Part 9

"Well, Sir, my father can paint signs as well as act, and now that the theaters are closed he is glad of outside work. Couldn't you please give him the contract to paint the numbers on your city carriages?"

The mayor's eyes twinkled. He was pleased with the business-like way of the boy and granted his request. The money from this work was a help, and right after that a rich man hired Joe's father to paint Scottish scenes on the walls of his reception hall, so they were getting on quite comfortably when poor Mr. Jefferson was taken ill and died. This meant that Joe and his sister must leave school and go to work. Mrs. Jefferson opened a boarding-house, and the two children joined a traveling theatrical company. They did fancy dancing and sang comic duets, and ever so many times when they pretended to laugh, they were so tired and homesick that they wanted to cry. Sometimes Joe would be given a few lines to speak in some play. It seemed as if he would never get a chance to show what talent he really had. But he studied all his spare time and watched great actors carefully, because he intended to win a high place on the stage some day.

By and by Laura Keene, an actress who had a theater of her own in New York, let him try a leading character in a play that ran one hundred and fifty nights. There was not one of these performances at which the audience did not applaud young Joe Jefferson and say they wanted to see him in something else. And when they did see him in Dickens's _Cricket on the Hearth_, as dear old Caleb Plummer, and as Bob Acres in _The Rivals_, they exclaimed: "This young man is a wonder! Why, he knows the whole art of acting!" But Joe Jefferson did not think he knew half enough. He kept on studying for he meant to improve still more.

Finally, after he had become quite famous in half a dozen different parts, in this country, in England, and Australia, he began giving the most wonderful play of all--the one always called his masterpiece--"Rip Van Winkle." In a few years he had all the fame, wealth, and praise that a man could ask for. The little fellow who, at four years of age, was blacked up to dance "Jim Crow" and gathered twenty-four dollars for his queer antics, forty years later could easily count on a thousand dollars for one night's appearance in Rip Van Winkle. But we must not forget how hard and patiently he had worked for this. We must not forget what he had actually done. He had educated himself so that he had friends among the most cultivated people in the world; he was quoted as one of the most polished and finished actors in America; and he had earned enough money to bring up his own children in luxury.

Joe Jefferson had a lovely old age. He bought a large southern estate, where he spent the winter months, and he owned a summer home at Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, where he fished and painted pictures to his heart's content, and where he entertained many distinguished people. After he stopped playing, except once in a while, and intended to retire from the stage, every now and then there would be such a call for him that he would consent to give "Rip Van Winkle" just once more. He must have been about perfect in this play, else how is it that old theater-goers look so happy and satisfied when they say: "Ah, you should have seen the great Joe Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle!"

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet, was a boy, he lived in Portland, Maine. In those days Portland did much trading with the West Indies, and Henry and his boy friends liked to stay down at the wharves when the Portland vessels came in. It was sport to watch the burly negroes unload the hogsheads of molasses, the barrels of sugar, and the spices. The boys used to wish they were sailors or captains, so that they could sail across the water and perhaps have great adventures. Henry also thought it would suit him to be a soldier, and when he was five years old, and there was much talk about the great war which is called the War of 1812, he sent a letter to his father, who happened to be away at the time, that he had a toy gun already, and if his father would please buy him a drum, he would start right off for the battle-field. Probably he was not as warlike as he fancied he was, for one Fourth of July just after that, he jumped every time a cannon went off and begged his mother to stuff his ears with cotton, so that he would not hear the banging.

Henry liked music and books far better than fighting. He read a great deal with his mother, and they took long walks together, for they both loved flowers and birds. Twice every Sunday Henry went to church with his mother. In the cold weather he carried her foot-stove for her (a funny little box which held coals) and in the summer her nosegay, because she never went to service, after the flowers began to bloom, without a bunch of sweet smelling blossoms. This odd foot-warmer can be seen any time in the old Wadsworth-Longfellow house in Portland. Visitors from all over the world, even from India and Turkey, have wandered through this home of the poet to look at the desk at which he wrote, the rich mahogany chairs, and the old-fashioned mirrors.

Henry was willing to do errands or any tasks that his mother wished him to do. He did not mind even driving the cow to pasture, for as he walked along, he was usually making up rhymes. And although he had very good lessons in school, he often scribbled little jingles in his copy book. When he was thirteen, he told his sister that he was going to send a poem to the Portland newspaper. He did not tell any one but her, and he only signed "Henry" at the end of the poem, so although the editor printed it, the other school children did not find out for a long time that it was his. Henry and his sister read the printed verses until they wore the newspaper to shreds and felt they had a lovely secret.

