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THE SPOTTED DEER. 
 
'IK V 
 
 \s< 
 
 ^ SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 A BOOK FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 
 
 By ALICE CARY. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 
 ' °f V/ashU^ 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 
 1867. 
 
 v 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 Cambridge. 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 MY little men and women 
 Who sit with your eyes downcast, 
 Turning the leaves of the Snow-Berries 
 Over and over so fast, 
 
 I know as I hear them flutter 
 
 Like the leaves on a summer bough, 
 
 You are looking out for the story about 
 The fairies, — are n't you, now ? 
 
 And so it is wise to tell you 
 That you need not turn so fast, 
 
 For there is n't a single fairy-tale 
 In the book from first to last. 
 
 My Muse is plain and homespun, — 
 Quite given to work-day ways, — 
 
 And she never spent an hour in the tent 
 Of a fairy, in all her days. 
 
 She is strongest on her native soil ; 
 
 And you will see she sings 
 Little in praise of elfs and fays, 
 
 And less of queens and kings. 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 The finest ladies, so she says, 
 
 And the gentlemen most grand, 
 Are made by Nature gentlefolk, 
 
 And are royal at first hand. 
 
 She says of the women who sew and spin, 
 
 And keep the house with care, 
 That they are the queens and princesses 
 
 Whose trains we ought to bear. 
 
 And says of the men who hammer and forge, 
 
 And clear and plough the land, 
 That they are the worthy gentlemen 
 
 Who make our country grand. 
 
 A ribbon, she says, in the buttonhole, 
 
 May go for what it goes, 
 But he is the greatest man who is great 
 
 Without such tinsel shows. 
 
 Our country's flag can never drag, 
 She says, nor its stars go down ; 
 
 For how should it fall when one and all 
 Are rightful heirs to the crown ! 
 
 But, little women, and little men, 
 I will tell you now, if you please, 
 
 What I set out to tell you about, — 
 Some real snow-berries. 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 All in the wild November, 
 
 And a long, long time ago, 
 When the birds were gone and the daisies done, 
 
 And clouds hung chilly and low, 
 
 Seven little and laughing children — 
 
 I, as you guess, being one — 
 Stood at the pane to charm the rain, 
 
 And to catch a glimpse of the sun. 
 
 At noon it was dreary as twilight, 
 
 But just as the clock struck two 
 There broke its way through the mass of gray 
 
 A hand's-breadth of the blue. 
 
 How close we pressed to see some cloud 
 
 Put on a golden edge, — 
 Head over head, and cheeks as red 
 
 As the roses in a hedge. 
 
 And the gray is grained with silver, 
 And the blue has widened its streak ; 
 
 And I was the one to see the sun, 
 And I was the one to speak ! 
 
 " Now, out and "away to the meadows ! 
 
 The rain has been charmed, you see, — 
 For here at our feet are our shadows, — 
 
 Three, and one, and three. 
 
" Be sure, the beautiful violet 
 
 In the grass no longer glows, 
 But we may get a-burning yet, 
 
 Some little lamp of a rose ! " 
 
 So out we ran to the meadows, 
 
 Though the time of flowers was done, 
 
 And after us ran our shadows, — 
 Three and three, and one. 
 
 All up and down the rivulets 
 
 That shaved so close to the sand, 
 
 And all across the lowland moss, 
 And across the stubble land ; 
 
 And deep, and deeper into the wood, 
 And under the hedge-row wall ; 
 
 To the Callamus Pond, and on beyond, 
 And never a flower at all ! 
 
 Footsore, weary, and heart-sick, 
 
 We had tramped for three long hours, 
 
 When a voice so proud cried out aloud, 
 " The flowers ! I 've found the flowers ! " 
 
 Fast we flew to the top of the hill, 
 
 And fast and faster down, 
 And full in sight limbs shone so white 
 
 From the thicket dull and brown. 
 
PEELUDE. 
 
 The turf slides back, and farther back, 
 We are there, we are under the trees ! 
 
 And our eager hands are breaking the wands 
 Of the milk-white snow-berries ! 
 
 We had had a tramp, through cold and damp, 
 
 Of three right weary hours, 
 But we did not grieve, if you believe, 
 
 That our berries were not flowers ! 
 
 But each with a sheaf on his shoulder, 
 
 As white as the whitest foam, 
 We struck across the lowland moss, 
 
 And into the lights of home. 
 
 So, my little men and women, 
 Who sit with your eyes downcast, 
 
 Turning the leaves of the Snow-Berries, 
 So eagerly and so fast, 
 
 When that you fail to find the tale 
 
 Of airy fancy bred, 
 You may even get some pleasure yet 
 
 From the stories in their stead. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Page 
 The Spotted Deer i 
 
 Two Birds 26 
 
 To the Boys 28 
 
 Counting the Chickens . . . . . 29 
 
 Advice 30 
 
 Talk with a Tree 31 
 
 A New- Year's Lesson 32 
 
 The Burning Prairie 35 
 
 PART II. 
 The Gypsy Fortune-Teller . . . . . . .39 
 
 The Cow-Boy 58 
 
 Little Ellie 60 
 
 The Brickmaker's Boy 62 
 
 Fairy Folk 64 
 
 Less or More 65 
 
 Fine Talk - . . .66 
 
 PART III. 
 The Weaver's Daughters . . . . .69 
 
 Three Little Women 86 
 
 Pretty is that pretty does 88 
 
 Elijah and I 89 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 A Fisherman 90 
 
 Amy to her Flowers 92 
 
 Autumn Thoughts 94 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 The Man who stole a Cow . . . . . . 97 
 
 The Potter's Luck 118 
 
 A Poet's Walk 121 
 
 The Snow-Flower 122 
 
 Easy Work 124 
 
 Courage 125 
 
 Jenny and I 126 
 
 PART V. 
 
 The Charmed Money ' . 129 
 
 To a Stagnant Pond 155 
 
 The Poet to the Painter 158 
 
 Only a Dream 160 
 
 Inventory of a Drunkard 162 
 
 Hunter's Song 163 
 
 Hagen Walder 164 
 
 A Goose and a Crow . 167 
 
 PART VI. 
 The Man with a Stone in his Heart . . -171 
 
 Caty Jane . 196 
 
 The Street Beggar 201 
 
 Evil Chance 202 
 
 Plea for the Boys 203 
 
 Work 204 
 
 Counsel 205 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE SPOTTED DEER. 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 
 
 THE sun was growing large toward the setting, 
 and the light, more red than golden, shin- 
 ing more and more faintly along a great mass of 
 woods that reached backward and upward along 
 the slope, till their tops seemed to touch the sky, 
 almost, and the red and scarlet and yellow of the 
 foliage — for it was autumn — to be giving their 
 colors to the clouds, when an adventurer made 
 fast his boat on the shore of the Ohio immediately 
 opposite Little Sandy Creek ; and, having given 
 some directions to his men, proceeded, accom- 
 panied only by his dog, to climb the ascent along 
 which the village of Lewisburgh was sprinkled. 
 
 The villagers, as the stranger soon found, were 
 but recent settlers on the land, — a tract of twenty 
 thousand acres, extending along the river, and 
 granted them by Congress in consideration of the 
 frauds and impositions practised upon them in 
 their earlier settlement of the neighboring town 
 of Galliopolis. 
 
 They were mostly French, or the descendants of 
 French emigrants, — a gay, primitive sort of people, 
 
4 SNOW-BEKRIES. 
 
 half thrifty, half negligent in their habits, and 
 in some sort refined in their rudeness, and culti- 
 vated in their ignorance. 
 
 They were generally farmers in a small way, each 
 having a few acres of ground attached to his cottage, 
 upon which he raised vegetables, grapes, and corn. 
 
 Almost every house had its flower-garden, its 
 bird-cages at the window, and its pet animals 
 about the door, and here and there in the out- 
 skirts of the village stood a tent or a wigwam 
 where Indians, to whom this people were very 
 friendly, carried on their trades, — making baskets 
 of birch bark, bags of bead-work, and other articles 
 of a trifling and ornamental character. The cot- 
 tages were generally painted or whitewashed, and 
 together with the tents and wigwams gave the 
 town a romantic and picturesque appearance. 
 
 The sunset light, falling upon and brightening 
 the mists of the river, gave a charming effect to 
 the beauty which the landscape would have pos- 
 sessed at any time ; and the numberless children 
 engaged in careless sports, together with a great 
 variety of pets, sporting with and among them, 
 completed the enchantment of the scene. 
 
 We have said the grounds about the houses 
 were devoted chiefly to corn and vegetables ; but 
 the peach-orchards with which the surrounding 
 hills were planted afforded the chief source of in- 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 5 
 
 come, yielding as they do without much cultiva- 
 tion. They procured them coffee, delf-ware, cut- 
 lery, and such simple articles of finery as the wo- 
 men desired, leaving abundant time for those 
 pleasurable and healthful activities of which they 
 were so fond. 
 
 It was September, with one of those mild, cloudy 
 atmospheres that have the balminess of spring, and 
 with the shadows came the young people out into 
 the gardens, — the youths wearing blue jackets 
 and trousers, which their mothers had spun and 
 woven for them, and the maidens, party-colored 
 dresses made in the gayest fashions which mem- 
 ory or invention could suggest. 
 
 Some of the more sober matrons brought out 
 their wheels, or needle-work, and, under the trees, 
 continued sewing and spinning till the last light 
 faded from the hill-tops, and the bright stripes 
 that variegated the woods were lost in one gen- 
 eral and sombre hue. 
 
 The older men gathered near these industrious 
 housewives, and, as they chatted of days gone by, 
 polished their guns or mended their fishing-tackle ; 
 while the smaller children instructed the pet ani- 
 mals, of which we have spoken, in various ingen- 
 ious tricks, until, wearied out, they sunk on the 
 grass among them, and fearlessly fell asleep ; so 
 primitive and simple were the habits of these 
 people. 
 
6 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 The strange gentleman, as he leisurely strolled 
 from one part of the village to another, found him- 
 self the object of much respectful admiration and 
 attention : the old women smiled, for he was hand- 
 some, and when do women cease to give such rec- 
 ognition to handsome faces? the old men lifted 
 their caps with an exceeding elegance of manner, 
 and smiled, too, a little less graciously perhaps, 
 while the children ran up to him and made over- 
 tures toward acquaintance by presents of flowers 
 and grapes. On the shoulder of one little crea- 
 ture a tame blue-jay would be fluttering, and give 
 its noisy welcome, and on the head of another the 
 paroquet, making such signs of gladness as it had 
 been taught to make, and the summer duck and 
 the peacock, meantime, would walk before him, 
 spreading out their brilliant plumage as if in con- 
 tribution to his pleasure. 
 
 This sociability and friendship on the part of the 
 children and their pets begot in the heart of the 
 stranger a sympathetic and kindly interest almost 
 at once, and his address so won upon these un- 
 sophisticated people that they extended to him an 
 invitation to sup with them under the trees, and 
 afterward join in the dance of the evening. 
 
 From the novelty of the suggestion, our adven- 
 turer entered into it with great heartiness, and a 
 vivacity scarcely exceeded by his demonstrative 
 
THE SPOTTED DEEE. 7 
 
 entertainers. Almost every house contributed its 
 quota of milk, wine, and peaches to the little fes- 
 tival, while he himself furnished his share in white 
 biscuits, which he caused to be brought from the 
 boat, — a donation than which nothing could have 
 proven more acceptable, the settlers having sub- 
 sisted for several months continuously on bread 
 composed chiefly of maize. 
 
 Never was supper more cheerful, never was 
 gayety more harmless ; and as for the stranger, 
 it was rather as if some dear friend had come back 
 to his home, than as though an adventurer were 
 by chance amongst them for an hour. 
 
 Three youths were in readiness with flutes and 
 violins, to strike up after the viands had received 
 due honor, the lads and lasses, not without effort, 
 having restrained their impatience for more congen- 
 ial merriment till the rural repast was concluded. 
 
 By and by the moon came up in full-orbed glory. 
 Hundreds of candles fixed in the trees contrib- 
 uted to the illumination ; and such a picture of rus- 
 tic enjoyment as was presented we can only hope 
 to outline imperfectly. The women put away their 
 wheels, the men their guns and fishing-tackle ; 
 young mothers sung their babes to sleep, and, lay- 
 ing them on the grass, covered them with their 
 shawls, and leaving the faithful dogs to tend them, 
 ran to join the dance with hearts as light as their 
 
8 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 footsteps. All seemed young alike. Old French- 
 men, lively as their grandchildren, were capering 
 about in crimson caps ; while their wives, in dresses 
 of the fashion of the time of Louis XI V., gossiped 
 with one another with still more animated volubil- 
 ity ; and the young people of both sexes, habited in 
 holiday costumes, lit up the shady places with their 
 bright blushes as they " tript it to and fro on the 
 light fantastic toe." Numbers of the domestic an- 
 imals I have mentioned followed their masters con- 
 fidently among the graceful and merry circles, con- 
 tributing to the picturesque and inartificial beauty 
 of the scene. 
 
 Among these animals were raccoons and opos- 
 sums, both as tame as young pigs ; also a curious 
 little animal called the ground-hog, which could 
 never be so far tamed by any amount of kindness 
 as not to snap at the hand that offered it food ; but 
 the most remarkable and perhaps interesting of 
 all the animals was a huge cub-bear, that was as 
 full of playful tricks as a monkey, taking from 
 time to time some one of the children between its 
 paws, and rolling and tumbling on the ground with 
 it as though it were going to tear it to pieces, and 
 may be devour it into the bargain. 
 
 Some of the Indian women and children drew 
 near and gazed on the scene with a strange mix- 
 ture of the grave and the mirthful in their faces ; 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. \) 
 
 and it was remarkable to observe with what fondness 
 the wild creatures — birds and beasts — gathered 
 about them. Here a youth might be seen with a 
 wolf or ground-hog, and perhaps one or two other 
 animals, between his legs, and there a young squaw, 
 with all her black hair hidden by the splendors of 
 the wings that were fluttering on her shoulders. 
 
 The Indian men kept mostly at a distance, but 
 one rawboned hunter was persuaded at last to 
 perform the war-funeral and the marriage-dance, 
 both of which he gave in grand style ; and so the 
 festivities, or the more mirthful of them, came to 
 an end. The old people, who had been sitting on 
 the benches ranged along the walks, arose and went 
 home, chattering and gesticulating as they went. 
 The mothers took up their babies, and the dulcet 
 symphonies fell to a lower and lower key, till by 
 and by they faded down to silence, and quiet took 
 up her melancholy reign. 
 
 The heart of the stranger was sad as he took 
 his separate way to the boat that, curtained with 
 mists, lay hugging the shore ; for there is a power 
 sometimes in the intercourse of a few hours that 
 holds us like the friendship of years, and makes us 
 feel poor and lonesome as we let go some hand 
 whose single pressure has given us the assurance 
 of a kindness that shall assert itself in eternity, if 
 not in time. 
 
 1* 
 
10 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 He was half way down the slope, and could al- 
 ready see the yellow-capped heads of the river- 
 waves, and hear the whistling and talking of the 
 distant raftsmen as they paddled their slow way to 
 the music of the whippoor wills, when suddenly 
 a sound unlike what his ear was tuned to struck 
 upon his attention and jangled to discord all his 
 sweet imaginings. 
 
 It was not a sobbing nor crying, but a helpless, 
 hopeless moaning that was more sorrowful to hear 
 than either, for it indicated a heart, not so much 
 crushed by sudden misfortune as wearied out by 
 long suffering. 
 
 Standing still to listen, our adventurer perceived 
 a rude habitation by the roadside, from the win- 
 dows of which streamed no light, and about which 
 grew no flowers. Indeed there was not so much 
 as a tree or a patch of green grass between the 
 doorsill and the highway. 
 
 A little way from this dreary habitation, seated 
 on a mossy log, and mournfully caressing two beau- 
 tiful deer that stood on either side of her, was a 
 young girl, apparently in deep distress. One of 
 these deer was as white as milk, with the exception 
 of a few red freckles on the breast and one of the 
 flanks ; the other, was as spotted as a leopard. 
 Both seemed exceedingly fond of her ; and while 
 the one was rubbing its graceful head against her 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 11 
 
 bare shoulder, — jangling a bell which was at- 
 tached to a shining collar it wore on its neck, — 
 the other licked the hands which lay idly folded in 
 the girl's lap. 
 
 Her feet had just touched that marvellously beau- 
 tiful, but also sadly uncertain ground where child- 
 hood and womanhood meet, and perhaps the time 
 and the situation lent their charm ; at any rate, 
 she had that about her which drew and fixed the 
 eyes of the stranger. He could not, perhaps, have 
 himself expressed the peculiar nature of the inter- 
 est awakened in him, as the sorrowful face looked 
 out from its cloudy tresses with an expression of 
 gentle appeal. He at once approached, and, under 
 pretence of the greatest admiration for the spotted 
 deer, made a proposal for their purchase. 
 
 Was there anything under the. sun that would 
 induce the fairy-like keeper of these singularly 
 beautiful creatures to part with them for good and 
 all ? How came she by them ? 0, he was en- 
 chanted, especially with the more spotted of the 
 two. 
 
 " Tell me, will you part with them for any 
 price ? " And bending low, the stranger waited in 
 silence for her answer. 
 
 " no, sir," replied the young girl, speaking 
 English with an accent that betrayed her French 
 origin. " I would not part with them for a whole 
 
12 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 lapful of gold ; they are my only friends ! " and 
 she caught back her heavy hair and bent her great 
 dark eyes upon the stranger as she spoke, with an 
 earnestness that drew hirn almost to her feet. 
 
 " Your only friends ! how can that be, my pretty 
 one ? Surely you are deserving a kinder fate," he 
 said. 
 
 She did not let fall the gathered-up tresses to con- 
 ceal the blushes tangling redly along her cheeks. 
 She was too ingenuous, and too unaffectedly friend- 
 less to receive from the stranger's words any 
 meaning, save that of genuine kindness. On the 
 contrary, she told him all her little story with a 
 confiding artlessness and simplicity that must have 
 touched the best feelings of his manhood, and made 
 him friendly if he had not previously been so. 
 
 When she was no higher than her spotted deer, 
 she said, her good mother died and was carried 
 away and left on the hill that stood up so dark and 
 so high between the yellow woods and the river, — 
 their few cows and simple furniture were sold to 
 defray the expenses of a long illness, and procure 
 something a little better than charitable support for 
 herself. 
 
 So slender a fortune was soon exhausted, of 
 course, and our story-teller, whose name was Eve- 
 line, was elbowed and jostled about, now here, now 
 there, — now in the way, and now out of the way. 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 13 
 
 — now in the village, and now perhaps in the wig- 
 wam of some Indian hunter, — drudging with the 
 squaws part of the time, and shooting with the bow 
 and arrow the other part. In the spring-time she 
 spun flax, in the summer she carded wool, in 
 the time of the grape harvest she gleaned, and, in 
 short, did what she could find to do ; for it is the 
 misfortune of poverty, that it has not a choice even 
 of its work, 
 
 At length she fell into the hands of the penuri- 
 ous old woman with whom she still lived, and for 
 whom she spun all day, and far into the night 
 sometimes. 
 
 " And where did you find these friends ? " asked 
 the stranger, seating himself on the mossy log a 
 little way from her, and doing his best to win her 
 favor through the praises he bestowed upon her 
 beautiful pets. 
 
 Then he told the two deer in a most playful 
 way, what blessed fortune had befallen them when 
 they fell into the hands of the little maid who was 
 their mistress, and asked them if they loved her as 
 so gentle and good a maiden deserved to be loved. 
 
 " yes ! " answered Eveline for them, not in the 
 least embarrassed by the implied compliment. " 
 yes, they love me with all their two little hearts ! " 
 
 Then, as she knitted up her long hair on her fin- 
 gers, and ravelled it out again, she told him, with a 
 
14 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 generous eagerness to oblige, how she had been 
 used to bring home the cows from the meadow 
 away beyond the orchard, and farther off than he 
 could see, and how tired her feet would grow in the 
 lonesome path for the want of company, and how, 
 happening one night to meet an old man who was 
 peddling fawns, she gave her ear-rings in exchange 
 for two of them, hoping by her spinning she should 
 soon be able to replace the rings. " But I never 
 have been," she concluded, with a sigh that betrayed 
 her fondness for ornaments and the sacrifice she 
 had made in behalf of her beautiful favorites. 
 
 " Suppose I should give you the prettiest pair of 
 ear-rings in the world, — coral drops, with gold 
 setting," — said the adventurer, unknitting her 
 black hair from her hand and folding it within his 
 own as he spoke, " what would you give me in 
 exchange, — the two deer ? " 
 
 Eveline looked bewildered for a moment, and 
 then tears began filling up her beautiful eyes at the 
 thought of parting from her only companions. " No, 
 no," she said at last, " I cannot give them up, for 
 you must know, sir, they love me, and even the 
 pretty ear-rings you promise me could not buy me 
 that ; besides, the old woman, who is my mis- 
 tress, would steal them from me as she did my red 
 ribbon to-night, keeping me away from the dance. 
 sir, it was breaking my heart when you came." 
 
THE SPOTTED DEEE. 15 
 
 And with a charming simplicity she went on 
 asking questions about the evening gayeties, now 
 bursting into tears at the remembrance of the sweet 
 red ribbon with which her hard mistress had 
 adorned her own ugly person, while herself was 
 wrongfully compelled to mope at home ; and now 
 laughing and blushing at the stranger's eloquently 
 expressed regrets that he should not have had the 
 pleasure of dancing with her. 
 
 " Ah, but you will come some other evening ! " 
 she cried, with the eager hopefulness of one who 
 had never known a pleasure like that; and then 
 she said, if it would really please him to dance 
 with her, she would weave a bright garland of 
 flowers for her head, and wear her blue bodice and 
 scalloped petticoat ! 
 
 What an honor and delight she would have, to 
 be sure ; and would n't the young girls all envy 
 her, and would n't the old woman who was her mis- 
 tress grow black in the face as a cloud, with angry 
 irritation! And as long as she lived the memory 
 of that night would be like a blessed candle burn- 
 ing away behind her in the dark ! What evening 
 might she expect to see him, and would he not 
 come very, very soon ? How lovely she appeared 
 as she waited with eager uplifted face for his re- 
 ply, her cheeks like two red roses, and the beating 
 of her heart making the ruffled cape that was tied 
 across her bosom flutter again. 
 
16 SNOW-BEREIES. 
 
 The stranger was evidently touched by the sim- 
 ple sincerity of the fresh young beauty, and bent 
 his admiring eyes very near the roselit cheek as 
 he explained to her the little probability there was 
 of their ever meeting again, even for a single 
 evening. 
 
 " I am but a rude traveller, my pretty one," he 
 said, "in love with adventure, and liking the 
 woods and the fields, the birds, the beasts, and 
 the curious insects of the air, better than I like 
 the homes of men and the tameness and common- 
 ness of civilized society." 
 
 If life could be all one moonlit evening, and all 
 a dance, and if he could dance with her, why it 
 would be very nice and pleasant, but that could 
 not be ; his boat was waiting even then on the 
 near river, just beyond the green fringe of wil- 
 lows that she could see so plain, — waiting to 
 bear him, he knew not where, but somewhere far 
 enough away from her, he was afraid. 
 
 "No, no, my child," — and he sighed as he 
 spoke, — " it is not likely we shall ever meet again 
 in this world ; but before long you will find a lover 
 to dance with, and then you will forget you have 
 ever seen the boatman who sits beside you now, I 
 dare say." 
 
 " O r how can you say so ? " answered Eveline. 
 "If I am not to dance with you, I shall never 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 17 
 
 dance at all, but spin and spin till I spin me a 
 shroud." Then she hung her head and made no 
 effort to conceal the tears that came to her in- 
 nocent eyes ; and her lately happy heart ceasing to 
 nutter in her bosom, like a bird that is learning to 
 fly, lay there as still and as heavy as lead. " If I 
 had only the red ribbon to give you, so that some- 
 times when you happened to see it you might re- 
 member me!" she said, at last ; " but the old 
 woman has stolen my ribbon, and that is the only 
 ornament I ever had, except the ear-rings, that I 
 parted with as I told you. Ah, it is too bad that 
 I have nothing to give you ! " 
 
 Then the stranger told her not to fret because 
 the old woman had stolen her ribbon. " And for 
 that matter, you shall have another," he said, " if 
 you will only give me the deer. I can send it 
 with the ear-rings, you know." And then he told 
 her, seeing that she was not quite satisfied, lightly 
 touching her fair young head as he said it, that he 
 would take, of choice, one of the long shining 
 tresses that fell adown her shoulder. " And 
 would you indeed prize a lock of my hair ? " 
 cries Eveline, in innocent surprise, ; " cut -it off 
 then!" And she leaned her head down to him, 
 singling one long rippling curl from the rest. 
 
 Such simple confidence was not to be trifled 
 with, and rising, the stranger said in an altered 
 
18 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 tone that he must not deprive her of the shining 
 tress, much as he would prize it, but that he still 
 hoped she would be persuaded to give him one of 
 her beautiful pets, — the one with only the spotted 
 flank, or the one with the skin like a leopard, — 
 just as she chose. " I know how much you love 
 them, but for my sake ! " he went on, — and then he 
 said, no, not for his sake, but for the sake of those 
 coral ear-rings all set in gold that he was going 
 to send back to her ! And while she hesitated, he 
 said, perhaps just to say something, that he would 
 have the spotted deer ; and he fell to coaxing and 
 petting it with all his might. The deer, being 
 very tame, responded to his kind words by going 
 close to him and eating grass from his hand, and 
 by a variety of fond and playful actions which it 
 had been taught. 
 
 " And would you really send me the ear-rings, 
 and such lovely ones as you say ? " inquired the girl, 
 almost persuaded, as it seemed. Then her eyes 
 fell, and in a changed voice she said : " But why, 
 sir, do you choose the spotted, and not the white 
 deer? I think, of the two, I would rather part 
 with the white one." 
 
 And putting her arms around the neck of the 
 spotted deer, she drew it close to her bosom, and 
 began prattling to it in the tenderest manner. No, 
 no, she could not part with that ! The white one 
 
THE SPOTTED DEEE. 19 
 
 was not so fond of her, and was surely not so pret- 
 ty. Why, Spotty would follow her all daylong. 
 She almost thought he understood every word 
 she spoke, and sometimes he would even come into 
 the house and lie by the side of her little low bed 
 all the night. 
 
 Then she made a confidant of her beautiful 
 Spotty, and told him that his little mistress loved 
 him better than anything else in all the world ! 
 Sell him for ear-rings, indeed ! No, not though 
 they were as big and as splendid as the new moon ! 
 Then she did actually kiss the forehead of the deer, 
 and whispered something so close in his ear that 
 the stranger could not hear what she said, but 
 something that was doubtless very pretty, if the 
 dumb thing could only have understood it. 
 
 " And so you like your spotted deer the best ? " 
 the stranger said, as soon as he could get the atten- 
 tion of the young girl. 
 
 " yes, so much the best ! Don't you see how 
 fond of me he is ? " 
 
 " Yery well, you may keep your Spotty. I think, 
 on the whole, I prefer the hind. Come, my beau- 
 ty ! " and he took the ear of the white deer in his 
 hand, as though he would lead it away. 
 
