The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children Part 4

"Ha, ha, ha!" again laughed the dwarf, "hear him talk! This is the way with all of them. No feet, does he say? Why, he has a thousand, if he only knew it; hands too, more than he can count. Ask him, sister, and see what he will say to you."

With that a soft little voice said cheerfully, "Give me your hand, that I may lead you on the upward part of your journey; for, poor little fellow, it is indeed true that you do not know how to live out of your cradle, and we must show you the way!" Encouraged by this kindly speech, Alba turned a little towards the speaker, and was about to say (as his mother had long ago taught him that he should in all difficulties), "I'll try," when a little cracking noise startled the whole company; and, hardly knowing what he did, Alba thrust out, through a slit in his shiny brown skin, a little foot reaching downward to follow the dwarf's lead, and a little hand extending upward, quickly clasped by that of the fairy, who stood smiling and lovely in her fair green garments, with a tender, tiny gra.s.s-blade binding back her golden hair. Oh, what a thrill went through Alba as he felt this new possession,--a hand and a foot! A thousand such, had they not said? What it all meant he could only wonder; but the one real possession was at least certain, and in that he began to feel that all things were possible.

And now shall we see where the dwarf led him, and where the fairy, and what was actually done in the underground tour?

The dwarf had need of his bright eyes and his skilful hands; for the soft, tiny foot intrusted to him was a mere baby, that had to find its way through a strange, dark world; and, what was more, it must not only be guided, but also fed and tended carefully: so the bright eyes go before, and the brown fingers dig out a roadway, and the foot that has learned to trust its guide utterly follows on. There is no longer any danger: he runs against no rocks; he loses his way among no tangled roots; and the hard earth seems to open gently before him, leading him to the fields where his own best food lies, and to hidden springs of sweet, fresh water.

Do you wonder when I say the foot must be fed? Aren't your feet fed? To be sure, your feet have no mouths of their own; but doesn't the mouth in your face eat for your whole body, hands and feet, ears and eyes, and all the rest? else how do they grow? The only difference here between you and Alba is, that his foot has mouths of its own, and as it wanders on through the earth, and finds any thing good for food, eats both for itself and for the rest of the body; for I must tell you, that, as the little foot progresses, it does not take the body with it, but only grows longer and longer and longer, until, while one end remains at home fastened to the body, the other end has travelled a distance, such as would be counted miles by the atoms of people who live in the under- world. And, moreover, the foot no longer goes on alone: others have come by tens, even by hundreds, to join it; and Alba begins to understand what the dwarf meant by thousands. Thus the feet travel on, running some to this side, some to that; here digging through a bed of clay, and there burying themselves in a soft sand-hill, taking a mouthful of carbon here, and of nitrogen there. But what are these two strange articles of food? Nothing at all like bread and b.u.t.ter, you think.

Different, indeed, they seem; but you will one day learn that bread and b.u.t.ter are made in part of these very same things, and they are just as useful to Alba as your breakfast, dinner, and supper are to you. For just as bread and b.u.t.ter, and other food, build your body, so carbon and nitrogen are going to build his; and you will presently see what a fine, large, strong body they can make. Then, perhaps, you will be better able to understand what they are.

Shall we leave the feet to travel their own way for a while, and see where the fairy has led the little hand?

QUERCUS ALBA'S NEW SIGHT OF THE UPPER-WORLD

It was a soft, helpless, little baby hand. Its folded fingers lay listlessly in the fairy's gentle grasp. "Now we will go up," she said.

He had thought he was going down, and he had heard the chipping-birds say he would never come back again. But he had no will to resist the gentle motion, which seemed, after all, to be exactly what he wanted: so he presently found himself lifted out of the dark earth, feeling the sunshine again, and stirred by the breeze that rustled the dry leaves that lay all about him. Here again were all his old companions,--the chipping-birds, his cousins, old grandfather Rubra, and, best of all, his dear mother. But the odd thing about it all was, that n.o.body seemed to know him: even his mother, though she stretched her arms towards him, turned her head away, looking here and there for her lost baby, and never seeing how he stood gazing up into her face. Now he began to understand why the chipping-birds said, "They never came back! they never came back!" for they truly came in so new a form that none of their old friends recognized them.

