Part 3

One winter's evening, as Captain Compass was sitting by the fireside, with his children all around him, little Jack said to him, "Papa, pray tell us some stories about what you have seen in your voyages. I have been vastly entertained, while you were abroad, with Gulliver's Travels, and the Adventures of Sinbad, the Sailor, and I think as you have gone round and round the world, you must have met with things as wonderful as they did."

"No, my dear," said the captain, "I never met with Lilliputians or Brobdingnagians, I assure you, nor ever saw the black loadstone mountains or the valley of diamonds, but, to be sure, I have seen a great variety of people, and have noticed their different manners and ways of living; and if it will be any entertainment to you, I will tell you some curious things that I have observed."

"Pray do, papa," cried Jack and all his brothers and sisters; so they drew close round him, and he began as follows:--

"Well, then, I was once, about this time of the year, in a country where it was very cold, and the inhabitants had much ado to keep themselves from starving. They were clad partly in the skins of beasts, made smooth and soft by a particular art, but chiefly in garments made from the outward covering of a middle-sized quadruped which they were so cruel as to strip off his back when he was alive. They dwelt in habitations part of which was sunk underground. The materials were either stones or earth hardened by fire; and so violent on that coast were the showers of wind and rain that many of the roofs were covered all over with stones. The walls of their houses had holes to let in light, but to prevent the cold air and wet from coming in, they were covered by a sort of transparent stone made artificially of melted sand or flint. As wood was rather scarce, I know not what they would have done for their fires had they not discovered in the bowels of the earth a very extraordinary kind of stone which, when put among burning wood, caught fire and flamed like a torch."

"Dear me," said Jack, "what a wonderful stone! I suppose it was like the things we call fire-stones, that shine so when we rub them together."

"I don't think they would burn," replied the captain; "besides, these are of a darker color.

"Well,--but their diet was remarkable,--some of them ate fish that had been hung up in the smoke till it was quite dry and hard; and along with it they ate either the roots of plants, or a sort of coarse black cake made of powdered seeds. These were the poorer class. The richer had a kind of cake which they were fond of daubing over with a greasy matter, that was the product of a large animal which lived among them. This grease they used, too, in almost all their dishes, and when fresh it really was not unpalatable. They likewise devoured the flesh of many birds and beasts when they could get it; and ate the leaves and other parts of a number of kinds of vegetables growing in the country, some absolutely raw, others variously prepared by the aid of fire. Another great article of food was the curd of milk, pressed into a hard mass and salted. It had so rank a smell that often persons of weak stomachs could not bear to come near it. For drink they made great use of the water in which certain dry leaves had been steeped. These leaves, I was told, came from a great distance. They had likewise a method of preparing a liquor of the seeds of a grass-like plant steeped in water, with the addition of a bitter herb, and then set to work or ferment. I was prevailed upon to taste it, and thought it at first nauseous enough, but in time I liked it pretty well. When a large quantity of the mixture is used, it becomes perfectly intoxicating. But what astonished me most was their use of a liquor so excessively hot and pungent that it seems like liquid fire. I once got a mouthful of it by mistake, taking it for water, which it resembles in appearance, but I thought it would instantly have taken away my breath. Indeed, people are not infrequently killed by it; and yet many of them will swallow it greedily, whenever they can get it. This, too, is said to be prepared from the seeds above mentioned, which are harmless and even valuable in their natural state, though made to yield such a pernicious juice. The strangest custom that I believe prevails in any nation, I found here, which was that some take a mighty pleasure in filling their mouths full of smoke; and others in thrusting a nasty powder up their nostrils."

"I should think it would choke them," said Jack.

"It almost did me," answered his father, "only to stand by while they did it--but use, it is truly said, is second nature.

"I was glad enough to leave this cold climate; and about half a year after I fell in with a people enjoying a delicious temperature and a country full of beauty and verdure. The trees and shrubs were furnished with a great variety of fruits which, with other vegetable products, constituted a large part of the food of the inhabitants. I particularly relished certain berries growing in bunches, some white and some red, of a very pleasant sourish taste, and so transparent that one might see the seeds at their very centre. There were whole fields full of odoriferous flowers, which they told me were succeeded by pods bearing seeds that afforded good nourishment to man and beast. A great variety of birds enlivened the groves and woods, among which I was greatly entertained by one that without any teaching spoke almost as articulately as a parrot, though it was only the repetition of a single word. The people were gentle and civilized, and possessed many of the arts of life. Their dress was very various. Many were clad only in a thin cloth made of the long fibres of the stalk of a plant cultivated for the purpose, which they prepared by soaking in water and then beating with large mallets. Men wore cloth woven from a sort of vegetable wool, growing in pods upon bushes. But the most singular material was a fine glossy stuff, used chiefly by the richer classes, which, as I was credibly informed, is manufactured out of the webs of caterpillars--a most wonderful circumstance, if we consider the immense number of caterpillars necessary to the production of so large a quantity of stuff as I saw used. The people are very fantastic in their dress, especially the women, whose apparel consists of a great number of articles impossible to be described, and strangely disguising the form of the body. In some instances they seem very cleanly, but in other cases the Hottentots can scarce go beyond them, particularly in the management of their hair, which is all matted and stiffened by the fat of swine and other animals mixed up with powders of various colors and ingredients. Like most Indian nations, they wear feathers in their headdress. One thing surprised me much, which was, that they bring up in their homes an animal of the tiger kind, with formidable teeth and claws, which, notwithstanding its natural ferocity, is played with and caressed by the most timid and delicate of their women."

