Part 7

We amused ourselves part of yesterday evening with _story play_, which I had never heard of before. You are to whisper a _word_, which must be a substantive, to the person who begins the play, and who is to tell a short story or anecdote, into which that word is to be frequently introduced. It requires some ingenuity to relate the story in so natural a manner, that the word shall not be too evident, and yet that it may be sufficiently marked. When the story is finished, each of the party endeavours to guess the word, and the person who discovers it tells the next story. I will give you a sample.

It was decided that my aunt should begin; Frederick whispered the word; and she began so naturally about a visit from Mr. Arthur Maude, who has just returned from Italy, that, at first, I thought she was not going to join in the play.

“Mr. Maude tells me,” continued my aunt, “that he has been greatly interested by the Vaudois, and well repaid, by seeing those amiable people, for the fatigue of making that part of his tour on foot.

“In a beautiful valley between Pignerola and La Tour, he observed a small open arch, under a group of oak trees, that stood on a round green knoll. He afterwards learned, that this arch had been erected about the time that the poor Vaudois had been obliged to quit their native hills, under the brave and pious Arnaud. It was ornamented with figures of saints, and had such an uncommon appearance among those wild valleys, that he sat down to make a sketch, not only of the arch, but of the picturesque scene which surrounded it. Twice he began, and twice he was interrupted by sounds of distress, which seemed to come from within the arch. On approaching it, he found a young creature about fifteen, seated under the shade of the arch, and plying her distaff diligently while the tears fell from her eyes. In reply to his inquiries as to the cause of her grief, she timidly told him, that her poor old father had been so ill that he could earn nothing for many weeks; and having already been reduced to sell every thing but his house, he was totally unable to pay one of the heavy taxes which was now demanded from him. She had, therefore, been spinning--spinning--for ever with her distaff, but all in vain; her yarn was not ready, they must pay the tax without delay, and to do so she must part with the only treasure she possessed: that was the cause of her sorrow; and she had retired to that little arch to avoid the sun, and to conceal her tears from her father.

“‘For that one thing, I can get money enough,’ said she, ‘but how can I part with it! It was once the Bible of Henri Arnaud; my grandmother gave it to me, saying, “Never, never part with this precious book, Janetta.” But, what can I do?’--and her tears burst out afresh. ‘I _must_ sell Henri Arnaud’s bible, or my father will have no house to shelter him!’

“Mr. Maude asked her to guide him to her father’s cottage. She took him by a winding path which led from the arch, to a very poor little chalet, overhung by chesnut trees. The old man was seated on a bench at his door; and Mr. Maude, placing himself at his side, and entering into conversation, observed how much his pale countenance brightened at the interest with which a stranger listened to his anecdotes of Henri Arnaud. Mr. Maude indulged himself by giving a small sum, which was sufficient to pay the tax. And having thus enabled the little Janetta to keep her valued Bible, he returned, I am sure, with a happy mind, to finish his sketch of the picturesque _Arch_.”

Mary readily guessed that word, and my aunt therefore whispered one to her. After considering for a moment, she proceeded--“The Alpine Marmot, you know, is one of those animals that pass a portion of the year in a torpid state. It delights in cold mountainous regions, where it burrows in the ground, and prepares its wintry residence with great art, lining it with the finest grass. To collect this grass, the whole family, it is said, act in concert; some are employed as sentinels, to give notice of approaching danger; others cut it; and when a sufficient quantity is gathered, one of them acts the part of a waggon, to carry it home. This marmot lays himself on his back, stretches his legs upward, and suffers himself to be loaded just like a waggon of hay. One set then take hold of him by the tail, and drag him along on his back; while another set act as guides, to prevent accidents, or to remove any roughness in the path, which might overturn their little living waggon.”

My uncle having rightly guessed the waggon, he was next called before the house; Mary first giving him his text word.

“I would readily gratify with a tale all the friends collected here to be amused; but alas! not having been gifted with invention, by the fairy presiding at my birth, I can offer you nothing but an historical fact: I can vouch, however, for its fidelity, as I had it from the lips of the person to whom it occurred.

“When Sir Charles W. was ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, he found that the intrigues of a party in the Russian cabinet were all directed against our interests; and, with his usual promptness, he wrote despatches to communicate the circumstance to his own government. These despatches were treacherously obtained by the Russians; but as they were found to be in a secret cipher, they were incomprehensible. By the most culpable want of fidelity, however, in some of Sir Charles’s household, it was discovered that the _key_ to this cipher was pasted on a screen, which he kept carefully locked up in a closet, within his own bed-room; yet in spite of this precaution, some artful person contrived to get in there, and was thus enabled to decipher his dispatches.

“The following night, he was awakened by his friend General Rostopchin, who, with the courage and fidelity of real friendship, risked every thing to warn him of his danger.

