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THE Kl-V.- lOhK

PUBLIC LIBaAKY

A8T0R, LENOX ANB
TILD'^N FOUN.'.\AT!ON8.

1) R E A M

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DREAM
CHILDREN

EDITED AN n ILLUSTRATED

«^

EUZABETH B. BROWNKLL

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

<.^LARA E. LAUGHLIN

INDIANAPOLLS

!{'F BOWENATKRRir.L (iny?'\S\ .

PUBLISHERS

TJh t. N., , YORK

^762o 7

^ A

1907 L

• r •••

• >• • • •
•• • •

' . *

• .' .-•

• ••; •_ • • • ••

,• •

• • • • •

••

PRESS OF

BRAUNWORTH & CO.

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS

BROOKLYN, N.Y.

"And He took a little child and set him in the
midst of them."

CONTENTS

Dream Chil
Thb Bakefc
The Little

LULLADV

The Snow

MiRAC

s Chiluhood
The Stobv of Cosette at

Little Boy Blue
Alice and Her Kitten
In School Days
A Portrait

Clara E. Laughlin

Charles Lamb
John G. Whittier

Hans Andersen .
James Whttcomb Riley

Nathaniel Hawthorne
James Wkitcomb Riley
Hans Andersen .
Henry W. Longfellow

Victor Hugo
Eugene Field
Lewis Carroll
John C. Whittier
Elizabeth Barrett

CONTENTS

From **A Christmas Carol"
Red Riding Hood
Mignon's Love and Longing

Brother and Sister .

Curly Locks

The Dolls' Dressmaker

Evelyn Hope

A Child's Drsam of a Star

Dorothy Q ...

Philip, My King

Annabel Lee
A Prospective Glimpse
Seven Times One
Happy as Kings .

Sleep on, Fair Child

PAGE

Charles Dickens

131

James Whitcomb Riley

148

y. Wolfgang von

Goetke

151

George Eliot

157

James Whitcomb Riley

166

Charles Dickens

168

Robert Browning

187

Charles Dickens

192

Oliver Wendell

Holmes .

199

Dinah Maria Mulock

Craik

202

Edgar Allen Foe

206

James Whitcomb Riley

210

Jean Ingelow

212

Robert Louis Steven-

son ....

216

Thomas Carlyle

217

"^^

"In old days there were angels who came and
took men by the hand and led them away from
the city of destruction. We see no white-winged
angels now; bnt yet men are led away from threat-
ening destruction. A hand is put into theirs, which
leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright
land, so that they look no more backwards, and
the hand may be a little child's."

INTRODUCTION

In one sense ALL children are Dream Children, —
or nearly all; all save the ]x>or little Cosettes of the
actual world over whose sleeping innocence no ador-
ing mother sits in ecstasy, foreshadowing that which
is to come. God meant that all real children should
be dream children, that around the altar of infancy
men and women should kneel in a reflectiveness
reaching- far back into the i>ast, and yet farther
ahead into the future; for the baby is one of God's
ways of offering a new life, retrieving the mistakes
and realizing the ideals of the old. He who will
may live again in a little child; it was the Master
Himself who taught this, when He took a little child

INTRODUCTION

and set him in the midst of them, and never, since
then, has He improved upon this method of teaching
men and women the spirit of the Kingdom of
Heaven. The harsher ambitions of maturity have
no place in the presence of a baby ; the sweet dreams
of youth, the untarnished, love-lit dreams come back
with the coming of the baby ; and sweeter dreams
yet, inspired by Love more intense than any known
or felt before, — these, too, come with the coming
of the baby, the wonderful little bundle of potential-
ities of whom, it seems, nothing is impossible. Not
a contemplation of the tiny hand but leads the parent
fancy far, far afield, wondering to what uses that
wee hand may come, in time, what part it will play
in the great world's work ; not an uncovering of the
tiny pink feet but suggests anxious questionings and
imaginings, reaching to the outermost boundaries of
time and place, in an effort to guess where these
feet will tread, ere their journey's done; not a
glance into baby eyes but the fond heart thinks of
tears unshed and smiles unguessed that shall lurk
there in the years to come, — and wonders, wistfully,
which, or tears or smiles, will predominate. Not a
mother kisses the lips of her baby boy or girl but
projects, in fancy, the lover's kisses that will some
day come thereto. Dream! and Dream! and
Dream ! All children are Dream Children.

And, in a sense, all Dream Children are real chil-
dren, made so by the very power of longing that
called them into being. It is a matter frequently
noted that many of the Dream Children whom the

■ INTRODUCTION

world has adopted most affectionately are the chil-
dren of those who never had children after the flesh ;
ALL their power to dream and love and long went
into the children of their fancies! The author of
"John Halifax" never had a baby of her own, but
scarce a mother does not murmur to her upheld baby
boy, 'Thilip, my king!" And Charles Lamb never
gathered child of his to his knee, to* hearken to tales
of their ancestors, but so real did he make his little
Alice and John that one cannot think of Charles
Lamb in the great Beyond, without those identical
children that he wanted so much, so much, forever at
his knee. And not Whittier, nor Stevenson, nor
Riley, nor Hans Andersen, nor many another who
has dreamed the sweetest dreams of childhood, ever
knew child of his own in the flesh. But in their
Dream Children they live on.

The aim of this little book has been to- picture,
with the newest aid to- pictorial effect, the camera, a
few of the Dream Children of literature. It was a
bewildering field to chose from! And not all the
fancies of the dreamers were realizable with a lens.
But a handful of posies is here offered, old favorites
tied up in a bouquet with some that are new, or com-
paratively that. There has been no thought of order
in their arrangement, or yet of harmony in their
selection. As one goes into a luxuriant, old-fash-
ioned garden and gathers here a blossom and there a
blossom, as fancy listeth and the sweet recollection
of long-gone days prompts, so the editor and illus-
trator of this book has gone about her bouquet-

INTRODUCTION

making, and one who knows well every step of the

way about that garden wishes the little, and the big,
readers of this book might know the story of how
real little children, gathered like posies, too, to go
into the bouquet, have entered into the spirit of the
thing, and thrown their whole ardent little spirits
into the attempt to illustrate some Dream Child
that they loved. Anyway, here it is, the Dream
Children's book! And she who made it says that if
it pleases, thanks must go first of all to the men and
women who gave these dear Dream Children to us,
to be sweeter companions than even the fairies; and
after that to the real children who, with all of child-
hood's delight in "make lielieve," worked so faith-
fully to bring the Dream Children within the range
of the matter-of-fact camera.

Clara E, Laughlin.

DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE

Children love to listen to stories about their
elders, when they were children; to stretch their
imagination to the conception of a traditionary
great-uncle, or a grandanie, whom they never saw.
It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about
me the other evening to hear about their great-
grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in
Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which
they and papa lived), which had been the scene —
so at least it was generally believed in that part of
the country — of the tragic incidents which they
had lately become familiar with from the ballad of
the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the
whole story of the children and their cruel uncle
was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the
chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story
down to the Robin Redbreast; till a foolish rich

DREAM CHILDREN

person pulled it down to set up a marble one of
modern invention in its stead, with no story upon
it. Here Alice put on one of her dear mother's
looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then
I went on to say how religious and how good their
great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and re-
spected by everybody, though she was not indeed
the mistress of this great house, but had only the
charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be
said to be the mistress of it, too) committed to her
by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and
more fashionable mansion which he had purchased
somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she
lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own,
and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort
while she lived, which aften\^ards came to decay,
and was nearly pulled down, and all its old orna-
ments stripped and carried away to the owner's
other house, where they were set up and looked
as awkward as if some one were to carry away the
old tombs they had seen lajtely at the Abbey, and
stick them up in Lady C's tawdry gilt drawing-
room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "That
would be foolish indeed." And then I told how
when she came to die, her funeral was attended by
a concourse of all the poor and some of the gentry,
too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to
show their respect for her memory, because she
had been such a good and religious woman; so
good, indeed, that she knew all the Psaltery by
heart; aye,. and a great part of the Testament be-

A REVERIE

Sides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then
I told her what a tall, upright, graceful person their
great-grandmother Field once was: and how in her
youth she was esteemed the best dancer, — here
Alice's little right foot played an involuntary move-
ment, till upon my looking grave, it desisted, — the
best dancer, I was saying, in the country, till a cruel
disease, called a cancer, came and bowed her down
with pain: but it could never bend her good spirits,
or make them stoop, but they were still upright,
because she was so good and religious. Then I
told how she used to sleep by herself in a lone
chamber of the great lone house; and how she be-
lieved that an apparition of two infants was to be
seen at midnight gliding up and down the great
staircase near where she slept, but she said, 'Those
innocents would do her no harm;" and how fright-
ened I used to be, though in those days I had my
maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so
good or religious as she, — and yet I never saw the
infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and
tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she
was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great
house in the holidays, where I in particular used to
spend many hours by myself gazing upon the old
busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors
of Rome, till the old marble heads w^ould seem to
live again or I to be turned into marble with them;
how I never could be tired with roaming about that
huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with
their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and

DREAM CHILDREN

carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost
rubbed out,- — sometimes in the spacious old-fash-
ioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless
when now and then a solitary gardening man
would cross me — and how the nectarines and
peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever
offering to pluck them, because they were for-
bidden fruit, unless now and then — and because I
had more pleasure in strolling about among the
old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and
picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, which
were good for nothing but to look at, — or in lying
upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells
around me, — or basking in the orangery, till I
could almost fancy myself ripening too long with
oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth, or
in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the
fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here
and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down
the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their im-
pertinent friskings: I had more pleasure in these
busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flowers
of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like com-
mon baits of children. Here John slyly deposited
back upon the plate a bunch of grapes which, not
unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing
with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish
them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in some-
what a more heightened tone, I told how, though
their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-
children, yet in an especial manner she might be

"Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren "

> • 1

TILL "N f^'i'

A REVERIE

said to love their uncle John L , because

he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a
king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about
in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount
the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but
an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it
carry him half over the country in a morning, and
join the hunters when there were any out, — and
yet he loved the old great house and gardens, too,
but had too much spirit to be always pent up
within their boundaries, — and how their uncle grew
up to a man's estate as brave as he was handsome,
to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-
grandmother Field most especially; and how he
used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-
footed boy — for he was a good bit older than me
— many a mile when I could not walk for pain; —
and how in after-life he became lame-footed, too,
and I did not always (I fear) make allowances
enough for him wdien he was impatient and in pain,
nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had
been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when
he died, though he had not yet been dead an hour,
it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such
a distance there is between life and death, as I
thought pretty well at first, but afterw^ards it
haunted and haimted me; and though I did not
cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think
he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him
all day long, and knew not till then how much I
had loved him. I missed his kindness, and missed

DREAM CHILDREN

his crossness, and wished him to be alive again,
to be quarreling with him (for we quarreled some-
times), rather than not have him again, and was
as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle must
have been when they took off his limb. Here the
children fell a-crying, and asked if their little
mourning they had on was not for Uncle John, and
they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about
their uncle, but to tell them some stories about
their pretty dead mother. Then I told how, for
seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in
despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice
W n; and, as much as children could under-
stand, I explained to them what coyness, and diffi-
culty, and denial meant to maidens, — when
suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first
Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reahty
of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of
them stood there before me, or whose that bright
hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and
still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful
features were seen in the uttermost distance, which,
without speech, strangely impressed upon me the
effects of speech: ''We are not of Alice, nor of
thee, nor are we children at all. The children of
Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less
than nothing, and dreams. We are only what
might have been, and must wait upon the tedious
shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have
existence, and a name" — and immediately awaken-

2.2

ing, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor
arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faith-
ful Bridget unchanged iDy my side, — but John L,
{or James Eli) was gone forever.

THE BAREFOOT BOY

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheeks of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, —
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, — the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye, —
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day.
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase.
Of the wild-flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;

Live and laugh, as boj'hood c

THE BAREFOOT BOY

How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young.
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow.
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, —
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon.
When all the things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees.
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played.
Plied the snouted mole his spade.
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight

DREAM CHILDREN

Through the clay and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall ;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes l)eyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw^ or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy.
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood.
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frog's orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire,
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man.
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard.

THE BARKFOOT ROY

Stubble-Speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod.
Like a coh's for work Ije shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil.
Up and down in ceaseless moil,
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground ;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou coulffst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

THE LITTLE MATCH-SELLER

It was terribly cold and neariy dark on the last
evening of the old year, and the snow was falling
fast. In the cold and darkness, a poor little girl,
with bare head and naked feet, roamed through
the streets. It is true she had on a pair of slippers
when she left home, but they were not of much
use. They were very large, so large, indeed, that
they had been worn by her mother, and the poor
little creature had lost them in running across the
street to avoid two carriages that were rolling
along at a terrible rate. One of the slippers she
could not find, and a bqy seized upon the other
and ran away with it, saying that he could use it
as a cradle, when he had children of his own. So
the little girl went on with her little naked feet,
which were quite red and blue with the cold. In
an old apron she carried a number of matches, and
had a bundle of them in her hands. No one had
bought anything of her the whole day, nor had
any one given her even a penny. Shivering with
cold and hunger, she crept along; poor little child,
she looked the picture of misery. The snow-flakes
fell on her long, fair hair, which hung in curls on
her shoulders, but she regarded them not.

Lights were shining from every window, and
there was a savory smell of roast goose, for it was
New-Year's eve — yes, she remembered that. In

PL'

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AST "tt, L' V X *f'r; 5
TILL ■ V • 'v 1

THE LITTLE MATCH-SELLER

a corner, between two houses, one of which pro-
jected beyond the other, she 3ank down, and hud-
dled herself together. She had drawn her little
feet under her, but she could not keep olT the cold;
and she dared not go home, for she had sold no
matches, and could not take home even a penny of
money. Her father would certainly beat her; be-
sides, it was almost as cold at home as here, for
they had only the roof to cover them, through
which the wind howled, although the largest holes
had been stopped up 'with straw and rags. Her
little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah!
perhaps a burning match might be some good, if
she could, draw it from the bundle and strike it
against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She
drew out one — "Scratch!'' how it spluttered as it
burnt! It gave a warm, bright light, like a little
candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really
a wonderful light. It seemed to the little girl as
if she were sitting by a large iron stove, with pol-
ished brass feet and a brass ornament. How the
fire burned! and seemed so beautifully warm that
the child stretched out her feet as if to w^arm them,
when, lo! the flame of the match went out, the
stove vanished, and she had only the remains of the
half-burnt match in her hand.

She rubbed another match on the wall. It burnt
into a flame, and w4Tere its light fell upon the wall
it became as transparent as a veil, and she could
see into the room. The table was covered with a
snowy white table-cloth, on which stood a splendid

DREAM CHILDREN

dinner service and a steaming roast goose, stuffed
with apples and dried plums. And what was still
more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the
dish and waddled across the floor, with a knife and
fork in its breast, to the little girl. Then the match
went out, and there remained nothing but the
thick, damp, cold wall before her.

She lighted another match, and then she found
herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas-tree. It
was larger and more beautifully decorated than the
one she had seen through the glass door at the
rich merchant's. Thousands of tapers were burn-
ing upon the green branches, and colored pic-
tures, like those she had seen in the show-windows,
looked down upon it all. The little one stretched
out her hand towards them, and the match went
out.

The Christmas lights rose higher and higher,
till they looked to her like the stars in the sky.
Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind a bright
streak of fire. ''Some one is dying," thought the
little girl; for her old grandmother, the only one
who had ever loved her, and who was now dead,
had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going
up to God.

She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the
light shone round her; in the brightness stood her
old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and
loving in her appearance. ^'Grandmother," cried
the little one, "oh take me with you; I know you
will go away when the match burns out; you will

THE LITTLE MATCH-SELLER

vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and
the large, glorious Christmas-tree." And she made
haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she
wished to keep her grandmother there. And the
matches glowed with a light that was brighter than
the noonday, and her grandmother had never ap-
peared so large or so beautiful. She took the little
girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in
brightness and joy far above the earth, where there
was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were
with God.

In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little
one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning
against the wall; she had been frozen to death on
the last evening of the old year; and the New-
Year's sun rose and shone upon the little corpse!
The child sat still in the stiffness of death, holding
the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was
burnt. "She tried to warm herself," said some.
No one imagined what beautiful things she had
seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her
grandmother, on New-Year's day.

LULLABY

The maple strews the embers of its leaves

O'er the laggard swallows nestled 'neath the eaves;

And the moody cricket falters in his cry — Baby-
bye ! —

And the lid of night is falling o'er the sky — Baby-
bye ! —
The lid of night is falling o'er the sky!

The rose is lying pallid, and the cup

Of the frosted calla-lily folded up;

And the breezes through the garden sol) and sigh

— Baby-bye! —
O'er the sleeping blooms of summer where they lie

— Baby-bye ! —
O'er the sleeping blooms of summer where they

lie!

Yet, Baby — O my Baby, for your sake
This heart of mine is ever wide awake,
And my love may never droop a drowsy eye —

Baby-bye! —
Till your own are w-et above me when I die — Baby-
bye ! —
Till your own are w^et above me when I die.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

For your sake this heart of r

^ . —

A-
7'L

M • >>

. ^ *■ ;

THE SNOW-IMAGE

A CHILDISH MIRACLE

One afternoon of a cold winter's day, when the
sun shone forth with chilly brightness, after a long
storm, two children asked leave of their mother to
run out and play in the new-fallen snow. The elder
child was a little girl, whom, because she was of a
tender and modest disposition, and was thought to
be very beautiful, her parents, and other people
who were familiar with her, used to call Violet.
But her brother was known by the style and title
of Peony, on account of the ruddiness of his broad
and round little phiz, which made everybody think
of sunshine and great scarlet flowers. The father
of these two children, a certain Mr, Lindsey, it is
important to say, was an excellent but exceedingly
matter-of fact sort of man, a dealer in hardware, and
was sturdily accustomed to take what is called the
common-sense view of all matters that came under
his consideration. With a heart about as tender as
other people's he had a head as hard and im-

DREAM CHILDREN

penetrable, and therefore, perhaps, as empty, as
one of the iron pots which it was a part of his busi-
ness to sell. Tlie mother's character, on the other
hand, had a strain of poetry in it, a trait of un-
worldly beauty, — a delicate and dewy flower, as it
were, that had survived out of her imaginative
youth, and still kept itself alive, amid the dusty
realities of matrimony and motherhood.

