Stories to Tell to Children Part 19

"Yes," said Death; and the little Nightingale bought the Emperor's sceptre for another song.

Once more Death begged for a song, and this time the little Nightingale got the banner for her singing. Then she sang one more song, so sweet and so sad that it made Death think of his garden in the churchyard, where he always liked best to be. And he rose from the Emperor's heart and floated away through the window.

When Death was gone, the Emperor said to the little Nightingale, "Oh, dear little Nightingale, you have saved me from Death! Do not leave me again. Stay with me on this little gold perch, and sing to me always!"

"No, dear Emperor," said the little Nightingale, "I sing best when I am free; I cannot live in a palace. But every night when you are quite alone, I will come and sit in the window and sing to you, and tell you everything that goes on in your kingdom: I will tell you where the poor people are who ought to be helped, and where the wicked people are who ought to be punished. Only, dear Emperor, be sure that you never let anybody know that you have a little bird who tells you everything."

After the little Nightingale had flown away, the Emperor felt so well and strong that he dressed himself in his royal robes and took his gold sceptre in his hand. And when the courtiers came in to see if he were dead, there stood the Emperor with his sword in one hand and his sceptre in the other, and said, "Good-morning!"

MARGERY'S GARDEN[1]

[1] I have always been inclined to avoid, in my work among children, the "how to make" and "how to do" kind of story; it is too likely to trespa.s.s on the ground belonging by right to its more artistic and less intentional kinsfolk. Nevertheless, there is a legitimate place for the instruction-story. Within its own limits, and especially in a school use, it has a real purpose to serve, and a real desire to meet.

Children have a genuine taste for such morsels of practical information, if the bites aren't made too big and too solid. And to the teacher of the first grades, from whom so much is demanded in the way of practical instruction, I know that these stories are a boon.

They must be chosen with care, and used with discretion, but they need never be ignored.

I venture to give some little stories of this type, which I hope may be of use in the schools where country life and country work is an unknown experience to the children.

There was once a little girl named Margery, who had always lived in the city. The flat where her mother and father lived was at the top of a big apartment-house, and you couldn't see a great deal from the windows, except clothes-lines on other people's roofs. Margery did not know much about trees and flowers, but she loved them dearly; whenever it was a pleasant Sunday she used to go with her mother and father to the park and look at the lovely flower-beds. They seemed always to be finished, though, and Margery was always wis.h.i.+ng she could see them grow.

One spring, when Margery was nine, her father's work changed so that he could move into the country, and he took a little house a short distance outside the town where his new position was. Margery was delighted. And the very first thing she said, when her father told her about it, was, "Oh, may I have a garden? MAY I have a garden?"

Margery's mother was almost as eager for a garden as she was, and Margery's father said he expected to live on their vegetables all the rest of his life! So it was soon agreed that the garden should be the first thing attended to.

Behind the little house were apple trees, a plum tree, and two or three pear trees; then came a stretch of rough gra.s.s, and then a stone wall, with a gate leading into the pasture. It was in the gra.s.sy land that the garden was to be. A big piece was to be used for corn and peas and beans, and a little piece at the end was to be saved for Margery.

"What shall we have in it?" asked her mother.

"Flowers," said Margery, with s.h.i.+ning eyes,--"blue, and white, and yellow, and pink,--every kind of flower!"

"Surely, flowers," said her mother, "and shall we not have a little salad garden in the midst, as they do in England?"

"What is a salad garden?" Margery asked.

"It is a garden where you have all the things that make nice salad,"

said her mother, laughing, for Margery was fond of salads; "you have lettuce, and endive, and romaine, and parsley, and radishes, and cuc.u.mbers, and perhaps little beets and young onions."

"Oh! how good it sounds!" said Margery. "I vote for the salad garden."

That very evening, Margery's father took pencil and paper, and drew out a plan for her garden; first, they talked it all over, then he drew what they decided on; it looked like the diagram on the next page.

"The outside strip is for flowers," said Margery's father, "and the next marks mean a footpath, all the way round the beds; that is so you can get at the flowers to weed and to pick; there is a wider path through the middle, and the rest is all for rows of salad vegetables."

"Papa, it is glorious!" said Margery.

Papa laughed. "I hope you will still think it glorious when the weeding time comes," he said, "for you know, you and mother have promised to take care of this garden, while I take care of the big one."

"I wouldn't NOT take care of it for anything!" said Margery. "I want to feel that it is my very own."

Her father kissed her, and said it was certainly her "very own."

