Part 9

“I tell you that I shall never get into habits of drinking,” interrupted young Stanley. Then, as he took up his gun to go out shooting, the cornet uttered the words with which this little story commences.

Captain Guise did not feel satisfied. He saw that his young friend was relying on the strength of his own resolutions, and in so doing was leaning on a reed. He could not, however, say anything more just then, and Norman Stanley started a new subject to give a turn to the conversation.

“By-the-by, Captain Guise, I’ve not shown you the prize which I captured yesterday. As Dugsley and I were beating about in the jungle, what should we light upon but a tiger-cub—a real little beauty, pretty and playful as a young kitten.”

“What did you make of it?” asked the captain.

“Oh, I’ve tethered it to the tree yonder,” said Norman, pointing to one not a hundred yards distant. “By good luck I had a dog’s chain and collar which fitted the little creature exactly. I mean to try if I can’t rear it, and keep a tiger-cub as a pet.”

“A tiger-cub is rather a dangerous pet, I should say,” observed Captain Guise, with a smile.

“Oh, not a bit of it!” cried Norman, lightly; “the little brute has no fangs to bite with, and if it had, the chain is quite strong enough to”—

The sentence was never finished, for while the last word was yet on the smiling lips of the youth, the sudden sound of a savage roar from a neighboring thicket made him start, turn pale, and grasp his gun more firmly. Forth from the shade of the bushes sprang a large tigress. In a minute, with a few bounds, she had cleared the space between herself and her cub! Snap went the chain, as the strong wild beast caught up her little one in her mouth; and before either Norman or the captain (who had snatched up a second gun) had time to take aim, the tigress was off again, bearing away her rescued cub to the jungle!

“That was a sight worth seeing!” exclaimed Captain Guise; “I never beheld a more splendid creature in all my life!”

Norman, who was very young, and quite unaccustomed to having a tiger so near him with no iron cage between them, looked as though he had not enjoyed the sight at all. “I should not care to meet that splendid creature alone in the jungle,” he observed. “Did you not notice how the iron chain snapped like a thread at the jerk which she gave it?”

“Yes,” replied Captain Guise, as he turned back into the tent; “what will hold in the cub, is as a spider’s web to the full-grown wild beast. You had, as I told you, a dangerous pet, Norman Stanley. You might play for a while with the young creature, but claws will lengthen and fangs will grow. And,” the captain added more gravely, “this is like some other things which are at first but a source of amusement, but which are too likely to become at last a source of destruction.”

Norman Stanley’s cheek reddened, for he felt that it was not merely of a tiger’s cub that his friend was speaking. Evil habits, which at first seem so weak that we believe that we can hold them in by a mere effort of will, grow fearfully strong by indulgence. Many a wretched drunkard has begun by what he called merely a little harmless mirth, but has found at last that he had been fostering something more dangerous still then a tiger’s cub. His good resolutions have snapped; he has been carried away by a terrible force with which he has not had the strength to grapple; and so has proved the truth of the captain’s words, that what is at first but a source of amusement may be at last a source of destruction.

NOT ONE TOO MANY.

“NO, neighbor, you’ve not one too many,” observed Bridget Macbride, as she stood in the doorway of the cottage of Janet Maclean, knitting coarse gray socks as fast as her fingers could go.

“It’s easy enough for you to say so,” replied Janet, who was engaged in ironing out a shirt, and who seemed to be too busy even to look up as she spoke—“it’s easy enough for you to say so, Bridget Macbride. You’ve never had but three bairns [children] in your life, and your husband he gets good wages. You’d sing to a different tune, I take it, if you’d nine bairns, as I ha’e, the oldest not twelve years old—nine to feed, to clothe, and to house, and to toil and moil for, and your goodman getting but seven shillings a-week, though he’s after the sheep from morning till night!” Mrs. Maclean had been getting quite red in the face as she spoke, but that might have been from stooping over her ironing work.

“Still children are blessings,—at least, I always thought mine so,” observed Bridget Macbride.

