The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball That Floats in the Air Part 5

Now we will see what clothes they wear.

You remember Agoonack, who wore the white bear's-skin, because she lived in the very cold country; and the little brown baby, who wore nothing but a string of beads, because she lived in the warm country.

Manenko, too, lives in a warm country, and wears no clothes; but on her arms and ankles are bracelets and anklets, with little bits of copper and iron hanging to them, which tinkle as she walks; and she also, like the brown baby, has beads for her neck.

Her father and mother, and Zungo her brother, have ap.r.o.ns and mantles of antelope skins; and they, too, wear bracelets and anklets like hers.

Little Shobo is quite a baby and runs in the suns.h.i.+ne, like his little sister, without clothes. Dear little Shobo! how funny and happy he must look, and how fond he must be of his little sister, and our little sister, Manenko! We have all seen such little dark brothers and sisters. His short, soft wool is not yet braided or twisted, but crisps in little close curls all over his head.

In the morning they must be up early, for the father is going to hunt, and Zungo will go with him. The mother prepares the breakfast, small cakes of bread made from the pounded corn, scarlet beans, eaten with honey, and plenty of milk from the brown cow. She brings it in a deep jug, and they dip in their hands for spoons.

All the meat is eaten, and to-day the men must go out over the broad, gra.s.sy fields for more. They will find the beautiful young antelope, so timid and gentle as to be far more afraid of you than you would be of them. They are somewhat like small deer, striped and spotted, and they have large, dark eyes, so soft and earnest you cannot help loving them. Here, too, are the buffalo, like large cows and oxen with strong horns, and the great elephants with long trunks and tusks. Sometimes even a lion is to be met, roused from his sleep by the noise of the hunters; for the lion sleeps in the daytime and generally walks abroad only at night. When you are older you can read the stories of famous lion and elephant hunters, and of strange and thrilling adventures in the "Dark Continent."

It would be a wonderful thing to you and me to see all these strange or beautiful animals, but Zungo and his father have seen them so many times that they are thinking only of the meat they will bring home, and, taking their long spears and the basket of ground nuts and meal which the mother has made ready, they are off with other hunters before the sun is up.

Now the mother takes her hoe, and, calling her little girl to help, hoes the young corn which is growing on the round hill behind the house. I must tell you something about the little hill. It looks like any other hill, you would think, and could hardly believe that there is anything very wonderful to tell about it. But listen to me.

A great many years ago there was no hill there at all, and the ground was covered with small white ants. You have seen the little ant-houses many a time on the garden-path, and all the ants at work, carrying grains of sand in their mouths, and running this way and that, as if they were busy in the most important work. Oh, the little ants are very wise! They seem to know how to contrive great things and are never idle. "Go to the ant; consider her ways, and be wise," said one of the world's wisest men.

Well, on the spot where this hill now stands the white ants began to work. They were not satisfied with small houses like those which we have seen, but they worked day after day, week after week, and even years, until they had built this hill higher than the house in which I live, and inside it is full of chambers and halls, and wonderful arched pa.s.sages. They built this great house, but they do not live there now. I don't know why they moved,--perhaps because they didn't like the idea of having such near neighbors when Sekomi began to build his hut before their door. But, however it was, they went, and, patient little creatures that they are, built another just like it a mile or so away; and Sekomi said: "The hill is a fine place to plant my early corn."

There is but little hoeing to do this morning, and, while the work goes on, Shobo, the baby, rolls in the gra.s.s, sucking a piece of sugar-cane, as I have seen children suck a stick of candy. Haven't you?

The mother has baskets to make. On the floor of the hut is a heap of fine, twisting tree-roots which she brought from the forest yesterday, and under the shadow of her gra.s.sy roof she sits before the door weaving them into strong, neat baskets, like the one in which the men carried their dinner when they went to hunt. While she works other women come too with their work, sit beside her in the shade, and chatter away in a very queer-sounding language. We couldn't understand it at all; but we should hear them always call Manenko's mother Ma-Zungo, meaning Zungo's mother, instead of saying Maunka, which you remember I told you is her name. Zungo is her oldest boy, you know, and ever since he was born she has been called nothing but Ma-Zungo,--just as if, when a lady comes into your school, the teacher should say: "This is Joe's mother," or "This is Teddy's mamma," so that the children should all know her.

So the mother works on the baskets and talks with the women; but Manenko has heard the call of the honey-bird, the brisk little chirp of "Chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr," and she is away to the wood to follow his call, and bring home the honey.

