His name was Johnny Leslie, and he was standing on an empty flour barrel; in his hand was his United States History, and he was shouting at the top of his little voice,—
“All men are born free and equal, and endowed with certain in-in-alienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
He stopped a minute to draw a long breath, and his audience, who was sitting in an easy position upon the upturned kitchen coal scuttle, with her oldest child in her arms, took the opportunity to ask meekly,—
“What does that dreadful long word mean, Johnny? I never heard of that kind of rights before.”
“You’ll know when you’re older, Tiny,” said Johnny, loftily, and he was going on with his oration, but the audience was not to be silenced in this easy manner, and persisted,—
“But I want to know right away, now! I don’t believe you know yourself, Johnny Leslie!”
“Well, I don’t believe I do,” said Johnny, candidly, and in his own natural voice. “We might ask mamma, she’s up there at her window, I can see the back of her head. O mamma!”
There was no doubt about Mrs. Leslie’s hearing; if she had been in the top of the apple tree, at the foot of the garden, she could have heard that “O mamma!” perfectly well.
A pleasant face appeared where Johnny had seen the head, and a sweet voice said, “O Johnny!”
“Mamma, what does in-a-li-en-able mean?” shouted the orator, still loudly enough for the top of the apple tree.
“I’ve the greatest mind in the world to drop my new ‘Webster’s Unabridged’ on your head, you wild Indian,” said Mrs. Leslie, holding the big dictionary threateningly, over the edge of the window-sill, and Johnny’s head. “Don’t you suppose I have any inalienable rights? And do you think I can even pursue my happiness, much less catch it, with all this hullaballoo under my window when I am trying to write a letter?”
“Well, mamma, Tiny and I would just as lief go to the barn,” replied Johnny, in a reasonable tone of voice, “if you’ll just please tell us first what that word means. You see, as Tiny’s asked me, maybe some of the boys might ask, and I ought to be able to tell them.”
“Come up here, then, if you please,” said Mrs. Leslie. “I am not a Fourth-of-July orator, and so I do not need to practise shouting, just now.”
So Johnny and Tiny and Veronica—who was Tiny’s oldest child, and was made of what had once been white muslin, with cotton stuffing—came upstairs, and had it explained to them that inalienable meant that which cannot be separated, or taken away.
“But, I don’t see how that works,” said Johnny, looking puzzled, “for folks do take our rights away; I’m having lots of mine taken away, all the time. I’m very fond of you, mammy, and you know it, but still you sometimes take away my rights yourself.”
“For a Fourth-of-July orator,” said Mrs. Leslie, gravely, “you are showing a painful amount of ignorance. We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that I take away, or deprive you of, certain things to which you have a right, but the right to have them is there, all the same. Taking away the things does not touch that. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, mamma, I think I do,” answered Johnny, thoughtfully, “but it’s kind of puzzling. It’s most as bad as ‘if a herring and a half cost a cent and a half, how much will three herrings cost?’ But I did get that through my head, and I suppose I can get this.”
“But, sometimes,” said Mrs. Leslie, “people’s ‘inalienable rights’ seem to conflict; I say seem, for they never really do. For instance, as you have a gentleman for a father, and a woman who tries to be a lady for a mother, I feel as if I had an inalienable right to a gentleman for a son, and a lady for a daughter; and when my son talks about getting a thing through his head, I begin to wonder what is becoming of my rights!”
“Now, mamma,” said Johnny, appealingly, “that’s just nothing at all to what some of the boys say. But I’d like to hear anybody say that you aren’t a lady, or that papa isn’t a gentleman!” and Johnny doubled his fists fiercely at the bare idea of such a statement.
“You may live to have that pleasure,” said Mrs. Leslie, “if you let the boys have more of a right in you than I have.”
Johnny caught his mother in a “bear hug.” “I never thought of it that way,” he said. “No ma’am! You’ve the very first, best right and title to me, Mrs. Mother, and the boys may go bang—oh, there I go again! I mean the boys may—what shall I say?”
“You might say that the boys may exercise their inalienable rights over somebody else,” said his mother, laughing and kissing him. “But now I’ll tell you what we will do—I really don’t think it would look well for a Fourth-of-July orator to read his oration out of an United States History, so when papa comes home, I will ask him to have the Declaration of Independence printed on two or three sheets of paper for you, and we’ll tie them together with a handsome bow of blue ribbon, and meanwhile, if you’ve no objection, you will practise in the barn.”
“Of course I will, you loveliest woman alive!” said Johnny, rapturously, “and I shall try not to have my rights treading on anybody else’s rights’ toes!” with which extraordinary declaration, he pranced off to the barn, closely followed by Tiny and Veronica.
There was to be a picnic on the Fourth-of-July. Mr. and Mrs. Leslie and three or four neighbor families had agreed to take their dinners in baskets and butter-kettles, to a very pretty grove which grew obligingly near to the little village-city where they lived, and where Mr. Leslie edited the one newspaper of the place, which fact enabled him to have the Declaration conveniently printed for Johnny, who had been chosen by the boys for the orator of the day, because he stood highest in his reading and declamation classes. It wanted three or four days, yet, of the “glorious Fourth,” and Johnny was diligently practising his voice, for he was afraid, notwithstanding his mother’s earnest assurances to the contrary, that it was not loud enough for an open air oration!
Johnny was a very sociable and friendly little boy, and he had recently made acquaintance with a boy somewhat older than himself, whose profession was bootblacking. This boy had a cool, knowing, and business-like air, which had greatly taken Johnny’s fancy, and it occurred to him that a partnership with Jim Brady might be a very good thing. Jim had happened to mention that he owned a wheelbarrow, and Johnny owned an apple tree, which had been planted by his father on the day of Johnny’s birth, and which, this season, was full of promising apples. So Johnny resolved, if Jim improved on acquaintance, and showed symptoms of honor and honesty, to propose to him, when the apples should be ripe, to take his wheelbarrow and peddle them “on shares.”
He would probably have made Jim the offer on the second day of their acquaintance, but his mother advised him to wait a little. She felt sure that Johnny would tell her at once, if Jim should use bad language, or say or do anything which would make him a dangerous acquaintance for her boy, and she thought it would be time enough then to break off the intercourse which might put a little pleasure into the hard life of the bootblack, whose sturdy figure and face she had often noticed in passing his stand, and she had also noticed that he was almost always busy, even when other boys of his trade were idle.
Johnny was such a very small boy that it had never entered his mother’s head to forbid him to smoke. She thought of it once in a while, and hoped that when the time came for him to choose about it, he would elect to go without a habit which is certainly useless, and which in many cases involves a great deal of selfishness. She wished Johnny’s wife, if he should be so fortunate as to have a good wife some day in the far future, to love him altogether, not with a “putting-up” with one thing, and “making allowances” for another; and she meant, when the time came, to lay the whole subject plainly before him, and let him choose rationally for himself. It was quite true that his father smoked; but he smoked very moderately, never where it could annoy any one, and, whenever he bought cigars, he deposited a sum equal to that spent for them, in the little earthern jug with which he presented his wife once a year, and this money was neither “house money” nor “pin money”; it was for Mrs. Leslie to spend absolutely as she liked. And Johnny’s mother meant him, if he should smoke at all, to be just such a smoker as his father was.
But on the third of July, as “Johnny came marching home,” he met Jim at the usual corner, and Jim had a long cigar in his mouth! Johnny felt a good deal awed. He thought Jim looked very manly indeed.
“Have a cigar?” asked Jim affably. “One of my best customers gave me this,” he added, “and the one I’m smoking, and I tell you it’s not many fellows I’d offer this to, for they’re prime! It was a regular joke on him—he’s always poking fun at me, and this morning, when I said I’d give anything to be a sailor, he just pulls these out of his pocket, and says, seriously, ‘Smoke these, my boy, and you’ll be as sure you’re at sea as you ever will if you really get there!’ He thought I wouldn’t take ’em, but I did,” and Jim chuckled, “I thanked him kindly, and told him I’d learned to smoke years ago!”
“Learned?” said Johnny, “why, what is there to learn? It looks easy enough.”
“So it is,” said Jim, with another chuckle, “it’s like what the Irishman said about his fall; ‘Sure, it’s not the fall, it’s the fetch up that hurts!’ I wasn’t sea-sick after that first cigar? Oh, no! not at all!” and he gave an indescribable wink.
All this time Johnny held the cigar doubtfully in his hand. Was it worth while deliberately to make himself “sea-sick?” That long, coarse, black thing did not look as if it would taste nice.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Jim, “a light? Here’s one,” and he drew a match from his pocket, struck it, and handed it to Johnny, who, prevented by a false and foolish shame, from saying what was in his mind, lighted the cigar, hastily thanked Jim, and walked off, smoking.
But he had not gone a block before a queer, dizzy feeling, and a bitter, puckery taste in his mouth, which reminded him of a green persimmon, made him resolve to finish his cigar another time; so he put it out, wrapped it carefully in paper, thrust it into his trousers pocket, and then hurried home.
When he kissed his mother, she exclaimed, “Why, Johnny! You smell exactly as if you had been smoking!”
Johnny had never, in all his life, concealed anything from his mother; what made him wish to, now?
I stopped to talk to Jim,” he said, hastily, “and he was smoking a cigar that a gentleman had given him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Mrs. Leslie, gravely; “I must speak to Jim. He is too young to begin to smoke.”
Johnny said nothing, but his mind was made up; he was not going to be beaten by that cigar! There were no lessons to be learned for the next day, and he could give the whole afternoon, and the whole of his mind to it.
He did. I am not going into particulars, they are not agreeable; but late that afternoon, as a heavy thunderstorm was coming up, Mrs. Leslie grew uneasy about Johnny, who had not been seen since dinner.
“Run to the barn, Tiny,” she said, “and see if he is there—though I don’t think he can be, for I haven’t heard a word of the oration.”
Tiny ran, and came back in five minutes, breathless, and with a horrified face.
“Oh, mamma!” she exclaimed, “Johnny’s cap and his speech are on the barn floor, and the most dreadfullest groans are coming out of the haymow!”
Mrs. Leslie was running to the barn before Tiny had finished.
“Johnny!” she called wildly. “My darling! What has happened?”
A pale face, a rough-looking head, with hay sticking out of its hair, appeared at the top of the ladder, and Johnny staggered weakly down.
“Oh, mamma!” he groaned, “I think I must be going to die! I never felt this way before!”
His mother caught him in her arms, and as she did so, the smell of the rank cigar which Johnny, with wasted heroism, had smoked to the end, struck her indignant nose.
“Johnny!” she exclaimed, reproachfully, “you’ve been smoking, and you told me what was just as bad as a lie about it!”
And the warm-hearted, offended little mother burst out crying, and sobbed with her head on Johnny’s dusty shoulder.
Nothing she could have said would have gone to Johnny’s heart of hearts as those sobs did. He forgot his alarming illness as he caught her in his arms, and said, imploringly,—
“Oh, mammy, my darling mammy, please don’t cry like that; I’ll die before I’ll ever tell you a lie, or act you one, again. Oh, please say you forgive me!”
Of course Tiny felt obliged to help with the crying, and when Mr. Leslie, coming home to a deserted house, traced his family to the barn, he came upon a place of wailing.
At first, he was inclined to laugh, but when he heard of the deceit which had followed Johnny’s first effort at smoking, he looked very grave. No one, however, could doubt Johnny’s penitence, and as he lay on the lounge in his mother’s room, while the heavy thunder and sharp lightning seemed to fill the air, and waves of deathly sickness rolled over him, he made some very good resolutions, which were not forgotten, as such resolutions sometimes are, after his recovery.
The orator of the day was somewhat paler than he usually was when he took his place upon the barrel which he had previously assisted to the grove, the next morning.
He read the Declaration of Independence in a voice which reached the ears of his most distant listener with perfect distinctness, and when he had finished, and the applause had subsided, he added, “out of his head,” as Tiny proudly announced.
