Kitabı oku: «Wreaths of Friendship: A Gift for the Young»

Preface

Young friends—stop a moment. We have set up a sort of turnpike gate here, as you see, between the title-page and the first story in our book, in the shape of a preface, or introduction. "What! do you mean to take toll of us, then?" Why, no—not exactly. But we want to say half a dozen words to you, as you pass along, and to tell you a little about these WREATHS which we have been twining for our friends. So you need not be in quite so great a hurry. Wait a minute.

You have no doubt noticed that it is a very common thing for an author to take up several of the first pages of his book with apologies to his readers. First, perhaps, he apologizes for writing at all; and secondly, for writing so poorly—just as if it was a crime to make a book, for which crime the author must get down on his knees, and humbly beg the public's pardon. We think we shall not take this course, on the whole, for this reason, if for no other—that we do not feel very guilty about what we have done. But as the plan of our book is somewhat new, we have been thinking it would be well enough, in introducing it to you, at least to tell how we came to make it.

We have both of us published a good deal, in one way and another, for young people; and we got a notion—a very pleasant one, certainly, and rather natural, withal, whether well founded or not—that among that class of the public composed of boys and girls, we had a pretty respectable number of friends. Under this impression, we put our heads together, one day, and made up our minds to invite these friends of ours, every one of them, to a kind of festival, and that we would share equally in the pleasure of giving the entertainment. The book, reader, which we have named WREATHS OF FRIENDSHIP, as perhaps you have already guessed, grew out of that plan of ours.

We have not, as you will perceive, indicated the authorship of the tales and sketches, as they appear; and those readers who have any curiosity in this matter, are referred to the index.

We hope the volume will please you. More than this: we hope it will prove to be useful—useful for the future as well as for the present life; and, indeed, if it had not been for this hope, much as we love to entertain our young friends, these Wreaths would never have been twined by our hands.

We have little else to add, except the fondest wishes of our hearts; and, to tell the truth, it was to express to you these kind wishes—to give you something like a hearty shake of the hand—rather than because we had any thing of importance to say in our preface, that we stopped you at the outset.

THE AUTHORS.

WHAT SHALL WE BUILD?

Four children were playing on the sea-shore. They had gathered bright pebbles and beautiful shells, and written their names in the pure, white sand; but at last, tired of their sport, they were about going home, when one of them, as they came to a pile of stones, cried out:

"Oh! let us build a fort; and we will call that ship away out there, an enemy's vessel, and make believe we are firing great cannon balls into her!"

"Yes, yes! let us build a fort," responded Edward, the other lad.

And the two boys—for two were boys and two girls—ran off to the pile of stones, and began removing them to a place near the water.

"Come, Anna and Jane," said they, "come and help us."

"Oh, no. Don't let us build a fort," said Jane.

WHAT SHALL WE BUILD?

"Yes; we will build a fort," returned the boys. "What else can we build? You wouldn't put a house down here upon the water's edge?"

"No; but I'll tell you what we can build, and it will be a great deal better than a fort."

"Well; what can we build?"

"A light-house," said the girls; "and that will be just as much in place on the edge of the sea as a fort. We can call the ship yonder a vessel lost in the darkness, and we will hang out a light and direct her in the true way. Won't that be much better than to call her an enemy, and build a fort to destroy her? See how beautifully she sits upon and glides over the smooth water! Her sails are like the open wings of a bird, and they bear her gracefully along. Would it not be cruel to shoot great balls into her sides, tear her sails to pieces, and kill the men who are on board of her? Oh! I am sure it would make us all happier to save her when in darkness and danger. No, no; let us not build a fort, but a light-house; for it is better to save than to destroy."

The girls spoke with tenderness and enthusiasm, and their words reached the better feelings of their companions.

"Oh, yes," said they; "we will build a light-house, and not a fort." And they did so.

Yes, it is much better to save than to destroy. Think of that, children, and let it go with you through life. Be more earnest to save your friends than to destroy your enemies. And yet, when a real enemy comes, and seeks to do evil, be brave to resist him.

THE TWO COUSINS;

OR, HOW TO ACT WHEN "THINGS GO WRONG."

"There, mother, I knew it would be so. Lucy Wallace has just sent over to tell me she can't walk out in the woods with me. There's no use in my trying to please any body—there's no use in it. I'm an odd sort of a creature, it seems. Nobody loves me. It always was so. Oh, dear! I wish I knew what I had done to make the girls hate me so!"

