NRLF Mts.HB.STOWE I OT7K CHARLIE. OUR CHARLEY, AND WHAT TO DO WITH HIM BY MRS. H. B. STOWE. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & COMPANY. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO., In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. KLECTROTYPKI) AT THB BOSTON STEEEOTYI B FOUNJDliV. PS oe CONTENTS. Pago OUR CHARLEY, 7 WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH OUR CHARLEY ? 17 THE HAPPY CHILD, 27 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY,. . 40 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM, 61 TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK, 79 FAIRY TALES, 85 A TALK ABOUT BIRDS 94 OUR CHARLEY. WHEN the blaze of the wood fire flickers up and down in our snug evening parlor, there dances upon the wall a little shadow with a pug nose, a domestic household shadow a busy shadow a little rest- less specimen of perpetual motion, and the owner thereof is " Our Charley? Now, we should not write about him and his ways, if he were strictly a peculiar and individual existence of our own home circle ; but it is not so. " Our Charley " exists in a thousand, nay, a million fam ilies ; he has existed in millions in all time back ; his name is variously ren dered in all the tongues of the earth ; nay, there are a thousand synonymes for him in English for indisputably "our (7) 8 OUR CHARLEY. "Willie," or "our Harry," or "our Georgie," belongs to the same snub-nosed, rosy- cheeked, restless shadow-maker. So in France, he is "Leonce," or "Pierre," as well as "Charle;" in Italy, he is "Car- lino" or "Francisco;" in Germany, "Max" or "Wilhelm;" and in China, he is little " Ling-Fung," with a long silk tail on the back of his head, but the same household sprite among them all ; in short, we take "our Charley" in a generic sense, and we mean to treat of him as a miniature epit ome of the grown man enacting in a shadowy ballet by the fireside all that men act in earnest in after-life. He is a looking glass for grown people, in which they may see how certain things become them in which they may sometimes even see streaks and gleamings of some thing wiser than all the harsh conflict of life teaches them. "Our Charley" is generally considered by the world as an idle little dog, whose pursuits, being very inconsequent, may OUR CHARLEY. U be put off or put by for every and any body; but the world, as usual, is very much mistaken. No man is more pressed with business, and needs more prudence, energy, tact, and courage to carry out his schemes, in face of all the opposing cir cumstances that grown people constantly throw in his way. Has he not ships to build and to sail? and has he not vast engineerings to make ponds and clocks in every puddle or brook, where they shall lie at an chor? Is not his pocket stuffed with material for sails and cordage ? And yet, like a man of the world as he is, all this does not content him, but he must own railroad stock too. If he lives where a steam whistle has vibrated, it has awa kened an unquiet yearning within him, and some day he harnesses all the chairs into a train, and makes a locomotive of your work table and a steam whistle of himself. He inspects toy-shop windows, gets up flirtations with benevolent shop- 10 OUR CHARLEY. men ; and when he gets his mouth close to papa s ear, reveals to him how Mr. So- and-so has a locomotive that will wind up and go alone so cheap too can t papa get it far him? And so papa (all papas do) goes soberly down and buys it, though he knows it will be broken in a week. Then what raptures ! The dear lo comotive ! the darling black chimney sleeps under his pillow that he may feel of it in the night, and be sure when he first wakes that the joy is not evaporated. He bores every body to death with it as artlessly as grown people do with their hobbies; but at last the ardor runs out. His darling is found to have faults. He picks it to pieces to make it work better ; finds too late that he can t put it together again ; and so he casts it aside, and makes a locomotive out of a broken wheelbarrow and some barrel staves. Do you, my brother, or grown-up sister, ever do any thing like this ? Do your OUR CHARLEY. 11 friendships and loves ever go the course of our Charley s toy ? First, enthusiasm ; second, satiety; third, discontent; then picking to pieces ; then dropping and losing ! How many idols are in your box of by-gone playthings? And may it not be as well to suggest to you, when you find flaws in your next one, to inquire before you pick to pieces, whether you can put together again, or whether what you call defect is not a part of its nature ? A tin locomotive won t draw a string of parlor chairs, by any possible alteration, but it may be very pretty for all it was made for. Charley and you might both learn something from this. Charley s business career, as we have before intimated, has its trials. It is hard for him to find time for it ; so many impertinent interruptions. For instance, there are four hours of school, taken out of the best part of the day ; four mortal hours, in which he might make ships, or 12 OUR CHARLEY. build dams, or run railroad cars, he is obliged to leave all his affairs, often in very precarious situations, and go through the useless ceremony of reading and spell ing. When he comes home, the house maid has swept his foremast into the fire, and mamma has put his top-sails into the rag bag, and all his affairs are in a des perate situation. Sometimes he gets ter ribly misanthropic ; all grown people seem conspiring against him ; he is called away from his serious avocations so often, and his attention distracted with such irrele vant matters, that he is indignant. He is rushing through the passage in hot haste, hands full of nails, strings, and twine, and Mary seizes him and wants to brush his hair ; he is interrupted in a burst of enthusiasm, and told to wash his hands for dinner! or perhaps, a greater horror than all, company is expected, and he must put on a clean new suit, just as he has made all the arrangements for a ship-launching down by the swamp. This OUR CHARLEY. 13 dressing and washing he regards with un utterable contempt and disgust ; secretly, too, he is sceptical about the advantages of going to school and learning to read ; he believes, to be sure, when papa and mamma tell him of unknown future ad vantages to come when he is a "great man;" but then, the present he is sure of; his ships and sloops, his bits of string and fish-hooks, and old corks and bro ken railroad-cars, and above all, his new skates ; these are realities. And he knows also what Tom White and Bill Smith say ; and so he walks by sight more than by faith. Ah, the child is father of the man c . When he gets older he will have the great toys of which these are emblems ; he will believe in what he sees and touches in house, land, railroad stock he will believe in these earnestly and really, and in his eternal manhood nomi nally and partially. And when his Fa ther s messengers meet him, and face him 14 OUR CHARLEY. about, and take him off his darling pur suits, and sweep his big ships into the fire, and crush his full-grown cars, then the grown man will complain and murmur, and wonder as the little man does now. The Father wants the future, the child the present, all through life, till death makes the child a man. So, though our Charley has his infirmi ties, he is a little bit of a Christian after all. Like you, brother, he has his good hours, when he sits still and calm, and is told of Jesus ; and his cheeks glow, and tears come to his eyes; his bosom heaves; and now he is sure he is going to be always good; he is never going to be naughty. He will stand still to have his hair combed ; he will come the first time mother speaks ; he will never speak a cross word to Katy ; he repents of having tyrannized over grandmamma, and made poor mamma s head ache ; and is quite sure that he has now got the victory over all sin. Like the Israelites by the Red OUR CHARLEY. 15 Sea, he beholds his spiritual enemies dead on the sea shore. But to-morrow, in one hour even, what becomes of his good res olutions ? What becomes of yours on Monday ? With all " our Charley s " backslidings, he may teach us one thing which we have forgotten. When Jesus w6uld teach his disciples what faith ytfts, he took a child and set him in thef midst of them. We do not presume/mat this child was one of those excep^kmal ones who have memoirs a common average child, with its sprites and tears, its little naughtinesses ind goodnesses, and its aptness as an ex ample was not in virtue of an exceptional but a universal quality. If you want to study faith, go to school to "your Char ley." See his faith in you. Does he not believe that you have boundless wealth, boundless wisdom, infinite strength ? Is he not certain of your love to that degree that he cannot be repelled from you ? Does he hesitate to question you on any 16 OUR CHARLEY. thing celestial or terrestrial ? Is not your word enough to outweigh that of the wisest of the earth ? You might talk him out of the sight of his eyes, the hearing of his ears, so boundless is his faith in you. Even checks and frowns cannot make him doubt your love ; and though some times, when you cross him, the naughty murmuring spirit arises, yet in an hour it dissolves, and his little soul flows back, prattling and happy, into your bosom. Be only to God as he is to you, and the fireside shadow shall not have been by your hearth in vain. WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH OUR CHARLEY ? YES, that is the question ! The fact is, there seems to be no place in heaven above, or earth beneath, that is exactly safe and suitable, except the bed. While he is asleep, then our souls have rest ; we know where he is and what he is about, and sleep is a gracious state ; but then he wakes up bright and early, and begins tooting, pounding, hammering, singing, meddling, asking questions, and, in short, overturning the peace of society gener ally, for about thirteen hours out of the twenty-four. Every body wants to know what to do with him every body is quite sure that he can t stay where they are. The cook can t have him in the kitchen, w r here he infests the pantry to get flour to make 2 (17) 18 WHAT IS TO BE DONE paste for his kites, or melts lead in the new saucepan. If he goes into the wood shed, he is sure to pull the wood pile down upon his head. If he be sent up garret, you think for a while that you have set tled the problem, till you find what a boundless field of activity is opened amid all the packages, boxes, bags, barrels, and cast-off rubbish there. Old letters, news papers, trunks of miscellaneous contents, are all rummaged, and the very reign of Chaos and old Night is instituted. He sees endless capabilities in all things, and is always hammering something, or knock ing something apart, or sawing or plan ing, or dragging boxes or barrels in all directions to build cities, or laying railroad tracks, till every body s head aches, quite down to the lower floor, and every body declares that Charley must be kept out of the garret. Then you send Charley to school, and hope you are fairly rid of him, for a few hours at least. But he comes home noi- WITH OUR CHARLEY ? 19 sier and busier than ever, having learned of some twenty other Charleys every sep arate resource for keeping up a commo tion that the superabundant vitality of each can originate. He can dance like Jim Smith ; he has learned to smack his lips like Joe Brown ; and Will Briggs has shown him how to mew like a cat ; and he enters the house with a new war-whoop learned from Tom Evans. He feels large and valorous ; he has learned that he is a boy, and has a general impression that he is growing immensely strong and know ing, and despises more than ever the con ventionalities of parlor-life in fact he is more than ever an interruption in the way of decent folks, who want to be quiet. It is true, that if entertaining persons will devote themselves to him exclusively, reading and telling stories, he may be kept in a state of quiescence ; but then this is discouraging work, for he swallows a story as a dog does a piece of meat, 20 WHAT IS TO BE DONE and looks at you for another, and another, without the slightest consideration, so that this resource is of short duration; and then the old question comes up, What is to be done with him ? But, after all, Charley is not to be wholly shirked, for he is an institution, a solemn and awful fad ; and on the an swer of the question, What is to be done with him ? depends a future. Many a hard, morose, and bitter man has corne from a Charley turned off and neglected many a parental heartache has come from a Charley left to run the streets, that mamma and sisters might play on the piano, and write letters in peace. It is easy to get rid of him there are fifty ways of doing that he is a spirit that can be promptly laid for a season, but if not laid aright, will come back by and by a strong man armed, when you can not send him off at pleasure. Mamma and sisters had better pay a little tax to Charley now, than a terrible WITH OUR CHARLEY ? 