After Henry graduated from college, his father wanted him to be a lawyer, like himself, but Henry was sure he wanted to be an author. He said: "Don't ask me to study law, father; I think I can write books. Anyway, if you will let me have my way, I will promise to be famous at something." So his parents let him travel through Europe, and when he sent long, happy letters home, telling about the different things he saw, they were so charming that all the neighbors wanted to borrow the letters, and Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow agreed that Henry would probably be famous with his pen.

When Henry came home again, he was chosen for a college professor. He was only twenty-two, and it began to look as if the Portland boy would be a success even if he did not study law.

The students at Harvard College loved young Professor Longfellow. He was so handsome, so lively, so exquisitely neat in dress, that they were very proud to introduce him to their parents, and best of all, he made their lessons so interesting that they were actually sorry when the class was dismissed. He proved a fine teacher. But, besides teaching in the college, Henry wrote poem after poem. It was not long before his verses were liked in other countries as well as in America. French people began to say: "Why, we want our children to know Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems!" And Spanish ladies and Italian noblemen declared they were beautiful. Finally so many countries were asking for these poems they were translated into fifteen languages.

Longfellow was soon called "The Poet of Every Land."

You will think that was the right name for him, when you hear what happened on a big ocean steamer. Once a large party of travelers were sailing from Greece to France. As they sat talking one evening, somebody praised the great French poet, Victor Hugo. A lovely Russian lady spoke up: "Victor Hugo is fine, but no poet is so well known as the American Longfellow. I want to go to Boston to see the Bridge about which he wrote." Then she repeated every word of "I stood on the Bridge at Midnight." Upon that, an English captain just back from the Zulu war, recited a Longfellow poem. A gray-haired Scotchman said another, an American remembered one, a Greek sang some verses of Longfellow's that had been set to music, and when the French captain of the steamer declaimed "Excelsior", there was great handclapping, and it showed that Henry Longfellow was indeed a favorite poet.

Henry Longfellow liked Cambridge. He boarded in a fine old place, Craigie House, where General George Washington had once stayed. And when he was married to a Boston girl, her father gave them Craigie House for a wedding present. Longfellow was so happy as the years went on, that he wrote better than ever. You will like his "Hiawatha", which tells about the Indians, his "Evangeline", and the story of Myles Standish. Do not forget to read "The Children's Hour." Longfellow was never too busy to play with his children and saw to it that they were kept happy. Once when he took the three girls to England, Charles Dickens, the great English writer, asked them to visit at his grand place, Gads Hill. He sent a wonderful coach, all glittering with gold trimmings and driven by men in scarlet livery, to the station for them, and had a Swiss chalet in his garden for them to use as a playhouse. Many great people gave them dinners and parties. But what pleased them most of all was the respect shown their father. One of the daughters still lives in Craigie House, which is often visited by people who love Longfellow's poems and who wish to see the rooms in which he lived.

Longfellow could sell his verses as fast as he wrote them. A New York editor once paid Longfellow three thousand dollars for one short poem. And imagine how proud his wife and children must have been to overhear people saying: "I wonder if Mr. Longfellow has written anything lately. If he has, I must read it!" Imagine how happy it made his father that he had kept his word: "If you will let me have my way, I will promise to be famous in something." And surely all the Americans who were on that steamer and heard the Russian, the Greek, and other foreigners reciting Longfellow's poems must have been proud that a man from their own country had won the name of "The Poet of Every Land."

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

It was about seventy-five years ago that the Emperor of Russia, Nicolas I., made up his mind that he wanted a railroad between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He meant to have it one of the best in the world. So he called an officer into his council chamber and said: "Now take plenty of time to look about in the different countries, have all the men you want to help you, but find me, somewhere, an engineer that will lay out a perfect railroad line." Men appointed by this colonel traveled some months. They visited many cities, wrote letters, and asked advice. Then the colonel went back to the emperor and said: "The man you need to do this piece of work lives in the United States of America."

"What's his name?" asked Nicolas.

"He is Major George Washington Whistler. He is one of the founders of the city in which he lives, Lowell, Massachusetts. He is a distinguished army officer and a fine engineer."

"He is named for a great officer," answered Nicolas, remembering our General Washington, and he dispatched a letter to the Lowell engineer.

The major made haste to start for Russia, because the honor was great, and the payment would be generous. He left his boys and his wife behind, because he did not know just how comfortable he could make them in the far-off country, but he told the boys to be good and to mind their mother.

