pick out one with all nursery stores at her command.