Eighth Reader

II. Friendship Among Nations 15

Let us suppose that four centuries ago some far-seeing prophet dared to predict to the duchies composing the kingdom of France that the day would come when they would no longer make war upon each other. Let us suppose him saying: —

"You will have many disputes to settle, interests to contend for, difficulties to resolve; but do you know what you will select instead of armed men, instead of cavalry, and infantry, of cannon, lances, pikes, and swords?

"You will select, instead of all this destructive array, a small box of wood, which you will term a ballot-box, and from what shall issue – what? An assembly – an assembly in which you shall all live; an assembly which shall be, as it were, the soul of all; a supreme and popular council, which shall decide, judge, resolve everything; which shall say to each, 'Here terminates your right, there commences your duty: lay down your arms!'

"And in that day you will all have one common thought, common interests, a common destiny; you will embrace each other, and recognize each other as children of the same blood and of the same race; that day you shall no longer be hostile tribes – you will be a people; you will be no longer merely Burgundy, Normandy, Brittany, Provence – you will be France!

You will no longer make appeals to war; you will do so to civilization."

If, at that period I speak of, some one had uttered these words, all men would have cried out: "What a dreamer! what a dream! How little this pretended prophet is acquainted with the human heart!" Yet time has gone on and on, and we find that this dream has been realized.

Well, then, at this moment we who are assembled here say to France, to England, to Spain, to Italy, to Russia: "A day will come, when from your hands also the arms they have grasped shall fall. A day will come, when war shall appear as impossible, and will be as impossible, between Paris and London, between St. Petersburg and Berlin, as it is now between Rouen and Amiens, between Boston and Philadelphia.

"A day will come, when you, France; you, Russia; you, Italy; you, England; you, Germany; all of you nations of the continent, shall, without losing your distinctive qualities and your glorious individuality, be blended into a superior unity, and shall constitute an European fraternity, just as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, have been blended into France. A day will come when the only battle field shall be the market open to commerce, and the mind open to new ideas. A day will come when bullets and shells shall be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by the arbitration of a great sovereign senate.

Nor is it necessary for four hundred years to pass away for that day to come. We live in a period in which a year often suffices to do the work of a century.

Suppose that the people of Europe, instead of mistrusting each other, entertaining jealousy of each other, hating each other, become fast friends; suppose they say that before they are French or English or German they are men, and that if nations form countries, human kind forms a family. Suppose that the enormous sums spent in maintaining armies should be spent in acts of mutual confidence. Suppose that the millions that are lavished on hatred, were bestowed on love, given to peace instead of war, given to labor, to intelligence, to industry, to commerce, to navigation, to agriculture, to science, to art.

If this enormous sum were expended in this manner, know you what would happen? The face of the world would be changed. Isthmuses would be cut through. Railroads would cover the continents; the merchant navy of the globe would be increased a hundredfold. There would be nowhere barren plains nor moors nor marshes. Cities would be found where now there are only deserts. Asia would be rescued to civilization; Africa would be rescued to man; abundance would gush forth on every side, from every vein of the earth at the touch of man, like the living stream from the rock beneath the rod of Moses.

III. Soldier, Rest 16 Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;Dream of battled fields no more,Days of danger, nights of waking.In our isle's enchanted hall,Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,Fairy strains of music fall,Every sense in slumber dewing.Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,Dream of fighting fields no more;Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,Morn of toil nor night of waking.No rude sound shall reach thine ear,Armor's clang, or war steed champing,Trump nor pibroch summon hereMustering clan or squadron tramping.Yet the lark's shrill fife may comeAt the daybreak from the fallow,And the bittern sound his drum,Booming from the sedgy shallow.Ruder sounds shall none be near,Guards nor warders challenge here,Here's no war steed's neigh and champing,Shouting clans, or squadrons stamping. IV. The Soldier's Dream 17 Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered,And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain;At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.Methought from the battle field's dreadful array,Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track;'Twas autumn, and sunshine arose on the wayTo the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oftIn life's morning march, when my bosom was young;I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung.Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I sworeFrom my home and my weeping friends never to part;My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart."Stay, stay with us – rest, thou art weary and worn;"And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. V. How Sleep the Brave 18 How sleep the brave who sink to restBy all their country's wishes blest!When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,Returns to deck their hallowed mold,She there shall dress a sweeter sodThan Fancy's feet have ever trod.By fairy hands their knell is rung,By forms unseen their dirge is sung:There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,To bless the turf that wraps their clay,And Freedom shall awhile repairTo dwell a weeping hermit there.-

Expression: Which one of these three poems requires to be read with most spirit and enthusiasm? Which is the most pathetic? Which is the most musical? Which calls up the most pleasing mental pictures?

