Chapter 2

They have come! the long expected letters from "Jemmy Stubbing," or the Nailer Boy. I am sure they will be a treat to all the children that meet in our School-room. I hope all the benches will be full whilst Josiah's letters are read. And what a nice thing it was in the children in America, to take that little fellow out of the cinders and soot of the blacksmith's shop, and send him to school for two years!

Now many a little boy and girl of our school-room circle has contributed half a dime towards Josiah's education. I would ask that little boy or girl what he or she would sell out all right and title to the pleasure and consequence of that act for? What would you take in money down for your share in the work of expanding that little fellow's mind, and filling it with such new ideas as he expresses in his letters? What a new world he has lived in since he returned from school to his little wayside smithy, the roof of which can hardly be seen over the hedge! Think of it--but you cannot think of it as it is, unless you could see that nailer's shop and cottage. But think of what he was, when you took him from the anvil and sent him to school. Then he could not tell a letter of the alphabet, and never would have read a verse in the Bible, if it had not been for your half dimes. Now see with what delight he searches the scriptures, and marks and commits to memory choice verses in that Holy Book. He has taught his father to read it too, and is teaching his sisters, and the children of the neighbors to read it, and all good books. A great many young boys and girls in England have heard what you did for him, and some of them are beginning to write to him, and he answers them, and gives them good advice. The last steamer from England brought us a nice lot of letters from him, some directed to you, some to me, and one or two to others, I will read them to you in the order in which they are written.

BROMSGROVE LICKEY, Dec. 4, 1849.

My Dear Sir:

I thought that when I wrote to you again I should have a few subscribers for the Citizen. I will tell you the reason why I have not got them; they are most all primitive methodists. They have been trying to scheme them a chapel for this last twelve months. They are having tea parties and missionary meetings every two or three weeks, so they have put me off a little longer. I had a good deal on my mind through reading the Citizen. I opened my bible at the forty-first chapter of Isaiah and at the sixth and seventh verses. There I read the following words: 'They helped everyone his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, be of good courage; so the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, it is ready for the sodering, and he fastened it with nails.' I thought about Mr. Burritt's sparks. He has got a few in England and France and America. I thought about the Russians, if they would but examine this chapter as well as I have, I think they would make away with their arms, for the Lord says, them that war against thee, they shall be as nothing and as a thing of nought. How dare they go to war against their Maker. I dare not. I have another word or two to say to my young friends in America. The boys and girls in England, they are forced to work very hard all the week till about middle day on the Saturday, and then they get a little time to play while their parents go and sell their work. They frequently come for me but I am very often forced to deny them. I tell them that I have some reading and writing to do. Reading and writing must be seen to. If that apostle Paul had neglected his reading and writing, that jailor would have never, perhaps, seen need to have cried out, 'what must I do to be saved,' or if Mr. Burritt had neglected his reading and writing very likely I should never have been able to read or write. Though you are in America and I am in England if we put our heads to work we dont know what we may do some day. It does me good to read that there are so many ladies engaged in the work. I have been asked several times what was the price of the Citizen, but I have not found that out yet. I dont know how you count your money. I dont know how much a cent is. The first three newspapers that I had, I paid five pence each for; but now I get them for twopence each. I keep at my old employment. I did not know that there was any other country besides England till I had the Citizen. While I am hammering away with my two hammers my mind is flying all over America and Africa and South Carolina and California and Francisco and France and Ireland Scotland and Wales, and then it comes back to Devonshire, then to Mrs. Prideaux, and then to them ladies at Bristol, and then to Mr. Fry at London, and what a good man he is in the cause.

I remain your humble servant wish to be a fellow laborer, heart and hand.

JOSIAH BANNER.

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BROMSGROVE LICKEY, Dec. 28th, 1849.

MY DEAR SIR:

I have received your letter with two sovereigns on Dec. 26. I dare say my young friends will look for something very good from me, but nothing very interesting for them at this time. I will tell you the reason. The last week before Christmas I was working late and early all the week, and at the end of the week my foot and hand did ache very much. In that week I received a letter of young Mr. Fry, a little school boy, and a beautiful letter it was. I have read it many a time to the boys and girls and I had to write him one back again that week, and a few days before I had to write one to Mr. Coulton, Superintendent of the Sunday school at Norwood. For this two or three last years, I have made a practice in going a carol singing on Christmas day in the morning and of course they looked for me again. So I started out at five o'clock and came home at nine, and then I went to school. I have never missed going to school on a Sunday for this last three years. I always like to be there to teach or to be teached. Now I have got this present in my hand, it leads me to the Scriptures; and at the fifty eighth chapter of Isaiah and at the second verse: "Now they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinances of their God." They ask of me the ordinances of justice, they take delight in approaching to God. Now if all nations would act to one another as America does to me, I think that better day would soon come. When I sat down to write this letter I thought that I would tell my young friends how thankful I was to receive their Christmas present; but my pen is not able to express nor my tongue is not able to confess it.