"I am sure I would not play with it," said Jack.

"Why, you might get an ugly scratch with it if you did," said the captain.

"The language of this nation seems very harsh and unintelligible to a foreigner, yet they converse with one another with great ease and quickness. One of the oddest customs is that which men use on saluting each other. Let the weather be what it will, they uncover their heads and remain uncovered for some time if they mean to be extraordinarily respectful."

"Why, that's like pulling off our hats," said Jack.

"Ah, ha! papa," cried Betsy, "I have found you out. You have been telling us of our own country, and what is done at home, all the while."

"But," said Jack, "we don't burn stones, or eat grease and powdered seeds, or wear skins and caterpillar's webs, or play with tigers."

"No?" said the captain. "Pray, what are coals but stones; and is not butter grease; and corn, seeds; and leather, skins; and silk, the web of a kind of caterpillar? and may we not as well call a cat an animal of the tiger kind, as a tiger an animal of the cat kind?

"So if you recall what I have been describing, you will find, with Betsy's help, that all the other wonderful things I have told you of are matters familiar among ourselves. But I meant to show you that a foreigner might easily represent everything as equally strange and wonderful among us as we could do with respect to his country; and also to make you sensible that we daily call a great many things by their names without ever inquiring into their nature and properties; so that in reality it is only their manners and not the things themselves with which we are acquainted."

A CURIOUS INSTRUMENT

A gentleman, just returned from a journey to London, was surrounded by his children eager, after the first salutations were over, to hear the news; and still more eager to see the contents of a small portmanteau, which were one by one carefully unfolded and displayed to view. After distributing among them a few small presents, the father took his seat again, saying that he must confess he had brought from town, for his own use, something far more curious and valuable than any of the little gifts they had received. It was, he said, too good to present to any of them; but he would, if they pleased, first give them a brief description of it, and then perhaps they might be allowed to inspect it.

The children were accordingly all attention, while the father thus proceeded: "This small instrument is made in the most perfect and wonderful way, and everything about it is very delicate and beautiful. Because of its extreme delicacy it is so liable to injury that a sort of light curtain, adorned with a beautiful fringe, is always provided, and so placed as to fall in a moment on the approach of the slightest danger. Its external appearance is always more or less beautiful, although in this respect there is a great diversity in the different sorts. If you should examine the inside you would find them all alike, but it is so curious, and its powers so truly astonishing, that no one who considers it can suppress his surprise and admiration. By a slight and momentary movement, which is easily made by the person it belongs to, you can ascertain with considerable accuracy the size, color, shape, weight, and value of any article whatever. A person having one is thus saved from the necessity of asking a thousand questions, and trying a variety of troublesome experiments, which would otherwise be necessary; and such a slow and laborious process would, after all, not succeed half so well as a single trial of this very useful article."

George. "If they are such very useful things I wonder that everybody, who can at all afford it, does not have one."

Father. "They are not so uncommon as you may suppose; I myself happen to know several individuals who possess one or two of them."

Charles. "How large is it, Father? Could I hold it in my hand?"

Father. "You might; but I should not like to trust mine with you!"

George. "You will be obliged to take very great care of it, then?"

Father. "Indeed I must: I intend every night to enclose it within the small screen I mentioned; and it must besides be washed occasionally in a certain colorless fluid kept for the purpose. But, notwithstanding the tenderness of this instrument, you will be surprised to hear that its power may be darted to a great distance, without the least injury, and without any danger of losing it."

Charles. "Indeed! and how high can you dart it?"

Father. "I should be afraid of telling you to what a distance it will reach, lest you should think I am jesting with you."

George. "Higher than this house, I suppose?"

Father. "Much higher."

Charles. "Then how do you get it again?"

Father. "It is easily cast down by a gentle movement, that does it no injury."

George. "But who can do this?"

Father. "The person whose business it is to take care of it."

Charles. "Well, I cannot understand you at all; but do tell us. Father, what it is chiefly used for."

Father. "Its uses are so various that I know not which to specify. It has been found very serviceable in deciphering old manuscripts, and, indeed, has its use in modern prints. It will assist us greatly in acquiring all kinds of knowledge; and without it some of the most wonderful things in the world would never have been known. It must be confessed, however, that very much depends on a proper application of it, since it is possessed by many persons who appear not to know what it is worth, but who employ it only for the most low and common purposes without even thinking, apparently, of the noble uses for which it is designed, or of the great joy it is capable of affording. It is, indeed, in order to have you fully appreciate its value that I am giving you this description."