“I’ve got a declaration of my own to make, now—it’s not at all long, so you needn’t worry—it’s just this: Folks sometimes think they’re being independent, when they’re only being most uncommonly foolish, and you never need think that anything you’re afraid to have anybody know is independence—it’s pretty sure to be sneaking meanness! And I’ve heard somebody that knows more than all of us put together, say that if we want to be presidents and things, and govern other folks, we’d better begin on ourselves!”
And Johnny stepped, in a dignified manner, from the barrel to a box, and thence to the ground, amid a storm of applause, while Mr. Leslie rose and bowed gracefully, from his place among the audience, in acknowledgment of the tribute paid him by the orator.
A prisoner in a dungeon may be one of those “freemen whom the Truth makes free,” and an absolute monarch may be “the servant of sin.” Each one of us must frame for himself his own especial Declaration of Independence.
It is a great pity that little boys’ legs are so short; they have to hurry so much, and a pair of good long legs, like those of the stately giraffe, for instance, would be such a convenience to a small boy, who wished to run home from school—half a mile—ask his mother something, and be back again, inside of five minutes.
It is difficult to think and run both at once, but something like this was passing through Johnny’s mind, as he tore home to ask if he might spend his shiny new half dollar in going to the circus with “the other boys.”
Flaming posters on all the available fences and walls, had been announcing for some days that Barnum was coming, and that there would be two afternoon and two evening performances, “presenting in every respect the same attractions.” Mr. Leslie had an engagement for the first afternoon, but he had promised to take Tiny and Johnny, and as many neighbor children as chose to join the party—with mothers’ and fathers’ consent, of course—on the second afternoon, and with this promise Johnny had been well content.
But when he went to school, on the morning of the first day, he found that several of his schoolmates had arranged to go that afternoon, and they soon succeeded in talking him into a belief that life would not be worth living unless he could join them.
“You see, Johnny,” said Ned Grafton, solemnly, “some of the ‘feats of strength and agility’ are about as hard to do as it would be for you or me to turn ourselves inside out and back again, and it stands to reason that they’ll not do them so well the second day as they will the first, when they’ve just had a rest; and the beasts and things always roar and fight more the first day, because they’re mad at having been shut up in their boxes and jolted about so; and then, forty things may happen to hinder your father from taking you to-morrow, and just think how you’d feel, if you were the only fellow at school who hadn’t been! You couldn’t stand it at all! So just cut home, and explain it to your mother, and ask her to let you come with us to-day, and we’ll wait for you here.”
“I’ll tell you what I can do,” said Johnny, eagerly, “I’ve half a dollar, all my own, left from my apple money, so I’ll take that, and then I can go with papa to-morrow, too,—I wouldn’t like to hurt his feelings, nor Tiny’s either.”
“Well, I should think your mother’d have to say yes to that,” said Ned, “and you’ll be luckier than the rest of us, if you go twice; but hurry up—you know it begins at three, and it’s after two, now.”
So Johnny hurried up, and was so perfectly breathless when he reached home, that he gasped for several minutes before he could begin to shout through the house for his mother.
His very first shout was enough; it was given at the foot of the front stairs, and, as his mother was in the dining-room, it reached her instantly, and without losing anything by the way. She came out at once, and boxed his ears lightly with the feather-duster, saying,—
“Johnny Leslie! This is not a deaf and dumb asylum. Did you imagine, when you came in that it was?”
“I didn’t know you were so near, mammy dear,” panted Johnny, “and I’m in the worst kind—I mean, a dreadful hurry, I don’t see why there couldn’t be a thinkephone, so that we could just think things at each other, it would save so much time. The boys are all waiting for me, and they want me to go to the circus with them this afternoon, because Ned Grafton says the first performance is always the best, before the beasts get the roar out of them, and before the people are tired, so mayn’t I take my own half dollar, and go with them, and then I can go with papa and Tiny to-morrow, too—it isn’t that I don’t want to go with him, but I want to have the best of it!”
“Is any grown person going with the ‘boys’?” asked Mrs. Leslie.
“N-o, mamma,” replied Johnny, hesitatingly, “at least, they didn’t say there was, and I don’t believe there is, but some of the boys are quite old, you know—Charley Graham is ’most fifteen—and there isn’t any danger; all the things are in cages, except the Tattooed Man.”
“I’m ever so sorry, dear,” said his mother, putting her arm around him, “but indeed I don’t feel willing to have you go without some grown person. There will be a very great crowd, and I don’t know all the boys with whom you want to go, and you might be led into all sorts of dangers. And it is all nonsense about the beasts getting the roar out of them by to-morrow; poor things! they’ll keep on roaring as long as they are caged. So you must be patient. I really think you’ll enjoy it more with papa to explain things, and Tiny to help you.”
“But they’re all waiting for me!” said Johnny, choking down a sob, “and something may happen between now and to-morrow—it’s a great while! Oh, please, dear mammy! I’ll be just as careful as if papa were there, and come right straight home when it’s out!”
Johnny’s mother looked nearly as sorry as he did.
“Dear little boy,” she said, “I know just how hard it is, and how foolish it seems to you that I am afraid to trust you there without papa, or some other grown person, and you know how dearly I love you, and now you have a chance to wear my sleeve in earnest; you must run back and tell the boys that you cannot go till to-morrow, and then come home to me, and I’ll comfort you.”
Johnny turned away without a word; he did not quite shake off his mother’s arm, but he drew away from under it, and ran, not to keep the boys waiting, back to the schoolhouse. But it was not the light-footed running which had brought him home, and although, before he reached the playground, he had conquered his tears, because he was ashamed for the boys to see them, his voice trembled as he said,—
“Mother says I can’t go to-day,—that I must wait till to-morrow, and go with papa.”
The boys all knew Johnny’s mother, more or less; those who knew her more adored her, and those who knew her less admired her profoundly, so there were no jeers or tauntings upon this announcement, but they all looked sorry, and Ned Grafton said,—
“We’re awfully sorry, old fellow, but we can’t wait—it wants only five minutes of three now; good by.”
There was a general rush, and the boys were gone. Johnny walked home very slowly, thinking bitter thoughts.
“I just believe it is because mamma never was a boy!” he thought. “If papa had been at home, and I’d asked him first, he’d have let me go! Ladies don’t know about boys—they can’t. Mamma knows more than most ladies, but even she doesn’t know everything.”
The circus tent was in plain sight all the way home; it stood on a vacant lot about half way between the school and Mr. Leslie’s house, and, just as Johnny entered the gate, a burst of gay music came to his ears. His mother stood on the porch with a little basket in her hands. It was very full, and covered with a pretty red doily. Tiny and little Pep Warren, from next door, were jumping up and down on the porch, and the baby was tottering from one to the other, chuckling, and talking in what they called “Polly-talk.”
“Johnny,” said his mother, eagerly, as he came heavily up the walk, “Tiny says there are lots of blackberries in our field, and I want you and Pep to go with her and get some for tea. You’ll have to eat up what is in the basket first, and then you can fill it with blackberries. And I’m going to lend you Polly!”
Johnny’s dull face brightened a little; he and Pep were great friends; he liked picking blackberries when he did not have to pick many, and to have Polly lent to them for even so short and safe an expedition as this was an honor which he appreciated.
“Oh, thank you, mamma!” he said, almost heartily, as he took the basket, and they started down the lane together, he and Pep holding Polly between them, with one of her chubby hands in a hand of each, and Tiny marching on in front. Pep sympathized deeply upon hearing of Johnny’s woe, but added, at the same time:—
“I can’t help being sort of glad, Johnny, that you’ll not see it before I do. You know mamma is going to let me go with all of you to-morrow.”
Johnny thought this was a little selfish in Pep, but he did not say so, and the party reached the blackberry bushes in harmony. Polly was even funnier than usual. She was just at that interesting age when babies begin trying to say all the words they hear, and the children were never tired of hearing her repeat their words in “Polly-talk.”
It was necessary to empty the basket first, of course, so they chose a nice grassy spot at the edge of the field, where the woods kept off the afternoon sun, spread the little red shawl which Tiny had brought, seated Polly on it, and themselves around it, and opened the basket. There were two or three “lady-fingers,” labelled “For Polly,” three dainty sandwiches, three generous slices of loaf cake, and three oranges.
“I think your mother is the very nicest lady I know, except my mother!” said Pep, through a mouthful of loaf-cake, and Johnny, who had just bitten deeply into his sandwich, nodded approvingly.
The lunch was soon finished, and then they began, not very vigorously, to fill the basket with blackberries, laughing at Polly as she tangled herself in a stray branch, and then scolded it.
Johnny put his hand in his pocket for his knife to cut the branch, and drew it out again, as if something had stung it—there was his half dollar! Then he remembered that he had taken it when he went to school in the morning, because he had half made up his mind to buy a monster kite. At that moment the music struck up once more in the distant tent. Johnny stopped his ears desperately.
“If I keep on hearing that, I shall go!” he said to himself.
He could not pick blackberries and stop his ears at the same time. The music swelled louder and louder. Then came a cheer from the audience. Johnny looked round for the other children. They were all standing together; Pep was holding down a branch for Polly, and he and Tiny were laughing as the little lady stained her pretty fingers and lips with the ripe berries.
“She’s all safe with them; they’ll take her home,” he whispered to himself, as he slipped into the wood, unseen by the other children.
“Suppose you had your thinkephone now, Johnny Leslie!” somebody seemed to say inside of his head, “you’d like your mother to know what you’re thinking now, wouldn’t you?”
“Papa would have let me go—mamma’s never been a boy, and she don’t know anything about it!” said Johnny, stubbornly, and speaking quite aloud. He ran fast as soon as he was through the wood, and, never stopping, handed his half dollar to the doorkeeper, and went in. The vast crowd bewildered him; he could not see a vacant seat anywhere, nor a single boy that he knew, but a good-natured countryman pushed him forward, saying:—
“Here, little fellow, there’s a seat on the front bench for a boy of your size.”
He struggled past the people into the place pointed out to him, and leaned eagerly over the rope. The clown was in the ring performing with the “trick donkey,” and everybody was roaring with laughter.
The donkey wheeled around suddenly, and flashed out his heels, just as Johnny, recognizing a boy on the other side of the tent, leaned still farther forward and nodded.
Johnny had a dim impression that he had been struck by lightning; the roaring of the crowd sounded like thunder; he did not remember what came next.
It was some minutes before the other children missed him; then they called him several times at the top of their voices, and, when he neither came nor answered, Tiny began to cry. Pep wished to explore the wood, but Tiny fairly howled at the idea of being left alone with Polly.
“I just believe,” she sobbed, “that some of the elephants and tigers and things have broken out of the circus, and got into the wood, and eaten my Johnny all up, and if we stay here they’ll eat us up, too!”
And, taking Polly’s hand, she set off up the lane toward the house. Pep followed her, greatly troubled. If the “elephants and tigers and things” really were in the wood, he was missing a glorious opportunity! His heart swelled at the thought of throwing a big stone at the elephant, demolishing the tiger with a club, and leading the rescued Johnny home to his glad and grateful mother! But Tiny was only a girl, and a badly frightened one at that; they had been trusted with baby Polly, and something seemed to tell him that it was his duty to see his charge safely home, and lay the case before Mrs. Leslie, rather than to rush into the wood and leave them frightened and alone.
Mrs. Leslie was sitting in the back porch, peacefully sewing, when the three children came up the garden walk, and she saw at once that something was the matter.
“Why, where’s Johnny, Pep?” she asked, anxiously, “and what has happened?” and she sprang up, dropping her sewing.
“We don’t know, ma’am,” said Pep, looking scared, “Tiny and I were holding down the branches for Polly to pick, and when we looked ’round, Johnny was gone, and I’m afraid he went into the wood, and that some of the circus beasts have carried him off!”
“Have any of them broken loose? Did anybody tell you?” gasped Mrs. Leslie.
“No ma’am,” said Pep, “but I don’t see what else could have gone with him.”
