Part 2

“Them’s my sentiments exactly,” says Harry. “It’s been just so at our house now for a week. Everything’s topsy-turvy, and you can’t find a place to rest the sole of your foot. And cross? my! I thought Ann would take my head off, this morning, when I tumbled against her mop-pail and tipped it over.”

“Will you please give these to Mr. Walter?”

It is bashful little Bessie, on her way home from a ramble in the distant wood, who whispers in Kate’s ear, as she offers a bunch of spring beauties gathered there, and blossoms plucked from a wayside apple-tree. Mr. Walter receives them with a smile of recognition, for who does not love the odor of apple-blossoms?

The blushing Bessie is straightway reassured and gratified by the following fable improvised for the occasion:

Once on a time, in early dawn of summer, Among the trees the question chanced to rise— “Which of us is the fairest, the most comely?” A towering pine tree boasted in this wise:

“Behold me, all ye puny ones, behold me! Look at my shoulders reaching to the sky! Look at my tasseled mantle—green forever! How can ye doubt or question?—here am I!”

A stately elm tree upward gazed a moment, In acquiescence bent her regal head: “Aye, thou art tall and gayly decked, my brother, But I have more of symmetry,” she said.

A languid willow, musing, softly murmured: “Yes, shapely is the elm, and tall the pine; But see, oh, friends (she made a sweeping courtesy), You must admit that gracefulness is mine.”

“Ah, well, that’s not the point,” replied a maple; “’Tis not of grace we’re talking, not at all; And as for form, why, I am well proportioned: And as for height, why, one may be _too_ tall.”

“Hold!” cried a tulip tree; “am I not shapely? And illy would the pine tree’s tassels green Compare with these broad leaves, so smooth and shining, Or with the bells of bloom that swing between!”

“Conceited fools!” a gnarly old oak grumbled; “Bragging of your fine clothes and shape and length! Bah, with your silly prate and idle prattle! There is most beauty where there is most strength!”

At that a plain, ill-favored tree took courage,— “And I, too—I am rugged! I am stout!” The little saplings sidelong glanced and giggled, The grown-up trees did toss their heads and shout;

And, one and all, they laughed and laughed together, And, one and all, together did they say: “Oh, listen! ugly scrub lays claim to beauty! Who ever heard the like before to-day!”

But Mother Nature frowned at their derision, Seeing the humble tree with grief downcast; Her wand she lifted—lo! the slighted claimant In comeliness all other trees surpassed!

A downy robe the knotted limbs enveloped, In folds whose fragrance thrilled the wond’ring air— A robe of pale, rose-tinted blossoms woven! Amazed and breathless did the scoffers stare.

And, one and all, they turned from jest and laughter, And, one and all, together whispered they: “Behold, behold the garment of our brother! Who ever saw the like before to-day!”

Since then, alway, in early dawn of summer, Dame Nature lifts her wand the trees to shame Who envy him that wears the apple blossoms And wish they had not mocked his modest claim.

But listen—will you?—to this score of lads and lasses, Bessie’s companions (freed from school, for it is Saturday), who, laden with wild flowers and mosses and ferns, have meanwhile established themselves on the steps, and are chattering like a flock of blackbirds:

“Oh, we’ve had lots of fun, and I’m awfully tired. Will you believe it? I ran over a snake! Dear me, how scared I was!” (A girl, of course.)

“Sho! you needn’t have been afraid of such a harmless little snake as that; I’d just as soon take it up in my hand as not!” (A boy, of course.)

“Why didn’t you, then? Ha, ha! I’d like to have seen you.”

“See, Marie, what a pretty toad-stool I found, all scarlet inside; and Fred, he’s got a lot of snail-shells in his pocket.”

“If I’d only had a gun along I could have popped over two or three red squirrels.”

“Oh—h—h! it would be cruel to kill the dear, sweet, cunning little creatures.”

“Don’t be alarmed, puss; he couldn’t fire off a gun to save his life.”