These boys were named James McNeill, William, and Charles. Their mother was a fine woman, but sometimes they wished she would not be quite so strict. She used to say on Saturday afternoons: "Come, boys, empty your pockets and gather up your toys; we will put the knives and marbles away and get ready for Sunday." All day Sunday they were not allowed to read any book but the Bible. But James liked the stories he found there, and when he was only nine could say almost half the Bible by heart.

James was the oldest in the family. He was born in Lowell and was such a cunning baby that everybody wanted his picture. One of his uncles, who loved him dearly, used to say: "It's enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds (this was a great English painter, who had died years before) come out of his grave to paint Jimmie asleep!" Jimmie had delicate features and long, silky, brown curls that hung about his face. In among these was one white lock that dropped straight down over his forehead. This looked like a tiny feather. More than all his playthings he liked a pencil and paper. From the time he could scribble at all he drew pictures of everybody and everything in sight. These pictures were very good, and when he was large enough to go to school the other children were apt to ask him to make animals and birds for them on the blackboard.

Major Whistler soon sent for his family to join him in Russia. It was a long, hard voyage there, and poor little Charlie died on the way. The two other boys were better sailors and were as well as could be when they met their father. They did enjoy the strange sights in St. Petersburg! They were not long in getting acquainted with the little Russian children or in learning the language. They went skating, dressed in handsome furs; they learned the folk and fancy dances, joined in the winter sports, and voted Russia a fine country. Still their parents did not let them forget they were little Americans.

The climate did not agree with James, and every time he caught cold he had touches of rheumatism, so that often he had to stay in the house and have his feet put in hot water. Instead of making a fuss about this, he used to call for pencil and paper and practise drawing feet until he could make very perfect ones. Major Whistler sent him to the Art Academy in St. Petersburg, where he was praised by his teachers. That old, tiresome rheumatism kept bothering him, and by and by he had a long rheumatic fever. He was a dear, patient boy, however, and afterwards declared he was almost glad he had it because some one who pitied the small invalid sent him a book of Hogarth's engravings. I want you to be sure and remember about this gentleness and patience, because when he was older people often accused him of being cross and rude. But at this time I am sure no one could have been nicer.

James was very careful of his mother, too. One evening she had taken the boys in a carriage to see a big illumination. Bands were playing and rockets flying. The horses next their carriage were frightened, and reared and plunged as if they would hit the Whistler party. James shoved his mother down on the seat behind him, and standing in front of her, beat the horses back from them. He always was as polite to her as if she were the emperor's wife.

The major worked too hard on the great railway and died before James was fifteen. The emperor was fond of the two boys and wanted them to stay on in Russia and be trained in the school for pages of the Court. But their mother said they must grow up in America and hurried back to her own land. She did not have much money to spend but thought James should go to West Point to get the military training his father had had. At this academy he found he did not like to draw maps and forts nearly as well as he did human figures and faces. Once, when he had been sent to Washington to draw maps for the Coast Survey, he forgot what he was about and filled up the nice, white margins with pert little dancing folks. He was well scolded for this, I can tell you.

James was a tall, handsome young fellow at this time, and liked to go about to dancing-parties in the evening. He earned very little making maps and could not afford to buy the real, narrow-tailed coat which was proper. So he used to take his frock coat that he wore all day and pin it back to look like a dress coat and start off for big balls, where nobody was much shocked, because he was always doing droll things and was so lively that he was welcome in any dress.

In Paris strangers used to ask who the young artist was who had the snow-white lock among his black curls, for the brown curls had grown as black as jet, and the map-drawing had grown so tiresome that James had given up West Point and settled down to painting and etching in Paris. He had decided that there was nothing in the world which suited him but the life of an artist. He worked quite steadily and people began to say: "I think young Whistler is going to do great things some day." But suddenly he packed up and went to London.

In this city he was praised even more, but he did not sell enough pictures to pay his bills, and once, when he had kept men waiting a long time for money that he owed them, officers came and took everything away but his pictures. The room looked so bare and homely that Whistler painted a very good imitation of furniture round the walls of his room. So good, in fact, that a rich man who came to look at the pictures sat down in one of the imitation chairs and found himself on the floor.

It was fortunate that James could go a long time without food, for it took nearly all he could earn from his pictures to buy paint and canvas for others. I dare say that quite often when it was said: "James McNeill Whistler is growing rude and cross," the real truth of the matter was that James McNeill Whistler was hungry and worried.