So Violet and Peony, as I began with saying,
besought their mother to let them run out and play
in the new snow, for, though it had looked so
dreary and dismal, drifting downward out of the
gray sky, it had a very cheerful aspect, now that
the sun was shining on it. The children dwelt in
a city, and had no wider play-place than a little
garden before the house, divided by a wdiite fence
from the street, and with a pear tree and two or
three plum trees overshadowing it, and some rose-
bushes just in front of the parlor windows. The
trees and shrubs, however, were now leafless, and
their twigs were enveloped in the light snow, which
thus made a kind of wintry foliage, wdth here and
there a pendant icicle for the fruit.

"Yes, Violet, — yes, my little Peony," said their
kind mother; "you may go out and play in the new

snow."

Accordingly, the good lady bundled up her
darlings in woolen jackets and wadded sacks, and
put comforters round their necks, and a pair of
striped gaiters on each little pair of legs, and
worsted mittens on their hands, and gave them a

THE SNOW-IMAGE

kiss apiece, by way of a spell to keep away Jack
Frost. Forth sailed the two children, with a hop-
skip-and-jump, that carried them at once into the
very heart of a huge snow-drift, whence Violet
emerged like a snow-bunting, while little Peony
floundered out with his round face in full bloom.
Then what a merry time had they! To look at
them, frolicking in the wintry garden, you would
have thought that the dark and pitiless storm had
been sent for no other purpose but to provide a
new plaything for Violet and Peony; and that they
themselves had been created, as the snow-birds
were, to take delight only in the tempest, and in
the white mantle which it spread over the earth.

At last, when they had frosted one another all
over with handfuls of snow, Violet, after laughing
heartily at little Peony's figure, was struck with a
new idea.

"You look exactly like a snow-image, Peony,"
said she, ''if your cheeks were not so red. And
that puts me in mind! Let us make an image out
of snow, an image of a little girl,- — and it shall be
our sister, and shall run about and play with us all
winter long. Won't it be nice?"

"Oh yes," cried Peony, as plainly as he could
speak, for he was but a little boy. "That will be
nice! And mamma shall see it!"

"Yes," answered Violet, "mamma shall see the
new little girl. But she must not make her come
into the warm parlor; for, you know, our little
snow-sister will not love the warmth.'

DREAM CHILDREN

And forthwith the children began this great busi-
ness of making a snow-image that should run
about; while their mother, who was sitting at the
window and overheard some of their talk, could not
help smiling at the gravity with which they set
about it. They really seemed to imagine that there
would be no difficulty whatever in creating a live
little girl out of the snow, and to say the truth, if
miracles are ever to be wrought, it will be by pul-
ing our hands to the work in precisely such a simple
and undoubting frame of mind as that in which
Violet and Peony now undertook to perform one,
without so much as knowing that it was a miracle.
So, thought the mother, and thought, likewise,
that the new snow, just fallen from heaven, would
be excellent material to make new beings of, if it
were not so very cold. She gazed at the children
a moment longer, delighting to watch their little
figures, — the girl, tall for her age, graceful and
agile, and so delicately colored that she looked like
a cheerful thought, more than a physical reality;
the boy on his short and sturdy legs as substan-
tial as an elephant, though not quite so big. Then
the mother resumed her work. What it was
I forgot; but she was either trimming a silken bon-
net for Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for
little Peony's short legs. Again, however, and
again, and yet other agains, she could not help
turning her head to the window to see how the
children got on with their snow image.

Indeed, it was an exceedingly pleasant sight,

THE SNOW-IMAGE

those bright little souls at their task! Moreover,
it was really wonderful to observe how knowingly
and skilfully they managed the matter. Violet
assumed the chief direction, and told Peony what
to do, while with her own delicate fingers she
shaped all the nicer parts of the snow-figure. It
seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the
children, as to grow up under their hands, while
they were playing and prattling about it. Their
mother was quite surprised at this; and the longer
she looked the more and more surprised she
grew.

"What remarkable children mine are!'' thought
she, smiling with a mother's pride; and smiling at
herself, too, for being so proud of them. '*What
other children could have made anything so like a
little girl's figure out of snow at the first trial?
Well, — but now I must finish Peony's new frock
for his grandfather is coming to-morrow, and I
want the little fellow to look handsome.''

So she took up the frock, and was soon as busily
at work again with her needle as the two children
with their snow-image. But still, as the needle
traveled hither and thither throuo^h the seams of
the dress, the mother made her toil light and
happy by listening to the airy voices of Violet and
Peony. They kept talking to one another all the
time, their tongues being quite as active as their
feet and hands. Except at intervals, she could not
distinctly hear what was said, and had merely a
sweet impression that they were in a most loving

DREAM CHILDREN

mood, and were enjoying themselves highly, and
that the business of making the snow-image went
prosperously on. Now and then, however, when
Violet and Peony happened to raise their voices,
the words were as audible as if they had been
spoken in the very parlor, where the mother sat.
Oh, how delightful those words echoed in her heart,
even though they meant nothing so very wise or
wonderful after all!

But vou must know a mother listens with her

heart, much more than with her ears, and thus she
is often delighted with the thrills of celestial music,
when other people can hear nothing of the kind.

"Peony, Peony!" cried Violet to her brother,
who had gone to another part of the garden, ''bring
me some of the fresh snow, Peony, from the very
farthest corner, where w^e have not been trampling.
I want it to shape out our little snow-sister's bosom
with. You know that part must be quite pure, just
as it came out of the sky!"

"Here it is, Violet!" answered Peony, in his bluff
tone, — but a very sweet tone, too, — as he came
floundering through the half-trodden drifts. "Here
is the snow for her little bosom. Oh, Violet, how
beau-ti-ful she begins to look!"

"Yes," said Violet, thoughtfully and quietly;
"our snow-sister does look very lovely. I did not
quite know, Peony, that we could make such a
sweet little girl as this."

The mother, as she listened, thought how fit and
delightful an incident it would be, if fairies, or still

THE SNOW-IMAGE

better, if angel-children were to come from para-
dise, and play invisible with her own darlings, and
help them to make their snow-image, giving it the
features of celestial babyhood! Violet and Peony
would not be aware of their immortal playmates,
— only, that they would see that the image grew
very beautiful while they worked at it, and would
think that they themselves had done it all.

"My little girl and boy deserve such playmates,
if mortal children ever did!" said the mother to
herself; and then she smiled again at her own
motherly pride.

Nevertheless, the idea seized upon her imagina-
tion; and ever and anon she took a glimpse out of
the window, half dreaming that she might see the
golden-haired children of paradise sporting with
her own golden-haired Violet and bright-cheeked
Peony.

Now for a few moments, there was a busy and
earnest, but indistinct hum of two children's voices,
as Violet and Peony wrought together with one
happy consent. Violet still seemed to l^e the guid-
ing spirit, while Peony acted rather as a laborer,
and brought her the snow from far and near. And
yet the little urchin evidently had a proper under-
standing of the matter, too!

"Peony, Peony!" cried Violet; for her brother
was again at the other side of the garden. "Bring
me those light wTeaths of snow that have rested
on the lower branches of the pear-tree. You can
clamber on the snow-drift. Peony, and reach them

DREAM CHILDREN

easily. I must have them to make some ringlets
for our snow-sister's head!"

"Here they are, Violet!'' answered the little boy.
Take care you do not break them. Well done!
Well done! How pretty!"

''Does she not look sweetly?" said Violet, with
a very satisfied tone; '*and now we must have some
little shining bits of ice, to make the brightness of
her eyes. She is not finished yet. Mamma will
see how very l)eautiful she is; but papa will say,
*Tush! nonsense! Come in out of the cold!' "

'*Let us call mamma to look out," said Peony;
and then he shouted lustily: "Mamma! Mamma!
Mamma! Look out and see what a nice 'ittle girl
we are making!"

The mother put down her work, for an instant,
and looked out of the window, but it so happened
that the sun — for this was one of the shortest days
of the whole year — had sunken so nearly to the
edge of the world, that his setting shine came
obliquely into the lady's eyes. So she was dazzled,
you must understand, and could not very distinctly
observe what was in the garden. Still, however,
through all the bright, blinding dazzle of the sun
and the new snow, she beheld a small wdiite figure
in the garden, that seemed to have a wonderful
deal of human likeness about it, and she saw Violet
and Peony, — indeed, she looked more at them than
at the image,' — she saw the two children still at
work; Peony bringing fresh snow, and Violet ap-
plying it to the figure as scientifically as a sculptor

j«; ■

THE SNOW-IMAGE

adds clay to his model. Indistinctly as she dis-
cerned the snow-child, the mother thought to her-
self that never before was there a snow figure so
cunningly made, nor ever such a dear little girl and
boy to make it.

"They do everything better than older children,"
said she, very complacently. "No wonder they
make better snow-images!"

She sat down again to her work, and made as
much haste with it as possible; because twilight
would soon come, and Peony's frock was not yet
finished, and grandfather was expected, by rail-
road, pretty early in the morning. Faster and
faster, therefore, went her flying fingers. The chil-
dren, likewise, kept busily at work in the garden,
and still the mother listened, whenever she could
catch a word. She was amused to observe how
their little imaginations had got mixed up with
what they were doing, and were carried away by
it. They seemed positively to think that the snow-
child would run about and play with them.

"What a nice playmate she will be for us, all
winter long!" said Violet. "I hope papa will not
be afraid of her giving us a cold! Sha'n't you love
her dearly. Peony?"

"Oh yes!" cried Peony. "And I will hug her,
and she shall sit down close by me, and drink some
of my warm milk!"

"Oh, no. Peony!" answered Violet, with grave
wisdom. "That will not do at all. Warm milk will
not be wholesome for our little snow-sister. Little

DREAM CHILDREN

snow-people, like her, eat nothing but icicles. No,
no, Peony; we must not give her anything warm to
drink r'

There was a minute or two of silence; for Peony,
whose short legs were never weary, had gone on a
pilgrimage again to the other side of the garden.
All of a sudden, Violet cried out, loudly and joy-
fully:

*'Look here, Peony! Come quickly! A light
has been shining on her cheek out of that rose-
colored cloud! and the color does not go away!
Is not that beautiful!"

**Yes; it is beau-ti-ful," answered Peony, pro-
nouncing the three syllables with deliberate accur-
acy. *'Oh, Violet, only look at her hair! It is all
like gold."

'*Oh, certainly," said Violet, with tranquillity, as
if it were very much a matter of course. "That
color, you know, comes from the golden clouds,
that we see up there in the sky. She is almost
finished now. But her lips must be made very
red, — redder than her cheeks. Perhaps, Peony, it
will make thern red if we both kiss them!"

Accordingly the mother heard two smart little
smacks, as if both her children were kissing the
snow-image on its frozen mouth, but as this did not
seem to make the lips quite red enough, Violet
next proposed that the snow-child should be in-
vited to kiss Peony's scarlet cheek.

"Come 'ittle snow-sister, kiss me!" cried Peony.

"There! she has kissed you," added Violet, "and

THE SNOW-IMAGE

now her lips are very red. And she blushed, a little,
too!"

"Oh, what a cold kiss!" cried Peony.

Just then there came a breeze of the pure west-
wind, sweeping through the garden and rattling
the parlor windows. It sounded so wintry cold
that the mother was about to tap on the window-
pane with her thimbled finger, to summon the two
children in, when they both cried out to her with
one voice. The tone was not a tone of surprise,
although they were evidently a good deal excited;
it appeared rather as if they were very much re-
joiced at some event that had now happened, but
which they had been looking for, and had reckoned
upon all along.

**Mamma! mamma! we have finished our little
snow-sister, and she is running about the garden
with us!"

''What imaginative little beings my children
are!" thought the mother, putting the last few
stitches into Peony's frock. "And it is strange,
too, that they make me almost as much a child as
they themselves are! I can hardly help believing
now, that the snow-image has really come to
life!"

"Dear mamma!" cried Violet, "pray look out and
see w^hat a sweet playmate we have!"

The mother, being thus entreated, could no
longer delay to look forth from the window. The
sun was now gone out of the sky, leaving, however,
a rich inheritance of his brightness among those

DREAM CHILDREN

purple and golden clouds, which make the sunsets
of winter so magnificent. But there was not the
slightest gleam or dazzle, either on the window or
on the snow; so that the good lady could look all
over the garden, and see everything and everybody
in it. And what do you think she saw there?
Violet and Peony, of course, her own two darling
children. Ah, but whom or w-hat did she see be-
sides? Why, if you will believe me, there was a
small figure of a girl, dressed all in white, with rose-
tinged cheeks, and ringlets of golden hue, playing
about the garden with the two children! A
stranger though she was, the child seemed to be
on as familiar terms w^ith Violet and Peony, and
they with her as if all the three had been playmates
during the whole of their little lives. The mother
thought to herself that it must certainly be the
daughter of one of the neighbors, and that seeing
Violet and Peony in the garden, the child had run
across the street to play with them. So this kind
lady went to the door, intending to invite the little
runaway into her comfortable parlor; for now that
the sunshine was withdrawn, the atmosphere, out
of doors, was already growing very cold.

But after opening the house-door, she stood an
instant on the threshold, hesitating whether she
ought to ask the child to come in, or whether she
should even speak to her. Indeed, she almost
doubted whether it were a real child, after all, or
only a light wreath of the new-fallen snow, blown
hither and thither about the garden by the intensely

THE SNOW-IMAGE

cold west-wind. There was something very sin-
gular in the aspect of the Httle stranger. Among
all the children of the neighborhood, the lady could
remember no such face, with its pure white and
delicate-rose color, and the golden ringlets tossing
about the forehead and cheeks. And as for her
dress, which was entirely of white, and fluttering
in the breeze, it was such as no reasonable woman
would put upon a little girl, when sending her out
to play in the depth of winter. It made this kind
and careful mother shiver only to look at those
small feet, with nothing in the world on them,
except a very thin pair of white slippers. Never-
theless, airily as she was clad, the child seemed to
feel not the slightest inconvenience from the cold,
but danced so lightly over the snow that the tips
of her toes left hardly a print in its surface; while
Violet could but just keep pace with her, and
Peony's short legs compelled him to lag behind.
Once, in the course of their play, the strange
child placed herself between Violet and Peony, and
taking a hand of each, skipped merrily forward,
and they along with her. Almost immediately,
however. Peony pulled away his little fist, and be-
gain to rub it as if the fingers were tingling with
cold; while Violet also released herself, though
with less abruptness, gravely remarking that it was
better not to take hold of hands. The white-robed
damsel said not a word, but danced about just as
merrily as before. If Violet and Peony did not
choose to play with her, she could make just as

DREAM CHILDREN

good a playmate of the cold west-wind, which kept
blowing her all about the garden, and took such
liberties with her, that they seemed to have been
friends for a long time. All this while the mother
stood on the threshold, wondering how a little girl
could look so much like a flying snow-drift, or how
a snow-drift could look so very like a little girl.

She called Violet, and whispered to her.

"Viojet, my darling, what is this child's name?"
asked she. "Does she live near us?"

"Why, dearest mamma," answered Violet,
laughing to think that her mother did not compre-
hend so very plain an aflfair, "this is our little snow-
sister, whom we have just been making!"

"Yes, dear mamma," cried Peony, running to his
mother and looking up simply into her face. "This
is our snow-image! Is it not a nice 'ittle child?"

At this instant a flock of snow birds came flitting
through the air. As was very natural, they avoided
Violet and Peony. But — and this looked strange,
— they flew at once to the white-robed child,
fluttered eagerly about her head, alighted on
her shoulders, and seemed to claim her as
an old acquaintance. She, on her part, was
evidently as glad to see these little birds, old
Winter's grandchildren, as they were to see
her, and welcomed them by holding out both
her hands. Hereupon they each and all tried
to alight on her two palms and ten small fingers
and thumbs, crowding one another off, with an
immense fluttering of their tiny wings. One dear

THE SNOW-IMAGE

little bird nestled tenderly in her bosom; another
put its bill to her lips. They were as joyous all the
while, and seemed as much in their element, as you
may have seen them when sporting with a snow-
storm.

•^ Violet and Peony stood laughing at this pretty
sight; for they enjoyed the merry time which their
playmate was having with these small winged vis-
itants, almost as much as if they themselves took
part in it. "Violet," said her mother, greatly per-
plexed, "tell me the truth, without any jest. Who
is this little girP''

"My darling mamma," answered Violet, looking
seriously into her mother's face, and apparently sur-
prised that she should need any further explana-
tion, "I have told you truly who she is. It is our
little snow-image, which Peony and I have been
making. Peony will tell you so, as well as I."

"Yes, mamma," asseverated Peony, with much
gravity in his crimson little phiz; "this is 'ittle snow-
child. Is not she a nice one? But mamma, her
hand is oh so very cold!"

While mamma still hesitated what to think and
what to do, the street-gate was thrown open, and
the father of Violet and Peony appeared, wrapped
in a pilot-cloth sack, with a fur cap drawn down
over his ears, and the thickest of gloves upon his
hands. Mr. Lindsey was a middle-aged man, with
a weary and yet a happy look in his wind-flushed
and frost-pinched face, as if he had been busy all
the day long, and was glad to get back to his quiet

DREAM CHILDREN

home. His eyes brightened at the sight of his wife
and children, although he could not help uttering
a word or two of surprise at finding the whole
family in the open air, and on so bleak a day, and
after sunset, too. He soon perceived the little
white stranger, sporting to and fro in the garden,
like a dancing snow wreath, and the flock of snow-
birds fluttering about her head.

**Pray what little girl may that be?" inquired this
very sensible man. "Surely her mother must be
crazy to let her go out in such bitter weather as it
has been to-day, with only that flimsy white gown
and those thin sHppers!''

"My dear husband," said his wife, "I know no
more about the little thing than you do. Some
neighbor's child, I suppose. Our Violet and
Peony," she added, laughing at herself for repeat-
ing so absurd a story, "insist that she is nothing
but a snow-image, which they have been busy
about in the garden, almost all the afternoon."

As she said this, the mother glanced her eyes
toward the spot where the children's snow-image
had been made. What was her surprise on perceiv-
ing that there was not the slightest trace of so much
labor! — no image at all! no piled up heap of snow,
nothing whatever, save the prints of little footsteps
around a vacant space!

This is very strange!" said she.
What is strange, dear mother?" asked Violet.
Dear father, do not you see how it is? This is our
snow-image, which Peony and I have made, be-

THE SNOW-IMAGE

cause we wanted another playmate. Did not we
Peony?"

"Yes, papa/' said crimson Peony, "this is our
'ittle snow-sister. Is she not beau-ti-ful? But she
gave me such a cold kiss!''