My young friends, when Mr. Burritt came to our house first, we had no Bible, but now we have two. My father could not read it but your kindness has teached me to read it and now I have teached my father to read it, and I am trying to teach my sisters to read it.

I remain your humble servant, wish to be a fellow laborer.

JOSIAH BANNER.

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BROMSGROVE LICKEY, Jan. 18th, 1850.

My Dear Young Friends:--I will write you a few more lines. I have got a very nice cloth coat and trousers, and I have a suit from head to foot. I have had three happy Christmases, but this is the best I ever witnessed before. It is not because I have had much play. I have been so busy in reading letters and writing letters. I have received two a week, for this last three weeks, of the friends of peace. On the morrow after Christmas day I was at work again. When my sisters have called me to my breakfast or dinner, I have been forced to be reading while I have eaten my food. One night I was reading in the Citizen about my young friends. I was reading about that little girl which went without milk at supper time because I should have a suit of clothes. My mother she dropped her head and began to wipe her eyes, but I kept on reading till I come to that little girl which came skipping across the street with a good long list of names which she had been collecting money of. I was forced to put the paper down. I told her that you sent that money to make me comfortable not to make me miserable. My mother she made me promise to pay you all again. I told her you did not want money you only wanted me to be a good boy and write about peace and Brotherhood, and as soon as I can I shall send some money to pay for some Olive Leaves and a good song to put in them. There are some good boys in America as well as girls. They have been very busy for me. I return you all many sincere thanks for your kindness. I am writing to you with pen and paper hoping sometime I shall come and see you all face to face. I shall not come with a sword in my hand nor a gun nor a fine feather in my cap flying about. I shall come with a nice book in my hand or a roll of paper and tell you some good news. It did not take quite all that money to buy my suit, so my sisters have got a little shawl apiece. They have not quite worn out their sixpenny bonnets.

JOSIAH BANNER.

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Dear Children:--

I have read these letters to you just as Josiah wrote them. He is now about 12 years old, "working with two hammers, one with his foot, the other with his hand, striking off nails as fast as he can." But I should like to compare his writing with the writing of any little boys and girls of his age, that meet in our school-room. He has no nice desk to write on; his pens and ink are such as he can get. There were no pen and ink in his father's house three years ago; for no one could make letters there when you sent Josiah to school. You see his care for his little sisters. It did not take all the two gold sovereigns we sent him first to pay for his suit of clothes; it would have done, if he had determined to buy himself a nicer suit. But he remembered his sisters lovingly, and gave part of his money to buy each of them a shawl; and pretty nice shawls they were, we have not the slightest doubt, and took a considerable part of the money you sent him. He knew you were kind to him, but he did not think you would remember his sisters too, and send them something to make them warm and comfortable through the winter. They have received before this time the two sovereigns, or ten dollars, which you contributed for their New Year's present. How I wish that all of you who sent in your half dimes for them, could look in upon that nailer's family circle when they open the letter and see two bright gold sovereigns for the little ones. The baby will crow a little at that, and the mother, who dropped her head and wiped her eyes, as Josiah read to her out of the Citizen about that little girl in Newton, who went without milk so long that he might have a suit of clothes for Christmas, will drop her head again, but she will cry for joy, and there will be hopping up and down for the space of fifteen minutes, I reckon, and Josiah's black eyes will twinkle with the gladness in his heart; and the neighbor's children will know it all before the news is two hours old, and then you will have another letter from Josiah; and may be his oldest sister will try her hand at a few marks for you.

And now, before I dismiss the School, I want to ask each boy and girl on these benches, who gave a half dime for Josiah's education, if the brightest silver dollar ever coined would buy of either of them that half dime? Would you sell for a dollar your share in his education and happiness, in the joy, hope and expectations which your gifts have brought to life in that poor nailer's cottage? There are some beautiful verses in the Bible which I hope you will write in your copy-books, and remember all your days. "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, and he will repay." And have you not been paid fifty times over for what you gave Josiah? "It is more blessed to give than to receive," said One who gave the greatest gift that God could give to mail. Have you not found it so in regard to your gifts to Josiah? You see how happy you have made him; how blessed it has been to him to receive your presents. But how blessed and happy you must be to make him all this joy and gladness! Ask little Phebe Alcott there, if she has not got her pay ten times over for going without milk so many days that he might have some warm clothes for winter. Ask little Sarah Brown if she has not been repaid well for carrying around her subscription paper for him so many frosty mornings in Worcester. And now, good-night. It has been a long, long time since I met you in the School-room. Many new faces have been added to our circle. Some that I used to see here are gone. But still, the benches are full, and I hope no boy or girl will vacate their seat for the next year.