21 one by and by. There is something sig nificant in the old English phrase, with which our Scriptures make us familiar a MAN child ! A man child ! there you have the word that should make you think more than twice before you answer the question, What shall we do with Charley ? For to-day he is at your feet to-day you can make him laugh, you can make him cry, you can persuade and coax, and turn him to your pleasure ; you can make his eyes fill and his bosom swell with re citals of good and noble deeds ; in short, you can mould him if you will take the trouble. But look ahead some years, when that little voice shall ring in deep bass tones ; when that small foot shall have a man s weight and tramp ; when a rough beard shall cover that little round chin, and all the strength of manhood fill out that little form. Then, you would give w r orlds to have the key to his heart, to be able to 22 WHAT IS TO BE DONE turn and guide him to your will ; but if you lose that key now he is little, you may search for it carefully with tears some other day, and not find it. Old housekeepers have^ a proverb, that one hour lost in the morning is never found all day it has a significance in this case. One thing is to be noticed about Char ley, that rude, and busy, and noisy, as he inclines to be, and irksome as carpet rules and parlor ways are to him, he is still a social little creature, and wants to be where the rest of the household are. A room ever so well adapted for a play room cannot charm him at the hour when the family is in reunion ; he hears the voices in the parlor, and his play room seems cold and desolate it may be warmed by a furnace and lighted with gas, but it is human light and warmth he shivers for he longs to take his things down and play by you ; he yearns to hear the talk of the family, which he so imperfectly comprehends, and is inces- WITH OUR CHARLEY ? 23 santly promising that of the fifty im proper things which he is liable to do in the parlor, he will not commit one if you will let him stay there. This instinct of the little one is Na ture s warning plea God s admonition. 0, how many a mother who has neglect ed it, because it was irksome to have the child about, has longed, when her son was a man. to keep him by her side, and he would not ! Shut out as a little Arab constantly told that he is noisy, that he is awkward and meddlesome, and a plague in general the boy has at last found his own company in the streets, in the highways and hedges where he runs, till the day comes when the parents want their son, the sisters their brother ; and then they are scared at the face he brings back to them, as he comes all foul and smutty from the companionship to which they have doomed him. Depend upon it, mothers and elder sisters, if it is too much trouble to keep Charley in your 24 WHAT IS TO BE DONE society, there will be places found for him, warmed and lighted with no friendly fires, where he who " finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," will care for him if you do not. You may put out a tree, and it will grow while you sleep ; but a son you cannot. You must take trouble for him, either a little now, or a good deal by and by. Let him stay with you at least some portion of every day. Put aside your book or work to tell him a story, or read to him from some book. Devise still par lor plays for him, for he gains nothing if he be allowed to spoil the comfort of the whole circle. A pencil and a sheet of paper, and a few patterns, will often keep him quiet for an hour by your side ; or in a corner he may build a block house, annoying nobody ; and if occasionally he does disturb you now, balance in your own mind which is the greatest evil, to be disturbed by him now, or when he is a man. WITH OUR CHARLEY? 25 Of all that you can give your Charley, if you are a good man or woman, your presence is the best and safest thing. God never meant him to do without you, any more than chickens were meant to grow without being brooded. Then let him have some place in the house where it shall be no sin to hammer,, and pound, and saw, and make all the lit- ter that his various schemes of business require. Even if you can ill afford the room, weigh well which is best, to spare him that safe asylum, or take the chance of one which he may find for himself in the street. Of all devices for Charley which we have tried, a few shelves, which he may dignify with the name of a cabinet, is one of the best. He picks up shells, and pebbles, and stones all odds and ends; nothing comes amiss ; and if you give him a pair of scissors and a little gum, there is no end of the labels he will paste on, and the hours that he may innocently 26 OUR CHARLEY. spend in sorting and arranging. A bottle of liquid gum is an invaluable resource for various purposes ; nor must you mind though he varnish his nose, and fingers, and clothes, so that he do nothing worse. A cheap paint box, and some engravings to color, is another ; and if you will give him some real paint and putty, to paint and putty his boats and cars, he is a made man. All these things make trou ble to be sure they do and will but Charley is to make trouble ; that is the nature of the institution. You are only to choose between safe and wholesome trouble and the trouble that comes at last like a whirlwind. God bless the little fellow, and send us all grace to know what to do with him. The stories following are some of those with which one mother has beguiled the twilight hours of one Charley ; they are given in hopes that other mothers may find pleasure in reading them to their Charleys. THE HAPPY CHILD. "PAPA," said Edward Thompson to his father, "you don t know what beauti ful things James Robertson has, of all kinds." 66 0, yes," said little Robert, " when we were there yesterday, he took us up into a little room that w r as all full of play things, just like a toy shop." "He had little guns, and two drums, and a trumpet, and a fife," said Edward ; " and one of the drums was a real one, papa, such as men play on." " And, papa, he had railroad cars, with a little railroad for them to go on, and steam engine, and all," said Robert. "And a whole company of wooden soldiers," said Edward. "And all sorts of blocks to build houses," said Robert. (27) 28 THE HAPPY CHILD. "And besides, papa/ said Edward, "he has a real live pony to ride on ; such a funny little fellow you never saw ; and he has such a pretty little riding stick, and a splendid saddle and bridle." " Eeally," said their father, " you make out quite a list of possessions." " 0, but, papa, we have not told you half; he has a beautiful flower garden, and a gardener to cultivate it for him, so that he don t have to take any trouble with it, and he can do any thing with the flowers he chooses." " 0, and, papa, he has rabbits, and a beautiful gray squirrel, with a cage fixed so nicely ; and the squirrel plays so many droll tricks ; and he has a parrot that can talk, and laugh, and call his name, and say a great many funny things." " Well," said their father, " I suppose you think that James is a very happy boy." " 0, yes, indeed, papa ; how can he help being happy ?" said both boys. u Be- THE HAPPY CHILD. 29 sides, his mamma, he says, lets him do very much as he likes about every thing." 66 Indeed ! " said their father ; " and was he so very happy all day when you were there?" " Why, no, not all day," said Edward ; " but then there was a reason for it for in the morning we had planned to go out to the lake to fish, and it rained, and it made James feel rather cross I sup pose." "But," said his father, "I should have thought, by your account, that there were things enough in the house to have amused you all." " But James said he was so used to all those things that he did not want to play with them," said Robert ; " he called some of the prettiest things that he had ugly old things/ and said he hated the sight of them." "Well," said their father, "I suspect, if the truth was known, James is not so much to be envied after all. I have been 30 THE HAPPY CHILD. a week at a time at his father s house, and I have thought that a more uncom fortable, unhappy-tempered little fellow I never saw." " Well, that is strange," said Edward ; " I am sure I would be happy if I was in his place." " I am afraid you would not," said his father ; u for I believe it is having so many things that makes him unhappy." " Having so many things, papa ! " said both boys. " Yes, my sons ; but I will explain this more to you some other time. However, this afternoon, as you are going to have a ride with me. I think I will take you over to see a little boy who is a very happy boy, as I think," said their father. HS & * " I wonder if this can be the house ? " said Edward to Kobert, as the carriage stopped before a very small brown house. Their father got out, and asked them to walk in with him. It was .a very little THE HAPPY CHILD. 31 house, with only two rooms in it ; and in the one they entered they saw a very pale, thin little boy, lying on a small, low bed in front of the door. His face was all worn away by disease, and his little hands, which were folded on the outside of the bed, were so thin one could almost see through them. He had a few play things lying by him on the bed, and on a little stand by him was a cracked brown mug, in which were some sweet peas, and larkspurs, and lavender, and bright yel low marigolds ; beside which lay a well- worn Bible and hymn book. His mother was ironing in the next room ; but when she saw the boys and their father, she came forward to receive them. "Well, my little fellow," said Mr. Thomp son, " how do you do to-day ?" " 0, pretty comfortable," he said. " I have brought my boys to see you," said Mr. Thompson. The sick boy smiled, and reached out one of his thin little hands to welcome 32 THE HAPPY CHILD. them. Edward and Robert took his hand, and then turned and looked anxiously at their father. 66 Papa, how long has he been so sick ?" asked Robert. " More than a year, young gentlemen," said his mother; "it s a year since he has been able to sit up ; and it s four months since he has been able to be turned at all in bed ; he has to lie all the time, just as you see, on his back." " 0, what a long, long time ! " said Ed ward ; " why can t you turn him, and let him lie on his side ? " " Because it hurts him to lie on either side." " What is the matter with him ?" asked Robert. "Why, the doctor says it s a complaint of the bone ; it began more than two years ago, down in his foot, and they had to cut the foot off, in hopes that that would stop it ; but it didn t ; and then they cut off the leg above the knee, and THE HAPPY CHILD. 33 that didn t stop it ; and it s creeping up, up, up, and finally it will be the death of him. He suffers dreadfully at nights ; sometimes no sleep at all for two or three nights." u father, how dreadful ! " said Edward, pressing close to his father. "Papa," said Robert, looking up and whispering, " I thought we were going to see a little boy that w r as very happy." " Wait a while," said Mr. Thompson, 66 and you will see ; " and then he turned to the sick boy. " My little fellow," said he, you find it very tiresome lying here so long." " A little so," said the boy, smiling very pleasantly ; " but then I have so many things to make me comfortable." "What things?" " 0, 1 have a knife, and I can whittle a little at a time, and I have this little china dog that a lady gave me. I play with that sometimes ; and then, don t you see my flowers ? " 3 34 THE HAPPY CHILD. The little boy pointed to a small bed of flowers just before the door, where there were some pinks, and some lark spurs, and marigolds, and sweet peas ; it was weeded very clean, and the flowers made it bright enough. "Mother planted all those flowers for me in *the spring," he said, "and she has watered and weeded them every night after she had done her work ; they grow beautifully, and I lie here every day and look at them. Sometimes, when the rain is falling, or in the morning when the dew is on them, they look so bright and fresh ! Mother puts some in the mug to stand by me every day." " But don t you suffer a great deal of pain?" a Sometimes I do ; but then, sir, I know that God would not send it if it was not best for me, so I am willing to bear it ; besides, I know that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered more pain for me than I suffer. There are some beautiful hymns about it THE HAPPY CHILD. 