“Run home, dear,” said Mrs. Leslie, “I’m sorry to send you away, but I must go look for Johnny. Take Polly to the nursery, Tiny, and I’ll send Ann up to you.”
And, only stopping to speak to the servant, Mrs. Leslie sped down the lane and into the wood, calling “Johnny! Johnny!”
It was a very small wood, and she soon satisfied herself that her boy was not there. She ran up the lane, intending to go to Mr. Leslie’s office, and see what he thought had better be done next, when the front gate opened, and the man who had shown Johnny to a seat, came in with the poor little boy in his arms.
Johnny was still insensible, and at the first glance, his mother thought that he was dead. Her face grew as white as his, and it was with great difficulty that she kept herself from falling.
“Don’t be scared, ma’am,” said the farmer, kindly, “the little feller’s only fainted, and his hurt ain’t but a trifle—the donkey’s hoof just grazed him kind of sideways. If it had struck him square, it would have finished him, but a miss is as good as a mile.”
While he was speaking, the farmer had laid Johnny on the bench in the porch, and now he went hastily to the pump, and brought a dipperful of water to Mrs. Leslie.
“A little of that will bring him to,” he said, and as she gently bathed Johnny’s face and head, his new friend fanned him gently with his own large straw hat, and in two or three minutes the little boy “came to,” and sat up, feeling strangely dizzy, and wondering where he was, and what had happened.
“There!” said the farmer, putting on his hat, and then making a bow, “Good afternoon, ma’am—he’ll do now,” and he was gone before Mrs. Leslie could even thank him.
“I went to the circus, mammy!” said Johnny, feebly, and throwing his arms around his mother’s neck as he spoke, “and the donkey was quite right to break my head, only I don’t see how he knew, or how you knew, and if I’d really had the thinkephone, then you could have stopped me. But I’m not good enough to wear your sleeve any more—you’ll have to take it back!”
Johnny had been very much interested about knights, a few weeks before, when his mother had told him some stories of the Knights of the Round Table, and how each one chose a lady whom he might especially honor, and for whom he was always ready to do battle, and wore her token, a glove, or a silken sleeve, or something of the kind that she had given him, and how Launcelot wore the sleeve of the fair Elaine. They were ripping up a silk gown of Mrs. Leslie’s, which was to be made over for Tiny, at the time of one of these talks; it was a summer silk, soft, and of a pretty light gray color, and he had begged one of the sleeves. His mother had humored him, and twisted the sleeve around his straw hat.
“Be my own true knight,” she had said, as she gave him his decorated hat, and Johnny had fully intended to render her all knightly service and homage. So that now, when he had so flagrantly deceived and disobeyed her, he felt that he was degraded, and had no longer any right to wear her token.
“We will not talk about that now, dear,” said his mother, very gently and gravely, “You must go to bed at once, and have a mustard plaster on the back of your neck. Does your head ache much?”
“I should think it did!” said Johnny, feebly, “it feels as big as the house, with an ache in every room!” and he closed his eyes.
He was feverish at bedtime, and his mother, too anxious to go to bed, put on a soft wrapper, and drew the easy-chair to his bedside. She had sent for the doctor, but he was not at home, and she could not hope to see him now, until morning.
Johnny moaned and muttered a good deal in his sleep, through the night, but toward morning he grew quiet, and when he woke, the pain was nearly gone, but he felt very weak and forlorn. The doctor came, and said he had better stay in bed until the next day, and against this advice he felt no desire to rebel.
“Mamma,” he said, earnestly, when the doctor had gone, “I wish I felt well enough to want to go with papa and Tiny and Pep and the rest of them, right badly. I don’t feel punished enough.”
His mother stooped to kiss him.
“The punishing will not help you for next time,” she said, “unless you see just where the fault was. When did the going wrong begin?”
Johnny was silent for a few moments; then he said,—
“I think it began when I said to myself that you didn’t know about boys because you were a lady. Then, when I found I had my half dollar in my pocket, and heard the music, that seemed to make it all right,—I made myself believe that if papa had been at home, he would have let me go,—only I didn’t really and truly believe it, for he never does let me do things that you don’t.
“But, mamma, don’t you think it would be a splendid thing if there really were thinkephones? Something like telephones, you know, only for thinks instead of words? You see, if you and I had one, you would always be able to stop me when I was going to do anything bad! I had such a queer dream last night, when my head hurt so; I thought somebody had really and truly invented thinkephones, and I was hearing everybody think, and some of the people that I had liked ever so much were thinking such disagreeable things that I did not like them any more, and they heard me think that, and then they didn’t like me any more, and things were getting into a most dreadful mess when you came in and cut the wires, and then the dream stopped, and I went into a nice quiet sleep.”
“So you see,” said his mother, smiling at this remarkable dream, “that if anybody ever should invent the thinkephone, it will make more trouble than pleasure, for no one, not even the best people, would be ready to have all their thoughts known to any other human being. But, dear Johnny, Who is it to whom all our thoughts lie bare, Who hears them just as if we spoke, Who, if we ask Him, can take away the wicked ones, and put good and holy ones in their place?”
“It is the Saviour, mamma,” said Johnny, reverently, “and if I had just asked Him yesterday, when I heard the music, and found the half dollar in my pocket, that would have been better than stopping my ears. But it seems to me that just when I am most bad and need Him the most, I forget all about Him.”
“We can teach our minds, as well as our bodies, to have habits,” said his mother, “and the habit of sending up a quick, earnest prayer, whenever we are especially tempted, will often save us from yielding to the temptation, when there is nothing else to do it. Even if I could read your thoughts, I cannot always be with you, and I could not always help you, but the Saviour is always near, and always ‘mighty to save,’ from small things as well as great, and you can think to Him, and know that it will be just the same as if you had spoken.”
Johnny was obliged to keep rather quiet for several days, but he was much more patient and gentle than he had ever been before during a slight illness, and he seemed sincerely pleased when he heard what a good time Tiny and Pep and the rest of his small friends had had at the circus.
Tiny had been much impressed by seeing the identical donkey that had come so near to breaking Johnny’s head.
“I didn’t half like that part,” she said. “I wanted that donkey punished for kicking you, Johnny.”
“He didn’t do it on purpose, Tiny,” said Johnny, indulgently. “You see, I stuck my head out over the rope, and, though I couldn’t help thinking at first that he knew and did it to punish me, I know now that that was foolish. And I’m really very much obliged to him! If nothing ever happened to folks, I don’t believe they’d think of anything!”
Mrs. Leslie left Johnny to decide for himself whether or not he should give her back her sleeve, and, very sorrowfully, he brought her his hat to have the “token” ripped off.
“It wouldn’t be fair for me to keep it on, mamma,” he said, “when I deserted Polly and Tiny and you all at once. But please don’t cut it up, or anything,—just put it away safely, and the very first time I’ve been tempted right hard, and remembered what you said, and been helped through, then I’ll ask you to put it on my hat again!”
Tiny and Johnny congratulated themselves, and each other, at least once a week, upon being the children of an editor.
You will think, perhaps, that they had literary tendencies, and hoped to grow up into co-editors? Not in the least! They each wondered, as they groaned over “composition day,” how anybody could be found willing to spend the greater part of his time either in writing, or in reading what other people had written; they knew that at least a column of the “large print” in their father’s paper, was always written by himself, and they had often seen him plodding through pages of bad writing, which must be read and decided upon, so that, proud as they were of him for being able to do these things, and much as they admired him, I am afraid they pitied him even more.
“Poor papa!” they would say to each other, when they saw him at his desk, with a mountain of manuscript before him; and sometimes, I must confess, Mr. Leslie echoed this sigh, for an editor’s life is not invariably “a happy one,” any more than a policeman’s is.
No, their pleasure in having an editor for their father was a very practical one; among the many books which were sent to him for review were numbers of nice story and picture books for children; among the “exchanges” which came to the office were delightful picture papers, selected, apparently, with a view to playroom walls and scrap-books. And last, but by no means least, there was the waste-paper basket! They had learned the signs and tokens, and whenever a very fat manuscript was being read, they would ask eagerly,—
“Did she send any stamps, papa?”
They were so nearly sure that the fat manuscript would prove “not available for the purposes of, etc.,” that the whole thing hinged on the stamps—if she had sent them, why then, of course, she must have her “old manuscript” back, if she wished it; but if she had not, then, oh, then! there were all those sheets of paper, perfectly blank on one side, anyhow. And what with colored envelopes, and pamphlets printed on pink and blue paper, and envelope bands, and monograms, and occasional coats-of-arms, that waste paper basket, with skilful handling of its contents, had yielded many a handsome kite.
Its contents had been given over to Johnny, and those of the rag-bag to Tiny, at the same time, but they preferred to make partnership affairs of both. As the rag-bag yielded sails for boats, and covers for balls, and “bobs” for kites, so did the waste-paper basket yield colored paper wherewith to dress paper dolls, and stiff cards which made excellent cardboard furniture, not to mention those pieces of blank-on-both-sides writing paper, which could be cut into small sheets and envelopes. And if a monogram is really handsome, why should not one person use it as well as another?
Johnny was beginning to be famous for his kites, and as he was a warm-hearted and generous little boy, with a large number of friends, he frequently made a kite to give away. Tiny was always ready to help him, and was particularly “handy” at making the devices of bright paper with which the kites were generally ornamented, and pasting them neatly on. When the kite was very large, she did even more than this, and Johnny never gave one away, without explaining that Tiny had shared in the making.
They had been saving all the best paper of every sort lately for the largest kite they had ever undertaken; it was so large that it was already named the Monster, and it was stretched, half finished, upon the floor of the spare garret, where it would not be disturbed. It was designed for a birthday present to one of Johnny’s very best friends, and everybody in the house was interested in it. It was to be pure white, with a pair of wings, and a bird’s head and tail, in brilliant red paper, pasted upon one side, and on the other, in large blue letters, the initials of the boy for whom it was intended.
But, with the perversity of things in general, or rather because it had been a very warm summer, and most of the poor authors had been taking holidays as much as they could, the waste-paper basket of late had not been worth the trouble of emptying.
So it was with no very great expectations that Johnny went to it one Saturday morning to see if by chance there should be a rejected manuscript of sufficient length to satisfy the Monster. No, there was nothing there but a letter written on both sides of the paper, a few pamphlets, likewise without blank sides, and some envelopes and postal cards. Johnny was turning away with a natural sigh, and the conviction that, if the Monster was ever to be finished, he must make a small appropriation out of his Christmas money, when behold! on the floor, just under the edge of the desk, and hidden by the basket, he spied a lovely manuscript; large sheets, firm, white, unruled paper, written upon only on one side.
He jumped for it with a joyful exclamation, but stopped as suddenly—had it been thrown down, and missed the basket, or had it fallen, and been neglected for the moment, because it was hidden by the desk and basket?
If Mr. Leslie had only been there, how quickly these questions could have been answered! But alas! he had left home that very morning, to be gone two days; and must a whole precious Saturday be lost on account of what was, perhaps, after all, only a needless and foolish scruple?
Then the two Johnnys—you may have observed that there are two of you?—began an argument something like this:—
Johnny No. 1. You’d better not take that thing till you’ve asked your father about it. It looks to me as if it had merely fallen from the table.
Johnny No. 2. But papa won’t be back till Monday morning, and I can’t wait. Bob’s birthday is next Wednesday, and the kite’s only half done now!
No. 1. That makes no difference. It is not the question. And you might at least ask your mother what she thinks, and let her decide.
No. 2. Mamma never knows anything about papa’s papers; I’ve heard her say so a dozen times. And why should it have been on the floor if it was worth anything?
No. 1. You know quite well that your father never throws on the floor things which are meant for the basket, and that it looks much more as if it had fallen from the table. Come, put it back, and either wait till Monday, or go and buy the rest of the paper you need.
No. 2. Papa’s a very careful man, and he wouldn’t have gone off for two days and left anything worth while on the floor. It was almost in the basket, and it’s all the same, and I mean to take it, so there!
