Part 17

Literary men have great opportunities opening in this day. If they take all that open, they are dead men, or worse--_living_ men that ought to be dead. The pen runs so easy when you have good ink and smooth paper, and an easy desk to write on, and the consciousness of an audience of one, two, or three hundred thousand readers. So great is the invitation to literary work, that the professional men of the day are overdone. They sit, faint and fagged out, on the verge of newspapers and books; each one does the work of three. And these men sit up late nights and choke down chunks of meat without mastication, and scold their wives through irritability, and maul innocent authors, and run the physical machinery with a liver miserably given out. The driving shaft has gone fifty times a second. They stop at no station. The steam-chest is hot and swollen. The brain and digestion begins to smoke. Stop, ye flying quills! "Down brakes!" _A hot axle!_

Some of our young people have read--till they are crazed--of learned blacksmiths who at the forge conquered thirty languages; and shoemakers who, pounding sole-leather, got to be philosophers; and of milliners who, while their customers were at the glass trying on their spring hats, wrote a volume of first-rate poems. The fact is, no blacksmith ought to be troubled with more than five languages; and, instead of shoemakers becoming philosophers, we would like to turn our surplus supply of philosophers into shoemakers; and the supply of poetry is so much greater than the demand, that we wish milliners would stick to their business. Extraordinary examples of work and endurance may do us much good. Because Napoleon slept only four hours a night, hundreds of students have tried the experiment; but, instead of Austerlitz and Saragossa, there came of it only a sick headache and a botch of a recitation.

Let us not go beyond our endurance, cutting short our days and making a wreck of our life work, but labor earnestly, zealously, intelligently for success; and in the twilight of old age peace and happiness will be ours--not the shattered and praised remains of a career disastrously checked.

THE CHILDREN.[2]

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

When the lessons and tasks are ended, And the school for the day is dismissed, And the little ones gather around me To bid me "good-night" and be kissed; Oh, the little white arms that encircle My neck in a tender embrace! Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven, Shedding sunshine and love on my face!

And when they are gone I sit dreaming Of my childhood too lovely to last; Of love, that my heart will remember When it wakes to the pulse of the past. Ere the world and its wickedness made me A partner of sorrow and sin, When the glory of God was about me, And the glory of gladness within.

Oh, my heart grows weak as a woman's, And the fountain of feelings will flow, When I think of the paths steep and stony Where the feet of the dear ones must go; Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them, Of the tempests of fate blowing wild; Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy As the innocent heart of a child.

They are idols of hearts and of households, They are angels of God in disguise, His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses, His glory still beams in their eyes; Oh, those truants from earth and from heaven, They have made me more manly and mild, And I know how Jesus could liken The kingdom of God to a child.

Seek not a life for the dear ones All radiant, as others have done, But that life may have just as much shadow To temper the glare of the sun; I would pray God to guard them from evil, But my prayer would bound back to myself; Ah, a seraph may pray for a sinner, But a sinner must pray for himself.

The twig is so easily bended, I have banished the rule and the rod; I have taught them the goodness of knowledge, They have taught me the goodness of God. My heart is a dungeon of darkness, Where I shut them from breaking a rule; My frown is sufficient correction, My love is the law of the school.

I shall leave the old house in the autumn, To traverse its threshold no more-- Ah, how I shall sigh for the dear ones That meet me each morn at the door. I shall miss the good-nights and the kisses, And the gush of their innocent glee, The group on the green and the flowers That are brought every morning to me.

I shall miss them at morn and eve, Their songs in the school and the street, Shall miss the low hum of their voices, And the tramp of their delicate feet. When lessons and tasks are all ended, And death says the school is dismissed, May the little ones gather around me To bid me "good-night" and be kissed.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Found in the desk of Charles Dickens after his death.

CHARITY.

When you meet with one suspected Of some secret deed of shame, And for this by all rejected As a thing of evil fame, Guard thine every look and action, Speak no word of heartless blame, For the slanderer's vile detraction Yet may soil thy goodly name.