Every thing that has hands wants to work; that is, hands are such excellent tools, that no one who is the happy possessor of a pair is quite happy until he uses them: so Alba began to have a longing desire to build a stem, and lift himself up among his neighbors. But what should he build with? Here the little feet answered promptly, "You want to build, do you? Well, here is carbon, the very best material; there is nothing like it for walls; it makes the most beautiful, firm wood. Wait a minute, and we will send up some that we have been storing for your use."

And the busy hands go to work, and the child grows day by day. His body and limbs are brown now, but his hands of a fine shining green. And, having learned the use of carbon, these busy hands undertake to gather it for themselves out of the air about them, which is a great storehouse full of many materials that our eyes cannot see. And he has also learned that to grow and to build are indeed the same thing: for his body is taking the form of a strong young tree; his branches are spreading for a roof over the heads of a hundred delicate flowers, making a home for many a bushy-tailed squirrel and pleasant-voiced wood-bird. For, you see, whoever builds cannot build for himself alone: all his neighbors have the benefit of his work, and all enjoy it together.

What at the first was so hard to attempt, became grand and beautiful in the doing; and little Alba, instead of serving merely for a squirrel's breakfast, as he might have done had he not bravely ventured on his journey, stands before us a n.o.ble tree, which is to live a hundred years or more.

Do you want to know what kind of a tree?

Well, Lillie, who studies Latin, will tell you that Quercus means oak.

And now can you tell me what Alba's rustic cradle was, and who were his cousins Rubra and Coccinea?

We all have our treasure-boxes. Misers have strong iron-bound chests full of gold; stately ladies, pearl inlaid caskets for their jewels; and even you and I, dear child, have our own. Your little box with lock and key, that aunt Lucy gave you, where you have kept for a long time your choicest paper doll, the peac.o.c.k with spun-gla.s.s tail, and the robin's egg that we picked up on the path under the great trees that windy day last spring,--that is your treasure-box. I no less have mine; and, if you will look with me, I will show you how the trees and flowers have theirs, and what is packed away in them.

Come out in the orchard this September day, under the low-bowed peach- trees, where great downy-cheeked peaches almost drop into our hands. Sit on the gra.s.sy bank with me, and I will show you the peach-tree's treasure-box.

What does the peach-tree regard as most precious? If it could speak in words, it would tell you its seed is the one thing for which it cares most; for which it has worked ever since spring, storing food, and drinking in sunshine. And it is so dear and valued, because, when the peach-tree itself dies, this seed, its child, may still live on, growing into a beautiful and fruitful tree; therefore, the mother tree cherishes her seed as her greatest treasure, and has made for it a casket more beautiful than Mrs. Williams's sandal-wood jewel-box.

See the great crack where this peach broke from the bough. We will pull it open; this is opening the cover of the outside casket. See how rich was its outside color, but how wonderfully beautiful the deep crimson fibres which cling about the hard sh.e.l.l inside. For this seed cannot be trusted in a single covering; moreover, the inner box is locked securely, and, I am sorry to say, we haven't the key: so, if I would show you the inside, we must break the pretty box, with its strong, ribbed walls, and then at last we shall see what the peach-tree's treasure-box holds.

Here, too, are the apples, lying on the gra.s.s at our feet; we will cut one, for it too holds the apple-tree's treasure. First comes the skin, rosy and yellow, a pretty firm wrapping for the outside; but it sometimes breaks, when a strong wind tosses the apples to the ground, and sometimes the insects eat holes in it: so, if this were the only covering, the treasure would hardly be very safe. Therefore, next we come to the firm, juicy flesh of the apple,--seldom to be broken through by a fall, not often eaten through by insects; but lest even this should fail, we come at last, far in the middle, to h.o.r.n.y sheaths, or cells, built up together like a little fortress, surrounding and protecting the brown, shining seeds, which we reach in the very centre of all.

One thing more let us look at before we leave the apple. Cut it horizontally through the middle with a sharp knife, and try how thin and smooth a slice you can make; hold it up to the light, and we shall see something very beautiful. There in the centre of the round slice is the delicate figure of a perfect apple-blossom, with all its petals spread; for it was that lovely pink-and-white blossom from which the apple was formed,--a tiny green ball at first, which you may see in the spring, if you look where the blossoms have just fallen. As this little green apple grew, it kept in its very heart always the image of the fair blossom; and now that the fruit has reached this ripe perfection, we may still see the same form.

