The Children's Portion Part 22

"Did you compose it?" she asked; "you a child! And the words? Would you like to come to my concert?" she asked.

"Oh, yes!" and the boy's eyes grew bright with happiness; "but I couldn't leave my mother."

"I will send somebody to take care of your mother for the evening, and there is a crown with which you may go and get food and medicine. Here is also one of my tickets. Come to-night; that will admit you to a seat near me."

Almost beside himself with joy, Pierre bought some oranges, and many a little luxury besides, and carried them home to the poor invalid, telling her, not without tears, of his good fortune.

When evening came and Pierre was admitted to the concert hall he felt that never in his life had he been in such a place. The music, the myriad lights, the beauty, the flashing of diamonds and rustling of silk, bewildered his eyes and brain.

At last she came, and the child sat with his glance riveted on her glorious face. Could he believe that the grand lady, all blazing with jewels, and whom everybody seemed to worship, would really sing his little song?

Breathlessly he waited--the band, the whole band, struck up a plaintive little melody. He knew it, and clasped his hands for joy. And oh, how she sang it! It was so simple, so mournful. Many a bright eye dimmed with tears, and naught could be heard but the touching words of that little song.

Pierre walked home as if moving on air. What cared he for money now?

The greatest singer in all Europe had sung his little song, and thousands had wept at his grief.

The next day he was frightened at a visit from Madame Malibran. She laid her hands on his yellow curls, and talking to the sick woman said: "Your little boy, madame, has brought you a fortune. I was offered this morning, by the best publisher in London, 300 pounds for his little song, and after he has realized a certain amount from the sale, little Pierre, here, is to share the profits. Madame, thank G.o.d that your son has a gift from heaven."

The n.o.ble-hearted singer and the poor woman wept together. As to Pierre, always mindful of Him who watches over the tired and tempted, he knelt down by his mother's bedside and offered a simple but eloquent prayer, asking G.o.d's blessing on the kind lady who had deigned to notice their affliction.

The memory of that prayer made the singer more tender-hearted, and she, who was the idol of England's n.o.bility, went about doing good. And in her early, happy death, he who stood beside her bed and smoothed her pillow and lightened her last moments by his undying affection, was little Pierre of former days, now rich, accomplished, and the most talented composer of his day.

TOM.

BY REV. C. H. MEAD.

Never did any one have a better start in life than Tom. Born of Christian parents, he inherited from them no bad defects, moral or physical. He was built on a liberal plan, having a large head, large hands, large feet, large body, and within all, a heart big with generosity. His face was the embodiment of good nature, and his laugh was musical and infectious. Being an only child there was no one to share with him the lavish love of his parents. They saw in him nothing less than a future President of the United States, and they made every sacrifice to fit him for his coming position. He was a prime favorite with all, and being a born leader, he was ungrudgingly accorded that position by his playmates at school and his fellows at the university.

He wrestled with rhetoric, and logic, and political economy, and geometry, and came off an easy victor; he put new life into the dead languages, dug among the Greek roots by day and soared up among the stars by night. None could outstrip him as a student, and he easily held his place at the head of his cla.s.s. The dullest scholar found in him a friend and a helper, while the brighter ones found in his example, an incentive to do their best.

In athletic sports, too, he was excelled by none. He could run faster, jump higher, lift a dumb-bell easier, strike a ball harder, and pull as strong an oar as the best of them. He was the point of the flying wedge in the game of foot-ball, and woe be to the opponent against whom that point struck. To sum it all up, Tom was a mental and physical giant, as well as a superb specimen of what that college could make out of a young man. But unfortunately, it was one of those inst.i.tutions that developed the mental, trained the physical, and starved the spiritual, and so it came to pa.s.s ere his college days were ended, Tom had an enemy, and that enemy was the bottle.

The more respectable you make sin, the more dangerous it is. An old black bottle in the rough hand of the keeper of a low dive, would have no power to cause a clean young man to swerve from the right course, but he is a hero ten times over, who can withstand the temptation of a wine gla.s.s in the jeweled fingers of a beautiful young lady. Tom's tempter came in the latter form, and she who might have spurred him on to the highest goal, and whispered in his ear, "look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright," started him down a course which made him learn from a terrible experience that "at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Does any one call a gla.s.s of wine a small thing? Read Tom's story and then call it small, if you dare! Whatever he did was done with his might, drinking not excepted. He boasted of his power to drink much and keep sober, while he laughed at the companions who imbibed far less and went to bed drunk. At first Tom was the master and the bottle his slave, but in three years' time they changed places. When too late, his parents discovered that the college had sent back to them a ripe scholar, a trained athlete and a drunkard.