"Pooh, nonsense, children!" cried their good,
honesi father, who as we have already intimated,
had an exceedingly common-sensible way of look-
ing at matters. "Do not tell me of making live
figures out of snow. Come, wife; this little stranger
must not stay out in the bleak air a moment longer.
We will bring her into the parlor; and you shall
give her a supper of warm bread and milk, and
make her as happy as you can. Meanwhile I will
inquire among the neighbors, or, if necessary, send
the city-crier about the streets, to give notice of a
lost child."

So saying, this honest and very kina-nearted man
was going toward the little white damsel, wnth the
best intention in the world. But Violet and Peony,
each seizing their father by the hand, earnestly be-
sought him not to make her come in.

"Dear father," cried Violet, putting herself be-
fore him, "it is true what I have been telling you!
This is our little snow-girl, and she cannot live any
longer than while she breathes the cold west-
wind. Do' not make her come into the hot
room !"

"Yes, father," shouted Peony, stamping his little
foot, so mightily w^as he in earnest, "this be nothing
but our 'ittle snow-child! She will not love the hot
fire!"

DREAM CHILDREN

'^Nonsense, children, nonsense, nonsense,'' cried
the father, half vexed, half laughing at what he con-
sidered their foolish obstinacy. "Run into the
house this moment! It is too late to play any
longer now. I must take care of this little girl im-
mediately, or she will catch her death-a-cold!"

"Husband! dear husband!*' said his wife in a low
voice, — for she had been looking narrowly at the
snow-child, and was more perplexed than ever, —
"there is something very singular in all this. You
will think me foolish, — but — but — may it not be
that some invisible angel has been attracted by the
simplicity and good faith with which our children
set about their undertaking? May he not have
spent an hour of his immortality in playing with
those dear little souls? and so the result is what we
call a miracle? No, no! do not laugh at me; I see
what a foolish thought it is!"

"My dear wife," replied the husband, laughing
heartily, "you are as much a child as Violet and
Peony."

And in one sense so she was, for all through life
she had kept her heart full of childlike simplicity
and faith, which was as pure and clear as crystal;
and looking at all matters through this transparent
medium, she sometimes saw truths so profound,
that other people laughed at them as nonsense and
absurdity.

But now kind Mr. Lindsey had entered the gar-
den, breaking away from his two children, who still
sent their shrill voices after him beseeching him to

THE SNOW-IMAGE

let the snow-child stay and enjoy herself in the cold
west-wind. As he approached, the snow-birds took
to flight. The little white damsel, also, fled back-
ward, shaking her head, as if to say, "Pray, do not
touch me!'' and roguishly as it appeared, leading
him through the deepest of snow. Once, the good
man stumbled, and floundered down upon his face,
so that, gathering himself up again, with the snow
sticking to his rough pilot-cloth sack, he looked
as white and wintry as a snow-image of the largest
size. Some of the neighbors, meanwhile, seeing
him from their windows, wondered what could
possess poor Mr. Lindsey to be running about his
garden in pursuit of a snow drift, which the west-
wind was driving hither and thither! At length,
after a vast deal of trouble, he chased the little
stranger into a corner, where she could not possibly
escape him. His wife had been looking on, and, it
being nearly twilight, was wonder struck to ob-
serve how the snow-child gleamed and sparkled,
and how she seemed to shed a glow all round about
her; and when driven into the corner, she positively
glistened like a star! It was a frosty kind of bright-
ness, too, like that of an icicle in the moonlight.
The wife thought it strange that good Mr. Lindsey
could see nothing remarkable in the snow-child's
appearance.

*'Come, you odd little thing," cried the honest
man, seizing her by the hand, ''I have caught you
at last, and will make you comfortable in spite of
yourself. We will put a nice warm pair of worsted

DREAM CHILDREN

Stockings on your frozen little feet, and you shall
have a good thick shawl to wrap yourself in. Your
poor white nose, I am afraid, is actually frost-bitten.
But we will make it all right. Come along in."

And so, with a most benevolent smile on his
sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold,
this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow-
child by the hand, and led her towards the house.
She followed him, droopingly and reluctant; for all
the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure,
and whereas just before she had resembled a bright,
frosty star-gemmed evening, with a crimson gleam
on the cold horizon, she now looked as dull and
languid as a thaw. As kind Mr. Lindsey led her up
the steps to the door, Violet and Peony looked into
his face, — their eyes full of tears, which froze before
they could run down their cheeks — and again en-
treated him not to bring their snow-image into the
house.

"Not bring her in!'' exclaimed the kind-hearted
man. ''Why you are crazy, my little Violet! quite
crazy, my small Peony! She is so cold, already,
that her hand has almost frozen mine, in spite of
my thick gloves. Would you have her freeze to
death?"

His wife, as he came up the steps, had been tak-
ing another long, earnest, almost awe-stricken gaze
at the little white stranger. She hardly knew
whether it was a dream or no, but she could not
help fancying that she saw the delicate print of
Violet's fingers on the child's neck. It looked just

THE SNOW-IMAGE

as if, while Violet was shaping out the image, she
had given it a gentle pat with her hand, and had
neglected to smooth the impression quite away.

"After all, husband," said the mother, recurring
to her idea that the angels would be as much de-
lighted to play with Violet and Peony as she her-
self was, — *'after all, she does look strangely like
a snow image! I do believe she is made of
snow!"

A puff of the west-wind blew against the snow-
child, and again she sparkled like a star.

''Snow," repeated good Mr. Lindsey, drawing
the reluctant guest over his hospitable threshold.
''No wonder she looks like snow. She is half
frozen, poor little thing! But a good fire will put
everything to rights."

Without further talk, and always with the best
intentions, this highly benevolent and common-
sensible individual led the little white damsel —
drooping, drooping, drooping more and more — •
out of the frosty air, and into his comfortable par-
lor. A Heidenberg stove, filled to the brim w^ith
intensely burning anthracite, was sending a bright
gleam through the isinglass of its iron door, and
causing the vase of water on its fop to fume and
bubble with excitement. A warm, sultry smell was
diffused throughout the room. A thermometer on
the wall farthest from the stove stood at eighty
degrees. The parlor was hung with red curtains,
and covered with a red carpet, and looked just as
warm as it felt. The difference between the atmos-

DREAM CHILDREN

phere here and the cold, wintry twilight out of
doors, was like stepping at once from Nova Zembla
to the hottest part of India, or from the North Pole
into an oven. Oh, this was a fine place for the lit-
tle white stranger.

The common-sensible man placed the snow-child
on the hearth rug, right in front of the hissing and
fuming stove.

'*Now she will be comfortable!" cried Mr. Lind-
sey, rubbing his hands and looking about him, with
the pleasantest smile you ever saw. *'Make your-
self at home, my child."

Sad, sad and drooping, looked the little white
maiden, as she stood on the hearth rug, with the
hot blast of the stove striking through her like a
pestilence. Once she threw a glance wistfully to-
ward the windows, and caught a glimpse, through
its red curtains, of the snow-covered roofs, and the
stars glimmering frostily and all the delicious in-
tensity of the cold night. The bleak wind rattled
the window-panes as if it were summoning her to
come forth. But there stood the snow-child droop-
ing before the hot stove!

But the common-sensible man saw nothing
amiss.

''Come wife," said he, "let her have a pair of
thick stockings and a woolen shawl or blanket
directly, and tell Dora to give her some warm sup-
per as soon as the milk boils. You, Violet and
Peony, amuse your little friend. She is out of
spirits, you see, at finding herself in a strange place.

THE SNOW-IMAGE

For my part, I will go around among the neigh-
bors, and find out where she belongs."

The mother, meanwhile, had gone in search of
the shawl and stockings; for her own view of the
matter, however subtle and delicate, had given
away, as it always did, to the stubborn materialism
of her husband. Without heeding the remon-
strance of his two children, who still kept murmur-
ing that their little snow-sister did not love the
warmth, good Mr. Lindsey took his departure,
shutting the parlor-door carefully behind him.
Turning up the collar of his sack over his ears, he
emerged from the house, and had barely reached
the street-gate, when he was recalled by the screams
of Violet and Peony, and the rapping of a thimbled
finger against the parlor window.

"Husband! husband!'' cried his wiie, showing
her horror-stricken face through the window-panes.
"There is no need of going for the child's parents!"

"We told you so, father!" screamed Violet and
Peony as he re-entered the parlor. "You would
bring her in; and now our poor — dear — beau-ti-ful
little snow-sister is thawed!"

And their own sweet little faces were already dis-
solved in tears; so that their father, seeing what
strange things occasionally happen in this every-
day world, felt not a little anxious lest his children
might be going to thaw too! In the utmost per-
plexity, he demanded an explanation of his wife.
She could only reply, that being summoned to the
parlor by the cries of Violet and Peony, she found

DREAM CHILDREN

no trace of the little white maiden, unless it were
the remains of a heap of snow, which, while she
was gazing at it, melted quite away upon the
hearth-rug.

**And there you see all that is left of it," added
she pointing to a pool of water in front of the stove.

'*Yes, father," said Violet, looking reproachfully
at him through her tears, *'there is all that is left
of our dear little snow-sister!"

** Naughty father!" cried Peony, stamping his
foot, and — I shudder to say — shaking his little fist
at the common-sensible man. *'We told you how
it would be! What for did you bring her in?"

And the Heidenberg stove, through the isinglass
of its door, seemed to glare at good Mr. Lindsey,
like a red-eyed demon, triumphing in the mischief
which it had done.

This, you will observe, was one of those rare
cases, wdiich yet will occasionally happen, where
common-sense finds itself at fault. The remark-
a1)le story of the snow-image, though to that saga-
cious class of people to whom good Mr. Lindsey
belongs it may seem but a childish affair, is, never-
theless, capable of being moralized in various
methods, greatly for their edification. One of its
lessons, for instance, might be, that it behooves
men, and especially men of benevolence, to con-
sider w^ell what they are about, and before acting
on their philanthropic purposes, to be quite sure
that they comprehend the nature and all the rela-
tions of the business in hand. What has been

established as an element of good to one being
may prove absolute mischief to another; even as
the warmth of the parlor was proper enough for
children of flesh and blood, like Violet and Peony
— though by no means very wholesome even for
them — but involve<i nothing short of annihilation
to the unfortunate snow-image.

But, after all, there is no teaching anything to
wise men of good Mr. Lindsey's stamp. They
know everything — Oh, to be sure! — everything
that has been, and everything that is, and every-
thing that, by any future possibility, can be. And
should such phenomenon of nature or providence
transcend their system, they will not recognize it,
even if it come to pass under their very noses.

"Wife," said Mr. Lindsey, after a bit of silence,
"see what a quantity of snow the children have
brought in on their feet! It has made quite a pud-
dle here before the stove. Pray tell Dora to bring
some towels and sop it up!"

LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay.
An' wash the cups and saucers up, an' brush the

crumbs away.
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the

hearth, an' sweep.
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her

board-an'-keep;
An' all us other childern, when the supper things

is done.
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest

fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about;
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you •

Ef you
Don't

Watch
Out!

Onc't they was a little boy wouldn't say his pray-
ers, —

So when he went to bed at night, away up stairs.

His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd
him bawl.

An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't
there at all!

An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-
hole, an' press,

A-listnin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about

DREAM CHILDREN

An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-

wheres, I guess;'
But all they ever found was thist his pants an'

roundabout: —
An' the Gobble-uns '11 git you

Ef you
Don't

Watch
Out!

An' one time a little girl 'ud alius laugh an' grin,
An' make fun of ever'one, an' all her blood an' kin;
An' onc't, when they was ''company," an' old folks

was there
She mocked 'em, an' shocked 'em, an' said she

didn't care!
An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run

an' hide
They was two great big Black Things a-standin' by

her side,
An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she

knowed what she's about!
An' the Gobble-uns '11 git you

Ef you
Don't

Watch
Out!

An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is

blue.
An' the lamp-wick sputters, and the wind goes

w^oo-oo !

LlTTLi; URPIIANT ANNdC

An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is

gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenchetl

away, —
You better mind yer parents, an' yer teachers fond

an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the

orphant's tear.
An' he'p the pore and needy ones 'at clusters all

about.
Er the Gobble-uns '11 git you
Ef you
Don't

Watch
Out!

THE CANDLES

There was a great Wax-light that knew well
enough what it was.

''I am born in wax, and moulded in a form," it
said. *'I give more light, and burn a longer time
than any other light. My place is in a silver candle-
stick."

"That must be a charming life!" said the Tallow-
candle. "I am only of tallow, — only a tallow-dip;
but then, I comfort myself, it is always better than
to be a mere taper, that is dipped only two times.
I am dipped eight times to get a decent thickness.
Tm satisfied. It would, to be sure, be finer still to
have been born in wax, and not in tallow; but one
doesn't fix himself. They are put in great rooms.
I live in the kitchen, — but that is a good place, too;
they get up all the dishes in the house there."

''There is something that is more important than
eating," said the Wax-candle. "Good company, —
to see them shine, and shine yourself. There is a
ball here this evening. Now I and all my family
are soon to ])e sent for."

Scarcely was this said when all the Wax-lights
were sent for, — but the Tallow-candle too. The
mistress took it in her delicate hand, and carried
it into the kitchen; there stood a little boy with a
basket full of potatoes, and a few apples were in

THE CANDLES

it, too. The good lady had given all these to the
little poor boy.

**Here is a candle for you, my little friend/' said
she. "Your mother sits up and works far into the
night, — she can use this.''

The lady's little daughter stood by her; and when
she heard the words, "far into the night," she said,
eagerly; "And I'm going to sit up far into night,
too! We're going to have a ball, and I'm to wear
big red bows for it."

How^ her face shone! Yes, that was happiness!
No Wax-light could shine like the child's eyes.

"That is a blessed thing to see," thought the
Tallaw-candle. "I shall never forget it, and it cer
tainly seems to me there can be nothing more.
And so the candle was laid in the basket under the
cover, and the boy took it away.

"Where am I going now?" thought the Candle.
I shall be with poor folks, perhaps not once get
a brass candlestick; but the Wax-light is stuck in
silver, and sees the fine folks! What can there be
more delightful than to be a light among fine folks?
But it's my lot to be tallow, not wax."

And so the Candle came to the poor people, — a
widow with three children, in a little, low studded
room, just opposite the rich house.

"God bless the good lady for what she gave!"
said the mother; "it is a splendid candle, — it can
burn till far into the night."

And the Candle was Hghted. "Pugh!" it said,
that was a horrid match she lighted me with.

({

((

DREAM CHILDREN

One hardly offers such a thing as that to a Wax-
light over at the rich house."

There also the lights were lighted, and shone out
over the street. The carriages rumbled up to the
rich house with the guests for the ball, dressed so
finely; the music struck up.

**Xow they're beginning over there," felt the
Tallow-candle, and thought of the little rich girl's
bright face, that was brighter than all the Wax-
lights. "That sight I never shall see any more."

Then the smallest of the children in the poor
house came — she was a little girl — very close to
her brother and sister; she had something very
important to tell, and must whisper it.

"We're going to have this evening, — just think
of it, — we're going to have warm potatoes!" and
her face beamed with happiness. The Candle shone
at her, and saw a pleasure, a happiness, as great as
was in the rich house, where the little girl said, **We
are going to have a ball this evening, and I shall
wear some great red bows."

*Ts it such a great thing to get warm potatoes?"
thought the Candle. "Well, here is just the same
joy among the little things." And it sneezed at
that, — that is, it sputtered, — and more than that no
Tallow-candle could do. The table was spread, the
potatoes were eaten. Oh, how good they tasted!
It was a real feast; and then each got an apple be-
sides. And the smallest child sang a little verse:

"Now thanks, dear Lord, I give to Thee,
That Thou again hast filled me.
Amen."

■

-, .

'^j. ^^>,i^irv 1

A^l -1 '.

'^ -X fNC

1 •

. ^6.

And the little children went to bed, gave a good-
night kiss, and fell asleep right away; and the
mother sat far into the night and sewed to get a
living for them and herself; and from the rich house
the lights shone, and the music sounded. The stars
twinkled over all the houses, over the rich and over
the poor, just as clear, just as kindly.

"That was in sooth a rare evening," thought the
Tallow-candle. "Do you think the Wax-lights had
any better time in their silver-candlesticks? That
I'd like to know before I am burnt out!"

And it thought of the happy children's faces, the
two alike happy, — the one lighted by Wax-light,
the other by Tallow-candle.

Yes, this is the story.

HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD

Downward through the evening twilight,

In the days that are forgotten,

In the unremembered ages,

From the full moon fell Nokomis,

Fell the beautiful Nokomis, \

She a wife, but not a mother.

She was sporting with her women,
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines.
When her rival the rejected.
Full of jealousy and hatred,
Cut the leafy swing asunder,
Cut in twain the tw'isted grape-vines,
And Nokomis fell afrighted
Downward through the evening twilight.
On the Muskoday, the meadow.
On the prairie full of blossoms.

See! a star falls!'' said the people;

From the sky a star is falling!''
There among the ferns and mosses,
There among the prairie lilies,
On the Muskoday, the meadow.
In the moonlight and the starlight.
Fair Nokomis bore a daughter.
And she called her name Wenonah,
As the first born of her daughters.
And the daughter of Nokomis
Grew up like the prairie lilies,

n
ii

Hiawatha's childhood

Grew a tall and slender maiden,
With the beauty of the moonlight.
With the beauty of the starlight.

And Nokomis warned her often,
Saying oft, and oft repeating,
''Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis,
Of the West-Wind, Mudjekeewis;
Listen not to what he tells you;
Lie not down upon the meadow,
Stoop not down among the lilies,
Lest the West-Wind come and harm you!'

But she heeded not the warning.
Heeded not those words of wisdom.
And the West-Wind came at evening.
Walking lightly o'er the prairie.
Whispering to the leaves and blossoms.
Bending low the flowers and grasses.
Found the beautiful Wenonah,
Lying there among the lilies,
Wooed her with his words of sweetness,
Wooed her with his soft caresses,
Till she bore a son in sorrow.

Thus was born my Hiawatha,
Thus was born the child of wonder;
But the daughter of Nokomis,
Hiawatha's gentle mother.
In her anguish died deserted
By the West-Wind, false and faithless,
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.

For her daughter long and loudly
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis;

DREAM CHILDREN

Oh that I were dead!'' she murmured
Oh that I were dead, as thou art!
No more work and no more weeping,
Wahonowin ! Wahonowin !"