 Instantly the girl pushed off his hand and took 
 the head of the white hind in her lap. " No, no ! 
 my poor Whity, your little mistress will not see 
 
20 SNOW-BEREIES. 
 
 you abused that way, not she ! " Then to the 
 stranger : " She is used to caresses, I assure you, 
 and not to having her ears pulled." 
 
 " But I thought you said she was not pretty, 
 and you did not care for her," answered the 
 stranger ; " and I thought, too, she was my prop- 
 erty, and not yours ! Did you not bargain her 
 away for the ear-rings ? " 
 
 " No, I did not bargain Whity away at all ; it 
 was Spotty I bargained away, and then I took Spot- 
 ty back, so that neither one is yours." 
 
 Then she began talking to Whity just as she 
 had done to Spotty before. " Suppose you are not 
 so very pretty," she said ; " is your little mistress 
 going to sell you away for that ! No indeed ! her 
 heart is not a lump of ice, and she could not be so 
 cruel, not for all the ear-rings under the sun. 
 Is it your fault that you are not beautiful ? No, it 
 is not your fault, but you are beautiful ! 0, so 
 beautiful ! there never was a deer in all the world 
 so beautiful as my own little Whity ! " 
 
 She could part with Spotty best ; he was sturdy 
 and independent, and did not need her half so 
 much as poor timid Whity. 
 
 Then the stranger said she might choose between 
 her deer, but one of them he must have. And 
 then he drew a picture of Eveline in her blue bod- 
 ice and scalloped petticoat, dancing on the green 
 
THE SPOTTED DEEK. 21 
 
 with the very handsomest of all the young fellows 
 in the village. "And what ' would you not give, 
 then, for the coral ear-rings ? " he concluded. 
 
 Here was a dazzling temptation. Would the 
 stranger be very good to poor Spotty, just as good 
 and kind as was his own mistress ? To be sure he 
 would ; never deer in the world fared half so roy- 
 ally as Spotty should fare. 
 
 After some further talk, it was concluded be- 
 tween them that he should take Spotty and send 
 back to her the ear-rings from the next landing- 
 point. Then he took from his finger a small gold 
 ring ; would Eveline wear that in token of his 
 promise, and perhaps, too, as a reminder of him- 
 self? It was a poor trifle, but he had nothing 
 better to offer. 
 
 Ah yes, Eveline would take the ring, and wear it, 
 — not in token of his promise, and not to remind 
 her of a stranger. He would never seem a stranger 
 to her, and she would require nothing to remind her 
 of him ; but for all that, she would take the ring. 
 
 So he took her hand, and when he had put the 
 ring on it, said it was now time to say good by. 
 
 But Eveline kept the hand, like the sweet, simple 
 child that she was, saying she would walk with him 
 to the river-side, and watch the vanishing boat till 
 it was quite out of sight. " And then I will go 
 back alone," she said ; " and then, and then, — why 
 then I do not know what I shall do ! " 
 
22 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 So they walked together, the two deer following, 
 through the mingling lights and shadows, and to- 
 ward the misty borders of the river, which they 
 reached at last, and could see through the swaying 
 boughs of the willows the waiting boat. 
 
 A few moments they stood in silence on the shore, 
 Eveline little guessing the charming picture she 
 made, — the misty moonlight all round her, and 
 the graceful head of her spotted deer beneath her 
 hand, while the white one stood a little way off 
 scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding mist. 
 
 " Be sure I will take the best care of your beau- 
 tiful pet," said the stranger, as he was about leap- 
 ing into the boat, " for your sake, my dear child, 
 if not for his ; so you need not fear to trust him 
 away from you." 
 
 Eveline was sobbing now, sobbing so she could 
 hardly speak ; and all at once she threw her arms 
 around the neck of her favorite, and, holding it fast, 
 said she could not let it go ; he might have the 
 white one, but the spotted one she must keep, 
 she really did love him best after all ! 
 
 " Then Whity it shall be ; come, Whity, my 
 beauty, come ! " And the stranger began to coax 
 and pet the white hind ; but she would not come, 
 shying off and snuffing the air instead. Then call- 
 ing two of his men, he told them to bring her 
 aboard by main force. 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 23 
 
 " No ! " cries the little mistress in an angry voice. 
 " She shall go of her own free will, or she shall not 
 go at all. I will never stand by and see her pnlled 
 and dragged from me as though she were the worst 
 creature in the world, instead of the best." 
 
 " Then persuade her yourself," said the stranger ; 
 "- you know how to coax her into anything, I dare 
 say." 
 
 " Yes, but I will not persuade her to leave me ! 
 I have not so much love that I can afford to do 
 that. If she is a mind to follow you, I must part 
 with her, that is all ; but I will never coax her to 
 do so, — never, never ! " 
 
 " Then I suppose I must go alone, after all," 
 said the stranger, sadly. " And you, my pretty 
 one, remember that you cannot have your white 
 hind for an grnament when the day of dancing 
 comes again." 
 
 " I shall never want to dance," answered Eve- 
 line, " not if I cannot dance with you ! " And she 
 lifted her face to him, all eloquent with its innocent 
 sorrow. 
 
 Then he told her that her life could not be more 
 lonely than his, going through the wide world, — 
 in wilderness places, and in deserts, with only two 
 or three rude men for companions. 
 
 By this time the white hind had come back to 
 its mate and its mistress, and, drawing its head 
 close to her, Eveline asked it in whispers if it 
 
24 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 would like to go with the stranger and sail away- 
 down the beautiful river, pointing as she did so to 
 the boat. It was perhaps in answer to the motion 
 of her hand that the hind immediately stepped 
 nearer to the shore. "Ah, then, she is yours, 
 sir," said Eveline, every word a separate tremble ; 
 " but I don't want the ear-rings. I can't sell any- 
 thing I love." Then she gave him special charge 
 about the feeding and general keeping and care, — 
 indeed, a mother who was parting with her baby 
 could hardly have been more tender in her en- 
 treaties and directions. " The poor thing is so 
 used to me," she said, " what will it do ? " 
 
 " There is one thing that you can do," answered 
 the boatman, " since you love your pet so very 
 much. You can go along and be its keeper." 
 
 Eveline was smiling and blushing and trembling 
 all at once now, and the boatman went on: "I 
 see only one difficulty, I am afraid the pretty crea- 
 ture, being so fond of the mistress, will not care 
 at all about the master ! " 
 
 " But I will teach her to love you ! " cries the 
 little maiden, eagerly. 
 
 " And how, my lady of the woodland," answered 
 the boatman, " will you contrive to do this ? " 
 
 " Just by loving you myself," she said. " There 
 is no teaching like example, you know." And she 
 looked up in his face with a sweet sincerity, that 
 charmed the stranger more than he had ever been 
 
THE SPOTTED DEER. 25 
 
 charmed by any beautiful bird or bright flower, or 
 by anything lovely that he had ever seen. 
 
 She would go, to be sure she would go, " But 
 0, sir, how are you to get nie over this wet 
 sand-bar that lies between the bank and the 
 boat ? " There was witchery in the trust and the 
 timidity, alike. 
 
 " Why, this way, my pretty mistress of the 
 fawns," he answered ; and putting his arm about 
 her waist, sprung with her clear across the sand- 
 bar and into the boat. Of course the deer fol- 
 lowed, and directly all three were sailing away 
 together toward the golden colors of the sunset, 
 the master of the boat singing as they sailed, — 
 
 " Night, with all thy stars look down, 
 Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, — 
 Never smiled the inconstant moon 
 On a pair so true." 
 
 But there is no need to linger any longer ; my 
 young reader no doubt guesses the end of the 
 story, and can make for himself a picture of the 
 boat, as, dividing the silver waves below, and the 
 yellow moonlight above, it bore away the artless 
 and gentle keeper of the spotted and white deer, 
 to the realization, let us hope, of brighter dreams 
 than even the promised ear-rings suggested.* 
 
 * This little story is based upon an account which I found in a 
 volume printed about sixty years ago, and entitled " Travels in 
 America." 
 
26 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 TWO BIRDS. 
 
 IN the blithe and budding weather 
 Of an April-time of yore, 
 Two wild-birds sat together 
 In the peach-tree at my door. 
 
 And each was gayly furnished, 
 And in beauty all complete, 
 
 From the topknot brightly burnished 
 To the rosy little feet. 
 
 Now under shadows winging, 
 And now hopping forth to view, 
 
 To the other each was singing, — 
 Thus the prouder of the two, — 
 
 Thus only, " Pretty ! Pretty ! " 
 
 In a low, caressing strain, 
 While in answer, " Sweety ! Sweety ! n 
 
 Softly sounded back again. 
 
 The buds to flowers were starting, 
 And the young leaves came in sight, 
 
 While they stayed together courting 
 In the peach-tree ; but one night 
 
TWO BIEDS. 27 
 
 They vanished. Swift with duties 
 
 Ran the time into the past, 
 Till I found my truant beauties, 
 
 As I knew I should, at last. 
 
 Making tender, twittering hushes, 
 
 That were sweet as any words, 
 Flying in and out the bushes 
 
 With a flock of little birds. 
 
 The snow stayed all unmelted, 
 
 And the winds of winter beat 
 On the boughs that lately tilted 
 
 Under rosy little feet, 
 
 When I heard a bird thus crying, 
 From the cold and frozen ground, 
 
 To the mate above him flying, 
 
 Half-distracted, round and round : — 
 
 " My wings are stiff and sleety, 
 
 I am dying in my bed, — 
 I am dying, darling." " Sweety." 
 
 That was every thing she said. 
 
28 SNOW-BERKIES. 
 
 TO THE BOYS. 
 
 DON'T you be afraid, boys, 
 To whistle loud and long, 
 Although your quiet sisters 
 Should call it rude or wrong. 
 
 Keep yourselves good-natured, 
 
 And if smiling fails, 
 Ask them if they ever saw 
 
 Muzzles on the quails ! 
 
 Or the lovely red-rose 
 
 Try to hide her flag, 
 Or the June to smother all 
 
 Her robins in a bag ! 
 
 If they say the teaching 
 
 Of nature is n't true, 
 Get astride the fence, boys, 
 
 And answer with a Whew ! 
 
 I '11 tell you what it is, boys, 
 No water-wheel will spin, 
 
 Unless you set a whistle 
 At the head of every pin. 
 
COUNTING THE CHICKENS. 29 
 
 And never kite flew skyward 
 
 In triumph like a wing 
 Without the glad vibration 
 
 Of a whistle in the string. 
 
 And when the days are vanished 
 
 For idleness and play, 
 'T will make your labors lighter 
 
 To whistle care away. 
 
 So don't you be afraid, boys, 
 
 In spite of bar and ban, 
 To whistle, — it will help you each 
 
 To make an honest man. 
 
 COUNTING THE CHICKENS. 
 
 COME, Joe ! come, Johnny ! the chickens are out, 
 As true as I am alive ! 
 Let me count, — one, two, three, four, — 
 0, if I can find but one more 
 
 Of the beauties, that will be five ! 
 
 Just look and see how they hop about ! 
 
 And see what a pretty thing 
 The little gray one is, and oh! 
 There is another one ! see it, Joe, 
 
 With its head through its mother's wing ! 
 
30 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 My dainty darlings, be still, be still ! 
 
 Just a minute till I can see 
 Which is prettiest, — that with down 
 Softly yellow and striped with brown, 
 
 Or that with the golden bill. 
 
 That one is cunning, with back and breast 
 
 Black as a raven, and so small, — 
 No bigger than one of its mother's eggs, 
 And the tiniest little rosy legs, — 
 I hardly saw it at all. 
 
 I will double up my hand to a nest, 
 
 Afraid though I am of the mother hen, 
 And put them into it one by one, 
 The gray, the yellow, the black, and dun, 
 And see which is prettiest then ! 
 
 ADVICE. 
 
 DO not look for wrong and evil, — . 
 You will find them if you do ; 
 As you measure for your neighbor 
 He will measure back to you. 
 
 Look for goodness, look for gladness, 
 You will meet them all the while ; 
 
 If you bring a smiling visage 
 To the glass, you meet to smile. 
 
TALK WITH A TREE. 31 
 
 TALK WITH A TREE. 
 
 STANDING straight up in the glory 
 Of God's sunshine, O my tree, 
 I would know thy wondrous story, — 
 
 Wilt thou speak and tell it me ? 
 With head in the sun and feet in the ground, 
 My heart it keepeth sweet and sound, 
 And evermore I grow and grow, 
 And this is all I know. 
 
 Rough and wild and many-jointed, 
 
 Thou art clothed with gracious hues, 
 And thy body is anointed 
 
 Nightly with the pleasant dews. 
 The sun and the storm I gladly greet, 
 And my heart it keepeth sound and sweet, 
 And my head is high and my root is low, 
 And this is all I know. 
 
 All thy blossoms come in season, — 
 
 In their time thy fruits come in, — 
 Canst thou give to me a reason ? 
 
 Thou dost neither toil nor spin. 
 Deep I strike my roots in the ground, 
 And my heart it keepeth sweet and sound, 
 And my buds they bloom, and my fruits they glow, 
 And this is all I know. 
 
32 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 From thy roots in silence pushing 
 
 Through the dark and gloomy ground, — 
 From thy boughs with blossoms blushing, — 
 
 From thy heart so sweet and sound, 
 Thou seemest to tell me, tree of mine, 
 We are not all earthy nor all divine, 
 But sown in corruption to be raised 
 Incorruptible, — God be praised. 
 
 A NEW-YEAR'S LESSON. 
 
 THE house was little and low and old, 
 But the logs on the hearth burned bright, 
 And two little girls with locks of gold 
 
 Were playing in the light ; 
 And their hearts were glad and their laughter gay, 
 For the morrow would bring the New-Year's day. 
 
 The house was little, the house was low ; 
 
 But cheerily shone the light 
 Out of the window and over the snow 
 
 (For the ground with snow was white), 
 Cheerily shimmered and shone about, 
 As if there were fire within and without. 
 
 An ancient, gnarled, and knotty tree 
 Hung all about the eaves ; 
 
A NEW-YEAR'S LESSON. 
 
 So the little house just seemed to be 
 
 A bird's-nest in the leaves ; 
 And the little girls, in homespun dressed, 
 Just like the nestlings of the nest. 
 
 And still as the wind with sharp teeth snapped 
 
 A leaflet sere and brown, 
 Right merrily their hands they clapped 
 
 To see it sliding down, 
 Past the firelight's ruddy glow, 
 To the fire that seemed to be in the snow. 
 
 " O mother, mother ! " they cried with a will, 
 Their cheeks to the window pressed, 
 
 And peeping shyly over the sill, 
 Like birdlings over the nest, 
 
 " See how it flutters and flies about ; 
 
 It thinks there is fire in the snow, no doubt." 
 
 And then they laugh and shout with glee, 
 
 And tell how wild it whirls, 
 And call it crazy as it can be, 
 
 " You foolish little girls ! " 
 The mother sadly and sweetly said, 
 Laying a hand on each golden head : — 
 
 " Suppose that leaf a crazy thing, 
 
 My darlings ; even suppose 
 It thought the firelight glimmering 
 
 Out there upon the snows, 
 
 2* O 
 
34 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 The same as the fire upon the hearth, 
 Why, that were not a cause for mirth ! n 
 
 And then she says, as pearl on pearl 
 Her pale cheek trickles down : 
 
 " It makes me think of the beggar-girl 
 We saw in the streets of the town ; 
 
 Her hand as little and brown as a leaf, — 
 
 Just such a picture of houseless grief. 
 
 " By some sharp breath of fortune whirled 
 Away from her mother's knee, 
 
 She is left to flutter about the world, 
 The same as the leaf of a tree ; 
 
 No roof for her, my dears, you know, 
 
 Nor fire, except the fire in the snow. 
 
 " In her poor hand, so brown and cold, 
 
 No New-Year's gift will shine." 
 Dropped low was each shining head of gold. 
 
 " I wish I could give her mine ! " 
 Cry both little girls, as they see the glow 
 Of their New- Year's fire outside in the snow. 
 
THE BURNING PRAIRIE. 35 
 
 THE BURNING PRAIRIE. 
 
 THE prairie stretched as smooth as a floor, 
 Far as the eye could see, 
 And the settler sat at his cabin door 
 
 With a little girl on his knee, 
 Striving her letters to repeat, 
 And pulling her apron over her feet. 
 
 His face was wrinkled, but not old, 
 
 For he held an upright form, 
 And his shirt-sleeves back to the elbow rolled, 
 
 They showed a brawny arm ; 
 And near in the grass, with toes upturned, 
 Was a pair of old shoes, cracked and burned. 
 
 A dog with his head betwixt his paws 
 
 Lay lazily dozing near, 
 Now and then snapping his tar-black jaws 
 
 At the fly that buzzed at his ear ; 
 And near was the cow-pen, made of rails, 
 And a bench that held two milking-pails. 
 
 In the open door an ox-yoke lay, 
 
 The mother's odd redoubt, 
 To keep the little one at her play 
 
 On the floor from falling out ; 
 While she swept the hearth with a turkey-wing, 
 And filled her tea-kettle at the spring. 
 
36 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 The little girl on her father's knee, 
 
 With eyes so bright and blue, 
 From A B C to X Y Z 
 
 Had said her lesson through, 
 When a wind came over the prairie-land, 
 And caught the primer out of her hand. 
 
 The watch-dog whined, the cattle lowed, 
 
 And tossed their horns about ; 
 The air grew gray as if it snowed ; 
 
 " There will be a storm, no doubt ! " 
 So to himself the settler said ; 
 " But, father, why is the sky so red ? " 
 
 And the little girl slid off his knee, 
 
 And all of a tremble stood ; 
 " Good wife," he cried ; " come out and see ! 
 
 The clouds are as red as blood ! " 
 " God save us !" cried the settler's wife, 
 " The prairie 's afire ! We must run for life I " 
 
 She caught the baby up. " Come ! come ! 
 
 Are ye mad ? to your heels, my man ! " 
 He followed, terror-stricken, dumb, 
 
 And so they ran and ran ; 
 Close upon them the snort and swing 
 Of buffaloes, madly galloping. 
 
 The wild wind like a sower sows 
 The ground with sparkles red, 
 
THE BURNING PRAIEIE. 37 
 
 And the flapping wings of bats and crows 
 
 Through the ashes overhead, 
 And the bellowing deer and the hissing snake, — 
 "What a swirl of terrible sounds they make ! 
 
 No gleam of the river water yet ! 
 
 And the flames leap on and on ! 
 A crash, and a fiercer whirl and jet, 
 
 And the settler's house is gone ! 
 The air grows hot. " This fluttering curl 
 Would blaze like flax," says the little girl. 
 
 And as the smoke against her drifts, 
 
 And the lizard slips close by her, 
 She tells how the little cow uplifts 
 
 Her speckled face from the fire ; 
 For she cannot be hindered from looking back 
 At the fiery dragon on their track. 
 
 They hear the crackling grass and sedge, 
 
 The flames as they whir and rave ; 
 On, on ! they are close to the water's edge ! 
 
 They are there, breast-deep in the wave ! 
 And lifting their little ones high o'er the tide, — 
 "We are saved, thank God ! we are saved!" they cried. 
 
PART II, 
 
 THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 
 
 WHERE the bend of a beautiful river kept 
 bright and green a little spot of this goodly 
 earth longer than it stayed bright and green else- 
 where, there used to be made, year after year, at 
 the season when the leaves turn yellow and the 
 mosses brown, a gypsy camp. 
 
 When the frost first bit the grass, and the rivu- 
 lets hid themselves away, expectation stood a-tip- 
 toe among the young people, and so continued, till 
 some farmer's boy, perchance, riding home from 
 mill, along the river road, would see the smoke of 
 their fires curling and rippling high above the tree- 
 tops, and hurrying home, would set the household 
 astir with the news, — " The gypsies have come ! " 
 
 Then there would be whispering and laughing 
 among the girls, and a missing of the lads when 
 the family circle drew about the evening fire ; for 
 it was the habit of the youth of both sexes to steal 
 out to the gypsy camp and have their fortunes told ; 
 and many a cock that had been used to crow in the 
 morning, and tell the sleepy inmates of the farm- 
 house it was time to get up and set the breakfast 
 
42 SNOW-BEKKIES. 
 
 in order, and yoke the steers, had to boii in some 
 gypsy pot to pay for it. Among the vagrants of the 
 camp was an ugly old woman, known to the peo- 
 ple of the neighborhood by the name of " Mother 
 Crow." She seldom strayed from among the tents, 
 and was usually to be found, till after the middle 
 of the night, peeping and muttering over a great 
 kettle of simmering herbs, of wonderful power, if 
 she were to be believed ; and indeed some persons 
 said, who had watched her stirring her mess with 
 a crooked and thorny stick, that they had seen 
 sparkles of unearthly light rising out of it and set- 
 tling along her forehead like a row of stars. How- 
 ever this were, she was certainly more feared and 
 believed in than all her tribe put together. It may 
 be that her wisdom was made up chiefly of cun- 
 ning, but no matter, — it passed current ; it may 
 be too that the snow-white hair, straggling from 
 beneath her cap of rabbit-skins, and veiling the in- 
 tense glitter of her snaky eyes, had somewhat to 
 do with her fascination. She was very tall, and 
 upright as an oak sapling, but her dimensions in 
 other respects no one could arrive at very defi- 
 nitely, as she was generally loosely wrapt in a 
 big blue blanket, with a border of scarlet stripes. 
 Many a night the home-going fisherman rowed 
 softly ashore by the gypsy camp, to learn of Mother 
 Crow whether his sweetheart were false or true, and 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 43 
 
 paid her with the choice treasure of his net ; and 
 it generally happened that he was richer than be- 
 fore ; such exceeding worth is there in a happy 
 heart, and Mother Crow was apt to see the bright 
 side of things. 
 
 She could instantly tell, so she used to say, when 
 she stepped on the graves of persons who had been 
 buried a hundred or more years, but she could not 
 tell whether the ground she trod on were to hold a 
 coffin on the morrow or not. She could see future 
 events, she used to say, but not the time at which 
 they would take place, and so she got along very 
 well with her prophecies. 
 
 Some persons, too good or too great to seek a 
 gypsy fortune-teller themselves, would gladly listen 
 to the gossip about her ; or if they happened near 
 the camp at night, would stop and peep over the 
 shoulder of some lad for the sake of seeing her as 
 she sat inside a ring of eager upturned faces, tell- 
 ing all the girls and boys whether their sweethearts 
 had black eyes or blue, and whether they would 
 marry and make a journey across the sea, and come 
 back with a great deal of gold, and live happy for- 
 ever afterwards, or whether they would marry, get 
 gold, and be happy without the great journey. 
 
 And it is no wonder these people thus stole a 
 glimpse of the strange woman, for she made such 
 a picture as one does not see every day in the 
 
44 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 week, nor every month in the year, nor every year 
 in ten. 
 
 Among those who visited her the oftenest, and 
 upon whom she levied the heaviest taxes, was an 
 old man who lived in a ruinous house by the river- 
 side, alone, and whose strange ways had shut him 
 quite without the pale of society, — in truth, he 
 was supposed to have lost his wits, and was treated 
 accordingly, when, by chance, his neighbors came 
 in contact with him. The columns that once held 
 up the porches of his house fell down one after 
 another, and lay where they fell ; the once beau- 
 tiful garden ran to weeds, and, instead of flower- 
 stalks, thistles stood up very high and proud ; 
 spiders made looms in the windows, and wove there 
 all the day long, making curtains so thick it could 
 hardly be told at night whether or not the old 
 man's candle were alight. 
 
 And the truth is, nobody cared whether or not 
 his candle was alight. He .wore a shirt of patched 
 flannel, trousers of an old fashion, and shoes quite 
 distinct from the modern style ; and instead of rid- 
 ing in a fine carriage he walked on foot. Perhaps 
 it was not altogether his fault that he was shy and 
 unneighborly, for certain it is, nobody stopped to 
 inquire whether it were or not ; and Mother Crow 
 herself, skinny and haggish as she was, created a 
 lighter sensation of awe than he. His hair hung 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 45 
 
 over his shoulders white as snow, and his beard 
 fell down his bosom in a profusion of silver waves, 
 that contrasted strangely with the black and won- 
 derfully inquisitive eyes, and made the children 
 hang their heads when he came near, and older 
 people too sometimes, for there was in his face, it 
 must be owned, a look that seemed to accuse men. 
 Indeed, he avoided men and women too, as far as 
 might be ; but when he could not help seeing them 
 he was civil in spite of the accusing look, which, if 
 it had been examined closely, would perhaps have 
 been found to be distrust rather than accusation, 
 after all. 
 
 " I don't like him ! " people used to say ; and it 
 may be that they did not stop to think why they did 
 not like him, and it may be that they would not 
 have seen much to like if they had stopped to think, 
 for we cannot very well see what is lovable in any- 
 body till we first love them. Love not only sees 
 existing good qualities, but creates good qualities. 
 
 All sorts of strange stories were told of this man, 
 and in connection with everything belonging to 
 him ; this, among the rest. 
 
 One of the chimneys of his house had fallen, or 
 had been blown down by the wind, perhaps, and 
 the story ran that it had been tumbled down by 
 the witches who were in the habit of seeking the 
 crazy man's chamber by this means. Then it was 
 
46 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 reported, too, that a well of once sweet waters in 
 his door-yard had grown brackish, and had petrified 
 an ox that had chanced to fall into it, and that his 
 horns might be seen any day sticking out of the 
 well's mouth ! 
 
 It is strange that such things should ever have 
 been believed ; but let a story once get afloat, no 
 matter how improbable, and it will hold its place 
 a long time in spite of everything. 
 
 The strangest and most improbable of all the 
 stories related to the wife of the " crazy man," — 
 for there was a time when his beard was not white, 
 when his flannel shirt was not patched, and when 
 he had as pretty a wife as was to be seen in all the 
 county-side. Most of his neighbors could remem- 
 ber very well when the fallen chimney stood up 
 red and proud as could be ; when at night there 
 were lights shining through all the windows, so 
 dark and gloomy now ; and when the cedar beams 
 along the porches, against which hung the gray 
 muddy nests of wasps, were bright and sweet, and 
 the rows of pillars white as milk. They could tell 
 about having sometimes seen a gentle-faced and 
 golden-haired woman walking in the garden, and 
 how all the roses bowed their heads down toward 
 her as she went ; and about the little child that she 
 used to lead by the hand ; and they could whisper 
 too, and they often did whisper dark surmises as 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 47 
 
 to what became of the woman and the child, for 
 they disappeared one after the other, and were 
 never seen or heard of more. 
 
 There were even hints of murder, and some 
 people said that the beautiful woman and child 
 were lying petrified away down in the well under 
 the stone ox ! 
 