The other Johnny made no reply to this conclusive argument—in fact, he had no time, for the wrong Johnny rushed out of the library, shouting:—
“Tiny! Oh, Tiny! come at once! Here’s enough to finish the Monster, tail and all!”
Tiny dropped some very important work for her best doll without a moment’s hesitation, and reached the garret almost as soon as Johnny did.
“Oh, that’s perfectly lovely!” she panted, “and it’s more than enough! But oh, Johnny,” she added, in a changed tone, “if we should ever write poems and stories and things, after we’re grown up, do you believe that some dreadful editor will let his children make kites out of them?”
“I’m afraid he will, of mine,” said Johnny, frankly, “for that’s about all they’d be good for, but you write much better compositions than I do, Tiny, for all you’re so much younger than I am, so perhaps the editors will print yours. But it does seem a sort of shame, when you think of all the time it must take them to do it, and how flat they must feel when it turns out to have been for nothing. Now this one”—looking at it critically—“is really beautifully written, and on such good paper. Why, even the paper must cost them ever so much! I say, Tiny, it’s just as if we had to put on five dollar gold pieces, or gold dollars, for bait when we go fishing, and then had them nibbled off without catching anything. I’ll tell that to papa—I think he might make a story, or a poem, or a fable, or something out of it—don’t you?”
“Yes, it’s just the kind of thing they use for a fable,” said Tiny, approvingly, and so, in steady work at the kite, enlivened by such intellectual conversations as this, the day flew by, and by evening the Monster was finished, tail and all.
There had been more than enough of the strong white paper for everything, and Tiny had carefully cut the “bobs” out of it, fringing each one at both ends. The colored paper for the enterprise had been on hand for some time, and Mrs. Leslie put the crowning glory on, by drawing a monogram to take the place of the separate initials of Bob’s name, which were to have adorned one side of the kite. This monogram was cut by Tiny’s deft fingers from pink and blue paper, and carefully pasted together in the middle of one side.
Johnny had so entirely succeeded in silencing his scruples about the manuscript, that he would probably never have thought of it again, if it had not been rather forcibly recalled to his memory. It had not occurred to Tiny to ask any questions about it; such streaks of luck had come to them before, and she had perfect faith in Johnny. So when, at the dinner-table, on Monday, Mr. Leslie said to his wife,—
“I’ve somehow mislaid a very bright article by Mrs. —— which I meant to use in the next number. Did you empty the waste basket, dear, or did the children?”
Before his mother could answer, Johnny, with a very red face, and a lump in his throat, had told the whole story.
Mr. Leslie looked exceedingly grave.
“I am very much annoyed by the loss of this manuscript,” he said, “for even should Mrs. —— have a rough draft of it, she will be obliged to take the trouble of making a second copy, and should she not, it will be necessary for me to pay her for it, as if I had used it. But that is not the worst of it, Johnny. If we deliberately stifle our consciences, after a while, we cease to hear from them. Do you remember asking me what ‘Quench not the Spirit’ means?”
“Yes, papa,” said Johnny, in a choked voice.
“I think, then, that you remember what I told you, my boy, and I shall pray that you may not again forget it. And now, the next thing is, reparation, so far as you can make it. You must write to Mrs. —— and tell her the whole story.”
“Oh, papa! please! I’ll do anything else!” said Johnny, piteously. “But won’t you please write for me, and let me sign it, or put that it’s all true, at the bottom?”
“No, my son,” said his father, firmly, “you must do this yourself, and I shall take it as a proof of real repentance, if you do it promptly, and without complaint.”
Johnny said not another word, and that evening, when he bade his father good-night, he handed him a letter, saying meekly,—
“You’ll direct it for me, won’t you, papa?”
“Certainly, I will, my dear boy,” said his father, throwing his arm around Johnny’s shoulder, and drawing him near for another kiss.
“And you’ll read it, and see if it will answer? Indeed, I did my very best!” said poor Johnny.
“I don’t doubt it, dear boy,” said his father, warmly, “and I shall add a few lines to tell Mrs. —— so.”
“Oh, will you do that? Thank you very much, dear papa!” said Johnny, and he went to bed with a wonderfully lightened heart.
This was his letter:—
“Dear Mrs. —— Perhaps you will think I have no right to call you that, when you hear what I have done. I took a story of yours, which I heard papa say was a very bright one, and used nearly all of it to finish a Monster Kite, which Tiny and I were making. Tiny is my sister, but she knew nothing about the way in which I took the story. It was this way. Papa lets us have everything which he puts into the waste-paper basket, but people don’t seem to have written much lately, and we had not near enough. On Saturday morning I went to look. There was nothing of any account in the basket, but your story had fallen on the floor, and I made myself believe that I thought it had been thrown at the basket, and missed it. Papa was away and was not coming back till Monday, and we were in a great hurry to finish the Monster for Bob Lane’s birthday, so I just took it, and let Tiny think I found it in the basket, which was as bad as a lie, though I didn’t say so. Now, I am so sorry that I don’t know how to tell you, but that is not enough. If I could unpaste your story, I would, but we put on a great deal of paste—you have to, you know, or it don’t stick—and some of it is all cut into fringe, for the bobs. But what I mean to say is this: if you have any little boys, or little nephews, or know anybody you would like to give that kite to, I will send it right on. I have money enough, I am pretty sure, to pay for expressing it, and I know a way of fixing it so that it will not break. I sent one to my cousin. Will you please let me know at once, if I may send it, and oblige,
“Yours very sorrowfully and very respectfully,
“John Leslie.”
It had taken Johnny three good hours to write and copy that letter. His father made no alteration in it, merely adding a few courteous lines to express his own regret for what had happened, and to say that he believed his boy had repented his fault very sincerely, and had done his best with the enclosed letter.
Mrs. —— was not a monster, if the kite was. She laughed till she cried, and then cried a little till she laughed again, over Johnny’s letter. Then she answered it, and this is what she said:—
“My dear John,—You have my hearty forgiveness. And I would like very much to have the kite for my son, who is nearly as old as I imagine you are, and has never yet made one. But you must allow me to pay the expressage; I can only accept it on that condition. I have a rough copy of the article which helped to make the Monster, and from this I will make a fair copy for your father to-day and to-morrow. Please tell him so, with my kindest regards,—and that I hope it will circulate as widely as will the first one, and in as high circles! I should very much like to hear from you again; if you will write once in a while, so will I, and some day, I hope, you and my boy will meet and be friends. In the meantime, believe me sincerely and cordially your friend,
“Mary ——.”
Johnny proved the sincerity of his repentance still further by the perfect willingness with which he packed the Monster for his journey. Tiny helped him, having first, by working very carefully, soaked off the monograms, not much the worse for wear, and, as they were so fortunate as to have some gilt paper in stock, the rough spot was covered with a shining star.
An explanation was made to Bob, who, not having expected a kite, or indeed any birthday present at all from Tiny and Johnny, was quite resigned to wait, with so brilliant a prospect ahead of him, until one or two more unfortunates had contributed a large enough supply of waste paper. If they had known how eagerly it was welcomed, it might have helped to console them a little, poor things!
The children built a third Monster for themselves, after Bob’s was finished, and on this they pasted, in large gilt letters, upon a blue ground, the motto they intended to use if they should ever have a coat-of-arms—“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”
“Only I suppose it will have to be in Latin then,” said Johnny, as he smoothed down the last letter of the last word, “and perhaps, by that time, I’ll know enough Latin to do it myself!”
There were just two things which could keep Johnny quiet for more than two minutes at a time; one was having some one read aloud to him, and the other was playing checkers. He could read to himself, more or less, but stopping once in a while to spell a long word, or to wonder what it means, breaks the thread of the most entertaining story, so whenever anything very attractive-looking in the way of books and magazines came into the Leslie family, Johnny coaxed his mother to read it aloud.
But it is one thing to hear reading because you have begged for it, and have been running and jumping enough to make keeping still not only possible but really quite pleasant, and another to hear it because your mother asks you to stay in the house until it clears up, or your cold is well.
New Year’s Day had been bitterly cold and raw, and Johnny, coming from the well-warmed church in the morning, had stopped on the way home to do a little snowballing. He had “cooled off,” as he expressed it, rather too quickly, and the result was an unpleasant cough. Now Johnny did not in the least object to drinking the agreeable beverage made of Irish moss and lemons and sugar, which his mother had prepared for him, but it was hard work to stay in the house when all the other boys were building a snow-fort, and making ready for a magnificent battle.
“Oh, mammy dear!” he implored, “if you’d ever in your life been a boy, you’d know how I feel when I look out of the window! If you’ll let me out for just one little hour, right in the middle of the day, I’ll put on my rubber-boots, and my overcoat, and my fur cap, and my ear-tabs, and wind my neck all up in Tiny’s red scarf, and not stand still one single moment—oh, please, please! They’re just building the tower!”
“Poor Johnny!” said Tiny, with much sympathy, “would it hurt him that way, mamma?”
“Yes, dear, I’m afraid it would,” said Mrs. Leslie, and turning to Johnny, she asked, “My Johnny, were you quite in earnest, when you said you would try to win back my sleeve?”
“Why mammy! of course I was!” he answered, opening his eyes very wide, and for a moment forgetting his woes. No opportunity which he considered large enough had yet occurred, for him to try to win back his mother’s “silken sleeve,” which he had worn twisted around his hat to show that he meant to render her knightly service, and which he had given back to her the day after the circus, because he felt that he was unworthy to wear it, and he often looked at it sorrowfully as it hung, where he had placed it, above his mother’s picture, in his little room.
Very well,” she said, gently pulling him down upon her lap, and turning his face away from the distracting window. “Imagine that you are really a knight, and that you are storm bound in my castle, as the foreign knight was in Sintram’s. You’d be too polite, in that case, I hope, to be grumbling and howling because you were compelled to pass a whole day in the charming society of the lady of the castle—now, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes, mamma, I suppose I should,” admitted Johnny, reluctantly, “but somehow it doesn’t seem exactly the same thing. You see, the snow may all be melted before you let me out again, and when the real old knights were storm bound, or anything, they always knew that their enemies and battles and things would keep!”
“Very well then,” replied his mother, promptly, “that gives you a chance to be just so much more knightly than the ‘real old knights’ were! And if you don’t give another howl, or scowl, or grumble, all day, but are my very best Johnny, instead of my second best or third best, I’ll twist my sleeve around your new school cap this very night!”
“Oh, mammy! will I really and truly be winning it, that way?” asked Johnny, eagerly.
“Indeed you will,” said his mother, kissing him, “for you’ll never, even if you should some day be a soldier, and fight for your country, find a worse enemy, or one that will take more conquering, than my third-best Johnny Leslie!”
Johnny returned the kiss with interest, and then, resolutely turning his back to the window, he said,—
“Tiny, if you’ll bring your old black Dinah here, I’ll get out all the blocks, and my pea-shooter, and my little brass cannon, and we’ll make a huge fort, and put Dinah in the tower, and storm it! You don’t mind our making a muss here, mammy, if we clear it up again, do you?”
“Not a bit,” said his mother, cheerfully, while Tiny, with a little scream of delight rushed off for Dinah. The playroom stove was out of order, and the children were obliged to play in the dining-room, which made Johnny’s imprisonment all the harder to bear.
Tiny came back presently, with an assorted cargo, presided over by Dinah, in the basket.
“I brought all my tin housekeeping things,” she explained, as she proceeded to unload. “I thought we could put them on top, and they’d make such a lovely clatter when the fort fell!”
“Now, that’s what I call really bright!” and Johnny nodded his head approvingly. “It’s almost a pity you’re a girl, Tiny—you’d be such a jolly little fellow if you were only a boy!”
It made Tiny very happy when Johnny approved of her, so the building of the fort went merrily on with so much laughing and talking that Mrs. Leslie, who was in the kitchen, not “eating bread and honey,” but making doughnuts, looked in once or twice to see if any of the children’s friends had called. And when the stately fort, with its tin battlements, at last yielded to the fierce attack of the brass cannon and the pea-shooter, used after the manner of battering-rams, she rushed to the scene of conflict with the dreadful certainty that the stove had been knocked over, but an invitation to help hurrah for the victory quieted her fears.
