Journeys Through Bookland Volume Iv Part 9

There came also as the day grew apace a painter who had fame in the world and who was liberal of hand and of spirit.

"I seek one who should have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the people, "a boy of rare promise and genius. An old woodcutter on a fallen tree at eventide, that was all his theme. I would find him and take him with me and teach him art."

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung to her father's arm, cried aloud: "O Nello, come! We have all ready for thee. The Christ child's hands are full of gifts, and the old piper will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth and burn nuts with us all the Noel week long--yes even to the feast of the kings! And Patrasche will be happy! O Nello, wake and come!"

But the young, pale face, turned upward to the great Rubens with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."

For the sweet sonorous h.e.l.ls went ringing through the frost, and the sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay and glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked charity at their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.

When they were found the arms of the boy were folded so closely around the dog that it was difficult to draw them away. The people of the little village, contrite and ashamed, took the little boy tenderly in their arms and bore him away to his last resting place. Patrasche was not forgotten, for all the villagers felt the strength of his devotion.

Of all the characters in this story, which is the most important and the most interesting? The author has showed us which she considers the most important by the t.i.tle she has given to the tale--_A Dog of Flanders_. Let us see just what she has told us about Patrasche, that we may know whether he is worthy of being the hero of a story.

First, as to his appearance, we are given the following facts:

1. Yellow of hide.

2. Large of limb.

3. Wolflike ears.

4. Legs bowed and feet widened.

5. Large, wistful, sympathetic eyes.

6. Great, tawny head.

7. (Later) Drooping and feeble; gaunt.

The picture which the author paints for us of Patrasche's appearance is not beautiful; we do not love him just for his looks. As to his character and abilities, we are told, or are enabled to find out from his actions, the following things:

1. Strong and industrious. He used to draw the heavy cart of the hardware dealer.

2. Grateful. He loved those who had saved his life, and worked for them willingly.

3. Careful of his young master. He was troubled when Nello went into the dim churches.

4. Wise. He felt that it was good for Nello to be as much as possible in the sunny fields or among happy people.

5. Sympathetic. He looked at Nello with _wistful, sympathetic eyes_.

6. Understanding. He realized that the picture that Nello was drawing was something which meant much to him.

7. Loving. He grieved pa.s.sionately with Nello at the old man's death.

8. Acute of sense. He discovered the pocket book in the snow.

9. Faithful. He refused to stay in the miller's warm kitchen while Nello was out in the cold.

10. Persistent and patient. He never gave up the search, difficult though it was, until he had found his master.

11. Unselfish. He was happy for himself, but he wept because his master was unhappy.

Do you think a dog could have all these qualities, or do you think the author, in her anxiety to have us like the dog, has given him characteristics which he could not really possess? Have you not, yourself, known dogs that were as intelligent, as affectionate and as faithful as Patrasche?

ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY

_By_ ANNA McCALEB

In the writings of Alice and Phoebe Cary are to be found many references which show how fondly they remembered the little brown house in which they were born. This house was on a farm in the Miami Valley in Ohio, eight miles north of Cincinnati. Alice was born April 26th, 1820, and Phoebe, September 24th, 1824, and there was one brother between them. Robert Gary, the father, was a kindly, gentle man, fond of reading, especially romances and poetry. The education for which he had so much longed he had been unable to obtain, and this made him quiet and diffident with strangers, although in his own family he was most loving and most companionable. Even the animals on the farm loved him, and the horses and cattle would follow him about watching for the kindly word and pat, or for the lump of salt or sugar which he was so certain to have for them. This Robert Cary was a descendant of Sir Robert Cary, a famous English knight of the time of Henry V, and Phoebe was always very proud of this ancestry of hers--so proud, in fact, that she had the Gary arms engraved on a seal ring.

It would seem that the enthusiastic admiration which the daughters all their life had for their mother was nothing beyond her deserts, for she seems to have been far from an ordinary woman. Despite the fact that she had nine children, and that she did the work for the entire family, she managed to keep up her interest in public affairs, and to read history, essays, biography and politics, as often as books on such subjects came to her hand.

In the little brown house with its overhanging cherry tree, which tapped the roof and scratched the attic window-panes, and with its sweetbrier under the window, the children lived a simple and happy life. Naturally in a family of this size they divided themselves into groups, and Alice and Phoebe, who in their later life were so inseparable, do not seem to have singled each other out as companions in their childhood. Alice's special comrade was her next older sister, Rhoda, Thom she persisted to her dying day in thinking of as the real genius of the family, while the constant playmate of the active Phoebe was her next younger brother. The children spent much time out-of- doors, gathering nuts and flowers in their season, and gaining that love of nature which stayed with them all their lives. As they grew older, they were sent to the district school, and were taught household tasks, Alice taking readily enough to housekeeping, while Phoebe became, even as a child, remarkably proficient with the needle.

