Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad Part 57

CATCHING SNOW FLAKES.

BY MRS. S. J. BRIGHAM.

Down from the sky, one winter day, The snow-flakes tumbled and whirled in play.

White as a lily, Light as a feather, Some so chilly Were clinging together.

Falling so softly on things below, Covering all with beautiful snow.

Drifting about with the winds at play, Hiding in hollows along the way, White as a lily, Light as a feather, Coming so stilly In cold winter weather.

Touching so lightly the snow-bird's wing, Silently covering every thing.

Every flake is a falling star, Gently falling, who knows how far?

White as a lily, Light as a feather, Hosts so stilly Are falling together.

Every star that comes fluttering down, Falls, I know, from the Frost King's crown.

A MISCHIEVOUS MONKEY.

Jocko was hardly more than a baby monkey, but he was so full of mischief that he often made his mother very sad. Jocko's father used to get angry with him; sometimes he used to give Jocko a good spanking; only he hadn't a slipper as the father of little boys have!

Jocko's father and mother used to try to teach him that it was very bad manners to s.n.a.t.c.h any thing from the visitors who came up to the cage. That was a very hard lesson for Jocko to learn. One day he s.n.a.t.c.hed a pair of spectacles from an old lady, who was looking into the cage and laughing; the old lady screamed with fright. Jocko tried to put the spectacles on himself; but the keeper made him give them up. When the old lady got her gla.s.ses again, she didn't care to look at the monkeys any more.

Another day Jocko was taken very sick; he laid down in one corner of the cage, and could not be made to move. His mother thought he was going to die, and she was quite sure that some of his monkey cousins had hurt him. "Not so," chattered Jocko's father, "I found some pieces of gloves among the hay; I think the bad fellow has s.n.a.t.c.hed them from somebody, and partly eaten them."

"Dear, dear," chattered mother monkey, "I think you are right." When she turned Jocko over, he was so afraid of being punished, that he pretended to be fast asleep; but he heard all that his father and mother had said, and knew that they guessed right.

"They're just like boys," said George Bliss one day, as he stood looking at the monkeys in Central park. George is a boy, and he ought to know. But there is a great difference after all. Boys can learn, better than monkeys, not to get into mischief, and bother their parents, and other people who come where they are. Some boys do not behave better than monkeys.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MISCHIEVOUS MONKEY.]

THE AFRICAN SLAVE BOY.

There are few who have not heard or read of the great traveler, Sir Samuel Baker, who found his way into the heart of Africa, and whose brave wife accompanied him in all his perilous journeys. The natives, when they found how kind he was, and how interested in trying to help them, called him the Great White Man.

One day, after traveling a long distance, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker were sitting, in the cool of the evening, in front of their tent, enjoying a cup of tea in their English fas.h.i.+on, when a little black boy suddenly ran into the courtyard, and throwing himself at Lady Baker's feet raised his hands toward her, and gazed imploringly into her face.

The English lady thought that the little lad was hungry, and hastened to offer him food; but he refused to eat, and began, with sobs and tears, to tell his tale. He was not hungry, but he wanted to stay with the white lady and be her slave.

In broken accents he related how cruelly he had been treated by the master, who stole him from his parents when he was quite a little boy; how he made him earn money for him, and beat him because he was too small to undertake the tasks which were set him. He told how he and some other boys had crept out of the slave-hut at night and found their way to English Mission House, because they had heard of the white people, who were kind to the blacks.

Then little Saat, for that was his name, made Lady Baker understand how much he loved the white people, and how he wished to be her little slave. She told him kindly that she needed no slave-boy, and that he must go back to his rightful master. But little Saat said, "No, he had no master;" and explained that the Missionaries had taught him a great deal, and then sent him, with some other lads, to Egypt, to help in the Mission work.

Unfortunately, his companions had soon forgotten the good things they had been taught, and behaved so badly that the Missionaries in Egypt refused to keep them, and turned them out, to find their way back as best they might to their own people; but Saat had no people of his own, and he never rested until he succeeded in finding the Great White Man of whom he had heard so much.

Lady Baker's kind heart was touched. She determined to keep the little black boy and train him to be her own attendant. He accompanied the travelers upon their wonderful journey to the Source of the Nile, and his attachment to his mistress was very touching.

CLIMBING.

The ivy, while climbing, preserves its pointed leaf, but when it has reached the top of its support it spreads out into a bushy head and produces only rounded and unshapely leaves.