The ruins had just been picked up and repacked in the basket, when Ann came in to set the dinner table, and Johnny found, to his astonishment, that the morning was gone.
“But there’s all the great long afternoon yet!” he thought, ruefully, “and mamma will have to lie down, I’m afraid, and Tiny’s going to that foolish doll-party, and—hello! if I keep on this way I shall say something, and, if I do, Tiny will stay at home; it would be just like her, she’s such a good little soul. Brace up, Johnny Leslie, and win your sleeve!”
And Johnny marched up and down, and tried to sing “Onward, Christian Soldier!” but only succeeded in coughing.
“Mamma, I wish to whisper something to you,” said Tiny, after dinner. “Don’t listen, please, Johnny,” and she whispered, “Don’t you think it would be dreadfully mean for me to go to the doll-party, mamma, when poor Johnny has such a cough and can’t go out? Because if you do, I’ll stay at home, and I wouldn’t mind it, or not so very much, if Johnny would play with me as he has played this morning.”
“No, darling,” whispered her mother, “Johnny would not be so selfish as to wish you to stay; and the other little girls you are to meet would be disappointed, for they all know about your new Christmas doll. So run and get ready, and Ann will carry you and your daughter across the street. You will have a great deal to tell us when you come home, you know.”
Tiny went, but not very briskly, and, when she was gone, Johnny said,—
“I’ll bet—I mean I think I know what Tiny said, mamma; didn’t she offer to stay at home from her doll-party?”
“What a brilliant boy!” said his mother, smiling. “She did, but I knew you would not like her to make such a sacrifice; she has been counting upon the party for a week.”
“No, indeed!” said Johnny, warmly, “I hope I’m not such a great bear as all that! But it was a jolly thing for the dear little soul to do, and I’ll not forget it.”
“Would you like me to read to you again, dear?” asked his mother, when she had put the finishing touches to Tiny’s dress, and seen her off.
“No, Mrs. Mother, thank you,” said Johnny, stoutly, “I am going to read to myself, and you are going upstairs to lie down for at least an hour. You’re making your back ache face, and if you don’t lie down I’ll not eat one single doughnut or gingerbread—so there!”
“I couldn’t stand that, of course,” said his mother, laughing, and kissing him, “and I find my back does ache, now you mention it, so I will take you at your word, my own true knight!”
If they had been looking out of the window just then, they would have seen a bright-faced little girl running up the walk, and before Mrs. Leslie had started upon her upward journey the door-bell rang, and there was Johnny’s especial friend, Kitty McKee, with a little basket of rosy apples, and permission to spend the afternoon, “if it would be convenient.”
To say that Johnny was glad to see her but faintly expresses his feelings. She was a year or two older than he was, and he considered her friendship for him a flattering thing. She played checkers so well that his occasional victories over her were triumphs indeed, and, what was better still, she never lost her temper with her game. So, after performing a war dance around her while she took off her cloak and hood, Johnny rushed for the checker-board, and Mrs. Leslie, with an easy mind and a tired body, went upstairs for a delightful nap.
Johnny took a white checker in one hand, and a black one in the other, mixed them up under the table, and held up his hand, asking,—
“Which’ll you have?”
“Right,” said Kitty, and, as it happened, that gave Johnny the first move.
The battle was fierce, but the advantage which the first move had given Johnny was followed up until he felt so sure of victory that he began to grow a little careless, and was startled by losing a king and seeing Kitty gain one in rapid succession. Then he resumed his caution; his hand hung poised over the piece he was about to move until he had taken in all the possible consequences. Slowly he pushed his man to the back row; two more well-considered moves and the game was his!
Perhaps the triumph of winning the first game made him too self-confident; at any rate, victory perched upon Kitty’s banner for the rest of the afternoon, and when the early dusk fell they drew their chairs to the cheerful fire, quite willing to exchange their battle for Tiny’s eager account of the doll-party.
Mrs. Leslie had come down, rested and refreshed, and presently Mr. Leslie was heard stamping the snow from his boots in the porch, and Kitty said she really must go, if she did live only next door but one, and Mr. Leslie said it was highly personal for her to rush off the minute she heard his fairy footsteps, and he should step in and tell her mother they were keeping her to tea. Kitty thanked him with a kiss, and the supper was a very cheerful one. When it was over, the meeting adjourned to the parlor, and Mr. Leslie found a Christmas Graphic and a London News and a number of Punch in his pockets, and it was time for Kitty to go home and for Johnny to go to bed before anybody knew it. Tiny had gone an hour ago, too sleepy even to wish to sit up longer.
When Mrs. Leslie came to tuck Johnny up and give him his last dose of cough mixture and last good-night kiss, she took down the sleeve, saying,—
“You’ll find it on your cap in the morning, my own true knight.”
“But, indeed, mamma,” said Johnny, earnestly, “I don’t think I’ve half won it. It hasn’t been hard at all, but the very pleasantest day since Christmas Day.”
“And why has it been so pleasant?” asked his mother, drawing a chair to the bedside and sitting down. “Begin at the beginning, and tell me.”
“Why, you know all that happened, mammy,” replied Johnny. “But I’ll go over it, if you like. First, I had some good fun with Tiny, because she played fort so nicely, and then you made us laugh with the doughnut woman and gingerbread man, and then Kitty came with those beautiful apples, and then I beat her the very first game of checkers we played—and I don’t see why in thund—I mean why I didn’t beat her any more, for we played six games after that, and she beat me every single one. And then Tiny made us laugh telling about the doll-party, and then papa kept Kitty to tea, and gave us those jolly papers, and if that isn’t a pretty good day, I should like to know what is!”
“But you didn’t begin at the beginning,” said his mother. “Now I am going to suppose. Suppose, when you found you could not go out this morning, you had kept on looking out of the window and watching the boys until your vexation and disappointment had made you cry, I am very certain that would have set you to coughing, and then your body would have felt worse, as well as your mind. Suppose that, instead of offering to play with Tiny, and doing it heartily, you had been cross and sulky, and hurt her feelings, and had spent the morning bemoaning your hard fate, and thinking how ill-used you were; you would have been in such a bad way by dinner-time that my doughnut woman and gingerbread man would scarcely have made you smile, and by the time Kitty came, the sight of your face would have been enough to make her turn round and go home again. Fretting and fuming all the afternoon would have left you too tired of yourself and everything else to care for Tiny’s account of the party and papa’s papers. In short, everything would have looked to you the ugly color of your own dark thoughts.”
“Then it’s just like checkers!” exclaimed Johnny, sitting up in bed; “if you get the first move, and make that all right, the rest is pretty sure to come straight.”
“Yes,” said his mother. “There is a French proverb which means, ‘It is only the first step that costs.’ If we make the first step, or the first move, in the right direction, we have gone a good deal more than one step toward the right end.”
“And it’s like checkers in another way,” said Johnny, thoughtfully; “if we’re too uncommonly sure we’re all right, and can’t go wrong, we get tripped up before we know it. I do believe that the reason why Kitty beat me every time but that one, was because I felt so stuck up about the first game that I didn’t try my best afterward; I thought I could beat her anyhow.”
“That is very likely,” answered his mother. “And now you see how needful it is to ask that we may obey God’s ‘blessed will’ in all things—not only large, important-looking things, which only come once in a while, but in the veriest trifles, or what seem to us like trifles, that are coming all the time. Sometimes I think that there is no such thing as a trifle, Johnny. Good-night, darling—you will find my sleeve on your helmet in the morning, my own true knight!”
As time went on, from that Fourth of July when Johnny had reason to change his views about independence, and as he thought more about that, and other matters connected with it, he grew only the more firmly convinced that any of his rights which trod upon the toes of other people’s rights, were only wrongs under a false name.
The boys at his school nearly all liked him; he “went into things” so heartily, that he was wanted on both sides in all the games that had more than one. But with all his love of fun, the boys soon found that there were some sorts of fun—or what they called so—for which it was useless to ask his help. So when recess came, the morning before school closed for the summer, a group of boys gathered in a corner of the playground, whispering together, and did not ask him to join them. He felt a little left out in the cold, for some of his best friends were in the group, but he was not naturally suspicious, and his mother had brought him up in a wholesome fear of imagining himself injured or slighted.
“Always take good-will for granted, Johnny,” she said to him once, when he fancied himself neglected by somebody, “at least until you have the most positive proof of ill-will.”
So he joined some of the smaller boys, who did not seem to have been invited to the conference, and made them supremely happy by getting up a game of football.
He had just parted from one of the larger boys, on his way home from school that afternoon, and was near his gate, when a little fellow, the youngest of all his schoolmates, stuck his head cautiously out of the nearly closed gate, and, after seeing that the coast was clear, said in a mysterious whisper,—
“Hold on, Johnny, will you? I’ve got something to tell you, but if you ever say I told you, you’ll get me into the awfullest scrape that ever was!”
If little Jamie Hughes had been talking to anybody but Johnny, he would have exacted a very solemn “indeed and double deed and upon my sacred honor I’ll never tell!”
But the boys all felt very sure, by this time, that Johnny would not do them an ill-turn, no matter what chance he might have; so Jamie went hurriedly on, linking his arm in Johnny’s as he spoke, and drawing him inside the gate and up the walk, as if he feared being seen.
“You see, they didn’t mean me to hear,” said Jamie, talking very fast, “but it wasn’t my fault. I was up the apple tree cutting my name, and two of them were under it, and one of them said, ‘The old gentleman will open his eyes, for once in his life,’ and then the other said, kind of uneasy, ‘I don’t think we need take cannon crackers; wouldn’t the small ones do just as well?’ and then I began to sing, and they never let on they heard me, but the first fellow said: ‘My dear boy, my grandfather expressly requested that the salute in his honor should be fired with cannon-crackers!’ and then they both burst out laughing, and walked away, and I never thought, till ever so long afterward, that that one who spoke last hadn’t a grandfather to his name, and I’m sure they’re going to do something to—to Mr. Foster.”
“What makes you think that, Jamie?” asked Johnny, kindly, “It may be all a joke; perhaps they saw you up there, and are just putting up a game on you.”
Jamie shook his head.
“No, they’re not!” he said, very positively, “they both jumped like everything when I began to sing, and the one who said little crackers would do turned as red as a beet. Now, Johnny, I came to you because I knew you wouldn’t give me away, and because I thought you could think of some way to checkmate them, and you’d just better believe it’s what I think! You know Mr. Foster always leaves his window wide open at night, and the ceilings are so low in that house where he boards that anybody could throw a pack of crackers into a second-story window easy enough. I was in his room once, and his bed’s right opposite the window, and suppose those fellows should throw so hard that the crackers would hit him in the face, or light in the bed and set the clothes afire? I can’t tell you all I know, or you’d believe me, and spot the fellows in a minute, and then they’d spot me, and I wouldn’t give much for my skin if they did!”
Jamie would have been a good deal more nervous than he was if he had known that Johnny had already, and without the least difficulty, “spotted the fellows.” Jamie was a timid little boy, and his affection for Mr. Foster, who was the teacher of mathematics at the school, had grown out of that gentleman’s patient kindness to him. Mr. Foster never mistook timidity for stupidity, but he was a very clear-headed man, with little patience for boys who tried to make shifts and tricks do duty for honestly-learned lessons. So the school was divided into two pretty equal camps concerning him. The boys who really studied hard were his enthusiastic admirers, and those who studied only enough to “pull through,” as they expressed it, were very much the reverse. But when it came to a question of “fun,” things were sometimes a little mixed, and it seemed, in this particular case, as if some of the boys had thoughtlessly gone over to the enemy, and then been somewhat dismayed when they saw where they were being led.