When you meet with one pursuing Ways the lost have entered in, Working out his own undoing With his recklessness and sin; Think, if placed in his condition, Would a kind word be in vain, Or a look of cold suspicion Win thee back to truth again?

There are spots that bear no flowers, Not because the soil is bad, But the Summer's genial showers Never made their bosoms glad. Better have an act that's kindly Treated sometimes with disdain, Than, in judging others blindly, Doom the innocent to pain.

NO OBJECTION TO CHILDREN.

It was a block of yellow-brown houses in South Boston, looking as much like a sheet of gingerbread as anything.

An express-wagon had just backed up to No. 21 in that block, and the driver, unloosing ropes here and there, proceeded to unpack the luggage.

"What have we here?" exclaimed Mrs. Bacon, the downstairs tenant. "A menagerie, I do believe. Come here, John."

There was, indeed, on the very top of the load a gray horse that in the twilight looked very real till one noticed the rockers on which it stood. But there was a kennel with a live terrier's head at the window, a bird-cage with its fluttering tenant, a crib and high chair besides, suggesting that the folks in the other part might, in the language of Mrs. Bacon, "make music."

Now, the downstairs tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Bacon, were precise, orderly people, living, like many other city people, in desert-island fashion, and only hoping that everybody else would mind their own business. It had been for weeks their great comfort that the other part was unoccupied, and now this load of household goods brimming over with pets and their belongings was an unwelcome sight.

There were no young Bacons--no, indeed! Plants did not flourish in their shaded windows nor canary birds splash water from their tiny baths upon the clear glass. No dog barked a noisy welcome when his master returned at night. No cat purred in her mistress's lap. The housekeeping of the Bacons was a fight against dirt, dust, sunshine and noise; and somehow pets bring all these.

"Well, John," said Mrs. Bacon as she turned from the window and pulled the shade over the sacred glass, "there's an end to peace and quiet. We must keep the entry doors locked; and don't you be whistling round to attract a child. Give them an inch and they'll take an ell. If folks must have rocking horses and what goes with them, they ought to move into the country, where they will not be pestering other people."

But, to the surprise of the Bacons, they were not pestered, only by the patter of little feet overhead, or a woman's voice singing cradle-songs or joining in her child's laughter. Crying there was, too, sometimes, but it was so soon hushed in motherly caresses that it seemed a sort of rainbow grievance only.

At night, when the father came home, there was quite a joyful noise upstairs, at which time John's face was a little wistful. But the new family did not intrude for ever so small a favor.

Mrs. Bacon took good care to keep out of sight whenever the new tenants were passing through the entry-way. One small pair of boots had considerable traveling to do up and down the stairs for a stroll on the sidewalk or to old Dorchester Heights, just beyond, for spoils of wild flowers.

One day Little Boots came back from this favorite resort, and instead of climbing the stairs, as usual, strayed hesitatingly toward Mrs. Bacon's kitchen door.

"Smells the gingerbread," soliloquized Mrs. Bacon, grimly. "Glad the door is locked." She glanced toward it to be sure; yes, it was locked, though the key had been transferred to another door. But shining through the keyhole was a very bright and sweet-looking star of an eye. Only a moment it twinkled, and then there was thrust in very gently the stem of a dandelion, and the small boots scampered away up the stairs.

"Little mischief!" exclaimed Mrs. Bacon, and she would have pushed the intruding stem outside, but her hands were in the dough. "If he wanted a piece of gingerbread, why didn't he say so? Mebbe he was afraid of me; cats run like all possessed when they see me. I can't have my key-holes choked up with dandelion stems--that's so. Soon's I get my hands out of this it will walk into the stove, that dandelion will." But the dandelion was too fresh and perfect, and brought back the old childhood days to Mrs. Bacon so clearly that she changed her mind. There was an old horseradish bottle on the pantry-shelf which, filled with water, received the dandelion. There, resting in the kitchen window, it smiled all day.

There was quite a commotion upstairs that night, and John and his wife, drowsily hearing it, thanked their stars that they were not routed by children's ails. The next day Mrs. Bacon's watchful ear caught the sound of "Little Boots" on the stairs, and again the blue eyes twinkled at the keyhole. This time the door opened in response:

"Well, child, what is it? Want some gingerbread?"

