Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Where did you find old Whitey?” Paul asked.

  “You was the one who did it, you little rascal?”

  “Did what?”

  “You know what. You have made me walk clear to Fairview. I have a mind to horsewhip you.”

  Paul laughed to think that the old horse had tramped so far, though he was sorry that Mr. Smith had been obliged to walk that distance.

  “I didn’t mean any harm, Mr. Smith, but old Whitey has made our door-yard his stamping-place all summer, and I thought I would see if I could get rid of him.”

  “Well, sir, if you do it again I’ll trounce you,” said Mr. Smith as he rode away, his anger coming up.

  “Wouldn’t it be better for you to put him in a pasture, Mr. Smith? Then he wouldn’t trouble us,” said Paul, who knew that Mr. Smith had no right to let old Whitey run at large. Paul was not easily frightened when he had right on his side. The people in the stores and at the tavern had a hearty laugh when they heard how old Whitey went to Fairview.

  Mr. Cipher taught the village school. He was tall, slim, thin-faced, with black eyes deeply set in his head, and a long, hooked nose like an eagle’s bill. He wore a loose swallow-tailed coat with bright brass buttons, and pants which were several inches too short. The Committee employed him, not because he was a superior teacher, but they could get him for twelve dollars a month, while Mr. Rudiment, who had been through college, and who was known to be an excellent instructor, asked sixteen.

  There was a crowd of roistering boys and rosy-cheeked girls, who made the old school-house hum like a beehive. Very pleasant to the passers-by was the music of their voices. At recess and at noon they had leap-frog and tag. Paul was in a class with Philip Funk, Hans Middlekauf, and Michael Murphy. There were other boys and girls of all nationalities. Paul’s ancestors were from Connecticut, Philip’s father was a Virginian. Hans was born in Germany, and Michael in Ireland. Philip’s father kept a grocery, and sold sugar, molasses, tobacco, and whiskey. He was rich, and Philip wore good clothes and calf-skin boots. Paul could get his lessons very quick whenever he set about them in earnest, but he spent half his time in inventing fly-traps, making whirligigs, or drawing pictures on his slate. He could draw admirably, for he had a quick eye and natural ability. Philip could get his lessons also if he chose to apply himself, but it was a great deal easier to get some one to work out the problems in arithmetic than to do them himself.

  “Here, Paul, just do this question for me; that is a good fellow.”

  It was at recess.

  “No; Cipher has forbid it. Each one has got to do his own,” said Paul.

  “If you will do it, I will give you a handful of raisins,” said Philip, who usually had his pockets full of raisins, candy, or nuts.

  “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Come, just do that one; Cipher never will know it.”

  “No!” Paul said it resolutely.

  “You are a mean, sneaking fellow,” said Philip with a sneer, turning up his nose.

  Philip was a year older than Paul. He had sandy hair, white eyelashes, and a freckled face. He carried a watch, and always had money in his pocket. Paul, on the other hand, hardly ever had a cent which he could call his own. His clothes were worn till they were almost past mending.

  “Rag-tag has got a hole in his trousers,” said Philip to the other boys.

  Paul’s face flushed. He wanted to knock Philip’s teeth down his throat. He knew that his mother had hard work to clothe him, and felt the insult. He went into the school-house, choked his anger down, and tried to forget all about it by drawing a picture of the master. It was an excellent likeness, — his spindle legs, great feet, short pants, loose coat, sunken eyes, hooked nose, thin face, and long bony fingers.

  Philip sat behind Paul. Instead of studying his lesson, he was planning how to get Paul into trouble. He saw the picture. Now was his time. He giggled aloud. Mr. Cipher looked up in astonishment.

  “What are you laughing at, Master Funk?”

  “At what Paul is doing.”

  Paul hustled his slate into his desk.

  “Let me see what you have here,” said Cipher, walking up to Paul, who spat in his fingers, and ran his hand into the desk, to rub out the drawing; but he felt that it would be better to meet his punishment boldly than to have the school think that he was a sneak. He laid the slate before the master without a line effaced.