“‘Fly my, friend,’ he exclaimed, ‘your despatches have been read--the council is now sitting, and it is resolved that you shall be seized and sent to Siberia. Every moment’s delay increases your danger. I have prepared every thing for your escape; the British fleet is off Cronstadt, and now only can you get on board.’

“The friendship of this generous Russian had even triumphed over the fidelity which he owed his own sovereign. But Sir Charles, though full of gratitude, refused to take his advice.

“‘I am here,’ said he, ‘as the representative of the British King; and never can I so forget his Majesty’s dignity, as to fly from danger. They may send me to Siberia, at their peril; but I never will voluntarily quit my post. I will immediately appear at the council, and assume my place as the ambassador of England.’

“With the utmost expedition he arose, and prepared to appear at the Russian council; but with a presence of mind, like Lord Nelson’s, when he waited to seal his letter with wax, that it might not appear written with precipitation, Sir Charles dressed himself with the utmost precision, in full court dress, to shew that he felt perfectly at ease. When he entered the council chamber, all his enemies seemed to shrink--no one ventured to intercept him as he advanced to the Empress. She received him graciously, and, extending her hand to him, looked contemptuously at those around her, saying, ‘I wish I might possess such a minister as this British ambassador; on him, indeed, his master can justly rely for courage and fidelity.’”

Wentworth guessed the particular word in this interesting anecdote; and a new one having been whispered to him, he begged leave to tell us a traveller’s story:--

“Mr. Scouler, in his voyage up the Columbian river, came to a curious rocky hill, called Mount Coffin by Captain Vancouver. These rocks appeared to be the burial place for the natives of an extensive district; who from dread, as well as respect, the Indians are in the habit of depositing at a considerable distance from their dwellings. The bodies were placed on the rocks in canoes, which served as coffins, and which were covered by boards and secured by great stones. Into these canoes, or more properly speaking coffins, their disinterested relations, unlike hungry heirs in more civilized countries, had crammed all the valuable property of the deceased. Mr. Scouler mentions as a remarkable circumstance, that a large serpent, which you know is the emblem of immortality, issued from one of the coffins as if to warn off all intruders from that sacred spot. Perhaps,” continued Wentworth, “the Indians have some confused idea of the river Styx, and think their deceased friends will be the more readily ferried over to paradise from being placed in a canoe instead of a coffin.”

Mr. Lumley was very much pleased with the manner in which Wentworth had performed his part, and having of course guessed the coffin, he was next brought forward.

“My mother,” he said, “had a dream soon after I was born, which she afterwards told me, and which still remains fresh in my memory. She imagined that an angel appeared and told her that her new born son might possess all the qualities of both heart and understanding for which she had so ardently prayed; ‘but,’ added he, ‘you have omitted in your petitions to ask for one power of the mind, without which all acquirements lose their value, and even the best feelings of the heart will be rendered useless. Now is the time to repair your error--ask quickly for that essential blessing for your boy, and you shall have it.’

“My mother’s heart beat high; her thoughts became so much confused that it was some time before she could command them sufficiently to decide upon what this nameless treasure could be. She fancied she heard the quivering of the angel’s wings, as he rose into the air to depart; and, in an agony of despair lest she should lose for ever this precious gift, she struggled to utter the wish which now was uppermost, but in her effort to speak, she awoke.

“Now tell me, my friends, what was the wish that trembled on her lips, and you will have my word.”

I guessed it, and told some dull story which is not worth repeating; the rest of the company told theirs; but as I have not time for all, I will go on at once to Caroline, who, with a pretty little blush, thus began:--

“Three young children were coming down the Mississippi with their father in a sort of a boat which they call there a pirogue. They landed on a desert island in that wide river, in a bitter snowy evening in the month of December; their father left them on the island, promising to return after he had procured some brandy at a house on the opposite bank. He pushed off in his little boat to cross the river, but the wind was high, and the water rough.--The children watched him with tears in their eyes, struggling in his pirogue against the stream, till about half way across, when they saw the boat sink--and never more saw their father. Poor children! they were left alone, exposed to the storm, without fire, shelter, or even food, except a little corn.

“As the night came on, the snow fell faster, and the eldest, who was a girl of only six years old, but very sensible and steady for her age, made her little sister and her infant brother creep together close to her, and she drew their bare feet under her clothes. She had collected a few withered leaves and branches to cover them, and in this manner they passed the long winter’s night. Next morning she tried to support her poor weeping companions by giving them corn to chew, and sometimes she made them run about with her to keep themselves warm.

“In this melancholy state you may imagine what was her joy, when, in the course of the day, she discovered a vessel--no--a boat approaching the island. It happily contained some good-natured Indians, who took compassion on the children, shared their food with them, and safely conveyed them to New Madrid in their own boat.”

