Chapter 6

Out of the hearth crept Hannah, with Mitz hugged to her heart, and her short, round figure all the rounder for an ancient shawl and a venerable cap perched on the top of her plump, rosy face. Hannah had just passed the brass griffins, when some one burst into the room. There was a vision of two long stockings with a hole in one knee, a faded velveteen suit, a pair of brass-tipped boots, a bright patch in the seat of the short breeches, and a look of triumph on a round face with a turn-up nose, while a grin, extending from ear to ear, discovered a loss of several front teeth in the big mouth.

"Max, how you frightened me!" cried Hannah; then, "oh, Maxy, what's the matter?" Mitz was forgotten; he gave a leap, shawl and pillow-case, and before Hannah could prevent, had crept out of his bandages and was standing a free cat, with arched back and a defiant tail. By this time Mrs. Liseke had come out of the fire-place with her two youngest in her arms. She was elegantly dressed in a bed-sheet, which trailed behind her and was gracefully tied under her chin. Mitz's mother followed, stretching all-fours luxuriously.

No, Max wouldn't tell. He plunged two black hands in his breeches' pockets and made up faces and danced a wild war dance, while Mitz and family fled into various corners.

"Why don't you slap him?" pouted Liseke.

"No," little Hannah said, wisely. "He likes cookies." Coaxingly: "Maxy dear, won't you tell?"

"No, you bet I won't! you're nothing but girls."

"Is it a surprise, Max?" Hannah suggested, anxiously.

"Won't tell yer," contemplating his brass-tipped toes.

"Maxy, I'll give you a big cookey if you'll tell."

"You nasty thing, I don't want a cookey."

"Maxy: two? three--four--five--six--there! now you'll tell?"

"Give 'em first," said this practical boy, apparently conquered.

Six noble cookies were counted into his hand.

"Now I won't tell yer at all. It's a surprise! Father said I wasn't to tell," he cried, scornfully, with his mouth full.

"Oh, Haneke, papa's going to surprise us! Now I know what it is!" Liseke whispered excitedly "It is a piano, and perhaps--perhaps a stool. Try and find out from Max."

"Maxy, dear," Hannah said, imploringly, "is it covered with plush?"

"Why, how do you know?" Max cried, unguardedly, as he was finishing his sixth cookey.

"I knew it, I knew it," Liseke gasped, wildly.

"Does it make a noise if, well, say, if you bang on it?" Hannah cried, with a beating heart.

"Why--why--yes," Max acknowledged, wrathfully, with a futile kick at Mitz's mother, who was purring about his legs. "There, you mean thing, you're always trying to find out something! Just you wait till I tell yer anything more!" he cried, and slam-banged himself out of the room, with his bosom full of suppressed injuries.

"He was mad because we guessed," Liseke cried, joyfully.

"A piano!" Hannah gasped, as the door went to with a crash.

"A stool," Liseke added; then, "Let's tell mamma!"

That dear, gentle mother, sitting by the dim window trying to mend by the last flicker of daylight! She looked up lovingly as the door flew open.

"Mamma," gasped Hannah, "papa's got a surprise for us."

"Max said so," chimed in the other. "We've guessed, mother dear."

"It's a piano."

"And--and a stool."

"He said it'ud make a noise; and was covered with plush."

"O, dear children, surely papa wouldn't buy you a piano. He can not afford it," and two kind hands were stretched out to the children.

"Oh, yes it is," the two cried hopefully.

"You know, mamma, papa's always promised us a surprise, and he's never done it yet!" Hannah cried, and laid her round cheek against the delicate, pale face.

There was no use arguing; the children were convinced. They were sure of the piano.

"There, mamma, didn't we tell you so," they cried, as Max came in, mysterious and exasperating.

"Father says the surprise will be ready for you to-morrow afternoon at three o'clock in the sitting room," he cried, and was gone, leaving a momentary vision of a bright patch in the seat of his breeches.

"Poor child," thought the little mother, regretfully; "he is all in rags--I wish I had some money!" with a patient sigh.

"There, mamma, we told you so! It'll stand by the window in the corner of the sitting-room," two excited voices cried, and the next moment the sitting-room was invaded by two small figures who looked at the empty corner by the window with delicious expectancy; and so the day went slowly by.

In another room the little mother looked at her husband wistfully. "Karl," she began, timidly, "have you really prepared a surprise for the children? You won't disappoint them?"

"Betty, don't say a word! Wait! Did I ever disappoint you?"