Johnny was very much troubled by what he had heard, and the more he thought of it the less he liked it. A pack of cannon-crackers, flung at random through a window, and flung all the harder by reason of the flinger’s haste to put himself out of sight, might do untold mischief. Beside the possibility that they would start a fire in the room, there was another even worse one—they might explode dangerously near the face of the sleeping victim.
No, the thing must be stopped; but how to stop it? He thought of asking the boys, point-blank, what they were whispering about, but, even should any of them give him a truthful answer, they would probably suspect that somebody had suggested the question to him, and then, of course, remember Jamie’s presence in the tree. He thought of giving Mr. Foster a confidential warning, but, if it took effect, it would be open to the same objection, and he did not like to think of the life Jamie would lead for the next few months were he even suspected of being the informer.
Johnny’s face wore so puzzled and hopeless an expression, that evening after he had learned his lessons, that his father said, kindly,—
“There’s nothing so desperate that it can’t be helped somehow, my boy; what’s the special desperation this evening? Grief at the prospect of a temporary separation from your beloved studies?”
Johnny laughed a little at that.
“Oh, no, papa!” he said. “I like one or two of them well enough, but I think I can stand it without them for a while. I wish I could tell you all about what’s the matter, but I haven’t any right to. I will ask you a question, though. Can you think of any kind of game, or spree, or anything that would make the fellows at school take such an early start on the Fourth that they wouldn’t have time for anything else first?”
Mr. Leslie had not in the least forgotten how he had felt and acted when he was a boy, and he also remembered various things which Johnny had said from time to time about the way in which Mr. Foster was regarded by the boys, so he had no great difficulty in guessing that some mischief was on foot which Johnny was anxious to forestall, but could not hinder by attacking the enemy on high moral grounds.
“I should not be much of an editor if I had not enough invention and to spare for such an emergency as that,” said Mr. Leslie, smiling; “How many fellows are there, altogether?”
Johnny thought a minute, and then said,—
“Only thirty, papa, since the mumps broke loose—we had over forty before that.”
“I’ll call around to-morrow, just before the exercises are over,” said Mr. Leslie, “and ask permission to address the meeting. By a curious coincidence, a plan for jollifying the Fourth was seething in my brain before you spoke, and I think a trifling alteration will make it fit the case to a nicety.”
Johnny fell upon his father’s neck with smothering affection, and went to bed with a light and easy heart; if “papa” undertook the business, all would go right.
“And he didn’t ask me a single question, except about how many of us there were!” said Johnny to himself, proudly, “What a first-class boy he must have been himself!”
Mr. Leslie was on very good terms with the principal of Johnny’s school, and had no difficulty in obtaining leave to “address the meeting.” His address was an invitation to attend an all-day picnic, on the Fourth of July, and included teachers as well as scholars. Two hay-wagons, half filled with hay, were to be the vehicles, and a brass band was to be in attendance. The refreshments, Mr. Leslie stated, would be simple, but abundant, nobody need feel called upon to bring anything, but anybody who chose to bring fruit, and could bring it from home, would community.
“It is not usual,” concluded Mr. Leslie, “to impose conditions in giving an invitation, but I must ask a promise from all of you, as we are to start at seven, sharp, on our collecting tour, not to leave your homes that morning until you are called for. We shall have a long drive to take, and I wish to have it over before the heat of the day begins. Will all the boys who agree to grant me this favor raise their right hands?”
Most of the right hands flew up as if their owners had nothing to do with it; there was a very short pause, and then the remainder followed. Johnny drew a long breath of intense relief. He knew that, although some of the boys were anything but strictly truthful, they would consider it “a little too mean” to break their pledge to their entertainer, and besides, Mr. Leslie had said, emphatically, that there would be no hunting for absentees, but simply a call at each door.
That picnic was unanimously pronounced the most brilliant of this, or of any, season. Mr. Leslie was voted “as good as forty boys,” and the woods rang again with laughter and joyous shouting. But when a long tin horn had given the signal which had been agreed upon, and the boys were gathered together for the return, Mr. Leslie mounted a convenient stump.
“Boys!” he said, as the noisy throng grew silent to listen, “No Fourth of July celebration is complete without a speech, so I feel called upon to make a short one. How does the Declaration of Independence begin?”
“‘All men are born free and equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights!’” shouted at least half the party.
“And what does ‘inalienable’ mean?” pursued the orator.
Silence. And then somebody said doubtfully, “Something you can’t lose or give away?”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Leslie. “So, as we travel through life, we are to bear in mind this fact, that no matter how great, or wise, or rich, or powerful, or poor, or oppressed, or injured we may be, we are bound to respect the ‘inalienable rights’ of other people, and that we shall never gain anything really worth gaining, or that will bring a blessing with it, by disregarding those rights.
“I will not undertake to tell you what they are; I think we can generally tell nearly enough for all practical purposes by two ways; remembering what we consider our own rights, and imagining what we should consider our rights, were we in the places of the people with whom we are dealing. We have had a happy day, I think; I know I have——”
“So have we!” in a vast shout from the audience——
“——and I have been pleased to see what good Republicans you all may be, if you choose. I see you are pleased with my pleasure, and I want to ask you all to remember, as each day closes, leaving its record of good or evil, that the longest life must close some time, and that nothing will be of much value to us then, but the Master’s ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Thank you for listening to me so patiently. This day will be a pleasant memory, I hope, for all of us.”
“Three cheers for Mr. Leslie!” shouted the “fellow” who had not any grandfather, and the amount of noise that followed was truly astonishing.
But a good many people’s ideas of what it is to be manly underwent a gradual change from that evening.
“If Johnny’s father thinks so—why, there’s nothing mean about Johnny’s father! I should hope we all knew that!”
A pair of shiny steel skates had been among Johnny’s Christmas presents, and had very nearly eclipsed all the rest, although he had many pretty and useful things beside.
He had never yet learned to skate, for the only good skating-pond was at some little distance from his home, and he had no big brother to take him in hand, and see that he had only the number of falls which must be accepted by nearly every one who ventures on skates for the first time.
But the winter following the famous picnic of which I have just told you, Pep Warren’s almost grown-up brother Robert was at home, because he had strained his eyes, and been forbidden to study for a month or two; but, as he sensibly observed, he didn’t skate on his eyes, and, being a big, jolly, good-natured fellow, he gave Pep a pair of skates exactly like Johnny’s, and offered to teach both the little boys to skate.
He had made this offer privately to Johnny’s mother and father before Christmas, for he had heard Johnny bewailing himself, and saying he didn’t believe he ever should learn to skate till he was as old as papa, and then he wouldn’t wish to!
Robert said nothing at the time, but made his kind offer in season for Kriss Kringle to learn that nothing he could bring Johnny Leslie would so delight his heart as a pair of steel skates would.
Johnny came home from his trial trip on the new skates with his transports a little moderated. He was “not conquered, but exhausted with conquering,” and quite ready to go to bed early that night, and to submit to a thorough rubbing with arnica first. His head ached a little. Some of the numerous and hitherto unknown stars which he had seen still danced before his eyes, and he felt as if he had at least half-a-dozen each of elbows and knees.
“You see, mamma,” he said, confidentially, as his mother’s soft, warm hand, wet with comforting arnica, passed tenderly over the black and blue places, “I looked at the other fellows, and it seemed to me it was just as easy as rolling off a log. Rob was cutting his name and figures of eight and all sorts of things while Pep and I were putting on our skates, and I thought I had nothing to do but sail in—begin, I mean, and it would sort of come naturally, like walking!
“I think Pep must have been born sensible—he hardly ever wants to do foolish things, the way I do, and, when Rob held out his hand, Pep just took it, and went very slowly at first, exactly as Rob told him, and, if you’ll believe it, he could really stand alone, and even strike out a little, before we came home!
But I started out alone to meet Rob, and, first thing I knew, my feet went up in the air, as if they had balloons on, and down I came, whack! right on the back of my head! I tell you, I saw Roman candles and rockets, but Rob helped me up, and only laughed a little, though I must have looked dreadfully funny, and then he took my hand, and told me how to work my feet, and I got along splendidly, till I felt sure my first flop was only an accident, and that I could go alone well enough. So I let go of Rob’s hand, and kept up about two minutes, and was just crowing to myself when everything seemed to give way at once, and the ice flew up and hit all my knees and elbows, and there I was in a heap, with my skates locked together as if they were a padlock. Rob sorted me out, and tried not to laugh, till I told him to go ahead, and then he just roared! He said if I’d only been lighted, I’d have made such a gorgeous pin-wheel!
“Perhaps you’ll think I’d had enough—I thought I had then myself, but just before we started for home I believed I really had got the hang of it this time, so I let go again. I struck out all right, and went ahead for two or three yards, and Rob and Pep had just begun to clap their hands and hurrah when before I knew what had happened I was sure I felt my backbone coming out of the top of my head, and there I was again, sitting down as flat as a pancake, and feeling a good deal flatter! I didn’t try any more after that, but just took off my skates and came home.”
Mrs. Leslie could not help smiling at this graphic account of Johnny’s first attempt at skating, but when she tucked him up and gave him his last kiss, she said,—
“Johnny, do you know of what your adventures to-day have made me think? A verse in the Bible—‘Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.’ Nearly all our falls come from being very sure we can stand, and from refusing the offered help.”
“Pep didn’t fall once,” said Johnny, thoughtfully, “though it was his first skate, too, and he’s younger than I am. Yes, I see what you mean, mamma, and I hope I’ll remember it at the right time—but I’m so apt not to remember till afterward!”
“That is why we are taught to ask that God’s grace ‘may always prevent’—that is, go before to smooth the way—‘and follow us,’” replied his mother, as she stooped to give him another last kiss.
Johnny applied his lesson to his next attempt at skating, and came home triumphant, saying,—
“We didn’t fall once, mamma, either of us, and Rob let us go a little way alone, but he skated backward, just in front of us, and caught us every time we staggered much.”
But in two weeks, during which time the skating remained good, Rob’s pupils ventured fearlessly all about the pond, without a helping hand, and had even begun to try to cut letters and figures—though not, it must be admitted, with any great amount of success. Mrs. Leslie declared that she must see some of the wonderful performances of which she heard so much, so one bright afternoon, when the mildness of the air threatened to spoil their fun before long, she wrapped Tiny and Polly warmly up, hired Mr. Chipman’s safest horse and best wagon, and drove in state to the pond.
The boys were delighted, and did their best, but of course, in his eagerness to excel himself, Johnny managed to fall once or twice, and Rob was obliged to testify that this was now quite unusual.
Then they begged for Polly—Tiny had been allowed to leave the wagon when it first arrived, and was successfully and joyfully sliding.
“Oh, do let us have Polly, if it’s just for five minutes, mamma!” said Johnny, eagerly. “We’ll take off our skates and give her a slide. It’s first-rate sliding, here by the bank, and it’s quite safe.”
So Miss Polly, chuckling with delight, was lifted from the wagon, while Johnny and Pep pulled off their skates, but she was a little frightened when she felt the slippery ice under her feet, and “hung down like a rag doll,” as Johnny said, instead of putting herself in sliding position.
“Stand up straight, Polly, and put your feet down flat, so,” said Johnny, as Polly slid helplessly along on the backs of her heels, resting all her little weight confidingly upon the boys. And, after two or three earnest explanations from Johnny and Pep, she suddenly seemed to understand; she stiffened up, grasped a hand on each side, and went off in such style that the boys had almost to run to keep up with her, and she obeyed her mother’s call very unwillingly.
“Wasn’t it fun to see her little face, though!” said Johnny, as he and Pep walked home, having declined the proffered drive for the sake of a little more skating. “I think she thought something had made her feet slippery, all of a sudden—she’d never been on ice before.”
The thaw came very soon after this, as thaws will come, even when people have new steel skates, but happily, there are always tops and marbles, and, as some wise person has remarked, “When one door shuts, another opens.”
Johnny did not play marbles “for keeps”; his father had explained to him that taking anything without giving a fair return for it is dishonesty, and as he quite understood this, he had no desire to “win” marbles from boys who could not shoot so well as he could, but he enjoyed playing fully as much as anybody did, and found the game exciting enough when played merely for the hope of victory.