Talk with your teacher about the three authors of these poems, and learn all you can about their lives and writings.

EARLY TIMES IN NEW YORK. 19

In those good old days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewife.

The front door was never opened, except for marriages, funerals, New Year's Day, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, which was curiously wrought, – sometimes in the device of a dog, and sometimes in that of a lion's head, – and daily burnished with such religious zeal that it was often worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation.

The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, – insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers, "like unto ducks."

The grand parlor was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. No one was permitted to enter this sacred apartment, except the mistress and her confidential maid, who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning. On these occasions they always took the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly in their stocking feet.

After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, – which was curiously stroked with a broom into angles and curves and rhomboids, – after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new branch of evergreens in the fireplace, the windows were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room was kept carefully locked, until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day.

As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous household assembled round the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported to those happy days of primeval simplicity which float before our imaginations like golden visions.

The fireplaces were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white, – nay, even the very cat and dog, – enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half-shut eyes, and thinking of nothing, for hours together; the good wife, on the opposite side, would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings.

The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and bloody encounters among Indians.

In those happy days, fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes, or noblesse; that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons. The company usually assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might reach home before dark.

The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company seated round the genial board, evinced their dexterity in launching their forks at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish, – in much the same manner that sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes.

Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat and called doughnuts or olykoeks, a delicious kind of cake, at present little known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families.

The tea was served out of a majestic Delft teapot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs, – with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fancies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper teakettle. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend, by a string from the ceiling, a large lump directly over the tea table, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth.

At these primitive tea parties, the utmost propriety and dignity prevailed, – no flirting nor coquetting; no romping of young ladies; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen, with no brains at all.

On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woolen stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say "Yah, Mynheer," or "Yah, yah, Vrouw," to any question that was asked them; behaving in all things like decent, well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.

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Notes: More than two hundred and fifty years have passed since the "good old days" described in this selection. New York in 1660 was a small place. It was called New Amsterdam, and its inhabitants were chiefly Dutch people from Holland. Knickerbocker's "History of New York" gives a delightfully humorous account of those early times.

The festival of St. Nicholas occurs on December 6, and with the Dutch colonists was equivalent to our Christmas.

Word Study: sanctum sanctorum, a Latin expression meaning "holy of holies," a most sacred place.

noblesse, persons of high rank.

olykoeks (ŏl´ y cooks), doughnuts, or crullers.

Mynheer (mīn hār´), sir, Mr.

Vrouw (vrou), madam, lady.

Tobit, a pious man of ancient times whose story is related in "The Book of Tobit."

Haman (ha´ man), the prime minister of the king of Babylon, who was hanged on a gibbet which he had prepared for another. See "The Book of Esther."

Har´ le quin, a clown well known in Italian comedy.

Look in the dictionary for: gorgeous, rhomboids, primeval, patriarchal, burgher, crone, porpoises, beverage, divertisements.

A WINTER EVENING IN OLD NEW ENGLAND

Shut in from all the world without,We sat the clean-winged hearth about,Content to let the north wind roarIn baffled rage at pane and door,While the red logs before us beatThe frost line back with tropic heat;And ever, when a louder blastShook beam and rafter as it passed,The merrier up its roaring draftThe great throat of the chimney laughed.The house dog on his paws outspreadLaid to the fire his drowsy head,The cat's dark silhouette on the wallA couchant tiger's seemed to fall;And, for the winter fireside meet,Between the andirons' straddling feetThe mug of cider simmered slow,And apples sputtered in a row.And, close at hand, the basket stoodWith nuts from brown October's woods.What matter how the night behaved?What matter how the north wind raved?Blow high, blow low, not all its snowCould quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.

THE OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVING 20

I do not know but it is that old New England holiday of Thanksgiving which, for one of New England birth, has most of home associations tied up with it, and most of gleeful memories. I know that they are very present ones.

We all knew when it was coming; we all loved turkey – not Turkey on the map, for which we cared very little after we had once bounded it – by the Black Sea on the east, and by something else on the other sides – but basted turkey, brown turkey, stuffed turkey. Here was richness!

