The Knights of the White Shield Part 36

"Some sense in the idea. The boys will learn something."

"And then," said Miss Barry, "when Christmas comes, you can give a Christmas entertainment, and ask an admission fee, and, won't you give the money to the missions of our Church? That will be putting another round in the ladder, and the 'Up-the-Ladder Club' will go higher still. I want you to help other people all you can. I'll tell you what to do, and be with you."

The boys agreed to their teacher's plan. Sid was specially enthusiastic.

Will Somers said he would help. Aunt Stanshy had promised to open the rooms of her house, and one December night, when the sky was like the dark face of an Oriental beauty, hung all over with golden jewelry, the White s.h.i.+elds and their friends met at Aunt Stanshy's. How happy were the club boys to find there a banner sent by Mr. Walton. He wrote that Tim Tyler was coming to Sunday-school, and that they had previously secured four scholars, and Tim should be counted the fifth. Happy knights to earn that banner!

About eight Sid came into the front room dressed in a brown, broad-skirted coat, also wearing small clothes, silver knee-buckles, and buckled shoes.

He took off his c.o.c.ked hat, made a low bow, and holding out a diminutive newspaper, yellow with age, began:

"I am a printer. I had the honor of printing the 'New Hamps.h.i.+re Gazette,'

which was started in Portsmouth in 1756, and is still published in that good old city. In those days newspapers were not so numerous as now. When the Revolutionary War closed there were forty-three papers in the country.

We did not give such crowded or so large sheets as are now published. My paper, though, was so popular all the spare copies were taken, and I have none by me this moment; but here is a copy of the 'New England Chronicle,'

that came out in Boston on the 4th of July, 1776. It has four pages, you will see, measures ten inches by fifteen, say, and each page has three columns. It was not easy work then to publish a paper. We had no steam-presses, but hand-power had to do the work, and my arms ache to this day. It was hard, too, at the time of the Revolutionary War, to get paper, and before the war, too. In 1769 there was only one paper-mill in New England, and that was at Milton, Ma.s.s. They had to advertise for rags, and what they called the bell-cart went through Boston picking them up. Then in towns like Salem, Charlestown, Portsmouth, they sc.r.a.ped all they could.

Ten years after, my brother-publisher, of the 'Ma.s.sachusetts Spy,'

appealed to the 'fair Daughters of Liberty in this extensive country' to save their rags, and so 'serve their country,' advising them to hang up a bag in one corner of a room that the odds and ends might be saved. For a pound of 'clean white rags' the ladies could get ten s.h.i.+llings! If you had lived then, and had your mother's rags to-day, what heaps of money you could have made! It was hard, too, for us newspaper men to get news. I was looking yesterday at a copy of the 'Portsmouth Oracle,' published in 1805.

That was in this wonderful century. What did it say on the 26th of January? 'News by telegraph?' and did it tell us what the Hottentots were doing yesterday? No; it said, 'By the mails,' and had one item from Boston two days old, two from New York nine days old, and one from Fredericksburg about a trouble with the colored people, and that news was twenty-three days old! Rags and news, those two things, how hard they were to get! And then, ladies and gentlemen, how hard it was to get our pay! A brother editor in New York, in 1777, told his customers he must charge them, for 'a quarter of news,' twelve pounds of beef, seven pounds of cheese, and so on, or he must have their worth in money, and he tells them to bring in the produce, or he will have to 'shut up shop.' I will now shut, also."

Making a low bow again, the wearer of small clothes retired. When Juggie's turn arrived, he appeared, whip in hand.

"I'm de stage-driber. In de days ob our ancestors dar were no railroads, but jest common roads. De fust ca.n.a.l was built in 1777. Dar was a big road dat went from Bosson to mouf of Kennebec, one up into New Hamps.h.i.+re, and den ta Canada, one to Providence, and one to New York, while New York had two roads, norf and one souf. I was a stage-driber." (Here Juggie cracked his whip and shouted, "Get up, Caesar!") "I ran de 'Flyin' Machine' dat went from New York to Philadelfy, and took only two days; and one spell I took a stage from New York to Bosson in six days. What do you say to dat?

Don't it make yer eyes open? Who carried de mail, do you say? And haben't you eber heard? De stage. In 1775 de mail went from Philadelfy to New England ebery fortnight in winter, but dey improbed and went once a week, and letter-writers could get an answer in free weeks, when before it took six weeks. What progress! De worl' goes on, and--so do I."

Juggie left, and Governor Grimes appeared in the dress of a farmer, carrying a shovel in one hand and a hoe in the other.

"I am a farmer, and was one in the old days. It is true I did not have so many neighbors as people nowadays, and I went without things that farmers now have. I didn't have newfangled cultivators, reapers, or such things.

But then what a stout house I lived in, a big, square house, and its frame wasn't made of pipe-stem sticks! They were big, solid sticks of oak that I had, and you could see them sticking out of the corners and down from the ceiling. What chimneys I had, and the bricks came all the way from England! I had none of your box stoves, but a big fire in the chimney which you could see. My wife, Polly, had no carpets on the floor, but she had rugs she made of rags. And my darter, Jerusha, what a cook she was!

She made pies--cooked 'em, I mean--in a brick oven, and she stewed her chickens in pots hung on hooks from a swinging crane in the chimney. And then I gave Jerusha a turn-spit, too, which she put before the fire, and I gave her a tin kitchen. Polly had a spinning-wheel and Jerusha a hand-loom, and that is where our cloth came from. I raised corn and gra.s.s and potatoes, and we had plenty of apples, and what fun we had at huskin'

parties and apple parings! I took care of my horses, oxen, cows, and sheep, pigs, too, and had to kill my own critters and cure the hams we used. In those days we had to do many things ourselves, such as dip our candles, and I made my eyes weak mending Jedidiah's shoes in the evening, a candle near me, and the tall old family clock ticking in the corner."