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water.
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!'
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
*'Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"

Many things Nokomis taught him
Of the stars that shine in heaven;
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits.
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,

i»

it
ii

HlAWATHA^S CHILDHOOD

Flaring far away to northward
In the frosty nights of Winter;
Showed the broad white road in heaven,
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
Running straight across the heavens,
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.

At the door on summer evenings
Sat the little Hiawatha:
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
Heard the lapping of the waters,
Sounds of music, words of wonder;
Minne-wawa!" said the pine-trees,
Mudway-aushka!" said the water.

Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,
Flitting through the dusk of evening,
With the twinkle of its candle
Lighting up the brakes and bushes.
And he sang the song of children.
Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
Little, flitting, white-fire insect.
Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
Light me with your little candle.
Ere upon my bed I lay me,
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!'

Saw the moon rise from the water.
Rippling, rounding from the water.
Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?''
And the good Nokomis answered:
"Once a warrior, very angry.

i>>

DREAM CHILDREN

Seized his grandmother, and threw her
Up into the sky at midnight;
Right against the moon he threw her;
'Tis her body that you see there/'

Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?''
And the good Nokomis answered:
'* Tis the heaven of flowers you see ther^;
All the wild flow^ers of the forest,
All the lilies of the prairie.
When on earth they fade and perish.
Blossom in that heaven above us."

When he heard the owls at midnight,
Hooting, laughing in the forest,
''What is that?" he cried in terror,
''What is that," he said, "Nokomis?"
And the good Nokomis answered:
"That is but the owl and owlet.
Talking in their native language,
Talking, scolding at each other."

Then the little Hiawatha
Learned of every bird its language.
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How they built their nests in Summer,
Where they hid themselves in Winter,
Talked with them w^hene'er he met them,
Called them — "Hiawatha's Chickens."

Of all beasts he learned the language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How the beavers built their lodges,

• ;- ■ '

/ ti I

7.L ^' ' ■

Hiawatha's childhood

Where the squirrels hid their acorns,

How the reindeer ran so swiftly,

Why the rabbit was so timid.

Talked with them whene'er he met them.

Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."

Then lagoo, the great boaster.
He the marvelous story-teller.
He the traveler and the talker.
He the friend of old Nokomis,
Made a bow for Hiawatha;
From a branch of ash he made it.
From an oak bow made the arrows,
Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers,
And the cord he made of deer-skin.

Then he said to Hiawatha:
"Go, my son, into the forest.
Where the red deer herd together.
Kill for us a famous roe-buck.
Kill for us a deer with antlers!"

Forth into the forest straightway
All alone walked Hiawatha
Proudly, with his bow and arrow;
And the birds sang round him, o'er him,
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
Sang the blue bird, the Owaissa,
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"

Up the oak-tree, close beside him.
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches.
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,

DREAM CHILDREN

Laughed, and said between his laughing,
*'Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"

And the rabbit from his pathway
Leaped aside, and at a distance
Sat erect upon his haunches,
Half in fear and half in frolic,
Saying to the little hunter,
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"

But he heeded not, nor heard them,
On their tracks his eyes were fastened.
Leading downward to the river.
To the ford across the river,
For his thoughts were with the red-deer;
And as one in slumber walked he. *

Hidden in the alder-bushes,
There he waited till the deer came,

Till he saw two antlers lifted, i

Saw two eyes look from the thicket, i

Saw two nostrils point to windward, I

And a deer came down the pathway, 1

Flecked with leafy light and shadow.
And his heart within him fluttered,

Trembled like the leaves above him, j

Like the birch-leaf palpitated,
As the deer came dow^n the pathway.

Then, upon one knee uprising, i

Hiawatha aimed an arrow;
Scarce a twig moved with his motion.

Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, I

But the warv roe-buck started.
Stamped with all his hoofs together,

84 '

HIAWATHA S CHILUIJOUU

Listened witli one foot uplifted,
Leaped as if to meet the arrow;
Ah! the singing, fatal arrow,
Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him!

Dead he lay there in the forest,
By the ford across the river;
Beat his timid heart no longer,
But the heart of Hiawatha
Throbbed and shouted and exulted.
As he bore the red-deer homeward.
And lagoo and Nokomis
Hailed his coming with applauses.

From the red-deer'^ flesh Nokomis
Made a banquet to his honor.
All the village came and feasted,
All the guests praised Hiawatha,
Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-getaha!
Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-gotaysee!

THE STORY OF COSETTE AND HER DOLL

CONDENSED FROM VICTOR HUGO's "lES MISERABLES"

MEN MUST HAVE WINE AND HORSES WATER

Four new guests had just come in.

Cosette was musing sadly; for, though she was
only eight years old, she had already suffered so
much that she mused with the mournful air of an
old woman.

She had a black eye from a blow of the Thenar-
diess' fist, which made the Thenardiess say from
time to time: "How ugly she is with her patch on
her eye."

Cosette was then thinking that -it was evening,
late in the evening, that the bowls and pitchers in
the rooms of the travelers who had arrived must
be filled immediately, and that there was no more
water in the cistern.

From time to time one of the drinkers would
look out into the street and exclaim: "It is as
black as an oven!'' or "It would take a cat to go
along the street without a lantern to-night!" And
Cosette shuddered.

THE STORY OF COSETTE

All at once, one of the peddlers who lodged in
the tavern came in and said in a harsh voice :

"You have not watered my horse/'

*'Well, of course that is right," said the Thenar-
diess; "if the beast has not had any water, she must
have some/'

Then looking about her:

**Well, what has become of that girl?"

She stooped down and discovered Cosette
crouched at the other end of the table, almost un-
der the feet of the drinkers.

"Aren't you coming?" cried the Thenardiess.

Cosette came out of the kind of hole where she
had hidden. The Thenardiess continued:

"Mdlle. Dog-without-a-name, go and carry some
drink to this horse."

"But, ma'am," said Cosette feebly, "there is no
water."

The Thenardiess threw the street door wide
open.

"Well, go after some!"

Cosette hung her head and went for an empty
bucket that was by the chimney corner.

The bucket was larger than she, and the child
could have sat down in it comfortably. ^

Then she remained motionless, bucket in hand,
the open door before her. She seemed to be wait-
ing for somebody to come to her aid.

"Get along!" cried the Thenardiess.

Cosette went out. The door closed.

DREAM CHILDREN

II
A DOLL ENTERS UPON THE SCENE

The row of booths extended along the street
from the church, the reader will remember, as far
as the Thenardier tavern. These booths, on ac-
count of the approaching passage of the citizens on
their way to the midnight mass, were all illumin-
ated with candles, burning in paper lanterns, which,
as the schoolmaster of Montfermeil, who was at
that moment seated at one of Thenardier's tables,
said, produced a magical effect. In retaliation not
a star was to be seen in the sky.

The last of these stalls, set up exactly opposite
Thenardier's door, was a toy-shop, all glittering
with trinkets, glass beads and things magnificent in
tin. In the first rank, and in front, the merchant
had placed upon a bed of white napkins, a great
doll nearly two feet high, dressed in a robe of pink
crape with golden wheat-ears on its head, and
which had real hair and enamel eyes. The whole
day this marvel had been displayed to the bewilder-
ment of the jxissers under ten years of age, but there
had not been found in Montfermeil a mother rich
nnough, or prodigal enough, to give it to her child.

At the moment when Cosette went out, bucket
in hand, all gloomy and ovenvhelmed as she was,
she could not help raising her eyes toward this
wonderful doll, toward the lady, as she called it.
Tlie poor child stopped petrified. She had not seen
this doll so near before.

'^HE STORY OF COSETTE

In this adoration she forgot everything, even the
errand on which she had been sent. Suddenlv, the
harsh voice of the Thenardiess called her back to
the reality: "How, jade, haven't you gone yet?
Hold on; I am coming for you! Fd like to know
what she's doing here? Little monster, be off!" .

The Thenardiess had glanced into the street and
perceived Cosette in ecstasy.

Cosette fled with her bucket, running as fast as
she could.

THE LITTLE GIRL ALL ALONE

As the Thenardier tavern was in that part of the
village which is near the church, Cosette had to go
to the spring in the woods towards Chelles to draw-
water.

She looked no more at the displays in the booths,
so long as she was in the Rue du Boulanger; and
in the vicinity of the church, the illuminated stalls
lighted the way, but soon the last gleam from the
last stall disappeared. The poor child found her-
self in darkness. She became buried in it. Only
as she became the prey of a certain sensation, she
shook the handle of the bucket as much as she
could on her way. That made a noise, which kept
her company. When she had passed the corner
of the last house Cosette stopped. To go beyond

DREAM CHILDREN

the last booth had been difficult: to go further than
the last house became impossible. She put the
bucket on the ground, buried her hands in her hair,
and began to scratch her head slowly, a motion
peculiar to terrified and hesitating children. It
was Montfermeil no longer, it was the open coun-
try; dark and deserted space was before her. She
looked with despair into this darkness where no-
body was, where there were beasts, where there
were perhaps, ghosts. She looked intensely, and
she heard the animals walking in the grass, and
she distinctly saw the ghosts moving in the trees.

The nocturnal tremulousness of the forest
wrapped her about completely.

She thought no more; she saw nothing more.
The immensity of night confronted this little crea-
ture. On one side, the infinite shadow; on the
other, an atom.

It was only seven or eight minutes' walk from
the edge of the woods to the spring. Cosette knew
the road from traveling it several times a day.
Strange thing she did not lose her way.. A remnant
of instinct guided her blindly. But she neither
turned her eyes to the right nor to the left, for fear
of seeing things in the trees and in the bushes.
Thus she arrived at the spring.

Without being conscious of w^hat she was ex-
periencing, Cosette felt that she was seized by this
black enormity of nature. It was not merely terror
that held her, but something more terrible even
than terror. She shuddered. Words fail to express

THE STORY OF COSETTE

the peculiar strangeness of that shudder which
chilled her through and through. Her eye had
become wild. She felt that perhaps she would be
compelled to return there at the same hour the
next night.

Then, by a sort of instinct, to get out of this
singular state, which she did not understand, but
which terrified her, she began to count aloud one,
two, three, four, up to ten, and when she had fin-
ished she began again. This restored her to a
real perception of things about her. Her hands,
which she had wet in drawing the water, felt cold.
She arose. Her fear had returned, a natural and
insurmountable fear. She had only one thought,
to fly; to fly with all her might across woods, across
fields, to houses, to windows, to lighted candles.
Her eyes fell upon the bucket that was before her.
Such was the dread with which the Thenardiess
inspired her that she did not dare to go without the
bucket of water. She grasped the handle with both
hands. She could hardly lift the bucket.

She went a dozen steps in this manner, but the
bucket was full; it was heavy; she was compelled
to rest it on the ground. She breathed an instant,
then grasped the handle again and walked on, this
time a little longer. But she had to stop again.
After resting a few seconds she started on. She
walked, bending forward, her head down, like an
old woman; the weight of the bucket strained and
stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle was
numbing and freezing her little wet hands; from

DREAM CHILDREN

time to time she had to stop, and every time she
stopped the cold water that splashed from the
bucket fell upon her naked knees. This took place
in the depth of a wood, at night, in the winter, far
from all human sight ; it was a child of eight years ;
there was none but God at that moment who saw
this sad thing.

And undoubtedly her mother, alas!

For there are things which open the eyes of the
dead in their grave.

She breathed with a kind of mournful rattle;
sobs choked her, but she did not dare to weep, so
fearful was she of the Thenardiess even at a dis-
tance. She always imagined that the Thenardiess
was near.

However, she could not make much headway
in this manner, and was getting along very slowly.
She tried hard to shorten her resting spells and to
walk as far as possible between them. She remem-
bered with anguish that it would take her more
than an hour to return to Montfermeil thus, and
that the Thenardiess would beat her. This anguish
added to her dismay at being alone in the woods
at night. She was worn out with fatigue, and was
not yet out of the forest. Arriving near an old
chestnut tree, which she knew, she made a last halt,'
longer than the others, to get well rested, then she
gathered all her strength, took up the bucket again,
and began to w^alk on courageously. Meanwhile
the poor little despairing thing could not help cry-
ing: "Oh, my God! my God!"

THE STORY OF COSETTE

At that moment she felt all at once that the
weight of the bucket was gone. A hand, which
seemed enormous to her, had just caught the han-
dle and was carrying it easily. She raised her head.
A large dark form, straight and erect, was walking
beside her in the gloom. It was a man who had
come up behind her and whom she had not heard.
This man, without saying a word, had grasped the
handle of the bucket she was carrying.

There are instincts for all the crises of life.

The child was not afraid.

COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE UNKNOWN IN

THE DARKNESS

Cosette, we have said, was not afraid.

The man spoke to her. His voice was serious,
and was almost a whisper.

"My child, that is very heavy for you, which you
are carrying there."

Cosette raised her head and answered:

"Yes, monsieur."

"Give it to me," the man continued. "I will
carry it for you."

Cosette let go of the bucket. The man walked
along with her.

"It is very heavy, indeed," said he to himself.
Then he added:

DREAM CHILDREN

"Little girl, how old are you?"

**Eight years, monsieur."

*'And have you come far in this way?"
'From the spring in the woods."
'And are you going far?"
'A good quarter of an hour from here."

The man remained a moment without speaking,
then he said, abruptly:

"You have no mother then?"

"I don't know," answered the child.

Before the man had had time to say a word she
added:

*1 don't believe I have. All the rest have one.
For my part I have none."

And after a silence she added:

*'I believe I never had any."

The man stopped, put the bucket on the ground,
stooped down and placed his hands upon the child's
shoulders, making an effort to look at her and see
her face in the darkness.

The thin and puny face of Cosette was vaguely
outlined in the livid light of the sky.

*'What is you name?" said the man.

'^Cosette."

It seemed as if the man had an electric shock.
He looked at her again, then, letting go of her
shoulders, took up the bucket, and walked on.

A moment after he asked:

"Little girl, where do you live?"

"At Montfermeil, if you know it."

"Is it there that we are going?"

"Yes, monsieur."

THE STORY OF COSETTE

He made another pause then he began:

"Who is it that has sent you out into the woods
after water at this time of night?"

'^Mme. Thenardier."

The man resumed with a tone of voice which he
tried to render indiflferent, but in which there w^as,
nevertheless, a singular tremor:

What does she do, your Mme. Thenardier?"

"She is my mistress," said the child. "She keeps
the tavern."

"The tavern," said the man. "Well, I am going
there to lodge to-night. Show me the way."

"We are going there," said the child.

When they had passed the church, the man, see-
ing all these booths in the street, asked Cosette :

"Is it fair time here?"

"No, monsieur, it is Christmas."

As they drew near the tavern Cosette timidly
touched his arm:

"Monsieur?"

"What, my child?"

"Here we are close by the house."

"Well?"

"Will you let me take the bucket now?"

"What for?"

"Because, if madame sees that anybody brought
it for me, she will beat me."

The man gave her the bucket. A moment after
they were at the door of the chop-house.

DREAM CHILDREN

INCONVENIENCE OF ENTERTAINING A POOR MAN

WHO IS, PERHAPS, RICH

Cosette could not help casting one look toward
the grand doll still displayed in the toy-shop, then
she rapped.

The door opened. The Thenardiess appeared
with a candle in her hand.

"Oh! it is you, you little beggar! Lud-a-massy!
you have taken your time! she has been playing,
the wench!"

"Madame," said Cosette, trembling, "here is a
gentleman who is coming to lodge."

The Thenardiess very quickly replaced her fierce
air by her amiable grimace, a change at sight
peculiar to innkeepers, and looked for the new-
comer with eager eyes.

'Is it monsieur?" said she.

Tes, madame," answered the man, touching his
hat.

Rich travelers are not so polite. This gesture
and the sight of the stranger's costume and bag-
gage which the Thenardiess passed in review at a
glance made the amiable grimace disappear and
the fierce air reappear. She added, dryly:

"Enter, good man."

The "good man" entered. The Thenardiess cast
a second glance at him, examined particularly his
long coat, which was absolutely threadbare, and

THE STORY OF COSETTE

his hat, which was somewhat broken, and with a
nod, a wink and a turn of her nose, consulted her
husband, who was still drinking with the wagoners.

Meanwhile the man, after leaving his stick and
bundle on the bench, had seated himself at a table
on which Cosette had been quick to place a bottle
of wine and a glass. The peddler, who had asked
for a bucket of water, had gone himself to carry it
to his horse. Cosette had resumed her place under
the kitchen table and her knitting.

The man, who hardly touched his lips to the wine
he had turned out, was contemplating the child
with a strange attention.

Cosette was ugly. Happy, she might, perhaps,
have been pretty. We have already sketched this
little pitiful face. Cosette was thin and pale; she
was nearly eight years old, but one would hardly
have thought her six. Her large eyes, sunk in a
sort of shadow, were almost put out by continual
weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve
of habitual anguish which is seen in the condemned
and in the hopelessly sick. Her hands were, as her
mother had guessed, "covered with chilblains."
The light of the fire which was shining upon her
made her bones stand out and rendered her thin-
ness fearfully visible. As she was always shivering,
she had acquired the habit of drawing her knees
together. Her whole dress was nothing but a rag,
which would have excited pity in the summer, and
which excited horror in the winter. She had on
nothing but cotton, and that full of holes; not a

DREAM CHILDREN

woolen rag. Her skin showed here and there, and
black-and-blue spots could be distinguished, which
indicated the places where the Thenardiess had
touched her. Her naked legs were red and rough.
The hollows under her collar-bones would make
one weep. The whole person of this child, her
gait, her attitude, the sound of her voice, the in-
tervals betw^een one word and another, her looks,
her silence, her least motion, expressed and uttered
a single idea — fear.

Fear was spread all over her; she w^as, so to say,
covered with it ; fear drew back her elbows against
her sides, drew her heels under her skirt, made her
take the least possible room, prevented her from
breathing more than was absolutely necessary, and
had become what might be called her bodily habit,
without possible variation, except of increase.
There was in the depth of her eye an expression of
astonishment mingled with terror.

This fear was such that on coming in, all wet as
she was, Cosette had not dared go and dry herself
by the fire but had gone silently to her w^ork.

A door now opened and Eponine and Azelma
came in.

They were really two pretty little girls, rather
city girls than peasants, very charming, one with
her well-polished auburn tresses, the other with
her long black braids falling down her back, and
both so lively, neat, plump, fresh and healthy, that
it was a pleasure to see them. They were warmly
clad, but with such maternal art, that the thickness

THE STORY OF COSETTE

of the stuff detracted nothing from the coquetry of
the fit. Winter was provided against without
effacing spring. These two little girls shed light
around them. Moreover, they were regnant. In
their toilet, in their gayety, in the noise they made,
there was sovereignty. When they entered, the
Thenardiess said to them in a scolding tone, which
was full of adoration: "Ah! you are here, then, you
children!"

