Part 14

Ah! the poor captain! My eyes fill, my heart aches, as if I had known him years, instead of those few bright fairy days. Poor Captain Jack Wilson, with his handsome, sunshiny face, cheery voice, and manly ways! How little I thought there would be no “next summer” for him, when he so kindly helped me up on the “hurricane deck,” and into the cosy little “pilothouse” to look about; who was always sending me word to come “forward” or “aft,” because he knew I so much enjoyed seeing all beautiful things; who was all goodness, all kindness, and yet, after we left him that morning, found a grave in that cruel surf!

The afternoon of the day we said our last good by to him on the Chicago pier, we had taken a carriage to drive round the city, and reined up at the draw, for a boat to pass through. It was the “Lady Elgin” going forth to meet her doom! We kissed our hands gaily to her, in the bright sunshine, and that night as we slept safely in our beds at the hotel, that brave heart, with a little wailing babe pressed to it, had only a treacherous raft between him and eternity. The poor, poor captain! It was _so_ hard to give him up! As his strong arm sustained the helpless in that fearful night, may God support his own gentle ones in this their direst need.

This was indeed a gloomy ending to our lovely lake trip. We saw many things to interest us on our return to New York through Cleveland and Pittsburgh, but, as you may suppose, we were not very gay; every now and then, when we saw anything beautiful, we would say to each other, “The _poor_ captain!” You know there are some people whom it is so hard to “make dead;” and he was one of these. So strong, so sunshiny, so full of life! How blessed to know all this bright intelligence cannot be extinguished like a taper; else, how sad, my dear children, would life be to us.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG.

Not one girl in ten, now-a-days, knows how to sew. “’Twas not so in my time,” as the old ladies say, with an ominous shake of the head. No; in my school-days proper attention was given to rivers, bays, capes, islands, and cities in the forenoon—interspersed with, “I love, thou lovest, he, she, or it loves;” then, at the child’s hungry hour—(twelve)—we were dismissed to roast beef and apple dumplings. At three we marched back with a comfortable dinner under our aprons—with cool heads, rosy cheeks, and a thimble in our pockets; and never a book did we see all the blessed afternoon. I see her—the schoolma’am (angels see her now), with her benevolent face, and ample bosom—your flat-chested woman never should keep school, she has no room for the milk of human kindness; I see her sitting on that old cane-bottomed chair, going through the useless ceremony of counting noses, to see if there were any truants; and of course there never were from choice, for our teacher never forgot that she was once a child herself. I see her calling one after another to take from her hand a collar, or wristbands, or shirt-bosom to stitch, or some button-holes to make;—good old soul! and then, when we were all seated, she drew from her pocket some interesting book and read it aloud to us—not disdaining to laugh at the funny places, and allowing us to do the same—hearing, well pleased, all our childish remarks, and answering patiently all our questions concerning the story, or travels, or poetry she was reading, while our willing fingers grew still more nimble; and every child uttered an involuntary “Oh!” when the sun slanted into the west window, telling us that afternoon school was over.

Ah, those were the days!

I bless that schoolmistress every time I darn a stocking or make or mend a garment; and I am glad for her own sake that she is not alive now, to see the ologies and isms that are thumped into children’s heads, to the exclusion of things better suited to their age, and which all the French and Italian that ever was mispronounced by fashion, can never take the place of in practical life. Yes—girls _then_ knew how to sew. Where will you find a schoolgirl who does it neatly, now? who does not hate a needle, and most clumsily wields it when compelled to? and not by her own fault, poor thing! though her future husband may not be as ready as I to shield her with this excuse. Modern mothers never seem to think of this. Male teachers, with buttonless shirts on their own backs, seem to ignore it. No place for the needle _in_ school, and no time, on account of long lessons, out. Where is a modern girl to learn this all-important branch of education, I want to know? A fig for your worsted work, your distorted cats, and rabbits, and cows! Give me the girl who can put a shirt together, or the feminine of a shirt either—which, by the way, I could never see the impropriety of mentioning, any more than its male, though I am not going to make any old maid scream by saying “chemise”—of course not!

I am concerned for the rising generation; spinally in the first place, stitch-ically in the second. All the stitches they know of now are in their sides, poor things! I should like every schoolhouse to have a playground, where the pupils could stay when they were not in school—which should be almost never, until ventilation, recesses, and school hours are better regulated—in fact, till the whole system is tipped over, and buried fathoms under ground, and only spoken of as the tortures of the Inquisition are spoken of—with shuddering horror—as remnants of darkness and barbarism. I don’t want children to be burned up, but I don’t care how many badly conducted schoolhouses burn down. I consider every instance a special interposition of Providence; and even if some of the children _are_ burned—horrible as that is—is it not a quicker mode of death than that they are daily put through, poor, tortured things?