The mistake that poor Caroline made in saying vessel for boat, and then correcting herself with a little confusion, betrayed her; so that the moment she ended her story, every one exclaimed “Boat,” “Boat.”

_19th._--In the morning we had a shower of hail, and since seven o’clock it has been snowing constantly the whole day. I am delighted with its pure, beautiful, feathery appearance; besides, it has brought back to my mind little shadows of things that happened before we left England. The ground all white, and the large blazing fire, remind me of the time when we were at Montague Hall, when my grandfather used to employ me to gather the crumbs at breakfast, to put out of the windows for the poor little starving birds. I believe it was that circumstance that gave me such a love of birds; for I am sure I can recollect the happiness I used to feel when feeding them along with good grandpapa, and watching all their little motions.

My uncle was amused with my exclamations of delight at the snow, and he was good enough to shew me that each flake has a star-like appearance, consisting of five or six rays that diverge from the centre; and that from each of these rays little _spicula_ shoot out, which by crossing each other form a beautiful net-work. He says that when clouds are formed at such a height in the air as that the temperature there is below 32°, the particles of moisture become congealed or frozen. If the particles are small, or if they are slowly frozen, they become snow, which gradually descends to the earth; but it often happens that the atmosphere near the earth is so warm as to re-dissolve the snow while falling, so that it comes down in the shape of rain. “This,” he added, “cannot take place with hail, because it is so much more solid, and falls so rapidly, that the warmth of the lower atmosphere has not time to melt it, before it reaches the ground. In summer, therefore, snow may be formed at a great elevation, as people who have ascended in balloons have more than once witnessed, but it again becomes rain in its descent; whereas, hail, for the reason I have given you, has been known to come down in the hottest months of the year.”

I reminded him that he had not told me why the moisture should sometimes freeze into flakes of snow, and sometimes into the pretty little round balls of hail.

“I waited,” he replied, “till you asked that question; for information is always best remembered when the want of it is felt. If the particles of moisture in the atmosphere are small, and if they are _slowly_ congealed, they form themselves into flakes of snow, as I have already mentioned; but when the moist vapour rapidly collects into large drops of rain, and when these are _suddenly_ frozen, they become hail.”

“So that in fact,” said I, “hailstones are nothing more than little balls of ice.”

“They are ice, but not common transparent ice,” my uncle said, as he opened the window and picked out a few hailstones from under the snow; “you see that they have an opaque whiteness very different from the appearance of ice. The upper regions of the air are not only always colder, but also less _dense_ than those near the surface of the earth; and the white porous nature of hail is owing to the _rarity_ of the atmosphere where they were congealed. Professor Leslie has proved this by the simple experiment of freezing small quantities of water in the reservoir of an air pump from which the air had been considerably exhausted. Hailstones, however, are not always globular like these; I have seen a shower of irregular lumps of ice of a great size, some of them weighing even three or four ounces, and producing dreadful mischief, killing the lambs and destroying all the crops. Last summer there was a partial hailstorm near London, which broke thirty thousand panes of glass in the green-houses of one nursery-ground.”

I am sorry to add, mamma, that every body says it is going to thaw; and there will be an end of all the amusement I have had to-day in looking at the beautiful feathery flakes as they blew against the windows.

_20th._--After dinner this gloomy evening, we had another edition of our story-play. Though very much amused by all I heard, I will only mention two or three little circumstances which may perhaps be interesting to you or Marianne.

The word telescope was whispered to my aunt; and in the course of her story she contrived to introduced the tube through which Prince Ali, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, saw his distant friends. She said, she had very little doubt that this must have alluded to some optical instrument, and even that the carpet by which Prince Houssain transported himself through the air was of the nature of a balloon. Both these inventions are generally ascribed to the moderns, but she thinks they must have been formerly known in the East, where, indeed, all knowledge seems to have begun.

Mr. Lumley was so good as to join our circle; and having been given the word elephant, he mentioned a laughable anecdote of a man who took hold of an elephant’s tail lately in the streets of London. The animal was so displeased by this indignity, that he turned suddenly round, and grasping the man with his trunk, placed him against the iron rails where he kept him prisoner for some time. The keeper at last prevailed on the elephant to let the offender go, but not till after he had received some hard squeezes, for which he complained to a magistrate, who of course gave him no redress, as he was the first aggressor.

Mr. L. also told us that a friend of his in India, when riding on an elephant through a rice field, observed that the sagacious creature plucked a considerable quantity of the ears and carried them behind his trunk till the party stopped, when he ate them at leisure.

_21st._--The expected thaw arrived--yesterday was odious, half snow, half rain, and everything dirty and dreary. My uncle and Frederick went this afternoon to the poor man’s garden, where you know we saw the carrots raised up by the little icy pillars; but this thaw has made the roads so wet, that I could not possibly go with them.

