Part 5

“Well, I don’t suppose we could find anybody that would want to trade a pony for him, but don’t you think you could trade him for a goat?”

XX. KEEPING SCHOOL.

Every boy and girl in America ought to go to school. The public school is one of the best institutions connected with the life of our nation. But did you ever hear of a little girl who went to school to herself? I have, and I want to tell you about it.

We will call her Tootsie.

There was no school house, and no teachers; nothing only just little Tootsie; not even her dolls; just simply Tootsie sitting all alone on the couch near the window. That was all there was to this little school, so far as anybody could see.

But Tootsie said she had a large school, with some sixty pupils. Sometimes she would say that her scholars had been naughty and that they would have to stay in at recess; and then again she would say that they had been promoted to a higher grade; she often talked to her pupils as if they were real live people, telling them how they should stand and how they should sit and giving them permission to be excused, and so on. So you see it seemed in Tootsie’s mind very much more like a real school than it could to us.

Every morning, when Tootsie’s sister would start for school, Tootsie would watch her until she was out of sight, and then she would go and sit down on the couch. Not having a true-true school book, she would take her Christmas story books. At first she would only look at the pictures and try to think what the story about them must be. Then she would ask mama or grandma, or whoever happened to be nearest, what the words of the picture-story were. She would then say the words of the story over to herself, and look at the picture. Next day she would read over the words of the same story as far as she could remember them, and when she came to a word that she did not know, up she would jump and go and ask some one what it was. When she had learned a story herself, she would then talk to her sixty imaginary scholars about it, showing them the picture and explaining the story to them just as though the children were all there before her in her little school room.

In this way Tootsie went through one after another of her story books, picking out the stories that had pleasing pictures.

But the nice thing of it all was that Tootsie was really learning to read, and she did get so that she read real well; for she knew just what she was reading about, and often, when she would find a story that was funny, she would laugh right out even if she was at school, and then she would find mama or grandma and read the funny part to them.

Maybe one reason why Tootsie learned so fast was because her school was just like play to her and not like work. Of course, it is easier to play than it is to work. But could you think of any better thing to play than to play keeping school? Why not try it? It helped Tootsie wonderfully, and I believe it would help many other boys and girls. What do you think about it?

XXI. THE SCHOOL OF THE STREET.

Little Joe, ten years old, had followed his business as a newsboy and bootblack in Smutville for three or four years, and, of course, had turned out to be a first-class little citizen of the street. He could curse and swear, and drink and smoke, just the same as any old hardened sinner.

One day, after Joe had finished one of his daily fights with some other small boy, a kind-hearted gentleman stepped up to him and said,——

“My little man, do you go to school?”

“Nope,” said Joe.

“Do you go to Sunday-school?”

“Nope.”

“Well,” said the gentleman, “what do you expect to do when you are grown?”

“I ain’t going to wait till I’m grown—I’m going to be a jockey; that’s what I’m going to be.”

“How would you like to be bank cashier or president of a great bank? Wouldn’t you like that better?”

“Yep,” said the boy, “but a poor boy can’t get no job like that—now you know he couldn’t.”

“Oh, yes; he could if he were to prepare himself for it. But a poor boy, and no other boy, will ever be a great business man if he is going to live forever in the street—cursing and swearing and fighting and, it may be, stealing, and having no higher ambition than to be a jockey.”

“Are you a parson?” asked the boy, becoming interested.

“No, but I am interested in little boys. I am the secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association and we have a boys’ department. I want you to join it. I have found out about your habits and your surroundings; I was told of the death of your mother and father; and I made up my mind to come and ask you to come over to the Young Men’s Christian Association and live with us. You may continue to sell your papers and black boots, but, you see, living with us, you can go to school at night, and some day you will have a good education—and you might be a bank cashier.”

Little Joe took this good man’s advice and went to live in the Y. M. C. A. building. He did not turn out to be a bank cashier or president, but what was better, Joe turned out to be a General Secretary of one of the largest Y. M. C. A.’s among the colored people of this country, and in that way has been instrumental in saving a great many other boys from the gutter.

But Joe would never have amounted to anything if he had not been taken away from the wicked influences of the street, and placed on the road to higher things. The worst school in this world that any boy can go to is the school of the street. The school of the street turns out the most impure, the most dishonest and the most illiterate boys, and those boys and girls who ever rise to be anything or anybody in the world are the ones who leave the influences of the street in due time, as Little Joe did. The street offers most of its work and most of its attractions at night, as many boys can tell. The life of the street leads to no career that is worth following. The good careers are made by those whom the street has not had a chance to spoil, or by those who are taken out of the streets before they become hopeless cases.