Miss Barry was charming in her antique dress, as every White s.h.i.+eld thought. It came down from her great-great-grandmother, Sally Tilton, who was a famous belle in her day. The dress was hooped and ruffled, "trailed," also, in the old style. Miss Barry's hair was powdered, and she wore white satin shoes. She represented the "Daughters of Liberty," and told about Emily Geiger, the South Carolina young lady who undertook to carry a written message from General Greene to General Sumter, and when the British took her, she ate up her letter! The enemy released her, not finding her message. She went on and she did her errand, though, giving the message from memory, as General Greene, fearful of a capture, had told her the contents of the letter. Then Miss Barry told about some girls in New York who gave a coat of mola.s.ses and flag-down to a young man disrespectful to Congress. She gave an account of the young ladies in Virginia, Ma.s.sachusetts, and elsewhere.

Will Somers appeared in the dress of a revolutionary soldier, carrying on his shoulder a musket that was a fire-lock, and slung at his side was a powder-horn, while in his tinder-box were flint and steel. How many battles this old Continental had been in, what victories he had won, and what hards.h.i.+ps he had endured! He was not slow to tell of them all.

The entertainment was voted a great success.

"There, Charles Pitt," declared Aunt Stanshy the next morning at the breakfast-table, "I like that style of a club ever so much. It tells you something."

"Yes," said Charlie, "I know a lot more than I did."

"I want you to have a good time in your club, but when it is all play and nothing else, it aint just the thing."

"Yes, aunty," said the now matured and venerable Charlie. "And we're going to have something else."

"What is it?"

He only winked and looked wise as an owl at midnight.

December was now hurrying away. The winter weeks followed one another rapidly, and at last Charlie heard Mr. Walton say in church something about a Christmas festival.

"Christmas is coming!" was Charlie's silent response.

What a Christmas it was! Two nights previous to it the club had an entertainment in behalf of missions, as Miss Barry had suggested. Dressed as that benevolent individual, Santa Claus, different members of the club stepped forward and gave an account of Christmas in Germany, Christmas in Russia, Christmas in Italy, and Christmas in Australia. The boys were curious to see how much money they had made.

"Twenty dollars!" declared Sid, who counted the funds.

"There," said Miss Barry, "the Up-the-Ladder Club will put rounds under the feet of boys in heathen lands, and help them climb up into the light of a Saviour's presence."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE WRECK.

Snow still kept away, but winter winds had come, and they swept over the bare ground, cutting like knives. About the first of the year the weather softened. The old gray heads, whose possessors occupied that village-throne of wisdom, the jackknife-carved bench by Silas Trefethen's stove, prophesied "a spell of weather."

"Storm brewin'! I feel it in my bones," declared Simes Badger, squinting at the vane on Aunt Stanshy's barn and then at the gray, scowling clouds above. The wind was from the "nor'-east." It had a damp, chilly touch, so that the people shrank from it, and were glad to get near their cozy fires. All day threatening clouds rolled in from the sea, as if the storm had planted batteries there and the smoke from the cannonade was thickening. At night Charlie, pa.s.sing a window in his chamber, heard the rain drumming on the panes. He had gone to his warm nest and been there only two minutes, when he said to himself, as he gaped, "If it would only rain so hard that I wouldn't have to go to school to-mor--" Here the angel of sleep came along, and, putting his hand on the eyes of a tired boy, closed them and drowned in sweet oblivion all his school anxieties. It rained through the night. It rained all the next day. The tide, too, was unusually high. It rolled over the wharves, swept up the s.h.i.+pyards, and even ventured into the yard back of Silas Trefethen's store, floating away a hencoop with its squawking tenants.

"It beats all!" said Simes Badger. "The oldest person round here never saw such a tide."

The Up-the-Ladder Club did the tide the honor of making it a call in a body, and from the rear of Silas Trefethen's store watched the swollen current beyond the yard.

"Let's go down to the beach and see the waves to-morrow. It's Sat.u.r.day, you know, and the waves pile up tremendous in a storm. Who's for it!"

inquired Sid Waters. There was not a White s.h.i.+eld present who was unwilling to go. Some of them, however, went sooner than they expected.

Toward the morning of the next day, Will Somers was aroused by the ringing of a bell. He opened his ears, opened his eyes, and then he sprang out of bed.

"Fire!" he said. "Fire!"

He rushed to a window, threw it up, and put his head out into the black storm, through which echoed the notes of the bell of old St. John's. They made such an impression it seemed as if they must be living things out in the darkness walking. So strange, so unreal was this, it was a relief to hear the approaching footsteps of somebody who was actually "flesh and blood."

"Where's the fire?" asked Will.

"Fire!" said the man, walking leisurely along. "I should think any b.o.o.by might know this is not the night for a fire, when things are so wet; but it is the night for a wreck, and the feller pullin' that bell tells me there is one off Gull's P'int."

"Is it? I am going, then, and I should think any one but a b.o.o.by would be going in that direction," retorted Will, noticing that the man was not moving toward the quarter where the wreck was. The stranger muttered something about knowing his own business best, while Will pulled in his head and slammed down the window.

"Charlie!" he said, stepping into the boy's little chamber after lighting a lamp.

"What is it?" asked Charlie, winking his eyes at the blinding glare of the light.

"Do you want to go with me?"

"Go where?"

"To see a wreck."