 But these things were only spoken under breath, 
 for all that was certainly known was, that a fair- 
 faced woman and a lovely little child used to be 
 seen about the grounds, and that they were seen 
 no more ; but that anything mysterious was con- 
 nected with their disappearance nobody dare posi- 
 tively assert. But it was asserted and believed 
 that often, at night, strange and unearthly sounds 
 were heard about the old house, and in the end it 
 came to be thought that the old house was haunted 
 with witches, if with nothing worse ; so that often 
 when these noises were supposed to prevail, the more 
 superstitious of the people would shake their heads, 
 and whisper, apart from the hearing of the chil- 
 dren, " They are the echoes of the love-ditties the 
 crazy man used to sing to the beautiful woman ! " 
 And then the windows would be put down and the 
 Bibles opened and prayers offered, and sometimes, 
 after all these pious ceremonies, a horseshoe would 
 be hung over the door-case to protect the household 
 against witch-work, so strangely are the minds of 
 
48 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 men and women constituted. And at such times 
 the frightened children would look wonderingly up 
 into the faces of the old folks, and ask to have the 
 candles trimmed anew, or that another stick might 
 be added to the fire. 
 
 The story ran too, that often of winter nights, 
 when the moon shone bright on the snow that had 
 been drifted into fantastic but smooth curves along 
 the meadows, and in the ragged edges of the 
 woods, there used to be heard a footstep going 
 along their edges, — tramp, tramp, — and in the 
 morning it would be seen that the snow was writ- 
 ten all over with letters which the crazy man had 
 traced with his finger, and the letters spelled one 
 name, over and over, sometimes a thousand times, 
 and that name was Hesther ; but whether it had 
 been borne by the missing woman, or whether it 
 was a fantasy of his bewildered brain, was left to 
 conjecture. 
 
 The only person in the world for whom this sad 
 old man appeared to cherish any kindly regard 
 was Mother Crow. Under the straggling boughs 
 of an apple-tree he at length built her a house, a 
 very goodly house for a gypsy, with a roof and door 
 of pine planks ; albeit there were gaps between the 
 logs of which it was composed more than wide 
 enough for the moon to peep through and see what 
 was going forward. Many a basket of bright ap- 
 
THE GYPSY FOKTUNE-TELLER. 49 
 
 pies he bore to Mother Crow's house on his 
 shoulder, and many a bag of corn he emptied on 
 her broad clay hearth ; and once, at least, during 
 every period of encampment, he might be seen 
 leading thither by the horns a fat heifer or steer, 
 and then be sure there was great feasting among 
 the gypsies. 
 
 It was noticeable that during the stay of these 
 people the old man always became more like other 
 men, that he would smile when he met his neigh- 
 bors, and sometimes speak to them, not only cheer- 
 fully, but with great good sense. 
 
 It was strange his lucid intervals should al- 
 ways occur at the time of the gypsies' encamp- 
 ment, people used to say, but they never inquired 
 into the mystery, for the world generally takes but 
 little interest in its old crazy men that live in 
 ruined houses. 
 
 Scarcely a midnight came and went that did not 
 find the crazy man by the gypsy's fire, bowing his 
 white head beneath the skinny hand of the old for- 
 tune-teller, and listening to her muttering, which 
 contained always one and the same story ; and of 
 course the story was all about the crazy man's 
 wife and child, for she pretended that she could 
 look back into the past and see what had hap- 
 pened to them, and she commonly begun her story 
 something after this fashion : — 
 
50 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 "I see a beautiful river with a border of fine 
 trees, and moonlight shining along the billows; 
 I see herds of cattle grazing, and a great house 
 with porches white as snow ; and now there comes 
 to the porch a fair young woman, with curls down 
 her shoulders bright as the sunshine, and eyes blue 
 as a morning sky in May. She wanders toward 
 the river-bank, leading by the hand a child like 
 herself, but even more beautiful, — her eyes being 
 like the color of the morning-glory, and the fingers 
 fair as the fingers of a lily. 
 
 " And now there leaps from his boat on the 
 river wave a man, sleek and bright and stealthy 
 as a leopard ; he approaches her with smiles and 
 gentle words, but his feet are shod with evil, and 
 his heart is full of all manner of dark things. Now 
 he talks to her and his voice is soft and low as the 
 voice of the wind when it talks to the violet ; and 
 now he sings, and the song of the nightingale is 
 not so sweet." 
 
 At this point of the story the old woman would 
 stop and tell her eager, trembling listener that she 
 could not see any more until he had again crossed 
 her palm with silver, and so having got more 
 money she would go on. 
 
 " All the scene that I lately saw is vanished, but 
 I see the same woman walking in the fields alone. 
 It is a wild windy night, and the clouds are flying 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 51 
 
 across the face of the moon, and the autumn leaves 
 are blowing about withered and dry, and still the 
 woman walks on alone until she comes to a black- 
 thorn-tree, under which, on a little heap of stones, 
 sits a gypsy fortune-teller, — a wicked woman as I 
 can see by her wolfish face, and her long, lithe, 
 snake-like body ; and now she crosses the palm of 
 this old hag with silver, and she tells her a tale 
 that is like a fairy tale, of the splendid fortune 
 that is waiting for her in a far-off country, — how 
 she shall eat from plates of gold, sleep on a bed 
 of swan's down, wear her hair braided up with 
 diamonds, have gowns with hems embroidered 
 with pearls, ride in a gilded coach, and have a 
 hundred lovely maids of honor to be about her and 
 to tend her day and night, and all just for going 
 with the stranger who sings to her so sweetly, and 
 who, she says, is a man of honor and authority in 
 his own country. And the eyes of the fair woman 
 are dazzled, and she seems almost persuaded to go 
 away with the leopard-like man, and leave forever 
 her comfortable home and her good husband." 
 
 And here again, Mother Crow would pause in 
 her story, and profess that she could not see any- 
 thing more until she had more silver, and then she 
 would say that she saw a boat sailing down the 
 river, and seated within it three persons, a man 
 and a woman and a child, and that the three 
 
52 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 looked like the other three which she had seen 
 before. 
 
 Then the shadows would come between her and 
 the boat, and her vision would grow dim, so she 
 would say, and not till the old man had paid her 
 more money could she see anything further. 
 
 Sometimes she would sit for half an hour hold- 
 ing out her rabit-skin cap, and not till she heard 
 something clink in it would she speak one word. 
 Then at last she would profess to see the beautiful 
 woman sick and dying, and to see the child, grown 
 to be a beautiful young girl now, standing by her 
 bedside ; then she could see the eyes of the woman 
 closed, and a long funeral procession ; and after 
 this, no matter by what prices the crazy man 
 sought to buy her vision, Mother Crow could see 
 no further; though she always professed to be 
 growing in prophetic wisdom, and quite sure that 
 at the time of the full moon, or at the falling of 
 the November rain, or at some other designated 
 season, she should be able to trace further the his- 
 tory of the young girl. 
 
 And this was the secret of her power over the 
 crazy man, as he was called ;' and by this means it 
 was that the entire gypsy camp fared so well year 
 after year. But the more liberal the old man was, 
 the more the fortune-teller demanded ; and at last 
 one night when the fumes of her bitter stew had 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 53 
 
 gotten into her brain a little more than common, 
 it may be, she professed to see the fate of the beau- 
 tiful young girl. She saw that she was living in 
 the castle of a nobleman, and that she was become 
 a lovely woman, with golden hair and blue eyes 
 like her mother's, and that she saw little shining 
 letters along her forehead which spelled the name 
 of Hesther. But in what castle Hesther was, and 
 how she was to be obtained by the old man, she 
 would not tell until twelve pots of rum had been 
 ranged along her clay hearth, with a beehive full 
 of new honey at their head. This request was no 
 sooner complied with, however, than Mother Crow 
 declared that her vision was become dim, and that 
 the anxious inquirer must wait another day. Of 
 course she had her way ; but, alas ! things turned 
 out as she little expected. 
 
 Having feasted to excess on the honey and rum, 
 she lay down in her cabin to sleep, and feeling 
 presently that the lease of her mercies was run out, 
 and that the pains of death were hold of her, she 
 called the old man back, and taking from her 
 bosom the picture of his wife, she gave it into his 
 hand, and also a piece of yellow parchment written 
 over with clumsy and curious characters ; but the 
 eyes of love can decipher hard things, and the old 
 man read all the parchment contained, as if it had 
 been written by a scribe. 
 
54 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 Mother Crow watched him as he read, and at the 
 close of the reading lifted up her hands and hid the 
 light from her eyes, even before death hid it, and 
 turned her face to the wall ; so fearful, sooner or 
 later, are the effects of wrong-doing. 
 
 It was all a lie that Mother Crow had been tell- 
 ing the old man, after all. There had never been 
 a man who was sweet-voiced and sleek and shining 
 as a leopard, there had never been a little boat 
 that rocked on the river of nights, and there had 
 never been any running away, first or last. She 
 herself had stolen the child in the hope of getting 
 money from the father by telling him where it was, 
 and how he could get it again ; but when it came 
 to pass, as it did, that the mother pined for her 
 child till she became crazy, and wandered away 
 and was lost to her house and her husband, and to 
 all who knew her, -she was afraid to say aught 
 about the child lest she herself should be accused 
 of murder. She was afraid even to keep it any 
 longer, and pinning to its dress a paper that said 
 it had been stolen and was to be given up if the 
 father should ever come for it, or any one, bearing 
 a certain parchment which the said paper men- 
 tioned, she one dark night, having taken it a 
 long way off, shut it up in a rich man's garden, 
 where the gardener would be likely to hear its cries 
 and take it to the rich man's house, as indeed he 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 55 
 
 did, and here the girl had lived and was now 
 grown to be a beautiful woman. She had meant 
 always to tell the truth some time or other, but had 
 put it off month after month and year after year, 
 knowing that her palm would no more be crossed 
 with silver by the old man if he once came to know 
 where his child really was. And the story was 
 never told until Death came and put her soul in 
 torture that pressed the secret out of her lips. 
 
 And the red leaves drifted in a red heap over the 
 grave of Mother Crow, and the rain beat out the 
 fires, and the pot of bitter herbs simmered no more, 
 and the winter snow fell and lay in smooth curves 
 about the stone house, for there was no name writ- 
 ten on it now, and no crazy man anywhere to be 
 seen. All the windows were dark as they could be, 
 the fallen pillars lay one across another along the 
 porches, and the chimney, in a stack of ruins, 
 frowned from the roof, and at night not a sparkle 
 was seen to rise above it. Now it was that the 
 corpse of the old suspicion floated up on the stream 
 of gossip again, more black and malignant than 
 ever. 
 
 The crazy man, in addition to his other crimes, 
 it was asserted, had poisoned Mother Crow, and, 
 lest they who saw him should murder him, had 
 shut himself in his own house, and was slowly dy- 
 ing of starvation and cold. Some even declared 
 
56 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 that they could hear him making the night hideous 
 by his hungry howls. 
 
 But no man and no woman sought out the truth, 
 or made one effort to alleviate the miserable con- 
 dition of the old man. 
 
 All at once, and as by magic, the stone house 
 was transformed into its original grandeur ; the 
 columns stood in white rows along the porches, the 
 windows shone with curtains of crimson stuff, 
 mixed with satin, white as snow, — the stack of 
 ruins stood up in a high, proud chimney, and above 
 it, at night, there glittered a shower of sparkles red 
 as roses. 
 
 And every day, riding along the river road, in a 
 coach with shining panels, was seen the man that 
 his neighbors called crazy when he walked along 
 the road. Magnificent horses, in the most dazzling 
 furniture, drew the carriage ; and by the man's 
 side sat a lovely young woman, who folded his 
 mantle tenderly about him with her sweet white 
 hands. 
 
 But the most marvellous thing I have to tell is 
 the change that came to the hearts of the people 
 when they saw the gold trappings of the horses, 
 and the diamonds on the white hands of the young 
 woman, — whose name was Hesther, and the er- 
 mine that lined the mantle of the old man. The 
 proudest of them bowed down as he went by, and 
 
THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 57 
 
 saluted him as though he had been a king, and 
 his wisdom and beauty were the continual themes 
 of conversation and admiration. The white hair 
 and beard that used to be thought so frightful were 
 considered regal now, and the austerity that used 
 only to excite derision fitted him right royally now. 
 
 In short, no man could be found to own he had 
 ever believed the rich man to be crazy. On the 
 contrary, every one was loud in the declaration 
 that it had always been his belief that the owner of 
 the stone house was some great person in disguise, 
 and a very wise person too. And those who had 
 affirmed most vehemently, when the stone house 
 was ruinous and dark, that they could hear its 
 crazy inmate howling with hunger, were the first 
 to make feasts for him, and illuminations, now that 
 his house was full of light, and his board beautiful 
 and shining with plate. 
 
 Not a soul could be found to own he had 
 ever believed the rich man's well had a stone ox in 
 it, and only one or two simple and old-fashioned 
 old women would admit that they had ever heard 
 the story. 
 
 Every one who could afford it built a porch 
 against his house ; white beards became the fash- 
 ion, and the rich man's advice was asked upon the 
 most trivial occasions. 
 
 Thus ends the story of Mother Crow and the 
 
 3* 
 
58 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 Crazy Man, and I hope the reader has been taught 
 by it two things, — first, that conscience will find 
 out your sins, though you hide them under heaps 
 of gold, mountain high ; and secondly, that those 
 who make feasts for you and do you the humblest 
 reverence while your mantle is lined with ermine, 
 will be the first to cry out Crazy ! and see you 
 starved if your chimney chances to tumble down. 
 
 THE COW-BOY. 
 
 DAY after day, when the tawny-bills 
 Were twittering through the boughs, 
 " Sook ! sook ! " across the sunset hills 
 He would call his mother's cows. 
 
 " Whee ! whee ! " and then the thrum and fall 
 
 Of the clumsy meadow-bar, 
 And we knew he had found them one and all, 
 
 " Mottle," and " Rose," and " Star." 
 
 A merry cry, and then a hush, 
 
 And then a merrier ring, — 
 He had found a bird's-nest in a bush, 
 
 And was happier than a king. 
 
THE COW-BOY. 59 
 
 " Plash and plash ! " and " Sook, sook ! " 
 
 And tramp and trill again, — 
 He had brought his cows across the brook, 
 
 And was singing up the lane. 
 
 Spingspang ! whish ! in the bucket cool 
 
 And burnished silver-bright, 
 And then he had gotten his milking-stool, 
 
 And was milking with all his might. 
 
 Clump! clatter! spinkle! span! 
 
 He had done with the milking-chore, 
 And was setting each shining and shallow pan 
 
 On the watery " spring-house " floor. 
 
 Days went and came, and came and went, 
 
 And over the sunset hills 
 No more his cheerful call was blent 
 
 With the twittering tawny-bills. 
 
 But in the dingle and in the dell \ 
 
 Deep silence held the rule ; 
 The little lad that we loved so well 
 
 Was gone to the grammar-school. 
 
 Years came and went, and went and came ; 
 
 He had made, or mastered fate, 
 For the little cow-boy's humble name 
 
 Was the name that ruled the state. 
 
60 SNOW-BEREIES. 
 
 LITTLE ELLIE. 
 
 DARLING Little Ellie, 
 Stout of heart and limb, — 
 What, I often wonder, 
 
 Will the future make of him ? 
 
 Where will be the roses 
 
 That keep his cheeks so red, 
 
 When years with their temptations 
 And trials shall have fled ? 
 
 Stirring with the morning, 
 As if he owned the farm ; 
 
 On the floor at sunset, 
 Sleeping on his arm : 
 
 Torn and faded jacket, 
 
 Feet brown and bare, 
 Sunshine laughing in his eyes, 
 
 And tangled in his hair. 
 
 In his little bucket, 
 
 Helping milk the cows, — 
 Riding on the horses, 
 
 Tumbling down the mows; 
 
LITTLE ELLIE. 61 
 
 Wading in the water, 
 Working mimic mills, — 
 
 Chasing through the meadows, 
 Rolling down the hills ; 
 
 Making strings of elm-bark, 
 Stealing mother's yarn, — 
 
 All to see his kite fly 
 Higher than the barn ; 
 
 Planning long aforetime, 
 With ambitious pride, 
 
 How, when snow has fallen, 
 He '11 have a sled and ride. 
 
 Gravely puzzling over 
 Each childish little plan, — 
 
 Working, and tugging, 
 And scheming like a man. 
 
 Now upon grandfather's knee, 
 Listening with delight 
 
 To the stories that are new 
 Every day and night. 
 
 Now, with joyous make-believe 
 
 In despite his frown, 
 Turning chairs to railcars, 
 
 And riding into town. 
 
62 SNOW-BEREIES. 
 
 Ah, 't is wisely well for us 
 That we cannot see 
 
 What in years that are to come 
 He will grow to be. 
 
 THE BRICKMAKER'S BOY. 
 
 THE ground of the brick-yard is burning and bare ; 
 By the hedgerow are plenty of shady spots, 
 But Ralph, when he gets a white apron to wear, 
 Plays in the mortar, and shapes it to pots. 
 
 That is his mother's house over the hill, 
 
 With the pitcher of pinks in the window, so sweet, 
 
 And Ralph is her darling, and sets at his will, 
 In the soft bricks, the prints of his bare little feet. 
 
 Poor soul ! — she is homely and wrinkled and old, 
 And work is her portion, but what does she care 
 
 For herself, since no neighbor has need to be told 
 That her darling has beauty enough, and to spare ! 
 
 Low down on the limbs of the prickly sweet-brier 
 Are handfuls of roses, but still he will push 
 
 His cheek through the thorns, for the one red as fire 
 That grows out of reach at the top of the bush. 
 
THE BKICKMAKER'S BOY. 63 
 
 . Sometimes the old brickmaker, sunburnt and bent, 
 Will tug him about on his shoulder awhile, 
 Whereat, growing restless instead of content, 
 He scarcely repays the good man with a smile. 
 
 He makes of a stray piece of cedar a shelf, 
 
 Sometimes, where he sets up his pots in the sun, 
 
 And then, growing vexed with his work or himself, 
 He breaks them, and tramples them down, every one. 
 
 From the time when the locust puts on the white mass 
 Of his odorous plumes, till in summer's decay, 
 
 His bright yellow jacket he throws on the grass 
 And braves the bleak wind, he is busy each day. 
 
 I know it is all in his own wilful way, 
 Yet sigh, as I see him a-working so hard, 
 
 His hands and his apron so heavy with clay 
 He scarcely can toddle about in the yard. 
 
 My heart often says to me, wherefore employ 
 Your thoughts in a fashion so pitiful ? then, 
 
 Reflecting, I see in the brickmaker's boy 
 A type of the work and the wisdom of menr 
 
64 SNOW-BEERIES. 
 
 FAIEY FOLK. 
 
 THE story-books have told you 
 Of the fairy-folk so nice, 
 That make them leather aprons 
 
 Of the ears of little mice, 
 And wear the leaves of roses 
 
 Like a cap upon their heads, 
 And sleep at night on thistle-down, 
 Instead of feather-beds ! 
 
 These stories, too, have told you, 
 
 No doubt to your surprise, 
 That the fairies ride in coaches 
 
 That are drawn by butterflies ; 
 And come into your chambers, 
 
 When you are locked in dreams, 
 And right across your counterpanes 
 
 Make bold to drive their teams ; 
 And that they heap your pillows 
 
 With their gifts of rings and pearls ; 
 But do not heed such idle tales, 
 
 My little boys and girls. 
 
 There are no fairy folk that ride 
 
 About the world at night, 
 Who give you rings or other things 
 
 To pay for doing right. 
 
LESS OK MOKE. 65 
 
 But if you do to others what 
 
 You 'd have them do to you, 
 You '11 be as blest as if the best 
 
 Of story-books were true. 
 
 LESS OR MORE. 
 
 SEVEN trees grew beside our door, — 
 We used to wish they were six, or four ! 
 Seven, — each standing so close to each, 
 The boughs from one to the other could reach, 
 And when the wild winds over them run 
 The tops of the seven trees looked like one. 
 
 There they stood in the rain and shine, 
 
 Like so many soldiers, all of a line, 
 
 Beating the tempest away when it came ; 
 
 And still when the midsummer burned like a flame, 
 
 Dropping their shadows, now less, now more, 
 
 Over the door-stone and into the door. 
 
 Seven, and one of the seven, an oak, 
 
 Scarred and scathed by a lightning-stroke, 
 
 That, leaving it at the fork gaped wide, 
 
 Ran like a black vein down one side ; 
 
 An elm, with a shaggy red vine at the top, 
 
 Hanging loose, and as though it were ready to drop. 
 
66 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 Three sweet silver maples, a willow so fair 
 
 That like a lithe swimmer took hold of the air ; 
 
 A walnut, too proud to yield ever a nut, 
 
 With all its black bark into rough diamonds cut. 
 
 And so there were seven — we wished they were four, 
 
 Or six — we would have them be less or be more ! 
 
 Fair every tree of them — why should we say 
 
 If this one or that one were only away ! 
 
 O, 't is no matter, — the story is meant 
 
 To show you that mortals are never content, 
 
 And if the trees had been six, or four, 
 
 We still would have wished they were less, or more. 
 
 FINE TALK. 
 
 THEY may talk about talk 
 With a silvery ring, 
 But silence is sometimes 
 
 An excellent thing. 
 Of course there 's no statute 
 
 To limit the breath, 
 And he that so chooses 
 
 May talk you to death ! 
 But if you have nothing 
 
 To tell or to teach, 
 There 's no use abusing 
 
 The good gift of speech ! 
 
FINE TALK. 67 
 
 I ve heard tongues that clattered 
 
 Like shallowest brooks, 
 But never the fine talk 
 
 You read of in books ! 
 I often hear things 
 
 That were tolerably good, 
 But not your fine, fine talk, — 
 
 I wish that I could ! 
 For when words like music 
 
 Have ravished the air, 
 It somehow has happened 
 
 I never was there. 
 
 It is, as I fancy, 
 
 The fault of my star, 
 For certainly somewhere 
 
 Fine talkers there are ; 
 And sometimes I 've thought, 
 
 For a minute or two, 
 Here is one ! He was telling me 
 
 All that he knew ! 
 For when we next met, 
 
 Without switching the train 
 Of a thought, he repeated 
 
 The same things again. 
 
 And if I might venture 
 
 One word to suggest 
 To the talkers, who brilliantly 
 
 Prey on the rest, 
 
68 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 - I would tell theui that no one, 
 
 So far as I 've heard, 
 Likes always to listen 
 
 And say not a word ; 
 And that it were wisdom 
 
 To ponder my rhyme, 
 And utter their oracles 
 
 One at a time ! 
 
PART III. 
 
 THE WEAVEE'S DAUGHTEES. 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 
 
 TN a poor little house that stood almost within 
 -"- the shadow of a great monastery there lived 
 once two sisters, named Agnes and Elthea, — or- 
 phans, and heirs of nothing but an honest name 
 and the trade of their parents, which was that of 
 weaving. The elder, Agnes, had black hair, a 
 pale face, hands that were never idle, and a tongue 
 that was always still, except when it repeated pray- 
 ers or when the prattle of Elthea provoked it to 
 speech. 
 
 Mirth ill becomes you, good sister, Agnes often 
 said, with severe voice and frowning brow. Do not 
 the bones of our parents moulder in the dust ? 
 and have we not to earn our bread by our weav- 
 ing ? and if we take time to laugh, what will be- 
 come of the work ! 
 
 Then Elthea would answer something after this 
 fashion : " I know, my sister, that you are wise and 
 I am simple ; I know too that our parents are 
 dead, and that we are poor girls who must weave 
 from morning till night to earn our food and our 
 clothing ; but I cannot see that it is wicked to keep 
 
72 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 the heart light just because the hands have to be 
 busy, or for that other reason that our good father 
 and mother have gone to a better world." 
 
 And having said this, or something like it, she 
 would try to separate the smiles from her rosy 
 mouth, and would weave very quietly for five min- 
 utes ; then, all unaware, she would break into 
 mockery of the bird at the door side, and after her 
 little song, ask Agnes how it happened that so often 
 at nightfall the cloth in her loom measured the 
 longer ! 
 
 " Giddy child," Agnes would answer, with never 
 a smile, " do you not know that the Devil helps his 
 own ? " 
 
 This was a dreadful thought, and, pondering it, 
 Elthea would remain silent a whole half-hour some- 
 times ; but in the end laugh again, and reply, " If 
 it be as you say, good sister, I will sing while I 
 may, for the breath I use in singing would not 
 serve me to cool the fires a thousand years hence." 
 
 " my poor sister ! " Agnes would sigh, moisten- 
 ing the threads of her weaving with her tears ; and 
 thus from day to day they sat at their looms, roses 
 blooming in the cheeks of one, and wrinkles and 
 pallor making the face of the other old before its 
 time. 
 
 At twilight Elthea went with their woven cloth 
 to the neighboring convent, where it was embroid- 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 73 
 
 ered by the sisters in patterns fine and beautiful 
 enough for queens to wear. If it were summer, 
 she plucked flowers on the way and made crowns 
 for her golden hair, which she sometimes wished 
 might be admired by eyes besides her own, as she 
 bent her head over the still places along the brook. 
 
 If Agnes could have seen how nicely she disposed 
 the flowers, and with what vanity she broadened 
 the golden bands of her hair, she would have 
 frowned, even at her prayers ; but Elthea never 
 wore home the flowers. She gave them to the brook, 
 whose bright waters carried them lovingly away, 
 and smoothed back the broad bands of her hair before 
 crossing the threshold of the gloomy house, where, 
 till her return, the firelight seemed afraid to shine. 
 
 One night, as she was spreading the table with 
 bread and grapes and milk, singing a song so low 
 that it hardly came out of her heart, — a song that 
 was half thanksgiving and half prayer, — the great 
 bell of the monastery began to toll so solemnly that 
 for a moment she grew pale, and crossed herself in 
 silence ; for she had been born and reared in the 
 faith that teaches men and women to believe there 
 is some special virtue in the sign of the cross, and 
 she had not learned that there is no virtue at all 
 in the signs, or outward shows of things. No 
 change came over the face of Agnes, and indeed 
 her face was always so gloomy that it would have 
 
74 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 been difficult for it to look gloomier than common, 
 but her voice had in it some bitter gratification as 
 she said she was glad to see her sister Elthea silent 
 and sad for once ! 
 
 It was only for a moment, however, that Elthea 
 looked sad. " I was afraid some evil had fallen 
 upon the land, at first," she said, " but I perceive 
 by the peculiar tolling of the bell that it is not evil, 
 but good that has befallen. And it is probably 
 some sister of the convent that has passed from 
 death into life " ; and so saying, she joined her little 
 song where it had been broken off, and went on 
 with her preparations for supper with a face as ten- 
 derly bright as the tenderest and brightest of all 
 the May mornings. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Agnes, lifting up her hand ; " I 
 hear the mountain wind coming angrily down ; the 
 roof-tree shakes its last leaves off to battle with it. 
 Saints, protect us ! it will be a fearful night ! " 
 
 As she spoke the rain dashed against the roof as 
 if a thunder-cloud emptied itself all at once. Then 
 Agnes began to cry aloud, as a child that is lost in 
 the dark ; but Elthea said : " God, who holds the 
 whirlwinds in his hand, will keep us, and we shall 
 not die. Why do you fear, my sister ? doth he not 
 love us the same when to our weak vision the way 
 of his providence seems dark ? " 
 
 And still the bell tolled mournfully, the winds 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 75 
 
 drove dismally, and the rain beat heavily. It was 
 enough to make any soul afraid that could not draw 
 light into the darkness from the sunshine of a past 
 life of pious cheerfulness and resignation. 
 