  “Giving your attention to drawing, are you, Master Paul?” His eyes flashed. He knit his brows. The blood rushed to his cheeks. There was a popping up of heads all over the school-room to get a sight of the picture.

  The boys laughed aloud, and there was a tittering among the girls, which made Cipher very angry. “Silence!” he roared, and stamped upon the floor so savagely that the windows rattled. “Come out here, Sir. I’ll give you a drawing-lesson of another sort.” He seized Paul by the collar, and threw him into the space in front of his own desk. “Hold out your hand.”

  Paul felt that he was about to receive a tremendous thrashing; but he determined that he would not flinch. He held out his right hand, and spat! came the blow from a heavy ferule. His hand felt as if he had been struck by a piece of hot iron.

  “The other, sir.”

  Whack! it fell, a blow which made the flesh purple. There was an Oh! upon his tongue; but he set his teeth together, and bit his lips till they bled, and so smothered it. Another blow, — another, — another, — which were hard to bear; but his teeth were set like a vice. There was a twitching of the muscles round his lips; he was pale. When the blows fell, he held his breath, but he did not snivel.

  “I’ll see if I can’t bring you to your feeling, you good-for-nothing scape-grace,” said the master, mad with passion, and surprised that Paul made no outcry. He gave another round, bringing the ferule down with great force. Blood began to ooze from the pores. The last blow spattered the drops around the room. Cipher came to his senses. He stopped.

  “Are you sorry, sir?”

  “I don’t know whether I am or not. I didn’t mean any harm. I suppose I ought not to have drawn it in school; but I didn’t do it to make fun. I drew you just as you are,” said Paul, — his voice trembling a little in spite of his efforts to control it.

  The master could not deny that it was a perfect likeness. He was surprised at Paul’s cleverness at drawing, and for the first time in his life saw that he cut a ridiculous figure wearing that long, loose, swallow-tailed coat, with great, flaming brass buttons, and resolved upon the spot that his next coat should be a frock, and that he would get a longer pair of pants.

  “You may take your seat, sir!” he said, puzzled to know whether to punish Paul still more, and compel him to say that he was sorry, or whether to accept the explanations, and apologize for whipping him so severely.

  Paul sat down. His hands ached terribly; but what troubled him most was the thought that he had been whipped before the whole school. All the girls had witnessed his humiliation. There was one among them, — Azalia Adams, — who stood at the head of Paul’s class, the best reader and speller in school. She had ruby lips, and cheeks like roses; the golden sunlight falling upon her chestnut hair crowned her with glory; deep, thoughtful, and earnest was the liquid light of her hazel eyes; she was as lovely and beautiful as the flower whose name she bore. Paul had drawn her picture many times, — sometimes bending over her task, sometimes as she sat, unmindful of the hum of voices around her, looking far away into a dim and distant dream-land. He never wearied of tracing the features of one so fair and good as she. Her laugh was as musical as a mountain-brook; and in the church on Sunday, when he heard her voice sweetly, softly, and melodiously mingling with the choir, he thought of the angels, — of her as in heaven and he on earth.

  “Run home, sonny, and tell your marm that you got a licking,” said Philip when school was out.

  Paul’s face became livid. He would have doubled his fist and given Philip a blow in the face, but his palms were like puff-balls. There was an ug
ly feeling inside, but just then a pair of bright hazel eyes, almost swimming with tears, looked into his own. “Don’t mind it, Paul,” said Azalia.

  The pain was not half so hard to bear after that. He wanted to say, “I thank you,” but did not know how. Till then his lips had hardly quivered, and he had not shed a tear; now his eyes became moist; one great drop rolled down his cheeks, but he wiped it off with his coat-sleeve, and turned away, for fear that Azalia would think that he was a baby.

  On his way home the thought uppermost in his mind was, “What will mother say?” Why tell her? Would it not be better to keep the matter to himself? But then he remembered that she had said, “Paul, I shall expect you to tell me truthfully all that happens to you at school.” He loved his mother. She was one of the best mothers that ever lived, working for him day and night. How could he abuse such confidence as she had given him? He would not violate it. He would not be a sneak.

