Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 Part 4

Can you wonder, then, that the air of Blue Town is made hideous with the shrieking of the camels as, to test their strength, they are made to kneel while one thing after another is piled on their backs, and made to rise under each new burden, until they can rise no longer?

"Sometimes while the camel is kneeling a man gets upon its hind-heels, and holds on by the long hair of its hump; if the camel can rise then, it is considered an animal of superior power"--according to the writer above quoted.

"The trade in camels is entirely conducted by proxy; the seller and the buyer never settle the matter between themselves. They select different persons to sell their goods, who propose, discuss, and fix the price, the one looking to the interests of the seller, the other to those of the purchaser. These 'sale-speakers' exercise no other trade. They go from market to market, to promote business, as they say. They have generally a great knowledge of cattle, have much fluency of tongue, and are, above all, endowed with a knavery beyond all shame. They dispute by turns furiously and argumentatively as to the merits and defects of the animal, but as soon as it comes to be a question of price, the tongue is laid aside as a medium, and the conversation proceeds altogether in signs."

A LITTLE GIRL'S ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.

BY KATIE C. YORKE.

One beautiful morning we took a carriage and started from Naples on a trip to Mount Vesuvius. We drove along the bay for several miles, and when we reached the foot of the mountain we began to ascend through vast fields of lava, which had flowed there during previous eruptions. I always imagined that lava was white and smooth, but this was of a grayish-black color, and very ragged.

The carriage-road ends at the Observatory, which is a building where a scientific man resides, being appointed by the government to watch the state of the volcano. He can tell when there is going to be an eruption, and always notifies the people.

There we found guides and men with saddled horses waiting to take us to the foot of the cone. After a short ride we reached it, and dismounted, and started up. The cone is so steep, and covered with cinders, that people that are unaccustomed to such walking can't get up it without a.s.sistance, because every step you take you slide back several inches.

We thought we would be pulled up by the guides, but the rest of the party got tired, and had to be carried on their shoulders. I managed to walk nearly all the way, and when I got tired my guide carried me too.

About half way up we stopped at a cave where some men were waiting to sell us some new Lacrima Christi wine. We drank some, and rested, and went on to the top. When we reached it we were nearly four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and had a beautiful view of Naples, the bay, the islands, the villages, and the surrounding mountains.

We enjoyed the view very much, but every little while the wind would blow a cloud of sulphurous vapor from the crater, and nearly suffocate us. We walked to the edge of the crater and looked down, but we couldn't see much, because of the vapor. One of the guides went down into it a little way, and brought us up some pieces of sulphur. The cinders were so hot they burned our feet, and when we poked sticks into some cavities they caught fire.

The thick vapor annoyed us so that we soon decided to go down. Just as we were starting, the mountain gave a low, deep growl, and trembled under us, so we were very glad to leave. It was great fun going down, because the cinders were so loose that at each step we would slide a long way. Part way down we caught a pale yellow b.u.t.terfly that was almost stifled by the sulphurous fumes.

When we reached the foot of the cone, we found we had been only twenty minutes coming down, although it took us an hour and a half to go up. No sooner had we arrived at the Observatory than we were surrounded by crowds of ragged, beggarly looking men and boys, who insisted on blacking our shoes, or pretended they had been guides, and tried to make us pay them for things they had never done at all. We ordered them away, but they kept on tormenting us, so we jumped into the carriage, and drove off as fast as we could, leaving them all behind, shouting, screaming, and wildly gesticulating.

Since I was there they have built a railroad up the mountain, but I should not think it would be half so much fun to go up in the cars.

A LETTER FROM INDIA.

LUCKNOW, INDIA, _June 20, 1880_.

My Dear Friends,--My auntie has sent me several copies of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, and I thought maybe you would like to know a little how we children in India live. I don't know anything about your life except what I read, and my mamma tells me, because I was born here. I am nine years old, and in a little while we are going home. I say home because mamma and papa do, but the only home I know is here, where it is so hot sometimes it seems as if I should die. Last night mamma had to get up and take a towel as wet as it could be, and rub my sheets with it, before I could get to sleep at all, and if the punka stops a single minute, it wakes me right up again. I read my letter to mamma so far, and she says you won't know what a punka is. That is funny to me; but I will tell you. They are very stiff cloth things fixed on frames, and fastened to the ceiling so that they move, and by fanning the air keep a breeze in the room all the time. There are holes in the wall, and ropes put through the holes, and a man outside on the veranda pulls the ropes, and keeps the punka moving. One night I was so hot I got up and went out on the veranda, but the boards of the step burned my feet; so I slipped on my slippers, and tried again. There sat the punka wala nodding, fast asleep, but keeping his arms moving all the time. It looked funny, I can tell you.

We have good times in the winter, though. Christmas-day we always have a picnic. The children of the native Sunday-schools and English schools join together, and have a good time in some grove. And all through the winter we play out under the trees, just as mamma says you do in the summer. But here in summer we can only go out very late in the afternoon or very early in the morning, because if the mid-day sun touches us, it will make us very sick, and perhaps we will die. Theo Carter, a girl I know, when she was real little got away from her nurse, and ran out in the sun without her hat. It was in the morning, too; and now every time she gets warm or tired she has the most dreadful headache, and mamma says she don't believe she will ever be strong, even if she goes to America. But I guess she would, because everybody that gets sick here goes to America, else England, and when they come back they are ever so much better; but sometimes they don't come back, and mamma says people die even in America.

