Kitabı oku: «The Children's Tabernacle», sayfa 8

XXI.
Conclusion

“DORA is late – shockingly late – on her birthday too! I am surprised!” exclaimed Elsie, who was in a fidget of impatience to present her sister with a marker which she had made.

“And Aunt has kept us twenty – more than twenty minutes waiting for prayers!” cried Amy; “I am surprised, for she always is so punctual.”

“And Agnes has employed the time mending my gloves, the most surprising thing of all,” laughed Lucius.

“Why so surprising?” asked Elsie.

“Because a few months ago Agnes was much more given to picking holes than to sewing them up,” answered the boy. “I liked to plague her and she to tease me, and I thought that we should always live a kind of cat-and-dog life together. But now we’re going to be grand allies,” added the merry boy, clapping Agnes upon the shoulder; “by your example you’ll help to mend my manners as well as my gloves!”

Lucius spoke in his saucy playful way, but “there’s many a true word spoken in jest,” and he was but expressing what all the family had observed, that there was gradual but steady improvement in the outer conduct of the once peevish and selfish girl.

But the sharpest conflict of Agnes upon her twelfth birthday had been against a jealous spirit within. From a few words dropped by her aunt on the previous evening, Agnes felt sure that her mother’s likeness would be given as a birthday present to one of the twins, and she had not a doubt that the younger would be the one thus favored.

“It was just the same last birthday,” thought Agnes with bitterness: “I am given some makeshift, Dora has what is really of value. It is rather hard that she should always be preferred before her elder sister because she is called after my aunt, whilst I am named after my mother. But oh! how wicked is this feeling of jealousy, how sinful these unkind and covetous thoughts! Lord! help me to overcome this secret temptation, and to feel pleasure, real pleasure, when I see Dora wearing that which is so precious to us both!”

As the thought, or rather the prayer, passed through the mind of Agnes, the door opened and Miss Clare entered, followed by Dora. The lady held the beautiful brooch in her hand, and going up to the elder twin whom she had not met before on that morning, with a kiss and a whispered blessing, fastened the precious jewel on her breast.

That twenty-fourth day of December was a day long remembered with delight by many a poor child in Chester, for large was the number of scholars (it would be scarcely just to call them ragged) who enjoyed the feast and the varied amusements provided for them in the large red house by their benefactress, Miss Clare.

Specially was the beautiful, the wonderful model which the young gentlefolk had made, the theme of many a conversation in the low courts and lanes from which the guests had been gathered. Worn, weary mothers, at their sewing or washing, paused, needle in hand, or with arms whitened with soap-suds, to hear of the golden pillars, and silver loops, and above all of the splendid embroidery that adorned the inner part of the model, that part which, as Miss Clare had told them, was called the Holy of holies.

“And the young ladies looked just as pleased and happy as we,” a bare-footed little urchin observed at the end of a lively narration of all the wonders that he had seen; “all but one, and her eyes were red as if she’d been a-crying, – what could she have had to make her cry? But she smiled, too, when we clapped our hands and shouted for joy as we saw the beautiful tent!”

What delighted their eyes, and pleased their fancy, was what naturally made the greatest impression on the ragged scholars who had stared in wondering admiration on the model of the Tabernacle of Israel. But the concluding words of a little address made by Miss Clare to the children were what sank deepest into the memories and hearts of her twin nieces.

“I have described to you, my dear young pupils, the various parts of this model,” she said: “let me now briefly point out a few lessons which we should all carry away. In Israel’s Tabernacle we see a TYPE of every Christian, in whose body, as St. Paul tells us, God’s Holy Spirit deigns to dwell (1 Cor. iii. 16). In that living Tabernacle, the lowly heart is the Holy of holies, because it is cleansed by the blood of sprinkling, in it the Commandments of God are treasured, and the light of His love shines within. But as the Tabernacle was not intended to last forever, but to give place to a far more splendid building, so is it with these bodies of ours. As Solomon’s magnificent temple, glorious and fair, and firm on its deep foundation, far surpassed the Tabernacle made to be moved from place to place; so will the glorified bodies of saints, when they are raised from their graves, surpass these weak, mortal bodies in which they served their Lord upon earth. For what saith the Apostle St. Paul: – ‘We know that if our earthly house of this Tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’” (2 Cor. v. 1.)