  His mother and the Pensioner were sitting before the fire as he entered the house. She welcomed him with a smile, — a beautiful smile it was, for she was a noble woman, and Paul was her darling, her pride, the light, joy, and comfort of her life.

  “Well, Paul, how do you get on at school?” his grandfather asked.

  “I got a whipping to-day.” It was spoken boldly and manfully.

  “What! My son got a whipping!” his mother exclaimed.

  “Yes, mother.”

  “I am astonished. Come here, and tell me all about it.”

  Paul stood by her side and told the story, — how Philip Funk tried to bribe him, how he called him names, — how, having got his lessons, he made a picture of the master. “Here it is, mother.” He took his slate from his little green bag. The picture had not been effaced. His mother looked at it and laughed, notwithstanding her efforts to keep sober, for it was such a perfect likeness. She had an exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and Paul was like her. She was surprised to find that he could draw so well.

  “We will talk about the matter after supper,” she said. She had told Paul many times, that, if he was justly punished at school, he must expect a second punishment at home; but she wanted to think awhile before deciding what to do. She was pleased to know that her boy could not be bribed to do what his conscience told him he ought not to do, and that he was manly and truthful. She would rather follow him to the church-yard and lay him in his grave beneath the bending elms, than to have him untruthful or wicked.

  The evening passed away. Paul sat before the fire, looking steadily into the coals. He was sober and thoughtful, wondering what his mother would say at last. The clock struck nine. It was his bedtime. He went and stood by her side once more. “You are not angry with me, mother, are you?”

  “No, my son. I do not think that you deserved so severe a punishment. I am rejoiced to know that you are truthful, and that you despise a mean act. Be always as you have been to-night, and I never shall be angry with you.”

  He threw his arms around her neck, and gave way to tears, such as Cipher could not extort by his pounding. She gave him a good-night kiss, — so sweet that it seemed to lie upon his lips all through the night.

  “God bless you, Paul,” said the Pensioner.

  Paul climbed the creaking stairs, and knelt with an overflowing heart to say his evening prayer. He spoke the words earnestly when he asked God to take care of his mother and grandfather. He was very happy. He looked out through the crevices in the walls, and saw the stars and the moon flooding the landscape with silver light. There was sweet music in the air, — the merry melody of the water murmuring by the mill, the cheerful chirping of the crickets, and the lullaby of the winds, near at hand and far away, putting him in mind of the choirs on earth and the choirs in heaven. “Don’t mind it, Paul!” were the words they sung, so sweetly and tenderly that for many days they rang in his ears.

  Carleton.

  NEW-YEAR CAROL.

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Little children, down the turnpike goes the year,

  Down through every dell,

  All the bells of all the country in its ear:

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Through the meadows and the woods, o’er the plain,

  Past where children dwell,

  All the children, some in joy and some in pain:

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Is it from a belfry, or the beating heart

  Of the year, this swell,

  Solemn like the steps of friends who have to part?

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Little children’s homes in heaven and on earth,

  All have hearts to tell

  How good actions overflow the year with mirth:

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  And it needeth not a steeple’s voice to say,

  What a dreary knell

  Hearts are ringing as their goodness flies away:

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  Down the turnpike for you comes another year;

  Children, treat it well:

  Naught but goodness brings to homes right jolly cheer:

  Ding, Dong, Bell!

  John Weiss.

  FARMING FOR BOYS.

  WHAT HAVE THEY DONE, AND WHAT OTHERS MAY DO IN THE CULTIVATION OF FARM AND GARDEN, — HOW TO BEGIN, HOW TO PROCEED, AND WHAT TO AIM AT.

  No. I.