It was in the midst of a very even game that the school bell rang one morning. Johnny and one other boy were the champions; the rest had “gone out.” They lingered for one more shot—two more—then just a third to finish the game, and then, as they hurried into the schoolroom, they found that the roll had been called, and they were marked late.
Johnny had intended to take one more look at his history lesson, but there was no time. He was sure of it all, except two or three dates, and of course, one of those dates came to him—or rather, didn’t come; it was the question that came. The next boy gave the answer, and Johnny’s history lesson for the first time that term, was marked “Imperfect.”
This vexed him so, that he gave only a small half of his mind to his mental arithmetic, and he lost his place in the class,—lost it to a boy who was almost certain to keep it, too.
Thinking of this misfortune, he dropped a penful of ink on his spotless new copy-book, and, although he promptly licked it off, an ugly smear remained, and the writing teacher reproved him for untidiness. So he was very glad when two o’clock struck, and he could go home and tell his mournful story, for he had an uncomfortable feeling, under the injured one, that the real, responsible cause of his misfortunes was one Johnny Leslie.
When his mother had heard it all with much sympathy, she paused a moment, and then repeated these words,—
“‘That they who do lean only upon the hope of Thy Heavenly grace, may evermore be defended by Thy mighty power.’”
A sudden light came into Johnny’s face, and he exclaimed,—
“That was it, mamma dear! I wasn’t leaning on it at all, and of course, I went down! I know all about it now. I didn’t get up when you called me the first time, and I said my prayers in a hurry, just as if they were the multiplication table, and I didn’t wait to read the verse in my little book—I meant to do it after breakfast, but the marbles rattled in my pocket, and I forgot all about it, I was in such a hurry to have a game before school. And I wouldn’t stop to think, when the bell rang, except a sort of make-believe think that a minute more would not make me too late to answer to my name, and so I lost the chance to go over those dates. And the question I missed in mental arithmetic was a mean little easy thing, if I’d had my wits about me, but I was worrying about the history, and I made that dreadful blot because I was thinking of both, and did not look, and dug my pen down to the bottom of the inkstand. It’s just like ‘The House that Jack built.’”
“Yes,” said his mother, “I don’t think anything, the smallest thing, stands quite alone; it is fast to something else that it pulls after it, so we must keep a sharp lookout for the first things. We can’t rub out this bad day—it is like the blot on your copy book; you will keep seeing the mark, even if you don’t make another. But then, you can use the mark, with the dear Saviour’s help, to keep you from making another. To-morrow will be another day. You know Tiny and you like Tennyson’s ‘Bugle Song’ so much, here is something else he said,—
‘Men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves, to higher things.’
So to-morrow you must stand on this thoughtless, careless Johnny, who forgets what he ought to remember, and be the Johnny you can be, if you ‘lean only on the hope’ of that Heavenly grace which God gives to His faithful children.”
It was an humble, but bright and hopeful Johnny who sprang up at the first call the next morning, and started for school, with fresh courage and resolution.
Try not to be defeated, little soldier, but, if defeats come, do you too try to make them stepping-stones to victory.
Johnny did not have a great deal of time for thinking. It is difficult to think when one is running, or jumping, or hammering, or shouting, and still more difficult when one is asleep! He often intended to “take a think” about something that bothered him, after he was in bed, and before he went to sleep, but somehow, no matter how wide awake he supposed he was before he began thinking, he always found, before he had finished, that it was next morning, and time to get up.
But he actually walked all the way home from school, one day, without shouting once at anybody; he came and sat down in the sewing-room, after he had put his books away, and was so quiet for five minutes that his mother was just going to ask him if his head ached, when he suddenly asked her,—
“Mamma, would you object to my keeping a peanut-stand—out of school hours, you know, I mean?”
“Not at all,” replied Mrs. Leslie, “if you were obliged to earn your living at once, and that were the only way in which you could possibly do it. But papa and I are both anxious that you should earn your living in a way which will help as many people as possible to earn theirs, and if you were to set up a peanut-stand now, while you are trying to learn a better way, I am afraid it would hinder our plans for you.”
Johnny’s eyes had sparkled when his mother began with “Not at all,” and now he looked a good deal disappointed.
“Yes, mamma,” he said, meekly, “I see that’s your side of it, but may I just tell you my side?”
“Of course you may!” said Mrs. Leslie, smiling, and stopping her sewing long enough to give him a hug and kiss. “I always like to hear your side, even if I can’t agree with it, and I know you trust me enough to come over to my side, even when you can’t see why.”
“It would be queer if I didn’t, mamma,” he said, drawing his stool closer, and resting his arms on her knees, “you’ve come out right so often when I was pretty sure you wouldn’t, you know. Now, its just this way—I know you and papa aren’t rich, and I know I oughtn’t to ask you for any more money than you give me now, but I do want more, dreadfully, sometimes! F’r instance, here’s Tiny’s birthday next week, and I’ve only twenty-five cents to buy her a birthday present with, and she really needs a new doll; that old dud she carries about isn’t fit to be seen, but what kind of a doll can you buy for twenty-five cents? And then your birthday will be coming along, and then papa’s and then Easter, and I want to give presents and send cards to lots and lots of people, and how can I do it without any money?”
Mrs. Leslie could not help laughing.
“O Johnny, Johnny!” she said, “you’re as bad as the old woman who called her lazy maids on Monday morning: ‘Come girls! Get up! It’s washing day, and to-morrow’s ironing day, and Wednesday’s baking day—here’s half the week gone, and you not out of bed yet!’ Dear little boy, we can’t have more than one day at a time, and here you are borrowing trouble for almost a whole year!”
“Well, anyhow, mamma,” said Johnny, laughing in spite of himself, and looking a little foolish, “Tiny’s birthday is, most here, and if I might buy a quarter’s worth of peanuts, and sell them, and then invest the money again, I do believe I’d have a dollar before it was time to buy her present.”
“And I wonder,” said his mother, “how many of your lessons you would learn, and on how many errands you would go for me, and how many steps you would save for papa, when he comes home tired, and how much carpentering you would do for Tiny and her little friends? No, darling, if you can’t quite see what I mean, you must just trust me. You can help a great many people, in a great many ways, without money, and it is all beautiful practice for you, against the time when you can help them with money too; but just now, your main business is to see that papa and I are not disappointed in the man that, with the dear Father’s help, we are trying to help you to grow into. Keep your heart and your eyes open, and you’ll see plenty of chances without the peanut-stand.”
Johnny looked, and felt, a good deal disappointed, but he was a boy of his word, so he said resolutely,—
“I promised to trust you, mamma, and I will, for although you never were a boy, papa was, and I sometimes think he’s a kind of one yet; but you see I can’t help feeling pretty badly about it. Perhaps it’s partly from sitting still so long—my legs are all cramped up. Come out and race me just twice ’round the house,” he added, coaxingly. “I should think your legs would be as stiff as pokers, sitting sewing here the way you do, for half a day at a time!”
“They do feel a little stiff,” said Mrs. Leslie, springing up, and dropping her sewing into the never-empty basket, “but for all that, I think I can beat you yet, Mr. Johnny.”
She took off her apron and tucked up her skirt a little, and Johnny made a line on the gravel-walk with a stick.
“Now, mamma, are you ready? One, two, three, off!” and away they skimmed, down the walk, across the grassplot; into the walk again, over the line, around once more, and then—
“There!” said Mrs. Leslie, triumphantly, “you’re beaten again, Johnny Leslie!”
“I don’t care,” said Johnny, panting, and very red in the face, “you’re only a foot ahead this time, mamma, and at that rate, I’ll be two feet ahead, next time.”
The dinner-bell rang while Mrs. Leslie was smoothing her tumbled hair and straightening her dress.
“I have an errand that will take me almost to the park this afternoon, Johnny,” she said, at dinner, “Tiny is going with me, and if you’d like to go, I will call for you at three, and ask to have you excused from the writing hour, and then we can have a whole hour in the park before we need come home to supper. Shall I?”
This was an extremely pleasing arrangement, and when the time arrived, a happy party took seats in the horse car, for the park was more than two miles from Mr. Leslie’s house, and the last part of the way was decidedly an “up-grade.”
“Oh mamma!” exclaimed Tiny, “how will these two poor horses pull such a car full of people up that steep hill? It’s too much for them! Suppose we get out and walk?”
Tiny was always on the watch about the comfort of horses and dogs and cats.
Just then the car stopped, and a third horse, that had been standing patiently under a tree near the sidewalk, was fastened to the pole in front of the other two, and, with his help, the car went easily up the slope.
“That’s nice,” said Tiny, looking greatly relieved, “I didn’t remember that they kept an extra horse here, mamma; how good it must make him feel, when the poor tired horses stop and say, ‘That hill’s a great deal too steep for us to drag this great heavy car up it’; and then he says, ‘Hold on, I’m coming. You can do it easily, with me to help you!’”
“But, then,” said Mrs. Leslie, “just think how much of his time he spends standing under the tree, doing nothing but wait.”
“Why, mamma,” put in Johnny, “you know he knows the car will be along presently, and while he’s waiting he’s resting from the last trip, and getting up his muscle for the next one, so it isn’t exactly doing nothing, even when he’s standing still.”
“And you don’t imagine that it makes him feel sorry that he hasn’t a special car of his own to pull, but must just help other horses pull theirs?” pursued Mrs. Leslie.
“I should think he’d be pretty foolish if he felt that way,” said Johnny, confidently; “he’s doing something just as good, in fact, I think perhaps it’s better, for he must make the two regular horses feel good every time they come ’round there. Oh mamma, you’re laughing! You’ve made me catch myself the worst ki—I mean dreadfully! I see just what you mean; you might as well have said it; you think that till I am old enough to have a car of my own, I ought to be an extra horse!”
“But how could Johnny be a horse, mamma?” asked Tiny, deeply puzzled.
They were out of the car by this time, and Tiny amiably joined in the laugh which greeted this question.
“I’ll explain how he could when we sit down by the lake, darling,” said her mother, “You and Johnny walk on slowly, now, while I stop here for a few minutes and leave my work—the parcel, Johnny, please!”
For Johnny was marching off with the parcel under one arm, and Tiny under the other.
When they were comfortably seated on the shady green bank by the lake, Mrs. Leslie explained to Tiny that she did not really expect Johnny to turn into a horse, but that everybody who is looking out for chances to help other people over their hard places will be sure to find plenty to do.
“The world has a great many tired people in it,” said Mrs. Leslie, “and a great many sick and sorrowful and discouraged and disappointed people, and what a beautiful thought it is that the very smallest and weakest of us may give help, and comfort, and encouragement, every day of our lives, if we only will.”
“You do, mamma,” said Johnny, softly, stealing his hand into his mother’s as he spoke, “and so does papa, but I’m afraid I’ve been too busy with my own fun and things to try to help the poor tired ones pull, but I truly mean to turn over a new leaf. I shall put it in my prayers,” he added, reverently, and—“when, do you think, is a good time for me to think, mamma? The time never seems to come.”
“While you are dressing in the morning and undressing at night would be very good times,” said his mother, “just before you say your prayers, you know. You can think over in the morning what you need most for that day, and at night what you have done and left undone. I know your dressing and undressing don’t take long,” she added, smiling, “but one can do a good deal of thinking in a few minutes, if one gives the whole of one’s mind to it.”
The red sun, peeping under the tree beneath which they were sitting, reminded Mrs. Leslie to look at her watch. It was high time to start for home, and Tiny and Johnny, as the car went down the steep hill, looked out with much affectionate interest for the “extra horse,” and softly called good bye to him, as he stood quietly under the tree, panting a little from his last pull, and patiently waiting for the next.
I wonder how many of the dear little men and women who will read this are training for their own life race by watching for chances to help the hard-pressed runners who have started. Here is a motto for all of you; the motto which a noble and earnest man has already given to many people—“Look up, not down; look out, and not in; look forward, not back; and lend a helping hand.”
