A FIFTH DAY IN MARY CARROW’S SCHOOL.

Fifth Day. The Harvesters.

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Fifth Day. Eddy at the Window,—Just up.—p. 5.

THE FORESTERS’ COTTAGE.

I will take my little readers over to Eddy Forester’s, this morning.

There is Eddy at the window, just up. Do you see him in the picture? He has opened the window, and is glad to find the sun is shining; for the first thing he thought of this morning, when he awoke, was the mowing-party to be at Linn’s.

6As soon as Eddy was half-dressed, he went to the little bedroom where Lily slept, and called, “Sister Lily! Sister Lily! Get up; it isn’t raining, and we shall have the hay-making party this afternoon.”

Lily was apt to be sleepy in the morning, and she would not get up; but Eddy called and thumped at the door till his little sister was wide awake, and then she got up and came to open it. He kissed her and said, “Come, Lily, I will help you to carry your clothes down to mother’s room, and she will dress you. If you were not such a big girl, I would carry you, too; but I’m afraid, if I did that, we might both get a tumble. Don’t you think we should, Lily?” Lily was sometimes a little cross when she first waked in the morning; 7but Eddy talked to her till she was in a good humour. He liked to take her out with him in the morning, when he went to do what he could for his mother before breakfast, and he sometimes had to bear a good deal with her little pets and humours before they could get off.

Their mother heard them talking overhead, and then she heard their little naked feet pattering along the entry and on the stairway; and she wondered why they were so long coming to her.

Shall I tell my little readers why Eddy and Lily stopped on their way?

In the stairway wall, about half-way down, there was a small window which overlooked the garden.

8There was something in the garden which had been placed there the day before. Eddy knew of it, but Lily did not. It was a beehive, for the bees to make honey in.

When they were on the step, just under the little window, Eddy said, “Stop, Lily, and I will show you something you have never seen—something that begins with a B. Would you like to see it?”

Lily. Yes, Eddy. What is it? A little pig?

Eddy. No. I said it began with a B, not with a P. You must guess again.

Lily. A pussy-cat?

Eddy. No. It begins with B, I tell you. That is not it, either.

Lily could not guess, and Eddy said he 9would show it to her, if she could climb up into the window. Then he sat down on one of the stairs, and told Lily to get upon the step behind him, and to put her foot on his shoulder, and then she must take hold of the window-sill, and he would raise her up. Lily did so, and Eddy climbed up beside her, and showed her the beehive in the garden.

While they were there, talking about the beehive, their mother called them, and they soon came down again and ran to her. Lily could hardly wait to be dressed, she was so eager to have a closer look at the beehive. Her mother told her she might go with Eddy, if she would not touch the bees; for if she did, they would sting her.

After Lily was dressed, her mother took out 10of the closet a pair of thick-soled, leather boots, which she was to put on when she went out with Eddy, early in the morning, while the grass was wet with dew. Then she wished Lily to sit down, and put them on herself; and while she was doing this, Eddy went for his boots, and then they set off together to look at the beehive.

Eddy slipped back the little door which was placed in the side of the hive, and then, through the glass, he and Lily peeped, to see the little, industrious bees at work. They saw them travelling to and fro, inside of their glass house; but they did not know much about bees, and could not tell what they were doing. They only knew that bees made wax and honey, and they knew that honey was very nice, for they had eaten it.

Fifth Day. Eddy and Lily looking at the beehive.—p. 10.

11“We will ask Mary all about the bees, when we go to school,” said Eddy. “She can tell us what they are doing inside of their little house.”

When they were satisfied with looking at the beehive, and talking about the industrious little bees, Eddy said—

“Come, Lily; do you want to go with me to bring Brindle up, for mother to milk?”

Lily said “Yes.” And Eddy took her by the hand and led her very carefully, out of the way of some swampy ground which was near the garden-wall, and then they had two meadows to cross and a fence to climb over before they found the cow. Brindle knew Eddy right well, and he had no trouble in driving her home to the barnyard to be milked. He 12had a long stick, which he had cut from a hickory-tree, and whenever Brindle walked out of the right path, he gave her a little tap with the stick, and that was quite enough of a hint to turn her into the track again.