35 in this book," he added, taking up his little hymn book ; " and then I have the Bible. 0, I don t know how I could get along if it were not for that." "But are you never unhappy when you see other boys jumping and playing about?" " No, I am not ; I know God knows what is best for me ; besides, my Saviour comforts me. I love to lie here, when it is all still, and think about him." "Don t you hope that sometimes you will get well, and be able to go about again?" " No, I know that I can t ; I shall not live a great while ; they all say so." " And don t you feel afraid to die ? " " 0, no ; I feel as if I would be glad to. I long to see my Saviour. All I feel sad about is, that mother will be lonesome when I am gone." "Well, my little boy, if there is any thing that I can send you to make you more comfortable, I shall be glad to." 36 THE HAPPY CHILD. " 0, thank you, sir ; but I don t know as I want any thing." " I wish I could relieve your pains, my little fellow," said Mr. Thompson. " God would do it in a minute, if it was only best for me," said the boy ; " and if it is not best, I had rather he would not do it. Besides, I think I am happier now than I used to be when I was well." "Ah! how can that be?" " I did not love God so much then, and I used to forget to read the Bible. I had not so much pleasure in thinking about heaven," said the little boy. " You remember," said Mr. Thompson, " it says in the Bible, Before I was afflict ed I went astray ; but now have I kept thy word. " "That is just it, sir," said the boy; "just the way I feel. 0, 1 ve been very happy since I have been sick here." Edward and Robert looked at their fa ther, at these words. Mr. Thompson now rose to go. THE IIAPPY CHILD. 37 " If you please, sir, perhaps the boys would like some of my flowers ; there is a beautiful root of pinks there, and some roses," said the sick boy. " 0, no/ said Edward, " we won t take them away from you." " 0, 1 like to give them away," said the boy, earnestly ; " do take some." " Take some, my dear children ; it will please him," said Mr. Thompson, in a low voice, as he picked a few and gave to each of the boys ; and then added aloud, " We will keep them to remember you by, my dear little fellow." As they parted with the little boy, he smiled sweetly, and put out his hand, and added, " If you ll come when my latest rose bush is in blossom, I ll give you some roses." " Papa," said Edward, " that poor little boy really does seem to be happy, and yet he is poor, and sick, and in pain ; and 38 THE HAPPY CHILD. he has very few things, too. It is strange ; he is certainly a great deal happier than James Eobertson." 66 Well, I can tell you the reason/ said his father. " It is because James Eobert son is a selfish boy, that he is unhappy- from morning till night he thinks of noth ing but how to please himself. His fa ther and mother have spent all their lives in contriving ways to please him, and have never required him to give up his own will in any thing ; and now he is so selfish that he is always unhappy. He does not love God, and he does not love his parents, nor any thing else, so well as he loves himself; and such a boy will always be unhappy. And the reason that this poor little sick boy is happy, is be cause he has learned to love God, his Saviour, better than any thing else, and to find all his pleasure in trying to do His will instead of his own. This is what makes him peaceful. If he did not love God, and love to give up his will to Him, THE HAPPY CHILD. 39 and to bear ancl suffer whatever He thought best, how miserable he would be now!" " He would be very fretful, I suppose," said Edward ; " I m afraid I should be." " Yes," said his father ; " but now, when he has learned to give up entirely to the will of his heavenly Father, see how he seems to enjoy his flowers, and his hymn book, and his few little playthings. He enjoys them more than James Robertson enjoys all his elegant things. Now, my dear boys, remember this : The way to be happy is to have a right hearty and not to have every thing given to us that we want." LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY.* MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND : As I am go ing to give you some account of my life, I will begin at the beginning, and tell you how fairies come into existence. You must know, then, that if at midnight a drop of dew Mis exactly in the middle of a flower, and if nothing happens to disturb it, it will absorb the fragrance and essence of the flower, and in the morning the first ray of light will change it into a fairy. It was a beautiful May morning, when I first opened my eyes, and found myself standing in a sweet-scented violet in a garden on Walnut Hills, a village in the north of England. My dear sister Lillian, who had been * The two following stories are by a friend of the author s. (40) LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 41 appointed by our queen to watch for me, kindly helped me to unfold my wings, and offered me a drop of nectar ; after which she conducted me to the palace of our queen, which I will describe to you another time. The queen, who is the most lovely and beautiful fairy in the world, wel comed me with a sweet smile, and said, We receive you into our company, my dear Viola, and hope you will be very happy in the society of your sisters, and will, like them, do much good wherever you go. You cannot be too thankful that you belong to a race of benevolent fairies, and not to those mischievous ones who spend all their time in plaguing and tormenting poor mortals." She then gave me a pencil of sun beams, a small vial of essence of health, a tiny air pillow, and a mantle, which she told me would render me invisible to all except infants and very young children. "And now, my dear Viola/ said the queen, 42 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. " I will leave you with your sister fairies. Take good care of the present which you have received. Lillie will tell you how to use them. Once in seven days we meet on the floating island, when each fairy must give an account of what she has done since our last meeting." After the queen left us, Lillie told me that every fairy made it the object of her life to do good to mortals,, and that many took for their particular charge the child of some poor woman, who, on account of care and poverty, could not herself pay proper attention to it. I thought that I should like that very much ; and as every fairy is allowed to have one chosen friend, to be always with her, Lillie and I took our invisible mantles and flew away to gether in search of some poor child who might need our care. In a little white cottage, in the village of R, we found a poor, sickly baby, of four months old, lying in its cradle alone. Its mother had gone out to wash, and was LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 43 obliged to leave her poor baby with her daughter Mary, a child of ten years of age, who, though she loved her little sis ter Emily, loved play still more, and was at that moment sailing chip boats in a pool of water at some distance from the house, at the same time quieting her con science by thinking that perhaps the baby was asleep, or, at any rate, if it cried very loud, she could hear it, and would run home immediately. The poor baby s pale face was wet with tears when we found it, and it looked so helpless and forlorn that we immediately adopted it as our favorite. We dried its tears with our wings, danced and sang to amuse it, dropped fairy sugar in its mouth, and did not leave it until it was comfort ably asleep, when, painting on its eyelids beautiful pictures, which we knew would insure pleasant dreams, we left it for a short time, and flew away to carry food to a poor little bird which had been shot in the wing by a cruel boy. 44 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. When Lillie and I returned, we found little Emily just waking up, and her moth er, who had returned home, was preparing some milk for her, into which I dropped some of my essence, which not only im proved the taste of the milk, but also added very much to its strengthening qualities ; so that when Emily had taken it twice a day for two weeks, she began to grow quite fat and rosy, to the surprise of the neighbors, who had often prophe sied that " Mrs. W. would never raise that child." Mrs. W. herself wondered what made the child s eyes look so very bright some times, and what made her so much qui eter and happier than she used to be. " Why, bless the child," said she, " she will lie awake in the cradle and talk to her self an hour at a time, and it pears Uke she was looking at something, I don t know what ; and then she will commence singing like, in her baby fashion, and fairly get herself to sleep, without being rocked LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 45 a bit ; she is getting a great fashion, too, of looking at her hands, and gooing and gaing at them, and she is getting so strong that she can set up all alone by herself; and Mary says that sometimes, when I am gone la tor than usual, she will begin to fret a little, and then, all at once, she will begin sucking her thumb, and be as quiet as a lamb until I come home ; and now, this minute, do see how she is smiling in her sleep. I used to think that was a sign of colic ; but now " "And is it the colic you mane?" said a kind-hearted Irish woman ; u and sure yourself may be asy about that same. Never a bit of colic is it, but the good angels are whispering to the swate darlint. An sure it s the troth that I say, for my self heard the good praste say that same." They all smiled at what they considered Irish superstition, and another neighbor said, "Well, Mrs. W., I am very glad the child is doing so well. I expect a turn of 46 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. good luck for you ; for I said to my Mary on Monday, no, Tuesday no, Monday, it was, the day that my fork fell and stuck straight up in the floor; said I, Now, Mary, Mrs. W. will have a turn of good luck, I know, for there she goes with her apron wrong side out, and it is after twelve o clock, and last night she saw the moon over her right shoulder, and, best of all, my old man showed it to her, and that is a sure sign of good luck. " Poor, ignorant mortals, they never once dreamed who it was that played with the child, and covered her little fingers with fairy rings, set with brilliants, and painted pictures of gay birds and flowers on her hands, and covered her thumb with the purest fairy sugar, and played a thousand tricks to amuse her ; but I hear the silver bells of our dear queen, and must stop writing for the present and hasten to her. Little Emily continued to grow and thrive under our care, so that when she LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 47 was a year old, she was as lovely a child as I ever saw. Her eyes were bright and blue as my native flower, and her hair, which Lillie and I curled every day when she was asleep, hung in shining ringlets around her sweet face and neck. We taught her to keep herself neat and clean by hiding ourselves and taking away her rings and pictures whenever she soiled her hands or dress, and the moment she was washed we appeared again ; so that she very soon learned to be neat and careful, and whenever she got a spot on her dress, or her little white hands, she would hold them up and say, "Wass ? wass," so earnestly, that her mother or sister would always attend to .her. She was called the little lady, on account of her neatness, and was very much loved and admired. About this time she began to walk alone ; and now Lillie and I were busier than ever. We kept our little air pillow constantly with us, and whenever she fell we threw it between her head LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 49 but we kept our little pet well supplied. Mary tied