A NURSERY THOUGHT.

Do you ever think how much work a little child does in a day? How from sunrise to sunset, the little feet patter round—to us—so aimlessly. Climbing up here, kneeling down there, running to another place, but never _still_. Twisting and turning, and rolling and reaching, and doubling, as if testing every bone and muscle for their future uses. It is very curious to watch it. One who does so may well understand the deep breathing of the rosy little sleeper, as with one arm tossed over its curly head, it prepares for the next day’s gymnastics. Tireless through the day, till that time comes, as the maternal love which so patiently accommodates itself hour after hour to its thousand wants and caprices, real or fancied.

A busy creature is a little child. To be looked upon with awe as well as delight, as its clear eye looks trustingly into faces that to God and man have essayed to wear a mask. As it sits down in its little chair to ponder precociously over the white lie you thought it “funny” to tell it. As, rising and leaning on your knee, it says, thoughtfully, in a tone which should provoke a tear, not a smile—“I don’t believe it.” A lovely and yet a fearful thing is that little child.

THE USE OF GRANDMOTHERS.

A little boy, who had spilled a pitcher of milk, stood crying, in view of a whipping, over the wreck. A little playmate stepped up to him and said, condolingly:—Why, Bobby, haven’t you got a _grandmother_?

Who of us cannot remember this family mediator, always ready with an excuse for broken china, or torn clothes, or tardy lessons, or little white fibs? Who was it had always on hand the convenient stomach-ache, or headache, or toothache, to work on parental tenderness? Whose consoling stick of candy, or paper of sugar plums, or seed-cake, never gave out; and who always kept strings to play horse with, and could improvise riding whips and tiny kites, and dress rag-babies, and tell stories between daylight and dark to an indefinable amount to ward off the dreaded go-to-bed hour?

Who staid at home, none so happy, with the children while papa and mamma “went pleasuring?” Who straightened out the little waxen limbs for the coffin when papa and mamma were blind with tears? Who gathered up the little useless robes and shoes and toys, and hid them away from torturing sight till heaven’s own balm was poured into those aching hearts? “Haven’t you got a grandmother?” Alas! if only our grown up follies and faults might always find as merciful judgment, how many whom harshness and severity have driven to despair and crime, were now to be found useful and happy members of society!

THE INVENTOR OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.

Did you ever ride in an old-fashioned stage coach? cramped in your back, cramped in your legs, with a “crick” in your neck, while you were packed in, and strapped in so closely that it was next to impossible to move a toe or a finger? Was the day hot and dusty, and had the tired horses hill after hill to crawl and climb up? Was some fellow-passenger’s knee boring a hole in your back, and did you bump, and thump, and bob about, hour after hour, unable to sleep, and too weary almost to live, till, when you drew up at last to some little country tavern, before which Lafayette or Washington hung creaking on a sign, with John Smith’s Hotel underneath, you didn’t care whether you ever got out or not; whether you ever ate, or drank, or laughed again; whether your trunk was safe, or lost on the road, miles back? Well, if you have not experienced all this, perhaps your father or mother, or uncle, or aunt have; and they will tell you that is one of the slow methods in which people used to travel before railroads and cars were invented. Ah, but, you say, stages were safer than railroad cars! Were they? They never tipped over, I suppose, or rolled over a precipice of a dark night, or had defective wheels, or drunken drivers, or balky horses, or any thing of that sort. And if anybody was very sick, or dying, at a distance, they might not have been buried weeks, I suppose, before one could reach them.

Well, people after a while thought they might travel faster than this, and quite as safely, too.