"Oh no, thank you, dear," said the little voice--a very hoarse little voice it was, and the throat was all wrapped in flannel.

"I wanted to know if you liked my f'ower?"

"See?" Mrs. Bacon pointed to the glorified horseradish bottle.

"Is your name Mrs. Bacon, dear?"

"Bacon--no 'dear' about it."

"I like to call you 'dear.' Don't your little boy call you so?"

"No."

"Ally! Ally, child!" called the mother anxiously; "come back, darling; you'll get cold."

"I'll take him up," responded Mrs. Bacon; and taking with unwonted tenderness the three-years-old darling, she landed him safely upstairs.

"It's the croup," explained the mother. "He got cold yesterday, out for dandelions--his favorite flower, ma'am. Calls 'em preserved sunshine; saw me put up fruit last fall--there's where he got the idea; though, as to telling where he gets all his ideas, that beats me. The doctor says he's that kind of a child the croup is likely to go hard with. Scares me to death to hear him cough."

"Goose oil is good for croup," remarked Mrs. Bacon.

"Did you ever try it?" asked the new neighbor, innocently.

"Me? No use for it. Got a bottle, though. Have it if you like."

Alas! the doctor's prophecy was true. The fatal disease developed that very night.

* * * * *

Little boots are still and starry eyes shine afar off now. As he lay in his beautiful last sleep, a flower amid the white flowers, a woman's brown hand slipped a few dandelions tenderly--oh, so tenderly!--into the dainty cold fingers.

"That is right, Mrs. Bacon, dear," said the poor mother. "'Preserved sunshine!' That's what he is to us."

The new tenants have moved into the country, and No. 21, upper tenement, is again to let.

Mrs. Bacon hopes the landlord will add to his advertisement, "No objection to children."

BANFORD'S BURGLAR-ALARM.

"Another Daring Burglary!" read Mrs. Banford, as she picked up the morning: paper. "Lucullus," she said, turning to her husband, "this is the fourth outrage of the kind in this town within a week, and if you don't procure a burglar-alarm, or adopt some other means of security, I shall not remain in this house another night. Some morning we'll get up and find ourselves murdered and the house robbed if we have to depend on the police for protection."

Banford assured his wife that he would have the matter attended to at once. Then he left the house and didn't return until evening. When Mrs. B. asked him if he had given a second thought to the subject which she had broached in the morning, he drew a newspaper from his pocket, and said: "See here, Mirandy! There's no use o' foolin' away money on one o' those new-fangled burglar-alarms. Economy is wealth. Here's a capital idea suggested in this paper--cheap, simple and effective."

And then he read the suggestion about hanging a tin pan on the chamber-door.

"I tell you, Mirandy! the man who conceived that brilliant notion is a heaven-born genius--a boon to mankind; and his name should go ringing down the corridors of time with those of such brilliant intellect as Watt, Morse, Edison, and other successful scientific investigators. You see, the least jar of the door will dislodge the pan, and the noise occasioned thereby will not only awaken the occupants of the room, but will also scare the burglar half to death, and perhaps the pan will strike him on the head and fracture his skull. It is a glorious scheme, and the fact that it was not utilized years ago is the most remarkable thing about it."

"Well," assented Mrs. B. in less sanguine tones, "it may be better than nothing, and it won't cost anything; and as Susan has gone out to spend the night with her sick sister, and we'll be all alone, I'll hunt up the pans now."

Accordingly, each inside door was crowned with a tin pan and left slightly ajar. Banford also thoughtfully placed a six-shooter under his pillow and stood a base-ball bat within easy reach.

"Now, Mirandy," he courageously observed, as they were preparing to retire, "if you are awakened by a noise during the night, don't scream and jump out of bed. Just lie still, or some o' the bullets I fire at the burglar may go through you and kill you. Let me wrestle with the intruder, and I'll soon make him regret that he had not postponed being born for a few centuries!"