up a little bundle of rags, and Lillie painted it, and made it appear to little Emily as beautiful as the most costly wax doll. If she got a little chip with a twine string tied to it, we made it look like a gayly painted carriage. We col ored and embellished every thing that she had to play with, and made her baby life alnlost one continued stream of sun shine. But I do not wish you to think that we spent all our time in taking care of one child ; we played with the hum ming birds and butterflies, danced by moonlight with our sister fairies, and did many good offices for people, beasts, birds, and insects. One hot day in August, we found a poor, tired traveller in the dusty road. We sang like a thrush, and thus drew his attention to a little grove near by, where was a mossy bank and a spring of the clearest and coolest of water. As he drank of the water, we dropped into his cup a little of our essence, and fanned 4 50 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. him with our wings. " 0, what a good little breeze ! " said he, as he threw him self down on the bank of moss, and was soon in a refreshing sleep. We then paint ed on his eyelids an exact representation of our queen s palace and garden, and left him to enjoy his dream. The next morning we were surprised and delighted, on visiting Emily, to find that our traveller was Mrs. W. s only son, w r ho had just got through his apprentice ship in a distant city, and had come home to work for and comfort his mother and little sisters. He was sitting with Emily on his knee, looking with pride and affec tion at her bright eyes and beautiful curls, and telling a very curious dream to his mother and Mary, who were listen ing with great attention. He was just fin ishing his dream ; but as I know it a little better than he did, I will tell it to you, and you will then know how the beauti ful Fairy Queen lives. LEAVES FROM TUB LIFE OF A FAIRY. 51 THE l".:i \M. I was lying down m rest on a green .. \\hen Middenly i : nd heneath me seemed \\ay. and 1 fell down, that m^N head LJ-IVNN diy/v. and I ive up all hope; \shen Middenlv 1 t onnd jn\ Self in a 1 rautifid gTOl < - Thr i and grass AM iv el tin- inoM K.\dv gl 1 , Bt BaW, :md inanv of thr tr66l IfeW ii fruit and llov, hrilliant colors. l>inl> oi -ay pluii lilli-d tin- ; ami tin* fame <>f the flowers \\as drli-htfnl. 1 wandered about until 1 came to a -mall lak.- :y Mai ; the hottoin of thr lake was covered uith hi-amiful -iniis and Lfl Mono ; thoil.-allds of 1. j.i-arl and lined \\ ith leavefl were sailing ahout. and in each hoat was a liijht little taiiy . the middle of the lake was a tl. idand \vhi. tinl t" he me. and grew more and i.. 52 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. lovely the more I examined it. It seemed to be composed entirely of moss and flowers, and shaded by the most delicate little trees, in exact imitation of the larger trees which I described. The smallest of humming birds and butterflies kept the trees and flowers in continual motion. Exactly in the centre of this island stood a small circular palace ; it was white as the purest alabaster, delicate as the rose leaf, and so transparent that I could see distinctly all that was going on inside. The roof of the palace was in the form of an inverted lily, the petals of which were bordered with rubies and emeralds, and all kinds of precious stones. The roof was supported by pillars of pearl, around which were twined never-fading roses, about as large as a small forget-me-not, the tiny green vines and rich crimson roses con trasting beautifully with the snowy white ness of the palace. The queen was the most elegant little creature that you can imagine ; every look, word, and ac- LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 53 tion was perfect grace and beauty. She seemed to be very busy with, her attend ants in arranging and weaving a number of little crowns and garlands, by which I supposed they were preparing for some festival. While I stood wondering and admiring, I heard the sound of a little silver bell, and immediately every little boat was brought up to the island, and the fairies all gathered around their queen, (who was seated on a throne in front of her palace,) and each fairy in turn told where she had been and what she had done since their last meeting. The queen then made a speech, in which she told them how happy she was to find that they had been so diligent and kind, so self-denying, and so careful of the happiness of others. " Continue, my beloved ones," she said, " to be thus pure and good ; mingle with mortals, and do all you can for them, but keep your selves free from their sins and follies ; for if one shade of envy, jealousy, or any evil 54 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. passion, should come into our domain, it would destroy our happiness forever." She then gave to each of them a little crown or garland of myrtle and rose buds, and they were preparing to dance, when, forgetting myself, I made a slight movement, and immediately the island, palace, fairies, all were gone, and I awoke and found myself three miles from home, and the sun going down. I felt quite rested and refreshed, and shall always remember my pleasant dream. Mrs. W. was much surprised and pleased with her son s dream, and said that it sounded almost like reading ; that he always was a lucky boy, and she had no doubt but his dream was a good one ; that she should not wonder if he found work and good wages that very day, for she always heard that it was a good sign to dream about fairies. He did very soon find work, for he was well known to be an honest and diligent young man, and LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 55 things soon began to be more pleasant and comfortable at the cottage. The lit tle garden was planted and kept in order, a cow bought, and Mrs. W. only went out to wash once a week. Mary was sent to school, and new clothes were provided for the whole family. When Emily was about three years of age, she one day found two or three leaves of Mary s old Primer, and I painted the letters, and made them look so pretty that she was quite delighted with them, and began at once to learn their names. Lillie and I had learned to read English by attending little children at school, and we found no difficulty in teaching Emily. As she grew older and more earthly, we began to fade from her sight, but we still with our pen cils color and brighten all that she came in contact with, and put kind and pleasant thoughts into her mind. We taught her to be obedient and diligent, to be kind to animals, and whenever she did a good action we felt repaid for all our care of 56 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. her. When she was four years of age, her brother was very much surprised one day to find her reading a book which he had just left, and still more surprised to find that nobody knew how she had learned to read. Mary said she remem bered that, some time ago, Emmy got hold of her old Primer, and asked her the names of some of the letters, but she never thought any more about it. Mrs. W. said she had seen the child often play ing with a book, as she supposed, but never thought of her learning to read ; and when Emily was asked who taught her, she raised her dark eyes with a look of wonder at being asked such a ques tion, and said, " Pretty book." Things went on very quietly in the vil lage until Emily was six years of age, when some ladies from London, who were spending the summer in the country, es tablished a Sunday school. Mary and Emily both attended, and here they LEAVES FROM THE LIEE OF A FAIRY. 57 learned better things than the best of fairies could teach them. They heard and read about the great Creator and Saviour of the human race, and of the home which he has prepared for all who love him, compared with which Fairyland is as a spot on the sun. Emily, who was still the pet and the pride of the family, would sit whole evenings between her mother and brother George, repeating hymns and verses which her teacher had taught her, or reading to them in her little Testament, until the things of this world seemed to fade from their sight, and heaven and eternity alone seemed worth living for. They passed two happy years in this manner, until Emily w r as eight years old, when, without any visible cause, she began to fade and waste away. Every month she grew weaker, although George got the best physician that could be found to attend upon her, and every thing that could be thought of was done for her, 58 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. but all in vain. " I am going home, dear mother/ she said ; " I am going to be with the dear Saviour, who loves little children so much, and I shall then be a good child, mother always good and never even think a wrong thought. But I shall not forget you ; I shall always love you, and Mary, and brother George, and soon you will all come, and we will be happy to gether. It was beautiful now to see the kind ness and affection which this poor family showed to each other in their affliction ; how George, after working hard all day, would go a mile out of his way to get an orange for his little sister ; how tenderly he would take her in his arms, and carry her about the room to relieve the weari ness and nervousness caused by her lying so long on her little bed; how quietly and thoughtfully the once careless Mary would do and remember all the little things that her mother, in her anxiety and grief, had forgotten ; and, in short, LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. 59 how they all seemed to forget them selves, and live only to comfort and help each other. Emily died as she had lived, gently and happily. The sun was just setting ; her Sabbath school teacher, with her friends standing round her bed, longing to do something, and yet unable to help or relieve her. Emily, my darling," said her mother, " what can I do for you ? " " Nothing, dear mother," whispered the dying child ; " the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. Yea, though I walk through the valley " She could say no more ; her eyes grew brighter and brighter, and with a smile which made her face look like the face of an angel, she left us, and was with the Saviour whom she loved. for a human soul ! To feel for one hour such love as lighted up that pale face, would outweigh all the pleasures of Fairyland. Emily will live forever and 60 LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY. ever, pure and holy. I shall live and be happy, perhaps for thousands of years, and then sleep never to wake again. My happiness and usefulness will come to an end. Hers, never. Lillian and I have taken care of a great many little children, but we never found one that we loved so well as little Emily. We took seeds from our favorite flowers, and planted them on her grave, and the next summer her friends were pleased and surprised to find violets and lilies of the valley in full bloom ; and even now, Mary, who is a good and respectable woman, and has a home and a little Emily of her own, has just returned from weeding and watering the fairy flowers. UNCLE JERRY S DREAM ABOUT THE BROWNIES. I HAD just settled myself in my easy chair, to take my usual nap after dinner, when the door was suddenly opened, and my little son and daughter entered, all ready for school. "Papa," said little Tom, "won t you please to give me a cent to buy a slate pencil?" "Another slate pencil! Why, Tom, you ll ruin me. How many have you had this week ? " " Only two, sir, and this is Thursday. My last I kept two days, and I should have had it yet, only yesterday I just laid it down a minute while I went out in recess time, and when I came in I couldn t find it any where. Susy staid after school, and helped me look for it ; (61) 62 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM but I think somebody must have taken it ; and this morning I had to borrow a pencil and do my sum in recess. I didn t get any time to play at all." " Good for you, you careless rogue. If I was your teacher, I d make you lose your recess every time you lost your pencil." " Then I m glad you are not my teacher," said he, with a sly look, as he pocketed the cent, and slipped fairly out of my reach. " Papa, you wouldn t real ly, would you?" said little Susan, who always took every thing in earnest. " Well, I don t know, pet," said I I guess I shouldn t be a very cruel teacher." Susan seemed satisfied, and followed her brother ; and I, wondering what in the world became of slate pencils, pins, and needles, very soon found myself in the land of dreams. I seemed to be wandering about in a thick forest of pine trees ; the sky was covered with clouds, the wind sang mournfully among the FINVILLE. ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 63 branches, and not a path or the slightest trace of human footsteps could be seen. Suddenly I came to an open place, and there, in the space of twelve feet square, stood a whole village. Each little house was about two or three inches square, built in the form of a log cabin of slate pencils, the spaces between the pencils being filled with pieces of paper, one of which (having by some accident got loose) looked wonderfully like one of the missing leaves from Tom s spelling book. The chimneys were little thimbles with the ends knocked out ; the fences were all closely built with needles and pins, and over every little gateway, towering above the top of the house, stood, stretched wide open, a pair of scissors, I stood for some time in silent astonish ment. What in the world, thought I, is the meaning of all this ? Why, there are wife s scissors that I borrowed the other day to cut my hair with ; and there is Susy s little forget-me-not thimble, that 64 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM she was so proud of, and there is I was interrupted in my observations by a low, disagreeable, croaking sound, which seemed to proceed from behind a large pine tree near which I stood and look ing carefully round, I saw two such hateful, spiteful-looking creatures, that I thought their faces must ache, they were so very ugly. They were about an inch in height, and had each of them a little bag about twice as large as themselves, which appeared to be quite full of one thing and another, and yet they seemed to lift them about with perfect ease. They held in their hands a girdle which made them invisible whenever they wore it. I wondered that they didn t wear it all the time. tf Well, Wormwood," said the uglier of the two, " what have you been about since I saw you last? Have you had much fun ? " Why, Nightshade, I can t say that I have had a very jolly time. You see, I m ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 65 not much used to the ways of the world yet. I ve only been here two weeks; and then those floating islanders, they do bother a fellow terribly, with their bal sam, and their pencils, and all their hypo critical nonsense about being kind, and good, and honest, and true, and all that stuff that they are forever whispering to one child or another. I wish Rosa, and Lillian, and Viola, and the whole set of them island and all were at the bot tom of the Red Sea ; then one might have a chance to do something. The other day, I found a little fellow looking wistfully at a basket of ripe apples, which stood at the door of a store. Take one, said I ; ( take it quick ; the man is busy, and won t see you. Pshaw, don t be so par ticular ; it s only an apple. He reached forward, and had one in his hand, when, as ill luck would have it, Rosa, the fairy, came flying along, and just sung in his ear a part of a tune which his mother had taught him, and he dropped the 66 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM apple as quick as he would a red-hot coal, and away he ran. I tell you, Night shade, it s hard work to make a boy steal when he is thinking of his mother. "Well, I didn t like to be cheated so, and I followed him home, and spent several days in the family; but it was in fact time wasted ; for, although there were seven children, the mother was so watch ful, and the children so particular about saying their prayers, and studying their Bible lessons, and singing their hymns, that I could get no power over them at all. One day, I found the youngest child alone, and I thought I would make him swear. Well, I whispered some w r ords in his ear, very softly, but so distinctly that he didn t know them from his own thoughts. Now/ said I, say them ; it will make you feel like a man, and it is just as bad to think wicked words as to say them, and you know you have thought them already/" ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 67 " And did he say them ? " asked Night shade, with a malicious grin. " Say them ! no he ran crying to his mother, and said, ma, I am so naughty, I have been thinking swear > like what that man said to his horses this morning. Are you afraid that I shall grow up like him, ma ? She took the little fellow on her lap, and I cleared out ; for I knew there was no chance for me that day. " Next morning, I was delighted to find one of the little girls climbing up to get something off the mantel-piece a thing that she had been forbidden to do. I saw what she did not that the sleeve of her apron brushed against one of the flowers in her mother s china vase, and I suddenly flew right in her face in the form of a dragon-fly, which frightened her, so that she started and knocked down the vase, which was broken into a dozen pieces. I was delighted, of course. 6 Now, said I, you have got yourself into trouble ; that is your mother s favorite 68 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM vase ; she will be very much displeased, and will lose all confidence in you, be cause you know you promised never to try to get any thing off the mantel-piece ; and now you have not only broken your mother s favorite vase, but what is worse, you have broken your word. Your father, too, will know it, and all the family and this afternoon, when they go to ride, you will be left at home. The best thing that you can do now is to go quietly out of the room, shut the door softly, and say nothing you will never be suspected. If you are asked about it, you can say you don t know who broke it. " Always tell the truth, said Lillian, the fairy ; remember what your teacher said about that last Sabbath. You have done wrong, but your mother is your best friend ; you had better go tell her about it before it is too late. " "And did she go?" " Yes, the little goose picked up the pieces, and went right to her mother and ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 69 told her all about it ; and I was so mad that I just gathered up a few pins and pencils and came away." " Ha, ha ! but you are green/ said Nightshade ; " to think of your spending your time in such a house as that. Now, let me give you a little piece of advice : Next time, go into a school, where one poor, bewildered teacher has forty or fifty wild, careless boys and girls to attend to. There you can play your tricks to any extent. You will always find a few bright ones, who are up to any thing that you can put into their heads, and not at all troubled with conscience. They will lead the rest, and there is no end to the mischief that you can make them do. As to lying, why, that s nothing to some of them ; and when a boy gets to be an expert liar, it is very easy to make him steal ; I ve got more such fellows into jail than you can count in a day ; and as to pencils and paper, I know of a whole town, six times as big as Pinville here, 70 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM that was built entirely from one district school. Or, if you are fond of private life, go into a family where the children all forget to say their prayers, and the mother forgets to attend to it; where they consider the Bible a very dull old book, and the Sabbath the most tedious day in the week ; or where the father thinks of nothing but how he can make the most money, and the mother thinks only how she can spend it in the most fashionable and genteel manner; where the children are all taught to look out for number one, and to care for nobody but themselves. u If you want to make a boy swear, don t frighten him, and make him run to his mother, as you did before ; but first teach him to say, Confound it, or, By George, or, By jingo just let him get in the habit of using such expressions when ever he is surprised or angry, and you will then find it an easy matter to make him swear. If you want him to steal, let ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 71 him begin at home with a lamp of sugar, a piece of cake, or a few raisins ; and then, if you have taught him to lie easily, you will soon have him in the straight road to ruin." " Ah, well," said Wormwood, " I ll re member ; but what is that red thing in your bag ? " " This," said Nightshade, pulling out a beautiful coral necklace, " this is Emily s birthday present from uncle John/ I borrowed it, Wormwood just borrowed it, you know, to pave my yard with. Ha, ha ! won t these little beads make pretty paving stones ? Little Miss Emily had been told often not to take it off her neck on any account, but I persuaded her one day just to try it on her little white kitten. By the way, Wormwood, that lit tle word just is worth all the beads in creation to us just this, and only just that. 0, what a prime little word it is ! Well, as I was saying, she just tried it on her kitten, and I, seeing that the door was 72 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM open, just stuck a pin into kitty s ear, and away she flew into the garden, through bushes and fences, and I after her, and Emily crying and chasing us both, until kit dropped her necklace, which I pocket ed, or rather bagged, and left Miss Emily to make it up with her mother and uncle John the best way she could." "And what did you do next?" said Wormwood. "Well, I amused myself in various ways. I found a little girl sewing ; and as she seemed to be in a hurry to get through, I first knotted her thread, then twitched her needle away, and threw it as far as I could across the room ; and while she was looking for it, I rolled her spool of thread under the stove, and blew a piece of paper over her scissors, which she had dropped in looking for her needle ; and when she ran up stairs to get more thread, I followed her, and hung her nice new dress on a tack which her brother had just driven into the window sill ; and ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 73 as she was still in a hurry, she tore it across a whole breadth before she could stop. 0, I ve torn dozens of dresses in this manner, on nails and door-latches. Next, I went into the kitchen to help them take up dinner, as I knew they were going to have company. The first thing I did was to slip a large china dish out of the cook s hands, which was of course broken all to pieces. Dinah rolled up her eyes, and declared she didn t know how dat ar dish cum to slip out of her hands she spected Miss B. would be mighty mad, but she couldn t help it no how. I then dropped a lump of fairy ice into the saucepan, and Dinah said she ( bleeved it was bewitched every thing was a waiten for that ar gravy, and it wouldn t bile. By this time I was tired of staying in the house, and so, after cracking a tumbler with my bag of pen cils, rolling two or three burning brands from the fire down on the new dining 74 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM room carpet, and filling the room with smoke and smut, I flew away. " My next visit was to a farm house. Here I had fine fun. I stuck pins into the cows, and made them kick over the milk pails, scared the setting hens, and sent them cackling off their nests, fright ened the horses, and made them upset the wagon and throw all the farmer s eggs and butter which he was carrying to mar ket into the mud, and various other pleas ant little tricks of the kind ; but the best thing I did there was to gnaw the clothes line, and let down all the wet clothes on the ground, and then drive a few stray sheep right over them all. Worm wood, if you had seen that old woman and her daughters, you would have laughed yourself all away to nothing I thought they would be the death of me. They had just dressed themselves up in their new corn-colored dresses, and were going out to spend the afternoon, hoping to have an opportunity of saying that ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 75 they always made it a pint to get all their washin and cleanin done up before dinner but just as they were starting, one of them happened to look round towards the clothes; and what a sight met their astonished eyes ! I never heard women scold and storm quite as bad as they did. I thought in my heart they d swear. I left them disputing as to who left the gate open, and let in them plaguy sheep, and went laughing off through the fields towards town." " And what did you do on the way ? " said Wormwood. " Well, I broke a few butterflies wings, pulled little birds feathers, stepped into a cottage now and then, tickled the babies noses, and pulled their hair to make them cross ; stole little girls thimbles and nee dles whenever they only laid them down fast one minute] while they ran off to play or to look at something ; jerked people in their sleep, and made them think they were falling ; drew ugly pictures on their fore- 76 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM heads to make them have bad dreams ; went to church on Sunday with other good people, and scattered here and there a pin or a straw for the little boys and girls to play with ; whispered to the ladies to look at Mrs. A. s new shawl, and Miss B. s horrid ugly bonnet, &c. ; fanned dull people with poppy leaves, and set them to bowing and bobbing to the min ister and to each other ; got several of the singers up in the gallery engaged in whispering and writing notes to each other; told the minister that it was of no use to preach to such sleepy, careless people and the people that it did them no good to hear such dull, prosy ser mons ; and after I got them all thor oughly discontented, why, I came away, and left them to enjoy themselves." Well, well," said Wormwood, " I ll take you for a pattern ; " and here they both together set up such a horrid, discordant laugh, that I awoke. "Wife," said I, "do the children re- ABOUT THE BROWNIES. 