“Oh, the quantities of Bobolinks we saw in the meadows! If you could only have heard them sing—”

_Ting-a-ling,_ _Ting-a-ling, ling._

Everybody stares at the apparition. He has stolen a march upon them—that little tawny Italian, down there in the street, gazing up at the merry group, with a weary sort of smile, as his slender fingers toy with the strings of his instrument, bringing forth many a plaintive air. Soon the music ceases, and the tattered hat is passed around. But he may not go yet; his audience is clamoring for a song. “An Italian song,” cries Marie. And so, to the accompaniment of his guitar, he sings in his native tongue a little ballad which runs something after this fashion:

Wandering, wandering all the world over, Hither and thither, and to and fro, Free as the wind—the rollicking rover, Lightly humming and thrumming I go.

Free as the wind to linger and tarry, Free as the wind to hasten afar, All my wealth in my hands I carry— Look, behold it—my gay guitar!

Gold and houses and lands encumber, Never king, in his palace high, Slumber’d as sweetly as I slumber, Under the clear, unclouded sky.

Free as the wind, the rollicking rover, Little of trouble or care I know, Wandering, wandering all the world over, Hither and thither, and to and fro.

And off he goes with his merry song, and his weary smile, and his pockets jingling with pennies; and is succeeded by a fair-haired Norwegian, with a basket on his head, crying, “Oranges, oranges!”

Harry rushes down, and buys him out of the stock in hand, and before any one has time to protest, begins to treat the assembled company. So it was for this feast that the round, golden fruit has been, all these months, basking and ripening and gathering fragrance and sweetness from the rays that gladden a land of perpetual summer.

“What’s this—a picnic?” asks a gentleman in uniform, who has come to call upon the Lieutenant. The youngsters follow with their eyes the blue coat and bright buttons disappearing through the open doorway, then they slowly disperse; and Ponto, the great shaggy Newfoundlander, is left alone, dozing upon the mat. And the wee, gray sparrow returns with a wisp of horse-hair, and commences to build her nest.

PATCHES AND PERSEVERANCE.

“There goes Patches!”

“Hallo, Patches!”

Sitting in the porch, in the twilight of a June afternoon, Kate overhears those cruel taunts. “Oh-h-h!” she exclaims in smothered indignation, the hot flush mounting up her forehead.

“What is it, sister?” asks the Lieutenant.

“Oh, Walter, there are some boys down there in the street, calling names at a little newsboy, and making sport of his poor, patched clothes. And he looks so downhearted and discouraged—poor little fellow! Oh, it’s _too_ bad! I wish you could say something to him to comfort him. Mrs. McAllister was telling me about them the other day. His mother is a widow and does washings, and there are other children—he the eldest; and he is so kind and thoughtful, and does everything he can to help her; goes around town, out of school-hours, running on errands and carrying newspapers. I know what I’ll do”—but her plan for a new suit of clothes is suddenly broken in upon by the boy approaching, and handing her the evening paper, damp, just from the press.

“How many more of those have you to deliver?” Walter inquires.

“Only about a dozen.”

“Well, when you get through, and if you are not otherwise engaged, I’d like to have your company for a walk. You see,” he adds, with a smile, “I haven’t any eyes, myself, to find the way with; and it’s such a fine evening I believe I’d like to go—yes, as far as the Park.”

The boy looks up into the blind man’s face, Kate thinks, as if he would be willing to go to the ends of the earth with him.

“Yes, sir, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he says, hurrying away.

In one corner of the Park there is a shady, secluded nook—a clump of trees all overgrown with vines, with rustic seats underneath. As Walter and his companion rest there after their long walk, the moonbeams shining softly down between the leaves, all at once a sob breaks the stillness, followed by another and another, and then they come thick and fast. Now the Lieutenant does not ask, “What’s the matter, little boy?” as a great many thoughtless people would; for he remembers very well that one doesn’t like to be asked such questions when one is crying. Besides, doesn’t he know what the matter is? He can picture to himself the wearisome life the poor child leads—ill-fed, ill-sheltered, ill-clad, half the year pinched with hunger and cold, half the year breathing the close, pent-up air of some wretched tenement—in his brave struggle to help his widowed mother, not always able to find work; knocked about by ruffian newsboys, sneered at by thoughtless schoolmates, little heeded or noticed by anybody; till he looks downhearted, as Kate says, and the very tones of his voice are grown dreary and sorrowful. Thinking of all this, the Lieutenant cannot sit there like a block of stone, and listen to those stifled sobs. So, as there is nothing to be said, he leans over, and with that one arm of his about the slight figure, draws it close to his side.