Then taking them upon her knees one after the
other, smoothing their hair, tying over their rib-
bons, and finally letting them go with that gentle
sort of shake which is peculiar to mothers, she ex-
claimed :

"Are they dowdies?"

They went and sat down by the fire. They had
a doll which they turned backward and forward
upon their knees with many pretty prattlings.
From time to time Cosette raised her eyes from
her knitting and looked sadly at them as they were
playing.

Eponine and Azelma did not notice Cosette. To
them she was like the dog. These three little girls
could not count twenty-four years among them all,
and they already represented all human society; on
one side envy, on the other disdain.

The doll of the Thenardier sisters was very much
faded, and very old and broken; but it appeared
none the less wonderful to Cosette, who had never
in her life had a doll, a real doll, to use an expres-
sion that all children will understand.

Oi^-/»

3762o?

DREAM CHILDREN

Cosette had left her knitting, but she had not
moved from her place. Cosette always stirred as
little as was possible. She had taken from a little
box behind her a few old rags and her little lead
sword.

Eponine and Azelma paid no attention to what
was going on. They had just performed a very
important operation; they had caught the kitten.
They had thrown the doll on the floor, and Epon-
ine, the elder, was dressing the kitten, in spite of
her miaulings and contortions, with a lot of clothes
and red and blue rags. While she was engaged
in this serious and difficult labor, she was talking
to her sister in that sweet and charming language
of children, the grace of which, like the splendor
of the butterfly's wing, escapes when we try to pre-
serve it.

As birds make a nest of anything, children make
a doll of no matter what. While Eponine and
Azelma were dressing up the cat, Cosette, for her
part had dressed up the sword. That done, she
had laid it upon her arm, and was singing it softly
to sleep.

The doll is one of the most imperious necessities,
and at the same time one of the most charming
instincts of female childhood. To care for, to
clothe, to adorn, to dress, to undress, to dress over
again, to teach, to scold a little, to rock, to cuddle,
to put to sleep, to imagine that something is some-
body — all the future of woman is there. Even
while musing and prattling, while making little

100

THE STORY OF COSETTE

wardrobes and little baby-clothes, while sewing lit-
tle dresses, little bodices, and little jackets, the child
becomes a little girl, the little girl becomes a great
girl, the great girl becomes a woman. The first
baby takes the place of the last doll.

A Httle girl without a doll is almost as unfortu-
nate and quite as impossible as a woman without
children.

Cosette had, therefore, made a doll of her sword.

All at once Cosette stopped. She had just
turned and seen the little Thenardiers' doll, which
they had forsaken for the cat and left on the floor
a few steps from the kitchen table.

Then she let the bundled-up sword, that only
half satisfied her, fall, and ran her eyes slowly
around the room. The Thenardiess was whisper-
ing to her husband and counting some money,
Eponine and Azelma were playing with the cat,
the travelers were eating or drinking or singing,
nobody was looking at her. She had not a mo-
ment to lose. She crept out from under the table
on her hands and knees, made sure once more that
nobody was watching her, then darted quickly to
the doll and seized it. An instant afterward she
was at her place, seated, motionless, only turned in
such a way as to keep the doll that she held in her
arms in the shadow. The happiness of playing
with a doll was so rare to her that it had all the
violence of rapture.

Nobody had seen her except the traveler, who
was slowly eating his meager supper.

This joy lasted for nearly a quarter of an hour.

lOI

DREAM CHILDREN

But in Spite of Cosette's precautions she did not
perceive that one of the doll's feet stuck out and
that the fire of the fireplace lighted it up very viv-
idly. This rosy and luminous foot which pro-
truded from the shadow suddenly caught Azelma's
eye, and she said to Eponine: '*Oh, sister!"

The two little girls stopped, stupefied. Cosette
had dared to take the doll.

Eponine got up, and without letting go of the
cat went to her mother and began to pull at her
skirt.

'*Let me alone," said the mother; "what do you
want?"

"Mother," said the child, (^look there."

And she pointed at Cosette.

Cosette, wholly absorbed in the ecstasy of her
possession, saw and heard nothing else.

The face of the Thenardiess assumed the peculiar
expression which is composed of the terrible
mingled with the commonplace and which has
given this class of women the name of furies.

This time wounded pride exasperated her anger
still more. Cosette had leaped over all barriers.
Cosette had laid her hands upon the doll of "those
young ladies." A czarina who had seen a mujick
trying on the grand cordon of her imperial son
w^ould have had the same expression.

She cried with a voice harsh with indignation:

"Cosette!"

Cosette shuddered as if the earth had quaked
beneath her. She turned around.

102

THE STORY OF COSETTE

(it

Cosette!'' repeated the Thenardiess.

Cosette took the doll and placed it gently on
the floor with a kind of veneration mingled with
despair. Then, without taking away her eyes, she
joined her hands, and, what is frightful to tell in a
child of that age, she wrung them; then what none
of the emotions of the day had drawn from her,
neither the run in the wood, nor the w^eight of the
bucket of water, nor the loss of the money, nor
the sight of the cowhide, nor even the stern words
she had heard from the Thenardiess, she burst into
tears. She sobbed.

Meanwhile the traveler rose.

* What is the matter?'' said he to the Thenardiess.

"Don't you see?" said the Thenardiess, pointing
with her finger to the corpus delicti lying at Cos-
ette's feet.

Well, what is that?" said the man.
That beggar," answered the Thenardiess, "has
dared to touch the children's doll."

All this noise about that?" said the man.
Well, what if she did play wath the doll?"

She has touched it with her dirty hands!" con
tinued^the Thenardiess, "with her horrid hands!

Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.

"Be still!" cried the Thenardiess.

The man walked straight to the street door,
opened it, and went out.

As soon as he had gone, the Thenardiess profited
by his absence to give Cosette, under the table, a
severe kick, which made the child shriek.

103

a
i(

DREAM CHILDREN

The door opened again, and the man reappeared,
holding in his hands the fabulous doll of which
we have spoken, and which had been the admira-
tion of all the youngsters of the village since morn-
ing; he stood it up before Cosette, saying:

"Here, this is for you."

It is probable that during the time he had been
there — more than an hour — in the midst of his
reverie, he had caught confused glimpses of this
toy-shop, lighted up wath lamps and candles so
splendidly that it shone through the bar-room win-
dow like an illumination.

Cosette raised her eyes; she saw the man ap-
proach her with that doll as she would have seen
the sun approach; she heard those astounding
words: "This is for you." She looked at him, she
looked at the doll, then she drew back slowly, and
went and hid as far as she could under the table
in the corner of the room.

She wept no more, she cried no more, she had
the appearance of no longer daring to breathe.

The Thenardiess, Eponine and Azelma were so
many statues. Even the drinkers stopped. There
was a solemn silence in the whole bar-room.

Cosette looked upon the wonderful doll with a
sort of terror. Her face was still flooded with tears,
but her eyes began to fill, like the sky in the break-
ing of the dawn, with strange radiations of joy.
What she experienced at that moment w^as almost
like what she would have felt if some one had said
to her suddenly: "Little girl, you are queen of
France."

104

villi strange radiations of joy

PUBLIC I-..-, .v.vi i

A8T0R, LEN'^X *• ^

THE STORY OF COSETTE

It seemed to her that if she touched that doll
thunder would spring forth from it.

Which was true to some extent, for she thought
that the Thenardiess would scold and beat her.

However, the attraction overcame her. She
finally approached, and timidly murmured, turning
toward the Thenardiess:

"Can I, madame?"

No expression can describe her look, at once
full of despair, dismay and transport.

"Good Lord!" said the Thenardiess, "it is yours.
Since monsieur gives it to you."

"Is it true, is it true, monsieur?" said Cosette.
"Is the lady for me?"

The stranger appeared to have his eyes full of
tears. He seemed to be at that stage of emotion in
which one does not speak for fear of weeping. He
nodded assent to Cosette, and put the hand of "the
lady" in her little hand.

"Why don't you play, Cosette?" said the stran-
ger.

"Oh! I am playing," answered the child.

This stranger, this unknown man, who seemed
like a visit from Providence to Cosette, was at that
moment the being which the Thenardiess hated
more than aught else in the world. However she
was compelled to restrain herself. Her emotions
were more than she could endure, accustomed as
she was to dissimulation, by endeavoring to copy
her husband in all her actions. She sent her
daughters to bed immediately, then asked the yel-

107

DREAM CHILDREN

low man's permission to send Cosette to bed —
''who is very tired to-day," added she, with a
motherly air. Cosette went to bed holding Cath-
erine in her arms.

Several hours passed away. The midnight mass
was said, the revel was finished, the drinkers had
gone, the house was closed, the room was deserted,
the fire had gone out, the stranger still remained
in the same place and in the same posture. From
time to time he changed the elbow on which he
rested. That was all. He had not spoken a word
since Cosette was gone.

The Thenardiers alone out of propriety and cur-
iosity had remained in the room.

"Is he going to spend the night like this?"
grumbled the Thenardiess. When the clock struck
two in the morning she acknowledged herself
beaten, and said to her husband: 'T am going to
bed, you may do as you like."

For his part, the traveler had put his stafT and
bundle in a corner. The host gone, he sat down
in an arm-chair, and remained some time thinking.
Then he drew oflf his shoes, took one of the two
candles, blew out the other, pushed open the door,
and went out of the room, looking about him as if
he were searching for something. He passed
through a hall, and came to the stairway. There
he heard a very soft little sound, which resembled
the breathing of a child. Guided by this sound he
came to a sort of triangular nook built under the
stairs, or rather formed by the staircase itself. This

io8

THE STORY OF COSETTE

hole was nothing but the space beneath the stairs.
There, among all sorts of old baskets and old rub-
bish, in the dust and among the cobwebs, there
was a bed; if a mattress so full of holes as to show
the straw, and a covering so full of holes as to
show the mattress, can be called a bed. There
were no sheets. This was placed on the floor im-
mediately on the tiles. In this bed Cosette was
sleeping.

The man approached and looked at her.

Cosette was sleeping soundly; she was dressed.
In the winter she did not undress on account of
the cold. She held the doll clasped in her arms;
its large open eyes shone in the obscurity. From
time to time she heaved a deep sigh, as if she were
about to wake, and she hugged the doll almost
convulsively. There was only one of her wooden
shoes at the side of her bed. An open door near
Cosette's nook disclosed a large dark room. The
stranger entered. At the farther end, through a
glass window, he perceived two little beds with
very white spreads. They were those of Azelma
and Eponine. Half hid behind those beds was a
willow cradle without curtains, in which the little
boy who had cried all the evening was sleeping.

The stranger conjectured that this room com-
municated with that of the Thenardiers. He was
about to withdraw when his eyes fell upon the fire-
place, one of those huge tavern fireplaces where
there is always so little fire, when there is a fire,
and which are so cold to look upon. In this one

109

DREAM CHILDREN

there was no fire, there was not even any ashes.
What there was, however, attracted the traveler's
attention. It was two little children's shoes, of
coquettish shape and of different sizes. The trav-
eler remembered the graceful and immemorial cus-
tom of children putting their shoes in the fireplace
on Christmas night to wait there in the darkness
in expectation of some shining gift from their good
fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken good care
not to forget this, and each had put one of her
shoes in the fireplace.

The traveler bent over them.

The fairy — that is to say, the mother — had
already made her visit, and shining in each shoe
was a beautiful new ten-sou piece.

The man rose up and was on the point of going
away, when he perceived farther along, by itself,
in the darkest corner of the fireplace, another ob-
ject. He looked and recognized a shoe, a horrid
wooden shoe of the clumsiest sort, half broken and
covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cos-
ette's shoe. Cosette, with that touching confidence
of childhood, which can always be deceived without
ever being discouraged, had also placed her shoe
in the fireplace.

What a sublime and sweet thing is hope in a
child who has never known anything but despair!

There was nothing in this wooden shoe.

The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over
and dropped into Cosette's shoe a gold louis.

Then he went back to his room with stealthy
tread.

LITTLE BOY BLUE

The little toy dog is covered with dust,

But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,

And the musket moulds in his hands.

Tirne was when the little toy dog was new,

And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue

Kissed them and put them there.

Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed.
He dreamt of the pretty toys;

And, as he was dreaming, an angel song

Awakened our Little Boy Blue —
Oh! the years are many, the years are long.

But the little toy friends are true!

Aye, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,

Each in the same old place —
Awaiting the touch of a little hand.

The smile of a little face;

And they wonder, as waiting the long years
through

In the dust of that little chair.
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,

Since he kissed them and put them there.

BUGENB FIELD

ALICE AND HER KITTEN

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had
had nothing to do with it ; it was the black kitten's
fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having
its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter
of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering) ;
so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the
mischief.

The way Dinah washed her children's faces was
this : first, she held the poor thing down by its ear
with one paw, and then with the other paw she
rubbed its face all over, the wTong way, beginning
at the nose : and just now, as I said, she was hard
at work on the \Vhite kitten, which was lying quite
still, and trying to purr — no- doubt feeling that it
was all meant for its good.

But the black kitten had been finished with earlier
in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting
curled up in a corner of the great armchair, half
talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had
been having a grand game of romps with the ball of
worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had
been rolling it up and down till it had all come
undone again, and there it was, spread over the
hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten
running after its own tail in the middle.

"Oh, you wicked, wicked little thing!" cried

114

ALICE AND HER KITTEN

Alice, catching up the kitten and giving it a little
kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace.
'^Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better
manners ! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought !"
she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and
speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage —
and then she scrambled back into the armchair,
taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and
began winding up the ball again. But she didn't
get on very fast, as she was talking all the time,
sometimes to the kitten and sometimes to herself.

Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending
to watch the progress of the winding, and now and
then putting out one paw and gently touching the
ball, as if -it would be glad to help if it might.

''Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?" Alice
began. ''You'd have guessed it if you had been up
in the window with me — only Dinah was making
you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys
getting in sticks for the bonfire — and it wants plenty
of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and snowed
so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll
go and see the bonfire to-morrow." Here Alice
wound two or three turns of the worsted round the
kitten's neck, just to see how it would look; this led
to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon
the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound
again.

"Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty," Alice
went on, as soon as they were comfortably settled
again, "when I saw all the mischief you had been

IIS

DREAM CHILDREN

doing, I was very nearly opening the window and
putting you out into the snow! And you'd have
deserved it, you Httle mischievous darling! What
have you got to say for yourself?

**Now don't interrupt me," she went on, holding
up one finger, '^Fm going to tell you all your faults.
Number one : you squeaked twice while Dinah was
washing your face this morning. Now you can't
deny it, Kitty : I heard you! What's that you say?"
(pretending that the kitten was speaking). "Her
paw went into your eye? Well, that's your fault
for keeping your eyes open — if you'd shut them tight
up, it wouldn't have happened. Now don't make
any more excuses, but listen! Number two: you
pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just» as I had
put down the saucer of milk before her. What?
you were thirsty, were you? How do you know
she wasn't thirsty, too? Now for number three:
you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn't
looking.

^'That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been
punished fo-r any of them yet. You know I'm
saving up all your punishments for Wednesday
week. Suppose they had saved up all my punish-
ments !" she went on, talking more to herself than
the kitten. ''What would they do- at the end of
a year ? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when
the day came. Or — let me see — suppose each pun-
ishment was to be going without a dinner: then
when the miserable day came, I should have to go
without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't

ii6

id every bit of worsted wlien I v

A8T0h, LS^-X AU'O I

ALICE AND HER KITTEN

mind that much! I'd far rather go without them
than eat them !

*'Do you hear the snow against the window panes,
Kifty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if
someone was kissing the window all over o-utside.
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that
it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them
up snug, you know, with a white quilt ; and perhaps
it says : 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes
again/ And when they w^ake up in the summer,
Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance
about — whenever the wind blows — oh, that's very
pretty!" cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted
to clap her hands. "And I do so wish it was true!
I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when
the leaves are getting brown.

"Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile,
my dear; I'm asking it seriously. Because, when
we were playing just now, you watched just as if
you understood it; and when I said 'Check!' you
purred ! Well, it was a nice check, Kitty, and really,
I might have won if it hadn't been for that nasty
Knight, that came wriggling down among my

pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend " And here

I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used
to^ say, beginning with her favorite phrase : "Let's
pretend." She had quite a long argument with her
sister only the day before, all because Alice had
begun with : "Let's pretend w^e're kings and queens ;"
and her sister, who liked being very exact, had
argued that they couldn't, because there were only

119

DREAM CHILDREN

two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to
say : "Well, you can be one of them then and I'll
be all the rest/' And once she had really frightened
her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear:
**Nurse ! Do let's pretend I'm a hungry hyena and
you're a bone."

But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to
the kitten. "Let's pretend that you're the Red
Queen, Kitty ! Do you know, I think if you sat up
and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her.
Now, do try, there's a dear!" And Alice got the
Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the
kitten as a model for it to imitate; however, the
thing didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because
the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to
punish it, she held it up to the looking-glass that it
might see how sulky it was — "and if you're not good
directly," she added, "I'll put you through into
Looking-glass House. How would you like that?

"Now if you'll attend, Kitty, and not talk so
much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass
House. First, there's the room you can see through
the glass — that's just the same as our drawing-
room, only the things go the other way. I can see
all of it when I get upon a chair — ^all but the bit
just behind the fireplace. Oh ! I do so wish I could
see that bit! I want so much to know whether
they've a fire in winter: you never can tell, you
know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes
up in that room, too — ^but that may be only pretense,
just to make it look as though they had a fire. Well,

1 20

ALICE AND HER KITTEN

then, the books are something like our books, only
the words go the wrong way ; I know that, because
IVe held up one of our books to the glass, and then
they hold up one in the other room.

'*How would you like to live in Looking-glass
House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd give you milk
in there ? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to
drink. But, oh, Kitty ! now we come to the passage.
You can just see a little peep of the passage in
Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our
drawing room wude open, and it's very like our
passage as far as you can see, only you know it may
be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty ! how nice
it would be if we could only get through into
Looking-glass House! Tm sure it's got, oh! such
beautiful things in it! Let's pretend there's a way
of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's
pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that
we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort
of mist now, I declare ! It'll be easy enough to get

through " She was up on the chimney piece

while she said this, though she hardly knew how
she had got there. And certainly the glass it^as be-
ginning to melt away like a bright silvery mist.