George. "Well, then, tell us something more about it."

Father. "It is very penetrating, and can often discover secrets which could be detected by no other means. It must be said, however, that it is equally prone to reveal them."

Charles. "What! can it speak, then?"

Father. "It is sometimes said to do so, especially when it happens to meet with one of its own kind."

George. "What color are these strange things?"

Father. "They vary considerably in this respect."

George. "What color is yours?"

Father. "I believe of a darkish color, but, to confess the truth, I never saw it in my life."

Both. "Never saw it in your life!"

Father. "No, nor do I wish to; but I have seen a reflection of it, which is so exact that my curiosity is quite satisfied."

George. "But why don't you look at the thing itself?"

Father. "I should be in great danger of losing it if I did."

Charles. "Then you could buy another."

Father. "Nay, I believe I could not prevail upon my body to part with it."

George. "Then how did you get this one?"

Father. "I am so fortunate as to have more than one; but how I got them I really cannot recollect."

Charles. "Not recollect! why, you said you brought them from London to-night."

Father. "So I did; I should be sorry if I had left them behind me."

Charles. "Tell, Father, do tell us the name of this curious instrument."

Father. "It is called--an EYE."

NOTE

The first of these stories is reprinted from the well-known "Evenings at Home, or the Family Budget Newly Opened," by Dr. John Aiken and his sister Mrs. Barbauld, which is a survival from a very dreary period in the history of books for children. Except lesson books, books of manners, morals, and religion, the printing press had done little for youth until about the middle of the eighteenth century, and for long years after that no book was thought to be suitable for children's reading unless it contained many pills of information and so-called "useful knowledge," gilded over with more or less of fancy and imagination. These books were generally of the driest and most uninteresting character, but Dr. Aiken and his sister Mrs. Barbauld were among the two or three writers who succeeded in making their stories more vivid and real, and their men, women, and children seem more like actual living people, than did most of their contemporaries. There is a human interest in some of their stories which has charmed each successive generation of men and women that has come upon the scene since they were written, and unless the child-mind changes very much, will continue to do so for many generations to come.[E]

[E] Dr. Aiken was born in London in 1757, and Mrs. Barbauld in 1743. The former died in 1822, and the latter in 1825.

There are many walks in our vast country quite as full of interest in sights and sounds as that over Broom Heath, "among the green meads by the side of the river," and there are many boys who go through them in just the same way as William and Robert took their walk. Let our Roberts take a lesson from our Williams, and our Williams go on cultivating the habit of observing and remembering what they see.

Professor Archibald Geikie, in his work on the "Teaching of Geography," page 54, makes the following interesting remarks as to the pedagogical value of the story of "Eyes and No Eyes":--

"It is worth a thousand educational treatises. Never shall I forget the impression it made on me when, as a young boy, I first came upon it. Every step of William's walk was to me a subject of engrossing interest; I tried myself to make similar observations, and was delighted in particular to recognize the movements of a lapwing in a succeeding country ramble. To this day, such is the permanence of early associations, the swoop and scream of that bird overhead brings back to me these first impressions of boyhood, and reminds me of my lifelong debt to the 'Evenings at Home.' The story ought not only to be known to the teacher; he should make it thoroughly familiar to his pupils as soon as they are of an age to understand and enjoy it.

"The contrast between the two boys in this story is one which may be found in every schoolroom. Unless a teacher actually tries the experiment, he can scarcely imagine the extraordinary differences in power of observation, not so much between clever and dull pupils, for that might be looked for, as among those who are bright and forward in the general work of the school. Of two clever boys, the one who has the quicker perception of things around him is more likely to succeed in life. But the chances of the other may be vastly improved by early training. And it is this training, so little provided for by the ordinary school work, that the teacher should do all in his power to secure."

Charles Kingsley says: "When we were good, a long time ago, we used to have a jolly old book called 'Evenings at Home' in which was a great story called 'Eyes and No Eyes,' and that story was of more use to me than any dozen other stories I ever read;" and what Oliver Wendell Holmes thought of the story is printed at the beginning of the book.

To turn to the other stories in the book, "The Three Giants" is from "Tales of Political Economy," by Mrs. Marcet (1769-1858), and has long been a favorite with children. Slight changes have been made in order to simplify it, and to confine the attention solely to the leading idea. "Travellers' Wonders" is also from "Evenings at Home," and in reading it one might almost imagine Captain Compass was thinking of a visit to the United States when he unfolded his budget of wonders to his listening family. "A Curious Instrument" is by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), who wrote many books for children in conjunction with her sister Ann. The sisters are best known, perhaps, by their "Original Poems" and "Hymns for Infant Minds."

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Transcriber Note

Minor typos were corrected. Text was moved to prevent images splitting paragraphs. The page numbers for The Coming of Vaporifer and Vaporifer at Work in the Illustrations listing have been corrected. The footnotes were standardized by placing lettered anchors in the associated text.

End of Project Gutenberg's Eyes and No Eyes, and Other Stories, by Various