“Oh, you’re so good!” murmurs the tearful voice, as the lad rests his head against the friendly shoulder. “It’s that that makes such a baby of me. I can’t help it. Other folks ain’t like that. Other folks don’t talk to me pleasant about this and that as you did all the way. Other folks—oh!” and with that the slender form is shaken again with sobs.

“Ah, but those other folks who treat you so, you are going to make them sorry for it, some day.”

“How?” The dreary young voice is full of wonder.

“How? Let me tell you a little story. Years ago a young printer went to New York City to find work. He hadn’t any fine clothes, and scarcely any money, and I doubt if in all that great city there was a single person that he knew. After much searching he found something to do; and in the office where he was employed the other printers delighted in annoying him, playing jokes upon him, and daubing his light-colored hair with ink. I wouldn’t wonder if this sort of treatment made him feel sad and homesick, sometimes, and wish he was back again among the mountains where he came from. However, he paid little attention to it; he worked all day, faithfully, and at night he read and studied a good deal; and when he couldn’t afford to pay for a light to study by, he would take his book out by the street-lamp and study there—sometimes when it was cold, too. Wasn’t he persevering? Well, he worked, and read, and studied, and persevered, till he got to be an editor; yes, in time he became the most famous editor—or journalist, some would call it—the most famous one that ever lived. Last fall he died—this man who was once a penniless, friendless boy—and at the news of his death there was sadness all over the country; and, at his burial, thousands and thousands of people crowded those same streets where he used to read, shivering, by the lamp-light; thousands and thousands went to get a glimpse of his dead face, and wept over it, because he had helped them and they loved him and were sorry he was gone.

“Oh, was it Horace Greeley?” the lad whispers. (He has stopped crying now.)

“You have guessed.”

“I’ve thought, sometimes,” says the boy, presently, in a hesitating way—“I never told it to anybody before—but I’ve thought I’d like to be great, too, some time, to be a lawyer—and—and go to Congress—and—oh, I never told it to anybody before, because it’s foolish, I know, and they’d laugh at me. I can’t help thinking about it, though. But of course there’s no hope for _me_.”

“Ah, but there _is_, though! I doubt if our Vice-President thought there was much hope of his ever going to Congress when, in his youth, he was earning his livelihood in a shoemaker’s shop. But, you see, he kept pegging away; when it wasn’t at boots and shoes it was at books, at gaining knowledge, and making the most of the talents that were given him, working his way up, inch by inch, till he became congressman, surely, till now he presides over the Senate. And our President, at your age, little dreamed that he would ever be called upon to control a great army, to plan campaigns and sieges, to ‘fight it out all summer on this line,’ as you have heard about—persevering, you see—and so to put an end to the bloody war, and be chosen once and again to the highest office in the land—like Washington, long ago. Yes, it’s perseverance that does it. Did you ever hear of Cyrus Field, the man who brought the Old World and the New nearer together by his Atlantic cable? When he first proposed to do it, to send dispatches through two thousand miles of water, that seemed to every one a very absurd idea. But when his cable was finished and ready to be laid, then people began to be interested; indeed, they were really excited over it, and it was quite the fashion to wear attached to one’s watch-chain a bit of that gutta-percha cable, set in gold. But the cable, or telegraph, was a failure, after all; it didn’t ‘work.’ So people disbelieved once more, and lost interest in the enterprise, and took the bits of gutta-percha from their watch-chains, and put them away out of sight and of mind. And it fared with the experimenter just as it fared with those trinkets. But years passed by, and lo! one day, to everybody’s surprise, the President received from Queen Victoria a polite message that had taken but a few moments to cross the wide Atlantic. And now, you know, Europe and America can talk with each other almost as easily as you and I here, sitting side by side. For what had Cyrus Field been doing all that time that nobody took any notice of him? He had been making trial after trial, and failure after failure, and losing fortune, and, very likely, friends, but never losing hope. So he persevered—and succeeded, at last. And who does your history say discovered America?”