FROM "as in a looking GLASS " — LEWIS CARROLL

121

IN SCHOOL-DAYS

Still sits the school-house by the road

A ragged l)eggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow.

And blackberry-vines are creeping.

Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;

The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;

The charcoal frescoes on its wall;

Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,

Went storming out to playing!

Long years ago a winter sun

Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,

And low eaves' icy fretting.

It touched the tangled golden curls.
And brown eyes full of grieving,

Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy

Her childish favor singled:
His cap pulled low upon a face

Where pride and shame were mingled.

122

iorry Ihnt 1 spelt the word

V^ X-.

ASTCh, L«^\ \ .' ^
TILL ^ ■

^M V X * — . *.

IN SCHOOL-DAYS

Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he Hngered; —

As restlessly her tiny hands

The blue- checked apron fingered.

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,

And heard the tremble of her voice.
As if a fault confessing.

"I'm sorry that I spelt the word:

I hate to go above you.
Because," — the brown eyes lower fell,-

"Because, you see, I love you!"

Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing,

Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!

He lives to learn, in life's hard school.
How few who pass above him

Lament their triumph and his loss.
Like her, — because they love him.

A PORTRAIT

I will paint her as I see her,
Ten times have the lilies blown
Since she looked upon the sun.

And her face is lily-clear,

Lily-chaped, and dropped in duty
To the law of its own beauty.

Oval cheeks encolored faintly,
Which a trail of golden hair
Keeps from fading off to air;

And a forehead fair and saintly,
Which two blue eyes undershine,
Like meek prayers before a shrine.

Face and figure of a child.

Though too calm, you think, and tender,
For the childhood you would lend her.

Yet child-simple, undefiled,
Frank, obedient, waiting still
On the turnings of your will.

Moving light, as all young things, —
As young birds, or early wheat
When the wind blows over it. j

I
126 I

Dropped in duty to the la\

THZ i

ASTOH, L'^^ X * '• fi
TILL -N r-^\

A PORTRAIT

Only, free from flutterings

Of loud mirth that scorneth measure,
Taking love for her chief pleasure.

Choosing pleasures for the rest,
Which come softly, just as she,
When she nestles at your knee.

Quiet talk she liketh best.
In a bower of gentle looks,
Watering flowers, or reading books.

And her voice, it murmurs lowly.
As a silver stream may run.
Which yet feels, you feel, the sun.

And her smile, it seems half holy,
As if drawn from thoughts more far
Than our common jestings are.

And, if any poet knew her,
He would sing of her with falls
Used in lovely madrigals.

And, if any painter drew her.
He would paint her unaware
With a halo round the hair.

And, if reader read the poem,

He would whisper, "You have done a
Consecrated little Una."

129

DREAM CHILDREN

And a dreamer (did you show him
That same picture) would exclaim,
Tis my angel, with a name!''

a V

And a stranger, when he sees her
In the street even, smileth stilly,
Just as you would at a lily.

And all the voices that address her
Soften, sleeken every w^ord.
As if speaking to a bird.

And all fancies yearn to cover

The hard earth whereon she passes,
With the thymy-scented grasses.

And all hearts do pray, "God love her!''
Av, and always, in good sooth,
We may all be sure HE DOTH.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

130

FROM "A CHRISTMAS CAROL"

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut
up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of
all these dinners and the progress of their cook-
ing, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's
oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones
were cooking too.

"Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle
from your torch?" asked Scrooge.

'There is. My own."

"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this
day?" asked Scrooge.

"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."

"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.

"Because it needs it most."

"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's
thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings in the
many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these
people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment."

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You would deprive them of their means of din-
ing every seventh day, often the only day on which
they can be said to dine at all," said Scrooge.
"Wouldn't you?"

131

DREAM CHILDREN

"ir cried the Spirit.

"You seek to close these places on the Seventh
Day?" said Scrooge. **And it comes to the same
thing."

"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done
in your name, or at least in that of your family,"
said Scrooge.

"There are some upon this earth of yours," re-
turned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and
who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred,
envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who
are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if
they had never lived. Remember that, and charge
their doings on themselves, not us."

They went on, invisible, as they had been before,
into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable
quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed
at the baker's), that, notwithstanding his gigantic
size, he could accommodate himself to any place
with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof
quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature,
as it was possible he could have done in any lofty
hall.

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit
had in showing off this power of his, or else it was
his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his
sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight
to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he went, and took
Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and on the
threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped

132

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROL"

to bless Bob Cratchit"s dwelling with the sprink-
lings of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but
fifteen *'bob" a-week himself; he pocketed on Sat-
urdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and
yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-
roomed house!

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife,
dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but
brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a
goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth,
assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daugh-
ters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of pota-
toes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt
collar (Bob's private property, conferred upon his
son and heir in honor of the day) into his mouth,
rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and
yearned to show his linen in the fashionable parks.
And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came
tearing in, screaming that outside the baker's they
had smelt the goose, and known it for their own;
and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage-and-
onion, these young Cratchits danced about the
table, and exalted Master Peter Crachit to the
skies, while he (not proud, although his collars
nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the slow
potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the sauce-
pan-lid to be let out and peeled.

"What has ever got your precious father then?"
said Mrs. Cratchit. "And your brother. Tiny Tim!
And Martha warn't as late last Christmas Day by
half-an-hour!"

133

DREAM CHILDREN

'Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing
as she spoke.

"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young
Cratchits. ''Hurrah! There's such a goose,
Martha!"

"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late
you are!" said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen
times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her
with officious zeal.

"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night."
replied the girl, "and had to clear away this morn-
ing, mother!"

"Well! Never mind so long as you are come,"
said Mrs. Cratchit. "Sit ye down before the fire,
my dear, and have a warm. Lord bless ye!"

"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two
young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once.
"Hide, Martha, hide!"

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob,
the father, with at least three feet of comforter ex-
clusive of the fringe, hanging down before him;
and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed,
to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoul-
der. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and
had his limbs supported by an iron fr^me!

"Why, Where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit,
looking round.

"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declen-
sion in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood
horse all the way from church, and had come home

134

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROL"

rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day!

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it
were only in joke; so she came out prematurely
from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms,
while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim,
and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might
hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs.
Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity,
and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's
content.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Some-
how he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much,
and thinks the strangest things you ever heard.
He told me, coming home, that he hoped the
people saw him in the church, because he was a
cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to re-
member upon Christmas Day, who made lame
beggars walk and blind men see."

Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them
this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny
Tim was growing strong and hearty.

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor,
and back came Tiny Tim before another word was
spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his
stool before the fire; and while Bob, turning up his
cuffs — as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being
made more shabby — compounded some hot mix-
ture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it
round and round and put it on the hob to simmer;
Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young

135

DREAM CHILDREN

Cratchits, went to fetch the goose, with which they
soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have
thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered
phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter
of course — and in truth it was something very like
it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy
(ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot;
Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible
vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce;
Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim
beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two
young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not
forgetting themselves, and, mounting guard
upon their posts, crammed spoons into their
mouths, lest they should shriek for goose be-
fore their turn came to be helped. At last
the dishes were set on, and grace was said.
It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as
Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carv-
ing-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but
when she did, and when the long expected gush of
stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose
all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by
the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the
handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!

There never was such a goose. Bob said he
didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked.
Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were
the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by
the apple saucC'and mashed potatoes, it was a suffi-

136

t'ROM ^'a CHRISTMAS CAROL**

cient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs.
Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one
small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't
ate it all at Last! Yet every one had had enough,
and the young Cratchits in particular, were steeped
in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the
plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Crat-
chit left the room alone — too nervous to bear wit-
nesses — -to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Sup-
pose it should break in turning out! Suppose
somebody should have got over the wall of the
back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry
with the goose — a supposition at which the two
young Cratchits became livijJ ! All sorts of horrors
were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding
was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day!
That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house
and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with
a laundress's next door to that! That was the pud-
ding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered — •
flushed, but smiling proudly — ^with the pudding,
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blaz-
ing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and
bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said,
and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest
success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their mar-
riage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was
off her mind, she would confess she had had her

137

DREAM CHILDREN

doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had
something to say about it, but nobody said or
thought it was at all a small pudding for a large
family. It would have been flat heresy to do so.
Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a
thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was
cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up.
The compound in the jug being tasted, and con-
sidered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon
the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire.
Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth,
in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half
a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family
display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup
without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however,
as well as golden goblets would have done; and
Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the
chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily.
Then Bob proposed:

*'A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God
bless us!"

Which all the family re-echoed.

"God bless us every one!'' said Tiny Tim, the
last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side upon his
little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in
his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him
by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken
from him.

138

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROl"

"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had
never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."

"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the
poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an
owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows re-
main unaltered by the Future, the child will die."

"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit!
say he will be spared!"

"If these shadows remain unaltered by the
Future, none other of my race," returned the
Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be
like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the sur-
plus population."

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words
quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with peni-
tence and grief.

"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart,
not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you
have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it
is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men
shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven,
you are more worthless and less fit to live than mil-
lions like this poor man's child. O God! to hear the
Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much
life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"

Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and,
trembling, cast his eyes upon the ground. But he
raised them speedily, on hearing his own name.

"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "Fll give you Mr.
Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!"

"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs.

139

DREAM CHILDREN

Cratchit, reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd
give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I
hope he'd have a good appetite for it."

"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas
Day."

"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said
she, "on which one drinks the health of such an
odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr.
Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody
knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"

"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas
Day."

"I'll drink his health for your sake and the
Day's," said Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life
to him! A Merry Christmas and a Happy New
Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have
no doubt!"

The children drank the toast after her. It was
the first of their proceedings which had no hearti-
ness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he
didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre
of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark
shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for
full five minutes.

After it had passed away, they were ten times
merrier than before, from the mere relief of
Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob Crat-
chit told him how he had a situation in his eye for
Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained,
full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young
Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of

140

spirit of Tiny Timl Thy childish *

-.i i

TIL. -N ■' - i

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROL"

Peter's being a man of business; and Peter him-
self looked thoughtfully at the fire from between
his collars, as if he were deliberating what par-
ticular investments he should favor when he came
into the receipt of that bewildering income.
Martha, who was a poor appentice at a milliner's,
then told them what kind of work she had to do,
and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and
how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for
a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she
passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess
and a lord some days before, and how the lord
"was much about as tall as Peter;" at which Peter
pulled up his collar so high that you couldn't have
seen his head if you had been there. All this time
the chestnuts and the jug went round and round;
and bye-and-bye they had a song, about a lost
child traveling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who
had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well
indeed.

There was nothing of high mark in this. They
were not a handsome family; they were not well
dressed; their shoes were far from being water-
proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter's might
have known, and very likely did, the inside of a
pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful,
pleased with one another, and contented with the
time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet
in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at
parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and espe-
cially on Tiny Tim, until the last. *****

143

DREAM CHILDREN

They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house; the
dwelling he had visited before; and found the
mother and the children seated round th^ fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits
were as still as statues in one comer, and sat look-
ing up at Peter, who had a book before him. The
mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing.
But surely they were very quiet!

'' 'And He took a child, and set him in the midst
of them.' ''

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had
not dreamed them. The boy must have read them
out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold.
Why did he not go on?

The mother laid her work upon the table, and
put her hand up to her face.

The color hurts my eyes,'' she said.

The color? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife.
It makes them weak by candlelight; and I
wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he
comes home, for the world. It must be near his
time."

'Tast it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his
book. "But I think he's walked a little slower
than he used, these few last evenings, mother."

They were very quiet again. At last she said,
and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered
once:

*T have known him walk with — I have known
him walk w^ith Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very
fast indeed."

144

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROL"

And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
And so have I," exclaimed another. So had
all.

''But he was very light to carry," she resumed,
intent upon her work, "and his father loved him
so, that it was no trouble — no trouble. And there
is your father at the door!"

She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in
his comforter^ — ^he had need of it, poor fellow- —
came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob,
and they all tried who should help him to it most.
Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees
and laid, each child a little cheek, against his face,
as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
grieved!"

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke
pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the work
upon the table, and praised the industry and speed
of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be
done long before Sunday he said.

"Sunday! You went to-day then, Robert?" said
his wife.

"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you
could have gone. It would have done you good
to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it
often. I promised him that I would walk there
on a Sunday. My little, little child!" cried Bob.
"My little child!"

He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it.
If he could have helped it, he and his child would
have been farther apart perhaps than they were.

145

DREAM CHILDREN

He left the room, and went up stairs into the
room above, which was Hghted cheerfully, and
hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close
beside the child, and there were signs of some one
having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it,
and when he had thought a little and composed
himself, he kissed the little face. He was recon-
ciled to what had happened, and went down again
quite happy.

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls
and mother working still. Bob told them of the
extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew,
whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who,
meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that
he looked a little — "just a little down you know,"
said Bol), inquired what had happened to distress
him. *'On which," said Bob, '*for he is the pleas-
antest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told
him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,' he
said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.' By
the bye, how he ever knew that, I don't know."
Knew what, my dear?"

'Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
'Everybody knows that!" said Peter.

''Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I
hope they do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said, 'for your
good wife. If I can be of service to you in any
way,' he said, giving me his card, 'that's where I
live. Pray come to me.' Now, it wasn't," cried
Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be able
to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this

146

a-
a-"

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROL"

was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had
known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us."

I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
^You would be surer of it, my dear," returned
Bob, "if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be
at all surprised, mark what I say, if he got Peter a
better situation."

'Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
'And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will
be keeping company with some one, and setting up
for himself."

"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.

"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of
these days; though there's plenty of time for that,
my dear. But however and whenever we part from
one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget
poor Tiny Tim — shall we — or this first parting that
there was among us?"

Never, father!" cried they all.
'And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears,
that when we recollect how patient and how mild
he was; although he was a little, little child; we
shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and for-
get poor Tiny Tim in doing it."

"No, never, father!" they all cried again.

"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very
happy!"

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed
him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter
and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy
childish essence was from God!

FROM "a CHRISTMAS CAROL," BY CHARLES DICKENS

147

RED RIDING HOOD

Sweet little myth of the nursery story —
Earliest love of mine infantile breast,

Be something tangible, bloom in thy glory
Into existence, as thou art addressed !

Hasten ! appear to me, guileless and good —

Thou art so dear to me, Red Riding Hood !

Azure-blue eyes, in a marvel of wonder.
Over the dawn of a blush breaking out ;

Sensitive nose, with a little smile under
Trying to hide in a blossoming pout —

Couldn't be serious, try as you would,

Little mysterious Red Riding Hood !

Hah ! little girl, it is desolate, lonely,
Out in this gloomy old forest of Life ! —

Here are not pansies and buttercups only —
Brambles and briers as' keen as a knife ;

And a Heart, ravenous, prowls in the wood

For the meal have he must, — Red Riding Hood !

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

148

Little mysterious Red Riding Hoodt

MIGNON'S LOVE AND LONGING

Nothing is more touching than the first dis-
closure of a love which has been nursed in silence;
of a faith grown strong in secret, and which at last
comes forth in the hour of need and reveals itself
to him who formerly has reckoned it of small ac-
count. The bud which had been closed so long
and firmly was now ripe to burst its swathings, and
Wilhelm's heart could never have been readier to
welcome the impressions of affection.

She stood before him, and noticed his dis-
quietude. "Master!" she cried, "if thou art un-
happy, what will become of Mignon?" "Dear little
creature," said he, taking her hands, "thon too art
part of my anxieties, I must go hence," She
looked at his eyes, glistening with restrained tears,
and knelt down with vehemence before him. He
kept her hands; she laid her head upon his knees,
and remained quite stiH. He played with her hair,
patted her, and spoke kindly to her. She continued
motionless for a considerable time. At last he felt
a sort of palpitating movement in her, which began
very softly, and then by degrees, with increasing

151

DREAM CHILDREN

violence, diffused itself all over her frame. "What
ails thee, Mignon?'' cried he; "what ails thee?"
She raised her little head, looked at him, and all at
once laid her hand upon her heart, with the counte-
nance of one repressing the utterance of pain. He
raised her up, and she fell upon his breast; he
pressed her toward him and kissed her. She re-
plied not by any pressure of the hand, by any
motion whatever. She held firmly against her
heart ; and all at once gave a cry, which was accom-
panied by spasmodic movements of the body. She
started up, and immediately fell down before him,
as if broken in every joint. It was an excruciating
moment! "My child!" cried he, raising her up
and clasping her fast, — "my child, what ails thee?"
The palpitations continued, spreading from the
heart over all the lax and powerless limbs; she was
merely hanging in his arms. All at once she again
became quite stiff, like one enduring the sharpest
corporeal agony; and soon with a new vehemence
all her frame became once more alive, and she
threw herself about his neck, like a bent spring
that is closing; while in her soul, as it were, a strong
rent took place, and at the same moment a stream
of tears flowed from her shut eyes into his bosom.
He held her fast. She wept, and no tongue can
express the force of these tears. Her long hair
had loosened, and was hanging down before him;
it seemed as if her whole being was melting in-
cessantly into a brook of tears. Her rigid limbs
were again become relaxed; her inmost soul was

152

Knowest thou the land where citron-apples bloom?

DREAM CHILDREN

pouring itself forth; in the wild confusion of the
moment, Wilhelm was afraid she would dissolve
in his arms, and leave nothing there for him to
grasp. He held her faster and faster. "My child,"
cried he, "my child! thou art indeed mine, if that
word can comfort thee. Thou art mine! I will
keep thee, I will never forsake thee!" Her tears
continued flowing. At last she raised herself; a
faint gladness shone upon her face. "My father!"
cried she, "thou wilt not forsake me? Wilt be my
father? I am thy child!"

Softly, at this moment, the harp began to sound
before the door; the old man brought his most
affecting songs as an evening offering to our
friend, who, holding his child ever faster in his
arms, enjoyed the most pure and indescribable
felicity.

''Knowest thou the land where citron-apples bloom,
And oranges like gold in leafy gloom,
A gentle zvind from deep blue heaven blows,
The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows?
Knozvest thon it then?

'Tis there! 'Tis there!
O my true loved one, thou with me must go!

''Knowest thou the house, its porch with pillars tall,
The rooms do glitter, glitters bright the hall.
And marble statues stand, and look each one:
Whafs this, poor child, to thee they've done?
Knpwest thou it then?

154

mignon's love and longing

^Tis there! 'Tis there!
O my protector, thou with me must go!