SHORT STORIES BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE BEAR

“HE is just like a bear!” that is a very common expression when we talk of some ill-tempered man or boy, who takes a pleasure in saying rude things, and who seems bent upon making every one near him as uncomfortable as he can.

But we may be unjust even to bears. Could you have gone to wintry Greenland, and seen Mrs. Bruin amidst her family of little white cubs, each scarcely bigger than a rabbit, you would have agreed that a bear can be a kind and tender mother, and provide for her four-footed babies a snug and comfortable home.

You would, indeed, have had some difficulty in finding Bear Hall, or Bear Hole, as we rather should call it. Perhaps in wandering over the dreary snow-covered plains of Greenland, you might have come upon a little hole in the snow, edged with hoar-frost, without ever guessing that the hole was formed by the warm breath of an Arctic bear, or that Mrs. Bruin and her promising family were living in a burrow beneath you.³ How wonderfully does Instinct teach this rough, strange-looking creature to provide for her cubs! The mother-bear scrapes and burrows under the snow, till she has formed a small but snug home, where she dwells with her baby-bears during the sharpest cold of an Arctic winter. So wonderfully has Providence cared for the comfort even of wild beasts, that the mother needs no food for three months! She is so fat when she settles down in her under-snow home, that her own plumpness serves her instead of breakfast, dinner, and supper; so that when at last she comes out to break her long fast, she is not starved, but has merely grown thin.

I need hardly remind my reader that the Arctic bear is provided by Nature with a thick, warm, close-fitting coat of white fur; and the snow itself, strange as it seems to say so, serves as a blanket to keep the piercing air from her narrow den.

Yes, Mrs. Bruin was a happy mother though her cell was small to hold her and her children, and the cold above was so terrible that water froze in the dwellings of men even in a room with a fire. Mrs Bruin found enough of amusement in licking her cubs, which was her fashion of washing, combing, and dressing, and making them look like respectable bears. She let them know that she loved them dearly in that kind of language which little ones, whether they be babies or bear-cubs, so soon understand.

But when March came, Mrs. Bruin began to grow hungry, and think that it was full time to scramble out of her under-snow den, and look out for some fish, or a fat young seal, to eat for her breakfast. The weather was still most fearfully cold, and the red sun seemed to have no power at all, save to light up an endless waste of snow, in which not a tree was to be seen save here and there a stunted fir, half crusted over with ice.

Safe, however, and pretty warm in their shaggy furs, over the dreary wilds walked Mrs. Bruin, and the young bears trotted at her heels. They went along for some time, when they came to a round swelling in the snow; at least so a little hut appeared to the eyes of a bear. Indeed, had our own eyes looked on that snow-covered hillock, we should scarcely at first have guessed that it was a human dwelling.

Perhaps some scent of food came up from the chimney-hole, which made Mrs. Bruin think about breakfast, for she went close up to the hut, then trotted around it – her rough white nose in the air. She then uttered a low short growl, which made her cubs scramble up to her side.

Oh, with what terror the sound of that growl filled the heart of poor Aneekah, the Esquimaux woman, who was with her little children crouching together for warmth in that hut!

“Did you hear that noise?” exclaimed Aleekan, the eldest boy, stopping suddenly in the midst of a tale which he had been telling.

“There’s a bear outside!” cried all the younger children at once.

Aneekah rose, and hastily strengthened the fastenings of her rude door with a thick piece of rope, while her children breathlessly listened to catch again the sound which had filled them with fear.

“The bear is climbing up outside!” cried little Vraga, clinging in terror to her mother. “I can hear the scraping of its claws!”

There was an anxious pause for several minutes, all listening too intently to break the silence by even a word. Then, to the great alarm of the Esquimaux, the white head of an Arctic bear could be plainly seen, looking down upon them from above. The animal had, after clambering up to the top of the hut, enlarged the hole which had been left in the roof to let out the smoke.

“We’re lost!” exclaimed Aneekah.

“O mother let us pray! Will not God help us?” cried one of the children.⁴

The prayer could have been but a very short one, but the presence of mind which the mother showed may have been given as the instant answer to it. Aneekah caught up a piece of moss, stuck it on a stick, set it on fire, and held the blazing mass as close as she could to the nose of the bear.