The pears, too, the apricots and plums, you may see for yourselves; you do not need me to tell their stories.

But come down to the garden, for there I have some of the oddest and prettiest boxes to show. The pease and beans have long canoes, satin- lined and waterproof. On what voyage they are bound, I cannot say.

The tall milk-weed that grew so fast all summer, and threatened to over- run the garden, now pays well for its lodging by the exquisite treasure which its rough-covered, pale-green bag holds. Press your thumb on its closed edges; for this casket opens with a spring, and, if it is ripe and ready, it will unclose with a touch, and show you a little fish, with silver scales laid over a covering of long, silken threads, finer and more delicate than any of the sewing-silk in your mother's work-box.

This silk is really a wing-like float for each scale; and the scales are seeds, which will not stay upon the little fish, but long to float away with their silken trails, and, alighting here and there, cling and seek for a good place to plant themselves.

See, too, how the poppy has provided herself with a deep, round box of a delicate brown color; the carved lid might have been made by the Chinese, it looks so much like their fine work. Full to the brim, this box is. The poppy is rich in the autumn; brown seeds by the hundred, packed away for another year's use.

Here are the balsams,--touch-me-nots, we used to call them when I was a child; for, Poor things, so slightly have they locked up their treasure, that even the baby's little finger will open the rough-feeling oblong casket with a snap and a spring, and send the jewels flying all over the garden-bed, where you will scarcely be able to find them again.

Roses have beautiful round, red globes to hold their precious seeds; and so firm and strong are they, that the winter winds and snows even do not break or open them. I have found them dashed with sea-spray, or on dusty roadsides; everywhere strong and safe, making the dullest day bright with their cheery color.

If we go to the wet meadows and stream-sides, we shall find how the scarlet cardinal has packed away its minute seeds in a pretty little box with two or three partings inside; and the cowslip has a cl.u.s.ter of oval bags as full as they can hold.

Among the rocks, hairb.a.l.l.s have their tiny five-parted chests; and the columbine, its standing group of narrow brown sacks, which show, if we open them, hundreds of tiny seeds.

But in the woods, the oak has stored her treasures in the acorn; the chestnut, in its bur which holds the nut so safely. The walnut and beech trees have also their hard, safe caskets, and the boys who go nutting know very well what is inside.

Autumn is the time to open these treasures. It takes all the spring and summer to prepare them, and some even need all of September too, before they are ready to open the little covers. But go into the garden and orchard, into the meadows and woods, and you have not far to look before finding enough to prove that the plants, no less than the children, have treasures to keep, and often most charming boxes to keep them in.

A PEEP INTO ONE OF G.o.d'S STOREHOUSES

Once there was a father who thought he would build for his children a beautiful home, putting into it every thing they could need or desire throughout their lives. So he built the beautiful house; and any one just to look at the outside of it would exclaim, How lovely! For its roof was a wide, blue dome like the sky, and the lofty rooms had arching ceilings covered with tracery of leaves and waving boughs. The floors were carpeted with velvet, and the whole was lighted with lamps that shone like stars from above. The sweetest perfumes floated through the air, while thousands of birds answered the music of fountains with their songs. And yet, when you have seen all this, you have not seen the best part of it: for the house has been so wonderfully contrived, that it is full of mysterious closets, storehouses, and secret drawers, all locked by magic keys, or fastened by concealed springs; and each one is filled with something precious or useful or beautiful to look at,--piles upon piles, and heaps upon heaps of wonderful stores. Every thing that the children could want, or dream of wanting, is laid up here; but yet they are not to be told any thing about it. They are to be put into this delightful home, and left to find it all out for themselves.

At first, you know, they will only play. They will roll on the soft carpets, and listen to the fountain and the birds, and wander from room to room to see new beauties everywhere; but some day a boy, full of curiosity, prying here and there into nooks and corners, will touch one of the hidden springs; a door will fly open, and one storehouse of treasures will be revealed. How he will shout, and call upon his brothers and sisters to admire with him; how they will pull out the treasures, and try to learn how to use the new and strange materials.