“Blessings; yes, to be sure!” cried Janet; “I thought so too till there were so many of them that we had to pack in the cottage like herrings in a barrel.” Janet was now ironing out a sleeve, and required to go rather more gently on with her work. “I’m sure nae folk welcomed little ones more than Tam and I did the four first wee bairns, though many a broken night’s rest we had wi’ poor Jeanie,—and I shall never forget the time when the measles was in our cottage, and every ane o’ the four had it! Yes,” the mother went on, “four we could manage pretty well, with a wee bit o’ pinching and scraping; but then came _twins_; and then little Davie; and afore he could toddle alane, twins again!” and Janet banged down her iron on its stand, as if two sets of twins were too much for the patience of any parent to endure.

“You must have a struggle to keep them all,” observed Bridget Macbride.

“Struggle! I should say so!” cried Janet, looking more flushed and angry than ever. “We never could have got on at all, had I not taken in washing and ironing; and it’s no such easy matter, I can tell you, to wash and iron fine things for the gentry with twin-babies a-wanting you to look after them every hour in the twenty-four!” It seemed as if the babies had heard themselves mentioned, for from the rude cradle by the fire came a squall, first from one child, and then from both, and poor Janet was several minutes before she could get either of them quiet again.

“You’ve a busy life of it indeed,” observed Bridget, as soon as the weary mother was able once more to take up her iron.

“’Deed you may say so,” replied Janet sharply, plying her iron faster, as if to make up for lost time. “And for all my working, and Tam’s, we can scarce get enough of bread or porridge to fill nine hungry mouths; and as for meat, we don’t see it for weeks and weeks—not so much as a slice of bacon! Then there’s the schooling of the twa eldest bairns to be paid for, as Tam and I won’t ha’e them grow up like heathen savages; and we’ll hae them gae decent too, not in rags and barefooted, like beggars. And I should like to know”—Janet was ironing fast, but talking faster—“I should like to know how shoon [shoes] and sarks [shirts], and a plaidie for this ane, and a bonnet for anither, and breakfasts o’ bannocks, and porridge for supper, are a’ to come out of that wash-tub?”

“And yet,” observed Bridget Macbride, “hard as you have to work for your children, I don’t believe that you would willingly part with one of them, neighbor.”

Even as she spoke, there was a distressful cry of “Mither! mither!” as Janet’s two eldest children burst suddenly into the cottage, looking unhappy and frightened.

“What ails the bairns?” asked Janet anxiously, turning round at the cry.

“O mither, we’ve lost wee Davie; we can’t find him nowhere in the wood, and we be afeard as he may have fallen over the cliff.”

“Davie! my bairn! my darling!” exclaimed poor Janet, forgetting in a moment all her toils and troubles in one terrible fear. Down went the iron on the table, and without waiting to put on bonnet or shawl, the fond mother rushed out of the cottage, to go and search for her child. Bridget had spoken the truth; Janet might complain of the trouble brought by a large family, but she could not bear to part with one out of her flock. If Davie had been the only child of a rich mother, instead of the seventh child of a poor one, he could not have been sought with more eager anxiety, more tender, self-forgetting love.

Followed by several of her children, but outstripping them all in her haste, Janet was soon at the edge of the wood. “Davie! Davie! my bairn! my bairn!” resounded through the forest. The mother’s cry was answered by a distant whoop and halloo;—Janet knew the voice of her husband, and her heart took courage from the sound. But her hope was changed into delight, when she caught a glimpse between the trees of the shepherd coming towards her, with her little yellow-haired laddie Davie perched on his broad shoulders, grasping with one hand his father’s rough locks, and with the other a bannock, which he was nibbling at as he rode.

“The Lord be praised!” cried poor Janet, and rushing forward she caught the child from her husband, pressed Davie closely to her heart, and burst into a flood of grateful tears.

“You must look a bit better after your stray lamb, Janet,” said Tam with a good-humored smile. “I was just crossing the wood when Trusty set up a barking which made me go out o’ my way just to see if he had found a rabbit, or started a blackcock. There was our wean [child] sitting much at his ease, munching a bannock, as contented and happy as if he’d been a duke eating venison out of a golden dish. But you mustna let the wee bairn wander about by himsel’, for if he’d gaen over the cliff, we’d never hae heard the voice o’ our lammie again.”