Eddy and Lily loved the old cow, and they played with her, and talked to her as if she understood them.

After Lily’s mother had milked the cow, she carried the pail, which was filled with milk, into the spring-house, and there, on the stone floor, were two nice, bright tin pans, all ready to receive it. She took down from its place a fine sieve, which she put first over one pan, and then over the other, as she poured the milk into them. This was done in order to strain the milk and have it perfectly 13clean—free from motes and hairs, and the small insects which are often flying about barnyards.

When the pans were filled with the nice new milk, Eddy assisted his mother in carrying the water, with which to clean her milkpail, and Lily went to the house to get the cream cup, that it might be filled with cream for breakfast.

Then Eddy drove Brindle away back to the meadow, where she could eat her good breakfast of grass, while his mother and Lily went home to prepare their’s.

Lily carried the cream cup, and her mother carried a pot of butter in cold water to keep it hard. The first thing they did when they went into the house was to put on dry shoes.

14Then Lily’s mother began to prepare breakfast. Lily could place the cream and butter and bread on the table, after her mother had cut it; and she knew where the sugar was kept, and could fill the sugar-bowl, and she could count as many eggs as were wanted for breakfast, and bring them to her mother from the pantry. Then she put a plate for her mother, and one for Eddy, and one for herself, and a knife and fork for each, and an egg-cup and a napkin. When Lily had done all this, she asked her mother, (as any other good little girl would do,) if she could assist her in any thing else?

Her mother told her she might go up-stairs and take the bedclothes off Eddy’s little bed, and off her own; first the coverlets, which 15she could put on the back of a chair; then the sheets, one by one, and then the pillows and bolster, which she might place on the window-sills to air.

When Lily came down-stairs, Eddy had returned, and breakfast was ready. It was only six o’clock, when the Foresters sat down to their morning meal. They were a happy little family of love. They always rose early, and finished their tasks before breakfast, and when they came to the table, they enjoyed their meal as much as any prince in his palace could do. They had found the great secret of happiness—they were contented with their lot. Eddy’s mother would sometimes say, her cottage and her children made her a little Garden of Eden, in the midst of 16which God had planted her, that she might dress it and keep it.

Eddy and Lily had a great deal of talk with their mother at table. They asked her questions, and she answered them, and instructed them in many things.

“I will take another egg, if you please, mother,” said Eddy, “and some more bread and butter. I am very hungry this morning.” Eddy and Lily ate their eggs as their mother had taught them, without soiling their fingers at all. They took their knives, and cracked a line round the shell, near the large end, about half an inch from the top. Then they peeled off the shell where it was cracked, and put their eggs into little cups, which their mother had placed for each of them, the 17peeled end being uppermost; and with their spoons they ate the egg from the shell. There is another way to eat eggs. Cut through the middle of the shell into the egg, and with the thumb and finger of each hand break it open; hold the cut part next to your cup or glass, and let the contents of the shell fall into your cup. But little boys and girls are not apt to do this dexterously; so, for fear of soiling their fingers, (which is a very offensive habit, at table,) they had better eat eggs as Eddy and Lily Forester did.

THE WALK TO SCHOOL.

As Eddy and Lily walked to school, they had to wait, when they got to the wide turnpiked road, for two travelling-carriages to pass. While they waited, a little curly-headed boy dropped something out of one of the carriage windows, and Eddy told Lily to stand still where she was, while he went and picked it up. It was a large humming-top, and when he handed it to the little boy who had dropped it, the little boy said, “I thank you, Eddy Forester. I wish you would ask your mother to let you come and see me, when we come back, and I will show you how my top hums when I spin it.” Eddy said he would like to come, and then the carriage 19passed on. It belonged to their neighbour, Thompson, a gentleman who had a beautiful country-seat near the Foresters’ cottage.

“I wish we could ride in that pretty carriage, and have little ponies, as Willy and Alfred Thompson have,” said Lily. “Don’t you, Eddy?” “Yes,” said Eddy. “I wonder why mother hasn’t as much money as the Thompsons, and why she cannot have servants to milk and get breakfast and dinner, as they have, instead of doing it all herself.”