^'Knowest thou the hill, the bridge that hangs on

clouds.
The mules in mist grope o'er the torrent loud,
. In caves lie coiled the dragon's aitcient brood,
The crag leaps down, and over it the Hood:
Knowest thou it then?

'Tis there! 'Tis there!
Our waxy runs; O my father, will thou go?'

Next morning, on looking for Mignon about the
house, Wilhelm did not find her, but was informed
that she had gone out early with MeHna, who had
risen betimes to receive the wardrobe and other
apparatus of his theater.

After the space of some hours, Wilhelm heard
the sound of music before his door. At first he
thought it was the harper come again to visit him;
but soon he distinguished the tones of a zither, and
the voice which began to sing was Mignon's. Wil-
helm opened the door; the child came in, and sang
him the song we have just given above. The music
and general expression of it pleased our friend ex-
tremely, though he could not understand all the
words. He made her once more repeat the stanzas,
and explain them; he wrote them down and trans-
lated them into his native language. But the
originality of its turns he could imitate only
from afar: its childlike innocence of expression

155

DREAM CHILDREN

vanished from it in the process of reducing its
broken phraseology to uniformity, and combining
its disjointed parts. The charm of the tune, more-
over, was entirely incomparable.

She began every verse in a stately and solemn
manner, as if she wished to draw attention towards
something wonderful, as if she had something
weighty to communicate. In the third line, her
tones became deeper and gloomier; the "Knowest
thou it then?'' was uttered with a show of mystery
and eager circumspectness; in the " Tis there! 'Tis
there!" lay a boundless longing; and her "With me
must go!'' she modified at each repetition, so that
now it appeared to entreat and implore, and now to
impel and persuade.

On finishing her song for the second time, she
stood silent for a moment, looked keenly at Wil-
helm, and asked him, "Know'st thou the land?"
"It must mean Italy," said Wilhelm; "where didst
thou get the little song?" "Italy!" said Mignon,
with an earnest air. "If thou go to Italy, take me
along with thee; for I am too cold here." "Hast
thou been there already, little dear?" said Wilhelm.
But the child was silent, and nothing more could
be got out of her.

FROM ** WILHELM MEISTER^S APPRENTICESHIP"

BY J. WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

156

BROTHER AND SISTER

I cannot choose but think upon the time

When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss

At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime,
Because the one so near the other is.

He was the elder and a little man

Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,

And I the girl that puppy-like now ran.

Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread.

I held him wise, and when he talked to me

Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the
best,
I thought his knowledge marked the boundary
Where men ^rew blind, though angels knew the
rest.

If he said "Hush!" I tried to hold my breath;
Wherever he said "Come!" I stepped in faith.

Long years have left their writing on my brow,
But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam

Of those young mornings are about me now,
When we two wandered toward the far-off stream

157

DREAM CHILDREN

With rod and line. Our basket held a store
Baked for us only, and I thought with joy

That I should have my share, though he had more.
Because he was the elder and a boy.

The firmaments of daisies since to me

Have had those mornings in their opening eyes.

The bunched cowslip's pale transparency
Carries that sunshine of sweet memories.

And wild-rose branches take their finest scent
From those blest hours of infantine content.

Ill

Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways,
Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill.

Then with the benediction of her gaze

Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still

Across the homestead to the rookery elms,

Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound.

So rich for us, we counted them as realms

With varied products: here were earth-nuts
found,

And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade;

Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew.
The large to split for pith, the small to braid;

While over all the dark rooks cawing flew,

And made a happy strange solemnity,

A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me.

158

BROTHER AND SISTER

Our meadow-path had memorable spots:
One where it bridged a tiny rivulet,

Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots;
And all along the waving grasses met

My little palm, or nodded to my cheek,

When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew

My wonder downward, seeming all to speak
With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew.

Then came the copse, where wild things rushed
unseen,

And black-scathed grass betrayed the past abode
Of mystic gypsies, who still lurked between

Me and each hidden distance of the road.

A gypsy once had startled me at play,
Blotting with her dark smile my sunny day.

Thus rambling we were schooled in deepest lore.
And learned the meanings that give words a soul.

The fear, the love, the primal passionate store,
Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole.

Those hours were seed to all my after good;

My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch,
Took easily as warmth a various food

To nourish the sweet skill of loving much.

159

DREAM CHILDREN

For who in age shall roam the earth and find
Reasons for loving that will strike out love

With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind?
Were reasons sown as thick as stars above,

'Tis love must see them, as the eyes see light:
Day is but Number to the darkened sight.

Our brown canal was endless to my thought;

And on its banks I sat in dreamy peace,
Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought,

Untroubled by the fear that it would cease.

Slowly the barges floated into view,
Rounding a grassy hill to me sublime

With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew
The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring-time.

The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers,
The wondrous watery rings that died too soon,

The echoes of the quarry, the still hours

With white robe sweeping on the shadeless noon,

Were but my growing self, are part of me,
My present Past, my root of piety.

VII

Those long days measured by my little feet
Had chronicles which yield me many a text;

Where irony still finds an image meet

Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext.

i6o

711; -,\ '

BROTHER AND SISTER

One day my brother left me in high charge,
To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait,

And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge.

Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late.

Proud of the task, I watched with all my might
For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide.

Till sky and earth took on a strange new light
And seemed a dream-world floating on some
tide —

A fair pavilioned boat for me alone

Bearing me onward through the vast unknown.

VIII

But sudden came the barge's pitch-black prow,
Nearer and angrier came my brother's cry,

And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo!
Upon the imperiled line, suspended high,

A silver perch! My guilt that won the prey.
Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich

Of hugs and praises, and made merry play,
Until my triumph reached its highest pitch.

When all at home were told the wondrous feat,
And how the little sister had fished well.

In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet,
I wondered why this happiness befell.

163

DREAM CHILDREN

"The little lass had luck," the gardener said:
And so I learned, luck was with glory wed.

We had the selfsame world enlarged for each
By loving difference of girl and boy:

The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach
He plucked for me, and oft he must employ

A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe

Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind

"This thing I like my sister may not do,
For she is little, and I must be kind."

Thus boyish Will the nobler mastery learned
Where inward vision over impulse reigns,

Widening its life with separate life discerned,
A Like unlike, a Self that self restrains.

His years with others must the sweeter be
For those brief days he spent in loving me.

His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy

Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;

My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy
Had any reason when my brother came.

I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling
Cut the ringed stem and made the apple drop,

164

BROTHER AND SISTER

Or watched him winding close the spiral string
That looped the orbits of the humming top.

Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought
Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil;

My aery-picturing fantasy was taught
Subjection to the harder, truer skill

That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-
tracked line

And by "What is/' "What will be" to define.

School parted us; we never found again

That childish world where our two spirits min-
gled

Like scents from varying roses that remain
One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

Yet the twin habit of that early time

Lingered for long about the heart and tongue:
We had been natives of one happy clime,

And its dear accent to our utterance clung,

Till the dire years whose awful name is Change
Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce,

And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range
Two elements which sever their life's course.

But were another childhood-world my share,
I would be born a little sister there.

GEORGE ELIOT

165

CURLY LOCKS

Curly Locks! Curly Locks! unit thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine;
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream.

Curly Locks ! Curly Locks ! wilt thou be mine ?
The throb of my heart is in every line,
And the pulse of a passion as airy and glad
In its musical beat as the little Prince had !

Thou shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine !
Oh, ril dapple thy hands with these kisses of mine
Till the pink of each nail of each finger shall be
As a little pet blush in full blossom for me.

But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And thou shalt have fabric as fair as a dream, —
The red of my veins, and the white of my love,
And the gold of my joy for the braiding thereof.

And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream
From a service of silver, with jewels agleam ;
At thy feet will I bide, at thy beck will I rise,
And twinkle my soul in the night of thine eyes !

Curly Locks! Curly Locks! wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine;
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam.
And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream,

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

i66

THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER

They stopped at the point where the street and
the square joined, and where there were some little
quiet houses in a row. To these Charley Hexam
finally led the way, and at one of these stopped.

"This must be where my sister lives, sir. This
is where she came for a temporary lodging, soon
after father's death."

"How often have yon seen her since?"

"Why, only twice, sir," returned the boy, with
his former reluctance; "but that's as much her
doing as mine."

"How does she support herself?"

"She was always a fair needle-woman, and she
keeps the stockroom of a seaman's outfitter."

"Does she ever work at her own lodging here?"

"Sometimes; but her regular hours and regular

i68

THE dolls' dressmaker

occupation are at their place of business, I believe,
sir. This is the number."

The boy knocked at the door, and the door
promptly opened with a spring and a click. A
parlor door within a small entry stood open, and
disclosed a child — a dwarf — a girl — a something —
sitting on a little low old-fashioned arm-chair,
which had a kind of little working bench before it.

"I can't get up,'' said the child, "because my
back's bad, and my legs are queer. But I'm the
person of the house."

"Who else 'is at home?" asked Charley Hexam,
staring.

"Nobody's at home at present," returned the
child, with a glib assertion of her dignity, "except
the person of the house. What did you want,
young man?"

"I wanted to see my sister."

"Many young men have sisters," returned the
child. "Give me your name, young man."

The queer little figure, and the queer but not
ugly little face, with its bright gray eyes, were so
sharp, that the sharpness of the manner seemed
unavoidable. As if, being turned out of that
mould, it must be sharp.

"Hexam is my name."

"Ah, indeed?" said the person of the house.
"I thought it might be. Your sister will be in in
about a quarter of an hour. I am very fond of
your sister. She's my particular friend. Take a
seat. And this gentleman's name?

169

DREAM CHILDREN

"Mr. Headstone, my schoolmaster."

"Take a seat. And would you please to shut the
street door first? I can't very well do it myself,
because my back's so bad, and my legs are so
queer."

They complied in silence, and the little figure
went on with its work of gumming or gluing to-
gether with a camel's-hair brush certain pieces of
cardboard and thin wood, previously cut into vari-
ous shapes. The scissors and knives upon the
bench showed that the child herself had cut them;
and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and ribbon
also strewn upon the bench showed that when duly
stuffed (and stuffing too was there), she was to
cover them smartly. The dexterity of her nimble
fingers was remarkable, and as she brought two
thin edges accurately together by giving them a
little bite, she would glance at the visitors out of
the corners of her gray eyes with a look that out-
sharpened all her other sharpness.

"You can't tell me the name of my trade, I'll be
bound," she said, after taking several of these ob-
servations.

"You make pincushions," said Charley.

"What else do I make?"

"Pen-wipers," said Bradley Headstone.

"Ha! ha! What else do I make? You're a school-
master, but you can't tell me."

"You do something," he returned, pointing to a
corner of the little bench, "with straw; but I don't
know what."

170

THE dolls' dressmaker

"Well done, you !" cried the person of the house.
I only make pincushions and pen-wipers to use
up my waste. But my straw really does belong to
my business. Try again. What do I make with
my straw?''

"Dinner-mats."

"A schoolmaster, and says dinner-mats! I'll give
you a clue to my trade, in a game of forfeits. I
love my love with a B because she's Beautiful; I
hate my love with a B because she is Brazen: I
took her to the sign of the Blue Boar, and I treated
her with bonnets; her name's Bouncer, and she
lives in Bedlam. — Now, what do I make with my
straw?"

"Ladies' bonnets?"

"Fine ladies'," said the person of the house, nod-
ding assent. "Dolls'. I'm a Doll's Dressmaker."

"I hope it's a good business?"

The person of the house shrugged her shoulders
and shook her head. "No. Poorly paid. And
I'm often so pressed for time! I had a doll mar-
ried, last week, and was obliged to work all night.
And it's not good for me, on account of my back
being so bad and my legs so queer."

They looked at the little creature with a wonder
that did not diminish, and the schoolmaster said:
"I am sorry your fine ladies are so inconsiderate."

"It's the way with them," said the person of the
house, shrugfging her shoulders again. "And they
take no care of their clothes, and they never keep
to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll

171

DREAM CHILDREN

with three daughters. Bless you, she's enough to
ruin her husband!''

The person of the house gave a weird Httle laugh
here and gave them another look out of the cor-
ners of her eyes. She had an elfin chin that was
capable of great expression; and whenever she gave
this look, she hitched this chin up. As if her eyes
and her chin worked together on the same wires.

**Are you always as busy as you are now?"

'"Busier. I'm slack just now. I finished a large
mourning order the day before yesterday. Doll I
work for lost a canary-bird." The person of the
house gave another little laugh, and then nodded
her head several times, as who should moralize,
*'Oh this worW, this world!"

"Are you alone all day?" asked Bradley Head-
stone. "Don't any of the neighboring children — ?"

"Ah, lud!" cried the person of the house, with
a little scream, as if the word had pricked her.
"Don't talk of children. I can't bear children. I
know their tricks and their manners." She said
this with an angry little shake of her right list close
before her eyes.

Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher-habit
to perceive that the doll's dressmaker was inclined
to be bitter on the difference between herself and
other children. But both master and pupil under-
stood it so.

"Always running about and screeching, always
playing and fighting, always skip-skip-skipping on
the pavement and chalking it for their games! Oh!

172

THE dolls' dressmaker

I know their tricks and their manners!" shaking
the little fist as before. "And that's not all. Ever
so often calling names in through a person's key-
hole, and imitating a person's back and legs. Oh!
I know their tricks and their manners. And I'll tell
you what I'd do to punish 'em. There's doors un-
der the church in the Square — black doors, leading
into black vaults. Well! I'd open one of those
doors, and I'd cram 'em all in, and then I'd lock the
door and through the keyhole I'd blow in pepper."

"What would be the good of blowing in pepper?"
asked Charley Hexam.

"To set 'em sneezing," said the person of the
house, "and make their eyes water. And when
they were all sneezing and inflamed, I'd mock 'em
through the keyhole. Just as they, with their
tricks and their manners, mock a person through
a person's keyhole!"

An uncommon emphatic shake of her little fist
close before her eyes seemed to ease the mind of
the person of the house; for she added with recov-
ered composure, "No, no, no. No children for
me. Give me grown ups."

It was difficult to guess the age of this strange
creature, for her poor figure furnished no clue to it,
and her face was at once so young and so old.
Twelve, or at the most thirteen, might be near the
mark.

"I always did like grow^n ups," she went on, "and
always kept company with them. So sensible. Sit
so quiet. Don't go prancing and capering about!

173

DREAM CHILDREN

And I mean always to keep among none but grown
ups until I marry. I suppose I must make up my
mind to marry, one of these days."

She listened to a step outside that caught her
ear, and there was a soft knock at the door. Pull-
ing at a handle within her reach, she said with a
pleased laugh: "Now here, for instance, is a
grown-up that's my particular friend!" and Lizzie
Hexam in a black dress entered the room.

"Charley! You!"

Taking him to her arms in the old way — of
which he seemed a little ashamed — she saw no one
else.

"There, there, there, Liz, all right, my dear.
See! Here's Mr. Headstone come with me."

Her eyes met those of the schoolmaster, who had
evidently expected to see a very different sort of
person, and a murmured word or two of salutation
passed between them. She was a little flurried by
the unexpected visit, and the schoolmaster was not
at his ease. But he never was quiet.

"I told Mr. Headstone you were not settled, Liz,
l)ut he was so kind as to take an interest in com-
ing, and so I brought him. How well you look!"

Bradley seemed to think so.

"Ah! Don't she, don't she?" cried the person
of the house, resuming her occupation, though the
twilight was falling fast. "I believe you she does!
But go on with your chat, one and all:

'You one two three
My com-pa-nie.
And don't mind me;' "

174

THE DOLLS^ DRESSMAKER

— -pointing this impromptu rhyme with three
points of her thin forefinger.

"I didn't expect a visit from you, Charley/' said
his sister. "I supposed that if you wanted to see
me you would have sent to me, appointing me to
come somewhere near the school, as I did last time.
I saw my brother near the school, sir,'' to Bradley
Headstone, "because it's easier for me to go there,
than for him to come here. I work about midway
between the two places."

"You don't see much of one another," said
Bradley, not improving in respect of ease.

"No." With a rather sad shake of her head.
"Charley always does well, Mr. Headstone?"

"He could not do better. I regard his course as
quite plain before him."

"I hoped so. I am so thankful. So well done of
you, Charley dear! It is better for me not to come
(except when he wants me) between him and his
prospects. You think so, Mr. Headstone?"

Conscious that his pupil-teacher was looking for
his answer, and that he himself had suggested the
boy's keeping aloof from this sister, now seen for
the first time face to face, Bradley Headstone stam-
mered :

"Your brother is very much occupied, you know.
He has to work hard. One cannot but say that the
less his attention is diverted from his work, the
better for his future. When he shall have estab-
lished himself, why then — it will be another thing
then."

T75

a
a
((

it,

DREAM CHILDREN

Lizzie shook her head again, and returned, with
a quiet smile. '*I always advised him as you ad-
vise him. Did I not, Charley?''

*'Well, never mind that now," said the boy.
How are you getting on?'*

Very well, Charley. I want for nothing."
You have your own room here?"
Oh yes. Up stairs. And it's quiet, and pleas-
ant, and airy."

And she always has the use of this room for
visitors," said the person of the house, screwing up
one of her little bony fists, like an opera-glass, and
looking through it, with her eyes and her chin in
that quaint accordance. "Always this room for
visitors; haven't you, Lizzie dear?"

It happened that Bradley Headstone noticed a
very slight action of Lizzie Hexam's hand, as
though it checked the dolls' dressmaker. And it
happened that the latter noticed him at the same
instant; for she made a double eye-glass of her two
hands, looked at him through it, and cried, with a
waggish shake of her head: "Aha! Caught you
spying, did I?"

It might have fallen out so^ any way; but Bradley
Headstone also noticed that immediately after this,
Lizzie, who had not taken of? her bonnet, rather
hurriedly proposed that as the room was getting
dark they should go out into the air. They went
out; the visitors saying good-night to the dolls'
dressmaker, whom they left, leaning back in her

176

The dolls' dressmaker

THE dolls' dressmaker

chair with her arms crossed, singing to herself in

a sweet thoughtful little voice.

* * * *

The person of the house, dolls' dressmaker and
manufacturer of ornamental pincushions and
pen-wipers, sat in her quaint little low arm-chair,
singing in the dark, until Lizzie came back. The
person of the house "had attained that dignity while
yet of very tender years indeed, through being the
only trustworthy person in the house.

"Well, Lizzie-Mizzie-Wizzie," said she, breaking
off in her song. "What's the news out of doors?"