The mother tried to save her son, but failing in every effort, her heart broke and she died with Tom's name on her lips. The father, weighed down under the dead sorrow and the living trouble, vainly strove to rescue his son, and was found one night in the att.i.tude of prayer, kneeling by the side of the bed where his wife's broken heart a few months before had ceased to beat. He died praying for his boy!

One evening as the sun was setting, a man stood leaning against the fence along one of the streets of a certain city. His clothes were ragged, his hands and face unwashed, his hair uncombed and his eyes bleared; he looked more like a wild beast hunted and hungry, than a human being. It was Tom. The boys gathered about him, and made him the object of their fun and ridicule. At first he seemed not to notice them, but suddenly he cried out: "Cease your laughter until you know what you are laughing at. Let me talk to my master while you listen."

He pulled a bottle from his pocket, held it up, and looking at it with deep hatred flashing from his reddened eyes, he said:

"I was once your master; now I am your slave. In my strength you deceived me; in my weakness you mock me. You have burned my brain, blistered my body, blasted my hopes, bitten my soul and broken my will.

You have taken my money, destroyed my home, stolen my good name, and robbed me of every friend I ever had. You killed my mother, slew my father, sent me out into the world a worthless vagabond, until I find myself a son without parents, a man without friends, a wanderer without a home, a human being without sympathy, and a pauper without bread.

Deceiver, mocker, robber, murderer--I hate you! Oh, for one hour of my old-time strength, that I might slay you! Oh, for one friend and some power to free me from this slavery!"

The laugh had ceased and the boys stood gazing on him with awe. A young lady and gentleman had joined the company just as Tom began this terrible arraignment of his master, and as he ceased, the young lady stepped up to him and earnestly said: "You have one friend and there is one power that can break your chains and set you free."

Tom gazed at her a moment and then said:

"Who is my friend?"

"The King is your friend," she answered.

"And pray, who are you?" said Tom.

"One of the King's Daughters," was the reply "and 'In His Name' I tell you He has power to set you free."

"Free, free did you say? But, you mock me. A girl with as white a hand and as fair a face as yours, delivered me to my master."

"Then, in the name of the King whose daughter am I, even Jesus Christ the Lord, let the hand of another girl lead you to Him who came to break the chains of the captive and set the prisoner free."

Tom looked at the earnest face of the pleading girl, hesitated awhile, as his lip quivered and the big tears filled his eyes, and then suddenly lifting the bottle high above his head, he dashed it down on the pavement, and as it broke into a thousand pieces, he said:

"I'll trust you, I'll trust you, lead me to the King!"

And lead him she did, as always a King's Daughter will lead one who sorely needs help. His chains were broken, and at twenty-nine years of age Tom began life over again. He is not the man he might have been, but no one doubts his loyalty to the King. His place in the prayer circle is never vacant, and you can always find, him in the ranks of those whose sworn purpose it is to slay Tom's old master, King Alcohol!

STEVEN LAWRENCE, AMERICAN.

BY BARBARA YECHTON.

Stevie's papa usually wrote his name in the hotel registers as "Edward H. Lawrence, New York City, U. S. A.," but Stevie always entered his--and he wouldn't have missed doing it for anything--as "Steven Lawrence, American."

When Kate and Eva teased him about it, he would say: "Why, anybody could come from New York--an Englishman or a German or a Frenchman--without being born there, don't you see? but I'm a real out-and-out American, born there, and a citizen and everything, and I just want all these foreigners to know it, 'cause I think America's the greatest country in the world." Then the little boy would straighten his slender figure and toss back his curly hair with a great air of pride, which highly amused his two sisters. But their teasing and laughter did not trouble Stevie in the least. "Laugh all you like I don't care," he retorted, one day. "It's my way, and I like it," which amused the little girls all the more, for, as Eva said, "Everybody knew Stevie liked his own way, only he never had owned up to it before."