“I don’t know why it is,” said Lily; “but we will ask Mary as soon as we go to school.”

“Oh, yes,” Eddy replied. “Mary knows; she can tell us all about it, and about the bees too.”

And with this happy hope of an answer to 20all their questions and doubts, the little brother and sister began to look about them for something else to enjoy and talk about.

“Look! look! Lily. Here is an ant-hill. Don’t tread on it. The little ants are bringing grains of sand to make it bigger.”

Lily. Why do they creep in at that hole in the top of the hill? Do you know, Eddy?

Then they both stooped down and watched the little ants; and while they did so, Eddy told his sister that the hill was the house which the little ants had built for themselves to live in, and that the hole at the top was their front-door, where they went in and out of their house.

Lily. Why do they go in and out of it?

Eddy. Because they are building little 21rooms inside of it, and those pellets of sand and earth which they carry in with them are what they build with. They use those little pellets just as the masons use bricks when they build houses for people to live in. They pile them up close together to make the walls and ceilings of their little rooms, inside the hill which you see.

Lily. Who told you about it, Eddy?

Eddy. Mary told me one day, when she and I carried some things over to Mike’s mother. She and I stopped to look at some ant-hills, and we talked about them all the way home.

Lily. What else did Mary tell you about the little ants?

Eddy. She said that after the rooms inside 22the hills were finished, the ants laid their eggs in them; and when the sun made the little rooms nearest the top of the hill too warm for the eggs, the ants removed the eggs into the cellar of their houses; for they make rooms under the ground as well as above it. When the young ants come out of the eggs, then there are too many to live in one house, and the father and mother-ants and the children-ants all set to work together, and build another little house.

Lily. Oh! Eddy, what a pretty story about ants! Do you know any more?

Eddy. Yes. Mary told me these little brown ants were called mason-ants, because they build their houses as masons do; and she said there were different kinds of ants, 23and some time she would tell me more about them.

When Eddy and Lily were satisfied with looking at the ants and their little houses, they went on again to school. Suddenly, Lily screamed, “Oh, Eddy! Eddy! Take it off! Do take it off! Do kill it!”

“What is the matter?” said Eddy. But poor little Lily only jumped about and cried, “Oh, the ugly thing! The ugly thing!”

At length Eddy discovered that a caterpillar had fallen on Lily’s neck, from one of the trees under which they were walking.

He begged Lily to be quiet while he took it off, telling her at the same time that it would not hurt her. He then picked a green leaf and held it close to the caterpillar, and 24the caterpillar crept off Lily’s neck and came upon the leaf. As soon as she knew it was off, she wanted to kill it.

“Oh no! You must not,” said Eddy; “let the poor little thing have some breakfast, out of this tender green leaf. We have had our’s, you know, and this leaf is the little caterpillar’s bread and butter.” When Lily understood that the caterpillar would not bite, nor poison her, she looked at it, as Eddy pointed out the pretty bright rings round its body, and the little horns on its head; and when he told her that a pretty butterfly would come out of the caterpillar, if it were let alone, she was glad she did not kill it.

As they walked along, Lily spied a beautiful rose, just outside of a garden railing. 25She was running off to pluck it, but Eddy held her by the arm.

Fifth Day. They saw a gentleman sitting in an arm-chair, with a book in his lap, and his eyes uplifted.—p. 25.

“It is not your’s, you know,” said Eddy. “It would be stealing, to take it.”

“Would it?” said Lily. “Then let us go and ask for it.” “So we will,” said Eddy; and they turned back a short distance, to a garden-gate, which they opened and passed through. They found themselves in a beautiful garden, where were flowers of various kinds all in bloom. Lily could hardly keep her hands from them, but Eddy told her she must not touch them without leave. They went on, until they came to a door, which was partly open. They peeped in, and saw a gentleman sitting in an arm-chair, with a book on his lap, and his eyes were uplifted 26as if he were praying. “It is our pastor,” whispered Eddy, and at that moment the good man espied his little visitors. He held out a hand to each, and said, “Well, my little children, have you any thing to say to me this morning?”