Frederick tells me that all the fairy colonnades which supported the earth about the carrots are now melted, the earth has fallen down, and the tops of the roots are to be seen, quite bare, but above the ground, and appearing as if they had been half pulled up by hand.

I asked my uncle if frost pushes up any other kind of root in that way,--and he said that these columns have a quite different effect on fibrous roots, particularly the grasses. In consequence of the strong matting together of their roots, a whole piece of sward between two cracks is sometimes lifted up by these pillars, so as to separate it from the earth underneath. When the columns dissolve, the sward sinks into its former place, and the earth, which has been loosened and minutely divided by the frozen columns, affords a fine bed for the roots to strike into, so that it is rather an advantage than an injury to them to have been thus loosened. After the frost is melted, he says, he has seen patches of the sward lifted up with nearly as much ease as if they had been separated by a parting-spade.

Frederick asked what effect frost had upon soils which are not spongy.

My uncle told us that in clay soils the water forms small detached crystals, so thickly interspersed through the whole mass, that when a clod is broken, the fractured part looks as if covered by hoar frost; but they are too small for the naked eye to distinguish their shape. They help, however, to divide and loosen the clay in those stiff lumps; and after a frost the blow of a spade will almost reduce them into powder. Farmers sometimes, in expectation of this effect of frost, sow their wheat in very rough ground in autumn, in order that the clods, being pulverised by it, may close round the roots of the young plants; and these benefit by it as drilled corn does by _landing_--that is, having the earth laid up by the plough against the little seedlings when they have grown to some height. In mild winters farmers are disappointed in this; but my uncle says it is but a lazy mode of farming, and deserves to be disappointed.

Do you know, mamma, that I think it is colder and more uncomfortable than during the frost. The birds, however, seem to be rejoiced: I hear them chirping their satisfaction--and all the robins that we had in the house (we had seven at one time) have left their good shelter, and flown off to their companions, by whom I hear they are not likely to be welcomed: I suppose they are despised for not bearing the hardships of the season as well as the others.

_22nd, Sunday._--My uncle read the Ten Commandments to us to-day, and afterwards addressed us on the subject; and though I know that I cannot do justice to all he said, I will try and note down a little of it.

“‘And God spake all these words.’ The Hebrews emphatically called these commandments the ‘Ten words;’ and the same term having been adopted in Greek, they have obtained the name of _Decalogue_ in every modern language. Though all mankind were bound to obey the precepts contained in these important laws, yet, as they were more especially addressed to the Israelites, the tables on which they were engraven were preserved in the ark with great solemnity, and were distinguished from the rest of God’s ordinances by a peculiar veneration, as containing the covenant of the Lord. The Mosaic dispensation is at an end, but these commandments continue in full force; for we find that our Saviour and his apostles quoted them as matter of perpetual obligation to Christians; who are now, as the Jews were formerly, ‘the Israel of God.’

“In order to understand their full extent, it is necessary, my dear children, that you should _study_ them attentively: for though they are contained in a few brief precepts, they really comprehend a complete code of morality. You must consider that there is much more implied than is expressly ordained; and that each commandment is to be understood as a concise text, reminding mankind of the whole sum of their duty on that particular head. For instance, when any one sin is forbidden, it is evident that every offence of the same nature, though of a lower degree, is also forbidden; and that as we well know how easily we are seduced step by step, so we are bound to abstain from every indulgence which may act as a temptation to violate the principle of that law. We are not to be contented with a cold and literal obedience to this divine code. Whatever virtues are enjoined to us, it is equally our duty to induce others to practise them; whatever is prohibited, becomes a double crime in us if we tempt others to commit it; and observe, that for this enlarged sense in which we are to view these commandments, we have the direct authority of our Saviour.

“The introduction to the commandments states the grounds on which God required the obedience and adoration of the Jews; 1st, that he was the Lord their God; and 2dly, that he had triumphantly delivered them from Egyptian bondage. And let it be ever impressed on your minds that these reasons apply to us Christians, no less than they did to the Jews; for He is the Lord _our_ God by a more excellent covenant than he was theirs. He has relieved us from that slavery, of which the Egyptian bondage was but a type; and instead of the land of Canaan, he has prepared for us an inheritance in heaven.

“The first and second commandments, in which we are forbidden, under a dreadful penalty, to swerve from the worship of the one true God, or to kneel to any created being, seem to have been framed in allusion to the gross idolatry of Egypt, where all manner of living creatures were adored; and this allusion must have strongly reminded the Israelites of the want of power in those mock deities, who could neither prevent the plagues which they had just witnessed, nor could they enable Pharaoh, though backed by a mighty army, to detain them in that country.”