 " Have mercy on us, good saints ! " cried Agnes 
 again and again, wringing her hands in dismay. 
 
 " Our Father, we thank and bless thee for the 
 fire that makes us warm, and for the roof that shel- 
 ters us, and for our trust in thee that no storm can 
 beat down," prayed Elthea. 
 
 Directly, in a lull of the storm, there was heard 
 a knocking at the door, and Elthea, smiling, made 
 haste to open it ; for she said, " It is, perhaps, some 
 poor wayfarer, whose life is mercifully given into 
 our keeping." But Agnes reproved her with 
 frowns, saying, " Stir not for your life ; it is some 
 murderer who seeks our blood, or at best a robber 
 who takes advantage of the storm." And when 
 she saw that Elthea would not be hindered from 
 opening the door, she hid herself in the darkest cor- 
 ner of the house, under the cloth that was in her 
 loom ; and her trembling shook the floor beneath 
 Elthea' s feet, as her steady hand unlatched the door 
 and set it open wide. 
 
 " Now, all good saints and angels bless thee for 
 the sake of thy sweet charity," said the stranger 
 who stood waiting. " I dreamed not these rude 
 hills held so fair a blossom. Thy goodness — for 1 
 
76 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 am sure thou art good — shalt be my shield as well 
 as thy roof. Bring me straight to thy royal mother, 
 that I may kiss her hand." 
 
 The youth and stranger had crossed the threshold 
 as he spoke, and now stood waiting meekly before 
 Elthea in the light of the burning fire. 
 
 " You honor me above my deserts, gentle friend," 
 replied Elthea, her confusion showing all the more 
 for the blushes in which it tried to hide. " We 
 are but poor girls, the children of weavers, and 
 our parents are dead." 
 
 " Children ? " repeated the stranger, turning his 
 fair face toward the dark corners of the room ; " I 
 see only thyself." 
 
 Then Agnes came forth from beneath the cloth 
 of the loom, and said, turning her dark face toward 
 the stranger, " My sister, a giddy and thoughtless 
 maiden as you may judge, has spoken truly. We 
 are indeed poor, weaving all day long for our bread, 
 which at the best is scanty enough" ; and she broke 
 the small loaf in two pieces as she said this, and 
 offering one piece to Elthea, began to eat the other, 
 for she hoped to drive the stranger away by show- 
 ing him that they had nothing to spare. 
 
 But Elthea forgot her long fast, which she was 
 used to keep all day, and remembering the stranger, 
 who had been beaten by the rain, and must be 
 tired and famished, she offered him what bread 
 was left without tasting any. 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 77 
 
 The stranger accepted the bread, bowing so low 
 that all his golden locks fell down about his face ; 
 and seeing what he did, Agnes not only frowned, 
 but asked, in accents sharp and reproachful, how 
 the poor could work without food. As she spoke, 
 the piece of bread the stranger held seemed to 
 grow into a whole loaf, and the part he gave back 
 to Elthea was more than the whole she had given. 
 And as they ate, the rain drove, and the wind 
 blew, and the great bell of the monastery tolled 
 and tolled. When Agnes spoke, she could hardly 
 hear her own voice for the noise of the storm. 
 Nevertheless, she said she believed the tempest 
 had wellnigh ceased, and a favorable time was of- 
 fered for wanderers, if any were abroad, to seek 
 shelter in the neighboring convent. The stranger 
 seemed not to hear or to understand her words, for 
 he continued to eat his bread quietly as before. 
 " Had we never so much charity," continued Ag- 
 nes, " we could neither shelter nor lodge a way- 
 farer, even though we knew him to be a pious 
 priest, let alone a vagabond of a minstrel, such as 
 are likeliest to trespass on the poor." 
 
 Now the stranger wore the habit of a minstrel, 
 and carried with him a harp, so that if he heard 
 the words of Agnes he could not mistake their 
 meaning. But he seemed not to hear her words. 
 He seemed only to hear the tolling of the monas- 
 
78 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 tery bell ; and as he listened, the tears filled his 
 beautiful eyes, and ran silently down his cheeks. 
 It seemed, indeed, as if the shadow of some great 
 affliction were resting upon him. 
 
 " Your tears will not be dried by remaining 
 here," said Agnes, " for we are poor girls who have 
 no comfort for ourselves, let alone for strangers, 
 and we sell the kerchiefs we weave for our bread." 
 
 But Elthea, when she heard this cruel speech, 
 came softly between her sister and him, and in si- 
 lence that was just as sweet as any spoken words, 
 wiped his tears with her long golden hair. And 
 directly the heart of the young man began to be 
 lighter in his bosom, and he told the little maiden, 
 as she strove to comfort him in her own gentle 
 way, that the king who had ruled in his own coun- 
 try for years and years, so wisely and so well that 
 all his people loved him and came to him in the 
 time of their sorrow as though he had been their 
 own father and not the king, was now dead, — 
 dead and gone, — and all the land was in mourn- 
 ing, and all the bells of all the convents ringing 
 dirges, and all the sisters singing funeral chants. 
 Then he made a dark picture of the king's empty 
 palace, and of the king's son, who in his grief had 
 wandered to a strange country. 
 
 " And what is all that to a poor minstrel like 
 thee, or to the poor daughters of a weaver like 
 
THE WEAVEE'S DAUGHTERS. 79 
 
 us ? " cried Agnes, her words dropping like icicles 
 from her mouth. " The kings may all die and 
 may all be buried, but can we leave our work to 
 weep, though they were twice dead and twice 
 buried ! " 
 
 And having spoken these chiding words, she 
 climbed into her loom again, and beckoned her 
 sister to follow; but Elthea, who had a mind of 
 her own, sat at the feet of the stranger and wept, 
 saying, " The king was a good king and a lover of 
 his people, doing in the land the things that were 
 lovely and the things that were right, and it is a 
 wise thing and a just thing to pause a little and 
 ponder upon the life and upon the death of such 
 an one." And the burden seemed lifted more and 
 more from the young man's heart, for the words 
 spoken by the gentle and kindly maiden. 
 
 " my sister ! my foolish sister! " cried Agnes. 
 " What is the king to you, whether he were good 
 or bad, whether he be alive or dead ? " 
 
 But Elthea, regardless of her sister's words, con- 
 tinued to sit at the stranger's feet and to weep, 
 and to speak words that were sweet and pleasant 
 to him. And the wind blew and the bell tolled, 
 and the rain beat against the house, but the mo- 
 ments fled away as fast as the moments of a bright 
 day in the middle of the summer. 
 
 And as the firelight shone upon the young man, 
 
80 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 and Agnes perceived that he was fair in the face, 
 and that his locks were in their beauty like the 
 locks of the morning, she grew only the more 
 impatient and vexed and uncharitable toward 
 him. 
 
 "You may perceive how poor we are," she said, 
 " and that we have but one bed, which cannot be 
 divided"; and then going on more fretfully, she 
 said that strolling minstrels, she supposed, were 
 used to no better shelter than the oak-trees af- 
 forded ; and as for the harp, the thought of it was 
 displeasing to her, and she would gladly have it 
 out of the house. " What is the good of music ? " 
 she said. " Would it help us to weave the better, 
 though we should listen to your harp till cock- 
 crow ! " 
 
 But the young man still sat contentedly by the 
 fire, his eyes resting on the face of Elthea as though 
 it had been the face of some delightful flower, and 
 the glow of the coals made his beauty radiant, and 
 his curling locks like the brightness of a day in the 
 middle of summer. His milk-white hands were all 
 sparkling with rings, and the weaver's daughters 
 had never seen lace in their lives that was so fine 
 as the ruffle he wore upon his neck. And seeing 
 that he sat thus contented, and seeing the white- 
 ness of his hands, and the glittering splendor of 
 the rings that adorned them, Agnes, casting upon 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 81 
 
 him a look of scorn, arose and dashed herself 
 across the bed, and made a pretence of sleep ; but 
 she did not sleep, you may be sure. Sleep is gen- 
 tle, and comes not readily to the ungentle, the 
 cold, and the hard. 
 
 Then Elthea stirred the coals, and added fresh 
 sticks of wood to the fire, and made all the low 
 room, and the two clumsy looms, and the cloth 
 that was in them, and the yarn that hung on the 
 walls, to shine again, and bringing her shawl from 
 the beam of her loom and the pillow from her bed, 
 she spread them on the hearth for the stranger, 
 saying how sorry she was that such scanty hospi- 
 tality was all she could offer. And the young man 
 thanked her with his eyes so kindly, and thanked 
 her with his smile so brightly, that she went away, 
 and resting her head on the cloth of her loom, 
 slept never so sweetly in her life. 
 
 And all night the rain beat, and the winds drove, 
 and the bell of the convent tolled ; but at last the 
 cold gray morning rose over the hill-tops, and the 
 face of Agnes, as she left her pillow, was black with 
 rage as the clouds, for there sat the stranger wait- 
 ing to share the morning meal. In vain she scowled 
 upon him : he would not be driven away, but 
 leaning his cheek upon his harp, followed Elthea 
 with his eyes, as she went about the humble room'; 
 and she, still freely as before, divided her bread 
 
 4* P 
 
82 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 with him, and after that broke from her geranium 
 all its pretty flowers and twined them about his 
 harp ; for he was going to the monastery to sing 
 dirges and to offer prayers for the rest of the dead 
 king's soul. 
 
 " The king was a good king, and he is dead," 
 said the young man ; " and my faith teaches me to 
 sing thus and to pray thus for the rest of his soul." 
 
 And when he went away, Elthea asked the Lord 
 to bless him ; and it seemed as if the blessing came 
 back and rested upon her own head, for her heart 
 had never been so full of peace as it was that day. 
 
 " A pretty measure of cloth you will be likely to 
 weave," said Agnes, flinging her shuttle across the 
 warp so violently as to break her thread ; " the sun 
 is an hour high, and be sure I shall not divide my 
 bread with you for your folly ! " 
 
 Elthea was thinking of the minstrel, and hardly 
 heard what her ill-natured sister said. She was 
 thinking, not so much of his beautiful locks, and 
 not so much of his fair face, as she was thinking of 
 his beautiful spirit, for it was that which made him 
 seem so beautiful after all ; and as she thought, her 
 fingers grew nimble, and her shuttle flew just as if 
 it had wings, and the hours of the day seemed al- 
 most like moments, and before she had dreamed 
 of it, it was night, and her task was done ; and 
 while Agnes still sat scolding and fretting over her 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 83 
 
 unfinished work, she was away to the convent with 
 her full measure of cloth. 
 
 A long time she lingered, for the music of the 
 choir had never sounded half so sweet : the miii- 
 .strel was singing with the rest of them. 
 
 Three days went by, and on the evening of each 
 Elthea listened to the music of the choir, and the 
 hour of her listening was like an hour taken out of 
 heaven. 
 
 It was an easy thing to weave now, for she . was 
 weaving dreams while she wove her cloth, — dreams 
 that stretched away and away, she knew not where. 
 
 On the evening of the fourth day she missed the 
 harp of her minstrel, and the convent seemed to 
 her cold and gloomy, and all the world to be 
 changed. And yet it was changed from clouds to 
 sunshine, and from the moaning and beating of the 
 winds to the chirping and singing of the birds, — 
 the storm was broken up and gone, and the land 
 was smiling again. She could not stay in the con- 
 vent, but hurried away as fast as her feet could 
 carry her ; and coming to the brook she sat down 
 on the bank very sad, — it seemed to her as if her 
 heart was being borne away in its waves. 
 
 The waters that had leapt and prattled along the 
 stones for the three days past were murmuring and 
 moaning now ; the flowers that had seemed to be 
 made of light now seemed to be made of shadows, 
 
84 " SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 or of something still darker than shadows ; the 
 grass had lost its tender greenness, and the air its 
 balm. Her very face must be changed, she thought, 
 as well as everything else; and looking into the 
 brook where the water lay still and mirror-like, 
 she was startled to see there a face beside her own. 
 It was that of the strange minstrel, who had fol- 
 lowed her, and was peeping over her shoulder. 
 
 With a cry of joy she turned to him, all her 
 heart blushing in her cheek ; and then feeling that 
 she had betrayed an interest deeper than a weav- 
 er's daughter should feel for one whose hands were 
 so much whiter than her own, she covered her face 
 with her long loose hair, and stood silent and trem- 
 bling before him. 
 
 Placing his harp on the grass by the brookside, 
 the minstrel seated himself a little way from where 
 Elthea was ; and when the moon came up and 
 looked, over the hill, she saw the minstrel kiss the 
 hand of the weaver's daughter ; and then she hid 
 her face in a cloud, for she thought it was not fair 
 that she should look upon that which it was never 
 meant she should see ; but when she had gotten 
 over the hill and came nearer, she could not for 
 the life of her help hearing what the minstrel was 
 saying to the weaver's daughter, and the substance 
 of what she heard was this. When he had laid his 
 hand on her golden hair, he told her that if he had 
 
\ ^f/.Af'iAr,.] 
 
 THE WEAVERS DAUGHTER. 
 
THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 85 
 
 any riches except his harp, he would ask her to go 
 with him to his own country, and to be his compan- 
 ion always. 
 
 But what cared Elthea for riches ? she knew 
 how to weave, and it would be easy work weav- 
 ing for him. And there, in the moonlight, they 
 plighted everlasting love with manifold kisses. 
 
 Many nights the bosom of the minstrel had been 
 the pillow of Elthea, and many days they had trav- 
 elled together, her feet bruised and tired, but her 
 iieart running over with delight, and her lips sing- 
 ing and prattling all the while, when toward sun- 
 set one day they sat down by the wayside to rest. 
 Then it was that the minstrel told his pretty wife 
 another story, the marrow of which was, that he 
 was no minstrel at all, except, indeed, for the sea- 
 son of mourning for the king, his father ; for him- 
 self was the king's son ; and the poor weaver girl, 
 who had shared with him her bread and her fire- 
 .de, was henceforth to share with him his broad 
 and beautiful palace, and for the shelter she had 
 given him from one storm, he would shelter her 
 from all the storms of life. 
 
 And Elthea was loved and honored by all her 
 people as long as she lived, and many was the real 
 minstrel that blessed her name, and sang songs in 
 her praise ; and many was the embroidered train 
 she wore that was made of the cloth she had woven 
 
86 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 when a poor girl, and the cloudy days and the 
 stormy days were always brightest with the bless- 
 ing of memory. And to the end of her life Agnes 
 wore coarse frocks, and wove cloth to make em- 
 broideries that she never saw, fretting and scold- 
 ing at her sister's good-fortune all the while, and 
 spoiling before its time the beauty of a face that 
 might have rivalled her sister's if she had suffered 
 her heart to shine through it the same. 
 
 THREE LITTLE WOMEN. 
 
 THERE were three little women, 
 Each fair in the face, 
 And their laughter, like music, 
 
 Filled all the green place, 
 As they sat knitting talk with the 
 Threads of their lace. 
 
 Of the winds in the tree-tops, 
 The flowers in the glen, — 
 
 The birds, the brown robin, 
 The wood-dove, the wren, — 
 
 They talked, but their thoughts were 
 Of three little men ! 
 
THREE LITTLE WOMEN. 87 
 
 The sea lay before them, 
 
 With ships going by ; 
 Behind them the hills shone, 
 
 So grand and so high ; 
 And above them, blue beautiful 
 
 Patches of sky. 
 
 But they felt not the sweetness 
 
 That smiled from the lea, 
 And they knew not the way of 
 
 The wind through the tree ; 
 And they saw not the sea, 
 
 "When they looked at the sea ! 
 
 The wood-dove tapped note of the storm, 
 
 The shy wren 
 Twittered fearful, and low 
 
 Hung the mist o'er the fen, 
 But all that they thought of 
 
 Was three little men ! 
 
 The wind rose, the clouds gathered, 
 
 Mass upon mass, 
 The sun drew his long lines 
 
 Of light from the grass, — 
 Alas ! for the three little 
 
 Women, alas ! 
 
 Fast home ran the robin, 
 Fast home flew the wren ; 
 
88 SNOW-BEERIES. 
 
 The blacksnake led all his 
 
 Black sons to the fen, 
 That lay 'twixt the three 
 
 Little women and men. 
 
 The sky was all over 
 
 One horrible frown ; 
 The rain from the hill-tops 
 
 In torrents dashed down, 
 The three little short-sighted 
 
 Women to drown. 
 
 They died : pray their watery 
 
 Graves may atone 
 For their folly, in trusting 
 • To see things alone 
 Through the eyes of the 
 
 Three little men, — not their own. 
 
 PRETTY IS THAT PRETTY DOES. 
 
 THE spider wears a plain brown dress, 
 And she is a steady spinner ; 
 To see her, quiet as a mouse 
 Going about her silver house, 
 
 You would never, never, never guess 
 The way she gets her dinner ! 
 
ELIJAH AND I. 89 
 
 She looks as if no thought of ill 
 
 In all her life had stirred her, 
 But while she moves with careful tread, 
 And while she spins her silken thread, 
 
 She is planning, planning, planning still 
 The way to do some murder ! 
 
 My child, who reads this simple lay 
 
 With eyes down-dropt and tender, 
 Remember the old proverb says 
 That pretty is, which pretty does, 
 
 And that worth does not go nor stay 
 For poverty nor splendor. 
 
 'T is not the house and not the dress 
 
 That makes the saint or sinner. 
 "To see the spider sit and spin, 
 Shut with her walls of silver in, 
 
 You would never, never, never guess 
 The way she gets her dinner ! 
 
 ELIJAH AND I. 
 
 THE house that you see underneath the great pine, 
 With walls that are painted and doors that are fine, 
 And meadows and wheat-fields about it, is mine. 
 
90 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 On the stony side-hill of the woodland close by, 
 In a house that is not half so wide nor so high, 
 Elijah, my miller, lives, richer than I. 
 
 When I go to the town to pay tax on my land, 
 He sits by the chimney, his book in his hand, 
 And merry of heart as if money were sand. 
 
 Of the meadows about him he owns not a rood, 
 No stone of the brookside, no stick of the wood, 
 Yet ne'er lacked Elijah for clothing or food. 
 
 'T is good in his blue eyes the twinkle to see ; 
 That the mill goes awry never troubles his glee ; 
 'T is I that must pay for the mending, — not he. 
 
 He laughs while I frown, and he sings while I sigh, 
 The pleasant love-ditties of days that are by ; 
 So Elijah, my miller, is richer than I. 
 
 A FISHERMAN. 
 
 A FISHERMAN leaned on a clapboard gate 
 He was often used to pass ; 
 'T was sunset, and two little boys 
 Were playing on the grass. 
 
A FISHEKMAN. 91 
 
 The watchdog by the door-stone sat, 
 
 And bayed the rising moon, 
 And the mother milked her cow and sung 
 
 An old and pleasant tune. 
 
 The children left their play and ran, 
 
 And, leaning on her knee, 
 She milked the milk into their mouths, 
 
 Laughing with girlish glee. 
 
 And as she carried her frothy pail 
 
 Slow to the rustic door, 
 One little one held at her skirt behind, 
 
 And the other one before. 
 
 She stopped, and hugging both their heads 
 
 Against her loving breast, 
 They looked like two bright little birds 
 
 A-peeping from one nest. 
 
 The sunburnt fisher went his way, 
 
 Sighing, alas, alas ! 
 It was not for the little boys 
 
 That played upon the grass. 
 
 And when he came where cold gray stones 
 
 Were standing, many a pair, 
 He put his net from his shoulder down, — 
 
 His little boy was there. 
 
92 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 AMY TO HER FLOWERS. 
 
 MY lowly little beauties, 
 Your time is coming on, — 
 The meadows will be full of you 
 
 Before a month is gone. 
 I never knew your names, so near 
 
 Your wild estate I grew, 
 But would that you could be alive 
 To feel my love for you. 
 
 Full many a time the coverlets 
 
 Of grass from off your beds 
 I 've turned, my beauties, just to touch, 
 
 With reverent hands, your heads. 
 They called you simple country flowers, 
 
 But what for that care I ? 
 I loved you all the more because 
 
 You were not proud and high ! 
 
 We had our ways of naming you, — 
 
 We children of the wood, — 
 Red-slippers, lily-fingers, 
 
 Queen's cap, and martyr's blood. 
 The rustic flower, by virtue of 
 
 A coat as brown as sand, 
 And by the dew-drop shining 
 
 Like a sickle in his hand. 
 
AMY TO HER FLOWERS. 93 
 
 The crumply cow, — the little shrew 
 
 In strange and sad attire, — 
 Lover's tremble, old maid's thimble, — ■ 
 
 Moon men, — miser's fire ; 
 And one we used to gather 
 
 When the millet land was ploughed, 
 With little thin and ragged leaves, 
 
 We called the beggar's shroud. 
 
 The belle, — the lady leopard, — 
 
 The sweetheart, — tender-eyed, — 
 The spinner's gown, — the winter-frown, 
 
 And many a one beside. 
 And these, our untaught fancies, 
 
 So much from nature grew, 
 I do not care to call you 
 
 By the names that others do. 
 
 But O my little beauties, 
 
 Of field and brook and brake, — 
 The slender ones, — the tender ones, — 
 
 I would, for my love's sake, 
 I could take and make immortal, 
 
 With the power of better lays, 
 All your crooked little bodies 
 
 That had never any praise. 
 
94 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 AUTUMN THOUGHTS. 
 
 WHEN frosts begin the leaves to blight, 
 And winds to beat and blow, 
 I think about a stormy night 
 Of a winter long ago. 
 
 The clouds that lay, when the sun went down, 
 
 In a heap of blood-red bars, 
 Turned, all at once, of a grayish brown, 
 
 And ran across the stars. 
 
 And the moon went out, and the wind fell low, - 
 
 And in silence everywhere 
 The fine and flinty flakes of snow 
 
 Slipped slantwise down the air. 
 
 Slipped slantwise down, more fast and fast, 
 
 And larger grew amain, 
 Till the long-armed brier-bush, at last, 
 
 "Was like a ghost at the pane. 
 
 A group of merry children we, 
 As any house can show ; 
 
 The very rafters rang with glee, 
 That night, beneath the snow. 
 
AUTUMN THOUGHTS. 95 
 
 The candle up and down we slid, 
 
 To make our shadows tall ; 
 And played at hide-and-seek, and hid 
 
 "Where we were not hid at all. 
 
 We heaped the logs against the cold, 
 
 And made the chimney roar ; 
 And told the stories we had told 
 
 A thousand times before. 
 
 "We ran our stock of riddles through, — 
 
 Nor large, be sure, nor wise ; 
 And guessed the answers that we knew, 
 
 And feigned a glad surprise. 
 
 But, in despite our frolic joys, 
 
 That rang so wild and high, 
 We wished, we foolish girls and boys, 
 
 That time would faster fly. 
 
 And years have come and gone since then ; 
 
 And the children there at play, 
 Are sober women, now, and men, 
 With heads that are growing gray. 
 
 But their hearts will never be so light, 
 
 And their cheeks will never glow 
 As they did upon that stormy night, 
 
 In the garret rude and low. 
 
PART IV. 
 
 THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 
 
 ^*. 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 
 
 TflHERE once lived in a beautiful country, no 
 JL matter just where, a young man whose name 
 was David. From his boyhood he was given to 
 idleness and to dreaming, so much so that he came 
 to be called by those who knew him Davy Dreamer, 
 and it was predicted of him that he would never 
 come to any good. But he did come to some good ; 
 he married a good wife, and a pretty one too. She 
 was the daughter of a man as poor as himself, but 
 she had habits of industry, and great good sense, 
 which was a good deal better than a dowry of gold 
 or silver ; and it was, no doubt, more owing to her 
 management and hard work — for she was never 
 idle — than to anything of his doing, that, at mid- 
 dle life, Davy Dreamer owned a neat cottage and 
 five acres of garden ground. Moreover, it is quite 
 certain that not a flower-bush nor a sweet-scented 
 herb grew on the little farm, if so it might be 
 called, which was not of her planting. A woman 
 who found no time for dreaming was the wife of 
 David. Nevertheless, she was never heard to rate 
 her good man for his indulgence in his favorite 
 
100 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 pastime, and never seen to frown, and some per- 
 sons believed it was her smiling which made her 
 face so pretty. 
 
 I said at middle life they owned a pretty cottage 
 and a garden, which with careful cultivation would 
 have yielded not only a competence, but many of 
 the luxuries of life ; but I am sorry to record that 
 David fell a-dreaming often, at which times the 
 spade was sure to fall out of his hands, and as the 
 pretty-faced woman who was his wife had tasks in 
 the house to do, thistles grew up, and briers and 
 rank grass choked the small vegetables quite down 
 sometimes. 
 
 As a natural consequence of this thriftlessness, 
 their wants grew faster than the means of sup- 
 plying them ; for the little house was full of chil- 
 dren — I know not how many, but so many that 
 David often desponded and said to his wife in a 
 half-dreaming state, — that it was quite impossible 
 for one little garden to maintain them all ; and so 
 he would sit for hours musing and meditating on 
 what could be done for the prevention of want, — 
 of actual starvation in fact. 
 
 " There will be some way provided, never fret," 
 the good wife would answer ; " there are more 
 berries ripe than I can get to the market" ; or, "I 
 have found two new hen's nests, both full of white, 
 fresh eggs," she would say to him, though most 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 101 
 
 likely he heard her not, and often it is supposed 
 he saw not the things which she did for his com- 
 fort and for the good of his children; for when 
 the cottage wall was newly whitewashed it was the 
 same to him as before, apparently, and when a 
 pudding was boiled for Sunday, or a plum-cake 
 baked, David took them as matters of course, and 
 ate them without seeming to distinguish them from 
 coarse bread. 
 
 If this were so, it was a pity ; but I am afraid it 
 was so, for we have all of us seen Davy Dreamers 
 who took the favors that were done them as mat- 
 ters of course. We expect pigs to eat the acorns 
 without looking up to see who thrashes them down ; 
 but we have a right, I think, to expect a little 
 more politeness of men and women. However, the 
 sweet disposition of the wife of David could not be 
 soured by any neglect on his part, and, indeed, as 
 he grew impatient and fretful and fault-finding, 
 she grew still more and more patient and gentle 
 and loving, — more industrious and painstaking 
 she could not have been. 
 
 Sometimes, when she asked David to assist in 
 digging the ground or in picking the berries, he 
 would answer, " Don't disturb me now, my dear, 
 I am making a great plan"; and so it often hap- 
 pened that she picked and digged alone. ' 
 
 At last, one day when the good woman came 
 
102 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 home from market with some money in the bottom 
 of a tow bag, which she had got in exchange for 
 her fruits and such other articles as she had to 
 sell, she ventured to ask David what he had been 
 dreaming about. She had never been known to 
 trouble him so much before, therefore it is reason- 
 able to suppose that his vision had been unusually 
 extended. 
 
 "Why," said he, "I have been thinking that 
 some of the rich folks about here might give us 
 a cow and never miss her, and I am told there is 
 a man living on the other side of the island " (it 
 appears that David lived on an island) " the hills of 
 whose farm are all covered with cattle. Now, if 
 I go to him and tell him how poor we are, and 
 how much one cow would be to us, do you not 
 think he would give us one ? v 
 
 But the wise woman saw no probability of such 
 good fortune. It was barely possible, she said, but 
 the experiment was not worth trying; and even if 
 successful, the mortification of having been a beg- 
 gar would imbitter the cow's milk. The wife of 
 David, it would seem, had her own little pride, and 
 in my opinion she was all the better for it. 
 