There is no greater error than the common notion that it is a good thing to let a boy run the streets and become “hard” and “tough” and “have his wits sharpened” and make “a little man” of himself, as some foolish people say. A boy learns more downright mischief in one night in the street than he can unlearn in the home in six months. And so, what will the teaching of the home, the public school and the Sunday-school amount to, if we are going to give our boys in their young and tender years the freedom of the streets? If now and then a street boy—that is to say, a boy hardened in the ways of the street—does get a good place, in most cases he will lose it and fall back to the old, free life of the gutter. The boys who succeed are the boys who get away from, or who are taken away from, the influences of the street and who are surrounded by better and more wholesome influences. Those who remain under the influences of the street become in the course of time members of the great army of beggars, tramps and criminals. It is a great pity that there should be so many stories going the rounds which tell about newsboys and messenger boys and so on rising to be bank clerks and telegraph-operators and so forth. On the whole, these stories are misleading, and for the reason that they seem to give the impression to many innocent boys and to many thoughtless parents that the surest way to give a boy a good start in life is to send him out into the streets to “rough it” and fight his way to the front over beer bottles, games of chance, the race-track, and the pool room, to the accompaniment of vulgar jokes, profane swearing and evil associates. I repeat: The school of the street is the worst school in the world, and the sooner boys get out of it the better it will be for them.

XXII. THE FOX HUNT.

Uncle Hambright used to pride himself upon his ability to invent amusing games for the children. Sometimes he found it hard to think of anything new, but the demands of the children were so insistent and his desire to please them always was so intense that it often happened that Uncle Hambright could almost make a way out of no way.

Dinner-time was fast approaching. All the morning, the half-dozen little children, who were spending the day with Uncle Hambright at the Sunday-school picnic, had been playing every conceivable sort of game and had been enjoying every imaginable kind of story told in Uncle Ham’s inimitable way,—but still the children were not satisfied. “Just one more story,” or “Just one more game,” or “Give us your best game now for the last before dinner,”—the children clamored one after another.

“Very well,” said Uncle Ham. “You all wait until I come back, and then we’ll play fox-hunting.”

Uncle Ham went and told his sister and her husband, the parents of the little children, to take the dinner-baskets far into the woods to the place which they had already agreed upon as the spot where the dinner-table should be spread. Coming back to the children, Uncle Ham said,——

“Now, we are ready. Come close and listen while I explain.”

With anxious hearts and eager faces, and clapping their glad hands, the children gathered around Uncle Ham.

“Now,” said he, “I have a piece of chalk here in my hand. I am going to make something like this wherever I go along.” While he was speaking he made a round ring on the fence close by. He put marks for the ears and feet and a mark for the tail. Then he continued: “This is the fox. I’m going to make foxes along the path that I take into the woods—sometimes these foxes may be on fences, sometimes on trees, sometimes on rocks, or anywhere I wish to place them. Whenever you find a fox you will know that you are on the right road, and you must be sure each time to follow in the direction that the head of the fox points. Then you won’t lose your way. You must give me a little start, because I must be out of sight before you all begin the hunt. At the end of the hunt, if you follow carefully, you will find a large present waiting for each one of you. You may help yourself to whatever you like, and then we shall all come back together, because, you know, I will be at the end myself waiting for you when you come.”

It seemed that the ten minutes start that the children had agreed to give Uncle Hambright would never come to an end, so eager were they to begin the hunt. By-and-by the time came, and they were off. The first few foxes had been drawn on the board-walk, so the hunters had easy sailing for a little while. Pretty soon, however, one of the girls discovered a fox on a tree, and the head of the fox pointed right into the woods. At first the children halted. The eldest girl said finally, after studying a few minutes,——

“Let’s go on; Uncle Hambright wouldn’t take us where anything could hurt us, and, besides, he said he would be waiting at the end.”

Thus reassured, all of them plunged into the woods. Once in the woods the little foxes drawn on trees and stumps carried them right along by the side of a babbling brook for a long distance. Sometimes they would find one fox, and then they would find it very hard to locate the next one. It was great fun for them to scurry about in the woods, examining trees, stumps, rocks and everything, hunting for the foxes. Finally one of the little girls found a fox on a fence. The head of the fox pointed upwards. The little child said,——

“This little fox seems to be pointing to heaven; I’m sure we can’t go up there.”

“Oh, no;” said the oldest girl, again coming to the rescue,—“I think that that little fox leads over the fence—that’s all.”

So, over the fence they jumped and continued the chase.