The ivy, climbing upward on the tower, In vigorous life its shapely tendrils weaves, But, resting on the summit, forms a bower, And sleeps, a tangled ma.s.s of shapeless leaves.

So we, while striving, climb the upward way, And shape by enterprise our inner lives; But when, on some low rest we idly stay, Our purpose, losing point no longer strives.

ELLIOT STOCK.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEARNING TO KNIT.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TUG OF WAR.]

LITTLE ELSIE.

FAITH LATIMER.

"I don't thee ath a Chineth baby lookth any differenth from any other folkth baby, do you, Perthy?"

"That's what I am trying to find out," said Percy, whom his little sister May called her "big brother;" for only that morning she had said to her mother,--"I will athk Perthy, he ith tho big, he muth know every thing."

Percy was as full of wonder as little May over the baby sleeper. He wanted to see the back of her head, but it was resting on the soft pillow, and the eyes were tightly closed. May stood at the foot of the bed longing, and yet afraid, to pull up the cover, and look at the little feet. "Do you thpect she wearth pink thatin thlipperth like thothe in the glath cathe?" she said.

The voices did not waken the baby even when Percy made May give a little scream as he pulled her braided hair, and carried off the ribbon, saying,--"You've got a Chinese pig-tail anyway." Did you ever see a big brother do any thing like that? Then Percy went out and slammed the door, and left little May thinking very hard, and the baby asleep, after all that noise. What was May thinking about? She had heard mamma talk a great deal about China, and had seen queer pictures of people with bald heads and a long braid of hair hanging down behind, and in the cabinet in the sitting-room was a pair of tiny pink satin slippers, so small that her little hand could just go into one of them. Then she had a Chinese doll with almost a bald head, and the queerest shaped eyes; and that was why she and Percy wanted this baby to wake up that they might see what she looked like. That very morning while the children were visiting their grandmother, a carriage came to their house, bringing a little baby and its mother; and by the time they got home, the child was in May's crib, fast asleep, and the two mothers were talking together as they had not done for years before.

Baby Elsie was not easily wakened, for she never had a very quiet place to sleep in. She was quite used to strange noises on s.h.i.+pboard, creaking ropes and escaping steam, loud voices giving orders to sailors, sometimes roaring waters and stormy winds. She had been many nights in a railroad sleeping-car, and she was not disturbed by the rush of wheels, or the whistling of the locomotive. Before that, she lived part of her little life on a boat in a narrow river, and a few months in a crowded, noisy house. Does it seem as if she had been quite a traveler? She had just come all the way from China--a land on the other side of the round world--and that was the reason that May called her a Chinese baby. Percy and May had never seen Elsie's mother, although she was their own aunt, for she and her husband had been more than ten years missionaries in China, and had come on a visit to America. Don't you think the two mothers, dear sisters, who had been so long and so far apart, had a great deal to say to each other? Do you expect they wanted Elsie to sleep quite as much as her cousins wanted her to wake? She was a good child, but she knew how to cry, and after a few days Percy said,--"She's not so much after all, she can't talk and tell us anything, and when she cries, she boo-hoo's just as you do, May."

In a week, two more Chinese travelers came; the baby's father, and another cousin, Knox, a boy nine years old. Did you ever fire off a whole pack of Chinese fire-crackers at a time? That was almost the way that questions were asked by the two boys, back and forth, so quick and fast that there was hardly time to answer each one. The boy from Shanghai found as many things strange to him as the New York boy would have seen in China. Percy, and May, although she could not understand half she heard, were full of wonder as Knox told of living on a boat in the river, of so many boats around them, where people lived crowded together as closely as houses could be on land. He told of the cities, of narrow, crooked streets, all the way under awnings, to be s.h.i.+elded from the hot sun; of riding many miles in a wheel-barrow, with a Chinaman to push it along the road. They all laughed when Percy said they called their cousin Elsie "a Chinese baby;" and the grown folks helped to tell about the black-eyed babies over there, wrapped up in wadded comforts and placed standing, a great, round roll, in a tall basket, instead of a cradle. Percy thought the best thing he heard was of a boy in a royal family. He had to be well taught, for he must be a wise scholar in Chinese learning, but no one dared to touch or hurt him; so a poor boy of low rank was hired and kept in the house to take all the whippings for him; and whenever the young prince deserved correction, the bamboo rod was well laid on the poor boy's back. What would you think of such a plan? Elsie's father and mother were going back to China, but they were not willing that Knox should grow up there; he must go to some good school and stay in this country. Even little Elsie they dared not trust out of their sight among the Chinese.