Betty turned away with a half-suppressed sigh, while papa Karl strode up and down the room grandly, virtuously, with a good deal of injured innocence in his face.

II.

The great day had come. Hannah and Liseke hadn't slept a wink all night.

Mitz and family had come purring into the room in the early morning, as usual, but had been shamefully neglected. All six sat in a row by the bedside, watching indignantly the two heads peeping out from the feathers.

"To-day!" Hannah sighed rapturously.

How they got into their clothes, they never knew.

As for eating! why, they couldn't touch the delicious rolls, the glasses of milk, even that delicious preserve, "Apfel-kraut."

Max alone was himself, and, in his injured way, managed to eat enough for three. Yet, he was not satisfied; at the age of eight life had few attractions left for him.

Who could believe that a September day would be so long? Or that the old clock in the hall would go so ridiculously slow? There was a quiet jocularity in the motion of its long pendulum, as if it were laughing bitterly that anyone could be in a hurry. "Ha! ha! ha!" ticked the clock.

"Oh, dear!" Hannah said with a sigh, "will it never be three?"

How they kept their ears open to hear a crowd of men come stumbling up the stone steps with the weight of the piano!

"Perhaps it is already here," Liseke said, faintly.

"Perhaps it's coming," Hannah suggested, hopefully.

"One--two--three--," the clock struck.

"Come, mamma!" the children cried; and so they opened the sitting-room door with trembling hands.

Nobody there; nothing there. Mamma sat down in a corner and began knitting, while the children looked out of the window into the narrow street to see a wagon drive up to the house.

"Perhaps they've forgotten all about it," Liseke was saying tremulously, when the sitting-room door burst open and there stood Max and behind him, papa Karl.

"Oh, Max, Max, where's the surprise?" the children implored.

"Why, don't you see!" Max cried, mightily injured, and turning himself about disclosed his small person arrayed in a new velveteen suit brilliant with brass buttons.

"Oh--dear--dear," sobbed little Hannah with the tears rolling down, "we thought it was a piano!'

"Did I say it was a piano?" Max howled.

"You said it--it--was--was--covered with pl--plush," Liseke sobbed.

"Well, isn't it?"

"And--and you said it 'ud make a noise if one b--banged on it," Hannah cried, piteously.

"Well, see if it don't!" Max shrieked, when papa Karl's hand came down upon him with such superb effect there was no doubting the truth of the assertion.

"Ungrateful children, you are never satisfied," papa Karl cried majestically. "No matter what I do for you, you're always ungrateful--"

"But Karl," mamma Betty interrupted, with quiet decision, in the midst of a storm of sobs, "you can't expect the children to be very much delighted because Max gets a new suit--something necessary."

"And it's so tight I can't breathe," Max cried, goaded to frenzy by the general grief.

"Ingrates!" gasped papa Karl, and strode up and down the room, while Liseke sobbed her grief out on mamma's shoulder, and Max hid his face in her lap, and Hannah was bravely trying to dry her brown eyes.

"Karl, they are children," mamma Betty said: softly patting Max's head; then lifting it up gently; "Max, go to the confectioners." Max sprang to his feet as a war-horse at the sound of a trumpet.

"Here are ten groschens;"--mamma Betty took them out of her scanty purse with something of a sigh;--"buy as much cake and whatever you like. Liseke tell Marie to make a pitcher of chocolate instantly. My little Hannah, you may set the table."

"Oh, mamma, may I put on the pretty china cups and saucers?" Hannah pleaded, as Max and Liseke bounded out of the room.

"Yes, but be careful, my dear."

"Chocolate!" said papa Karl with some scorn, "bribing them for the sake of peace."

They were children, she said. Had papa Karl forgotten that he, too, had once been a child?

Papa Karl had forgotten this trifling circumstance but he magnanimously declared he forgave them all.

There was a pattering of feet down the entry, and three tear-stained faces looked timidly in.

"The chocolate is on the table," Hannah said bravely, with only one tiny sob. Then the door closed and the little feet patted down the corridor.

"Come Karl, and drink a cup of chocolate. You need it as much as the children, for you were disappointed also. You thought to give them a pleasure, you mistaken man," mamma Betty said with a little smile.

"I really meant to," said Karl, quite softened.

Mamma Betty was just opening the door, when she suddenly paused.

"Karl," she said quite seriously, "will you promise me one thing?"

"Yes, my dear."

"Never surprise us again; surprises always end in disappointments."