Now fire was a new thing to Mrs. Bruin, and so was smoke; and if the bear had frightened the Esquimaux, the Esquimaux now frightened the bear. With a snort and a shake of her shaggy fur, the animal drew back her head, and, to the surprise and delight of the trembling family, they soon heard their unwelcome visitor scrambling down faster than she had clambered up. Mrs. Bruin trotted off to seek her breakfast elsewhere; let us hope that she and her cubs found a fine supply of fish frozen in a cleft in some iceberg floating away in the sea. At any rate they never again were seen near the Esquimaux home.

Do you wonder how the poor Esquimaux child had learned the value of prayer? Would any one go to the dreary wilds of Greenland to carry the blessed gospel to the natives of that desolate shore?

Yes, even to “Greenland’s icy mountains” have missionaries gone from brighter, happier lands. There are pastors now laboring amongst the poor Esquimaux, for they know that the soul of each savage is precious. The light of the gospel is shining now in Esquimaux homes, and, amidst all their hardships, sufferings, and dangers, Esquimaux have learned to show pious trust when in peril, and thankfulness after deliverance. It is from the pen of a missionary that we have learned the story which I have just related of the Esquimaux woman and the white bear.

THE TIGER-CUB

“REALLY, Captain Guise, you need trouble yourself no more in the matter; I am quite able to take care of myself!” cried young Cornet Stanley, with a little impatience in his tone.

The speaker was a blue-eyed lad, whose fresh complexion showed that he had not been long in the burning climate of India. Cornet Stanley had indeed but lately left an English home, for he was little more than sixteen years of age. With very anxious feelings, and many tears, had Mrs. Stanley parted with her rosy-cheeked Norman. “He is so very young,” as she said, “to meet all the trials and temptations of an officer’s life in India!”

Mrs. Stanley’s great comfort was that her Norman would have a tried and steady friend in her cousin, Captain Guise, who would, she felt sure, act a father’s part to her light-hearted boy. Young Stanley was appointed to the same regiment as that of the captain; and almost as soon as the cornet had landed in India, he proceeded up country to join it. The season of the year was that which is in India called the cold weather, when many Europeans live in tents, moving from place to place, that they may amuse themselves with hunting and shooting. Norman Stanley, who had never before chased anything larger than a rabbit, was delighted to make one of a party with two of his brother officers, and enjoy with them for a while a wild, free life in the jungle. There would have been no harm at all in this, had Norman’s new companions been sober and steady young men; but Dugsley and Danes were noted as the two wildest officers in the regiment.

Captain Guise was also out in camp, and his tent was pitched not very far from that of his young friend Norman. The captain took a warm interest in young Stanley, not only for the sake of his parents, but also for his own; for the bright rosy face and frank manner of the lad inclined all who met him to feel kindly towards him. It was with no small regret that Captain Guise, on the very first evening when the officers all dined together, saw that young face flushed not with health, but with wine, and that frank manner become more boisterous than it had been earlier in the day. Not that Norman Stanley could have been called drunk, but he had taken a little more wine than was good for him to take; and his friend knew but too well in what such a beginning of life in India was likely to end.

The captain was a good and sensible man, and he could not see his young relative led into folly and sin without warning him of the danger into which he was heedlessly running. Captain Guise, on the following day, therefore, visited Norman in his tent, and tried to put him on his guard against too close a friendship with Dugsley and Danes, and to show him the peril of being drawn by little and little into intemperate habits.

Norman Stanley, who thought himself quite a man because he could wear a uniform and give commands to gray-bearded soldiers, was a little hurt at any one’s thinking of troubling him with advice. Captain Guise had, however, spoken so kindly that the lad could not take real offence at his words, but only tried to show his friend that his warning was not at all needed.

“I shall never disgrace myself by becoming a drunkard, you may be certain of that,” said the youth; “no one despises a sot more than I do, and I shall never be one. As for taking an extra glass of champagne after a long day’s shooting, that is quite a different thing, and nobody can object to it.”

“But the extra glass, Norman, is often like the thin point of the wedge,” said the captain; “it is followed by another and another, till a ruinous habit may be formed.”

“I tell you that I shall never get into habits of drinking,” interrupted young Stanley. Then, as he took up his gun to go out shooting, the cornet uttered the words with which this little story commences.

Captain Guise did not feel satisfied. He saw that his young friend was relying on the strength of his own resolutions, and in so doing was leaning on a reed. He could not, however, say anything more just then, and Norman Stanley started a new subject to give a turn to the conversation.

“By-the-by, Captain Guise, I’ve not shown you the prize which I captured yesterday. As Dugsley and I were beating about in the jungle, what should we light upon but a tiger-cub – a real little beauty, pretty and playful as a young kitten.”