She runs beneath the tall trees, looking up for the small brown bird; then she stops and listens to hear him again, when close beside her comes the call, "Chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr," and there sits the brown bird above a hole in the tree, where the bees are flying in and out, their legs yellow with honey-dust. It is too high for Manenko to reach, but she marks the place and says to herself: "I will tell Ra when he comes home." Who is Ra? Why, that is her name for "father."

She turns to go home, but stops to listen to the wild shouts and songs of the women who have left the huts and are coming down towards the river to welcome their chief with lulliloo, praising him by such strange names as "Great lion," "Great buffalo."

The chief comes from a long journey with the young men up the river in canoes, to hunt the elephant, and bring home the ivory tusks, from which we have many beautiful things made. The canoes are full of tusks, and, while the men unload them, the women are shouting: "Sleep, my lord, my great chief." Manenko listens while she stands under the trees,--listens for only a minute, and then runs to join her mother and add her little voice to the general noise.

The chief is very proud and happy to bring home such a load; before sunset it will all be carried up to the huts, the men will dress in their very best, and walk in a gay procession. Indeed, they can't dress much; no coats or hats or nicely polished boots have they to put on, but some will have the white ends of oxen's tails in their hair, some a plume of black ostrich feathers, and the chief himself has a very grand cap made from the yellow mane of an old lion. The drum will beat, the women will shout, while the men gather round a fire, and roast and eat great slices of ox-meat, and tell the story of their famous elephant-hunt. How they came to the bushes with fine, silvery leaves and sweet bark, which the elephant eats, and there hiding, watched and waited many hours, until the ground shook, with the heavy tread of a great mother-elephant and her two calves, coming up from the river, where they had been to drink. Their trunks were full of water, and they tossed them up, spouting the water like a fine shower-bath over their hot heads and backs, and now, cooled and refreshed, began to eat the silvery leaves of the bushes. Then the hunters threw their spears thick and fast; after two hours, the great creature lay still upon the ground,--she was dead.

So day after day they had hunted, loading the canoes with ivory, and sailing far up the river; far up where the tall rushes wave, twisted together by the twining morning-glory vines; far up where the alligators make great nests in the river-bank, and lay their eggs, and stretch themselves in the suns.h.i.+ne, half asleep inside their scaly armor; far up where the hippopotamus is standing in his drowsy dream on the bottom of the river, with the water covering him, head and all.

He is a great, sleepy fellow, not unlike a very large, dark-brown pig, with a thick skin and no hair. Here he lives under the water all day, only once in a while poking up his nose for a breath of fresh air. And here is the mother-hippopotamus, with her baby standing upon her neck, that he may be nearer the top of the water. Think how funny he must look.

All day long they stand here under the water, half asleep, sometimes giving a loud grunt or snore, and sometimes, I am sorry to say, tipping over a canoe which happens to float over their heads. But at night, when men are asleep, the great beasts come up out of the river and eat the short, sweet gra.s.s upon the sh.o.r.e, and look about to see the world a little. Oh, what mighty beasts! Men are so small and weak beside them. And yet, because the mind of man is so much above theirs, he can rule them; for G.o.d made man to be king of the whole earth, and greater than all.

All these wonderful things the men have seen, and Manenko listens to their stories until the moon is high and the stars have almost faded in her light. Then her father and Zungo come home, bringing the antelope and buffalo meat, too tired to tell their story until the next day. So, after eating supper, they are all soon asleep upon the mats which form their beds. It is a hard kind of bed, but a good one, if you don't have too many mice for bedfellows. A little bright-eyed mouse is a pretty creature, but one doesn't care to sleep with him.

These are simple, happy people; they live out of doors most of the time, and they love the suns.h.i.+ne, the rain, and the wind. They have plenty to eat,--the pounded corn, milk and honey, and scarlet beans, and the hunters bring meat, and soon it will be time for the wild water-birds to come flocking down the river,--white pelicans and brown ducks, and hundreds of smaller birds that chase the skimming flies over the water.

If Manenko could read, she would be sorry that she has no books; and if she knew what dolls are, she might be longing every day for a beautiful wax doll, with curling hair, and eyes to open and shut. But these are things of which she knows nothing at all, and she is happy enough in watching the hornets building their hanging nests on the branches of the trees, cutting the small sticks of sugar-cane, or following the honey-bird's call.