 After this Davy Dreamer dreamed almost of 
 nothing but cows, and when he talked it was all 
 about the rich man at the other end of the island, 
 who had meadows against meadows all dotted over 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 103 
 
 with beautiful cattle. " He would never miss a 
 cow ; and I dare say if he only knew of our poverty, 
 he would gladly give us one ! " he used to say; and 
 once or twice he hinted to his wife that she might 
 go to him a-begging. But she only smiled and let 
 him alone with Ins dreaming, for she thought it 
 quite harmless. She had no idea of begging, how- 
 ever, for her part, and for days and weeks and 
 months worked on, and each return from the mar- 
 ket town saw more and more silver money in the 
 tow bag. She was never heard to complain, but 
 often to sing, and often to discourse merrily with 
 her children, who were growing to be blooming 
 men and women. A nice little plan of her own 
 had the wife of Davy the dreamer. 
 
 Meantime, his head was filled with all sorts of 
 vain imaginings. Night after night he would start 
 up out of sleep, crying out, " Just see what a pail- 
 ful ! " and morning after morning when he awoke 
 he would peep into the garden to see if a cow were 
 not browsing the cabbages. For hours and hours 
 he would sit facing the highway, wasting the time 
 that he should have used for working ; and never 
 a stranger passed along but that he looked wist- 
 fully after him, for each one he supposed to be the 
 rich man from the other side of the island come to 
 give him the cow. 
 
 But morning after morning came and no cow 
 
104 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 was found to be browsing in the garden, and 
 stranger after stranger passed along, but if the 
 "rich man from the other side of the island were 
 among them he made no pause. And all the time 
 he grew more and more fretful and dissatisfied. 
 He fretted at his wife, and fretted at his children, 
 and fretted at everything. 
 
 " What is it troubles you, Davy ? " the good 
 wife used to say ; but he would always answer, 
 " Nothing, nothing ! " so short and cross that she 
 was glad to leave him alone. And then, while he 
 covered his face from the light and moped and 
 moped, she would go forth into the sunshine and 
 work and sing, and make the best of things, bad as 
 they were. " Never mind what father does ! " she 
 used to say to the children when they complained. 
 " If father does n't help us, it is our place to get 
 along without his help, that is all. We must none 
 of us wait for another, nor depend on another, but 
 each do his own work in the world, and do it 
 cheerfully ; and then, let who will be at fault, we 
 are not." 
 
 " Your father will get over his delusions by and 
 by," she would say, and she really had some rea- 
 son for this hope : for at last he ceased to tell his 
 dreams. But, alas ! if she had known it, it was 
 not because he had ceased to dream. He did not 
 tell them, because they were evil, that was all. If 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 105 
 
 his wife would not hear of his begging, how much 
 less would she hear of what he meant to do now ? 
 
 It is probable that to his own mind he justified 
 himself, for the mind must work just as the brook 
 must run, else it grows dull and stagnant, and 
 reflects nothing clearly; and it is an easy thing 
 for those who do nothing but dream to let their 
 dreams delude them at last. It is likely that he 
 came to think he was not going to steal at all, 
 but just to take what he had a right to. He was 
 poor and wanted a cow, and the rich man on the 
 other side of the island would not miss her ! That, 
 I say, is likely the way he talked to himself, till he 
 came to think stealing was no stealing at all. 
 
 And while he was doing nothing but make his 
 bad plans, his wife was working and saving, so 
 that the tow bag had come to have a good deal of 
 silver in it; and one bright morning in May, 
 when Davy had been turning and twisting and 
 groaning all night, she arose early, and having 
 arrayed herself in her best gown and shawl, told 
 him that she was going to the market town, but 
 that she was not coming back by the direct road, 
 and might not be home till midnight. " And you 
 must not be frightened, Davy," she said, " if I 
 should not be home till moonset. I am going to 
 do something that will surprise you, I think." 
 Davy expressed no curiosity about what she was 
 
106 SNOW-BEERIES. 
 
 going to do, but he seemed wonderfully pleased 
 that she was not coming home till midnight, and 
 said a good deal to make it appear that the drive 
 after nightfall would be much pleasanter than be- 
 fore. 
 
 She was surprised and a little disappointed at 
 this, for she had hoped that he would miss her, 
 and would, at least, ask her why she should be 
 away so long ; but she could not but see that her 
 absence would be agreeable to him. 
 
 " Perhaps he is sick, and perhaps he is dreaming 
 again," she said to herself by way of excusing him, 
 and so kissed him and departed, but with a heart 
 much less light than it would have been if he had 
 said one loving word. 
 
 The old clock in the corner had not counted 
 many minutes after the wife was gone, till the hus- 
 band, having hastily prepared himself, took his 
 way to the other side of the island. 
 
 He walked vigorously on, for the morning air 
 was sweet, and a new project is apt to impart new 
 energy. Gayly sung the blackbirds, hopping along 
 the newly ploughed ground and up and down the 
 fences, and the bluebirds twittered and fluttered 
 almost in his face ; and it was not yet noon when 
 he came to the other side of the island, and found 
 that the rich man's possessions had not been over- 
 estimated. Lying in the faint shadows of the trees 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 107 
 
 there were cows ; standing knee-deep in the water 
 of the brooks there were cows ; and grazing along 
 the green, thick grass of the hills there were cows, 
 — all with great udders, and looking so gentle and 
 so pretty. He saw, too, the fine house in which the 
 rich man lived ; it was not much like his cottage, 
 and its splendor seemed to mock his poverty, so 
 that he grew angry as well as discontented. 
 
 There was no person in the field nor in sight, so 
 that he might have driven one of the cows away 
 quite safely, as it appeared ; but though he broke a 
 goad from a thorn-tree for that purpose, something 
 seemed to hold him back, and not until nightfall 
 could he persuade himself to single one from the 
 number and drive her away. But when at last 
 the sun was down and the shadows began to dark- 
 en, there came into the field the keeper of the 
 cows and called them home to be milked ; and 
 Davy, who had been waiting all day for this favor- 
 ing hour, was half glad when he saw the coveted 
 opportunity passing away. But it seems that when 
 our hand is once lifted up to do evil, Satan stands 
 ready to take it, and to lead us ; and what we call 
 chance favored the man's bad designs. 
 
 One of the cows, unmindful of the call of her 
 master, stayed feeding along the hollow and was 
 not missed among so many. Suddenly the clouds, 
 which had been floating about during the day, 
 
108 SNOW- BERRIES. 
 
 darkened together ; so that but for the white face 
 of the cow, the old man could not have seen her a 
 dozen yards away. Summoning .up all the resolu- 
 tion of the growth of years, he drove her with the 
 thorn-goad away from her own home. Many times 
 he paused and listened, thinking he heard footsteps 
 pursuing him ; and many times he hid in the 
 thickets, for he thought voices called him to stop, 
 and if the harmless cow but turned her face toward 
 him and lowed, he almost shrieked aloud ; so trem- 
 bling and listening, and framing lies to tell to his 
 good wife when he should reach home, he crept 
 slowly forward. 
 
 Having fasted all day, he grew faint, and the un- 
 accustomed exercise had made him tired, so that 
 he resolved to rest for a time and drink some of the 
 cow's milk, and at the rising of the moon, which 
 he apprehended would scatter the clouds, go on 
 refreshed. 
 
 Under the shelter of a low-spreading beech, upon 
 which the dead leaves of the last year hung thick, 
 he stopped ; and taking a small but stout cord 
 from his pocket, secured the cow, tying her by the 
 horn to the trunk of the tree. She seemed very 
 gentle and quiet, but, though he knew not why, he 
 could not make up his mind to taste her milk, hun- 
 gry and tired as he was ; so leaning against the 
 tree, he resolved to wait the rising of the moon, 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 109 
 
 and to take a nap meantime. But this resolve was 
 much easier made than executed. Sleep would 
 not come to him for any scolding or fretting, as his 
 wife had always been used to do. It was not be- 
 cause his bed was the ground, and not because his 
 grass pillow could not be moved like his feather 
 one at home, that he could not sleep, — though he 
 tried to make himself believe so ; it was because 
 he had done that which he should not have done 
 that he could not sleep. 
 
 It seemed to him that every step he heard was 
 the step of some one coming to arrest him ; and 
 his imagination made pictures of prison walls, of 
 jailers, and of everything that was frightful to 
 think of. The very moon seemed to look reproach- 
 fully on him from the sky, and to say : " You are 
 a thief, old man ! and you had better go and jump 
 into the river, if you can't be an honest man ! " 
 
 The corn-blades, as they rustled, seemed to him 
 to be talking to him, and to say : " Have you ever 
 made a cornstalk grow or an apple-tree bloom and 
 bear ? have you planted a wheat-field or sown a 
 meadow, or done anything else to help the world 
 along, or to make it any the better for your having 
 lived ? " In the leaves of the tree under which he 
 was lying, the wind seemed to stop and to stay 
 there, fretting and scolding ; he had always thought 
 the wind murmured and sung before, but it cer- 
 
110 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 tainly scolded now. The voice that used to whis- 
 per in the leaves seemed now to be saying, " I am 
 ashamed of you ! I am ashamed of you ! " over 
 and over and over. Poor old man ! he was 
 ashamed of himself, and that was why the wind 
 took such a sound. 
 
 Two crows alighted near by him, on the dead 
 branch of an old tree, and though it was not the 
 time for them to make a noise, being night, they 
 set up a cry ; but instead of saying Caw ! caw ! as 
 is the way of crows, they seemed to Davy to be 
 saying Cow ! cow ! So that he concluded that 
 they too knew what he had done. And more than 
 this, he thought everybody would hear them, and 
 the whole world would know of it. 
 
 He wished he had never heard of the rich man ; 
 he wished he had stayed at home and minded his 
 own business, and never seen a cow, nor heard of 
 a cow, nor thought of a cow ! but above all, he 
 wished that he had not stolen a cow ! Sometimes 
 he was almost persuaded to drive her back, turn 
 her into her own green pasture, go home to his 
 good wife and confess all the truth, and try to be a 
 better man ; but it is hard to turn evidence against 
 ourselves, and the man who has lied once will gen- 
 erally tell forty other lies to conceal the one, rather 
 than own the simple truth. I suppose a man never 
 suffered more from the torment of conscience than 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. Ill 
 
 Davy the Dreamer suffered as he lay there on the 
 ground by the side of his cow. And yet she looked 
 so beautiful as she stood there chewing the cud in 
 the moonlight, he could not help the thought, now 
 and then, that she would be a great delight to him 
 if he once had her in his own pasture, and if he 
 could be sure that no living mortal would ever 
 know how he came by her ! But even this fancy 
 did not quite satisfy him. " There is one person 
 that will know," said he, " and that is myself ! 0, 
 misery, misery ! if I could- only bribe my own 
 thoughts to let me alone ! " But this Davy could 
 not do, for no man ever could do it ; and feeling 
 how impossible it was to have his own respect, to 
 have anything but his own condemnation, he trem- 
 bled and hid his face in the wild grass about him 
 like a frightened beast. 
 
 At last the full moon got over the trees and the 
 hills and the low clouds, and in the clear sky shone 
 out in full splendor. And with the beautiful light 
 some part of his awful fear vanished ; and having 
 listened, and hearing no step, and the crows being 
 now still, he softly untied the cow and drove her 
 homeward. He did not get on very far, however, 
 before he found that he had lost his way. In the 
 first place, he had never been from home, and did 
 not know the roads ; and in the next, his mind was 
 so full of terror as to bewilder him, and in fact 
 
112 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 make him almost like a crazy man. He could not 
 tell north from south, nor east from west, and when 
 he came to where the roads forked, he could not 
 for the life of him conclude which way to go. So 
 he drove his cow into the woods, tied her to a tree, 
 as before, and resolved to wait till morning. 
 
 By and by the cow lay down among the dry 
 leaves, and her deep quiet breathing, together with 
 the security of the place, soothed Davy, so that he 
 at length lay down beside her, and, nestled close to 
 her speckled hide, fell asleep, and in his sleep he 
 dreamed, and this was what he dreamed. 
 
 It seemed to him that he got safely home with 
 his cow, even to the garden gate. And that on 
 looking up he saw that his house was burned down ; 
 and while he stood in consternation, one of his 
 neighbors met him and told him that his wife was 
 dead of a broken heart, and that his children were 
 some of them run away, and some of them in prison 
 for stealing cows ! 
 
 He awoke with a stifled cry in his heart, and sit- 
 ting up, saw that it was daylight, and that the gray 
 dew was lying all over his hair and clothes ; His 
 limbs were stiff, and he was chilled through and 
 through. 
 
 A squirrel near by was chattering among the 
 tangled roots of an old tree, and it seemed to Davy 
 that he kept saying, " Good for you ! good for you ! 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 113 
 
 good for you ! " So that it was alLthe same with 
 him, whether asleep or awake there was no peace. 
 
 When he tried to walk his legs dragged under 
 him as if they were half asleep, and his mind was 
 benumbed as well as his body ; but still it was 
 filled with strange, crazy notions that tormented 
 him cruelly. 
 
 A little way from where he had passed the night 
 there was a mossy stone sticking up out of the 
 ground, three times as big as his head, and at one 
 moment he was tempted to wrench this stone out 
 of its place, and knock the cow on the head with 
 it : if she were only dead, it seemed to him that that 
 would make it as if he had not stolen her. 
 
 Chilled, hungry, bewildered, half crazy, he knew 
 not what to do, for he was just as much lost as he 
 had been in the dark. Sometimes he thought he 
 would go and give himself up as a thief ; still he 
 did not, nor did he do anything else except stagger 
 blindly about, and almost wish himself dead and 
 buried under the dry leaves of the forest. 
 
 By and by the cow got hungry too, and pulled 
 at the rope with which she was tied, and lowed 
 again and again ; so loud that Davy thought 
 somebody would certainly hear her, and come 
 and take her away, and himself too, with iron 
 handcuffs on ! 
 
 At length, he struck the cow in his rage because 
 
114 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 she lowed so loud, and suddenly jerking at the rope 
 with which she was tied, she broke it, and ran 
 away. Now Davy no sooner saw her escaping from 
 him than the old desire to have a cow for his own, 
 to see her feeding in his garden, and his children 
 drinking her milk, all came back upon him, and 
 he hobbled after her as fast as he could go ; but 
 such a wild-goose chase as she led him it is not 
 worth while to describe. Through thistles, briers, 
 and hedges, through woods and across meadows, 
 and up and down hills, it seemed to Davy that he 
 was being led to the end of the earth, and what 
 was his surprise when toward nightfall, he found 
 himself in the identical pasture field from which he 
 had stolen the cow. If he had been afraid before, 
 how much more was he afraid now ! 
 
 He hid himself behind a stone-wall and waited 
 for the night to fall, not daring even to lift up his 
 head ; and when he saw the owner of the cows come 
 to drive them home to be milked, he crouched down 
 into the very earth. 
 
 All the cattle seemed delighted that the estray 
 was come back among them, and gathered round 
 her and licked her sides and her neck and her 
 forehead, and made little moans as though they 
 were talking and telling how glad they were. 
 
 " I shall never be able to divide her from her 
 -mates," thought Davy ; and his heart sank down 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 115 
 
 within him; for, in spite of all he had suffered, 
 he was fully resolved to steal the cow over again. 
 Again fortune favored him. When the owner of 
 the cattle drove the others out of the meadow, he 
 turned this one, the handsomest of all, back, and 
 Davy heard him say to her, " What business have 
 you here ? why don't you stay at home, you fool- 
 ish creature ? " 
 
 He could not quite tell what this meant ; per- 
 haps some one had bought the cow, and that 
 thought made him doubly anxious to have her. 
 So, just as soon as the gray twilight crept along the 
 meadows, he tied the cow by the horn and led her 
 away. 
 
 He was so weak by this time, with fasting, and 
 the trouble he had had, that before he had trav- 
 elled many miles he fell down, and could not go 
 another step. He milked a little of the cow's milk 
 in his hand, swallowed it, and then lay down to 
 get a little further strength from sleep. But the 
 sleep of a man who has stolen a cow is not refresh- 
 ing, as you may well believe, and he arose in the 
 morning chilled and cramped, and altogether in a 
 worse condition than he had yet been. 
 
 He was obliged to halt so often during that day, 
 that night again fell while he was yet a long way 
 from home. So for the third night he lodged in 
 the woods, and it is altogether probable that the 
 
116 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 crows and the squirrels talked to him just as they 
 did before. Just as the sun was going down on 
 the evening of the fourth day of his absence, he 
 reached home and drove the cow in at the garden 
 gate. His house was not burned down, as he had 
 dreamed it was, but it was so changed that he 
 hardly knew it. The front was all whitewashed, 
 and there were curtains of scarlet stuff shining at 
 the windows, and the grass had been dipt in the 
 dooryard, some young trees set, and so many 
 things done that Davy hardly knew it all for the 
 same place. 
 
 All at once, while he yet stood amazed, his chil- 
 dren came running out with shining faces and 
 sleek hair, and began to cry, " father, have you 
 fetched her at last ! " and then to fondle and ca- 
 ress the stolen cow as though she were an expected 
 guest. 
 
 He had just got inside and had latched the gate, 
 when turning round he saw his wife coming forth 
 to meet him, if, indeed, that smiling woman dressed 
 so neatly in a new gown and cap was his wife. 
 " Davy ! " she cries, as she takes his hand and 
 kisses it ; " we began to be afraid the cow had run 
 away with you ! " And then she asks him as she 
 leads him into the house, if he doesn't think she 
 has made a pretty good selection of a cow. Davy 
 is so puzzled by all this that he does not know 
 
THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 117 
 
 what to say, and least of all does lie know how 
 to look in his wife's face, for he sees plainly that, 
 however things are, she trusts him and believes 
 in him with all her heart. After a time the light 
 began to break in upon his brain. " Did you see 
 the rich man at the other end of the island ? " she 
 says ; and " 0, is n't it a beautiful place ? " and, 
 " Did he tell you how much I paid for the cow ? I 
 thought I would come home and surprise you with 
 the good news ; but good news travels fast, and when 
 I got home I found that you had already heard it, 
 and was gone to fetch her. How good it was of 
 you, to be sure ! " And so she ran on till Davy un- 
 derstood it all. She had bought the identical cow 
 he had stolen, the morning before he reached the 
 rich man's meadows. He was no thief, after all, 
 and nobody in the world could ever know his se- 
 cret. At first he felt very happy, and skipped and 
 danced about like a boy ; but this could not last 
 with a wicked secret in his bosom, and he soon 
 began to droop and to lose all appetite, especially 
 for milk. 
 
 The house had been all brightened up inside as 
 well as out ; and besides the scarlet curtains, there 
 was a new rag carpet and an easy-chair for him- 
 self, and a good many other things ; but none nor 
 all of them could give him pleasure, for all the 
 time he knew himself to be a thief. One day his 
 
118 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 wife said to him, " I thought, Davy, we were pre- 
 paring such a happy surprise for you, while you 
 were gone for the cow, but nothing seems to please 
 you, and we did it all for you ! " 
 
 Then Davy broke down, and crying like a boy, 
 told his wife all the ugly truth ; and after that he 
 had great pleasure in the new things, especially 
 the easy-chair, and milk tasted sweet to him, and 
 there was nowhere a happier family than that of 
 Davy Dreamer, for he was cured of his dreaming. 
 
 THE POTTER'S LUCK 
 
 IT was the summer's prime, and all the court 
 Were in the royal forest at their sport, 
 Hunting the hare to please the merry king, 
 Driving the game, and shooting on the wing ; 
 Pages, and hounds, and troops of gentlemen 
 With horns that rung the echoes from the glen ; 
 Ladies and lords with plumes and scarlet cloaks, 
 Sweeping across the shadows of the oaks. 
 
 The while a potter, sitting by the way, 
 Took in his hand a little piece of clay, 
 
THE POTTER'S LUCK. 119 
 
 And from the habit of his life began 
 
 To furbish it : he was a sad, sick man, 
 
 Having at home three children, pinched and pale, — 
 
 Is it a wonder that his heart should fail 
 
 With such a trouble tugging at the strings ? 
 
 This hunting pleasure of the merry king's 
 
 "Was not for any man, as you will guess, 
 
 Being so friendly with his own distress ; 
 
 He knew not how to spend his holiday, 
 
 But just to keep on working with the clay ! 
 
 Well, as betwixt his palms the piece he rolled, 
 
 A little zigzag stone that shined like gold 
 
 Dropt out, and rested on his knee. Just then 
 
 A lovely and sweet-hearted gentleman 
 
 Broke through the bushes, — leapt the wall that stood 
 
 About the outskirts of the royal wood, 
 
 And saw the potter sitting thus alone, — 
 
 Upon his knee the shining zigzag stone : 
 
 And in his white hand took it, paying down 
 
 On the poor potter's knee a silver crown ; 
 
 Then leapt the wall and through the bushes sped. 
 
 That night the potter came, with lightsome tread, 
 
 Home to his house, and when he showed the crown, 
 
 You would have thought the roof was coming down ! 
 
 Such merry children it were good to see, — 
 
 One at his shoulder, one on either knee ; 
 
 And as a hand, brown as a leaf that 's dead, 
 
 He laid upon each little golden head, 
 
120 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 And told, with heart a-tremble in his tone, 
 About the shining bit of zigzag stone, 
 And all about the lovely gentleman, 
 Who, breaking through the bushes of the glen, 
 Leapt the great wall, and on his knee laid down — 
 The Lord knew why, he said — the silver crown, 
 His brown hands shook, his eyes with tears grew dim, 
 That such grand luck should fall by chance to him. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then she, the eldest, at his shoulder, said, 
 
 Putting one fair, bare arm about his head, 
 
 Her eyes bent down, her fingers pale and thin, 
 
 Going so soft along his rough gray chin : 
 
 " You say the Lord knows why such luck should fall ^ 
 
 It seems to me, now, just no luck at all ! 
 
 But for your working all the day alone 
 
 Beside the royal wood, this precious stone 
 
 Would not have fallen upon your knee, — nor then 
 
 The silver crown of this fine gentleman ! 
 
 To pay an honest debt is not so ill ; 
 
 To earn the pay you get, is better still ! " 
 
 And you who read the tale, I trust, agree 
 
 The honor went where honor ought to be. 
 
A POET'S WALK. 121 
 
 A POET'S WALK. 
 
 ONCE his way a poet took 
 Through a deep and dewy glen ; 
 Write about me in your book ! 
 
 Cried the redbreast, cried the wren. 
 
 Twittering low from every bush, 
 Chirping loud from every tree, 
 
 Cried the pewet, cried the thrush, 
 Cried the blackbird, write of me ! 
 
 Sing about my eyes, my wings, — 
 Mine is but a hum]ble boon, — 
 
 So they cried, the silly things ! 
 Crossing each the other's tune. 
 
 But the poet, sign of grace 
 Giving not by look or tone, 
 
 Turned into a shady place, 
 Where a daisy lived alone. 
 
 All her modest shoulders hid 
 In a veil of leaves of grass, 
 
 Dropping either snowy lid 
 Sat she still to see him pass. 
 6 
 
122 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 Then the poet, with a quill 
 
 That some eager bird had shook 
 
 Downward, all against her will, 
 Wrote about her in his book. 
 
 THE SNOW-FLOWER. 
 
 THE fields were all one field of snow, 
 The hedge was like a silver wall ; 
 And when the March began to blow, 
 And clouds to fill, and rain to fall, 
 I wept that they should spoil it all. 
 
 At first the flakes with flurrying whirl 
 
 Hid from my eyes the rivulet, 
 Lying crooked, like a seam of pearl 
 
 Along some royal coverlet, — 
 
 I stood, as I remember yet, 
 
 With cheeks close-pressed against the pane, 
 And saw the hedge's hidden brown 
 
 Come out beneath the fretting rain ; 
 And then I saw the wall go down, — 
 My silver wall, and all was brown. 
 
 And then, where all had been so white, 
 As still the rain slid slant and slow, 
 
THE SNOW-FLOWER. 123 
 
 Bushes and briers came out in sight, 
 And spikes of reeds began to show, 
 And then the knot-grass, black and low. 
 
 One day, when March was at the close, 
 The mild air balm, the sky serene, 
 
 The fields that had been fields of snows, 
 And, after, withered wastes, were seen 
 With here and there some tender green ; 
 
 That day my heart came sudden up 
 With pleasure that was almost pain, — 
 
 Being in the fields, I found a cup, 
 
 Pure white, with just a blood-red vein 
 Dashed round the edges, by the rain, — 
 
 The rain, which I that wild March hour 
 
 So foolishly had wept to see, 
 Had shaped the snow into a flower, 
 
 And thus had brought it back to me 
 
 Sweeter than only snow could be. 
 
124 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 EASY WORK. 
 
 LITTLE children, be not crying ; 
 You have easy work to do ; 
 Look not upward for the flying 
 Of the angels in the blue ; 
 
 Look not for some great example, 
 Such as deaths of martyrs give ; 
 
 One command above is ample 
 For the teaching you to live : 
 
 So that you will find out roses 
 Brighter than are by the brooks ; 
 
 Poesy with sweeter closes 
 Than are in the poet's books ; 
 
 Friends to gently watch and tend you 
 When your hours of pain go by, 
 
 And at last their prayers to lend you, 
 When your time has come to die. 
 
 In your working, in your praying, 
 In your actions, great or small, 
 
 In your hearts keep Jesus' saying, — 
 " Love each other " : this is all. 
 
COUEAGE. 125 
 
 COURAGE. 
 
 KNOWING the right and true, 
 Let the world say to you 
 Worst that it can : 
 Answer despite the blame, 
 Answer despite the shame, 
 I'll not belie my name, — 
 I '11 be a man ! 
 
 Armed only with the right, 
 Standing alone to fight 
 
 Wrong, old as time, 
 Holding up hands to God 
 Over the rack and rod, — 
 Over the crimson sod, 
 
 That is sublime ! 
 
 Monarchs of old, at will 
 Parcelled the world, but still 
 
 Crowns may be won : 
 Yet there are piles to light, — 
 Putting all fear to flight, 
 Shouting for truth and right, 
 
 Who will mount on ? 
 
PART V. 
 