Very joyful and very thankful was Janet Maclean, as, with her boy in her arms, she returned to her cottage. Bridget had remained there to take care of the twins during the absence of their mother. Mrs. Macbride received her neighbor with a smile, and the words, “Didna I say, Janet, that ye’d not one too many, nor would willingly part wi’ a single bairn out o’ your nine?”

“The Lord forgie my thankless heart!” said poor Janet, and she fondly kissed her boy. “We ne’er are grateful enough for our blessings until we are like to lose them.” Then putting the little child down on the brick floor, with fresh courage and industry the mother returned to her ironing again.

May we not hope that all Janet’s toil and hard work for her children had one day a rich reward? May we not hope that not one out of the nine, when old enough and strong enough to labor for her who had labored so hard for them, but did his best to repay her care and her love? How large is a parent’s heart, that opens wide and wider to take in all the children of her family, however numerous those children may be! Though each new babe adds to poor parents’ toils, and takes from their comforts, still the kind father and the fond mother, as they look round their home circle of rosy faces, can not only say but feel, “There is not one too many.”

THE IRON RING.

CHANG WANG was a Chinaman, and was reputed to be one of the shrewdest dealers in the Flowery Land. If making money fast be the test of cleverness, there was not a merchant in the province of Kwang Tung who had earned a better right to be called clever. Who owned so many fields of the tea-plant, who shipped so many bales of its leaves to the little island in the west, as did Chang Wang? It was whispered, indeed, that many of the bales contained green tea made by chopping up spoilt black tea-leaves, and coloring them with copper—a process likely to turn them into a mild kind of poison; but if the unwholesome trash found purchasers, Chang Wang never troubled himself with the thought whether any one might suffer in health from drinking his tea. So long as the dealer made money, he was content; and plenty of money he made.

But knowing how to make money is quite a different thing from knowing how to enjoy it. With all his ill-gotten gains, Chang Wang was a miserable man, for he had no heart to spend his silver pieces, even on his own comfort. The rich dealer lived in a hut which one of his own laborers might have despised; he dressed as a poor Tartar shepherd might have dressed when driving his flock. Chang Wang grudged himself even a hat to keep off the rays of the sun. Men laughed, and said that he would have cut off his own pigtail of plaited hair, if he could have sold it for the price of a dinner! Chang Wang was, in fact, a miser, and was rather proud than ashamed of the hateful vice of avarice.

Chang Wang had to make a journey to Macao, down the great river Yang-se-kiang, for purposes of trade. The question with the Chinaman now was in what way he should travel.

“Shall I hire a palanquin?” thought Chang Wang, stroking his thin moustaches; “no, a palanquin would cost too much money. Shall I take my passage in a trading vessel?” The rich trader shook his head, and the pigtail behind it,—such a passage would have to be paid for.

“I know what I’ll do,” said the miser to himself; “I’ll ask my uncle Fing Fang to take me in his fishing-boat down the great river. It is true that it will make my journey a long one, but then I shall make it for nothing. I’ll go to the fisherman Fing Fang, and settle the matter at once.”

The business was soon arranged, for Fing Fang would not refuse his rich nephew a seat in his boat. But he, like every one else, was disgusted at Chang Wang’s meanness; and as soon as the dealer had left his hovel, thus spoke Fing Fang to his sons, Ko and Jung:

“Here’s a fellow who has scraped up money enough to build a second porcelain tower, and he comes here to beg a free passage in a fishing-boat from an uncle whom he has never so much as asked to share a dish of his birds’-nests soup.”[E]

“Birds’-nests soup, indeed!” exclaimed Ko; “why, Chang Wang never indulges in luxuries such as that. If dogs’ flesh[E] were not so cheap, he’d grudge himself the paw of a roasted puppy.”

“And what will Chang Wang make of all his money at last?” said Fing Fang more gravely; “he cannot carry it away with him when he dies.”

“Oh, he’s gathering it up for some one who will know how to spend it,” laughed Jung. “Chang Wang is merely fishing for others; what he gathers, they will enjoy.”