77 member their prayers morning and even ing ? You needn t look any more for those scissors ; you ll never see them again." " Why, my dear husband/ said she, laughing, and holding up the scissors, a what s the matter now ? How wild and queer you look ! you must have been dreaming." I was thoroughly awake by this time, and told my dream to Tom and Susan, who had just returned from school. "And now, children," said I, "don t let the wicked brownies tempt you to do any of their naughty tricks ; always tell the truth, and don t lay your things down, not a single minute, but always put them away when you have done using them." They both promised to be very good, and Tom ran off to play ; but little Susy climbed up in my lap, and said, " Papa, are there really any brownies ? and is that story about Viola true, that you told us yesterday ? " 78 UNCLE JERRY S DREAM. " No, no, dear/ said I, " they are only made-up stories ; but it is true that there are wicked spirits, always ready to tempt us to do wrong, and to feel discontented and unhappy ; and it is also true that the Lord Jesus and his good angels watch over us, and are always ready to teach and help us to do right, and to be good and happy. If we listen to them, and love the Bible, and are willing to be led and guided by their kind precepts, they will never leave us to the power of the wicked ones, but will watch over us and take care of us as long as we live, help us through all our difficulties, and at last take us to their happy home, to live with them forever." TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK. CHARLEY S mother would often sit with him by the fire, before the lamp was lighted in the evening, and repeat to him little pieces of poetry. This is one that Charley used to like particularly. It is written by Miss Jane Taylor. THE STORY OF THE LITTLE FISH. " Dear mother," said a little fish, " Pray is not that a fly ? I m very hungry, and I wish You d let me go and try." " Sweet innocent," the mother cried, And started from her nook, " That horrid fly is meant to hide The sharpness of the hook ! " (79) 80 TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK. Now, as I ve heard, this little trout Was young and silly too ; And so he thought he d venture out, To see what he could do. And round about the fly he played, With many a longing look ; And often to himself he said, " I m sure that s not a hook c I can but give one little pluck To try, and so I will." So on he went, and lo, it stuck Quite through his little gill And as he faint and fainter grew, With hollow voice he cried, ft Dear mother, if I d minded you, I should not thus have died." After this was finished, Charley looked gravely into the fire, and began his re marks upon it. " What a silly fellow that TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK. 81 little trout was ! He might have known better." " Take care, Charley," said his mamma ; " there are a great many little boys just as silly as this trout. For instance, I knew a little boy, a while ago, whose mamma told him not to touch green apples or currants, because they would make him sick. He did not mean to touch them, for he knew that it is very disagreeable to be sick and take medicine, but yet he did the very same thing that this little trout did. " Instead of keeping far away, he would walk about under the trees and pick up the green apples to look at, and feel of the green currants, just as the little fish would play round the hook. By and by he said, I really don t think they will hurt me ; I will just take one little taste. And then he ate one, and then another, till finally he got very sick. Do you re member ? " 6 82 TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK. " mamma, that was me. Yes, I re member." 66 Now, Charley, hear what I tell you : nobody does very wrong things because they mean to at first. People begin by little and little, just tasting and trying what is wrong, like this little fish. " Then there is George Jones, a very fine boy, a bright boy, and one who means to do right ; but then George does not always keep away from the hook. You will see him sometimes standing round places where men are drinking and swear ing. George does not mean ever to drink or to swear ; he only stands there to hear these men sing their songs and tell their stories, and sometimes he will drink just a little sip of sugar and spirits out of the bottom of a tumbler; but George never means really to be a drunkard. Ah, take care, George ; the little fish did not mean to be caught either, but he kept playing round and round and round the hook, TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK. 83 and at last he was snapped up ; and so you will be if you don t take care. " Then William Day means to be an honest boy, and you could not make him more angry than to tell him he would ever be a thief; and yet William plays too much round the hook. What does he do ? Why, he will take little things out of his father s desk or shop, or out of his mother s basket or drawers, when he really does not want his father or mother to see him or find it out. William thinks, 0, it s only a little thing ; it isn t much matter ; I dare say they had just as lief I had it as not, Ah, William, do you think so ? Why do you not go to your parents and ask for it then? No; the fact is that William is learning to steal, but he does not believe it is stealing any more than the little fish believed that what looked like a fly was in fact a dreadful hook. By and by, if William doesn t take care, when he goes into a shop or store, he will begin to take little things from 84 TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK. his master, just as he did from his father and mother ; and he will take more and more, till finally he will be named and disgraced as a thief, and all because, like the little fish, he ivould plan around the hook." " Mamma," said Charley, " who are George Jones and William Day ? Did I ever see them ? " " My dear, I must use some names in a story ; I am just making this up to show Charley what I mean by playing round the hooJc. And now let me teach you a text out of the Bible that means the same thing: He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little. " FAIRY TALES. u COME, papa, do tell us a story," said little Edward and Mary to their father, on New Year s evening. " A story a story ! always a story," said the father. " What shall it be about, now?" "0, something wonderful." said Ed ward ; " I like your real wonderful stories, like the Arabian Nights about palaces in the air, and about genii that can bring up great dishes of gold and diamonds." "Yes," said little Mary; "and where they live the trees are all covered with pearls and precious stones." " Rather poor eating, I should think," said her father, "unless they have extraor dinary teeth." "And then, papa, these genii can go any where in a minute up to the sun, (85) 86 FAIRY TALES. and down to the bottom of the ocean ; they can lift up great mountains, and pile up rocks, and they have long, flashing swords." "It seems to me," said their father, " that you know all about them already. I don t need to tell you a story about them." " 0, but we always like to hear, even if we do know." Well," said the father, then I will tell you a story about two little children whose father was a Spirit King." " What, a genius ? " said Edward. " I don t know exactly what you mean by a genius. He was a spirit and a great, powerful king, and he could do all those things that you say the genii can, and a great many more. He could lift up moun tains, if he chose ; he could raise up all the great waves of the sea, and make dreadful storms, if he only spoke to them ; and as to bringing up pearls and dia monds, he knew where every pearl and FAIRY TALES. 87 diamond was to be found, that is any where in the world, or even down at the bottom of the ocean, or in the deep, dark caves in the middle of the earth ; and he could bring them all up only by speaking to them." " Where did he live, papa ? " "0, far off up, up in the sky; be yond the stars was his home ; there he had a beautiful palace." " 0, do tell us about it." "Well, then, the walls of the palace were built of jasper " " I have read something like this in the Arabian Nights," said Edward. " But I don t know what jasper is," said Mary. "A very clear, bright crimson stone," said her father ; " and it was polished till it shone like a looking glass ; then every door in the palace was made of one whole pearl." "What wonderful pearls they must have been ! " said Mary, 88 FAIRY TALES. " 0, such things are very common in these stories," said Edward. " So you may think," said his father. " How beautifully all these doors would look, carved out of white, glistening pearl ! " "And had they gold hinges?" asked Edward. " No doubt," said his father. Then all the foundations of the palace were set full of sparkling, precious stones ; for instance, one foundation stone would be full of diamonds, and the next would be of bright yellow topaz, and the next would be sparkling green emeralds, and the next would be clear, blue sapphires, and so on, all the colors you could think of, so that the foundation looked like a dazzling rainbow." " 0, this is a real fairy story," said Ed ward ; " better than any I ever heard." " Then," said his father, " this palace was not one small house, such as we live in. In Europe, where the kings have FAIRY TALES. 89 palaces, they often take up two or three squares of a city ; but this palace is a city itself; it has streets through it, and these streets are paved with gold, and the gold is polished so smooth and clear that it is just like a looking glass, so that you can see every thing in it." " And who lives there ? " asked Edward. " 0, all sorts of beautiful spirits ; you know I told you that this was a Spirit King," said his father. " But you have not told us any thing about the king ; was he very beautiful ? " " Yes, my boy, he was very beautiful ; so beautiful that those who saw him among all these splendid things forgot to look at them, and looked only at him." How did he look ? " "That I cannot tell you. It is said that his robes were all dazzling and bright I can only tell you that he was more beautiful than all the most beautiful things you ever saw together." 90 FAIRY TALES. " Well, papa,, and what about those chil dren ? " "Why, there were two little children once, and this great king was their father. They never had seen him." " Never seen their father ! How strange ! Did he love them ? " 66 Yes ; he loved them very dearly, and took excellent care of them, as you shall hear." " But pray where did these children live ? " " What should you say if I told you that you were these children ? " "We, father?" " Yes, my children ; have you never heard of a Spirit King, who covers him self with light as a garment, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds his chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind ? " u 0, papa, we know now" said the chil dren. FAIRY TALES. 