There are lots of thieves in this country. One night last week they got into our house. The servants would keep shutting the bath-room window--the bath-room is between mamma's room and mine--and we wanted it open for air, and mamma told them so; but they said the thieves would climb in from a fig-tree near by. But mamma said if they did, they would be welcome to all they could get. They did get in, and took the clothes Bertie and I had worn through the day. Baby woke, and they were probably frightened, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the first thing they could, which was a box of h.o.m.oeopathic medicine mamma brought from home. We laughed in the morning, because they thought, no doubt, it was something valuable, and it will be worse than nothing to them; but papa says we will cry when we are sick, and have to take bitter medicine instead of little sugar pills.

Last week there was a big procession--something about the government--and one of papa's friends asked us to go to see it, and ride on an elephant. I was real glad, for I never rode on one but once, and then I was so little I don't remember much about it. We had a nice ride.

Papa had one elephant to himself, but mamma and I and Mrs. Carter and Theo rode on another. We could see into the up-stairs rooms of people's houses, and it was a delightful view we had of the procession. We had a real good time until our elephant became frightened at a loud noise they called music, and trumpeted dreadful loud. We wanted to get off, but our elephant wouldn't kneel, and the man couldn't make him. Papa came, but mamma said if we tried to get off 'twould only frighten him more. I was real scared, and ready to cry; but mamma took hold of my hand, and spoke just as pleasant as if we were at home, and I didn't think till afterward how white she looked, nor about that man whose elephant ran away with him last winter and killed him; but I guess mamma remembered all the time, for pretty soon the noise pa.s.sed by, and the men were able to quiet the elephant, so he kneeled, and let papa help us down. And when he took mamma, she fainted, and everybody said it was the fright; but I didn't know she was frightened a bit. I must stop now, because the Home Mail is going very soon; but if you like this, some time I will write you again.

JENNIE ANDERSON.

LITTLE COUSIN RANNA.

BY MRS. LUCY MORSE.

"Will and Almida Handly were rather sorry when they learned that their little cousin Marianne Joy was coming to make them a long visit.

"She won't know a b.u.mble-bee from a b.u.t.ternut," said Will. "City children don't know anything, and she'll be awfully in the way. Won't she tag after you and me, though, Almy?"

"Oh dear!" said Almy, in a complaining tone; "we'll have to keep her every speck of was.h.i.+ng and baking days."

"I wish they'd leave her where she belongs," said Will.

The children were silent awhile, and then Almy heaved a sigh, and said: "I s'pose that's just the trouble, Will. If her mother has--has _died_, where _does_ she belong? Where would you and I--"

"I know it," exclaimed Will, gruffly. "Come on, if you want me to help fix up your old baby-house for her."

The day after Marianne came the children's feelings were altered.

Walking down the lane all together, the little cousin was dazzled by b.u.t.tercups, and ran hither and thither gathering them in such wild delight that she came upon Dowsabell, the cow, unexpectedly. Dowsy only raised her sleepy nose from the gra.s.s to sniff at the b.u.t.tercups, but Marianne dropped the whole bunch, with a cry of terror, and ran like the wind to Will for protection. She flung herself upon him with such a pretty confidence that Will took her right into his big boyish heart, and wished on the spot that Dowsy was a raging lion, or, to say the least, Neighbor Stethaway's cross bull.

"After all," he confided to Almida, "she's only a poor city child: what can you expect? _I_ don't mind seeing to her."

"Laws, no," said Almida, with a matronly air. "And if her father's gone to Europe, and every day is baking, or was.h.i.+ng, or mending, or something, who is there besides you and me for her to look to, I'd like to know? Only you needn't think you're going to have more than just your own half of the care-taking, Will Handly."

The mother looked on in silence, and understood perfectly the very things which her children thought she had not noticed.

"At first I was troubled lest Will and Almy wouldn't notice the child,"

she said, one afternoon, to Mrs. Stethaway, as they watched the three children crossing the opposite field. "Next I thought they would tyrannize over her, and that Will would tease her to death."

"And now," said Mrs. Stethaway, "it looks as if they would neglect everything just to follow her bidding. What are you going to do about that?"

"Well," said Mrs. Handly, smiling after the children as they disappeared among the daisies, "it isn't always that old folks know the best turn to take. I'm going to see what the little one's course will be. It seems very much as if my own two children were in the way of getting some lessons in gentleness and self-forgetfulness from the poor little motherless child, which I don't know so well as she does how to teach them."

The children went through the field, the orchard, and over the bars into the lane, through which Ria Bell was just driving the cows.

"Quick! quick! Oh! oh!" screamed Marianne, as soon as she saw the cows.

"Not that way; you're running right into the face of the enemy, Ranna,"

said Will, laughing, and taking hold of her as she was trying to climb the bars.

But Ranna struggled, crying, "Get me over! get me over! I ain't 'fraid of tows; it's the birds;" and was so excited that Will on one side and Almida on the other lifted her into the lane as quickly as possible.

"Oh, goodness!" screamed Almy, as Ranna made a dive, right under Dowsabell's very nose, toward a little mound of leaves. Crouching down and spreading her arms over it, she looked up at Dowsy so savagely that Will exclaimed, much amused: "Thunder and lightning! what has poor Dowsy done? I thought you were afraid of her, Ranna, and now you look ready to take her by the horns, and are frightened at two poor little robins flying overhead."

"No, I ain't. Nor I won't mind Teazle even if he is going to bite my--my--my head off," cried Ranna, pale with fright, as the dog ran his nose into her face.