Two evenings after that, when Margery was called in from her first ramble in a "really, truly pasture," she found the expressman at the door of the little house.

"Something for you, Margery," said her mother, with the look she had when something nice was happening.

It was a box, quite a big box, with a label on it that said:--

MISS MARGERY BROWN, WOODVILLE, Ma.s.s.

From Seeds and Plants Company, Boston.

Margery could hardly wait to open it. It was filled with little packages, all with printed labels; and in the packages, of course, were seeds. It made Margery dance, just to read the names,--nasturtium, giant helianthus, coreopsis, calendula, Canterbury bells: more names than I can tell you, and other packages, bigger, that said, "Peas: Dwarf Telephone," and "Sweet Corn," and such things! Margery could almost smell the posies, she was so excited. Only, she had seen so little of flowers that she did not always know what the names meant.

She did not know that a helianthus was a sunflower till her mother told her, and she had never seen the dear, blue, bell-shaped flowers that always grow in old-fas.h.i.+oned gardens, and are called Canterbury bells.

She thought the calendula must be a strange, grand flower, by its name; but her mother told her it was the gay, st.u.r.dy, every-dayish little posy called a marigold. There was a great deal for a little city girl to be surprised about, and it did seem as if morning was a long way off!

"Did you think you could plant them in the morning?" asked her mother.

"You know, dear, the ground has to be made ready first; it takes a little time,--it may be several days before you can plant."

That was another surprise. Margery had thought she could begin to sow the seed right off.

But this was what was done. Early the next morning, a man came driving into the yard, with two strong white horses; in his wagon was a plough.

I suppose you have seen ploughs, but Margery never had, and she watched with great interest, while the man and her father took the plough from the cart and harnessed the horses to it. It was a great, three-cornered piece of sharp steel, with long handles coming up from it, so that a man could hold it in place. It looked like this:--

"I brought a two-horse plough because it's green land," the man said.

Margery wondered what in the world he meant; it was green gra.s.s, of course, but what had that to do with the kind of plough? "What does he mean, father?" she whispered, when she got a chance. "He means that this land has not been ploughed before, or not for many years; it will be hard to turn the soil, and one horse could not pull the plough,"

said her father. So Margery had learned what "green land" was.

The man was for two hours ploughing the little strip of land. He drove the sharp end of the plough into the soil, and held it firmly so, while the horses dragged it along in a straight line. Margery found it fascinating to see the long line of dark earth and green gra.s.s come rolling up and turn over, as the knife pa.s.sed it. She could see that it took real skill and strength to keep the line even, and to avoid the stones. Sometimes the plough struck a hidden stone, and then the man was jerked almost off his feet. But he only laughed, and said, "Tough piece of land; be a lot better the second year."

When he had ploughed, the man went back to his cart and unloaded another farm implement. This one was like a three-cornered platform of wood, with a long, curved, strong rake under it. It was called a harrow, and it looked like this:--

The man harnessed the horses to it, and then he stood on the platform and drove all over the strip of land. It was fun to watch, but perhaps it was a little hard to do. The man's weight kept the harrow steady, and let the teeth of the rake scratch and cut the ground up, so that it did not stay in ridges.

"He scrambles the ground, father!" said Margery.

"It needs scrambling," laughed her father. "We are going to get more weeds than we want on this green land, and the more the ground is broken, the fewer there will be."

After the ploughing and harrowing, the man drove off, and Margery's father said he would do the rest of the work in the late afternoons, when he came home from business; they could not afford too much help, he said, and he had learned to take care of a garden when he was a boy.

So Margery did not see any more done until the next day.

But the next day there was hard work for Margery's father! Every bit of that "scrambled" turf had to be broken up still more with a mattock and a spade, and then the pieces which were full of gra.s.s-roots had to be taken on a fork and shaken, till the earth fell out; then the gra.s.s was thrown to one side. That would not have had to be done if the land had been ploughed in the fall; the gra.s.s would have rotted in the ground, and would have made fertilizer for the plants. Now, Margery's father put the fertilizer on the top, and then raked it into the earth.

At last, it was time to make the place for the seeds. Margery and her mother helped. Father tied one end of a cord to a little stake, and drove the stake in the ground at one end of the garden. Then he took the cord to the other end of the garden and pulled it tight, tied it to another stake, and drove that down. That made a straight line for him to see. Then he hoed a trench, a few inches deep, the whole length of the cord, and scattered fertilizer in it. Pretty soon the whole garden was in lines of little trenches.

"Now for the corn," said father.