Eddy told him their errand, and he immediately laid down his book, put on his hat, took his cane, and walked with them into the garden.

“May we have one of your pretty roses?” said Lily.

“Yes! That you shall, my little daughter, and as many other flowers as you like. Now, come and show me which you admire most, and I will cut them for you.”

Their good pastor made them up a beautiful 27nosegay, and then dismissed them, inviting them to come and ask for flowers again, if they wanted them.

Eddy and Lily ran off to school with the flowers, and Lily said they would give them to Mary. On the way, Lily stopped to listen to something.

“What is that noise, Eddy? Do you hear it?”

Eddy. Yes. It is the mill-wheels grinding wheat, to make flour; but we must not stop now any longer, or we shall be late at school.

Eddy and Lily were the last at school, but not late. They met Mary, just as they went up the lane, and ran to her with the flowers.

“Thank you! Thank you! for your beautiful gift,” said Mary. “I will give you each a kiss for it.”

28“Definitions, arithmetic, spelling, reading, sewing, and philosophy is the order of to-day,” said Charles Linn. “Come, let us be at work, so that we may have plenty of time to play in our harvest-fields this afternoon. Father says we may do as we like—make hay or help bind the wheat-sheaves. At any rate, we shall have fine fun. Father is coming out to work with us, and, at lunch-time, mother will come and bring the baby.”

“May I nurse the baby, Charles?” said Lily Forester.

Carry Deacon. I like kittens better than babies, because babies cry, and kittens don’t.

Mary. Come, now, we must get to work, 29and talk about the respective merits of babies and kittens at some other time. What is the lesson in philosophy? We will take that first.

Charles. The atmospheric air.

Mary. What can you tell me about the atmospheric air?

Charles. It has weight.

Susan Field. It has colour.

Mary. Lucy Linn, please to give me some proof that the air has colour?

Lucy. The blue sky is a proof of it.

Mary. How does that prove it? Is there any thing beyond the sky? Any surface which reflects this colour, and makes it appear blue?

Charles. No. The atmospheric air is 30really of a blue colour; and we see it only in the sky, because between our eye and that distance a great space is filled with atmospheric air. The air is composed of transparent particles, and we must see a great number of these particles lying close together, in order to discover their true colour.

Mary. Can you make this more clear to me by illustration?

Charles. Yes, I think I can. If I take any transparent substance, a piece of glass for instance, so slightly coloured that I cannot tell whether it is blue, or pink, or green, by placing another piece of the same kind of glass behind it, the colour will be deepened; and if I place a number of pieces of glass of the same kind together, the whole of them 31will be so distinctly blue, or pink, or green, that in this way I can discover the colour of the first piece.

Just so I obtain the colour of the air. The particles which fill the space between you and me, being transparent, appear colourless because there are so few of them together; and if I look beyond you, out of the window, to the woods across there, I still perceive no colour in the atmosphere. But if I look far, far beyond, through as much space as my eye can take in, then I find out the colour of the air, because I see a sufficient number of its particles, one behind another, to give it to me.

Mary. Is there any other transparent 32fluid, the colour of which you can find out by the same means?

Carry D. Yes. Water. If I stand on the bank of a river, or on a boat, or in any situation where I see a large body of water, it appears coloured; sometimes blue, sometimes green. And I know I can only find out its true colour, by seeing a large body of it; because, if I were to take a cup and fill it with this same water, it would be colourless in the cup.

Mary. Very satisfactory. Now I should like to have some proof that the air has weight.

The scholars hesitated, and Mary asked them if flies, walking on the ceiling without 33falling, had any thing to do with the weight and pressure of the atmosphere?

Lucy. Yes. I remember now what you told us about that. The feet of flies are so constructed that when they place them on any surface, the atmospheric air is excluded. There is, then, no air between their feet and the ceiling, or wall, or pane of glass, on which they are walking, and the weight of the atmospheric air on the outer surface of their feet keeps them in their position, and prevents them from falling.

Mary. What else can you tell me about it?

Charles. The weight of the air falls equally on every side of a body which is exposed to it.

34Mary. Give me a proof of it.