Then they turned down the gas with a feeling of increased security, and were soon asleep. About half-past midnight they were awakened by a noise that sounded like a sharp clap of thunder, followed by a wail that almost chilled the marrow in their bones.

"Goodness!" screamed Mrs. B., in a voice swollen with terror, as she dived under the bed-clothes. "We'll be murdered in a minute. Shoot him, Lucullus! Quick--shoot him!"

Banford, after considerable nervous fumbling under the pillow, grasped his revolver with an unsteady hand and discharged its six barrels in rapid succession, but not with very gratifying results. One bullet shattered the mirror in the bureau; another plowed a furrow along the ceiling; another splintered the bed-post; a fourth perforated a portrait of his wife's mother; and the other two left their imprint on the walls.

"D-d-don't be fuf-fuf-frightened, M-mirandy," said Banford, encouragingly, his articulation sounding as if it had "collided" with an Arctic wave: "I gug-guess I've kik-kik-killed him. He'll not kik-kik-come here--"

At this juncture there was a noise in an adjoining room, as if a two-ton meteorite had crashed through a boiler-foundry, and Mrs. B. uttered a series of ear-piercing shrieks that would have scared the life out of any burglar.

"M-mirandy," stammered the frightened and demoralized Banford, grasping the base-ball bat and swinging it around with such reckless promiscuousness that he struck his terror-stricken wife on the head, "Mum-mirandy, the house is fuf-full of midnight mum-marauders, and we'll be bub-bub-butchered in cold bub-bub-blood! Save yourself and don't mum-mind about me!" And leaping out of bed, he sprang through a window on to the roof of a back building, and accidentally rolled off into the yard, fifteen feet below, just as another burglar-alarm went off with a clamor almost as deafening and harrowing as an amateur orchestra. Mrs. B., thinking she had been hit by the burglar, emitted a fresh outburst of shrieks, while her husband lay groaning in the back yard, with a sprained ankle and a frightful gash in his head.

A policeman had now been awakened by the uproar, and boldly mounting the front stoop, he pulled the door-bell out by the roots without evoking a response. Then he hesitated.

"If a foul murder has been committed," he mused, "the assassin has already made good his escape."

This thought gave him courage, and he forced an entrance. In the entry he collided with a hat-rack, which he mistook for the outlaw, and almost demolished it with several whacks of his club. Then he made a careful reconnaissance, and dislodged one of the burglar-alarms.

"Spare my life," he yelled to his imaginary assailant, "and I'll let you escape!"

He thought he had been stabbed with a frying-pan. He rushed out of the house and secured the assistance of four of his fellow-officers, and a search of the building was resumed. Mrs. Banford was found in bed unconscious. Her husband was found in the yard in nearly a similar condition; and the burglar was found under the sofa, shivering with fear, and with his tail clasped tightly between his legs.

The cause of the panic was soon explained. Mrs. Banford had overlooked the presence of her pet dog in the house, and this innocent animal, in running from one room to another, had dislodged the "cheap and effective" burglar-alarms.

BETTER THINGS.

BY GEORGE MACDONALD.

Better to smell the violet cool, than sip the glowing wine; Better to hark a hidden brook, than watch a diamond shine.

Better the love of a gentle heart, than beauty's favor proud; Better the rose's living seed, than roses in a crowd.

Better to love in loneliness, than to bask in love all day; Better the fountain in the heart, than the fountain by the way.

Better be fed by a mother's hand, than eat alone at will; Better to trust in God, than say: "My goods my storehouse fill."

Better to be a little wise, than in knowledge to abound; Better to teach a child, than toil to fill perfection's round.

Better to sit at a master's feet, than thrill a listening State; Better suspect that thou art proud, than be sure that thou art great.

Better to walk the real unseen, than watch the hour's event; Better the "Well done!" at the last, than the air with shouting rent.

Better to have a quiet grief, than a hurrying delight; Better the twilight of the dawn, than the noonday burning bright.

Better a death when work is done, than earth's most favored birth; Better a child in God's great house, than the king of all the earth.