The struggle to keep out of debt was a constant one with the Cary family, and Alice said long years afterward, "For the first fourteen years of my life it seemed as if there was actually nothing in existence but work." However, By 1832 family affairs had improved somewhat, and a new and larger house was built upon the farm. It seemed as if all the ill luck of the family dated from the building of the new house, in which they were never as happy as they had been in the little brown house.

When she was a woman, Alice told with perfect faith the "family ghost story," which concerned this new house. She said that just before the removal of the family to the new house, they were all driven to the shelter of the old house by a sudden and violent summer storm. As Alice herself stood at the window looking out, she exclaimed to her mother, "Why is Rhoda at the new house with baby Lucy, and why does she have the door open?"

They all looked, and all saw Rhoda standing in the doorway of the new house, with the baby in her arms.

"She was probably out with the child and took shelter in the nearest place when the storm came up," said the mother, and then she called loudly, "Rhoda!"

The figure in the doorway did not move, and in a few moments Rhoda came down from upstairs, where she had left little Lucy asleep, declaring that she had not been near the new house.

The family believed most sincerely that this was a warning of trouble to come, and certain it is that in 1833, within one month of each other, Rhoda and little Lucy died. Lucy had been Alice's special charge, as Rhoda had been her special companion, and the girl's heart was almost broken by this double loss. How deep and lasting her grief was may be seen from a remark that she made to one of her friends, speaking of Lucy's death.

"I was not fourteen when she died--I am almost fifty now. It may seem strange when I tell you that I do not believe that there has been an hour of any day since her death in which I have not thought of her and mourned for her."

In 1835 Mrs. Cary died, and two years later the father married again.

The stepmother, a hard-headed, practical woman, could see nothing but laziness in the desire of Alice and Phoebe to read and write. During the day she insisted that they must keep busy about the house; in the evening she refused to allow them to burn candles, and thus the girls often worked with no light except what was afforded by a saucer of lard with a twist of rag stuck into it for a wick. For books they had but the Bible, a Hymn Book, a _History of the Jews, Lewis and Clark's Travels_, Pope's _Essays_, _Charlotte Temple_, a romance, and a mutilated novel, _The Black Penitents_. The last pages of this novel were missing, and Alice often declared that it was a lifelong regret to her that she never learned how the story "turned out."

With these meager helps and with no incentives to work except their own desires, Alice and Phoebe constantly wrote poems and stories. At the age of fourteen, Phoebe, without telling her father or even her sister, sent a poem to a Boston publisher. She heard nothing from it, but some time later came upon it, copied in a Cincinnati paper from the Boston journal. She laughed and cried in her excitement, but still she told no one.

About this time the father and stepmother removed to another house which had been built on the farm, and left the children in possession of the old one, so that their life was decidedly happier and their chances for work were multiplied.

Alice from this time on published numerous poems, chiefly in church papers, and her writings began to attract attention throughout the country. There was a freshness and charm about her little poems which won for them the favorable opinion of some of the best judges of poetry in the country. Of her "Pictures of Memory," Poe said that it was one of the most rhythmically perfect lyrics in the English language.

Whittier wrote to the sisters, and Horace Greeley visited them in 1849, and thus slowly they gained the recognition and the encouragement which led them in 1850 to a rather daring step.

This was no less than a removal to New York. Alice went first, but she soon sent for Phoebe and their younger sister Elmina. In thus setting out for the great city and settling down to earn her living, Alice Cary was no doubt influenced by a rather painful circ.u.mstance which had taken place in her life. There had come to their neighborhood, some little time before, a man, her superior in age and education, who had recognized her unusual gifts and attractiveness, and had spent much time with her. She came to love him deeply and sincerely, and it would seem that he was but little less attracted by her. However, his family managed to persuade him that his best interests demanded that he should not marry this country-bred girl, and he returned to his home, leaving Alice to watch and hope for his coming. The gradual relinquishment of her dream and the final conviction that the sort of home life for which she felt herself most fitted was not after all to be hers, led Alice Cary to feel that she must take up some definite work to support herself and to help her sisters. She herself said later, in speaking about the removal to New York, "Ignorance stood me in the stead of courage and of books"--she knew so little about the great city to which she was going that she feared it little.

The sisters made up their minds from the first that they would have a home; they had a horror of the boarding-house atmosphere. Their first home was but two, or three rooms, high up in a big building in an unfas.h.i.+onable part of the town. Alice papered rooms, Phoebe painted doors and framed pictures; but the impress of their individuality was on the rooms, and every one who entered them felt their coziness and "hominess." Papers and magazines paid but little for contributions in those days, and it was only by living in the most economical and humble way that they managed to avoid their great horror--debt. But their life was by no means barren, for they became acquainted with many pleasant people, who were always glad and proud to be invited to the little tea parties in the three rooms under the roof.