And if you want his authority for this beautiful motto, it is easily found, for you will all know where to look for these words,—
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
Tiny and Johnny were planting their gardens, and Jim Brady was helping them. Johnny had happened to mention to Jim that he liked a garden very well, after the things were up, but that he did hate digging; and Jim, after thinking hard for a minute, had said,——
“See here! If you’ll teach me some of the things you’re learning at school, of evenings, after my day’s work is done, I’ll dig your garden for you, and do it better than you can, for I’m a good sight stronger than you are, and I’ll help you keep it clean all summer, too. Is it a bargain?”
Johnny hesitated. He did not like Jim’s tone. It was quite true that Jim was the stronger of the two, but Johnny thought it showed bad taste to mention it in that defiant sort of manner. And he did not see any particular fun in teaching Jim, especially on summer evenings. But it would be a great thing to have such good help with his garden as he knew Jim would give, so he swallowed his pride, and said, as graciously as he could,—
“All right. You come up after tea this evening, and we’ll begin. We have tea at six, and I’ll hurry through mine, and then, when it’s too dark to work any more, we can come into the playroom and have the lesson.”
You will remember that it was this Jim Brady who had given Johnny his first, and—there is reason to believe—his last cigar, and so led him, though quite unintentionally, into his first act of deceit to his mother. And the remembrance of this act was a very sorrowful one, for although Johnny, as you know, had both confessed and repented, and had been freely forgiven, the shameful act remained, never to be undone. Do you ever think of that, when you are tempted to do some mean, wicked thing?
Mrs. Leslie had called on Jim, at his bootblacking stand, soon after this occurrence, and had a long talk with him, and the next time the boys met, Jim had said, severely,—
“If I had an Angel for a mother, Johnny Leslie, I’d be shot before I’d behave anyhow but on the square to her, and now I’ll put you on your honor—if you find you’re learning anything she wouldn’t like, from me, you’ve only to let me know, and I’ll cut you dead!”
This was a rather mixed statement, but Johnny understood it, and felt himself blushing. It seemed to him that Jim had somehow got things backward, but his recent downfall had humbled him, in more ways than one, so instead of replying, as he was greatly tempted to, that if anybody did any cutting, he would be the person to do it, he merely said, rather shortly,—
“Very well, I guess I know a little more about my mother than you do, so you attend to your mother-minding, and I’ll attend to mine!”
“Glad to hear it,” said Jim, easily, “but my mother’s what the dictionary-talkers call a traydition; I never saw her, so I’d find it a little impossible to mind her, don’t you see? But I’ll tell you one thing—if your mother ever cares enough about me to give me a little extra minding to do for her, I’ll see what I’m equal to in that line, perhaps!”
Johnny had reported this speech to Mrs. Leslie, and she had begun to work on the suggestion. Jim had already set his mark to a promise not to smoke until he was twenty-one, and, although he did not know it, Mrs. Leslie was trying to find him a situation where he would have a certain, if small, salary, and be less exposed to temptation than he now was. She was very glad when she heard of the bargain which Johnny had made, and she presented the new scholar with a slate and spelling book, at once. She also gave the schoolmaster a little advice.
“You must remember, Johnny,” she said, “that Jim has had no chance to learn anything, compared with your chances, and you mustn’t look superior, whatever you do. Whenever you feel very grand, just imagine how it would be if papa should write to you in Greek, and talk to you in French and Latin, and then call you a little stupid because you could not understand him.”
Tiny looked rather mournful when she heard of the new arrangement, but she brightened up, presently.
“Is he a very big boy indeed, Johnny?” she asked.
“Why, no,” said Johnny, considering, “at least, he’s not much bigger than I am, Tiny. He’s only about half a head taller, but he’s a good deal thicker.”
“What did you say you’d teach him?” pursued Tiny.
“Oh, all the things I’m learning at school, I s’pose!” replied Johnny, “we didn’t settle about that, exactly, for I don’t know yet how much he knows—he can’t write, but maybe he can read a little—I hope so, for it must be awfully stupid work to teach people their letters. But why do you want to know, Tiny?”
“I have a reason,” said Tiny, nodding her head wisely. “You needn’t think you know all of everything, Johnny Leslie!”
“I never said I did!” retorted Johnny, warmly; then he looked at Tiny, and began to laugh, she was so little, and was trying so hard to look wise and elderly.
“You may laugh if you like,” she said, serenely, “I don’t mind. But if you don’t know what you are going to teach him, perhaps you know what you’re not. Are you going to teach him to sing?”
Johnny accepted Tiny’s gracious permission, and laughed a good deal, but at last he answered,—
“No, Tiny, I’m not going to teach him to sing. I am quite sure about that. Mamma says I can sing straight ahead first rate, but she never knew me to turn a tune yet. I wish I could sing the way you do,” he added, regretfully, “I’m so full of sing sometimes that I don’t know what to do, but I can’t make it come out.”
They were sitting on the back porch, pasting their scrap-books, and Mrs. Leslie was sewing at the window.
“Never mind, Johnny,” she said, consolingly, “you’ll not ‘die with all your music in you’ while you do so much shouting.”
“Very well, then,” said Tiny, with a look of great satisfaction, “when Jim comes, I shall tell him that if he will dig my garden for me, I will teach him to sing.”
Mrs. Leslie expected to hear Johnny first laugh, and then try to dissuade Tiny from carrying out her plan, but to her surprise, he did neither. He said,—
“I shouldn’t wonder if he’d do it, Tiny; he’s all the time whistling, and he whistles just like a blackbird, so very likely he’ll be glad to learn to sing, too.”
When Jim came that evening, Tiny and Johnny were both in the garden, and as Tiny had not yet met Jim, Johnny introduced them thus,—
“Tiny, this is Jim. Jim, this is my sister Tiny, and she wants to be in our bargain, too. Go ahead, Tiny.”
And so encouraged, Tiny went ahead.
“I have a garden, too,” she said, “but Johnny knows more of everything than I do, except singing, and I thought perhaps you’d like to learn to sing, and if you would, I’ll teach you that, and then, if you think it is worth it, will you just do the hard digging for me? I can do the rest myself, watching you and Johnny.”
A very gentle look came over Jim’s bold face, as he answered,—
“If you’ll teach me how to sing, Miss Tiny, it will be worth as much to me as all Johnny can teach me of other things, and I’ll be proud and happy to take charge of your garden.”
“Oh, thank you very much!” said Tiny, warmly. “What a nice, kind boy you are! Do you mind if I watch you while you dig?”
“Not a bit!” said Jim, cheerfully, “I’m not bashful. But you’d better sit down.”
“Wait a minute, and I’ll bring you your camp-chair, Tiny,” said Johnny, and he raced to the porch for Tiny’s small chair, while Jim pulled off the coat which he had put on as a mark of respect to Mrs. Leslie, whom he hoped to see before the evening was over, and went valiantly to work with the spade.
“What nice big spadefuls you make!” Tiny said, after watching him a while. “When I dig, it ’most all slides off while I am picking up the spade.”
“That’s because you are not quite so strong as I am,” said Jim, smiling, and turning over an extra large spadeful by way of proving his statement.
The two little gardens were thoroughly dug by the time that it was too dark to work any more, and Johnny had hoed and raked Tiny’s smooth, while Jim was digging his. Then they went into the playroom, and Mrs. Leslie brought them a lamp to light up the lesson.
“We will have a little singing first,” she said, opening the organ. “Tiny and I will sing the evening hymn, and you must listen, Jim, and try to catch the tune.”
Jim listened, and by the time they reached the Doxology, he had joined them, and went through the tune without a mistake, seeming even to know the words. His voice was a very sweet tenor, and Tiny exclaimed delightedly,—
“It will be just as easy as anything to teach him to sing, mamma!”
“I’d have come in sooner,” said Jim, looking very much pleased, “but that last verse was the only one I knew. I went to Sunday-school a few times when I was a little boy, and that verse came back to me as soon as you began to sing it.”
Then Johnny and his pupil sat down by the table, and Mrs. Leslie took Tiny’s hand and went to the parlor, thinking that the two boys would manage their undertaking better without an audience.
Johnny felt very much embarrassed, but he plunged in boldly, as the best way of overcoming his feelings.
“I’ll do you the way they did me, the first day I went to school,” he began, and taking his First Reader, he opened it, and handed it to Jim, saying,—
“Just read a little, will you?”
Jim burst out laughing.
“It’s heathen Greek to me,” he said. “I don’t know more than half the letters. Why, if I’d known how to read, I could have picked up the rest somehow, and that’s why I asked you to teach me.”
Johnny was about to whistle, but he suddenly recollected his mother’s warning.
“All right,” he said, composedly; “we’ll begin with the letters, and I’ll teach you the way mamma teaches Tiny—it’s easier than the way they do in school. Wait a minute, and I’ll borrow her card, the letters are so much larger than they are in the spelling-book.”
He came back with a large card, covered with letters in bright colors, and pointing to A, asked,
“Now, what does that look like to you?”
“It looks something like the tents those soldiers put up when they camped near here,” said Jim, after looking at it for a moment.
“Very well; that’s A. Now, when you say ‘A tent,’ there you have it, all right.”
“That’s easy enough to remember,” said Jim, “I thought it would be harder.”
“I’ll tell you what this second fellow looks like, to me,” said Johnny, delighted with Jim’s quickness, “it always makes me think of a bumble-bee, and its name’s B.”
“That’s queer,” answered Jim, “it does look like a big, fat bee, sure enough. I guess I can remember that, too.”
It was not easy to find likenesses like these for all the letters, but when Johnny could not think of anything in the way of a likeness, he told Jim of something strange or funny that the letter “stood for,” and felt quite sure, when the alphabet had been “gone through,” that every letter was firmly impressed upon Jim’s memory.
“Do you want to begin to learn to write now, or wait till you’ve learned to read?” inquired Johnny, when the reading-lesson was finished.
“I don’t know,” said Jim, “what’s the first thing you do when you learn to write, anyhow?”
“You make ‘strokes’ first, like that—” and Johnny made a few rapidly on the slate—“to sort of get your hand in, and then, when you can make them pretty well, you go on to ‘pot-hooks and trammels’—like these”—and he illustrated on the slate again—“and when you can make them pretty well, then you begin to make letters.”
“Well, then, I might as well begin right off,” said Jim, “I don’t have to know how to read before I can make ‘strokes,’ that’s plain, and if it takes so long just to get your hand in, the sooner I start, the better!”
“Yes, I think so too,” said Johnny, encouragingly, “for of course, you needn’t know how to read, to make ‘strokes’ or ‘pot-hooks and trammels’ either, and you see you’ll be all ready, this way, to make the letters, by the time you can read printing—maybe before. Here, I’ll rule your slate, but I’ll ask mamma to set you the copy. I can’t make as good strokes—or anything else for that matter—as she can, and papa says a copy, any kind of a copy, ought to be perfect.”
Mrs. Leslie willingly set the copy, and guided Jim’s hand over the first row. Nothing in her look or manner suggested to Jim that her soft white fingers felt any objection to taking hold of his grimy ones, but from that time he always asked Johnny for soap and water, when the gardening was done, and came to his lessons with hands as clean as vigorous scrubbing could make them.
When he had covered both sides of his new slate with “strokes,” which Johnny assured him were quite as good as the first ones he had made, they both decided that the lesson had been long enough for that time, and parted with cordial good-nights.
“I didn’t know it was so easy to teach people, mamma!” said Johnny, exultingly, as soon as his pupil was out of hearing, “why, it’s no trouble at all!”
Mrs. Leslie smiled.
“Jim seems to be a bright boy,” she said, “but you must remember that his mind is like your garden; things must be planted in it, and you must wait a while for them to come up. I don’t wish to discourage you, dear, but learning is a new business to him, as teaching is to you, and I think this would be a good text for both of you to start with—‘Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.’”