 THE CHARMED MONEY. 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 
 
 JERRY MASON had been hoeing two long 
 hours in the garden ; the earth was moist and 
 black about the cabbages, the heavy gray leaves of 
 which were lopping earthward to give their, as yet, 
 soft hearts a better chance of maturing in the sun ; 
 the red seamy leaves of the beets testified to the 
 good .culture they had had, but as if they could not 
 say it plainly enough, the beets themselves were 
 come up half out of the ground to add their tes- 
 timony, and the pale spiky tops of the onions stood 
 up like soldiers in straight rows, saying, " Behold, 
 there is not a weed among us." The tomatoes, 
 bright with dew-drops and full of young fruit, gave 
 out their pleasant odor most prodigally in payment 
 for the care they had just received ; and some few 
 flowers, common to be sure, — but what flower is 
 not beautiful ? — opened bright and honest in the 
 sunshine, causing Jerry to leave his work for a mo- 
 ment, and, leaning on his hoe, contemplate their 
 pinky and purple and yellow colors with an ecstasy 
 of joy. He did not believe, for the moment, that 
 the king's garden contained anything more de- 
 
132 SNOW-BEEEIES. 
 
 lightful than did his mother's. But even if that 
 were possible, he thought the king could not enjoy 
 its beauties half so much as he, because his pleas- 
 ure was more than half derived from the fact that 
 himself had ploughed and sowed the garden, and 
 that the fruits and flowers before him were his, as 
 they could not have been if another than himself 
 had done the work. The eyes of the simple see 
 straight to the truth sometimes, when all the curi- 
 ous speculations of the wise are at fault, and I am 
 not sure but that Jerry was wise in feeling that 
 the king could not be so happy as he. 
 
 He did not think of his bare feet half buried in 
 the loose earth ; he did not think of his patched 
 trousers, and that his shirt was not linen in the 
 wristbands and collar even ; and for a minute, at 
 least, he did not think how hot the sun was shin- 
 ing down upon him, and how tired he was. 
 
 " Jerry ! " called his mother, leaning from the 
 low window of her little house, — " Jerry, my child, 
 you may as well go and feed the old sitting goose, 
 and the change of work will rest you." 
 
 " Yes, mother," answered Jerry ; and as he took 
 off his hat and wiped his face, he looked across the 
 field where Henry Gordon was idly flying his kite, 
 and almost envied him : he was a rich man's son, 
 and neither had to hoe nor to feed an old goose. 
 
 But Jerry was too good, and too happy, for the 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 133 
 
 most part, to envy any one long, and directly, hang- 
 ing his hoe in the fork of a tree that stood by the gar- 
 den gate, he prepared the accustomed food, crossed 
 the barn-yard where the hens were cackling and 
 picking the grains from the chaff that was scat- 
 tered about, passed along the field where the cow 
 was nibbling the short grass, went over the brook 
 on a bridge of stones he had built the last summer, 
 climbed the slope beyond, and suddenly stood still. 
 The old goose sitting in the hollow of a black stump 
 close by was protruding her neck, flopping her 
 wings, and hissing at a terrible rate. " You are 
 crazy, ain't you, you ugly old goose ! " exclaimed 
 Jerry, raising up and clinching one hand as if he 
 would hit her if he had anything with which to do 
 it. " Do you think I am afraid of you ? Why I 
 have milked our cow on the wrong side, been all 
 the way to mill for mother, and besides that, have 
 killed two garter-snakes, — one of them half a yard 
 long and striped and checked like a ribbon — 
 Shut up your wings, you old — whew ! " and Jerry 
 climbed to the top of a neighboring stump and 
 shouted at the top of his voice, — cutting circles in 
 the air with his hat, and beckoning with his hand 
 in great earnestness. Farmer Hix stopped his 
 team in the adjoining field and listened, thinking 
 Jerry was shouting for help. Mrs. Mason put her 
 head out of the back door ; she, too, had heard 
 
134 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 Jerry, and feared some bad accident had happened. 
 A moment the farmer stood still, his horses turn- 
 ing their heads in the direction of the call, and the 
 mother leaned and listened in trembling anxiety ; 
 but the door closed presently, and the farmer 
 ploughed on again : both had heard Jerry say to 
 Henry Gordon, who was seen running with his 
 kite across the field, " Don't you think, our old 
 goose has got goslings ! " 
 
 That was enough to make any boy climb to the 
 top of a stump and shout for joy, Jerry thought. 
 How many she had he did not know, but he would 
 not be surprised to find that every egg was 
 hatched, — three of the golden little creatures he 
 saw, he is sure, and if the old goose would only 
 come off the nest he could soon tell ; he would dare 
 get a stick and drive her off, but he thinks he 
 won't. 
 
 " What is it ! what is it ! " cries Henry Gordon, 
 running as fast as he can, and quite regardless of 
 the kite that drags along the ground as he runs. 
 "What is it ! have you found a bag of gold ? " 
 
 He is older by two or three years than Jerry, 
 and wears much finer clothes, but he is not a finer 
 looking boy, for all that. His boots are of the 
 finest leather, and polished very bright, — brighter 
 than Jerry's best ones, which he only wears of Sun- 
 days, which hang over a peg at the head of his bed 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 135 
 
 in his mother's garret ; and his hat is so fresh and 
 new, and the ends of the green ribbon tied aronnd 
 it flutter so gayly, that Jerry is abashed for a mo- 
 ment, and says he fears Henry will not be paid for 
 having run so fast, and especially if he has spoiled 
 his fine kite into the bargain ; that he has not any- 
 thing worth showing, — some little goslings, that 
 is all. But Henry has never seen a gosling, for it 
 is only lately that he has come from a great city ; 
 and he says the old kite is of no value, he can get 
 as many better ones as he pleases ; he rather 
 hopes it is spoiled, and so by its string he winds it 
 up to him, and, tossing it at the feet of Jerry, be- 
 stows it on him in a patronizing sort of way that 
 would have offended him if he had not felt in his 
 heart that he was equal to any boy anywhere. 
 
 When the goose had been fed, and the goslings 
 too, Jerry showed his new friend the stone bridge 
 across the brook, which bridge, both concluded, 
 might be greatly beautified and improved if they 
 would unite their strength and ingenuity and give 
 a day to the work. He showed him his mother's 
 cow, and assured him that he dare plat her tail to- 
 gether, count the rings on her horns, or even go 
 up to her on the " wrong side " ! 
 
 Then they went to the cow-shed where the straw 
 was in which the hens made their nests, and after 
 this to the garden, where Henry pulled some of the 
 
136 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 finest flowers for his little neighbor. When it was 
 dinner-time and Jerry's mother called him, his 
 young friend went into the house with him, and 
 partook, with great relish, of the simple meal that 
 was spread. 
 
 When he went away he invited Jerry to come to 
 his house and ride his horse, and go gunning with 
 him, which Jerry felt would be a great delight to 
 him to do, and which he afterward did many times ; 
 for from that day Henry and Jerry were excellent 
 friends, working and playing together a great deal. 
 The rich man's son soon lost a good deal of the fool- 
 ish pretension he had at first, and what he did not 
 lose Jerry readily forgave. Sometimes, indeed, he 
 would throw off his coat and strip away shoes and 
 stockings, and enter with hearty good-will into 
 whatever was to be done. They went together to 
 the same school, for there was but one in the 
 neighborhood, and once or twice had hats and jack- 
 ets alike. They gathered nuts together, and ber- 
 ries ; made hay together, and picked apples ; 
 shouted, and sung, and made whistles, and drove 
 the cows home one with another. Then, too, O 
 idle dreaming ! they made plans for the years to 
 come, — plans of what they would do when they 
 were men. They would always be neighbors, and 
 divide whatever they had, just as they did their gos- 
 lings and hollyhocks now. 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY, 137 
 
 " Why don't you come to see my mother ? " 
 said Henry often to Mrs. Mason, for he could not 
 see why the mothers of such friends should not be 
 friends too. And Mrs. Mason always said she 
 would like to do so if she could get time, but some- 
 how it happened that she never did find time, and 
 never went. Mrs. Gordon rode in her fine carriage 
 to a fine church on Sundays, and wore a silk gown 
 and her hair in curls. Mrs. Mason put her hair 
 plainly under a plain cap, and walked across the 
 meadow to the school-house to attend service. Mrs. 
 Gordon dined sumptuously at five, Mrs. Mason 
 simply at twelve ; one lived in a big house and was 
 served by a good many maids and men, the other 
 in a very small house serving herself ; the one saw 
 the sun shine through a lace curtain, and the other 
 through rose-vines. So it was that Mrs. Gordon 
 said, " Thank you, my dear, it will give me the 
 greatest pleasure when I have an hour to spare," 
 in answer to Jerry's invitation of, " You must 
 come and see my mother." And so it happened 
 that she never found an hour to spare, and never 
 went to see Jerry's mother. 
 
 Three years went by of the closest friendship be- 
 tween the lads, and all this time they did not un- 
 derstand exactly why their mothers could not find 
 time to visit each other. It was the greatest pleas- 
 ure to Henry to go with bare feet across the nicely 
 
138 SNOW-BERKIES. 
 
 scoured floor of Mrs. Mason, and to sit with her 
 and Jerry, where the roses looked in at the win- 
 dow, and partake of her home-made cakes and 
 bread, and eat her preserved fruits, which were 
 never so good at home ; the wind came in so fresh 
 and sweet from the hay-field beyond the hollow, 
 and the birds made such music in the garden, and 
 Mrs. Mason had such a sweet voice and a pleasant 
 way, his mother would be delighted, he was sure, 
 if she could only find time to come to the cottage. 
 Mrs. Mason sat by the fire waiting for Jerry, 
 who had gone to carry a fine yellow pumpkin of 
 his own raising to Henry's mother, that Henry 
 might have some just such pies as he was to have, 
 — sat rocking and musing before the bright wood- 
 fire, wishing somebody would come in and cheer 
 the lonesomeness a little, for the night was falling 
 and the snow lay cold and smooth everywhere, far 
 as she could see. The straw-roofed shed of the 
 cow was beautified like a queen's chamber. No 
 king could put such a roof on his house as the 
 snow had put on that. The fences seemed made 
 of pieces of snow, the trees to be trees of snow, 
 and all so still and cold. The cock went early to 
 bed, fluttering the white shower from the limb of 
 the tree that lodged him, — fluttering it down as 
 though he did not care for it at all, and turning his 
 bright eyes to his mates that sat beside him, sober 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 139 
 
 and uncomfortable enough. He was rather glad, 
 for his part, that so cold and snowy a night was 
 come ; it brought out his gallantry and his forti- 
 tude. But generally the aspect of things without, 
 in spite of all the beauty, was cheerless. The tea, 
 in the old teapot cracked and bound with hoops of 
 tin, had been simmering a good while, the fire be- 
 gan to make a little red light on the snow beneath 
 the window, and a candle to be needed in the dim 
 room where Jerry's mother sat, when she heard 
 the creaking of the gate, and, rising, looked out of 
 the window. It was growing quite dusky ; and 
 though she saw two boys coming toward the door, 
 she could not at first believe it was Jerry and 
 Henry, so quietly they came, arm in arm, and talk- 
 ing so low and so earnestly. What could it mean ? 
 Of all times this was the one to make them merry, 
 for there is more exhilaration in snow than in wine, 
 and birds and boys are alike fond of dipping into 
 it, and chirping and chattering when it lies over 
 the ground loose and white. Close came the 
 young friends past rose-bushes and lilacs all 
 wrapped so prettily, and never once did they turn 
 to look or dash the white weights from the bending 
 twigs. Nor did they step aside from the open path 
 and break their way, ploughing off snow-furrows as 
 they came, as boys love to do. No merry voices 
 rang through the clear silence ; but soberly and 
 
140 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 straightforward they came, as if the snow had 
 buried beneath it some great joy. 
 
 And so, indeed, it had. They were about to be 
 separated for a long, long while. It had been de- 
 cided at home that Henry should go away to a mil- 
 itary school, not to come home for six months, 
 or it might be for a year. 
 
 Jerry's mother was sad enough when she heard 
 the news ; and to keep the moisture from gathering 
 to drops in her eyes, she rubbed the tin hoops of 
 her blue teapot with the towel, till they shone 
 
 Henry said he was sorry he was to go ; but for 
 all of his saying so, he was not as sorry as Jerry 
 was. He had new boots and a new coat and hat, 
 and a number of other things of which he was fully 
 conscious all the while. Then, too, he would write 
 every day, and it would be almost the same as see- 
 ing him, and he would come home often, for Henry 
 had been used to having his own way, and could 
 not think but that his will would still be his law, 
 as it always had been. 
 
 The next day Jerry climbed to the top of the 
 gate-post, and watched the carriage that took Henry 
 from him drive away. Through tears he caught 
 a glimpse of his little friend, but his little friend 
 did not once look toward him. 
 
 That was Jerry's first sorrow. No number of 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 141 
 
 yellow goslings could have brought the old light 
 into his red eyes that morning ; no pinks nor 
 daffodils, though the garden had been full of them, 
 could have seemed to him bright as the smile of 
 his playmate. 
 
 A letter was promised him by the first mail ; and 
 all the interval seemed to Jerry a blank, a time of 
 nothing, that he would be glad to push right along 
 and have done with. It would not be seeing his 
 friend, but it would be something ; it would be a 
 great thing : he had never received a letter in 
 his life, sealed and meant all for him. He won- 
 dered how it would begin and how it would end, 
 and what, in fact, his friend would say, and how he 
 would say it. One thing would be in it, that he 
 knew, that Henry was very lonesome and wanted 
 to see him so bad. That would be in the letter, 
 and he was not sure but that it would be in it a 
 great many times ; indeed, it Was not unlikely the 
 entire letter would be made up of love for him and 
 anxiety to see him. Henry knew so much and 
 would have learned so much, even in three days, 
 at a military school, that he supposed the letter 
 would be a model, — and what an advantage to 
 him to have such a fine friend ! 
 
 And at last the day on which the mail was ex- - 
 pected was come, and at last it went by and was 
 time to go to the post-office, two miles from his 
 
142 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 mother's house. The snow was deep and it was 
 cold after sunset, but little cared Jerry for that ; 
 he would run because he could not help it, and 
 that would keep him warm ; and, besides, if a boy 
 thought much of a boy and wrote him so, he would 
 feel bad to know a boy did not think enough of a 
 boy to go after the letter, because it was a little 
 cold. So buttoning the old coat that was outgrown 
 and a good deal worn, Jerry set out, never mind- 
 ing the still air that almost cut his face, as if it 
 tried to thrust him back into the warm' house, 
 never minding the white, cold glimmer of the stars 
 that seemed to say, " It's no use," never minding 
 anything, because he was a boy that liked a boy, 
 and supposed a boy liked him back just as well. 
 He was not long in walking the two miles. He 
 did not once think he might have gone faster and 
 with more comfort if Mrs. Gordon had offered 
 him Henry's pony to ride, when she asked him 
 to bring her letters. He did not think of any- 
 thing but the pleasure he would have in breaking 
 the seal and reading to his mother every word 
 Henry wrote. The two miles were a good deal 
 longer when Jerry went home, not because he was 
 going home, and not because it was more up hill ; 
 it was a good deal colder, too, and his coat seemed 
 thinner ; it nearly froze his hand to carry the bun- 
 dle of letters and papers for Mrs. Gordon, and the 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 143 
 
 sharp wind brought the water to his eyes, — he 
 had no letter from Henry. An ugly distrust came 
 into his heart as he went along, — the moon might 
 drop right down out of the sky, for all he knew, 
 and he hardly thought it unlikely that his mother 
 should have set fire to the house and run away 
 while he was gone. If it was possible that Henry 
 could have broken his " word and honor," his 
 " double word and honor," what might not be pos- 
 sible ? 
 
 Henry was not sick, for there, in a fair, firm hand, 
 was a letter to his .parents. 
 
 He could not stop and ask Mrs. Gordon if Henry 
 were well ; something choked him, and he must go 
 home. 
 
 An hour he sat on a stool in the corner and 
 cried, in spite of all his mother could say to 
 soothe him ; but at last when she told him to 
 wipe his eyes and run over to Mrs. Gordon's and 
 see what was in Henry's letter, he stifled his sobs 
 and obeyed. 
 
 Mrs. Gordon looked up from her reading as Jer- 
 ry came in, in a way that said plainly she was sur- 
 prised and annoyed ; and when little Fanny Gordon 
 ran from listening at her mother's knee and offered 
 Jerry a chair at the fireside, she shook her head at 
 the little girl, and whispered something which Jer- 
 ry thought meant she must not ask him to sit 
 
144 SNOW-BEKEIES. 
 
 down. Fanny half hid her face in her mother's 
 lap ; but she turned her eyes full of tears and sweet 
 pity toward Jerry, and the frown of the mother 
 lost its power on him, and for a moment he scarcely 
 cared whether Henry had said anything about him 
 or not. 
 
 Every mail day all the winter, whether it were 
 gusty or mild, freezing or thawing, Jerry went reg- 
 ularly to the post-office, but there was never any 
 letter for him. Once little Fanny had spoken to 
 him through the fence, and told him that her 
 brother Henry had written to know what he was 
 doing now-a-days, and said that he should write to 
 him as soon as he found time. She said, too, that 
 when she went away to school, as she was to do in the 
 spring, she would write a letter to him, and she 
 would not tell her mother nor anybody else what 
 she wrote. 
 
 After this Jerry tried to make excuses for 
 Henry, — he was very busy, no doubt, and had as 
 many letters to write home as he could find time to 
 do ; and as he worked, spading the garden, he often 
 tried to work out a letter in his brain. But he 
 could not tell very well how to begin, nor how to 
 end, nor what to say, — a boy in a military school 
 might not feel much like a boy spading in his 
 mother's garden. 
 
 The old goose brought out her troop of young 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 145 
 
 goslings again ; the flowers all looked over the gar- 
 den fence toward " Fanny's house," as Jerry fan- 
 cied ; the heads of the cabbages were hardening, 
 and their great gray leaves lopping toward the 
 ground again. Jerry could not go to school now 
 as he used to do when he was smaller, but had to 
 stay at home and work. Fanny was gone away to 
 school now, and had kept her promise and written 
 a letter to Jerry, — a very little letter made up of 
 very little sentences, and with a superscription that 
 made three very crooked lines all across and across 
 the envelope. To Jerry's thinking, however, there 
 never was a much better letter written. All the 
 time he kept it in his pocket, reading it again and 
 again as often as he found leisure, though he knew 
 every word from first to last. He could not bear 
 to put it away with his few books ; it seemed like 
 a free ticket to the good-will of everybody ; so he 
 kept it, as I said, all the time in his pocket. He 
 found the distrust that he had had in his heart 
 since Henry went away growing rapidly less, and 
 now and then he suspected that he had been very 
 wicked in imagining the moon could fall, or his 
 mother burn up the house and run away. Sud- 
 denly he stopped from his working, tired, but look- 
 ing well pleased ; he had been very industrious and 
 done a full day's work, though it wanted yet three 
 hours of night. He had made up his mind to 
 
146 SNOW-BEREIES. 
 
 write to Henry ; for since Fanny had written him, 
 " I am very well ; I hope you are very well. I 
 don't like here so well as home. Do your gos- 
 lings groW ? Have you heard from Henry?" he 
 had felt that everybody he knew liked him, and 
 would be glad to know how well he was doing. 
 So the happiness he thought he should give to 
 another was all bright in his face as he hung his 
 hoe in the pear-tree, and breaking three cabbage- 
 leaves, not crooked and deep green, but fair and 
 gray with bloom, made his way to the brookside, 
 where the shadow of a maple lay thick and cool, 
 and near where the stone bridge caused the water 
 to stop and make some silver talk before it went 
 over. 
 
 From the cherry-tree by the door he had brought 
 some little withes, and having sharpened them with 
 his teeth, began the composition of a letter, — using 
 his hat-crown for a desk, the cabbage-leaves for 
 paper, and the twigs for pens. Never was poet 
 wrapped more happily in a dream than he in his 
 work, when all at once he became conscious of 
 footsteps and heard a voice, not unfamiliar, except 
 in its derision, say, " Ha, boy ! I say you ought to 
 take out a patent for that sort of paper : how are 
 you, though ? " Jerry's senses were a good deal 
 bewildered, and he could not believe at first it was 
 Henry Gordon who stood before him, resting his 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 147 
 
 polished gun on the ground, holding a cigar in one 
 hand, and surveying him with such cool indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 He tried to rise and return civilly the rude salu- 
 tation of the young cadet ; and as he advanced he 
 saw that Henry was not alone, hut accompanied 
 by a youth whom he introduced as a classmate, 
 naming Jerry as a boy he used to know ; asking 
 Jerry how things were getting on in his line, and 
 saying that, as regarded himself, he hoped his soul 
 had got a little above potatoes during his absence. 
 He did not speak even of Jerry's mother, who had 
 done him so many favors ; and to complete the in- 
 sult, he tossed at Jerry, as he passed along, a small 
 piece of money, saying, " Take that, boy, and buy 
 you a copy-book and a pen or two." 
 
 Jerry did not speak ; he felt as if he could never 
 speak again ; he could hardly persuade himself 
 that it was indeed Henry Gordon who had stood 
 but now before him, and as long as he could see 
 gazed the way he was going. The very buttons of 
 his coat seemed to mock him with their shining ; 
 and there lay the money on the ground at his feet, 
 and the cabbage-leaves wilting in the sun, for 
 where the shadow had been an hour ago the sun 
 shone hot enough now. 
 
 All the world was changed, and it seemed for a 
 little while not only possible, but highly probable, 
 
148 SNOW-BEEEIES. 
 
 that his mother might set fire to the house and run 
 away, and the moon drop out of the sky ; if any- 
 thing could stay back such events, it would be the 
 letter from Fanny. He put his hand in his pocket, 
 to be sure that it was still there ; and, stooping, 
 picked up the piece of money and placed it in the 
 opposite pocket, to keep balance. Fanny's letter 
 should teach him the world was not all bad ; that 
 piece of money, that it was not all good. In itself 
 it was but a harmless piece of money, and he would 
 not have known it from a thousand others, 
 but it had been in contact with the hand that 
 shrunk away from him ; it had been flung at him 
 in charity, — at him a boy as good as any other 
 boy, as honest and as honorable. In all respects 
 he was not Henry's equal, to be sure, but he would 
 set to work that very day and make himself so. If 
 he had not had Henry's advantages, neither had 
 Henry had his ! And straight he set out for home. 
 His heart misgave him almost when he reached 
 the door and saw the tea-table spread in holiday 
 style, and for three. Mrs. Mason had learned that 
 Henry was come home, and was thinking what a 
 pleasant time they would all have once more. It 
 was hard to tell his good dear mother that he had 
 already seen Henry, and how he had seen him. 
 More than once, as they sat together, Jerry's 
 mother arose from the table to attend some little 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 149 
 
 duty, she said, but in truth it was to dry her eyes ; 
 and more than once Jerry said he did not care 
 what Henry Gordon thought of him ; but his 
 mother knew it was because he cared a great deal 
 that he said so. 
 
 Already his mind was stung into activity, and a 
 development was going on, of which he was not 
 himself aware. 
 
 Years of persevering endeavor, of hard work 
 with the hands and harder with the brain, we pass 
 by, — years in which hope has been busy with him, 
 so busy that he has felt the steep way they have 
 climbed together less toilsome. Teachers and 
 schools have not been accessible to him much, ex- 
 cept, indeed, the common school of humanity and 
 the great teacher, God, in his works. These 
 works he has read and reread ; these he has stud- 
 ied, and he has studied himself, and his duties to 
 himself and his fellows. He feels the nobility of 
 true and honest manhood, afraid of nothing but 
 doing wrong, ambitious of nothing but coining the 
 ability with which he has been endowed to right 
 use. For he is not ambitious to serve the world 
 nor the state, — measured against such great re- 
 quirements he feels unequal ; he is content with 
 making even a little spot of earth greener for his 
 having lived ; he thinks it something of an achieve- 
 ment to turn weeds into good rich soil, and make 
 
150 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 wheat or roses grow where, but for him, barrenness 
 would have been. He does not believe he could 
 have made himself a poet if he had mortised rhymes 
 together never so ingeniously ; nor does he suppose 
 he could manage the affairs of nations, because 
 he can manage a plough. Nevertheless, he is a 
 proud man, — proud of his cleared land and of his 
 woodland, — proud of his brooks and of his cows, 
 — of his harvests and of his garden, — of his beau- 
 tiful cottage, — of the vines about the porch and 
 of the well-bound volumes that shine row over row 
 against the wall, — of his mother, sitting beside 
 him so comfortable and so respectable, — proud 
 that he owes no man anything, and proud that he 
 is not proud in any mean and selfish sense. 
 
 A thousand times he might have resented the 
 old insult of the piece of money, but he feels that 
 " time at last sets all things even," and he is quite 
 contented to wait, — so well content, indeed, that 
 there is no waiting to do. He could not have 
 been so well avenged any way as he is by his indif- 
 ference. 
 
 It is the middle of June, and the garden is full 
 of flowers that still look toward Mrs. Gordon's a 
 good deal, though Jerry says he don't care which 
 way they look ; but we are quite sure they would 
 not be so many nor so bright if there were no bright 
 eyes looking down upon them from the opposite 
 
THE CHAKMED MONEY. 151 
 
 windows. There are bright flowers immediately 
 under the windows where the bright eyes are gaz- 
 ing forth so often ; but to those eyes the flowers in 
 the distance show the best. 
 
 Fanny is a woman now, and though she sends 
 no more letters to her friend Jerry that no one 
 knows anything of, she sends a great many glances 
 as full of kindly meaning as were the little sen- 
 tences sent him so long ago. She has been home 
 from school a whole year ; and though many times, 
 in her walks and drives, she has met Jerry, and 
 smiled upon him very sweetly, he has returned her 
 smiles with only formal politeness. Of course 
 Fanny Gordon does not care much for the like of 
 him, — that is what he says to himself, and so he 
 keeps up a show of indifference that he is very far 
 from feeling. 
 
 Henry has been at home a long time, too, spend- 
 ing his time in idleness and in worse than idleness, 
 so rumor says, and that things are growing from 
 bad to worse with the Gordons. Still they manage 
 to keep up an outside show, and hold their heads 
 much above working-people like the Masons. But 
 when the foundation is undermined, the time will 
 come that the house must fall, and that time came 
 to the Gordons. 
 
 It was early autumn ; there was a little fire on 
 the hearth, but the door toward the flower-gar- 
 
152 SNOW-BERBIES. 
 
 den stood open, and Jerry sat in the door watch- 
 ing the moonlight as it played along the grass and 
 shone among the stalks of such of the hardier blos- 
 soms as yet remained. 
 
 All at once his heart gave a little start, — was 
 it some bird rustling among the dry leaves ? No, 
 it was the step of Fanny rustling along the fall- 
 en leaves. She came without hesitation, without 
 blushing, straight to where Jerry was sitting. " I 
 could not go away," she said, putting out her hand 
 to him, " without first coming to bid your mother 
 and you good by ! " 
 
 " Go away, Fanny ! Where are you going, and 
 why ? " cried Jerry, surprised into cordiality and 
 earnestness. 
 
 Then Fanny sat down beside him in the moon- 
 light and told him where she was going, and why. 
 "Our fortune is all gone, and somebody must do 
 something," she concluded. 
 
 " But why should you go away to do some- 
 thing?" 
 
 " Because," Fanny answered, " we have no 
 friends here ! " and then her voice first faltered, 
 and she hid her face in her hands. 
 
 " No friends 1 " said Jerry ; " with my mother 
 and myself here? Fanny, how can you say 
 that?" 
 
 Then she told him that she was sure there was 
 
THE CHARMED MONEY. 153 
 
 no reason why himself and his mother should be 
 their friends ; but at any rate, they had no others, 
 and she was going away to teach school, or to 
 learn to sew, or to do something by which she 
 could take care of herself. " Just think, Jerry," 
 she says, " I have not a glove to my hand ! " And 
 she held out her hand to him, red as a rose with 
 the evening chill. 
 