It was a bright, pleasant day when Chang Wang stepped into the boat of his uncle, to drop slowly down the great Yang-se-kiang. Many a civil word he said to Fing Fang and his sons, for civil words cost nothing. Chang Wang sat in the boat twisting the ends of his long moustaches, and thinking how much money each row of plants in his tea-fields might bring him. Presently, having finished his calculations, the miser turned to watch his relations, who were pursuing their fishing occupation in the way peculiar to China. Instead of rods, lines, or nets, the Fing Fang family was provided with trained cormorants, which are a kind of bird with a long neck, large appetite, and a particular fancy for fish.

It was curious to watch a bird diving down in the sunny water, and then suddenly come up again with a struggling fish in his bill. The fish was, however, always taken away from the cormorant, and thrown by one of the Fing Fangs into a well at the bottom of the boat.

“Cousin Ko,” said the miser, leaning forward to speak, “how is it that your clever cormorants never devour the fish they catch?”

“Cousin Chang Wang,” replied the young man, “dost thou not see that each bird has an iron ring round his neck, so that he cannot swallow? He only fishes for others.”

“Methinks the cormorant has a hard life of it,” observed the miser, smiling.

“He must wish his iron ring at the bottom of the Yang-se-kiang.”

Fing Fang, who had just let loose two young cormorants from the boat, turned round, and from his narrow slits of Chinese eyes looked keenly upon his nephew.

“Didst thou ever hear of a creature,” said he, “that puts an iron ring around his own neck?”

“There is no such creature in all the land that the Great Wall borders,” replied Chang Wang.

Fing Fang solemnly shook the pigtail which hung down his back. Like many of the Chinese, he had read a great deal, and was a kind of philosopher in his way.

“Nephew Chang Wang,” he observed, “_I_ know of a creature (and he is not far off at this moment) who is always fishing for gain—constantly catching, but never enjoying. Avarice—the love of hoarding—is the iron ring round his neck; and so long as it stays there he is much like one of our trained cormorants—he may be clever, active, successful, but he is only fishing for others.”

I leave my readers to guess whether the sharp dealer understood his uncle’s meaning, or whether Chang Wang resolved in future not only to catch, but to enjoy. Fing Fang’s moral might be good enough for a Chinese heathen, but it does not go nearly far enough for an English Christian. If a miser is like a cormorant with an iron ring round his neck, the man or the child who lives for his own pleasure only, what is he but a greedy cormorant without the iron ring? Who would wish to resemble a cormorant at all? The bird knows the enjoyment of _getting_; let us prize the richer enjoyment of _giving_. Let me close with an English proverb, which I prefer to the Chinaman’s parable,—“Charity is the truest epicure; for she eats with many mouths.”

FOOTNOTE:

[E] Noted Chinese dishes.

THE ILL WIND.

“IT’S an ill wind that blaws naebody good, Master Harry—we maun say that,” observed old Ailsie, Mrs. Delmar’s Scotch nurse, as she went to close the window, through which rushed in the furious blast; “but I hae a dear laddie at sea, and when I hear the wind howl like that, I think”—

“Oh, shut the window, nurse! Quick, quick! or we’ll have the casement blown in!” cried Nina. “Did you ever hear such a gust!”

Ailsie shut the window, but not in time to prevent some pictures, which the little lady had been sorting, from being scattered in every direction over the room.

“Our fine larch has been blown down on the lawn,” cried Harry, who had sauntered up to the window.

“Oh, what a pity!” exclaimed his sister, as she went down on her knees to pick up the pictures. “Our beauty larch, that was planted only this spring, and that looked so lovely with its tassels of green! To think of the dreadful wind rooting up that! I’m sure that this at least is an ill wind, that blows nobody good.”

“You should see the mischief it has done in the wood,” observed Harry; “snapping off great branches as if they were twigs. The whole path through the wood is strewn with the boughs and the leaves.”

“I can’t bear the fierce wind,” exclaimed Nina. “When I was out half an hour ago I thought it would have blown me away. I really could scarcely keep my feet.”