“Christopher Columbus.”

“Well, this Christopher Columbus of whom all the histories tell and everybody knows, he was only a sailor boy, once, roving about in the Mediterranean, with small chance of ever becoming noted. As little chance would it seem there was when, years later, he went from court to court, vainly asking aid to carry out his project. People had hardly begun, yet, to credit the notion that the world was round; and this tall, sad-eyed, white-haired, shabbily dressed stranger, with his maps and his charts, and his plans for sailing straight West to India, who was going to listen to him? Kings and queens were unwilling to see him or give him an opportunity to explain, courtiers ridiculed him, children in the street would point to their foreheads, as he passed by, and call out to each other, ‘Look at the crazy Italian!’ But often disappointed, always hoping and persevering, he stuck to his project, and finally, after eighteen long years of waiting and fruitless effort, he got the help he wanted and started on his voyage, and so found—not India, but America.”

And as the Lieutenant and his young guide walk slowly homeward through the silent, moonlit avenues, he speaks of Lincoln, of Herder, of Ferguson, of Beethoven, of Sir William Herschel, and of others who have risen from poverty and obscurity to honor and renown; many of them “self-made,” as it is called, toiling patiently and unaided up that steep hill where the laurels grow.

Kate hears the hopeful ring in the lad’s voice as he says “Good night” to his friend, and through the open window she sees the hopeful expression upon his face as he turns away, glancing down rather proudly at the jacket that is mended with pieces of many shades, and the boots that have been patched and patched again. “What can you have been saying to him, Walter?” she wonders. “Oh, if you could only have seen his face just now! He doesn’t look like the same boy.” And Walter musingly repeats those lines with which every “wide-awake” American boy and girl is familiar. For was it not Longfellow who wrote them?

“Lives of great men all remind us We may make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;

“Footprints that perchance another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, Some forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.”

When, just before breakfast, Kate opens the door to look for the morning paper, what does she find lying there on the threshold beside it? Fresh water-lilies—the like of which are not to be found nearer than the lake—miles away. “He has been all that way and back, this morning! bless his little heart!” she exclaims, in astonishment, as she carries them to her brother, breathing a thousand sweetest “Thank-you’s,” from among their snowy petals. And you may be sure that those patched garments will soon be replaced by others nice and new.

KATE’S GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER.

“I’d like to know,” exclaims Marie, “if there weren’t any heroines as well as heroes in the time of the Revolution. Now down there in the Park to-day, while they were having their orations, and Mr. Higby got to talking about the Revolution—”

“Come now,” breaks in Harry, “you don’t mean to pretend you heard a word he said!”

“Indeed I do! I listened first-rate—along at first. Katy, mustn’t he stop interrupting? Well, all I was going to say was, that when he got to talking about the Revolution it was all about the forefathers that he got so eloquent, and never a word about the mothers! As if _they_ weren’t patriotic, too, and of some account! Don’t you suppose they were?”

“Kate,” slyly observes her brother, “here’s another fine opportunity for you to hold forth on the subject of your great-great-grandmother.”

“Ah! just as though you weren’t every whit as proud of her as I am!”

“Oh, my! _did_ you have a great-great-grandmother?” cries the enthusiastic Marie. “Do tell us about her.”

“Yes, do, Miss Katy,” says Harry, seconding the motion as he watches a sky-rocket shooting upward, leaving a gleaming train as it curves through the air. For this is the evening of the “Glorious Fourth,” and the speakers are all out in the porch, where a good view can be had of the display of fireworks down at the corner of the street.

“Well, then, Harry, you know about the battle of Cowpens, in South Carolina?”

“Yes, where the British thought they had won the day, sure, and Morgan brought up his dragoons, and they cut and slashed right and left, and put the Redcoats to flight, and took a lot of prisoners.”