This not very good-natured speech was made by a little girl, whom I shall call Angeline Standish. She was some ten or twelve years old, as near as I can recollect. Perhaps my readers would like to know something about the occasion which called for this speech; but it is a long story, and hardly worth telling. The truth is, when little boys and girls get very angry, or peevish, or fretful, they sometimes blow out a great deal of ill-humor, something after the manner that an overcharged steam boiler lets off steam—with this difference, however, that the steam boiler gets cooler by the operation, while the boy or girl gets more heated. The throat is a poor safety-valve for ill-humor; and it is bad business, this setting the tongue agoing at such a rate, whenever the mercury in one's temper begins to rise toward the boiling point.

As is usual, in such cases, Angeline felt worse after these words had whistled through the escape pipe of her ill-nature, than she did before; and, for want of something else to do, she commenced crying. She was not angry—that is, not altogether so—though the spirit she showed was a pretty good imitation of anger, it must be confessed. She was peevish. Matters had not gone right with her that day. She was crossed in this thing and that thing. Her new hat had not come home from the milliner's, as she expected; one of her frocks had just got badly torn; she had a hard lesson to learn; and I cannot repeat the whole catalogue of her miseries. So she fretted, and stormed, and cried, and felt just as badly as she chose.

Not long after the crying spell was over, and there was a little blue sky in sight, Jeannette Forrest, a cousin of Angeline's, came running into the room, her face all lighted up with smiles, and threw her arms around her cousin's neck, and kissed her. This was no uncommon thing with Jeannette. She had a very happy and a very affectionate disposition. Every body loved her, and she loved every body.

One not acquainted with Angeline, might very naturally suppose that she would return her cousin's embrace. But she did no such thing. Her manner was quite cool and distant. Human nature is a strange compound, is it not?

"Why, cousin," said the light-hearted Jeannette, "what is the matter? You are not well, are you?"

"Yes, well enough," the other replied, rather crustily. Take care, Angeline, there's a cloud coming over your cousin's face. Speak a kind word or two, now. Then the sun will beam out again, brightly as ever. Jeannette was silent for a moment, for she was astonished, and did not know what to make of her cousin's manner. It would have appeared uncivil and rude to most little girls. But the sweet spirit of Jeannette—loving, hoping, trusting—was differently affected. She saw only the brighter side of the picture. So the bee, as she flies merrily from flower to flower, finds a store of honey where others would find only poison.

"Dear Angeline," said her cousin, at length, "I'm sure something is the matter. Tell me what it is, won't you? Oh, I should love to make you happy, if I only knew how!"

Angeline seemed scarcely to hear these words of love. That is strange enough, I hear you say. So it is, perhaps, and it may be stranger still, that she read not the language of love and sympathy that was written so plainly in her cousin's countenance. It is true, though, for all that. She did not say much of any thing to this inquiry—she simply muttered, between her teeth,

"I don't believe any body loves me."

Jeannette was no philosopher. She could not read essays nor preach sermons. Her argument to convince her cousin that there was, at least, one who loved her, was drawn from the heart, rather than from the head. It was very brief, and very much to the point. She burst into tears, and sobbed,

"Don't say so, dear."

Jeannette could not stay long. Her mother had sent her on an errand, and told her she must make haste back. Perhaps it was as well that she could not stay—and perhaps not. Human nature is a strange sort of compound, as I said before; and it may be that the ice which had covered over the streams leading from Angeline's heart would not have melted under the influence even of the warm sun that, for a moment or two, beamed upon them so kindly. For one, however, I should like to know what would have come out of that conversation, if it had been allowed to go on. Jeannette went home, and Angeline was again left to her own reflections, which were any thing but pleasant. It was Saturday afternoon; and, there being no school, she had hoped to be able to ramble in the woods with some of her little companions. But here she was disappointed, too, and this increased her peevishness; though the reason why she could not go was, because she did not learn her lesson in season, and that was her own fault. Toward night, when Mrs Standish had leisure to sit down to her sewing, she called Angeline, and reminded her of the ill-natured spirit she had shown in the early part of the afternoon. The child was rather ashamed of what she had said, it is true; but she tried to excuse her conduct.

"Every thing went wrong to-day, mother," she said; "I couldn't help feeling so. Oh, dear! I don't see how any body can be good, when things go in this way—I mean any body but Jeannette. I wish I was like her. It is easy for her to be good."

"Your cousin has, no doubt, a very different disposition from yours," said the mother. "But it is much easier for you to be always good-natured and happy than you suppose, Angeline."

"I wish I knew how, mother."

"Well, you say things went wrong with you this afternoon. I think I know what some of these things were. They were not so pleasant as they might have been, certainly. They were troublesome. But don't you think the greatest trouble of all was in your own heart?"

"No, ma'am. I was well enough until the things began to go wrong; and then I felt bad, and I couldn't help it."

Mrs Standish laughed, as she said, "So, then, as soon as the things begin to go wrong, you take the liberty to go wrong too. Every thing works well inside, until it is disturbed by something outside?"

