Stories of Childhood Part 13

Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?

For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms; I tremble to approach an angry G.o.d, And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.

"Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence, Fain promise never more to disobey; But should my Author health again dispense, Again I might forsake fair virtue's way, Again in folly's path might go astray, Again exalt the brute and sink the man.

Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan, Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran?

"O thou great Governor of all below, If I might dare a lifted eye to thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, And still the tumult of the raging sea; With that controlling power a.s.sist even me Those headstrong furious pa.s.sions to confine, For all unfit I feel my powers to be To rule their torrent in the allowed line; O, aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE."

It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and Isabella Keith's letters written immediately after her death. Old and withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss!

"K. PHILIP (_to_ CONSTANCE).

You are as fond of grief as of your child.

CONSTANCE.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

Then I have reason to be fond of grief."

What variations cannot love play on this one string!

In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead Maidie: "Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled the finest waxwork. There was in the countenance an expression of sweetness and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had antic.i.p.ated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. To tell you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you was the constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she said to Dr.

Johnstone, 'If you let me out at the New Year, I will be quite contented.' I asked her what made her so anxious to get out then. 'I want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the sixpence you gave me for being patient in the measles; and I would like to choose it myself.' I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain of her head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O mother! mother!'"

Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture the _animosa infans_ gives us of herself,--her vivacity, her pa.s.sionateness, her precocious love-making, her pa.s.sion for nature, for swine, for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances! We don't wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours.

The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night Supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The company had all come,--all but Marjorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were there,--all were come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. "Where's that bairn? what can have come over her? I'll go myself and see." And he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell rang, and in came Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her in ecstasy,--"hung over her enamored." "Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you"; and forthwith he brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted her up and marched to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him; and then began the night, and such a night! Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and she gave them _Constance's_ speeches and "Helvellyn," the ballad then much in vogue, and all her _repertoire_,--Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.

We are indebted for the following to her sister: "Her birth was 15th January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her Bibles.[3] I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, never was an hour in bed.

[Footnote 3: "Her Bible is before me; _a pair_, as then called; the faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament over Jonathan."]

"I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's day came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, 'O, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.'

Again, when lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'O yes! if you would just leave the room-door open a wee bit, and play "The Land o' the Leal," and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself' (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and, while walking her up and down the room, she said, 'Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you like?' He said, 'Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, 'Few are thy days, and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, 'Just this once'; the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, 'to her loved cousin on the author's recovery,' her last work on earth;--

'Oh! Isa, pain did visit me; I was at the last extremity: How often did I think of you, I wished your graceful form to view, To clasp you in my weak embrace, Indeed I thought I'd run my race: Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken, But still indeed I was much shaken, At last I daily strength did gain, And oh! at last, away went pain; At length the doctor thought I might Stay in the parlor all the night; I now continue so to do, Farewell to Nancy and to you.'

"She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 'My head, my head!' Three days of the dire malady, 'water in the head,' followed, and the end came."

"Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly."

It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this: the fervor, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling child,--Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns touching the kindred chord, her last numbers "wildly sweet" traced with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last enemy and friend,--_moriens canit_,--and that love which is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end.

"She set as sets the morning star, which goes Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides Obscured among the tempests of the sky, But melts away into the light of heaven."

LITTLE JAKEY.

BY MRS. S.H. DEKROYFT.

I.

At the time of the opening of this story, there were in the rear of the New York Inst.i.tution for the Blind, two small but pleasant parks, full of trees and winding walks, where the birds sang, and blind boys and girls ran and played. The little gate between the two parks was usually left open during school hours, and one bright June morning, while the sun was drinking up the dews from the leaves and the flowers, I chanced to be walking there, and I heard the little gate opening and shutting, opening and shutting; rattle went the chain, then bang went the gate, until suddenly, as I was pa.s.sing it, a little voice saluted me, so sweet and musical and up so high, that for the moment I almost fancied one of the birds had stopped his song to speak with me.

"I know you. I knows ven you come. Sometimes you tell stories to ze girls, and I hear you ven I bees dis side."

Going up and putting my hand on the little speaker's head, I said,--

"Pray, what little girl is this here, with these long pretty curls, swinging on the gate?"

"I bees not a girl,--I bees a boy, I be."

Then pa.s.sing my hand down over a little coat covered with b.u.t.tons, I said,--

"Surely, so you are a little boy; but what is your name?"

"My name bees Little Jakey; dot is my name."

"Little Jakey! Indeed! and pray, when did you come here?"

Quick as thought his little foot struck out against the post again, and the gate went flying to and fro, as before; then coming to a sudden halt, he said,--

"Vell, I tink I tell you. I bees here von Sunday and von Sunday and _von_ Sunday; so long I bees here."

"How old are you, Jakey?"

"I bees seving; dot is my old,--dot is how old I bees."

"And can you not see?"

"No, I not see. Ven Gott make my eyes, my moder say he not put ze light in zem."

"And are you going to school here, Jakey?"

"Yes, some ze time I go in ze school, and I read ze letters mit my fing-er. Von letter vot live on ze top ze line, I know him, ven I put my fing-er on him; hees name bees A; and von oder letter, I know him, ven I put my fing-er on him,--round like ze hoop; hees name bees O."

"Who teaches you the letters, Little Jakey?"

"Ca.s.sie, ce teach me, but all ze time ce laugh, ven I say ze vords; so Miss Setland sen her avay, and now Libbie, ce teach me. But not much I go in ze school. I come down here mit ze birds in ze trees. Up to ze house ze birds not go. Eddy and Villy, and all ze boys, ven zey play, make big noise, and zey scare ze birds. But down here zey not scare, and all ze time zey sing."

"You love the birds, Jakey?"

"Yes, I love ze birds. I love von bird up in dot tree. You not see him vay high dare? Ven I have eat my dinner in ze morning, I come down here, and ven I have eat my dinner in ze noon, I come down here; and all ze time, ven I come, he sing. Sometimes some oder birds come in ze tree, and zey sing mit him; but all ze time he sing. I vish I sing like ze birds. I vish I have vings, and I go vay high in ze sky, vare ze stars be. Gott make ze stars, and Georgy say dot zey shine vay down in ze vater, he see zem dare; and von time I tell him dot he vill get me von mit hees hook vot he catch ze fishes mit; but he laugh and say dot he cannot. But I tink I see ze stars ven I come im Himmel mit"--