George Stephenson, the great Railway Engineer, was one of the first who thought this, and worked hard, and long, to make it possible. I want to tell you about him, because it seems to me quite beautiful that a poor, uneducated boy, as he was, should have brought so great a thing to pass. I rejoice in it, because I love to think that in our country our most useful and best men have, many of them, been very poor and humble when young; and because I want every boy who reads this to feel encouraged to try what _he_ too can do, instead of folding his hands and saying, “oh, what’s the use? I was born poor, and I shall die poor; I’m ignorant, and I shall die ignorant. Who cares what becomes of _me_?” I tell you _I_ care for one, and if nobody cared, you ought to care _yourself_. It is very certain, if you _don’t_ care yourself, that nobody can do much for you. Well, George Stephenson was the son of a poor collier, in England. He was the second of six children, for whom their father and mother worked hard to find bread and butter. Little George lived like other working people’s children: played about the doors, went bird’s nesting now and then, or of errands to the village; and as he grew bigger, carried his father’s dinner to him when at work; or helped nurse his brothers and sisters at home; for in a poor man’s house, you know, every little hand and foot must do something in the way of helping. As to school, none of them thought of such a thing; it was as much as they could do to keep a roof over their heads, and something to eat and drink. Dewley Burn was the name of the place where the one-roomed cottage stood, in which George was born; and near which his father was employed, to tend the engine-fire near the coalpit. Robert Stephenson, George’s father, was a kind-hearted, pleasant man. You may know that, because all the young people of an evening used to go and sit round his engine-fire while he told stories to them; sometimes about Sinbad the Sailor; sometimes about Robinson Crusoe, and often something which he himself “made up” to please them. Of course “Bob’s engine-fire” was a great place. No stoop of a village tavern on “muster day” was ever more glorious to happy urchins. You can almost see the picture; the bright fire blazing, and rows of bright eyes glistening in its light, some black, some blue, some gray; curly locks and straight locks, slender lads, and fat lads; some with chins on their palms, and elbows on their knees, some flat on their backs or sides, on the ground; and all believing every word of Bob’s, as you now do storybooks, which they would have given their ears to get hold of, though I have my doubts, if they are better, after all, than were “Bob’s stories.” Now you are not to think because George’s father worked as a collier, that he had no love for beautiful things. On the contrary, he used to take nice long, breezy summer walks, whenever he got a chance, with his little son. And when George had grown up to be a man, and long after his good father’s white head was under the sod, George used to speak often of his lifting him up to look into a black-bird’s nest, and of the delight and wonder with which he gazed at the little peeping creatures for the first time. I dare say your father and mother can tell you some such little thing which _they_ remember about their childhood’s home, which stands out in their memory now, from the mist of years, like a lovely picture, sunny and glowing and untouched by time.

These are blessed memories to keep the heart green. They are like the little swaying wild flower that the dusty traveler sometimes finds in a rock crevice, breathing out its sweetness all the same as if it were not hemmed in by flinty walls and bars; more beautiful than the most gorgeous garden flowers, which every passer by has gazed at, and handled, because to God and ourselves it is sacred. These childish memories! they are the first round of the ladder by which our world-weary feet shall climb to heaven, after those who have rocked our cradles.

Near Dewley Burn lived a widow, named Grace Ainslie, who kept a number of cows that used to nibble the grass along the woods. A boy was needed to watch them, and keep them from being run over by the coal wagons, or straying into the neighboring fields. To this boy’s duty was added that of barring the gates at night, after the coal wagons had passed through. George applied for this place, and to his great joy he got it, at two pence a day. It was easy work to loll about on the fresh green grass, and watch the lazy cows as they nibbled, or stretched themselves under the trees, chewing and winking, hour after hour. George had plenty of time to look for birds’ nests and make whistles out of sticks and straws, and build little mills in the water streams. But if you watched the boy, you would see that, best of all, when he and his friend Tom got together, he liked to build clay engines. The clay they found in the bogs, and of the hemlock which grew about, they made their steam pipes. I dare say some solemn wise head might have passed that way, and sighed that these boys were “wasting their time” playing in the mud; not remembering that children in their “foolish play,” by their little failures and successes in experimenting, sometimes educate themselves better than any book-read man in the land could do it; at least, at _that_ age. Then it was a blessed thing that the child’s work lay _out of doors_, and not in a stifling close factory, or shop. That his limbs got strong and his cheek brown and sunburnt, and his eye bright as a young eagle’s. Every day now added to his growth, and of course to his employment; though scarcely big enough to stride, he led the horses when plowing, and when he was able to hoe turnips and do such farm work, he was very much delighted at his increased wages of fourpence a day. When he was thirteen, he made a sun-dial for his father’s cottage. You may be sure his father was very proud of that. His little head had been busy, you see, when he lay on the grass watching the cows. By and by George got eighteen pence a day, and at last the wish of his heart, in being taken as an assistant to his father in feeding the engine fire. George was very much afraid, he was such a little fellow, that he should be thought too young for the work, and when the overseer of the colliery went the rounds, to see if everything was done right, George used to hide himself, for fear he would think him too small a boy to earn his wages. Some lads as fond as he was of bird’s-nesting, and such amusements, would not have been in such a hurry to make themselves useful; but George’s parents worked hard, and he loved them; he knew that white hairs were creeping among those brown locks of his mother’s, and that his good, merry father would not always be able to tend the engine fire; and so though his tame black-bird, who made the cottage her home in winter, flying in and out, and roosting on the head of his bed, and disappearing in the spring and summer, in the woods, to pair and to rear its young, and then coming back again in winter to live with George; although his bird was a very pretty pet, and his tame rabbits were a great pleasure, too, yet little as he was, he was anxious to shoulder his share of the burden that was pressing so heavily on his parents. Ever since, too, that he had modeled that little clay engine in the bog, he had determined to be an engineer, and the first step to this was to be an assistant fireman. Imagine, then, his delight when, at fourteen years, he got the post at the wages of a shilling a day.