"Well, Betty I promise," papa Karl said hurriedly, and he kept his word. So years after, when papa Karl's purse was a good deal fuller, and a piano did make its appearance, it was welcomed solemnly, as something long and rapturously expected.

APRIL FOOLS AND OTHER FOOLS.

The custom of playing a joke upon one's neighbor upon the First of April is of very ancient origin, dating so far back in the past that we are unable to tell just when or with what nation it had its birth.

There was a time, very many years ago, when the year began on the twenty-fifth of March. Then, as now, New Years' was a great feast of the Church; and as the First of April was what was termed the _octave_--that is, the eighth day after the commencement of the feast--it has been thought that the feast which terminated upon that day closed in April-fooling. In support of this theory we find that the Catholic Church, at one time in its early history, observed an annual feast called "The Feast of the Ass." The day upon which this feast was held answers to our sixth of January, which now is called "Twelfth-Day." The day was devoted to merry-making, masquerading, jesting, and to fun in general.

Among the Hindoos there is a feast which is still observed, called the "Huli," which, continuing several days, terminates on the thirty-first of March. One of the distinctive features of this feast is, that every one endeavors to send his neighbor upon some errand to some imaginary person, or to persons whom he knows are not at home; and then all enjoy a good laugh at the disappointment of the messenger. The observance of this custom by this peculiar people seems to indicate that it had a very early origin among mankind. In fact, it is not impossible that the manner in which the day is observed by us may have been suggested by some pagan custom. But whatever or whenever its origin may have been, we find it so widely prevalent over the earth, and with so very near a coincidence of day, as to be proof of its great antiquity.

The observance of April Fools' Day is a very popular one in France, and we find traces of it there at a much earlier period than we do in England. It is related that Francis, Duke of Lorraine, and his wife, having been confined at Nantes as prisoners, successfully made their escape on the First of April. Taking advantage of this day, when they knew the guards would be upon the lookout lest some joke should be played upon them, they disguised themselves as peasants, the Duke carrying a hod upon his shoulder, and his wife bearing a basket of rubbish upon her back. Thus disguised, they passed through the gates of the city at an early hour of the day. There was one person, however, who guessed their secret. This was a woman who was an enemy of the Duke and his wife, and she at once resolved that they should not thus escape. She therefore hastened to one of the guards and told him of the escape of the prisoners. But the soldier only regarded it as an attempt to play a joke upon him, and at once cried out "April Fool!" to let the woman know that he had not forgotten what day it was. Hearing the soldier call out this, the rest of the guard, led by their sergeant, shouted "April Fool!" until the woman was forced to retire without being able to accomplish her errand. When at last it was learned that she had told them the truth, it was too late, the Duke and his wife having made good their escape.

In France, the person who is April-fooled is called _poisson d'Avril_. Upon a certain occasion a French lady stole a watch from a friend on the First of April. The theft having been discovered, and the lady accused of having taken the watch, she endeavored to pass off the affair as _un poisson d'Avril_.

Having denied that the watch was in her possession, her rooms were searched, and the missing article found upon a chimney-piece. When shown the watch the thief coolly replied: "Yes; I think I have made the messenger a fine _poisson d'Avril_."

However, the magistrate ordered that she be confined in prison until the First of April following, "_comme un poisson d' Avril_."

In England, the custom of April-fooling is practiced very much as it is in the United States. "A knowing boy will despatch a younger brother to see a public statue descend from its pedestal at a particular appointed hour. A crew of giggling servant-maids will get hold of some simple swain, and send him to a bookseller's shop for the 'History of Eve's Grandmother,' or to a chemist's for a pennyworth of 'pigeon's milk,' or to the cobbler's for a little '_strap_-oil,' in which last case the messenger secures a hearty application of the strap to his shoulders, and is sent home in a state of bewilderment as to what the affair means. The urchins in the street make a sport of calling to some passing beau to look to his coat-skirts; when he either finds them with a piece of paper pinned to them or not; in either of which cases he is saluted as an 'April-fool!'"

It has been said that "what compound is to simple addition, so is Scotch to English April-fooling." The people living in Scotland are not content with making a neighbor believe some single piece of absurdity, but practice jokes upon him _ad infinitum_. Having found some unsuspecting person, the individual playing the joke sends him away with a letter to some friend residing two or three miles off, for the professed purpose of asking for some useful information, or requesting a loan of some article, while in reality the letter contains only the words:

"This is the first day of April, Hunt the gowk another mile."