"What's the news indoors?" returned Lizzie,
playfully smoothing the bright, long, fair hair
which grew very luxuriant and beautiful on the
head of the dolls' dressmaker.

" 'Let me see,' said the blind man. Why the
last news is, that I don't mean to marry your
brother."

"No?"

"No-o," shaking her head and her chin. "Don't
like the boy !"

"What do you say to his master?"

"I say that I think he's bespoke."

Lizzie finished putting the hair carefully back
over the misshapen shoulders, and then lighted a
candle. It showed the little parlor to be dingy,
but orderly and clean. She stood it on the mantle-
shelf, remote from the dressmaker's eyes, and then
put the room door open, and the house door open,
and turned the little low chair and its occupant

179

DREAM CHILDREN

towards the outer air. It was a sultry night, and
this was a fine-weather arrangement when the
day's work was done. To complete it, she seated
herself in a chair by the side of the little chair, and
protectingly drew under her arm the spare hand
that crept up to her.

"This is what your loving Jenny Wren calls the
best time in the day and night," said the person of
the house. Her real name was Fanny Cleaver; but
she had long ago chosen to bestow upon herself the
appellation of Miss Jenny Wren.

'T have been thinking," Jenny went on, "as I
sat at work to-day, what a thing it would be if I
should be able to have your company till I am mar-
ried, or at least courted. Because when I am
courted, I shall make him do some of the things
that you do for .me. He couldn't brush my hair
like you do, or help me up and down stairs like you
do, and he couldn't do anything like you do; but
he could take my work home, and he could call for
orders in his clumsy way. And he shall too. I'll
trot him about, I can tell him!"

Jenny Wren had her personal vanities — happily
for her* — and no intentions were stronger in her
breast than the various trials and torments that
were, in the fulness of time, to be inflicted upon
"him."

"Wherever he may happen to be just at present,
or whoever he may happen to be," said Miss Wren,
"I know his tricks and his manners, and I give him
warning to look out.'

1 80

Jenny Wren and Lizzie Hej

A X^ i_

iCT '-

Tl'

y i \ 4 ■*

» . V J .

THE dolls' dressmaker

"Don't you think you are rather hard upon
him?" asked her friend, smiling, and smoothing
her hair.

"Not a bit," replied the sage Miss Wren, with
an air of vast experience. "My dear, they don't
care for you, those fellows, if you're not hard upon
'em. But I was saying If I should be able to have
your company. Ah! What a large If! Ain't it?"

I have no intention of parting company, Jenny."

"Don't say that, or you'll go directly."

^Am I so little to be relied upon?"

'You're more to be relied upon than silver and
gold." As she said it, Miss Wren suddenly broke
off, screwed up her eyes and her chin, and looked
prodigiously knowing. "Aha!

"Who comes here?
"A Grenadier.
"What does he want?
"A pot of beer.

— And nothing else in the world, my dear!"

A man's figure passed on the pavement at the
outer door. "Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, ain't it?"
said Miss Wren.

'So I am told," was the answer.
'You may come in, if you're good."
I am not good," said Eugene, "but I'll come
m.'"

He gave his hand to Jenny Wren, and he gave
his hand to Lizzie, and he stood leaning by the
door at Lizzie's side. He had been strolling with
his cigar, he said (it was smoked out and gone by

183

DREAM CHILDREN

this time), and he had strolled round to return in
that direction that he might look in as he passed.

Then he fell to talking playfully with Jenny
Wren. "I think of setting up a doll, Miss Jenny/'
he said.

You had better not/' replied the dressmaker.
Why not?"

'* You are sure to break it. All you children do."

*'But that makes good for trade, you know, Miss
Wren,'* returned Eugene. **Much as people's
breaking promises and contracts and bargains of
all sorts, makes good for my trade."

*'I don't know about that," Miss Wren retorted;
''but you had better by half set up a pen-wiper, and
turn industrious and use it."

*'Why, if we were all as industrious as you, little
Busy-Body, we should begin to work as soon as
we could crawl, and that would be a bad thing!"

*'Do you mean," returned the little creature, wnth
a flush suffusing her face, ''bad for your backs and
your legs?"

*'No, no, no," said Eugene; shocked — to do
him justice — at the thought of trifling with her
infirmity. "Bad for business, bad for business. If
we all set to work as soon as we could use our
hands, it would be all over with the dolls' dress-
makers."

There's something in that," replied Miss Wren;
you have a sort of an idea in your noddle some-
times." Then, in a changed tone: "Talking of
ideas, my Lizzie," they were sitting side by side as

184

THE dolls' dressmaker

they had sat at first, "I wonder how it happens that
when I am work, work, working here, all alone in
the summer-time, I smell flowers/'

**As a common-place individual, I should say,"
Eugene suggested languidly — for he was growing
weary of the person of the house — "that you smell
flowers because vou do smell flowers."

"No I don't," said the little creature, resting one
arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin
upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her;
"this is not a flowery neighborhood. It's anything
but that. And yet, as I sit at work, I smell miles
of flowers. I smell roses till I think I see the rose-
leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor. I smell
fallen leaves till I put down my hand — so — and
expect to make them rustle. I smell the white and
the pink May in the hedges, and all sorts of flowers
that I never was among. For I have seen very few
flowers indeed, in my life."

"Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear!" said her
friend, with a glance towards Eugene as if she
would have asked him whether they were given the
child in compensation for her losses.

"So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. And
the birds I hear! Oh!" cried the little creature,
holding out her hand and looking upward, "how
they sing!"

There was something in the face and action for
the moment quite inspired and beautiful. Then the
chin dropped musingly upon the hand again.

I dare say my birds sing better than other birds,

185

<<-

DREAM CHILDREN

and my flowers smell better than other flowers.
For when I was a little child/' in a tone as though
it were ages ago, "the children that I used to see
early in the morning were very different from any
others that I ever saw. They were not like me:
they were not chilled, anxious, ragged, or beaten;
they were never in pain. They were not like the
children of the neighbors; they never made me
tremble all over, by setting up shrill noises, and
they never mocked me. Such numbers of them,
too! All in white dresses, and with something shin-
ing on the borders, and on their heads, that I have
never been able to imitate with my work, though I
know it so well. They used to come down in
long, bright, slanting rows, and say all together,
*Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!' When
I told them who it was, they answered, 'Come and
play with us!' When I said, 'I never play! I can't
play!' they swept about me and took me up, and
made me light. Then it was all delicious ease and
rest till they laid me down, and said, all together,
'Have patience, and we will come again.' When-
ever they came back, I used to know they were
coming before I saw the long bright rows, by hear-
ing them ask, all together a long way off, 'Who
is this in pain! Who is this in pain!' And I used
to cry out, 'O my blessed children, it's poor me.
Have pity on me. Take me up and make me
light!'"

By degrees, as she progressed in this remem-
brance, the hand was raised, the late ecstatic look
returned, and she became quite beautiful.

FROM ** OUR MUTUAL FRIEND " — CHARLES DICKENS

1 86

EVELYN HOPE

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!

Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower.
Beginning to die too, in the glass;

Little has yet been changed, I think;
The shutters are shut, no light may pass

Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died!

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
It was not her time to iove; beside.

Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares.

And now was quiet, now astir,
Till God's hand beckoned unawares, —

And the sweet white brow is all of her.

DREAM CHILDREN

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?

What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,

Made you of spirit, fire and dew —
And, just because I was thrice as old

And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was naught to each, must I be told?

We were fellow mortals, naught beside?

No, indeed! for God above

Is great to grant, as mighty to make.
And creates the love to reward the love:

I clai*n you still, for my own love's sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet.

Thro* worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
Much is to learn, much to forget.

Ere the time be come for taking you.

But the time will come, at last it will.

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
In the lower earth, in the years Ipng still,

That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine.

And your mouth of your own geranium's red —
And what you would do with me, in fine.

In the new life come in the old one's stead.

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,

Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men.

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;

1 88

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead

ji o

: Ti'-

f, i V

\.' ;

.1 V

EVELYN HOPE

Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,

Either I missed or itself missed me;
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!

What is the issue? let us see!

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!

My heart seemed full as it could hold;
There was place and to spare for the frank young
smile,

And the red young mouth, and the hair's young
gold.
So hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep;

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
There, that is our secret: go to sleep!

You will wake, and remember, and understand.

A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR

There was once a child, and he strolled about a
good deal, and thought of a number of things. He
had a sister, who was a child, too, and his constant
companion. They wondered at the beauty of the
flowers; they wondered at the height and the blue-
ness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the
bright water; they wondered at the goodness and
the power of God who made the lovely world.

They used to say to one another, sometimes,
Supposing all the children on earth were to die,
would the flowers, and the water, and the sky be
sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For,
said they, the buds are the children of the flowers,
and the little playful streams that gambol down
the hillsides are the children of the water; and the
smallest bright specks playing at hide and seek
in the sky all night, must surely be the children
of the stars; and they would all be grieved to see
their playmates, the children of men, no more.

There was one clear shining star that used to
come out in the sky before the rest, near the church
spire, above the graves. It was larger and more

192

A child's dream of a star

beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and
every night they watched for it, standing hand in
hand at a window. Whoever saw it first cried out,
"I see the star!" And often they cried out both
together, knowing so well when it would rise, and
where. So they grew to be such friends with it,
that before lying down in their beds, they always
looked out once again, to bid it good night; and
when they were turning round to sleep, they used
to say, "God bless the star!''

But while she was still very young, oh very, very
young, the sister drooped, and came to be so weak
that she could no longer stand in the window at
night; and then the child looked sadly out by him-
self, and when he saw the star turned round and
said to the patient pale face on the bed, *'I see the
star!" and then a smile would come upon the face,
and a little weak voice used to say, "God bless my
brother and the star!"

And so the time came all too soon! when the
child looked out alone, and when there was no face
on the bed; and when there was a little grave
among the graves, not there before; and when the
star made long rays down towards him, as he saw
it through his tears.

Now these rays were so bright, and they seemed
to make such a shining way from earth to Heaven,
that when the child went to his solitary bed, he
dreamed about the star, and dreamed that lying
where he was, he saw a train of people taken up
that sparkling road by angels. And the star, open-

193

DREAM CHILDREN

ing, showed him a great world of light, where
many more such angels w^aited to receive them.

All these angels, who were waiting, turned their
beaming eyes upon the people who were carried up
into the star; and some came out from the long
rows in which they stood, and fell upon the peo-
ple's necks, and kissed them tenderly, and went
away with them down avenues of light, and were so
happy in their company, that lying in his bed he
wept for joy.

But there were many angels w^ho did not go with
them, and among them one he knew. The patient
face that once had lain upon the bed was glorified
and radiant, but his heart found out his sister
among all the host.

His sister's angel lingered near the entrance of
the star, and said to the leader among those who
had brought the people thither:

"Is my brother come?"

And he said, "No."

She was turning hopefully away, w^hen the child
stretched out his arms, and cried, "O, sister, I am
here! Take me!" and then she turned her beam-
ing eyes upon him, and it was night; and the star
was shining into the room, making long rays down
toward him as he saw it through his tears.

From that hour forth the child looked upon the
star as on the home he was to go to, when his time
should come; and he thought that he did not be-
long to the earth alone, but to the star, too, because
of his sister's angel gone before.

194

When the child went to bed

1 V » V

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A'.r-.M, Lr

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A CHILD'iS DREAM OF A STAR

There was a baby born to be a brother to the
child, and while he was so little that he never yet
had spoken a word, he stretched his tiny form out
on his bed, and died.

And again the child dreamed of the open star,
and of the company of angels, and the train of peo-
ple, and the rows of angels with their beaming eyes
all turned upon those people's faces.

Said his sister angel to the leader:

"Is my brother come?"

And he said, ''Not that one, but another."

As the child beheld his brother's angel in her
arms, he cried, "O, sister, I am here! Take me!"
And she turned and smiled upon him and the star
was shining.

He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his
books when an old servant came to him and said:

''Thy mother is no more. I bring her blessing
on her darling son."

Again at night he saw the star, and all that
former company. Said his sister's angel to the
leader:

"Is my brother come?"

And he said, "Thy mother!"

A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the
star, because the mother was reunited to her two
children. And he stretched out his arms and cried,
"O, mother, sister, and brother, I am here! Take
me!" and they answered him, "Not yet," and the
star was shining.

He grew to be a man whose hair was turning

197

DREAM CHILDREN

gfray, and he was sitting in his chair by the fire-
side, heavy with grief, and with his face bedewed
with tears, when the star opened once again.

Said his sister's angel to the leader, *'Is my
brother come?''

And he said, '*Nay, but his maiden daughter."

And the man who had l^een the child saw his
daughter, newly lost to him, a celestial creature
among those three, and he said, *'My daughter's
head is on my sister's bosom, and her arm is around
my mother's neck, and at her feet there is the baby
of old time, and I can bear the parting from her,
God be praised!"

And the star was shining.

Thus the child came to be an old man, and his
once smooth face was wrinkled, and his steps were
slow and feeble, and his back was bent. And one
night as he lay upon his bed, his children standing
round, he cried as he had cried so long ago:

'1 see the star!"

They whispered one to another, ''He is dying."

And he said, 'T am. My age is falling from me
like a garment, and I move towards the star as a
child. And O, my Father, now I thank thee that
it has so often opened, to receive those dear ones
who await me."

And the star was shining; and it shines upon his
grave.

CHARLES DICKENS

198

DOROTHY Q

Grandmother's mother : her age, I guess,

Thirteen summers, or something- less ;

Girlish bust, but womanly air ;

Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair ;

Lips that lover has never kissed;

Taper fingers and slender wrist ;

Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade :

So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green

Sits unmoving and broods serene.

Hold up the canvas full in view, —

Look! there's a rent the light shines througli,

Dark with a century's fringe of dust, —

That was a Redcoat's rapier thrust !

Such is the tale the lady old,

Dorothy's daughter's daughter, toW.

Who the painter was none may tell, —

One whose best was not over well ;

199

DR£AM CHILDREN

Hard and dry, it must be confessed,
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed :
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,
Dainty colors of red and white ;
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien.

Look not on her with eyes of scorn, —
Dorothy Q. was a lady born !
Ay ! since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name ;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown, —
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O Damsel Dorothy ! Dorothy Q !
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king
Save to a daughter or son might bring, —
All my tenure of heart and hand,
All my title to house and land;
Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered No,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill ;

200

DOROTHY Q

Should I be I, or would it be

One- tenth another, to nine-tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes ;

Not the light gossamer stirs with less ;

But never a cable that holds so fast

Through all the battles of wave and blast,

And never an echo of speech or song

That lives in the babbling air so long !

There were tones in the voice that whispered then

You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover, — and here we are.
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,
Edward's and Dorothy's, all their own, —
A goodly record for Time to show

Of a syllable spoken so long ago! —
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive
For the tender whisper that bade me live ?

It shall be a blessing, my little maid !

1 will heal the stab of the Redcoat's blade.
And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
And gild with a rhyme your household name;
So you shall smile on us brave and bright

As first you greeted the morning light.
And live untroubled by woes and fears
Through a second youth of a hundred years.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

201

PHILIP, MY KING

Look at me with thy large brown eyes,

PhiHp, my king!
For round thee the purple shadow lies
Of babyhood's royal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand

With love's invisible scepter laden;
I am thine Esther, to command

Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my king!

Oh, the day when thou goest a-wooing,

Philip, my king!
When those beautiful lips 'gin suing.
And, some gentle heart's bars undoing,
Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there

Sittest love-glorified ! Rule kindly.
Tenderly over thy kingdom fair.

For we that love, ah ! we love so blindly
Philip, my king!

I gaze from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow,

Philip, my king,
The spirit that there lies sleeping now
May rise like a giant, and make men bow
As to one Heaven-chosen among his peers.

My Saul, than thy brethren, higher and fairer.
Let me behold thee in future years!
Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
Philip, my king!

202

Look at me with thy large brown eyes

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PHILIP, MV KING

A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day,

Philip, my king!
Thou, too, must tread, as we trod, a way
Thorny and cruel and cold and gray ;
Rebels within thee and foes without

Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious,
Martyr, yet monarch ! till angels shout,

As thou sitt'st at the feet of God victorious,
"Philip, the king!"

ANNABEL LEE

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love —

I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

• In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me —

206

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ANNABEL LEE

Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than -the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —

And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee :

For the moon never beams, without bringing me
dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee :
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee :
And so, all the night-tide I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

EDGAR ALLEN POE

209

A PROSPECTIVE GLIMPSE

Janey Pettibone's the best
Little girl an' purtiest
In this town! an' lives next door,
Up stairs over their old store.

Little Janey Pettibone
An' her Ma lives all alone, —
'Cause her Pa broke up, an' nen
Died 'cause they ain't rich again.

Little Janey's Ma she sews
Fer my Ma sometimes, an' goes
An' gives music-lessuns, where
People's got pianers there.

But when Janey Pettibone

Grows an' grows, like I'm a growin',

Nen I'm go' to keep a store,

An' sell things — an' sell some more —

Till I'm ist as rich! — An' nen
Her Ma can be rich again, —
Ef I'm rich enough to own
Little Janey Pettibone!

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

2IO

^7"

SEVEN TIMES ONE

There's no dew left on the daisies and clover.

There's no rain left in heaven:
I've said my "seven times" over and over,

Seven times one are seven.

I am so old, so old, I can write a letter;

My birthday lessons are done;
The lambs play always, they know no better;

They are only one times one.

moon! in the night I have seen you sailing"
And shining so round and low;

ou were bright! ah, bright! but your light is fail-
ing,—
You are nothing now but a bow.

You moon, have you done something wrong in
heaven
That God has hidden your. face?

1 hope if you have you will soon be forgiven.
And shine again in your place.

O velvet bee, you're a dusty fellow%
You've powdered your legs with gold!

O brave marsh marybuds, rich and yellow,
Give me your money to hold!

212

I am seven times one to-day

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SEVEN TIMES ONE

O columbine, open your folded wrapper.
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell!

cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!

And show me your nest with the young ones in it;
I will not steal them away;

1 am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet —
I am seven times one to-day.

JEAN 11

"Sleep on, thou fair child for thy long rough
journey is at hand. A little while and thou shalt
sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic
battles. * * * As yet, sleep and waking are
one; the fair life's garden rustles infinite around,
and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and budding
hope."

FROM EARTOR RESARIUS

217

V-'

JUL 3 1936

, I

JUL 3 1936

^'"= -■- ' ii-^.^r

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