“What did you make of it?” asked the captain.

“Oh, I’ve tethered it to the tree yonder,” said Norman, pointing to one not a hundred yards distant. “By good luck I had a dog’s chain and collar which fitted the little creature exactly. I mean to try if I can’t rear it, and keep a tiger-cub as a pet.”

“A tiger-cub is rather a dangerous pet, I should say,” observed Captain Guise, with a smile.

“Oh, not a bit of it!” cried Norman, lightly; “the little brute has no fangs to bite with, and if it had, the chain is quite strong enough to” —

The sentence was never finished, for while the last word was yet on the smiling lips of the youth, the sudden sound of a savage roar from a neighboring thicket made him start, turn pale, and grasp his gun more firmly. Forth from the shade of the bushes sprang a large tigress. In a minute, with a few bounds, she had cleared the space between herself and her cub! Snap went the chain, as the strong wild beast caught up her little one in her mouth; and before either Norman or the captain (who had snatched up a second gun) had time to take aim, the tigress was off again, bearing away her rescued cub to the jungle!

“That was a sight worth seeing!” exclaimed Captain Guise; “I never beheld a more splendid creature in all my life!”

Norman, who was very young, and quite unaccustomed to having a tiger so near him with no iron cage between them, looked as though he had not enjoyed the sight at all. “I should not care to meet that splendid creature alone in the jungle,” he observed. “Did you not notice how the iron chain snapped like a thread at the jerk which she gave it?”

“Yes,” replied Captain Guise, as he turned back into the tent; “what will hold in the cub, is as a spider’s web to the full-grown wild beast. You had, as I told you, a dangerous pet, Norman Stanley. You might play for a while with the young creature, but claws will lengthen and fangs will grow. And,” the captain added more gravely, “this is like some other things which are at first but a source of amusement, but which are too likely to become at last a source of destruction.”

Norman Stanley’s cheek reddened, for he felt that it was not merely of a tiger’s cub that his friend was speaking. Evil habits, which at first seem so weak that we believe that we can hold them in by a mere effort of will, grow fearfully strong by indulgence. Many a wretched drunkard has begun by what he called merely a little harmless mirth, but has found at last that he had been fostering something more dangerous still then a tiger’s cub. His good resolutions have snapped; he has been carried away by a terrible force with which he has not had the strength to grapple; and so has proved the truth of the captain’s words, that what is at first but a source of amusement may be at last a source of destruction.

NOT ONE TOO MANY

“NO, neighbor, you’ve not one too many,” observed Bridget Macbride, as she stood in the doorway of the cottage of Janet Maclean, knitting coarse gray socks as fast as her fingers could go.

“It’s easy enough for you to say so,” replied Janet, who was engaged in ironing out a shirt, and who seemed to be too busy even to look up as she spoke – “it’s easy enough for you to say so, Bridget Macbride. You’ve never had but three bairns [children] in your life, and your husband he gets good wages. You’d sing to a different tune, I take it, if you’d nine bairns, as I ha’e, the oldest not twelve years old – nine to feed, to clothe, and to house, and to toil and moil for, and your goodman getting but seven shillings a-week, though he’s after the sheep from morning till night!” Mrs. Maclean had been getting quite red in the face as she spoke, but that might have been from stooping over her ironing work.

“Still children are blessings, – at least, I always thought mine so,” observed Bridget Macbride.

“Blessings; yes, to be sure!” cried Janet; “I thought so too till there were so many of them that we had to pack in the cottage like herrings in a barrel.” Janet was now ironing out a sleeve, and required to go rather more gently on with her work. “I’m sure nae folk welcomed little ones more than Tam and I did the four first wee bairns, though many a broken night’s rest we had wi’ poor Jeanie, – and I shall never forget the time when the measles was in our cottage, and every ane o’ the four had it! Yes,” the mother went on, “four we could manage pretty well, with a wee bit o’ pinching and scraping; but then came twins; and then little Davie; and afore he could toddle alane, twins again!” and Janet banged down her iron on its stand, as if two sets of twins were too much for the patience of any parent to endure.

“You must have a struggle to keep them all,” observed Bridget Macbride.