The course proved to be zig-zag now for a few minutes, and the children found the foxes more and more difficult to locate. They felt safe again, when the foxes were found on stones or rocks leading up the side of a hill. The woods began to thin out, and the children were no longer timid. Up the hill they went with a merry laugh and a shout. Once on top of the hill, they lost their course again. After a time, they found a fox, though, and that fox pointed straight down the hill. The children bravely followed. At the foot of the hill, they came suddenly upon an open space, and close by there was a great big fox marked upon a piece of black paste-board and standing right over a bubbling spring of water.

“Uncle Hambright must have meant for us to stop here,” said one.

“Maybe, he meant for us to stop and get some water,” said another.

One or two of the fox-hunters stopped and drank some water. Then the oldest one said,——

“Come on now, let’s look for another fox; I guess we are most through now.”

About twenty yards away from the spring, the children came to another open space that was well shaded. What was their delight and surprise to find there stretched out before them on a large white table cloth, laid on the bare ground, a sumptuous picnic-dinner. And in the middle of the table there was a true-true stuffed fox with a large red apple in his mouth. For a few moments the children stood around the table in bewilderment. But they were not to be kept in suspense a great while. Pretty soon, Uncle Hambright and mama and papa came out of the woods near by, and such a laugh as went around that picnic-dinner was never heard before or since!

At the close of the meal, the children all voted that that was the best game that Uncle Ham had played during the day.

XXIII. A BOLD VENTURE.

“Mr. Slocum, good morning, sir; I came around to ask you to lend me five dollars.”

Mr. Slocum, Manager of the Harlem Steamboat Company, looked up from his desk in surprise when he heard this abrupt announcement.

“What’s that?” he asked curtly.

“Lend me five dollars,” said the little boy who had first addressed him.

“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Slocum.

“I’m nobody,” said the boy,—“nobody, but I want you to lend me five dollars.”

Mr. Slocum, who was generally said to be a hard man to deal with, was surprised at the boy’s presumption, yet, nevertheless, he was secretly pleased at the boy’s frank and open manner.

“Do you know what borrowing money means?” asked Mr. Slocum, rising and looking down upon the diminutive figure standing before him. The boy was barefooted, held his hat in his hand, and his hair was nicely combed. Mr. Slocum continued: “Don’t you know when a person borrows money he is supposed to pay it back?”

“Oh, yes;” said the boy, “I know that. You lend me the money, and I’ll pay it back all right. I only want it for three months. I’ll pay it back.”

There was something about the boy’s face and general deportment that won Mr. Slocum’s favor. He ran his hand into his pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the boy.

“Thank you, sir;” said the boy, as he turned to go,—“thank you sir; I’ll pay it back.”

Three months later, the same little boy entered Mr. Slocum’s office.

“Here’s your five dollars, Mr. Slocum,” said the little boy. “I’m much obliged to you, sir.”

“Who are you?” asked Mr. Slocum, as he reached out and took the money.

“I’m nobody,” said the boy.

“Well, why do you bring me this money?”

“Because I owe it to you,” explained the little fellow.

The boy told Mr. Slocum of the loan made three months before, and made Mr. Slocum recall the transaction. Mr. Slocum asked him to have a seat.

“Well, what did you do with that money?” asked Mr. Slocum.

“Well,” said the boy, “I was hard up when I called on you. Me and my ma had been selling papers for a living up to that time, but somehow we had got behind with our expenses. House rent was due, and we didn’t have nothing to eat. I had to find a friend somewhere. So, after trying two or three places where I was known and failing to get any help, I decided to drop in here and see you. You know the result. Well, I paid my rent for a week; rented a little stand for my ma to sell papers on the corner, while I continued to hustle in the street. That five dollars you lent me give me good luck, and I’ve been going right up ever since. Me and ma are living in a better place now; we’ve got a plenty to eat; and we’ve got a plenty of fine customers. I told you when I came here before that I was nobody then, but I’m somebody now, Mr. Slocum,—anyhow, I feel so—and I want to thank you again for the help you gave me.”

The boy’s story pleased Mr. Slocum very much. It is needless to say that he took an interest in that boy, and continued to befriend him.

This happened many years ago. To-day Tommy Tolliver—that was the boy’s name—is the Assistant General Manager of the Harlem Steamboat Company, and a very well-to-do man. Mr. Slocum says that there is nobody in the world like him. Tommy’s mother died some years ago, but she lived long enough to see her little boy taken out of the streets, put to school, and started on his career of usefulness.

XXIV. A HERO IN BLACK.

I read some years ago, boys and girls, a story in McClure’s Magazine, which I think should be of interest to every boy and girl in the world. The story was taken from the records of the Royal Humane Society of Great Britain. It told about an obscure negro seaman whose brave deed was discovered and honored by two of the great nations of the earth.

