Chatterbox, 1905 Part 68

And yet the girl's heart was heavy, and tears lay very close behind the smiles. Trade had not been very brisk of late, while illness in the home had made the expenses heavy. Her favourite little brother was still ailing, and seemed to make no progress. The doctor had said he needed change of air and nouris.h.i.+ng food; but how could the doctor's orders be obeyed when money was so scarce?

The morning was getting on, and still the cart had not lost much of its load. Smiles were more difficult to manage as the hope of being able to take home something dainty for d.i.c.ky's supper grew less.

A lady with her little boy had just pa.s.sed, but looks of admiration were all they gave. In the distance an old gentleman appeared, and he was even a more unlikely customer. He peered through his spectacles, and seemed too much wrapped up in his own thoughts to spare attention for anything else.

As he was pa.s.sing the cart he slipped, and would have fallen had not Mary put out her arm quickly to steady him. But, alas! in doing so the flower-pot she was holding fell, and lay in fragments on the pavement, with the delicate blooms of the azalea quite ruined.

'Thank you, my dear,' the gentleman said. 'It was kind of you to come to an old man's help.' But he did not notice the broken flower-pot, and pa.s.sed on, while Mary gazed in dismay at what meant a loss they could so ill afford.

'Run after him, my girl,' her father said. 'Tell him he must pay for that flower. A fine thing to come damaging other folk's property, and to slip off without a word!'

But at that moment a girl came hurrying along the pavement. 'Oh,' she cried, 'I saw what happened. That is my grandfather, and he is nearly blind. I must overtake him, and I am sure he will come back and repay you.'

Mary watched anxiously, and when they arrived, the old man leaning on the girl's arm, her spirits rose again.

'My grand-daughter says I always get into mischief when she leaves me for a minute,' he said, smiling. Then he put his hand in his pocket and took out a few coins. 'Will this make good the mischief I have done?' he asked.

'Oh, sir, it is too much,' Mary said. 'The price of the flower was only eighteen-pence.'

'But I must pay for my rudeness in running away without apologising, and you can buy a ribbon for yourself with the extra money.'

'I shall get something a great deal more useful than that,' she said.

'You seem to be a sensible young woman for your age. I wonder what this useful purchase will be?'

'Something to make my little d.i.c.ky strong,' Mary said softly.

'And who is d.i.c.ky?' asked the pretty grand-daughter; and she looked so sympathetic that somehow the whole story came out, for Mary's heart was full, and words came readily in response to this touch of kindness.

'I shall call and see him,' the girl promised, when she had inquired where Mary lived. And so the misfortune of the broken flower-pot turned out to be the best bit of good fortune Mary had ever enjoyed. Not only did her new friend come laden with delicacies for the invalid, but she interested herself in having him sent with some other children for a month to the sea-side. And when d.i.c.ky returned, brown and rosy, and full of life and spirits, Mary felt she could sell her flowers with a smiling face again, and look forward to the future with a light heart.

M. H.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Who'll buy?'"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Just as Lord Ma.s.sereene was leaving the prison, he was arrested."]

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

True Tales of the Year 1805.

V.--LORD Ma.s.sEREENE'S IMPRISONMENT.

'Truth is stranger than fiction,' says a very old proverb, which is certainly ill.u.s.trated by the following tale of an eccentric n.o.bleman's life.

Lord Ma.s.sereene was born in 1742, and in due course sent to Cambridge University, where, however, he learnt next to nothing except how to row on the river, and this he did to perfection.

On coming of age, he started off to do the 'Grand Tour,' as it was called--a leisurely visit to the various capital cities of European countries. This was a custom much in vogue amongst the young men of the wealthier cla.s.ses a hundred years ago. Our young friend, however, went no further than Paris, for that fascinating city was too much for the foolish fellow, and he spent his money right and left, till he was almost penniless. He then fell into the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer, a native of Syria, who put before him a plausible tale of how easy it would be to make a fortune by importing salt from Syria to France. Lord Ma.s.sereene, in the hope of regaining the money he had wasted, invested all he could lay his hands on in this wild scheme, and of course, as it was a fraud, lost every penny.

The next misfortune that happened to him was an arrest for debt, and he made acquaintance with the inside of 'La Chatelet,' one of the largest prisons in Paris. He could, however, have satisfied his creditors, and been released from prison, had he been willing to allow his estates to be charged with his debts; but this he persistently refused to do.

There was at that time a law in France permitting debtors who had suffered twenty-five years' imprisonment to be allowed to go free, with all their liabilities discharged, and this extraordinary young man actually decided to do this, and to settle his debts by undergoing a quarter of a century of prison life!

Beyond the inability to leave the prison, Lord Ma.s.sereene seems to have suffered at first but few privations, for cheerful society was not denied him, and he managed to woo and wed the daughter of one of the princ.i.p.al officials of the place.

A plan of escape was at length made, and as the young lady's father was able and willing to help in the matter, it was very nearly successful.

But not quite! For, just as Lord Ma.s.sereene was leaving the door of the prison to enter the carriage which was in waiting for him, he was arrested, and taken back to the prison. It appears that the Governor's suspicions had been aroused by seeing a carriage and pair loitering about the gate. As soon as he had caught the escaping prisoner, he ordered him to be lodged in the dungeon, a gloomy cell, below the Seine, on which Le Chatelet was built.