“Struggle! I should say so!” cried Janet, looking more flushed and angry than ever. “We never could have got on at all, had I not taken in washing and ironing; and it’s no such easy matter, I can tell you, to wash and iron fine things for the gentry with twin-babies a-wanting you to look after them every hour in the twenty-four!” It seemed as if the babies had heard themselves mentioned, for from the rude cradle by the fire came a squall, first from one child, and then from both, and poor Janet was several minutes before she could get either of them quiet again.

“You’ve a busy life of it indeed,” observed Bridget, as soon as the weary mother was able once more to take up her iron.

“’Deed you may say so,” replied Janet sharply, plying her iron faster, as if to make up for lost time. “And for all my working, and Tam’s, we can scarce get enough of bread or porridge to fill nine hungry mouths; and as for meat, we don’t see it for weeks and weeks – not so much as a slice of bacon! Then there’s the schooling of the twa eldest bairns to be paid for, as Tam and I won’t ha’e them grow up like heathen savages; and we’ll hae them gae decent too, not in rags and barefooted, like beggars. And I should like to know” – Janet was ironing fast, but talking faster – “I should like to know how shoon [shoes] and sarks [shirts], and a plaidie for this ane, and a bonnet for anither, and breakfasts o’ bannocks, and porridge for supper, are a’ to come out of that wash-tub?”

“And yet,” observed Bridget Macbride, “hard as you have to work for your children, I don’t believe that you would willingly part with one of them, neighbor.”

Even as she spoke, there was a distressful cry of “Mither! mither!” as Janet’s two eldest children burst suddenly into the cottage, looking unhappy and frightened.

“What ails the bairns?” asked Janet anxiously, turning round at the cry.

“O mither, we’ve lost wee Davie; we can’t find him nowhere in the wood, and we be afeard as he may have fallen over the cliff.”

“Davie! my bairn! my darling!” exclaimed poor Janet, forgetting in a moment all her toils and troubles in one terrible fear. Down went the iron on the table, and without waiting to put on bonnet or shawl, the fond mother rushed out of the cottage, to go and search for her child. Bridget had spoken the truth; Janet might complain of the trouble brought by a large family, but she could not bear to part with one out of her flock. If Davie had been the only child of a rich mother, instead of the seventh child of a poor one, he could not have been sought with more eager anxiety, more tender, self-forgetting love.

Followed by several of her children, but outstripping them all in her haste, Janet was soon at the edge of the wood. “Davie! Davie! my bairn! my bairn!” resounded through the forest. The mother’s cry was answered by a distant whoop and halloo; – Janet knew the voice of her husband, and her heart took courage from the sound. But her hope was changed into delight, when she caught a glimpse between the trees of the shepherd coming towards her, with her little yellow-haired laddie Davie perched on his broad shoulders, grasping with one hand his father’s rough locks, and with the other a bannock, which he was nibbling at as he rode.

“The Lord be praised!” cried poor Janet, and rushing forward she caught the child from her husband, pressed Davie closely to her heart, and burst into a flood of grateful tears.

“You must look a bit better after your stray lamb, Janet,” said Tam with a good-humored smile. “I was just crossing the wood when Trusty set up a barking which made me go out o’ my way just to see if he had found a rabbit, or started a blackcock. There was our wean [child] sitting much at his ease, munching a bannock, as contented and happy as if he’d been a duke eating venison out of a golden dish. But you mustna let the wee bairn wander about by himsel’, for if he’d gaen over the cliff, we’d never hae heard the voice o’ our lammie again.”

Very joyful and very thankful was Janet Maclean, as, with her boy in her arms, she returned to her cottage. Bridget had remained there to take care of the twins during the absence of their mother. Mrs. Macbride received her neighbor with a smile, and the words, “Didna I say, Janet, that ye’d not one too many, nor would willingly part wi’ a single bairn out o’ your nine?”

“The Lord forgie my thankless heart!” said poor Janet, and she fondly kissed her boy. “We ne’er are grateful enough for our blessings until we are like to lose them.” Then putting the little child down on the brick floor, with fresh courage and industry the mother returned to her ironing again.

May we not hope that all Janet’s toil and hard work for her children had one day a rich reward? May we not hope that not one out of the nine, when old enough and strong enough to labor for her who had labored so hard for them, but did his best to repay her care and her love? How large is a parent’s heart, that opens wide and wider to take in all the children of her family, however numerous those children may be! Though each new babe adds to poor parents’ toils, and takes from their comforts, still the kind father and the fond mother, as they look round their home circle of rosy faces, can not only say but feel, “There is not one too many.”