What did my father mean this for? Why did he give that so odd a shape, or so strange a covering? And so through many questions, and many experiments, they learn at last how to use the contents of this one storehouse. But do you imagine that sensible children, after one such discovery, would rest satisfied? Of course they would explore and explore; try every panel, and press every spring, until, one by one, all the closets should be opened, and all the treasures brought out. And then how could they show their grat.i.tude to the dear father who had taken such pains to prepare this wonderful house for them? The least they could do would be to try to use every thing for the purposes intended, and not to destroy or injure any of the precious gifts prepared so lovingly for their use.

Now, G.o.d, our loving Father, has made for us, for you and for me and for little Mage and Jenny, and for all the grown people and children too, just such a house. It is this earth on which we live. You can see the blue roof, and the arched ceilings of the rooms, with their canopy of leaves and drooping boughs, and the velvet-covered floors, and the lights and birds and fountains; but do you know any of the secret closets? Have you found the key or spring of a single one, or been called by your mother or father or brother or sister to take a peep into one of them?

If you have not, perhaps you would like to go with me to examine one that was opened a good many years ago, but contains such valuable things that the uses of all of them have not yet been found out, and their beauty is just beginning to be known.

The doorway of this storehouse lies in the side of a hill. It is twice as wide as the great barn-door where the hay-carts are driven in; and two railroad-tracks run out at it, side by side, with a little foot-path between them. The entrance is light, because it opens so wide; but we can see that the floor slopes downward, and the way looks dark and narrow before us. We shall need a guide; and here comes one,--a rough- looking man, with s.m.u.tty clothes, and an odd little lamp covered with wire gauze, fastened to the front of his cap. He is one of the workmen employed to bring the treasures out of this dark storehouse; and he will show us, by the light of his lamp, some of the wonders of the place.

Walk down the sloping foot-path now, and be careful to keep out of the way of the little cars that are coming and going on each side of you, loaded on one side, and empty on the other, and seeming to run up and down by themselves. But you will find that they are really pulled and pushed by an engine that stands outside the doorway and reaches them by long chains. At last we reach the foot of the slope; and, as our eyes become accustomed to the faint light, we can see pa.s.sages leading to the right and the left, and square chambers cut out in the solid hill. So this great green hill, upon which you might run or play, is inside like what I think some of those large anthills must be,--traversed by galleries, and full of rooms and long pa.s.sages. All about we see men like our guide, working by the light of their little lamps. We hear the echoing sound of the tools; and we see great blocks and heaps that they have broken away, and loaded into little cars that stand ready, here and there, to be drawn by mules to the foot of the slope.

Now, are you curious to know what this treasure is? Have you seen already that it is only coal, and do you wonder that I think it is so precious? Look a little closer, while our guide lets the light of his lamp fall upon the black wall at your side. Do you see the delicate tracery of ferns, more beautiful than the fairest drawing. See, beneath your feet is the marking of great tree-trunks lying aslant across the floor, and the forms of gigantic palm-leaves strewed among them. Here is something different, rounded like a nut-sh.e.l.l; you can split off one side, and behold there is the nut lying snugly as does any chestnut in its bur!

Did you notice the great pillars of coal that are left to uphold the roof? Let us look at them; for perhaps we can examine them more closely than we can the roof, and the sides of these halls. Here are mosses and little leaves, and sometimes an odd-looking little body that is not unlike some of the sea-creatures we found at the beach last summer; and every thing is made of coal, nothing but coal. How did it happen, and what does it mean? Ferns and palms, mosses and trees and animals, all perfect, all beautiful, and yet all hidden away under this hill, and turned into shining black coal.

Now, I can very well remember when I first saw a coal fire, and how odd it looked to see what seemed to be burning stones. For, when I was a little girl, we always had logs of wood blazing in an open fireplace, and so did many other people, and coal was just coming into use for fuel. What should we have done, if everybody had kept on burning wood to this day? There would have been scarcely a tree left standing; for think of all the locomotives and engines in factories, besides all the fires in houses and churches and schoolhouses. But G.o.d knew that we should have need of other fuel besides wood, and so he made great forests to grow on the earth before he had made any men to live upon it. These forests were of trees, different in some ways from those we have now, great ferns as tall as this house, and mosses as high as little trees, and palm-leaves of enormous size. And, when they were all prepared, he planned how they should best be stored up for the use of his children, who would not be here to use them for many thousand years to come. So he let them grow and ripen and fall to the ground, and then the great rocks were piled above them to crowd them compactly together, and they were heated and heavily pressed, until, as the ages went by, they changed slowly into these hard, black, shining stones, and became better fuel than any wood, because the substance of wood was concentrated in them.