There was something, however, that did trouble the little boy a good deal: though he was born in New York City, he had no recollection of it or any other place in America, as his mamma's health had failed, and the whole family had gone to Europe for her benefit, when Stevie was little more than a year old. They had traveled about a good deal in the eight years since then, and Stevie had lived in some famous and beautiful old cities; but in his estimation no place was equal to his beloved America, of which Mehitabel Higginson had told him so much, and to which he longed to get back. I fancy that most American boys and girls would have enjoyed being where Stevie was at this time, for he and his papa and mamma, and Kate and Eva, and Mehitabel Higginson, were living in a large and quite grand-looking house in Venice. The entrance hall and the wide staircase leading to the next story were very imposing, the rooms were large, and the walls and high ceilings covered with elaborate carvings and frescoes; and when Stevie looked out of the windows or the front door lo! instead of an ordinary street with paved sidewalks, there were the blue shining waters of the lagoon, and quaint-shaped gondolas floating at the door-step or gliding swiftly and gracefully by.

The children thought it great fun to go sight-seeing in a gondola: they visited the beautiful old Cathedral of St. Mark, and admired the famous bronze horses which surmount Sansovino's exquisitely carved gates, sailed up and down the double curved Grand Ca.n.a.l, walked through the Ducal Palace and across the narrow, ill-lighted Bridge of Sighs--over which so many unfortunate prisoners had pa.s.sed never to return--and peeped into the dark, dismal prison on the other side of the ca.n.a.l.

It was all very novel and interesting, but Stevie told Mehitabel, in confidence, that he would rather, any day, listen to her reminiscences of her long-ago school days in her little New England village home, or, better still, to her stories of George Washington, and the other great spirits of the Revolutionary period, and of Abraham Lincoln and the men of his time. Stevie never tired of these stories. He knew Mehitabel's leisure hour, and curling himself up among the cushions on the settee beside her tea table, he would say, with his most engaging smile: "Now's just the time for a story, Hitty; don't you think so? And please begin right away, won't you, 'cause, you know, I'll have to be going to bed pretty soon."

He knew most of the stories by heart, corrected Miss Higginson if she left out or added anything in the telling, and always joined in when she ended the entertainment with her two stock pieces--"Barbara Freitchie" and "Paul Revere's Ride," which were great favorites with him. "Oh, how I would like to be a hero!" he said with a sigh, one afternoon, just after they had finished reciting "Paul Revere's Ride"

in fine style. Presently he added, thoughtfully: "Do you think, Hitty, that any one could be a hero and not know it? I suppose Washington and Paul Revere and all those others just knew every time they did anything brave."

Hitty wore her hair in short gray curls, on each side of her rather severe-looking face, and now they bobbed up and down as, she nodded her head emphatically. "Of course they did," she answered, with conviction. "You see my grandfather fought in the Revolution, so I ought to know. But," with an entire change of conversation, "bravery isn't the only thing in the world for a little boy to think of. He should try to be nice and polite to everybody; obedient to his mamma and gentle to his sisters; he shouldn't love to have his own way and go ordering people about. I don't think," with sudden a.s.surance, "you'd have found Washington or Paul Revere or Lincoln behaving that way."

"Pooh! that's all you know about it," cried Stevie, ungratefully, slipping down from his nest among the cushions; he did not relish the personal tone the conversation had taken. "Didn't Washington order his troops about? And anyway, Kate's just as 'ordering' as I am, and you never speak to her about it." Then, before the old housekeeper could answer, he ran out of the room.

You see that was Stevie's great fault; he was a dear, warm-hearted little fellow, but he did love to have his own way, and often this made him very rude and impatient--what they called "ordering"--to his sisters, and Hitty and the servants, and even disobedient to his mamma.

Stevie's mamma was very much troubled about this, for she dearly loved her little son, and she saw plainly that as the days went on instead of Stevie's getting the upper hand of his fault, his fault was getting the upper hand of him. So one day she and papa had a long, serious talk about Stevie, and then papa and Stevie had a long, serious talk about the fault. I shall not tell all that pa.s.sed between them, for papa had to do some plain speaking that hurt Stevie's feelings very much, and his little pocket-handkerchief was quite damp long before the interview was over.

Papa so seldom found fault that what he said now made a great impression on the little boy. "I didn't know I was so horrid, papa,"

he said, earnestly; "I really don't mean to be, but you see people are so trying sometimes, and then it seems as if I just have to say things.

You don't know how hard it is to keep from saying them."