"That is it, mother."

"And when the things inside go smoothly, because every thing is smooth outside, you have a very good and happy disposition?"

"Pretty good, I think."

"And so, when there is a hurricane inside, because the wind blows rather more than usual outside, you are cross, and unhappy, and bad enough to make up for being so good before?"

"Yes, ma'am, I am afraid I am, sometimes."

"No, my child, you are wrong, all wrong. If all was right inside, the other things you speak of would not disturb you so, if they should happen to go wrong."

"Why, mother, wouldn't they disturb me at all?"

"They might, occasionally, but not near as much. Do you remember that our clock went wrong last winter?"

"Yes, ma'am; we couldn't tell what time it was, and it used to strike all sorts of ways."

"What do you suppose made the clock act so, Angeline? It goes well enough now, you know."

"I believe Mr Mercer said one of the wheels was out of order."

"That was all. It was not the weather—not because we forgot to wind it up—not because things did not go right in the room. Now, your mind is something like a clock. If it is kept in order, it will run pretty well, I guess—no matter whether it rains or shines—whether it is winter or summer. Milton says, very beautifully, in his poem called the 'Paradise Lost,'

 
"'The mind is its own place, and of itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'
 

"He means by this, that our happiness or unhappiness depends more upon what is within us than it does upon what is without. And he is right. Do you understand, my child?"

"I understand what you mean, but it is not so easy to see how I am to go to work and be good all the time, like cousin Jeannette. I'm not like her, mother, and I never can be like her, I know."

"True, you will always be very unlike your cousin. But I don't know of any thing to hinder your being as good and amiable as she is, for all that."

"Oh, mother! I'd give every thing in the world, if I only knew how!"

"I think you can learn, my child, with much less expense; though, to be sure, you will have to give up some things that perhaps you will find it hard to part with. You will be obliged to give up some of your bad habits."

"That would be easy enough."

"Not so easy as you think, it may be. It is a good deal easier to let a bad habit come in, than it is to turn one out. But 'where there's a will, there's a way,' you know."

"Well, mother, what shall I do? I should like to begin pretty soon, for scarcely any body loves me now,"

"Before you learn much, it might be well to unlearn a little. When any thing goes wrong, as you say, you must, at least, not make it go worse. You must not make every body around you unhappy, if you do feel a little cross and peevish."

"Oh, mother, I can't speak pleasantly when I don't feel so."

"Then, in most cases, you had better not speak at all."

"I never thought of that. I can stop talking, if I try."

"So you can, and you can do more. You can get into the habit of finding 'the south or sunny side of things,' as Jean Paul says, and if you do, you will not be likely to have a snow-storm in your heart very often. Besides, you ought to remember, that all these disappointments and crosses are a part of your education for heaven, and you should endeavor to improve them as such, so that their good effect will not be lost. And another thing, my child: you ought to ask God to assist you in this self-government—to make you his child—to give you a new heart—to teach you to love Christ, and to be like him. Then you will seldom feel cross and fretful, because things go wrong. You will be cheerful and good-natured. You will make others happy—and you will very soon forget the old story, that nobody loves you."

Now, many little boys and girls—possibly some who read this story—would have thought this task too hard. They would have regarded it as a pretty severe penance. Perhaps they would have concluded, after having put all these difficult things into one scale, and the thing to be gained by them into the other, that the reward was not worth so great a sacrifice. So thought not Angeline, however. She began the work in earnest, that very day. She went over to her uncle's, with an unusual amount of sunshine in her countenance, and made it all right with Jeannette. In the evening, she told her little brother James what she intended to do, and invited him to help her; and before they retired to rest that night, they knelt down together and offered up a prayer, that God, for Christ's sake, would help them in governing themselves.

One day—perhaps some six weeks after this—Mrs Standish said, smilingly, to her daughter,

"Well, my dear, does Lucy Wallace love you any better?"

"Oh, mother," said Angeline, as a tear of joy stood in her eye, "every body loves me now!"

A NOBLE ACT.

A NOBLE ACT

"What have you there, boys?" asked Captain Bland.

"A ship," replied one of the lads who were passing the captain's neat cottage.

"A ship! Let me see;" and the captain took the little vessel, and examined it with as much fondness as a child does a pretty toy. "Very fair, indeed; who made it?"

"I did," replied one of the boys.

"You, indeed! Do you mean to be a sailor, Harry?"

"I don't know. I want father to get me into the navy."

"As a midshipman?"

"Yes, sir."

Captain Bland shook his head.

"Better be a farmer, a physician, or a merchant."

"Why so, captain?" asked Harry;

"All these are engaged in the doing of things directly useful to society."