Lord Ma.s.sereene now knew all the rigours of a French prison. He was left to languish in damp and darkness, with no companions but the rats, and only the coa.r.s.est food.

When at last the twenty-five years were ended, and his release came, he was indeed a pitiful object: gaunt, yellow, with a long unkempt beard reaching below his knees.

But his wife had remained constant to him, and together they set out for England. On landing at Dover, Lord Ma.s.sereene was the first to step on sh.o.r.e, and falling on his knees, he exclaimed fervently,--

'G.o.d bless this land of freedom!'

He lived nearly twenty years in the enjoyment of the estate for which he had suffered imprisonment for so long, and died in 1805.

THE SAGO-TREE.

Sago is made from the pith of a tree-trunk. This tree--the sago-tree--is a kind of palm, like the date-tree and the cocoanut-tree. It is found in the East Indian Islands, where it gives food to many thousands of people, particularly in the large island of New Guinea, where a great part of the population is almost entirely dependent upon it.

The sago-tree grows in swampy places, either by the sea or in little hollows by the hill-sides. It is thicker than the cocoanut palm, but it does not grow quite so tall, being about thirty feet high when full grown, and perhaps twenty inches in diameter. What looks like the root of the sago-tree is really a creeping underground stem, from which a spike of flowers grows up when the tree is about ten or fifteen years old. For some years, while the plant is young, the upright growing stem is covered and completely hidden by very large spiny leaves. These are rather like enormous feathers, of which the centre stems, or midribs, corresponding to the quill of the feather, are from twelve to fifteen feet long, and, in their widest part, as thick as a man's leg. They are used like bamboo by the natives, for building houses, and also for making the roofs and floors of houses that are built of other kinds of wood.

The bases of the midribs widen out and wrap round the stem like a kind of sheath, as almost all leaf-stalks do to some extent. But the sheaths of the sago-tree are so large that, when they are broken off and trimmed, they are like large baskets or troughs--wide in the middle, where they have grasped the stem, and narrow at the ends, where they have joined the tree or are rolled up to form the midrib of the leaf. It is interesting to remember this, because the natives actually use the sheaths as baskets and troughs.

The hollow stem of the growing sago-tree is not more than half an inch in thickness, and it is filled with a light, pithy matter, from which 'sago' is made. This pithy matter varies in colour from a rusty tinge to white, and is rather like the eatable part of a dry apple. Strings of harder, woody fibre run through it like straight veins, and these are of no use for making sago. The pith is best for use when the tree is full grown and just about to flower, and it is then that the natives cut it down.

The tree is cut close to the ground, and, as it lies on the soil, its leaves are cut off, and a portion of the bark is shaved away from the upper side of the trunk so as to lay the pith bare. A native takes a club with a sharp stone in the end of it and beats the sago-pith with it. By this means he breaks up the fibres and the pith into little chips, taking care that they are kept within the trunk. From time to time these chips are loaded into one of the sheaths of the midribs, and carried away to be cleaned. The beater continues to break up the pith until there is nothing left but the hollow tree-trunk.

The sago is separated from the fibres in the pith by the aid of water.

The natives take two sheaths of the sago-plant and make them into water-troughs. They set them up upon little frames, one sheath a little higher than the other, with one of its narrow ends projecting like a spout over the lower sheath. A kind of net-like bark or skin, obtained from the cocoanut tree, serves as a strainer or sieve, and is stretched across the upper sheath or trough. They empty the broken pith into the trough above the strainer, and pour water upon it. The soft part of the pith is a kind of starch, which dissolves in the water, and so flows through the sieve and down the spout into the lower trough, but the fibres are held back by the sieve. In order to get all the sago-starch out of the pith, the sago-maker kneads and squeezes the pith until nothing but fibre remains. This is waste, and is thrown away. When the sago-laden water falls into the lower trough it rests awhile, and the sago sinks into the bottom of the sheath as a soft reddish sediment, while the clear water rises to the top, and by and by trickles over the end of the sheath. When this trough is nearly full the sago-starch is taken out, made into rolls, and wrapped in the leaves of the tree.

The sago thus prepared is known as raw sago, and is used by the islanders without being further refined. They boil it in water, and eat it with fruits and salt, or they bake it into cakes in a little clay oven. When these cakes have been well dried they will keep for years; a man can make in a few days sufficient sago-cakes to last him a whole year. It has been calculated that a single tree will produce about eighteen hundred of these cakes.

The sago which we use for our puddings is made by refining the raw sago. When our grandfathers and grandmothers were young, the best raw sago used to be mixed with water and rubbed into small grains before it was sent to Europe. At the present time the sago, after being moistened, is pa.s.sed through a sieve into a shallow iron pot, placed over a fire, and in this way the round pearly sago which we use is produced. As this sago is half-baked in this operation, it will keep for a very long time.

The Malays call the sago-tree the _rumbiya_ and its pith _sagu_ from which word we get our name _sago_. We have here an instance of a Malay word which is in daily use in the English language.