91 "But that is out of the Bible," said Edward ; u I have read it a great many times. I thought you were telling a fairy story." " And what is that about his palace ? " said Mary. "Do you not remember the twenty- first of Revelation, where the beautiful city is described ? And her light was like unto a jasper stone, clear as crystal, and the building of the wall of it was of jasper, and the foundation of the walls of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones, and the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each separate gate of one pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass, " u 0, yes ; I remember," said Mary. " Well, now, my dears," said their father, tt I want you to remember one thing. There is nothing that you read of in fairy stories that is as strange and won derful as what is true about you children." "About us, papa?" 92 FAIRY TALES. "Yes, my children; you arc children of One greater than any spirit king ; you have a Father who knows every thing, and can do every thing, and who can make more beautiful things in an hour than ever you read of in any fairy tale ; and you will live as long as he does forever." The little children looked at their fa ther with a serious air ; they were struck with the tone in which he pronounced the word forever. "But," added their father, "you will not only live as long as God lives, but you may become yourselves more beauti ful, and bright, and glorious than the sun or stars in yonder sky." Does the Bible say so, father ? " said Mary. " You know," said their father, " that our Saviour says, when speaking of the day of judgment, Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of o their Father; and it is said in Daniel, FAIRY TALES. 93 xii. 6, And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt/ And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever. Now, my little ones, I do not for bid your reading these wonderful fairy tales, but I want you to remember, when you read the strangest and most wonder ful things that are told in them, that things more strange, more wonderful, are true with regard to you. To have a Fa ther in heaven, to have a soul that never can die, to hope, through your Saviour, to live forever in heaven, is more won derful than all the wonders of fairy land." A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. ONE bright morning, when the yellow dandelions were shining out like so many gold dollars in the green grass, and the brooks were chattering and purling to each other, and small eyebrights were looking up from the turf like flocks of little white sheep, a little boy, whom we shall call Jamie, found, all of a sudden, that his school had stopped, and he had come to the first day of his vacation. So says Jamie to himself, " What shall I do all day long?" After a while he thought he would take a basket, and go over into a neighboring field, and gather gome eyebrights and violets to dress flower vases for his mamma. Well, over the fence he went, and wan dered far off into the field; and there he met two strange boys, larger than he, (94) A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 95 whose names were Will Drake and Charles Jones. " Hulloa ! " said one of the boys to him ; a come along with us we are going to have fun. We have got our pockets full of stories, and we are going to kill birds with them ; it s the best fun in the world." Now, Jamie was a thoughtless little fellow, and when another boy asked him to do a thing, at it he went at once, without so much as thinking whether it was right or not; so he filled his pockets with stones, and began running and shouting with the other boys. " Hulloa ! there s a chipping bird/ said one ; " I ll hit him." " Look at that robin ! " bawled another ; " send a stone at him. 0, there s a blue bird ! now for him ! " I am happy to say that these boys missed their hits, gener ally, for they had much worse intentions than they had skill to execute. While they were thus running about, a nice white cat came stepping along the top of a fence, putting down her paws as 96 A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. daintily as any lady. "Hulloa! there s a cat ; now for fun/ shouted Will Drake, as he let fly a stone, and then clashed after the cat. Puss was frightened, and scam pered with all her might ; and all three of the boys joined chase after her, and came tumbling, one after another, over the back yard fence of the place where Jamie lived. Now, Jamie s mother had been sitting at her window watching the whole affair ; and now she stood up, and called, in a very quiet way, " Jamie, come up here ; I have something to show you." The other two boys slunk away a lit tle. Jamie came up into his mother s room, all panting and hot, and began "Mamma, what do you want to show me?" Now Jamie s mamma was a very kind and tender-hearted woman, and nothing seemed more dreadful to her than cruelty to any animal. Now, some mothers, who felt as she did, would have seized Jamie A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 97 by the arm, and said, " Here, you naughty boy ; I saw you stoning birds over in the lot ; if you ever do such a thing again, I shall punish you." But Jamie s mother had reflected about these things, and made up her mind that when little boys did cruel things, it was more because they were thoughtless, than because they at heart were cruel ; and, therefore, instead of blaming him harshly, she set out to make him think. So, when Jamie came in, she washed his heated face and hands, and then took from a drawer a small black box, which she wound up with a key like a watch-key. As soon as the box was set down, it began to play a most beautiful tune, and Jamie was astonished and de lighted. " What a curious box ! " said he ; " who did make it ? " " I do not know," suid his mother ; " but why do you think it is curious ? " " Why, it is curious to see a musical 7 98 A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. instrument shut up in such a little box. Why, I could carry this about in my pocket. I wish twas mine, and I d set it a-going, and put it in my pocket, some day, and then I could make the boys stare." " But," said his mother, " if you think it strange to see a musical instrument put in a little box, what would you think if I could tell you of one which was put in a bird s throat?" 66 In a bird s throat ! " said Jamie ; " who ever heard of such a thing ? " " Well," answered his mother, " there is a boy in this room who has been listen ing this morning to a little instrument which is inside of a bird s throat, and which can make sweeter music than this box ; and yet he did not seem to wonder at it at all." Jamie looked wondering at his mother. " When you went into the fields, did you not hear robins and blue-birds playing on little instruments in their throats, and A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 99 making all sorts of sweet sounds ? Look now at your little Canary bird hanging in the window, and see when he sings how his throat trembles." " 0, I know what you mean now/ said Jamie ; " you mean my little Canary bird is like a music box. "Well, but what sort of an instrument has he got in his throat ? I m sure I don t know." " Why, he has a little, fine, soft flute, that can play as many notes as a piano." "A flute in his throat," said Jamie, laughing ; " what a funny idea ! " " It is even so," said his mother. " The little pipe through which the Canary bird plays his tunes is more curiously made than any flutes which any instrument maker ever formed ; it is so small, yet so perfect ; it fits into his throat so easily as never to interrupt his eating or breath ing ; and it turns whichever way he bends his head. Now, did you ever hear of any musical instrument that was as curious as this ? " 100 A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. "Now, it is strange," said Jamie; "I might have heard a bird sing a month, and never have thought of all this ; but now I do think of it, it seems very curi ous. "But, mother, what is this little flute made of?" " It is made of little elastic rings." 66 Elastic ! what is that ? " said Jamie. " Why, like India rubber, springy and easily bent ; and its being made of so many little elastic rings is the reason why he can turn and bend his throat without any inconvenience, which he could not do if it were a straight, stiff pipe, like a flute. "But," continued his mother, "these little bright eyes that your bird has are more wonderful than any thing I have yet told you of; but the contrivance is so very complicated that I do not think I can make you understand it." " What is complicated ? " said Jamie. " The machinery in the inside of my A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 101 watch is complicated ; that is, it is made up of a great many parts which answer many different purposes. And there is a ma chinery inside of one of those little birds eyes that is more complicated still." " What, that little dot of an eye, not bigger than a pin head ? " " Well, let me tell you ; inside of that little eye is a contrivance by which, when the bird is looking at you, an exact pic ture of you is painted on the back of his eye." " It must be a very small picture," said Jamie. 66 Of course it is," said his mother, " but still it is a picture exactly like you ; every line and every color in your face is painted exactly on the back of that little eye." " Pray, how is it done ? " said Jamie. " That, my dear boy, is the machinery which I told you was so complicated that I cannot hope to make you understand it. There is a contrivance just like it in 102 A TALK ABOUT BIKDS. your own eye, and in the eye of every animal ; but it is more curious in a bird s eye, because it is so very small." "What, do we all have pictures painted on the back of our eyes? Is that the way we see ? " " Yes, that is the way ; and when you are older you will be able to understand the wonderful and beautiful contrivance by which this is done. It has cost learned men much study to find it out, and they have discovered that the way in which the eye of a bird is made in some re spects is more curious than our own." "Well, mamma," said Jamie, "you have convinced me of one thing ; and that is, that there is a great deal more to be learned about a little bird than I ever supposed." " But, Jamie, I have not yet told you half. Every bone in this little bird s body is as carefully made and finished as if that bone were the only thing the Creator had to make ; and the joints of them are A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 103 curiously contrived, so that the little fel low can hop, and spring, and turn all day, and yet nothing grates or gets out of order. They all move so springy and easily, that I doubt whether he ever thought that he had a joint in his body or not. Then he has contrivances in his little stomach for dissolving his food, and turning it into blood, and he has blood vessels to carry it all over his body, and he has nerves to feel with, and he has muscles to move with." "Now, mother, I don t know what nerves and muscles are," said Jamie. u Nerves are what you feel with. You eat, and the nerves of your mouth give you your taste. The nerves of your nose give you smell. The nerves of your eyes see, and the nerves of your ears enable you to hear, and the nerves that cover your whole body enable you to feel. These nerves all come from a very large nerve, that runs down through the mid dle of your back bone, and which is com- 104 A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. monly called the spinal marrow ; and they go through the whole body, dividing and branching out, till they form a network covering over the whole of it, so that you cannot put the point of a pin any where without touching a nerve." " Mother, has a bird just such nerves?" a Very much the same." " And what are muscles ? " "Did you never pull a piece of lean meat into little strings ? " said his mother. " Yes," said Jamie. " Well, a muscle is a bundle of such little strings, and these strings generally end in a strong, tough cord, called a ten don. This muscle has the power of shrink ing up short, like India rubber; and when it shrinks it pulls the tendon, and the tendon pulls whatever it is fastened to. I can show you some tendon in a moment. Pull the back of your hand ; don t you find that there is a tough, hard cord runs down from every finger ? these are ten- A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 105 dons. Now take hold tight round your arm, and shut up your hand." Jamie did so, and exclaimed, "0, mother, when I shut up my hand, I feel something move up here by my elbow." " That is the muscle," said his mother ; "you feel it drawing up short, and it pulls the tendons, and these tendons pull down your fingers." Jamie amused himself some time with opening and shutting his hand, and then he said, " Well, are all the movements that we make done in the same way, by muscles and tendons?" "Yes," said his mother, "and all the motions of the animals. There are dozens and dozens of muscles, shrinking, and stretching, and pulling about in little Cherry every few moments, and yet none of them wear out, or break, or get out of order, or give him the least trouble." " I guess Cherry don t think much about them," said Jamie, as he watched 106 A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. the little fellow hopping about in his cage. "Poor little Cherry," said his mother, "he cannot understand how much God has done for him, with what watchful care he has made his little body, how carefully he has guarded it from all kinds of suf fering, and how many beautiful contri vances there are in it to make him happy." " No, indeed," said Jamie ; " if he did he would love God." " Well, Jamie," said his mother, " how should you feel, if you had contrived some curious and beautiful little play thing, and just as you had it all nicely finished ofi^ some boy should come along with a great stick, and knock it all to pieces ? " " Feel ? " said Jamie ; " why, I should be mad enough." "And suppose that some gentleman should invite you and two or three other boys to his house, and should show you A TALK ABOUT BIRDS. 