LITTLE JOHNNY.

BY J.B. SYME.

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It was our fortune to be born in the country--far away, at the foot of one of the blue hills of Scotland--in a quaint old fashioned little house--in a quiet little village that seemed shrunken and grey, and grim, and decrepid with age. The drooping ashes, the solemn oaks, and the shady plane-trees, spread their long arms tenderly over the straw-thatched roofs of this lowly hamlet, as if to defend it from the burning sun and reckless storms; and the Ayrshire rose and ivy crept up and clung to its damp and crumbling walls. In the broken parts of the gables, and in the crevices of the ruined chimneys, the dew-fed wall-flower grew in poverty and beauty, and shook the incense from its waving flowers into the bosom of summer. The bearded moss clustered like a thousand little brown pin-cushions upon the old thatch, and older stones; and sometimes the polyanthus and primrose, planted beside it by some child who loved to look at flowers, would close their eyes and lay their dewy checks upon the moss's breast at evening.

The only links that connected the simple, primitive people of this little hamlet, with the purely ideal was their flowers. They did not know about the participle mysteries that science has discovered in those beautiful children of God, the flowers. They could not, like the poor pariahs to whom the proud Hindoos of India will not speak, converse poetic stories with those daughters of spring and summer; yet, they saw something in their flowers beyond the visible and lowly circumstances of their own every-day life--something that lifted their eyes from the ground to heaven. The marigold, that star of the earth, with its bright, yellow petals, reminded them of the golden stars of heaven; the daisy, with its pure white blossom, bathed in the dew and sunlight of smiling morning, recalled to their minds the stories they had heard in their childhood about the diadems of fairies; and the blue forget-me-nots seemed to twinkle like the blue eyes of the angels. And when winter came, and the fair summer flowers faded away; moralizings on life, on death and eternity, came sighing in their expiring exhalations, over that simple people's souls. It was from being taught, in this way, to love the flowers of the country, that I Cultivated sympathies which pre-disposed me to love city flowers.

When I was first transplanted from my own green, native valley, into the heart of a great city; when my early home was levelled to the ground, and when its flowers were withered, never to bloom any more, I felt as if I had come amongst grim walls to wither too, and had been uprooted from the light and life of my youth that I might die. The birds that wailed around me in their prison cages, seemed to weep for the hawthorn and alder trees that were growing beside the ruins of my old home, and I wept with them, for I, too, was sighing for nature.

As I became familiar with the lanes, and streets, and byways of the city, I began at last to find, that there were flowers, too--flowers beautiful as the roses in the gardens of paradise, and bright as the smile of Abel when he worshipped his God. Day by day, in my little walks, I passed a large square encompassed by a low wall and lofty iron railing, in which several hundreds of boys and girls with rosy cheeks and light hearts, sported, and sang like fairies holding festival. Here were faces lovelier than roses; lips brighter than ripe cherries, and eyes purer than dew; from the day I first beheld those flowers of the city, I ceased to sigh for the country and its flowers. I used to stand and gaze at them with grateful delight, and live over again my own childhood's hours, as I watched their childhood's sports. By and by I knew and became known to several of those children; I gave them kind words, and they returned me beautiful smiles.

There was amongst that host of children one little boy whose face was very fair; whose eyes were very bright, and whose little feet made merry music on the smooth pavement. Girls have a strong intuitive love of the beautiful, and Johnny with his liquid eyes, and dimpled cheeks, and floating ringlets of gold was the favorite of all the girls at school, often wished that I had roses to place upon his brow, and the waters of paradise to sprinkle on his cheeks, that I might preserve their bloom forever. But, alas! city flowers droop and fade and die; and though tears fall, like Hermon's dews, upon the cold green earth where they are sleeping, it will not renew their blooming, nor bring them back from the grave.

I looked amongst the tiny throng one day, and Johnny was not there--I came again and again, and still he was not there. "He has gone away," said I, "to gladden his grandmother's bosom--his grandmother, who doubtless lives far away in some little cottage in the country. He will soon come back again."

And he did come back again, for on a lovely summer day, when the birds and butterflies and children were sporting in the sun, I saw him seated in a little chair, amidst his young companions.

"Shall I soon get well again, to play with them?" said he, lifting his pale face and sad eyes towards his mother's.

"Yes," said his mother, with a sad smile and a deep sigh, "you will soon get well again, Johnny."