 Jerry took it between both his. " And suppose, 
 Fanny, I should always keep it this way," he said, 
 " you would not need a glove, would you ? " 
 
 Fanny's face was all bright with blushes when 
 Mrs. Mason came to say that supper was ready; 
 and the place she took at the table that night be- 
 came hers for all her life before long ; for, of course, 
 she and Jerry were married, and two birds were 
 never happier under the mother's wing than were 
 they with the mother of Jerry. Everything pros- 
 pered with them, and by and by they were the rich 
 people in the town where they lived, and not the 
 Gordons at all. 
 
 One dreary night, when the outside show could 
 not be kept up any longer, when they were in 'fact 
 reduced to the last sixpence, they sat together, 
 Mrs. Gordon and her son Henry, lamenting their 
 hard fortune, and blaming each other, and blam- 
 ing Fanny, whom they had never been to visit, and 
 blaming everything but their own foolish pride and 
 
154 SNOW-BEEEIES. 
 
 perverseness for the ruin and degradation that was 
 now impending. 
 
 Both started at the sound of a footstep ; it was 
 a creditor's, no doubt. 
 
 " What brought you here ? I don't owe you 
 anything ! " exclaimed Henry, sullenly, when he 
 saw that the visitor was Jerry Mason. 
 
 " No," replied Jerry, " but I owe you a great 
 deal " ; and taking from his pocket the piece of 
 money Harry had flung at him so long ago, he 
 laid it down on the table before him. Henry 
 trembled and blushed for shame ; but when Jerry 
 took his hand and said, " This piece of money has 
 been a charm that has kept me from idleness and 
 uselessness ; it has added to my lands and built 
 me a house, beautified my garden, clothed my 
 mother, and made her old age happy and respecta- 
 ble, developed my own manhood, and crowned me 
 with the love of the best of women. For all this 
 I owe you something, and I am come to pay you. 
 Take first this money and see what it can do for 
 you. You are yet in the prime of life and can re- 
 trieve and achieve everything ; come with me with 
 as hearty a good-will as you came to leok at my 
 goslings, and we will devise the way." Henry 
 took the hand extended to him, and brushing the 
 tears from his eyes, — the first ones that had wet 
 them for long years, — said in accents that trem- 
 
TO A STAGNANT POND. 155 
 
 bled, " I will go, Jerry, if you think I am worth sav- 
 ing ; and my mother shall go too. Come, mother ! " 
 So all three went together, and Fanny met and 
 embraced them ; and then they sat down together 
 and made plans for the future, and that was the 
 happiest night of their lives. 
 
 TO A STAGNANT POND. 
 
 OPOND of tbe meadow, 
 So low and so black, 
 Say why are you lying thus, 
 Flat on your back ! 
 
 Week in and week out, 
 
 And from night until morn, 
 
 You have been doing nothing 
 Since first you were born. 
 
 Now if you are not dead. 
 
 But only just dumb, 
 Get up, sir, and take off" 
 
 Your jacket of scum ! 
 
 No sweet little flower 
 
 To your dull bosom bends; 
 
156 SNOW-BEKRIES. 
 
 You have only the hop -toad 
 And snake for your friends ! 
 
 No bird to your dark wave 
 Comes twittering down, 
 
 And the grass all about you 
 Is withered and brown. 
 
 It is time, and high time, 
 You were setting to work, 
 
 You sordid, unlovable, 
 Beggarly shirk ! 
 
 Just think, with your brow 
 Into black wrinkles curled, 
 
 You never have gladdened 
 A heart in the world ! 
 
 And if you would henceforth 
 Escape from abuse, 
 
 Get up, I beseech you, 
 And be of some use ! 
 
 Close at hand, only hid by 
 The sheep-grazing hill, 
 
 Your gad-about sister 
 Is turning a mill. 
 
 Her path is so pleasant, 
 Her smile is so bright, 
 
 The flocks stay about her 
 All day and all night. 
 
TO A STAGNANT POND. 157 
 
 The wild mint leans lowly, 
 
 Her kiss is so sweet, 
 And the stones that she treads on 
 
 Sing under her feet. 
 
 With foam-flowers always 
 
 Her wet locks are crowned, 
 And her bushes with berries 
 
 Blush all the year round. 
 
 She counts not the mill- work 
 
 As doing her wrong, 
 But makes the wheel partner, 
 
 And dances along. 
 
 And so, with her life 
 
 And her labor content, 
 She is queen of the meadow 
 
 By common consent. 
 
 Now here is a secret, 
 
 Receive it in faith, — 
 True life is in action, 
 
 Stagnation is death. 
 
 And this you may learn 
 
 From your sister, the brook, 
 As though it were written 
 
 And bound in a book. 
 
158 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 You die in your torpor, 
 She rests in her strife, 
 
 Because she is keeping 
 The law of her life. 
 
 And would you be happy 
 As she at her mill, 
 
 Throw off your scum jacket, 
 And work with a will. 
 
 THE POET TO THE PAINTER. 
 
 PAINTER, paint me a sycamore, 
 A spreading and snowy-limbed tree, 
 Making cool shelter for three, 
 And like a green quilt at the door 
 Of the cabin near the tree, 
 Picture the grass for me, 
 With a winding and dusty road before, 
 Not far from the group of three, 
 And the silver sycamore-tree. 
 
 'T will take your finest skill to draw 
 From that happy group of three, 
 Under the sycamore-tree, 
 
 The little girl in the hat of straw 
 
 And the faded frock, for she 
 
THE POET TO THE PAINTER. 159 
 
 Is as fair as fair can be. 
 You have painted frock and hat complete ! 
 Now the color of snow you must paint her feet ; 
 Her cheeks and lips from a strawberry-bed ; 
 From sunflower-fringes her shining head. 
 
 Now, painter, paint the hop-vine swing 
 
 Close to the group of three, 
 And a bird with bright brown eyes and wing, 
 
 Chirping merrily. 
 
 " Twit twit, twit twit, twee ! " 
 That is all the song he makes, 
 And the child to mocking laughter breaks. 
 
 Answering, " Here are we, 
 
 Father and mother and me ! " 
 Pretty darling, her world is small, — 
 Father and mother and she are all. 
 
 Ah, painter, your hand is still ! 
 
 You have made the group of three 
 
 Under the sycamore-tree, 
 But you cannot make all the skill 
 
 Of your colors say, " Twit twit, twee 1 " 
 
 Nor the answering, " Here are we, 
 
 Father and mother and me." 
 I '11 be a poet, and paint with words 
 Talking children and chirping birds. 
 
160 SNOW^BERRIES. 
 
 ONLY A DREAM. 
 
 "The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, 
 Unless the deed go with it" 
 
 ONE time, when lying in my bed, 
 Many a night ago, 
 Flying and flapping over my head, 
 
 There went a cunning crow. 
 I might have struck the creature dead, 
 She sailed so near and slow. 
 
 I might have struck her as she went, 
 
 (All in a dream lay I,) 
 But thought was on the method bent, 
 
 My fated bird should die ; 
 And when at last the shaft was sent, 
 
 The archer's time was by. 
 
 " O cruel, cunning bird/' I said, 
 
 " What made you fly away ? 
 I would have dyed your black wings red, 
 
 With but a moment's stay. 
 Then you had flown without your head, " — 
 
 (All in a dream I lay.) 
 
 Her nest was in a giant tree, 
 
 So safe and snug and high ; 
 And I said, " If there your young ones be, 
 
 I '11 kill them when they fly." 
 
ONLY A DREAM. 161 
 
 'T was hard just then to climb and see, — 
 (All in a dream lay I.) 
 
 Afield with my two boys one morn, 
 
 (This was the vision's close,) 
 Each with a basket full of corn 
 
 To plant the furrowed rows ; 
 Right over us, in full-fledged scorn, 
 
 There went three wicked crows. 
 
 " You might have killed us once," they cried, 
 
 " Our mother's nest you knew ; 
 But now our wings are strong and wide, 
 
 And we can caw at you ! " 
 Then vanished all my manhood's pride, — 
 
 The birds had spoken true. 
 
 " O father," said my boys to me, 
 
 " 'T is plain that crows will lie ; 
 You knew what they would grow to be, 
 
 Before they learned to fly, 
 And would have killed them in the tree," — 
 
 (All in a dream lay I.) 
 
 Many and many a night since then 
 
 I 've called to mind that crow, 
 And thought how many thousand men 
 
 Through all their lifetime go, 
 Planning out times and seasons when 
 
 They will do thus and so ; 
 
162 SNOW-BERKIES. 
 
 But all their joys are shallow joys, 
 Their praise augments their woes ; 
 
 For I remember when my boys 
 Denounced the taunting crows, 
 
 A voice inside of all their noise, 
 Condemning me, arose. 
 
 INVENTORY OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 A HUT of logs without a door, 
 Minus a roof and ditto floor ; 
 A clapboard cupboard without crocks, 
 Nine children without shoes or frocks ; 
 A wife that has not any bonnet 
 With ribbon bows and strings upon it, 
 Scolding and wishing to be dead, 
 Because she has not any bread. 
 
 A teakettle without a spout, 
 
 A meat-cask with the bottom out, 
 
 A " comfort " with the cotton gone, 
 
 And not a bed to put it on. 
 
 A handle without any axe, 
 
 A hatchel without wool or flax ; 
 
 A potlid and a wagon-hub, 
 
 And two ears of a washing-tub ; 
 
 Three broken plates of different kinds, 
 
 Some mackerel tails and bacon-rinds ; 
 
HUNTER'S SONG. 163 
 
 A table without leaves or legs, 
 One chair, and half a dozen pegs, 
 One oaken keg with hoops of brass, 
 One tumbler of dark-green glass ; 
 A fiddle without any strings, 
 A gunstock, and two turkey wings. 
 
 O readers of this inventory, 
 
 Take warning by its graphic story ; 
 
 For little any man expects, 
 
 Who wears good shirts with buttons in 'em, 
 
 Ever to put on cotton checks, 
 
 And only have brass pins to pin 'em ! 
 
 'T is, remember, little stitches 
 
 Keep the rent from growing great ; 
 
 When you can't tell beds from ditches, 
 
 Warning words will be too late. 
 
 HUNTER'S SONG. 
 
 I KNOW a mountain high, 
 With its head against the sky, 
 Where the stormy eagles fly 
 
 East and west ; 
 There, at morning's ruddy gleam, 
 And in evening's purple beam, 
 I have heard the nursling scream 
 From the nest ! 
 
164 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 O, I love that mountain high, 
 With its head against the sky, 
 And the hungry nurslings' cry, 
 
 All forlorn ; 
 For as winds went to and fro, 
 Cutting furrows through the snow, 
 In a hunter's hut so low, 
 
 I was born. 
 
 O, I love the rocky glade, 
 Where my little brothers played, 
 Where together they are laid 
 
 In green beds ; 
 With a water murmuring nigh 
 Its eternal lullaby, 
 And a blue strip of the sky 
 
 At their heads. 
 
 HAGEN WALDER. 
 
 THE day with a cold, dead color 
 Was rising over the hill, 
 When little Hagen Walder 
 Went out to grind in th' mill. 
 
 All vainly the light in zigzags 
 Fell through the frozen leaves, 
 
 And like a broidery of gold 
 Shone on his ragged sleeves. 
 
HAGEN WALDER. 165 
 
 No mother had he to brighten 
 
 His cheek with a kiss, and say, 
 " 'T is cold for my little Hagen 
 
 To grind in the mill to-day." 
 
 And that was why the north-winds 
 
 Seemed all in his path to meet, 
 And why the stones were so cruel 
 
 And sharp beneath his feet. 
 
 And that was why he hid his face 
 
 So oft, despite his will, 
 Against the necks of the oxen 
 
 That turned the wheel in th' mill. 
 
 And that was why the tear-drops 
 
 So oft did fall and stand 
 Upon their silken coats that were 
 
 As white as a lady's hand. 
 
 So little Hagen Walder 
 
 Looked at the sea and th' sky, 
 And wished that he were a salmon 
 
 In the silver waves to lie ; 
 
 And wished that he were an eagle, 
 
 Away through th' air to soar, 
 Where never the groaning mill-wheel 
 
 Might vex him any more ; 
 
166 SNOW-BERKIES. 
 
 And wished that he were a pirate, 
 To burn some cottage down, 
 
 And warm himself; or that he were 
 A market-lad in the town, 
 
 With bowls of bright, red strawberries 
 
 Shining on his stall, 
 And that some gentle maiden 
 
 Would come and buy them all. 
 
 So little Hagen Walder 
 
 Passed, as the story says, 
 Through dreams, as through a golden gate, 
 
 Into realities. 
 
 And when the years changed places, 
 Like the billows, bright and still, 
 
 In th' ocean, Hagen Walder 
 Was the master of the mill. 
 
 And all his bowls of strawberries 
 
 Were not so fine a show 
 As are his boys and girls at church, 
 
 Sitting in a row. 
 
A GOOSE AND A CROW. 167 
 
 A GOOSE AND A CROW. 
 
 TWO geese, scarcely knowing 
 The east from the west, 
 Got on to the water 
 
 And rode off abreast, — 
 Geese, you know, are not famed 
 For their wisdom, at best. 
 
 Well, these were perhaps 
 Neither greater nor less 
 
 Than their fellows, — each had on 
 A very white dress, 
 
 And both had short tails, 
 And a neck like an S. 
 
 The morning was genial, 
 
 The water was still, 
 And each with her heart 
 
 On the end of her bill 
 Began telling secrets, 
 
 As geese sometimes will. 
 
 " All ganders are vulgar," 
 
 One said, i( all so low 
 That one can't respect them ; 
 
 My dear, do you know 
 I am really going 
 
 To marry a crow ! " 
 
168 SNOW-BEEKIES. 
 
 "A crow ! " cried the other one, 
 
 Slanting her eye : 
 66 What ! one of those black things 
 
 That swim in the sky ? 
 How strange it would be 
 
 To go swimming so high ! 
 
 " But are you sure, darling, 
 (Though 't is n't for me 
 
 To question your wisdom,) 
 That you shall agree ? 
 
 I Ve heard say that crows 
 Have their nests in a tree ! " 
 
 " And what if they do, dear ? 
 
 Should that make you doubt 
 My wisdom ? " " No, darling, 
 
 My fears were about 
 The poor little goslings, — 
 
 Might they not fall out ? " 
 
 " Fall out of their own nest 
 Ah, where could you go 
 
 To find such a foolish fear ? 
 Do you not know 
 
 That the carefullest bird 
 In the world is the crow ? 
 
 " And when he shall have young 
 To quicken his care, 
 
A GOOSE AND A CROW. 169 
 
 Do you think he will leave his nest 
 
 Out of repair ? 
 Or, pray, do you think that 
 
 A crow is a bear ? 
 
 a Why, only this morning, 
 
 The one I propose 
 To marry (be sure, 
 
 He 's the kindest of crows) 
 Assured me that I should do 
 
 Just as I chose ! 
 
 " And so if I don't like 
 
 My nest in a tree, 
 Inasmuch as he means 
 
 To defer thus to me, 
 I will come down and build 
 
 On the ground." " If that he 
 
 " Continue his deference 
 
 When you are matched," 
 Said the wiser goose, " and if when 
 
 Discords are hatched, 
 He shall have no sharp claws 
 
 Nor your eyes to be scratched ! " 
 
 " I see," said the first goose, 
 
 Receiving amiss 
 The warning, " that you, madam, 
 
 Envy my bliss, — 
 
 8 
 
170 SNOW-BEEEIES. 
 
 Good morning." The last word 
 Was almost a hiss. 
 
 They married, this stranger pair, 
 For better or worse, 
 
 And, being opposed 
 
 In their natures, of course, 
 
 They quarrelled, — she left him, 
 Brought suit for divorce, — 
 
 And charged him with saying 
 A goose was a goose, 
 
 Also with most cruel 
 Neglect and abuse, 
 
 And with being black, — all true, 
 But no sort of use ! 
 
 And so they are living, — 
 He high in his tree, 
 
 Misanthropic as ever 
 A crow was, and she 
 
 Decrying the courts 
 
 That won't grant a decree. 
 
 He says to his friends 
 
 He was not understood, — 
 
 Says he would n't get married 
 Again if he could ; 
 
 And she says he lies, 
 
 For he knows that he would. 
 
PART VI. 
 
 THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS 
 HEART. 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 
 
 ONCE, in the suburb of a beautiful village, 
 which in our story we will call Heatherford, 
 there lived an old woman whose only wealth was 
 her garden and her little son Elijah, or Ligie, for 
 that was the pet name which the fond mother gave 
 her boy. No cottage in all the village was bright- 
 er and prettier with pots of flowers and tidy keep- 
 ing than that belonging to Ligie's mother. In- 
 deed, it was no unfrequent thing to see rich peo- 
 ple stop their carriages and look into the garden, 
 where the finely cultivated vegetables looked al- 
 most as well as the flowers that fringed the beds 
 where they grew. At the foot of the garden, which 
 sloped to the south, a spring broke out of a green 
 wall of grass, and, escaping from the shadow of a 
 willow-tree that grew there, ran crookedly away, 
 shining and laughing as far as you could see. No 
 corn had blades so thick and so green as that 
 which Ligie planted and hoed, and no poppies 
 were so large and so red as those fringing his 
 cornfield. 
 
 Sometimes after sunset Ligie's mother might be 
 
174 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 seen walking down the clean paths between the 
 lady-slippers and the lilacs, talking to her child in 
 a voice, low and soft, and at other times gathering 
 rose-leaves or hops in her white apron, scaring the 
 birds that went early to bed, and making them 
 sing their good-night songs anew. When the 
 dew came there was contention between the rose- 
 bushes and the hop-vines as to which smelled the 
 sweeter, and Ligie and his mother, as they went up 
 and down the paths, could never decide it ; the 
 bees loved the roses best, but the birds swung 
 on the hop-vines, and sung in the hop-vines the 
 oftenest. 
 
 Often Ligie's mother praised the industry and 
 skill of her little son ; but she loved him more 
 than the beautiful garden. It is probable that the 
 people who admired the blossoming bean-vines and 
 the waving corn saw only in Ligie a homely little 
 gardener ; but to his mother no marigold was so 
 bright as his head, and no violet so blue as his 
 eyes, and the spring-water running away in sun- 
 shine was to her music less pleasant than his 
 laughter. 
 
 As Ligie grew older, however, it was less and 
 less often she heard this pleasant music ; for the 
 boy grew silent and thoughtful, and, pitiful to re- 
 late, more and more discontented, — sometimes, 
 indeed, he would forget the work, and wander 
 away to the ends of the earth in dreams. 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEAET. 175 
 
 Every day the garden seemed narrower, and 
 every day his thoughts flew higher and more dis- 
 contentedly away. Grass was seen to grow in 
 places from which it had been carefully kept in 
 former times, the raspberry-vines to lop untied, 
 and the strawberries to blush more and more 
 faintly, as Ligie bent over them less and less 
 often. * 
 
 Many a time he leaned on his hoe-handle, and, 
 gazing wistfully — I am afraid enviously — after 
 some gay equipage, wished himself anywhere away 
 from his mother's little garden, and out of sight of 
 her poor little house. He wished there were no 
 gardens in the world, sometimes, and sometimes 
 that he might wake up in the morning and find 
 his pillow a pillow all of gold ; for he thought idle- 
 ness and money were the greatest blessings that 
 could come to anybody, and desired most of all 
 things to wear fine clothes, and to ride horses that 
 were sleek and galloped over the country fleet as 
 the wind. 
 
 " My dear son is sick," thought the good mother 
 of the discontented boy, and she gave him time 
 and times to rest from his work, and baked cakes 
 for him, and made him soft beds, and kissed 'and 
 petted him very tenderly. But Ligie had been 
 always used to her loving care, and received it as 
 he did the air and the other common blessings of 
 his life. 
 
176 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 One day, when the customary meal of bread and 
 milk was set before him, he went away from the 
 table without so much as breaking the bread ; he 
 said to his mother he was sick, but in his heart he 
 thought if he could not have meat and honey he 
 would not eat at all. Discontented with his 
 mother, with himself, and with everything, he 
 cast himself on the ground by the spring beneath 
 the willow ; but the murmur of the waters could 
 not silence the murmur in his heart, and the hedge 
 of bean-vines near by was not strong enough to 
 keep away wicked thoughts ; his hot hands wilted 
 the cool grass on which they lay, and his hot brain 
 withered and blackened all that came into it. 
 
 He saw a good many boys dressed in fine clothes, 
 and with shining curls down their shoulders, rid- 
 ing by in splendid coaches ; and some of them 
 held up their white hands tauntingly when they 
 saw his tawny ones lying on the grass, — some 
 even sneered at his garden, and said they had 
 much better ones at home. Among the other 
 passers, however, there came one day an old man 
 that looked exceedingly sad, and who was terribly 
 bowed down, and who, when he saw Ligie, called 
 to his coachman to stop ; and when his prancing 
 horses stood still, champing their silver bits, spoke 
 to him in words so friendly and so strange that he 
 knew not what to make of it. And no wonder 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEAET. 177 
 
 Ligie knew not what to make of it, for, among other 
 things, the old man asked him whether he would 
 not like to be rich, and if he would sell his garden 
 for a piece of gold as big as his mother's house. 
 Ligie said nothing would make him so happy ; to 
 which the old man replied that he did not want 
 the garden, but that he would give him all the 
 gold he wanted if he would consent to perform for 
 him a trifling service ; and when Ligie asked what 
 it was, and learned that it was only the carrying 
 of a small burden, he readily agreed to go with 
 the old man. It would be easier than working in 
 the garden, he thought, — 0, anything would be 
 easier than that ! and then to have all the gold he 
 wanted, — surely, he could not suffer, no matter 
 what he had to do ; so, with a bound, he sprang 
 from the grass and into the coach ; the door closed, 
 the silver latch shut with a snap, and his mother's 
 house was hid from him forever. At first he cared 
 very little about this ; fortune was his and the 
 great world before him ; could he not buy a great 
 palace if he chose, and why should he fret about 
 a poor little cottage in a scarcely-heard-of village ? 
 And as for the garden, why, he should be glad 
 never to see it; and, for all he knew, his riches 
 would procure him the pleasure of walking in the 
 king's garden, and his roses and hops he supposed 
 were poor affairs compared with the king's roses 
 
IT 8 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 and hops ; probably he should see birds as big as 
 eagles before nightfall, — birds that would make 
 the little brown twitterers at home stay there for 
 shame ; and he was surprised as they rode on and 
 on to meet no such birds, and to see no prettier 
 flowers than he had left at home. 
 
 But one thing surprised him more than the 
 fact of meeting no birds as big as eagles, — the 
 old man by whose side he rode gave him no bur- 
 den to carry. At last he ventured timidly to sug- 
 gest it, for he feared he was not earning his pleas- 
 ure. " By and by," said the old man, and that 
 was all. 
 
 Directly, however, he began to be secretly glad 
 that no burden was given him, and to say in his 
 heart, " Perhaps the old man will forget it alto- 
 gether, and I have the gold all for nothing" ; for 
 when one bad thought got into his mind, a thou- 
 sand others ran in behind it. 
 
 " What a good thing I have done," he kept say- 
 ing, as they went along ; " everybody that sees me 
 will envy me, and won't that make me proud and 
 happy ! " 
 
 That night he slept in a richly-furnished cham- 
 ber, where perfumes that seemed to him sweeter 
 than roses loaded the air, and where a brilliant 
 light burned at the head of the bed he slept on, — 
 a bed greatly softer than the one he had left at 
 home. 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 179 
 
 In the morning a rich repast was served to him 
 on shining plate ; he had not only meat and honey, 
 but wine, and stronger drink than wine. 
 
 The second day an immense distance was trav- 
 ersed ; and once or twice, when the motion of the 
 coach grew tiresome, Ligie thought he heard a 
 voice in him saying, " You might as well have 
 stayed at home, little boy ! " And each time he 
 drowned it by inquiring of the old man whether 
 he should not now take the burden agreed upon. 
 " By and by," the old man said, and that was all. 
 " He is a very strange man," thought Ligie ; and, 
 turning to look at him, he perceived, for the first 
 time, that there was no smile in his face and no 
 light in his eyes, and that his skin was dried like 
 parchment and wrinkled as though it was drawn 
 over dry bones. His hair was very white, and it 
 seemed to Ligie as though it had been dead a long 
 time. Happening to touch one of his fingers, he 
 found it so cold that, shivering, he shrank away. 
 Then first the old man smiled, — a grim, sarcastic 
 smile, as if the child's motion were one he was well 
 used to, and expected. 
 
 Ligie feared he had offended, and the mysterious 
 voice said to him very plainly now, " You had bet- 
 ter have stayed at home." " No, no," replied Li- 
 gie, " I am glad I came away " ; but they were only 
 words, and the feeling of gladness was not in his 
 
180 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 heart. Then came the thought of his mother, and 
 with it a pain shot through his bosom, — a pain 
 that was not only sharp, but hot as fire. " If you 
 please, sir, I will take the burden," he said ; " I 
 am getting tired of doing nothing." The old man 
 smiled again, and answered, " By and by," and 
 that was all. 
 
 Day after day they travelled so together, — the 
 old man silent and sad, and the boy growing impa- 
 tient, and tired of the everlasting motion and noise 
 of the close-shut coach in which they rode. Night 
 after night he slept in a soft bed, and morning after 
 morning was served with dainties more dainty than 
 he had ever imagined ; but after a few weeks he 
 began to think of the plain fare at home with re- 
 gret. Then the voice laughed, and said, " Fool 
 that you were to come away ! " and this time poor 
 Ligie could make no answer. 
 
 And day after day he asked the old man to allow 
 him to carry the burden agreed upon, and day 
 after day the old man replied, " By and by," and 
 that was all. 
 
 At last the rolling and swinging of the coach 
 made him sick, the healthful color went from his 
 cheek, and all the strength he used to have seemed 
 to forsake him. The time was come that people 
 looked enviously upon him as he rode along ; but 
 so far from gratifying, it but added to Ligie's dis- 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 181 
 
 comfort ; no one thought of giving him love and 
 sympathy now, he could very well afford to do 
 without them, so they who saw him believed. Poor 
 Ligie ! the less he was pitied, the more he pitied 
 himself; and so, day after day, and week after week, 
 he and the old man journeyed on and on, search- 
 ing for pleasure which they never found. So weary 
 grew Ligie at length, that he resolved to quit the 
 old man, who had never given him the proposed 
 burden, but still said, " By and by," whenever re- 
 minded of it ; and one day, seeing him asleep, and 
 his gray hair fallen low about his eyes, the wretched 
 child softly unlocked the coach-door, and made 
 haste to be gone, or tried to make haste, for, to his 
 horror, he found that it was with the greatest diffi- 
 culty he could move at all. His limbs were as 
 limbs asleep, and his back was doubled down al- 
 most like the old man's back. 
 
 " So ho ! " exclaimed his mysterious companion, 
 " you repent your bargain, do you ? Well, I am 
 sorry, but a bargain is a bargain ; I never fail to 
 fulfil mine." 
 