However, he began to make money at last, and just as life seemed bright, an art critic, Mr. John Ruskin, declared that the Whistler pictures, which were being bought at big prices, were poor--very poor! Mr. Ruskin spoke, and what was worse, printed his opinion. "I never expected," he wrote, "to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face!" Well, it did not look for a while as if there was any more good luck in the world for James Whistler. He did not lose any time in getting a lawyer to sue Mr. Ruskin for spoiling the sale of his pictures. There was a trial in London, and the court-room was crowded. Some were there because they already owned Whistler pictures and wanted to find out if they had paid good money for bad pictures; others because they were warm friends of the artist or the critic; but even more men and women went to hear the sharp questions of the lawyers and the clever answers of Ruskin and Whistler. Whistler won the case. When the judge awarded one farthing for damages (this is only a quarter of a cent in our money!), Whistler laughed and hung the English farthing on his watch-chain for a charm. Mr. Ruskin had to pay the costs of the trial, which had mounted up to nineteen hundred dollars. Some of his friends insisted on raising that sum for him. One of them said it was worth nineteen hundred dollars to have heard the talk that went on in the court-room.

Later, Mr. Whistler received much more than two hundred guineas for a single picture. Two famous ones, of which we often see prints, are "Portrait of my Mother" and the Scotch writer, "Carlyle." James Whistler's mother lived to be an old woman, as one can guess from the picture, and her son loved her just as dearly as he did when he beat the prancing horses away from her, in Russia. The French nation bought this portrait, and it hangs in the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. The Scotch people wanted to own the portrait of Carlyle, and the city of Glasgow was glad to pay five thousand dollars for it.

Mr. Whistler married a woman who was herself an artist, and she was very proud of him. "The Duet", one of his pictures, shows his wife and her sister at the piano. Two portraits by this American artist hang in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but most of them are owned in England.

James Whistler was always kind to young artists and liked to have them sit by him while he worked. They were very proud to be noticed by him, for long before he died he had received all kinds of honors and medals from foreign academies; and France, Germany, and Italy made him an Officer of the Legion of Honor, a Commander, and a Chevalier. He loved art so well that he made water-colors, pastels, etchings, and lithographs, as well as oil paintings. He did not get his fame without much hard work. You remember how many times he copied his own foot when he was a child. Well, he was just as patient and thorough when he was older. For a long time he made a practice of drawing a picture of himself every night before he went to bed. He traveled a great deal, painting views in many countries and studying the pictures of other artists. But Hogarth was his favorite, and it is interesting to know that James McNeill Whistler lies buried very near Hogarth, in London, for he had thought him a model ever since his boyhood days in St. Petersburg.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

You can't think how hard fathers and mothers used to work and plan to get their children educated in the old days when there were no public schools. The Emersons did some planning, I can assure you.

All the pictures of Ralph Waldo Emerson that I have happened to see show him as a man of middle age, with very smooth hair, and plain but very nice-looking clothes. He looks in these pictures as nurse Richards used to say of my father,--"as if he had just come out of the top bureau drawer."

Well, Ralph Emerson did not always wear fine clothes, but I would not be a bit surprised if he always looked middle-aged. Boys who had as little fun as the Emerson boys had when they were growing up would not be expected to look young.

In the end, Ralph became a minister, as well as a writer, and a lecturer, and a philosopher. His father and his grandfather had been ministers, too. I fancy it was trying to send all these minister-Emersons to school and college that kept each set of parents so poor.

Ralph's father, William Emerson, did not care to be a minister. He wanted to live in a city and teach school, play his bass viol, and belong to musical or singing clubs. But his mother looked ready to cry when he told her this and said: "Why, William, it has taken all the money I had to send you through Harvard College. What good will it do you, if you do not become a preacher?" So, rather than grieve his mother, he agreed to fit himself for preaching. How he hoped he might be sent to some large town! But instead of that, he settled in a small place where neighbors lived two or three miles from each other. He was as lonesome as he could be. He was too poor to buy a horse and too busy to spend half his time walking, so he could not get very well acquainted with the families that came to hear him preach. Besides, his pay was small, and if the kind-hearted farmers had not brought him a ham, a leg of lamb, or a load of wood now and then, I don't see how he would have managed.

In spite of all these hindrances, William saved a little money in five years. He bought a small farm and got married. As the years went by and there were children to feed, his preaching did not bring half the money they needed, so he taught school, his wife took boarders, and he--even--sold--his--beloved bass viol. And I do not think they felt that anything was too hard if only these children could go to college. Mrs. Emerson was very proud of her husband when he stood in the pulpit on Sundays, and used to shut her eyes and try to imagine how their boys would look in a pulpit.

Finally good luck came their way. Mr. Emerson was asked to preach in Boston. Then he had the city life he loved, he heard good music, and could call on his friends three times a day if he wished, and the boys had fine schools.