Alas no, fond mother; the bloom has gone from his cheek forever, the beauty from his form. Henceforth, if he lives, the thoughtless will laugh at him, as he moves painfully about the streets--the wicked will mock him. In thy heart only, and in the bowers of paradise, shall he now, henceforth and forever live and bloom. Slowly and sadly I saw his pale cheek grow paler, and the lustre fade away from his eyes.

Time wore away, and this stricken flower of the city faded away with it. He could no longer sit and look upon his former playmates; the airs of Autumn were too cool at last for his sensitive, thin, pale, transparent cheek.

I was walking one day, in a pensive mood, along a crowded thoroughfare, where active men jostled each other in the pursuit of business. There was life and hope in their eyes, and vigor in their limbs. It is not on the streets that one is likely to meet the blighted flowers of the city--the drooping and the dying do not wither away there. Within the chambers of silent and sorrowful homes they breathe out their lives, and fade away.

As I walked along, gazing at the tall grim buildings and dark alleys, that were so full of old, historical memories, I was suddenly recalled from a reverie, by a feeble cry; and turning quickly round I saw, in the arms of a robust and rosy lad, the wasted, corpse-like form of my little friend. I do not know how I recognized him. It was by an intuition of the soul, for not a feature that his countenance bore in his healthful days, was visible.

I took his trembling little hand in mine, and shaking my head to clear the moisture from my eyes, said I, attempting to smile--"How are you?"

"Quite well," said the dying infant, and he, too, smiled.

I knew that it was an angel that lighted up that smile--that it was the immortal spirit, rising in sublime resignation above the vanity of health and earthly beauty, that beamed in his blighted face.

"I cannot walk now," said Johnny, in a soft, low voice, that his panting chest could scarcely articulate.

I could not speak--and, continued the boy, with a little sigh, and in tremulous tones--"My mother is dead."--But thy Father, from whom the purest and holiest things and thoughts have their being--the Source of all light and life and beauty and goodness, lives to thee Johnny, said I in my heart. Poor little blighted city flower, thought I, as I looked at him through my tears--immortal flower of humanity--purer and lovelier now in thy pain and resignation than when thy cheeks were rosy, and thy laugh was like a song-bird's music; thou shall soon be transplanted to a land where no sorrows, sighs, and pains are known; thy little feeble frame will moulder away beneath the daisy and the weeping snow-drop, but thy purified soul shall bloom in everlasting glory, in the bosom of God.

Oh! you who are strong and full of life, speak gently to the fragile, drooping, blighted flowers of cities, and do not scorn them. They once were beautiful; and now they only linger sadly here, with no mother to cherish them. Kind words and gentle looks are everlasting sunshine to city flowers.

Around the throne of God are white-winged cherubim, whose countenances are purer than transparent snow, and whose voices are sweeter than that of the angel Azazil, who leads the choir of the daughters of Paradise. Those are the souls of little children, who have suffered in their bodies and in their affections, and who have yet complained not. The soul of little Johnny blooms brightly amongst those celestial spirits--a flower of heaven.

_SEVENTH VOLUME OF_

_BURRITT'S CHRISTIAN CITIZEN._

_ELIHU BURRITT_, Proprietor.

EDITORS,

_ELIHU BURRITT, THOMAS DREW, Jr._

REGULAR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS,

_Edmund Fry_, London, _Ernest Lacan_, Paris.

THE SEVENTH VOLUME of this large and popular Family Newspaper, commenced Jan. 1st. 1850. Devoted to

_Christianity and Reform, Literature, Education, Science, Art, Agriculture and News._

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, AT

_WORCESTER, MASS._

TERMS.--ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY CENTS, per Annum, _INVARIABLY_ in Advance.

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The Citizen is the organ of no party or sect, but expresses freely the sentiments of its editors upon all the great reformatory questions of the day. Sympathising with all the great enterprises of Christian benevolence, it especially speaks against all war in the spirit of peace. It speaks for the slave as a brother bound; and for the abolition of all institutions and customs which do not respect the image of God and a human brother, in every man, or whatever clime, color or condition of humanity.

All orders should be POST PAID and directed to either of the Editors, at WORCESTER, MASS.

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_BURRITT'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS,_

The Second Edition of this collection is just published, with additions and a

_PORTRAIT._

The rapid sale of the first edition of the collected writings of Mr. Burritt, has rendered necessary the second edition, to which we have added TWELVE pages of matter, and an Electrotype portrait of the author.

Price, 25 cents a single copy. A liberal discount made to those who buy quantities to sell again.

All orders should be addressed post paid to

_THOMAS DREW, Jr., Worcester, Mass._

ILLUSTRATIONS OF

_THE LAW OF KINDNESS._

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