Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad Part 48

In a Chinese village during a time of drought a missionary saw a row of idols put in the hottest and dustiest part of the road. He inquired the reason and the natives answered: "We prayed our G.o.ds to send us rain, and they wont, so we've put them out to see how they like the heat and dryness."

THE UNSOCIABLE DUCKS.

Three meadow birds went out in great glee, All in the sunshiny weather; Down by the pond, with the reeds waving free, Where the ducks were all standing together.

"Good day Mrs. Duck," said the three meadow birds, "From all the news we can gather, You're a very good friend, of very few words."

Then one flew away with a feather.

"Quack!" said the duck, "That feather is mine, I see through your ways altogether; You want our feathers, your own nests to line, All in the bright summer weather."

"What shall we use?" said the three meadow birds, "There's no good in moss or in heather."

"We don't care a straw," said the old blue drake, "If you line all your nests with sole leather."

"Quack! Quack! Quack! You must think we are slack!

You talk too polite altogether; We've had quite enough of your high-flown stuff, And we know, you are birds of a feather."

[Ill.u.s.tration: {d.i.c.kENS AND HIS CAT.}]

PUTTING OUT THE CANDLE.

Charles d.i.c.kens, for that is the name of the gentleman you see sitting by the table, wrote many books and stories. Some of his stories are about little children for grown folks to read, and others are for the children themselves. Mr. d.i.c.kens had a pet cat, that was always in his library. Strange to say, it had no name. That was no matter, because the cat could not hear. He was deaf. But he liked very much to be petted, and plainly showed sometimes that he was not pleased to have his master do any thing else. One evening, when Mr. d.i.c.kens was sitting at the table reading, his candle suddenly went out. He did not know why it should have done so, but he got up and lighted it. In a few moments it began to get dark again, and he looked up quickly at the candle, and saw puss just raising his paw to put it out. "What did he do?" He gave the cat a loving little pat and went on with his reading. What a sly cat was that to find a way to make his master notice him.

SULKY ARCHIE.

BY C. MANNERS SMITH.

"It must be nice to be a sailor, and I wish I was one. Every thing goes wrong and mother is always scolding me, and father is never done growling; I am getting tired of it."

The speaker was a little, round-cheeked lad, of about nine years of age. He was standing, with a tall, fair-haired girl, evidently his sister, on the edge of the river Wyncombe. He was not a lively boy. He was one of those thoughtful, gloomy little boys who are always dreaming; always thinking and imagining some fancied injury from either father or mother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "n.o.bODY CARES."]

Archie Phillips was the little boy's name, and he and his sister had got a holiday and were watching a party of older children from the Wynne High School, who had come down to the river to spend the afternoon. There was Algernon Wright with a large model yacht, and Willie Schofield, the Mayor's son, with a new silver-mounted fishing rod. They were all as happy and full of frolic as all boys in the spring-time of life ought to be. Little Archie was, however, of a morose temperament, and did not share in any of the amus.e.m.e.nts.

The village of Wynne is a fishing village, and is approached from the sea by a beautiful cove on the Cornish coast. The town is built on the slopes of the hills reaching down to the water's edge, and the river Wynne empties itself into the sea near by.

It is, indeed, a pleasant place. At the time of this story all the boys of Wynne, young and old, were crazy after maritime pursuits and sports. They spent the bulk of their holiday time either in sailing about the bay, or in fishing, bathing, or holding model yacht races in the cove.

"Why don't I have a yacht in the place of a silly ball? Why don't I have boys to play with instead of Lucy and Gyp? What do girls or dogs know about a top or a cat hunt? I'm disgusted! I'll go for a sailor!

I'll run away; there!"

The girl took no notice of this discourse. It was no new thing for her to hear grumbling from her brother, and she was accustomed to bear it without murmur or dissent. Presently she ran away, along the river bank, with her doll, to a shady place, where she knew the sun was not strong, and where some rushes overhung the path. There she could put her doll to sleep. It was no use asking Archie to join her. He was too old and too much of a man to enter into any such stupidity.

Presently Archie sat down in the shade, on the bal.u.s.trades of the churchyard and watched the glee of the High-Schoolboys with a sulky envy.

It was a glorious summer afternoon. The sky overhead was one vast, inverted field of blue, without a single speck of cloud. The hot sun was beating down almost perpendicularly, and the rays penetrated the leaves, shedding a lattice-work pattern on the ground.

"I know Ben Huntly, the boat-builder, will tell me how to go to sea.

He has been a sailor himself, and I know he will tell me all about it.

n.o.body cares; well, mother might, perhaps, a bit, but then, I don't know."

Then he paused in his musings and thought of all the injustice done to him by his mother. He thought, like all gloomy, wretched little boys, of all that was ill. He didn't for one moment remember, how, that very morning, the self-same, unjust mother, after packing up his little lunch-basket, had put her arms round his neck, and a little red-cheeked apple in his pocket, and told him to keep away from the river. Oh, no, he seemed to have quite forgotten all that.