The person to whom the letter is sent at once catches the idea of the person sending it, and informs the carrier with a very grave face that he is unable to grant his friend the favor asked, but if he will take a second note to Mr. So-and-so, he will get what was wanted. The obliging, yet unsuspecting carrier receives the note, and trudges off to the person designated, only to be treated by him in the same manner; and so he goes from one to another, until some one, taking pity on him, gives him a gentle hint of the trick that has been practiced upon him. A successful affair of this kind will furnish great amusement to an entire neighborhood for a week at a time, during which time the person who has been victimized can hardly show his face. The Scotch employ the term "gowk" to express a fool in general, but more especially an April fool; and among them the practice which we have described is called "hunting the gowk."

Sometimes the First of April has been employed by persons wishing to perpetrate an extensive joke upon society. Among those which have come to our knowledge the most remarkable one occurred in the city of London in 1860. Towards the close of March a large number of persons received through the post-office a card upon which the following was printed:

"TOWER OF LONDON.

ADMIT THE BEARER AND FRIEND

to view the

ANNUAL CEREMONY OF WASHING THE WHITE LIONS,

on

SUNDAY, APRIL 1ST, 1860.

_Admitted only at the White Gate._

* * * * *

It is particularly requested that no gratuities be given to the wardens or their assistants."

To give the card an official appearance, there was a seal placed at one corner of it, marked by an inverted sixpence. There were but few persons receiving the cards who saw through the trick, and hence it was highly successful. As soon as the first streaks of gray were seen in the east, cabs began to rattle about Tower Hill, and continued to do so all that Sunday morning, vainly endeavoring to discover the "White Gate," the joke being that there was no such gate.

In the United States the greater part of the attention which is paid to April Fools' Day comes from children. In cities, especially, it is made much of by the "street Arabs," who watch every opportunity to play some trick upon every countryman whom they chance to see. Although we may laugh at jokes which are played upon All-Fools' Day, yet the greater part of them are unjust and improper, and it would be much better were they left undone.

While speaking of April fools we are reminded of the Wise Fools of Gotham, and are constrained to tell our young readers about them in this connection. Gotham is a village in Nottinghamshire, in England. At one time, when King John and his retinue were marching towards the village, the people learned that he intended to pass through Gotham meadow. Now the ground over which a king passed became forever after a public highway, and should they suffer the king to pass through their meadow the villagers saw that they would lose it.

This they resolved not to do, and therefore devised a plan which caused the king to pass another way. When the king learned what had been done he was very angry, and at once sent messengers to inquire why they had been so rude, intending, no doubt, to punish them for what they had done. When the Gothamites learned of the approach of the messengers they were as anxious to escape punishment as they had been to save their meadow. They immediately came together and agreed upon a plan by which to save themselves. They at once set about carrying their plans into effect, and when the king's messengers arrived they found some of the inhabitants endeavoring to drown an eel in a pond; some dragging their carts and wagons to the top of a barn to shade the wood from the sun's rays; some tumbling cheeses down a hill in the expectation that they would find their way to Nottingham Market, and some were employed in hedging in a cuckoo which had perched upon an old bush. Seeing men engaged in such employments as these the king's servants were convinced that the villagers were all fools, and quite unworthy the king's notice. The villagers, however, seeing that they had outwitted the king, considered themselves wise. To the present day a "cuckoo bush" stands upon the spot where it is said that the inhabitants of Gotham endeavored to hedge in the bird.

There is another class of Fools which deserve mention. These are called Court Fools or Jesters. Until within a comparatively short time ago, every king had his Jester, whose duty it was to furnish mirth and merriment for the royal household. The real Court Fool was in reality a fool by birth, while a Jester was a _pretended_ fool. The former was dressed in "a parti-colored dress, including a cowl, which ended in a cock's-head, and was winged with a couple of long ears; he, moreover, carried in his hand a stick called his bauble, terminating either in an inflated bladder or some other ludicrous object, to be employed in slapping inadvertent neighbors."

On the other hand, the Jester selected his clothes not only with a view to their grotesqueness but also with an eye to their richness. While the real fool "haunted the kitchen and scullery, messing almost with the dogs, and liable, when malapert, to a whipping," the pretended fool was comparatively a companion to the sovereign who engaged his services. Berdic, the Jester of the Court of William the Conqueror, for instance, was considered of so great importance that three towns and five carucates were conferred upon him.