We had scored off the days until we were sure, to a recitation mark, when it was due – well into the end of November, when winds would be blowing from the northwest, with great piles of dry leaves all down the sides of the street and in the angles of pasture walls.

I cannot for my life conceive why any one should upset the old order of things by marking it down a fortnight earlier. A man in the country wants his crops well in and housed before he is ready to gush out with a round, outspoken Thanksgiving; but everybody knows, who knows anything about it, that the purple tops and the cow-horn turnips are, nine times in ten, left out till the latter days of November, and husking not half over.

We all knew, as I said, when it was coming. We had a stock of empty flour barrels on Town-hill stuffed with leaves, and a big pole set in the ground, and a battered tar barrel, with its bung chopped out, to put on top of the pole. It was all to beat the last year's bonfire – and it did. The country wagoners had made their little stoppages at the back door. We knew what was to come of that. And if the old cook – a monstrous fine woman, who weighed two hundred if she weighed a pound – was brusque and wouldn't have us "round," we knew what was to come of that, too. Such pies as hers demanded thoughtful consideration: not very large, and baked in scalloped tins, and with such a relishy flavor to them, as on my honor, I do not recognize in any pies of this generation…

The sermon on that Thanksgiving (and we all heard it) was long. We boys were prepared for that too. But we couldn't treat a Thanksgiving sermon as we would an ordinary one; we couldn't doze – there was too much ahead. It seemed to me that the preacher made rather a merit of holding us in check – with that basted turkey in waiting. At last, though, it came to an end; and I believe Dick and I both joined in the doxology.

All that followed is to me now a cloud of misty and joyful expectation, until we took our places – a score or more of cousins and kinsfolk; and the turkey, and celery, and cranberries, and what nots, were all in place.

Did Dick whisper to me as we went in, "Get next to me, old fellow"?

I cannot say; I have a half recollection that he did. But bless me! what did anybody care for what Dick said?

And the old gentleman who bowed his head and said grace – there is no forgetting him. And the little golden-haired one who sat at his left – his pet, his idol – who lisped the thanksgiving after him, shall I forget her, and the games of forfeit afterwards at evening that brought her curls near to me?

These fifty years she has been gone from sight, and is dust. What an awful tide of Thanksgivings has drifted by since she bowed her golden locks, and clasped her hand, and murmured, "Our Father, we thank thee for this, and for all thy bounties!"

Who else? Well, troops of cousins – good, bad, and indifferent. No man is accountable for his cousins, I think; or if he is, the law should be changed. If a man can't speak honestly of cousinhood, to the third or fourth degree, what can he speak honestly of? Didn't I see little Floy (who wore pea-green silk) make a saucy grimace when I made a false cut at that rolypoly turkey drumstick and landed it on the tablecloth?

There was that scamp Tom, too, who loosened his waistcoat before he went into dinner. I saw him do it. Didn't he make faces at me, till he caught a warning from Aunt Polly's uplifted finger?

How should I forget that good, kindly Aunt Polly – very severe in her turban, and with her meeting-house face upon her, but full of a great wealth of bonbons and dried fruits on Saturday afternoons, in I know not what capacious pockets; ample, too, in her jokes and in her laugh; making that day a great maelstrom of mirth around her?

H – sells hides now, and is as rich as Crœsus, whatever that may mean; but does he remember his venturesome foray for a little bit of crisp roast pig that lay temptingly on the edge of the dish that day?

There was Sarah, too, – turned of seventeen, education complete, looking down on us all – terribly learned (I know for a fact that she kept Mrs. Hemans in her pocket); terribly self-asserting, too. If she had not married happily, and not had a little brood about her in after years (which she did), I think she would have made one of the most terrible Sorosians of our time. At least that is the way I think of it now, looking back across the basted turkey (which she ate without gravy) and across the range of eager Thanksgiving faces.

There was Uncle Ned – no forgetting him – who had a way of patting a boy on the head so that the patting reached clear through to the boy's heart, and made him sure of a blessing hovering over. That was the patting I liked. That's the sort of uncle to come to a Thanksgiving dinner – the sort that eat double filberts with you, and pay up next day by noon with a pocketknife or a riding whip. Hurrah for Uncle Ned!