George’s home was one small room, crowded with three low-posted beds, in which father and mother, four sons, and two daughters slept. This one room was, of course, parlor, kitchen and sleeping-room, all in one. This cottage was furnished by the Duke who employed these people; he being also their landlord. Now I would be willing if I ever made bets, to bet you something handsome, that this Duke had a liveried servant behind his chair at home, and a table loaded with dainties, and silver and cut glass, and more wines in his castle than he knew how to use; and horses and hounds, and carriages and pictures, and statues, and conservatories and hot houses, and all that; and yet, that he was not one half as happy as the Stephensons in that little cottage with one room. Aching heads are apt to go with dainty food, and weak limbs with soft beds. When a poor man has a friend, he generally knows that he is loved for _himself_; when a rich man has one, he is never sure how much his riches have to do with his friendship. Many a rich man has sighed for the days when he used to run barefoot; and many a jeweled lady for the day when the little brook was her looking-glass. Things are more equal in this life, after all, than grumblers are apt to imagine. Well, to go back to George, all the time he was feeding that fire, he had his eyes open, watching everything about the engine; nothing escaped his notice; I have no doubt his father watched him, with an honest pride shining out of his eyes. It must have been very pleasant for the two to work together, and help each other; for George was growing strong and big, and used to try to make himself stronger by lifting heavy weights. When he was seventeen, he was made a “flagman.” That was a station as watchman above his father, as the flagman holds a higher rank than the fireman, and receives higher wages. No doubt good old Robert was as delighted as George could be at this promotion. We can imagine, too, how his mother and sisters, as they worked industriously to keep the little one room cottage tidy and comfortable, sang cheerfully as they worked, when they thought of their good strong brother. It is a flagman’s duty, when the engine is out of order, to call on the chief engineer to set it right. George had rarely need to do this. The engine was a perfect pet with him. He understood every part of it; he took it to pieces and cleaned it himself, and learned so well how it worked, and what it needed, that nobody could instruct him anything about it. It is said that all the important improvements of steam-engines have been made, not by learned literary men, but by plain laborers.

Everything that George undertook, howsoever small the matter might be, he determined to understand perfectly, and to do well and thoroughly. When George _said_ that he knew he could do a thing, all his friends knew it was no idle boast. So you will not be astonished when I tell you that he went on studying and improving till he became a famous man; so famous that he received calls from abroad, asking his advice as “a constructing engineer” about building bridges and railways, and all such things. I guess he never thought of _that_, when he was building bridges of mud with his play-fellows. Little children, you see, are not _always_ “wasting their time” when they are playing quietly by themselves. No, indeed. I guess he didn’t think then that he should build a two-mile bridge across the St. Lawrence in connection with the Grand Trunk Canadian Railway, which should be so much admired and praised for its _taste_ as well as skill; or, when he slept in the little cottage with only one room in it, that he should one day become “a Member of Parliament;” or that when he died, he should be buried in state at Westminster Abbey, where all the famous, great men were buried, and that immense crowds of people should go to his funeral, and be so sorry that a man who was so useful to his country should die, when he was only fifty-six years old. But so it was. I think George made good use of those fifty-six years; don’t you?

TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS.

I want to say a few words to the _little children_ who write me such nice letters.

Some of you live in and about New York, some at a great distance from it. I should be very glad, had I time, to write each of you a long letter—indeed, many long letters; but how is this possible, if I “make some more books for you,” as you all request me to do? One cannot write a book as fast as one can read it through; perhaps you do not think of that. Besides, I write every week for the New York _Ledger_. Then I have a great many other calls upon my time, of which you know nothing. Like your own mamma, I have children. They sometimes say, “Oh, do throw away that tiresome pen, and talk to us.” And then I say, “Yes, presently.” But still I have to keep on writing. Then, you know, if I only used my head, and never my feet, my head would not last long. I must exercise a great deal every day, else I should fly up the chimney, or through the roof, like a witch. But for all that I don’t forget one little girl or boy who ever wrote to me; and although I cannot answer, it always pleases me to hear from you. I want you all to believe this, and write me whenever you feel like it.

BABY EFFIE.