"But I am sure, captain, that those who defend us against our enemies, and protect all who are engaged in commerce from wicked pirates, are doing what is useful to society."

"Their use, my lad," replied Captain Bland, "is certainly a most important one; but we may call it rather negative than positive. The civilian is engaged in building up and sustaining society in doing good, through his active employment, to his fellow-man. But military and naval officers do not produce any thing; they only protect and defend."

"But if they did not protect and defend, captain, evil men would destroy society. It would be of no use for the civilian to endeavor to build up, if there were none to fight against the enemies of the state."

"Very true, my lad. The brave defender of his country cannot be dispensed with, and we give him all honor. Still, the use of defence and protection is not so high as the use of building up and sustaining. The thorn that wounds the hand stretched forth to pluck the flower, is not so much esteemed, nor of so much worth, as the blossom it was meant to guard. Still, the thorn performs a great use. Precisely a similar use does the soldier or naval officer perform to society; and it will be for you, my lad, to decide as to which position you would rather fill."

"I never thought of that, captain," said one of the lads. "But I can see clearly how it is. And yet I think those men who risk their lives for us in war, deserve great honor. They leave their homes, and remain away, sometimes for years, deprived of all the comforts and blessings that civilians enjoy, suffering frequently great hardships, and risking their lives to defend their country from her enemies."

"It is all as you say," replied Captain Bland; "and they do, indeed, deserve great honor. Their calling is one that exposes them to imminent peril, and requires them to make many sacrifices; and they encounter not this peril and sacrifice for their own good, but for the good of others. Their lives do not pass so evenly as do the lives of men who spend their days in the peaceful pursuits of business, art, or literature; and we could hardly wonder if they lost some of the gentler attributes of the human heart. In some cases, this is so; but in very many cases the reverse is true. We find the man who goes fearlessly into battle, and there, in defence of his country, deals death and destruction unsparingly upon her enemies, acting, when occasion offers, from the most humane sentiments, and jeopardizing his life to save the life of a single individual. Let me relate to you a true story in illustration of what I say.

"When the unhappy war that has been waged by our troops in Mexico broke out, a lieutenant in the navy, who had a quiet berth at Washington, felt it to be his duty to go to the scene of strife, and therefore asked to be ordered to the Gulf of Mexico. His request was complied with, and he received orders to go on board the steamer Mississippi, Commodore Perry, then about to sail from Norfolk to Vera Cruz.

"Soon after the Mississippi arrived out, and before the city and castle were taken, a terrible 'norther' sprung up, and destroyed much shipping in the harbor. One vessel, on which were a number of passengers, was thrown high upon a reef, and when morning broke, the heavy sea was making a clear breach through her. She lay about a mile from the Mississippi, and it soon became known on board the steamer, that a mother and her infant were in the wreck, and that unless succor came speedily, they would perish. The lieutenant of whom I speak, immediately ordered out a boat's crew, and although the sea was rolling tremendously, and the 'norther' still blowing a hurricane, started to the rescue. Right in the teeth of the wind were the men compelled to pull their boat, and so slowly did they progress, that it took over two hours to gain the wreck.

"At one time, they actually gave out, and the oars lay inactive in their hands. At this crisis, the brave but humane officer, pointing with one hand to the fortress of San Juan de Ulloa, upon which a fire had already commenced, and with the other to the wreck, exclaimed, with noble enthusiasm,

"'Pull away, men! I would rather save the life of that woman and her child, than have the honor of taking the castle!'

"Struck by the noble, unselfish, and truly humane feelings of their officer, the crew bent with new vigor to their oars. In a little while the wreck was gained, and the brave lieutenant had the pleasure of receiving into his arms the almost inanimate form of the woman, who had been lashed to the deck, and over whom the waves had been beating, at intervals, all night.

"In writing home to his friends, after the excitement of the adventure was over, the officer spoke of the moment when he rescued that mother and child from the wreck as the proudest of his life.

"Afterward he took part in the bombardment of Vera Cruz, and had command, in turn, of the naval battery, where he faithfully and energetically performed his duty as an officer in the service of his country. He was among the first of those who entered the captured city; but pain, not pleasure, filled his mind, as he looked around, and saw death and destruction on every hand. Victory had perched upon our banners; the arms of our country had been successful; the officer had bravely contributed his part in the work; but he frankly owns that he experienced far more delight in saving the woman he had borne from the wreck, than he could have felt had he been the commander of the army that reduced the city.

"Wherever duty calls, my lads," concluded the captain, "you will find that brave officer. He will never shrink from the post of danger, if his country have need of him; nor will he ever be deaf to the appeal of humanity; but so long as he is a true man, just so long will he delight more in saving than in destroying."