  There is an old farm-house in the State of New Jersey, not a hundred miles from the city of Trenton, having the great railroad which runs between New York and Philadelphia so near to it that one can hear the whistle of the locomotive as it hurries onward every hour in the day, and see the trains of cars as they whirl by with their loads of living freight. The laborers in the fields along the road, though they see these things so frequently, invariably pause in their work and watch the advancing train until it passes them, and follow it with their eyes until it is nearly lost in the distance. The boy leans upon his hoe, the mower rests upon his scythe, the ploughman halts his horses in the furrow, — all stop to gaze upon a spectacle that has long ceased to be either a wonder or a novelty. Why it is so may be difficult to answer, except that the snorting combination of wheels, and cranks, and fire, and smoke, thundering by the quiet fields, breaks in upon the monotonous labor of the hand who works alone, with no one to converse with, — for the fact is equally curious, that gangs of laborers make no pause on the appearance of a locomotive. They have companionship enough already.

  This old wooden farm-house was a very shabby affair. To look at it, one would be sure that the owner had a particular aversion to both paint and whitewash. The weather-boarding was fairly honeycombed by age and exposure to the sun and rain, and in some places the end of a board had dropped off, and hung down a foot or two, for want of a nail which everybody about the place appeared to be too lazy or neglectful to supply in time. One or two of the window-shutters had lost a hinge, and they also hung askew, — nobody had thought it worth while to drive back the staple when it first became loose.

  Then there were several broken lights of glass in the kitchen windows. As the men about the house neglected to have them mended, or to do it themselves by using the small bit of putty that would have kept the cracked ones from going to pieces, the women had been compelled to keep out the wind and rain by stuffing in the first thing that came to hand. There was a bit of red flannel in one, an old straw bonnet in another, while in a third, from which all the glass was gone, a tolerably good fur hat, certainly worth the cost of half a dozen lights, had been crammed in to fill up the vacancy. The whole appearance of the windows was deplorable. Some of them had lost the little wooden buttons which kept up the sash when hoisted, and which anybody could have replaced by whittling out new ones with his knife; but as no one did it, and as the women must sometimes have the sashes raised, they propped them up with pretty big sticks from the wood-pile. It was not a nice sight, that of a
rough stick as thick as one’s arm to hold up the sash, especially when, of a sultry day, three or four of them were always within view.

  Then the wooden step at the kitchen door, instead of being nailed fast to the house, was not only loose, but it rested on the ground so unevenly as to tilt over whenever any one stepped carelessly on its edge. As the house contained a large family, all of whom generally lived in the kitchen, there was a great deal of running in and out over this loose step. When it first broke away from the building, it gave quite a number of severe tumbles to the women and children. Everybody complained of it, but nobody mended it, though a single stout nail would have held it fast. One dark night a pig broke loose, and, snuffing and smelling around the premises in search of forage, came upon the loose step, and, imagining that he scented a supper in its neighborhood, used his snout so vigorously as to push it clear away from the door. One of the girls, hearing the noise, stepped out into the yard to see what was going on; but the step being gone, and she not observing it, down she went on her face, striking her nose on the edge of a bucket which some one had left exactly in the wrong place, and breaking the bone so badly that she will carry a very homely face as long as she lives. It was a very painful hurt to the poor girl, and the family all grieved over her misfortune; but not one of the men undertook to mend the step. Finally, the mother managed to drive down two sticks in front of it, which held it up to the house, though not half so firmly as would have been done by a couple of good stout nails.

  Things were very much in the same condition all over the premises. The fence round the garden, and in fact all about the house, was dropping to pieces simply for want of a nail here and there. The barn-yard enclosure was strong enough to keep the cattle in, but it was a curious exhibition of hasty patch-work, that would hurt the eye of any mechanic to look at. As to the gates, every one of them rested at one end on the ground. It was hard work even for a man to open and shut them, as they had to be lifted clear up before they could be moved an inch. For a half-grown boy to open them was really a very serious undertaking, especially in muddy weather. The posts had sagged, or the upper staples had drawn out, but nobody attended to putting them to rights, though it would not have been an hour’s job to make them all swing as freely as every good farm-gate ought to. The barn-yard was a hard place for the boys on this farm.