107 into a large hall fall of most beautiful pictures, and looking glasses, and flowers, and every kind of beautiful things, and you should amuse yourselves with break ing his looking glasses, and beating dow r n his flowers, and pulling to pieces all his curious and beautiful things ; how do you think he would feel?" Why, I should think he would feel very angry, to b$ sure." " Well, Jamie, when little boys go out into the woods and fields which God has filled with beautiful trees and flowers, and with hundreds of little happy birds, all so curiously and beautifully made, and amuse themselves only with throwing stones at them, and killing them, must not God be displeased ? " " Certainly, I should think he must," said Jamie. After a few minutes, he added, " And it is a great deal worse to kill little birds than it is to break looking glasses, and such things, because little birds can feel, you know." 108 THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. " Yes/ said his mother, " and the care with which God has made them shows how much he has thought about them, and how careful he has been to do all he can to make them happy. The Bible says, his tender mercies are over all his works ; he is not merely good to every thing, but he is tender and careful in all he does, as a mother is tender in taking care of a little helpless infant. Now," said his mamma, " I am going to read you a little story." IT was a bright and beautiful morning in April. The snows had melted into the little brooks, and the little brooks ran rat tling and gurgling about among the green, mossy stones. The violet had opened its fair blue eyes to look forth from its tufts of leaves ; the broad blades of the water flag and the blue lily were shooting up fresh and green; the yellow dandelions spotted the grass, and tufts of golden THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. 109 cowslips grew close by the water. The little leaves had just begun to show them selves, and looked like a thin green veil spread over the trees. The little birds had come back a long way through the air from the various countries where they had been spending the w r inter, and were filling the whole air with music. On a mossy rail, a part of the orchard fence, sat two beautiful bluebirds enjoy ing the bright sunshine, and twittering and chattering to each other with all their might. This little pair of birds, the last year, had made their nest in this very or chard, and brought up a whole family of little birds. All winter they had been chirping about and enjoying themselves among the warm, sunny valleys of the Bahama Isles ; and now they had come back again to go to house keeping in the old orchard. In the very middle of this peaceful or chard was a spreading apple tree, whose bending branches almost touched the 110 THE NEST IN THE ORCHAKD. ground all around. The tall grass and clover grew up so high under this tree as to mix with the leaves and fruit on the end of these boughs, and underneath there was a delicious cool little room, roofed by the branches, where all summer long no creature had admission but the birds, and the little flies, and the honey bees for this tree stood in the very middle of the orchard, and Farmer Brown kept good watch that no boys should get into it to trample down the long grass before mow ing time. Well, in the trunk of this old tree, just where the branches parted, was a snug little hole. It was exactly big enough for a bird to build its nest in, and it was so situated that any one stand ing under the tree and looking up could not have thought of there being any hole there. A safer little house for a bird could never have been found ; and here these little birds had concluded to build their nest. So they set to work and picked out all THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. Ill * the rubbish and dry sticks that had fallen into the hole, and after they had nicely cleaned it out, they laid the foundation of their little house with small twigs, which they plastered firmly together with mud ; then they picked up straw and hay for the next layer, and wove them into a little round nest; and after that they flew all over the neighborhood to pick up all the stray feathers, and soft bits of wool or moss that they could find, to line the inside and make it soft and warm. It took these little birds two or three days before their nest was finished. But on the evening of the third day, just as the long, bright, beams of the setting sun were darting between the apple trees of the old orchard, the two little birds might have been seen chirping and chatting together over their finished nest in the happiest manner in the world. " What a lucky thing it was, my dear," said the little wife, " that you found such a snug hole ! I am sure nobody will ever 112 THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. find us out here. We can fly all about under this great tree, and nobody will ever see us or suspect what we are doing." " And, my dear/ said the little husband, u I am delighted with your weaving here, in the inside of the house. How nicely you have worked in that little bit of red silk on one side ! I had no idea, when the good woman swept that piece out of doors, that you could make so much of it. Then how soft and warm the wool is. Ah, very few bluebirds can make a handsomer nest than this." "Yes," said the wife, "and there is almost a yard of lace woven into it. I picked it off from a bush, where an old lady had hung it on purpose for me." When the old apple tree began to put forth its pink buds, after a few days five little blue eggs made their appearance in the nest, and then the mother bird began to sit ; while her mate spent all his time either in flying about to look up food for her, or perching about in different parts THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. 113 of the tree, and entertaining her with his music. At length the buds on the old tree opened, and it grew white with fra grant blossoms, and five little downy birds were to be seen in the nest. No body can say how delighted both parents were. They carefully picked out all the broken bits of the eggs from their nest, and then, while one Would sit with wings outspread to keep the little creatures warm, the other would range about and get flies and worms to feed them. Little birds are amazingly hungry ; and when either parent returned with food, you might have seen five little red mouths gaping wide open, all ready to receive their portion. And when their hunger was fully satisfied, the mother would nes tle over them with her warm feathers, and the father bird would sit beside her, and they would admire the beautiful sheet of white blossoms over their heads, and have long talks about their little family, and how soon they would be learning to 8 114 THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. fly, and then what journeys they would take with them, and what good times they would have. One beautiful morning, while the dew drops were yet twinkling among the blos soms, the father bird prepared to go on one of his voyages after food. He bade good morning to his little family in a sweet song, which he sung on the highest branch of the apple tree, and then soared off into the blue sky, as happy a little bird as ever was seen. Just at the same time, a man with a large bag tied about his neck, and a long gun in his hand, made his appearance in the fields. Pretty soon he saw our poor little bluebird, as he was sitting on the top of a tree with a worm in his mouth, which he was just going to carry home to his family. So he drew up his gun and fired, and down fell the poor little bluebird. The man walked to the spot and picked him THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. 115 U p the shot had gone through his head, and he was quite dead. K What could he want to shoot the little birds for ?" said Jamie. "My dear boy, some people have an absurd way of thinking that birds will injure the fruit; and as there were one or two ripe cherry trees in this orchard, the man thought they would get his cherries. It is a very foolish idea ; for little birds, in fact, do more good by devouring the grubs and insects that injure trees and plants, than all the harm they can do by helping themselves now and then to a little fruit." Well, it came noon, and the mother bird remained in the old apple tree, still brooding and tending her little ones, and wondering that their poor father did not return as he had promised. Very soon the long shadows stretched to the east, and showed that the afternoon was far spent; and still he did not return, and 116 THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD. the mother bird wondered, and the little birds began to call for their food. So the mother left the little birds, and went to the top of the tree, and began to call on her husband ; but she could not make him hear. She fluttered around among the trees of the orchard, looking for him, and calling him ; but in vain. Then she picked up some food for her little ones, and re turned home weary and sad. The dark night came, but no kind father returned. And in the morning there was no merry song in the old tree, for the father was gone and the mother was silent. But she used to fly about in the orchard picking up food for her little ones as well as she was able. While she was thus flying about one day, the same man, with the gun on his shoulder, came spying about the old or chard, for he had said that it was an excellent place to shoot birds. Pretty soon he saw the poor mother picking worms from a mossy rail, and pointed his gun at her. The shot struck her wing THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD, 117 and went into her side ; but still she was not killed ; and all bleeding as she was, she thought she would try to get home to her little ones once more. When she came to the old apple tree, her little strength was quite spent her feathers were dripping with blood ; and when she had put the food she had gathered into their mouths, she fell down at the foot of the tree. She fluttered a few mo ments, and then her soft little eyes closed, and the poor mother bird was dead. A great while after, when the old apple tree was loaded with bright yellow apples, the farmer s men mowed the grass under the tree, and one of the boys thought he would go up and shake off some apples. While he was climbing, he put his hand into the hole and found our bird s nest. He drew it out, and there were five little dead birds in it ! So much for shoot ing little birds ! 2&L RECTDJ-D 1965 ___ INJiRHBRARY 9- ,D 2lA-60rn-4, 64 (E4555slO)476B Berkeley U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CDSSESS533