One tropical night, the steamer Dolphin rested almost motionless off the Cayman rocks in Nicaragua. Crew and passengers, some twenty in all, were asleep about the deck, for it was too hot to go below. Then came such a squall as comes only in those Southern seas. The sails, all set, furnished ample leverage. Within ten seconds, the Dolphin was bottom up, her passengers and crew struggling in the water.

Wilson McField, a negro and a subject of Great Britain, was the first to come to the surface. All his twenty-seven years of life he had known these waters, and he swam like a fish. He soon succeeded in climbing upon the bottom of the vessel. Then he shouted to the others, and one by one pulled up five of the crew.

Fortunately the squall was soon over, although the sea was high. After they had drifted two hours the men heard strange sounds, like pounding within the vessel. Some thought they heard voices. The more superstitious were afraid. The night dragged on, and by daylight the sounds had grown fainter. The crew concluded that men were imprisoned within the boat, but none could devise a way to save them. Then the negro proposed to dive under and into the ship. They assured him he would never get out again, but carrying between his teeth one end of a rope that had been dragging from the vessel, McField dived, passed under the gunwale and rose in the hatch.

It was pitch-dark, and the interior of the vessel was full of the floating cargo, but he kept on steadily. Finally concluding that he had reached the cabin, he rose, and in an instant his head was above water. Yet so foul was the air, and so narrow the space between the water and the ship’s bottom, that he could hardly breathe. He could see no one, but he heard the knocking again, and called out. Then came voices faint but familiar.

Swimming in the direction of the sound, he found two men braced against the cabin sides and holding their heads above water. One was a young rubber cutter, named Mallitz, the other a native Spanish-Nicaraguan, called Ovando. Both were panic-stricken, and McField was obliged to threaten them with instant death if they did not obey him. He fastened the rope round Mallitz and gave the signal to pull. McField dived into the water along with his man. In his fright Mallitz entangled himself in the hatchway, and precious time was lost in freeing him. When they reached the surface Mallitz was unconscious, and McField more dead than alive.

They pulled Mallitz aboard but McField would not follow. As soon as the rope was free he took it in his teeth and went under, found the hatch and entered the cabin. Ovando was almost uncontrollable with fear and exhaustion, but McField finally secured him with the rope, and gave the signal to pull up. This time the trip was made without accident, and both men were drawn on board. All the men were saved.

The United States government awarded McField a medal and a sum of money in gold, and the Royal Humane Society of Great Britain gave him a medal of silver.

XXV. THE ROAD TO SUCCESS.

The world is constantly looking for the man who knows the most, and it pays little regard to those who are proficient in the usual degree in the same things. One must excel, or, in other words, know more than his associates in order to succeed notably. The world will bid high for you if you know more than other men.

So that boys and girls who are preparing themselves for the duties of life should not aim simply at being as good as somebody else, but they should aim at being the best that it is possible to be in any chosen line of life or business. I have noticed in my short lifetime that there is a great tendency on the part of young people to cut short their education. Being able to shine in the intellectual and social worlds with the small attainments made in some college or normal school or industrial school, the average young negro man is content to stop with a diploma or certificate from one or another of these institutions. They will never realize what injury they have done themselves by so doing until it is too late. On the other hand, there is another large class of young people that stop short even before they have finished the course in even any one of the normal or industrial schools. They must go out to work; they know enough to make a living; what’s the use of so much education, anyhow? This is the way some of them talk. This is what some of them believe. Boys and girls, no man or woman with such low ideals will ever reach the topmost round of the ladder of fame. Such boys and girls will always play a second-rate part in the great drama of life. The boys and girls who are going to the front—the boys and girls who are going to have the leading parts—are the boys and girls who are willing to take time to prepare themselves. And preparation means hard work; and not only hard work, but hard and long-continued work. A person can learn a good deal in one year; a person can learn a good deal in two years; but nobody can learn enough in one or two years, or in three or four years, to make it at all likely that he will ever be sought by the great world.

Aside from the rudimentary training, it ought to take at least ten years to make a good doctor, or a good lawyer, or a good electrician, or a good preacher. Four of these years ought to be spent in college; and four in the professional school; and the other two ought to be spent in picking up a practical or working knowledge of the calling—whatever it may be. The young doctor obtains this practical knowledge in hospitals and in practice among the poor. The electrician obtains it by entering some large electrical industry or manufactory, in which a thoroughly practical knowledge of mechanical engineering and electricity can be secured. It is true that some men have become distinguished in these callings without this long preparation of which I have spoken; yet it is, also, true that they would have been better off—they would have been more likely to have become eminent—if they had taken the longer course. College is a little world which every one, other things being equal, ought to enter and pass through before launching in the great world.

XXVI. SAMUEL C. ARMSTRONG.