If the children who have books would oftener leave them, and study the wonders of the things about them,--of the birds, the plants, the curious creatures that live and work on the land and in the air and water,--it would be better for them. Try it, dear children; open your eyes and look into the ways and forms of life in the midst of which G.o.d has placed you, and get acquainted with them, till you feel that they, too, are your brothers and sisters, and G.o.d your Father and theirs.

LOUISE, THE CHILD OF THE BEAUTIFUL RIVER RHINE.

Have you heard of the beautiful River Rhine--how at first it hides, a little brook among the mountains and dark forests, and then steals out into the suns.h.i.+ne, and leaps down the mountain-side, and hurries away to the sea, growing larger and stronger as it runs, curling and eddying among the rocks, and sweeping between the high hills where the grape-vines grow and the solemn old castles stand?

How people come from far and near to see and to sail upon the beautiful river! And the children who are so blessed as to be born near it, and to play on its sh.o.r.es through all the happy young years of their lives, although they may go far away from it in the after years, never, never forget the dear and beautiful River Rhine.

It is only a few miles away from the Rhine--perhaps too far for you to walk, but not too far for me--that we shall find a fine large house, a house with pleasant gardens about it, broad gravel walks, and soft, green gra.s.s-plats to play upon, and gay flowering trees and bushes, while the rose-vines are climbing over the piazza, and opening rose-buds are peeping in at the chamber windows.

Isn't this a pleasant house? I wish we could all live in as charming a home, by as blue and lovely a river, and with as large and sweet a garden, or, if we might have such a place for our school, how delightful it would be!

Here lives Louise, my blue-eyed, sunny-haired little friend, and here in the garden she plays with Fritz and st.u.r.dy little Gretchen. And here, too, at evening the father and mother come to sit on the piazza among the roses, and the children leave their games, to nestle together on the steps while the dear brother Christian plays softly and sweetly on his flute.

Louise is a motherly child, already eight years old, and always willing and glad to take care of the younger ones; indeed, she calls Gretchen _her_ baby, and the little one loves dearly her child-mamma.

They live in this great house, and they have plenty of toys and books, and plenty of good food, and comfortable little beds to sleep in at night, although, like Jeannette's, they are only neat little boxes built against the side of the wall.

But near them, in the valley, live the poor people, in small, low houses. They eat black bread, wear coa.r.s.e clothes, and even the children must work all day that they may have food for to-morrow.

The mother of Louise is a gentle, loving woman; she says to her children: "Dear children, to-day we are rich, we can have all that we want, but we will not forget the poor. You may some day be poor yourselves, and, if you learn now what poverty is, you will be more ready to meet it when it comes." So, day after day, the great stove in the kitchen is covered with stew-pans and kettles, in which are cooking dinners for the sick and the poor, and day after day, as the dinner-hour draws near, Louise will come, and Fritz, and even little Gretchen, saying: "Mother, may I go?" "May I go?" and the mother answers: "Dear children, you shall all go together"; and she fills the bowls and baskets, and sends her sunny-hearted children down into the valley to old Hans the gardener, who has been lame with rheumatism so many years; and to young Marie, the pale, thin girl, who was so merry and rosy-cheeked in the vineyard a year ago; and to the old, old woman with the brown, wrinkled face and bowed head, who sits always in the suns.h.i.+ne before the door, and tries to knit; but the needles drop from the poor trembling hands, and the st.i.tches slip off, and she cannot see to pick them up. She is too deaf to hear the children as they come down the road, and she is nodding her poor old head, and feeling about in her lap for the lost needle, when Louise, with her bright eyes, spies it, picks it up, and before the old woman knows she has come, a soft little hand is laid in the brown, wrinkled one, and the little girl is shouting in her ear that she has brought some dinner from mamma. It makes a smile s.h.i.+ne in the old half-blind eyes. It is always the happiest part of the day to her when the dear little lady comes with her dinner. And it made Louise happy too, for nothing repays us so well as what we do unselfishly for others.

These summer days are full of delight for the children. It is not all play for them, to be sure; but then, work is often even more charming than play, as I think some little girls know when they have been helping their mothers,--running of errands, dusting the furniture, and sewing little squares of patchwork that the baby may have a cradle-quilt made entirely by her little sister.