And Aunt Eliza – is there any keeping her out of mind? I never liked the name much; but the face and the kindliness which was always ready to cover, as well as she might, what wrong we did, and to make clear what good we did, make me enrol her now – where she belongs evermore – among the saints. So quiet, so gentle, so winning, making conquest of all of us, because she never sought it; full of dignity, yet never asserting it; queening it over all by downright kindliness of heart. What a wife she would have made! Heigho! how we loved her, and made our boyish love of her – a Thanksgiving!

Were there oranges? I think there were, with green spots on the peel – lately arrived from Florida. Tom boasted that he ate four. I dare say he told the truth – he looked peaked, and was a great deal the worse for the dinner next day, I remember.

Was there punch, or any strong liquors? No; so far as my recollection now goes, there was none.

Champagne?

I have a faint remembrance of a loud pop or two which set some cousinly curls over opposite me into a nervous shake. Yet I would not like to speak positively. Good bottled cider or pop beer may possibly account for all the special phenomena I call to mind.

Was there coffee, and were there olives? Not to the best of my recollection; or, if present, I lose them in the glamour of mince pies and Marlborough puddings.

How we ever sidled away from that board when that feast was done I have no clear conception. I am firm in the belief that thanksgiving was said at the end, as at the beginning. I have a faint recollection of a gray head passing out at the door, and of a fleece of golden curls beside him, against which I jostle – not unkindly.

Dark?

Yes; I think the sun had gone down about the time when the mince pies had faded.

Did Dick and Tom and the rest of us come sauntering in afterwards when the rooms were empty, foraging for any little tidbits of the feast that might be left, the tables showing only wreck under the dim light of a solitary candle?

How we found our way with the weight of that stupendous dinner by us to the heights of Town-hill it is hard to tell. But we did, and when our barrel pile was fairly ablaze, we danced like young satyrs round the flame, shouting at our very loudest when the fire caught the tar barrel at the top, and the yellow pile of blaze threw its lurid glare over hill and houses and town.

Afterwards I have recollection of an hour or more in a snug square parlor, which is given over to us youngsters and our games, dimly lighted, as was most fitting; but a fire upon the hearth flung out a red glory on the floor and on the walls.

Was it a high old time, or did we only pretend that it was?

Didn't I know little Floy in that pea-green silk, with my hands clasped round her waist and my eyes blinded – ever so fast? Didn't I give Dick an awful pinch in the leg, when I lay perdu under the sofa in another one of those tremendous games? Didn't the door that led into the hall show a little open gap from time to time – old faces peering in, looking very kindly in the red firelight flaring on them? And didn't those we loved best look oftenest? Don't they always?

Well, well – we were fagged at last: little Floy in a snooze before we knew it; Dick, pretending not to be sleepy, but gaping in a prodigious way. But the romps and the fatigue made sleep very grateful when it came at last: yet the sleep was very broken; the turkey and the nuts had their rights, and bred stupendous Thanksgiving dreams. What gorgeous dreams they were, to be sure!

I seem to dream them again to-day.

Once again I see the old, revered gray head bowing in utter thankfulness, with the hands clasped.

Once again, over the awful tide of intervening years – so full, and yet so short – I seem to see the shimmer of her golden hair – an aureole of light blazing on the borders of boyhood: "For this, and all thy bounties, our Father, we thank thee."

A THANKSGIVING 21

Lord, thou hast given me a cellWherein to dwell —A little house, whose humble roofIs weatherproof —Under the spans of which I lieBoth soft and dry,Where thou, my chamber for to ward,Hast set a guardOf harmless thoughts, to watch and keepMe while I sleep.Low is my porch as is my fate —Both void of state —And yet the threshold of my doorIs worn by the poorWho hither come, and freely getGood words or meat.Like as my parlor, so my hallAnd kitchen's small.A little buttery, and thereinA little bin.Which keeps my little loaf of breadUnchipt, unfled.Some brittle sticks of thorn or brierMake me a fireClose by whose living coal I sit,And glow like it.Lord, I confess too, when I dine,The pulse is thine,And all those other bits that beThere placed by thee.'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearthWith guiltless mirth,And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink,Spiced to the brink.Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping handThat soils my land,And giv'st me for my bushel sownTwice ten for one.All these and better thou dost sendMe to this end, —That I should render for my part,A thankful heart;Which, fired with incense, I resignAs wholly thine —But the acceptance, that must be,My God, by thee.