“I could not keep my cap,” laughed Harry. “Off it scudded, whirling round and round right into the river, where I could watch it floating for ever so long. I shall never get it again.”

“Mischievous, horrid wind!” cried Nina, who had just picked up the last of her pictures.

“Oh, missie, ye maunna speak against the wind—for ye ken who sends it,” observed the old nurse. “It has its work to do as we hae ours. Depend on’t, the proverb is true, ‘It’s an ill wind that blaws naebody good.’”

“There’s no sense in that proverb,” said Harry, bluntly. “_This_ wind does nothing but harm. It has snapped off the head of mamma’s beautiful favorite flower”—

“And smashed panes in her greenhouse,” added Nina.

It was indeed a furious wind that was blowing that evening, and as the night came on it seemed to increase. It rattled the shutters, it shrieked in the chimneys, it tore off some of the slates, and kept the children awake with its howling. The storm lulled, however, before the morning broke; and when the sun had risen, all was bright, calm, and serene.

“What a lovely morning after such a stormy night!” cried Nina, as with her brother Harry she rambled in the green wood, while old Ailsie followed behind them. “I never felt the air more sweet and fresh, and it seemed so heavy yesterday morning.”

“Ay, ay, the wind cleared the air,” observed Ailsie. “It’s an ill wind that blaws naebody good.”

“But think of your poor son at sea,” observed Harry.

“I was just thinking o’ him when I spake, Master Harry. I was thinking that maybe that verra wind was filling the sails o’ his ship, and blawing him hame all the faster, to cheer the eyes o’ his mither. It is sure to be in the right quarter for _some one_, let it blaw from north, south, east, or west.”

“Why, there’s little Ruth Laurie just before us,” cried Harry, as he turned a bend in the woodland path. “What a great bundle of fagots she is bravely carrying!”

“Let’s ask after her sick mother,” said Nina, running up to the orphan child, who was well known to the Delmars. Ruth dwelt with her mother in a very small cottage near the wood; and the children were allowed to visit the widow in her poor but respectful home.

“Blessings on the wee barefooted lassie!” exclaimed Ailsie; “I’ll be bound she’s been up with the lark, to gather up the broken branches which the wind has stripped from the trees.”

“That’s a heavy bundle for you to carry, Ruth!” said Harry; “it is almost as big as yourself.”

“I shouldn’t mind carrying it were it twice as heavy and big,” cried the peasant child, looking up with a bright, happy smile. “Coals be terrible dear, and we’ve not a stick of wood left in the shed; and mother, she gets so chilly of an evening. There’s nothing she likes so well as a hot cup of tea and a good warm fire; your dear mamma gives us the tea, and you see I’ve the wood for boiling the water. Won’t mother be glad when she sees my big fagots; and wasn’t I pleased when I heard the wind blowing last night, for I knew I should find branches strewn about in the morning!”

“Ah,” cried Harry, “that reminds me of the proverb, ‘’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.’”

“Harry,” whispered Nina to her brother, “don’t you think that you and I might help Ruth to fill her poor mother’s little wood-shed?”

“What! pick up sticks, and carry them in fagots on our backs? How funny that would look!” exclaimed Harry.

“We should be doing some good,” replied Nina. “Don’t you remember that nurse said that the wind has its work to do, as we have ours? If it’s an ill wind that does nobody good, it must be an _ill child_ that does good to no one.”

Merrily and heartily Harry and Nina set about their labor of kindness. And cheerfully, as the children tripped along with their burdens to the poor woman’s cottage, Nina repeated her old nurse’s proverb, “’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 199, “grow” changed to “grew” (Dora grew uneasy)

Page 227, originally, footnote, right side of text missing, original read:

[B] A. L. O. E. remembers attending, many y ago, exactly snch an exhibition at the house friend, of a model of the Tabernacle made by a and her children for some charitable purpose.

This has been changed to:

[B] A. L. O. E. remembers attending, many years ago, exactly such an exhibition at the house of a friend, a model of the Tabernacle made by a lady and her children for some charitable purpose.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Children's Tabernacle, by A. L. O. E.