Then the sun went behind a cloud and Archie felt the cool wind, which blew from the cove, on his cheek, so he jumped down from his musing place and sped away as fast as his legs would carry him toward the house of the boat-builder. He ran across the green, down the gra.s.sy slopes and across a stretch of shingly beach, to the cottage of his friend.

Ben Huntly, the boat-builder, was a good-hearted fellow, and was extremely fond of all the children of the village. He had that method possessed by few people of searching into the heart of a child and arguing with him in a manner suitable for a child's understanding.

Archie had often sought Ben's counsel when things seemed to go wrong, and it was seldom that the boat-builder had failed to convince the boy, even to his satisfaction, that he was wrong.

It was an off day for the boat-builder. He was sitting, smoking his pipe, in the cottage porch, and reading a well-thumbed copy of "Gray's Master Mariner." He welcomed Archie with a secret delight, for he knew, by his little friend's face, that he was brooding over some fancied injury, and it gave the boat-builder pleasure to talk his little friend out of his troubles.

"Well, Archie, what's new in the wind," said Ben, as he greeted the boy with a grasp of the hand. "It seems almost an age since I saw you, my boy."

Little Archie sat down on a large stone bench in the porch, and told Ben his story. His mother had been vexed with him that morning. She had asked him to call at the rectory with a message for Doctor Hart, and he wanted to cut gra.s.s at the time, and objected. His mother did not scold him, oh, no, Ben, she sent Carrie, who willingly took the message, and his father had called him a name. Then, again, he had no toys like other boys. Some had a pony; he couldn't have one. His father always answered his request for a pony with the reply that he couldn't afford one just then and he would see about it some day. If Ben would only tell him how to go to sea he would certainly run away the next day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AND DISCUSSED LITTLE ARCHIE'S PURPOSED FLIGHT."]

Now, Ben knew the character of little Archie better, perhaps, than his own mother did; so, when he had given the little boy a draught of cool milk from the cottage kitchen, Ben lit his pipe afresh, and took down an old telescope, a relic of his sea-faring days, from the wall. The young man and the boy then strolled across a low, level tract of sand, to a gra.s.sy hillock, formed by the current of the Wyncombe. Here they sat down in the fast waning twilight, and discussed little Archie's purposed flight.

"Yes, Archie," said Ben, "a sailor's life is well enough, if you don't mind hard beds and harder words. If you can eat salty meat and mouldy bread it's a fine life, Archie. There is no life I'd like better if they'd give you fresher water and not quite so many cruel blows. But, if you've made up your mind, Archie, and think you can go to bed nights in a rolling, tossing sea, with the wind howling and the rain pouring, and your mother thousands of miles away, looking at your little empty bed, I should think very seriously about it." Archie looked thoughtful, as the gloom deepened on his face, and silence fell on the pair for a time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCHIE THINKING OF BEN'S STORY.]

Suddenly Ben spied a French frigate looming against the darkening sky and showed it to Archie through the telescope. He explained all the parts of the ship and dwelt long in his answers to the lad's questions. He told little Archie how, early one stormy morning, he had been awakened from his bed in the cottage by the sound of guns away at sea, how he had descended to the beach with a lot of the villagers, to find the waves beating mercilessly over a great broken ship. He told how they had all stood, in the leaden morning, stricken with dread at the sight of the disaster they were all powerless to prevent; leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the great mountain of foaming sea which kept breaking on the rocks in the cove. He told farther, how, before all their eyes, the vessel had given one great heave backwards and sank beneath the waves forever; how they could faintly hear the heart-rending screams of women and children above the storm as the great waste of waters covered the struggling vessel. He told Archie that, on the following evening, while he was mending a boat down the bay, he came across something lying amongst a ma.s.s of sea-weed, and on turning it over had found it to be the dead body of a sailor--a fair, curly-headed youth.

"He was clad," said Ben, "in a pair of linen trowsers and a sea shirt, and the weeds and sand were all tangled in his hair. I raised him up from the beach and a small bundle fell out of his bosom. I laid him in my boat and went for Doctor Hart. It was the talk of the village for days. Dr. Hart found the bundle to contain a packet of letters written in a feeble hand and signed by the dead sailor's mother. They were loving letters of expected joy at her boy's return."

Ben would have gone on with the story, but he was attracted by the appearance of Archie. The little lad was sitting, with his pale face turned up to Ben, and with two great tears, as large as horse beans, in the corners of his eyes. On meeting Ben's gaze he broke down thoroughly and burst into a flood of tears, throwing his arms round the honest boat-builder's neck, sobbing on his breast.

"Oh, Ben, I don't want to leave mother; I am a wicked boy. If she were to die, Ben, what should I do? Do you think she is alive now, Ben? I don't want to go away, Ben."

The boat-builder soothed the little lad and smiled at the success of his purpose to divert the boy's mind.

It was now nearly night, and time for Archie to go home, so Ben took him on his shoulders and carried him to Mr. Archer's house, where the family were all waiting supper for the little boy.

Archie ran to his mother as soon as he got in and kissed her over and over again. He told her his little story, making the good woman's heart overflow with love for her little son.