“What are dragoons?” inquires Marie.

“Mounted troops—cavalry. Oh, but didn’t they pitch into ’em good with their swords! Wish _I’d_ been there.”

“And then you know, Harry, how Cornwallis pursued Morgan, in hopes of recovering the prisoners; and how General Greene had to come to Morgan’s rescue. By the way, Walter, I don’t know exactly why, but somehow all I hear of Sherman in the last war reminds me of that General Greene.”

“And did your great-great-grandmother live around there anywheres?”

“Yes, Marie. But you mustn’t think of her as a grandmother at all, with gray hair and cap and spectacles; for she was only a young girl then. There’s a portrait of her painted a few years after. They have it at Uncle Robert’s—little Rob’s father, you know. There she sits, with her arms folded; and she wears a brocade silk, with much lace about the low neck and flowing sleeves; and her hair is combed straight up from the forehead over a roll, and coiled high at the back of the head, very much as the style is now—only I suppose it was all her own, for switches hadn’t yet been thought of.”

“And did she do something brave?”

“So the story goes. She was an orphan, you see, and lived with her uncle, who was a hot-tempered old Tory, and all his sons and daughters the same. But, perhaps because they weren’t as good to her as they might have been, she took it into her head to believe some other way—sympathized with the rebels, you know. But she took care not to let any one find that out, which no one was likely to, for she was so young, only sixteen—just two years older than you, Marie—people wouldn’t be questioning her about politics. Well, it was just at this time, when Cornwallis was chasing up Morgan, that there came one rainy evening to her uncle’s a small detachment of British troops, with some Americans belonging to Morgan’s force whom they had captured the day previous, and asked for lodgings for the night. Her uncle welcomed them heartily, and gave them a room where they could lock up their prisoners, and ordered Chloe, the black cook, to get up a grand supper for them. Grand? I don’t suppose it was what would be called a grand supper nowadays. I presume it consisted largely of game from the forest, venison, and the like—not much in the way of dessert and nick-nacks, you know. While the British were feasting in the dining-room, Kate—we may as well call her Kate, for I forgot to tell you that I was named after her—slipped into the kitchen, and managed, unseen, to fill a basket with some of that plentiful supper, and creep with it up a back stairway to the store-room or garret at the top of the house. Now the room where the prisoners were locked in was in the second story, and had no window; but in the ceiling there was a trap-door that opened into the garret. Kate raised this door—or rather, it was a mere piece of plank—and let down the basket by a rope. And the prisoners, looking up and catching sight of her friendly face by the light of the candle she held, were gladdened, you may be sure. Ah, poor fellows, and they were hungry, too; hadn’t had a mouthful for two days. (Indeed, they had been out in search of game. That was the way they happened to be caught.) ‘Was there any way under the sun for them to get out of there?’ they asked her. Yes; she told them of a way she had thought of, but they would have to be very still about it, and wait till everybody in the house had gone to sleep. Then she closed the door again, but she was careful to take the basket with her, lest the Red-coats might look in before retiring, and find it there and suspect something was wrong. They did look in, too. There were the prisoners, all secure. Then they locked and bolted the door again, and for further security stationed a guard outside. When Kate found out about the guard she trembled for her plans. But toward midnight she peeped into the hall and saw him nodding sleepily, for he and his comrades, as well as their officers, had been making free with her uncle’s wine. In those days it was the custom to keep quantities of wine even in private houses, and to use it freely at the table.”

“Nothing of that sort going on nowadays!”

“I am sorry to say so, Harry, but I suppose there is; though not so generally the practice, I am sure—at least, not in this country. Well, Kate crept up to the garret again, by the same way as before, and she lowered a ladder—oh, so still!—to those six prisoners, and one by one they climbed up softly through the little trap-door in the ceiling—oh, it was just the least mite of an opening, hardly large enough for a person to crawl through; but then I suppose that one could manage to squeeze through a pretty small space for the sake of regaining one’s liberty—”

“That’s so!” says Harry, speaking, doubtless, from experience.