Louise can knit, and, indeed, every child and woman in that country knits. You would almost laugh to see how gravely the little girl takes out her stocking, for she has really begun her first stocking, and sits on the piazza-steps for an hour every morning at work. Then the little garden, which she calls her own, must be weeded. The gardener would gladly do it, but Louise has a hoe of her own, which her father bought in the spring, and, bringing it to his little daughter, said: "Let me see how well my little girl can take care of her own garden."

And the child has tried very hard; sometimes, it is true, she would let the weeds grow pretty high before they were pulled up, but, on the whole, the garden promises well, and there are buds on her moss-rose bush. It is good to take care of a garden, for, besides the pleasure the flowers can bring us, we learn how watchful we must be to root out the weeds, and how much tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and care the plants need; so we learn how to watch over our own hearts.

She has books, too, and studies a little each day,--studies at home with her mother, for there is no school near enough for her to go to it, and while she and Fritz are so young, their mother teaches them, while Christian, who is already more than twelve years old, has gone to the school upon that beautiful hill which can be seen from Louise's chamber window,--the school where a hundred boys and girls are studying music. For, ever since he was a baby, Christian has loved music; he has sung the very sweetest little songs to Louise, while she was yet so young as to lie in her cradle, and he has whistled until the birds among the bushes would answer him again, and now, when he comes home from school to spend some long summer Sunday, he always brings the flute, and plays, as I told you in the beginning of the story.

When the summer days are over, what comes next? You do not surely forget the autumn, when the leaves of the maples turn crimson and yellow, and the oaks are red and brown, and you scuff your feet along the path ankle-deep in fallen leaves!

On the banks of the Rhine the autumn is not quite like ours. You shall see how our children of the great house will spend an autumn day.

Their father and mother have promised to go with them to the vineyards as soon as the grapes are ripe enough for gathering, and on this sunny September morning the time has really come.

In the great covered baskets are slices of bread and German sausage, bottles of milk and of beer, and plenty of fresh and delicious prunes, for the prune orchards are loaded with ripe fruit. This is their dinner, for they will not be home until night.

Oh, what a charming day for the children! Little Gretchen is rolling in the gra.s.s with delight, while Louise runs to bring her own little basket, in which to gather grapes.

They must ride in the broad old family carriage, for the little ones cannot walk so far; but, when they reach the river, they will take a boat with white sails, and go down to where the steep steps and path lead up on the other side, up the sunny green bank to the vineyard, where already the peasant girls have been at work ever since sunrise.

Here the grapes are hanging in heavy, purple cl.u.s.ters; the sun has warmed them through and through, and made them sweet to the very heart. Oh, how delicious they are, and how beautiful they look, heaped up in the tall baskets, which the girls and women are carrying on their heads! How the children watch these peasant-girls, all dressed in neat little jackets, and many short skirts one above another, red and blue, white and green. On their heads are the baskets of grapes, and they never drop nor spill them, but carry them steadily down the steep, narrow path to the great vats, where the young men stand on short ladders to reach the top, and pour in the purple fruit. Then the grapes are crushed till the purple juice runs out, and that is wine,--such wine as even the children may drink in their little silver cups, for it is even better than milk. You may be sure that they have some at dinner-time, when they cl.u.s.ter round the flat rock below the dark stone castle, with the warm noonday sun streaming across their mossy table, and the mother opens the basket and gives to every one a share.

Below them is the river, with its boats and beautiful s.h.i.+ning water; behind them are the vine-covered walls of that old castle where two hundred years ago lived armed knights and stately ladies; and all about them is the rich September air, full of the sweet fragrance of the grapes, and echoing with the songs and laughter of the grape-gatherers. On their rocky table are purple bunches of fruit, in their cups the new wine-juice, and in their hearts all the joy of the merry grape season.

There are many days like this in the autumn, but the frost will come at last, and the snow too. This is winter, but winter brings the best pleasure of all.

When two weeks of the winter had nearly pa.s.sed, the children, as you may suppose, began to think of Christmas, and, indeed, their best and most loving friend had been preparing for them the sweetest of Christmas presents. Ten days before Christmas it came, however. Can you guess what it was? Something for all of them,--something which Christian will like just as well as little Gretchen will, and the father and mother will perhaps be more pleased than any one else.

Do you know what it is? What do you think of a little baby brother,--a little round, sweet, blue-eyed baby brother as a Christmas present for them all?

When Christmas Eve came, the mother said: "The children must have their Christmas-tree in my room, for baby is one of the presents, and I don't think I can let him be carried out and put upon the table in the hall, where we had it last year."