 " How can you say that ? " said Ligie ; " have I 
 not been with you the longest year that was ever 
 made, and where is the burden I was to carry ? I 
 can't live this way any longer, for doing nothing is 
 the hardest work I ever did." 
 
 Then the old man laughed aloud, and said, " My 
 
182 SNOW-BEKRIES. 
 
 son, you have the burden already ; it is that that 
 weighs you down." 
 
 " It is not true," answered Ligie ; and he unfolded 
 his arms to convince the old man that he had no 
 burden ; but he only shook his head incredulously, 
 and added, " You have it concealed ; it is the way 
 rich people carry burdens." 
 
 Ligie was now angry, and opened his clothing 
 even to his bosom, to convince the old man that he 
 concealed nothing. 
 
 " You have it for all that," was the reply ; " and 
 because of it you cannot lift yourself up." 
 
 Then Ligie grew pale, and trembled, saying, 
 " How can I have a burden which I cannot see ? " 
 
 " Is pain the less certain because you cannot see 
 it ? " the old man said. " I did not stipulate 
 whether you were to carry the burden in your 
 arms, or on your head, or in your heart" ; and he 
 smiled a smile half bitterness and half sadness as 
 he spoke. 
 
 Then came the truth crushing through Ligie's 
 senses, — the burden was in his heart ; and cover- 
 ing his face with his hands, he cried a long while. 
 
 " In mercy," said the old man, " I gave you 
 little by little ; but it was none the less sure, and 
 'By and by' has come." 
 
 The low voice never spoke so clearly as it spoke 
 now, saying, " mistaken youth, you have sold 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 183 
 
 your birthright for a mess of pottage ! " "0 ter- 
 rible, terrible voice, why do you torment me ? " 
 said Ligie ; and the voice answered, " Such is my 
 work." 
 
 After a season of despair, however, Ligie began 
 to imagine, very foolishly, that strong drink and 
 strong pleasures would dissolve the stone which he 
 was persuaded had been wickedly gotten into his 
 heart. Without sorrow on the part of either, he 
 and his friend — if friend he might be called — 
 took separate ways. True to his foolish imagin- 
 ings, he saw dances, and heard music, and drank 
 wine, and stronger drink than wine, and bought 
 great houses and much land, gazed on fine pictures, 
 some of them painted by the greatest artists in the 
 world ; but, through all, Ligie remembered his 
 mother's little house and garden with painful re- 
 gret, and over all he heard the low voice reproach- 
 ing him. He even came to walk in the king's gar- 
 den, and to speak familiarly with princes ; but they 
 seemed to him not unlike other men, and even for 
 their praises he felt none the better, but, while 
 they smiled, often found his thoughts travelling 
 away to the obscure village of Heatherford, and 
 when he drank wine it seemed to him not so sweet 
 as the cool water of his mother's well. 
 
 All his childish dream was fulfilled, — he had 
 waked to find his pillow a pillow of gold ; but he 
 
184 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 would gladly have given it for the pillow of com- 
 mon down which his mother's hands used to make 
 so pleasant ; nevertheless, something held him 
 back. Was he ashamed to have his rich friends 
 know that he was born in a low, little house, and 
 that his mother was a poor woman ? I am afraid 
 so. 
 
 Years and years went by, and the little gardener 
 was a little gardener no more ; and thicker than 
 the years crowded upon each other crowded the 
 wrinkles in his face ; and before the pleasure he 
 sought was found, his hair grew white as the frost, 
 and his step slow as the sloth. 
 
 Celebrated waters he plunged into, and hired 
 with much gold physicians of great repute to treat 
 his malady, which, in spite of all their skill, grew 
 only the worse ; indeed, it seemed to Ligie some- 
 times that the stone in his heart was grown to be a 
 mountain. 
 
 And all the night and all the day the voice within 
 him said to him, " Go home, Ligie " ; and all the 
 night and all the day Ligie said to the voice, " At the 
 new year, or in the spring-time, or when the leaves 
 fall, I will go." And still, as he sailed in vessels or 
 rode on cushions, his prayer was for the feet of his 
 lost youth and the strength of his lost youth, to 
 walk as he used to do. Often he tried to walk, 
 feeling his way along with a stick ; but he fancied 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 185 
 
 he frightened the birds and spoiled their songs, for 
 sure was he they sang not as they used to sing 
 among the sweet-smelling hops of his mother's gar- 
 den. The little boys that were laughing and kick- 
 ing up the dust stopped their playing as he came 
 near, and gazed on him with eyes full of fear, in- 
 stead of sunshine. If flowers fringed the wayside, 
 their tops seemed dusty and dry, and not dewy and 
 sweet as they used to be. The young girl who sat 
 singing her ditty at the window, when she saw his 
 frowning visage and bent form, drew in her breath 
 and her music, and hastily pulled down the sash. 
 
 The very cattle ran away from him, stopping not 
 till the width of the meadow in which they pas- 
 tured was between themselves and him. The hens 
 left their peeping broods and crept away, afraid to 
 fly at him as they did at the urchin who plagued 
 them. 
 
 Seeing the sorry effect he had upon bird and 
 beast, he grew more and more dissatisfied, and the 
 burden in his heart weighed heavier and heavier 
 upon him. 
 
 Something like the shadow of gladness passed 
 over him, when in a valley before him he saw rising 
 the spires of a quiet village. " I will abide here," 
 he said, " and try if the air will not soften this ter- 
 rible stone." So he hired a house, and physicians, 
 and attendants, and made himself a home, but 
 
186 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 found little of the peace he sought. Consternation 
 ran up and down the streets, when it was known 
 among the people that an old man with a stone in 
 his heart would thenceforth abide among them, for 
 the physicians pronounced his malady not only in- 
 curable, but the most infectious of all diseases ; so 
 the attendants he had went away from him, and all 
 his gold could not hire others in their places. In 
 vain he sought religious comfort ; the clergyman 
 to whom he applied was of the opinion that Ligie 
 had not only a stone in his heart, but that he had 
 a demon there, into the bargain ; and this was cer- 
 tainly poor consolation. 
 
 Then the doctors resolved that the poor man 
 should not go abroad any more, for there was never 
 such fright as the stone and the demon occasioned. 
 
 When the doomed man was informed of the ver- 
 dict, he said it was just and right, and he further- 
 more admitted that when he listened he could hear 
 a voice within him that condemned him. Then 
 the wise men recommended entire abstinence from 
 all exertion of mind and body, and constant lis- 
 tening to the condemning voice, with as much 
 meditation on the stone as possible. 
 
 And all the people exclaimed, " Yea, verily, 
 these physicians are wiser men than till now we 
 knew them to be ! " and their fame stood before 
 them like a light that made common people almost 
 afraid. 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 187 
 
 Poor Ligie submitted patiently to the treatment, 
 and also to separation from all human society, and 
 found all the satisfaction he had in hugging his 
 woes. However, he grew no better. Sometimes 
 he would creep to his windows, and indulge in the 
 harmless occupation of looking into the sunshine ; 
 but this habit was no sooner discovered than it was 
 resolved by the people that the man with the stone 
 in his heart should be put in irons for the first of- 
 fence, and that for the second he should be impris- 
 oned for life. 
 
 " He has already offended twice," said one of the 
 most fearful ; and upon himself he took the admin- 
 istration of justice, and, stealing to the old man's 
 house in the night, secured the door with a ponder- 
 ous bar. 
 
 It was dreadful to hear the prisoner's moans 
 after that ; no one who heard them once could be 
 induced to go near him again ; so he lay moaning 
 and groaning to himself. Some of the more super- 
 stitious believed it was the demon that cried, and 
 not the man himself ; but there were some who 
 thought a stone in the heart was enough to make 
 anybody moan. 
 
 " We shall have to break his heart, and so free 
 it from the stone," said the surgeon ; and but for 
 an accident it is likely the cruel suggestion might 
 have been carried out. 
 
188 SNOW- BERRIES. 
 
 An old woman, residing in the suburbs of the 
 town, remarkable for nothing but industry, mod- 
 esty, and strong common sense, chanced to come 
 near this old man's house one stormy midnight, as 
 she was returning home from having dressed a 
 corpse. She had gone abroad so little, and been 
 so given to minding her own affairs, that she had 
 never once heard of the old man with a stone in his 
 heart, and came fearlessly to the very door. The 
 moon shone bright and friendly through the chinks, 
 and as she peeped in she saw the glitter of two 
 eyes that looked like the eyes of a famished wolf. 
 
 In vain the prisoner cried out to her to flee away, 
 saying he had a great stone in his heart, and was 
 possessed of a demon ; the assertion sounded so 
 much like nonsense to the ears of the old woman, 
 she refused to go, and furthermore the glitter of the 
 man's eyes told plainly enough that he was starving ; 
 so, notwithstanding his entreaties that she should 
 leave him to his fate, and save herself, she made 
 haste to unbar the door, and, walking straight to 
 the straw where he lay, bade him arise and go with 
 her. 
 
 At first he refused, saying that he had a stone in 
 his heart, and a demon in his bosom, and that to go 
 with her was impossible. 
 
 " Ah, yes," said the old woman, " I see how it 
 is," for she knew that too much brooding on light 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 189 
 
 afflictions will sometimes produce heavy ones, and 
 was resolved to humor his disease in order to cure 
 it. " I know a great witch who can cure you," 
 she said ; " there is not a doubt of it ;. she has 
 brought many back to health and happiness, whose 
 minds were gone far astray, and whose feet were 
 near the borders of the grave. Else quickly, and 
 come along with me." 
 
 The old man lifted himself on one elbow, and 
 said he had tried all remedies in vain, and that he 
 had no courage for a new trial ; but though he 
 said he had no courage, he smiled faintly, and felt 
 a very little courage. 
 
 " Ah, it is not such medicine as you have been 
 used to with which the witch cures," said the old 
 woman ; "it is with a charm known only to her- 
 self, said to be the pleasantest thing in the world." 
 
 She spoke hopefully and cheerfully, and the man 
 answered, " Let us go to her at once," and he 
 arose, and looked with shining, hungry eyes close 
 in the old woman's face ; and, taking his limber, 
 weak, and worthless hands in hers, she led him out 
 of his miserable den, and they took their way to- 
 gether through the village, and struck into a sweet- 
 scented clover-field, lighted by the clearest and 
 brightest of moons. 
 
 As they went along, Ligie told of the many 
 things he had suffered in the hope of cure, and 
 
190 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 that withal he had grown worse and worse, till he 
 had come to be the miserable creature she beheld. 
 
 At first the old woman was obliged to walk very 
 slowly ; but gradually she quickened her steps, and, 
 unaware, her companion quickened his, too ; and 
 as he walked faster and faster he straightened him- 
 self more, and when they reached the nice little 
 home where the woman lived he stood nearly up- 
 right. 
 
 The first care of the nurse was to feed her pa- 
 tient with plain but wholesome and nutritious food ; 
 and this done, she made him a bed, very clean and 
 comfortable, where he slept soundly till morning. 
 
 His first inquiry on waking was for the witch, 
 and his first desire was for an immediate inter- 
 view. 
 
 " The witch lives a good way off," said the nurse, 
 " and to leave home for so long a journey, I must 
 needs make some preparation ; and if you will con- 
 sent to help a little, only a very little, I shall be 
 ready so much the sooner." 
 
 Ligie said he had not done a chore for years ; 
 nevertheless, he would attempt whatever task she 
 would set for the sake of being brought so much 
 the sooner to the witch. So the old woman took 
 him to the garden, and set him to weeding the 
 beds there ; and as he worked he gained strength 
 to work, so before noon the garden-beds were as 
 clean as they could be. 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 191 
 
 When the old woman came out and saw what he 
 had done, she was well pleased, and said she had 
 never found so good a gardener in her life ; and 
 she added, " We will soon be ready for the journey 
 at this rate." 
 
 Ligie was a good deal tired and a little hungry 
 with the work, and when the nurse brought a plat- 
 ter containing bread and fruit and meat, and 
 placed it on a bench that stood in a shady place, he 
 quite forgot in the enjoyment of it the stone in his 
 heart ; and after the meal he forgot it for an hour 
 longer in the pleasant sleep that came to him as he 
 lay on the cool, grassy bed that Nature had made 
 for him. 
 
 Toward sunset the old woman appeared, and di- 
 rected her patient to cut off all the ends of the 
 bean-vines that were trailing from the tops of the 
 poles toward the ground. 
 
 When Ligie hesitated, and said he could not lift 
 himself up for such work, she encouraged him to 
 believe that he might straighten himself sufficiently 
 for the task, and assured him of the impossibility 
 of making the journey to the witch's house till 
 the bean-vines were attended to. Hearing this, he 
 lifted himself up, and began to clip off the ends of 
 the bean-vines. They were sweet with blossoms, 
 reminding him of the old garden at home ; and in 
 the interest of his occupation, he thought nothing 
 
192 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 about the terrible crook in his back, and when at 
 last he felt for it, it was gone. 
 
 He began now to think his hostess was the witch 
 who had charmed the stone out of his heart, and 
 from that time manifested no unwillingness to do 
 whatever she bade. 
 
 Day by day she set him harder tasks, professing 
 all the time when such a tree was felled, and 
 such a field ploughed, or the orchard-trees pruned, 
 or some other task accomplished, she would jour- 
 ney with him to the witch's house. But the work 
 stretched itself out before Ligie as far as he could 
 see ; for while he gathered apples he saw the corn 
 ripening, and of itself breaking out of the husk ; 
 and as he thought more about his work he thought 
 less about the witch, and finally began to conclude 
 there was no such thing in the world as a witch. 
 
 At last the heap in the crib was rounded up with 
 the last golden ears, the oxen turned loose among 
 the corn-stalks, and a bright wood-fire made on the 
 hearth of the good old woman's house. In the 
 middle of the floor the table was spread with pump- 
 kin-pies, and apple-tarts, and sweetcakes, and all 
 the variety which a country housewife knows so 
 well how to provide. All the friends of the old 
 woman had been invited to rejoice with her over 
 the restoration of her patient ; but, strange to say, 
 where one came there were a dozen who stayed 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 193 
 
 away, for they now feared the harmless old woman 
 as much as they had formerly feared Ligie. If he 
 was cured of stone in the heart, she must be a witch, 
 that was all ; so hard is it for us to believe in the 
 virtue of simple things, and that we have only to 
 wash and be clean. If Ligie had done some great 
 thing, then it would have been easy to believe. 
 
 " 0, if my mother were here to rejoice with me, 
 how happy I should be ! " sighed Ligie, as he con- 
 cluded reflections not unlike what I have written ; 
 " for though I am old and worn and weary, I 
 might yet do much good; but. how much more 
 might I have done if in youth I had improved my 
 opportunities, instead of wasting them in vain and 
 foolish dreaming and repining, — dreaming of im- 
 possible things, and repining that good things were 
 not the best things ! " 
 
 Then in his mind he made a picture of his 
 mother's little house he had once so come to de- 
 spise, and of the garden he had grown so tired of, 
 and it seemed to him that the king's garden was 
 not half so beautiful, that Eden itself could not 
 have been so beautiful. In the light of memory 
 the loveliness, which in reality he had failed to see, 
 came out clear and distinct, and he marvelled that 
 he could have received such blessings and been so 
 unconscious of them. 
 
 Tears came to his eyes, and in the anguish of 
 
 9 M 
 
194 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 repentance he wept aloud, saying over and over, 
 " 0, to have back my lost youth ! " Then it was 
 he seemed to hear, between his sobbings, a voice 
 like his mother's, saying, " My son, my dear, lit- 
 tle son!" 
 
 A thrill of joy ran through him, which was as 
 if all the heavens had opened, and in the rapture 
 of the moment he awoke, — for he had been all 
 this time in a dream, — awoke to find himself 
 little Ligie, and to see the sunset shadows on the 
 water of the spring, that flowed from its fountain 
 under the willow-tree, by which he remembered 
 to have thrown himself at noonday. But when he 
 was fully awake the thrill of joy kept still thrilling 
 through his bosom ; it was not all a dream ; he 
 heard the sweet voice of his mother still saying, 
 " My dear, little son," and all the beauty he had 
 seen shining so clearly in the light of memory he 
 saw shining all round about him. 
 
 Over a bank of golden clouds the sun was peep- 
 ing and smiling his good-night, the birds were 
 hushing in the hop-vines and under the roses, and 
 under his feet the grass was cool and green as it 
 could be. In the distance stood dark, leafy woods, 
 with cows and sheep and lambs feeding along the 
 hills. 
 
 But the brightest spot of all the picture was the 
 little house under the apple-tree, and with the 
 
THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 195 
 
 morning-glory at the window, and the red creep- 
 ers over the porch, where stood his mother smil- 
 ing, and calling, " Ligie, my son, my dear, little 
 
 son I 
 
 r » 
 
 You may be sure he lingered not long even for 
 the sake of the beautiful landscape, glorified as it 
 was by the last red light of the day, and the first 
 white light of the stars, but ran at once up the 
 smooth path between the lilacs and lady-slippers, 
 answering, " I am coming, mother, I am com- 
 ing ! " it was as if he had new feet and new hands 
 and new senses ; as if a new world had been made 
 about him ; as if, indeed, a great stone had been 
 taken out of his heart. There was the table spread 
 in the middle of the floor with cakes and apple- 
 tarts and meat and milk, just as he had dreamed, 
 and his hair was all unfaded, and his limbs strong 
 and full of health. 
 
 What more could he have ? Nothing, nothing. 
 Ligie felt this, and clasping his hands, he bowed 
 his head, and said, " How good God is, and how 
 unmindful and bad we are ! " 
 
 And seeing how his spirit was changed, his 
 mother inquired of him what had happened ; and 
 when he told her all his dream, and his thoughts 
 previous to the dream, they laughed and wept to- 
 gether, and wished that everybody could have such 
 a dream, and learn by it to appreciate the blessings 
 
196 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 they have, rather than mourn for those they have 
 not ; and to work with willing hands and a reso- 
 lute will in whatever field their portion may be 
 cast. 
 
 CATY JANE. 
 
 ONE summer morning, as I walked 
 Along a shady lane, 
 I met a black-eyed little girl, 
 Whose name was Caty Jane. 
 
 She had a pretty basket full 
 Of blossoms blue and white, 
 
 And when I asked her where she went, 
 She hid her face from sight ; 
 
 And sitting where the clover grew 
 So sweet and thick and red, 
 
 She said, " I had a sister once 
 Who loved me, and is dead ; 
 
 " And yonder, to the slope on which 
 
 You see the willows wave, 
 I 'm going with my flowers, for there 
 
 Is little Annie's grave. 
 
CATY JANE. 197 
 
 " Her goodness and her gentleness 
 
 I oftentimes forgot ; 
 She never said an unkind word, — 
 
 I wish that I had not. 
 
 " We had a play-house once, beside 
 
 This very shady lane ; 
 I wish it never had been made," 
 
 Said little Caty Jane. 
 
 " 'T was carpeted with grass, and weeds 
 
 Were piled to make the walls ; 
 The beds were spread with burdock-leaves, 
 
 And mother gave us dolls. 
 
 " We had some broken cups, and had 
 
 Some skeins of thread, I know, 
 And sometimes we pretended we 
 
 Were women, and would sew ; 
 
 " And often I would visit her, 
 
 And she would come again, 
 And make believe to visit me," 
 
 Said little Caty Jane. 
 
 " One day, when cloudily the sun 
 
 Was going down the hill, 
 Dear Annie said, ' We must go home,' 
 
 The wind was growing chill. 
 
198 SNOW-BEKEIES. 
 
 "And when she wrapt her apron round 
 Her neck and shoulders bare, 
 
 I laughed, and called her grandmamma, 
 And said it was n't fair 
 
 " That she should run away, nor care 
 
 For playing, nor for me. 
 1 O Caty Jane/ said Annie, then, 
 
 ' I 'm cold as I can be. 
 
 "'It seems as if no fire nor quilt 
 Could make me warm again/ 
 
 And, sure enough, they never did," 
 Said little Caty Jane. 
 
 " She said that more and more her head 
 
 Kept aching all the while, 
 And from her hands the playthings fell, 
 
 But still she tried to smile. 
 
 " And when the moon came up and shone 
 
 So cold across the floor, 
 She said that we would never play 
 
 Together any more. 
 
 " ' Well, if you feel so very bad, 
 
 Do let 's go home,' said I, 
 1 That you may have a chance to make 
 
 Your will before you die.' 
 
CATY JANE. 199 
 
 " And so I ran and left her in 
 
 Our play-house by the lane, 
 And ran the faster when she called, 
 
 * Don't leave me, Caty Jane.' 
 
 " And sitting by the warm wood-fire, 
 
 In little Annie's chair, 
 I fell asleep, and woke in fright, — 
 
 My sister was n't there. 
 
 " * She must be in a neighbor's house,' 
 
 My mother said ; but I 
 Hid in her lap my face, and cried 
 
 As hard as I could cry ; 
 
 u And told her I had left her in 
 
 Our play-house by the lane ; 
 And there they found her, sure enough," 
 
 Said little Caty Jane, 
 
 " Lying upon the frozen ground, 
 
 As cold as cold could be; 
 And when I called her pretty names 
 
 She did not speak to me. 
 
 " But with pale cheek and shut eyes lay 
 
 Upon our little bed. 
 And when the sun arose at morn," 
 
 Poor mourning Caty said, 
 
200 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 " I called her to get up, and kissed 
 Her cheek to make her wake ; 
 
 And when she did not speak nor smile, 
 I thought my heart would break. 
 
 " I brought my playthings and my dolls, 
 And laid them on the bed, 
 
 And told her they were hers to keep/* 
 Poor little Caty said. 
 
 " And, waiting there in fear and doubt, 
 They softly kissed my brow, 
 
 And told me I must live without 
 My sister Annie, now. 
 
 " O then I knew how dear she was," 
 
 Said little Caty Jane, 
 " And thought if she could be alive, 
 
 And play with me again, 
 
 " I M say a thousand things to her 
 
 That I had never said. 
 'T was easy work to think kind words 
 
 To say when she was dead." 
 
 And with her eyes brimful of tears, 
 She went along the lane ; 
 
 No sister now had she to love, — 
 Poor little Caty Jane ! 
 
THE STREET BEGGAR. 201 
 
 Seeing how very long she stayed 
 
 By Annie's lonesome bed, 
 I thought, If other little girls, 
 
 Whose sisters are not dead, 
 
 Could know how blest they are, and see 
 
 The sad look Caty wore, 
 They never would be heard to speak 
 
 A cross word any more. 
 
 For we must do to others just 
 
 As we would be done by, 
 If we would learn to live in peace, 
 
 Or peacefully to die. 
 
 THE STREET BEGGAR. 
 
 SHAKE not your glossy curls with a " No," 
 As you sit in the warm and rosy glow 
 'Twixt your hearth and pictured wall ; 
 Ah, my lady, you do not know 
 How folk feel with their feet in the snow, 
 And no bright fire at all. 
 
 A sixpence ! that you will never miss ; 
 See what a baby you have to kiss, 
 
 Honor and wealth to prove ; 
 Ah, my lady, you cannot guess 
 9* 
 
202 SNOW-BEEEIES. 
 
 How folk feel in a night like this, 
 With no little child to love. 
 
 From house to house I have gone all day, - 
 " Nothing for beggars," is all they say, 
 
 Though a banquet waiting stands ; 
 Ah, you never have known the way 
 Poor folk feel when their heads are gray 
 
 And palsy shaking their hands. 
 
 For sake of charity say not " No." 
 
 I am almost famished, — I cannot go, — 
 
 I must steal or starve, — and why ? 
 Because, my lady, you do not know 
 How folk feel with their feet in the snow, 
 
 Turned out from your fires to die. 
 
 EVIL CHANCE. 
 
 WHEN falls the hour of evil chance, - 
 And hours of evil chance will fall, ■ 
 Strike, though with but a broken lance, — 
 Strike, though you have no lance at all. 
 
 Shrink not, whate'er the odds may be, — 
 Shrink not, however dark the hour, — 
 
 The barest possibility 
 
 Of good deserves your utmost power. 
 
PLEA FOE THE BOYS. . 203 
 
 PLEA FOR THE BOYS. 
 
 YOUNG men must work, and old men rest,- 
 They have earned their quiet joys ; 
 And everywhere, from east to west, 
 The boys must still be boys. 
 
 They do not want your larger sight, 
 
 Nor want your wisdom grim : 
 The boy has right to the boy's delight, 
 
 And play is the work for him. 
 
 The idle day is the evil day, 
 
 And work in its time is right; 
 But he that wrestles best in the play 
 
 "Will wrestle best in the fight. 
 
 Then do not, as their hour runs by, 
 
 Their harmless pleasures clip ; 
 For he that sails his kite to the sky 
 
 May sometime sail a ship. 
 
 And soon enough the years will steal 
 
 Their mood of frolic joys ; 
 So keep your shoulder to the wheel, 
 
 And let the boys be boys. 
 
204 SNOW-BERRIES. 
 
 WORK. 
 
 DOWN and up and up and down, — 
 Over and over and over, — 
 Turn in the little seed, dry and brown, 
 
 Turn out the bright red clover ! 
 Work, and the sun your work will share, 
 
 And the rain in its time will fall, 
 
 For Nature, she worketh everywhere, 
 
 And the grace of God through all. 
 
 With hand on the spade and heart in the sky, 
 
 Dress the ground and till it ; 
 Turn in the little seed, brown and dry, 
 
 Turn out the golden millet ; 
 Work, and your house shall be duly fed, 
 
 Work, and rest shall be won ; 
 I hold that a man had better be dead 
 
 Than alive, when his work is done ! 
 
 Down and up and up and down, 
 
 On the hill-top, low in the valley ; 
 Turn in the little seed, dry and brown, 
 
 Turn out the rose and the lily. 
 Work with a plan, or without a plan, 
 
 And your ends they shall be shaped true ; 
 Work, and learn at first-hand, like a man, 
 
 The best way to know is to do ! 
 
205 
 
 Down and up till life shall close, 
 
 Ceasing not your praises ; 
 Turn in the wild, white, winter snows, 
 
 Turn out the sweet, spring daisies. 
 Work, and the sun your work will share, 
 
 And the rain in its time will fall, 
 For Nature, she worketh everywhere, 
 
 And the grace of God through all. 
 
 COUNSEL. 
 
 THOUGH sin hath marked thy brother's brow, 
 Love him in sin's despite, 
 But for his darkness, haply thou 
 Hadst never known the light. 
 
 Be thou an angel to his life, 
 
 And not a demon grim ; 
 Since with himself he is at strife, 
 
 O be at peace with him. 
 
 Speak gently of his evil ways, 
 
 And all his pleas allow ; 
 For since he knows not why he strays 
 
 From virtue, how shouldst thou ? 
 
 Love him, though all thy love he slights, 
 For ah, thou canst not say 
 
206 SNOW-BERKIES. 
 
 But that his prayerless days and nights 
 Have taught thee how to pray. 
 
 Outside themselves all things have laws, 
 
 The atom and the sun ; 
 Thou art thyself, perhaps, the cause 
 
 Of sins which he has done. 
 
 If guiltless thou, why surely then 
 Thy place is by his side, — 
 
 It was for sinners, not just men, 
 That Christ the Saviour died. 
 
 C 32 89 ii 
 
 Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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