Then the hills were piled up on top of it all; but here and there some edge of a coal-bed was tilted up, and appeared above the ground. This served for a hint to curious men, to make them ask "What is this?" and "What is it good for?" and so at last, following their questions, to find their way to the secret stores, and make an open doorway, and let the world in. So much for the fuel; but G.o.d meant something else besides fuel when he packed this closet for his children. At first they only understood this simplest and plainest value of the coal. But there were some things that troubled the miners very much: one was gas that would take fire from their lamps, and burn, making it dangerous for men to go into the pa.s.sages where they were likely to meet it. But by and by the wise men thought about it, and said to themselves, We must find out what useful purpose G.o.d made the gas for: we know that he does not make any thing for harm only. The thought came to them that it might be prepared from coal, and conducted through pipes to our houses to take the place of lamps or candles, which until that time had been the only light. But, after making the gas, there was a thick, pitchy substance left from the coal, called coal-tar. It was only a trouble to the gas-makers, who had no use for it, and even threw it away, until some one, more thoughtful than the others, found out that water would not pa.s.s through it. And so it began to be used to cover roofs of buildings, and, mixed with some other substances, made a pavement for streets; and being spread over iron-work it protected it from rust. Don't you see how many uses we have found for this refuse coal-tar? And the finest of all is yet to come; for the chemists got hold of it, and distilled and refined it, until they prepared from the black, dirty pitch lovely emerald-colored crystals which had the property of dying silk and cotton and wool in beautiful colors,--violet, magenta, purple, or green. What do you think of that from the coal-tar. When you have a new ribbon for your hat; or a pretty red dress, or your grandmamma buys a new violet ribbon for her cap, just ask if they are dyed with aniline colors; and if the answer is "Yes," you may know that they came from the coal-tar. Besides the dyes, we shall also have left naphtha, useful in making varnish, and various oils that are used in more ways than I can stop to tell you, or you would care now to hear. If your cousin Annie has a jet belt-clasp or bracelet, and if you find in aunt Edith's box of old treasures an odd- shaped brooch of jet, you may remember the coal again; for jet is only one kind of lignite, which is a name for a certain preparation of coal.

But here is another surprise of a different kind. You have seen boxes of hard, smooth, white candles with the name paraffin marked on the cover.

Should you think the black coal could ever undergo such a change as to come out in the form of these white candles? Go to the factory where they are made, and you can see the whole process; and then you will understand one more of G.o.d's meanings for coal.

And all this time I have not said a word about how, while the great forests lay under pressure for millions of years, the oils that were in the growing plants (just as oils are in many growing plants now) were pressed out, and flowed into underground reservoirs, lying hidden there, until one day not many years ago a man accidentally bored into one. Up came the oil, spouting and running over, gushing out and streaming down to a little river that ran near by. As it floated on the surface of the water (for oil and water will not mix, you know), the boys, for mischief, set fire to it, and a stream of fire rolled along down the river; proving to everybody who saw it, that a new light, as good as gas, had come from the coal. Now those of us who have kerosene lamps may thank the oil-wells that were prepared for us so many years ago.

When your hands or lips are cracked and rough from the cold, does your mother ever put on glycerin to heal them? If she does, you are indebted again to the coal oil, for of that it is partly made.

And now let me tell you that almost all the uses for coal have been found out since I was a child; and, by the time you are men and women, you may be sure that as many more will be discovered, if not from that storehouse, certainly from some of the many others that our good Father has prepared for us, and hidden among the mountains or in the deserts, or perhaps under your very feet to-day; for thousands of people walked over those hills of coal, before one saw the treasures that lay hidden there. I have only told you enough to teach you how to look for yourselves; a peep, you know, is all I promised you. Sometime we may open another door together.