CHAPTER III

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If you had peeped into the big attic bedroom the three girls occupied at the top of the high New York boarding-house, you would have seen Ada Nicoli in her pretty white dressing-gown—such a pitiful reminder of her former luxury—putting little Sadie’s hair into curl-papers. In her lonely life she had grown passionately attached to her two little sisters who were so dependent on her, and the thing that hurt her most about her poverty was seeing little Sadie look careless and neglected. Often at night she was so tired and weary that it took all her courage to brush and dress their two heads of hair, and see that their clothes were in proper order for going to school the next day. A hat-box full of Southern bank-notes, which had been Marjorie’s and Sadie’s amusement for many a day in their old home for playing at store-keeping, came in handy for curling Sadie’s hair, and the child always wanted Ada to tell her the same story, how her mother’s mother had saved up the bank-notes during the great war, believing that the South would be victorious, and how she had made some of the notes during the war by making slippers out of the felt carpets and selling them.

“If they were all real good dollars now, Ada,” the child said, “we needn’t live in this hen-roost any longer, need we?”

Ada took the child in her arms. “Poor little Sadie,” she said. “While we three are together, it doesn’t so much matter, does it? We can have a little fun sometimes, can’t we?”

“It isn’t so bad, siss,” the child answered, “but I do want to go to Barnum’s, and I wish the girls at school wouldn’t say, ‘When’s your father coming back? He’s been visiting for a long time.’”

Then Marjorie chimed in with—“I passed two of the girls I used to go to school with to-day, Ada, and they both looked in at a shop window when I passed.”

“Never mind,” Ada said, with her heart growing sadder every minute. “It’s a good thing not to be at school with girls who are so vulgar.” Ada’s own rich friends had also disappeared in a marvellous fashion. It is true she had left her old home so suddenly, and had to avoid seeing people whom it would be painful to meet in her altered circumstances, so much that, perhaps, they were not altogether to blame. She had been working for some months at Madame Maude’s now, and she had found that she had very little time in her busy life for musing over the faithlessness of her rich friends. Her mother’s mental condition had not improved, and she had not had a single line from her father. He had left the country to avoid disgrace as well as ruin. The cold weather had come, and Ada was feeling the hardship of walking every morning and evening to her business. It was a long way, and the girl’s constitution was not suited to the strain made upon it. The people in the boarding-house had watched her growing slighter and paler as the weeks passed, and her eyes had grown feverishly bright. Marjory was a selfish, peevish child, who did not do what she could to help her sister.

“She’s not worth Ada’s little finger!” the fat boarder would exclaim, when the child deceived her sister by making friends with girls that Ada had asked her not to know, and had spent Ada’s hardly-earned money on candies, and iced-cream sodas. “She’s her father’s own child, that’s what she is, and Ada Nicoli’s too fine a girl to kill herself for that saucy brat.”

But Ada could see no fault in Marjory, for Marjory was clever enough to deceive her. And so while Ada was toiling night and day to bring her up as a refined and cultivated child, Marjory was hankering after the society of vulgar companions, and paying little attention to her lessons. But little Sadie was a sweet and loving child, and her devotion to Ada was touching. At the boarding-house dinner-table it was a pretty sight to see Ada Nicoli with a little sister on each side of her. She was the prettiest, daintiest creature herself, and it was her greatest joy to see people look with admiration at her two children, as she called them. They were always wonderfully clean and freshly dressed.

“How long can she keep it up?” the fat boarder said. “She fairly amazes me, that girl. She had never even brushed her own hair a year and a half ago, and now she’s keeping these two children so sweet and fresh, and bringing them up so well, too. They are a deal nicer children than when they first came, but it’s wearing her out—that light burning up in her room till past twelve at night, and she’s up by seven o’clock in the morning.”

Beside the people in the boarding-house there was someone else who had been watching Ada working the soft curves of her face into sharper lines, and seeing the deeper shadows come below her bright eyes. It was an old man who drove to business every day on the Fifth Avenue stage-coach. He always knew that, if it was a wet day, Ada would be waiting at 20, East 32nd Street for the coach to pass, but if it was fine, she would save her twenty-five cents and walk. He was an observant old man, and somewhat of a character. He was supposed to be a miser, and very wealthy, though he lived in a small tenement house, and kept no servant. While he sat huddled up in the corner of the coach, which rattled and shook over the stones of Fifth Avenue like a relic from the last century, he had noticed every detail of the girl’s dress, he had seen the once pretty frocks become almost threadbare, and the dainty shoes lose their freshness. He had made inquiries, and found out her story. One day she had given the conductor a five-dollar bill to pay for her fare. The man gave her back a quarter too much change. The old man watched her count the money, and look at the extra quarter. It was bitterly cold weather, and he knew that that quarter would pay for her journey there and back for another two days. The girl’s expression said it as plainly as words could have done. “You’ve given me a quarter too much,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice. The man did not even say “Thank you,” but snatched the money out of her hand roughly. The old man smiled; he had long ago lost his belief in human nature, and this little act of honesty on the girl’s part did him good. If was like going near a fire on a cold winter day. The meeting of Ada coming and going from her work grew to be the one interest in the old hermit’s life. He had watched her so carefully that he had gained a knowledge of her life of which she was wholly unconscious. He had seen her tenderness to her little sisters when he met them out together on a Saturday afternoon. Often he had wandered over Central Park with his keen eyes looking out eagerly for the graceful figure of Ada Nicoli laced arm-in-arm with the two young children, and when they stopped to feed the swans on the lake, or rest in some summer-house, the old man seated himself where he could feast his eyes on his adopted family unseen.

Two or three times he had seen something very like tears in Ada’s eyes when a carriage with some beautifully-dressed women in it would pass the girl, and they would give her a stiff little bow of recognition.

* * * * *

It was one of the coldest winters New York had experienced for many years, but the old man’s shrivelled-up heart was, day by day, stretching and expanding towards the girl, who was always gentle. She had many times helped him as he got in and out of the Fifth Avenue stage-coach, and she had often offered to give up her seat in the snug top corner in exchange for his draughty one near the door, but beyond these natural, kindly little attentions, Ada Nicoli had thought little about the old man, whom so many people laughed and poked fun at. He had even taken the trouble to follow her to the private asylum where her mother lived, and would wait there until she came out with her sweet blue eyes filled with sadness. He had heard of her father’s cruel desertion, and many a time the old man could feel his fingers close upon the villain’s neck in his longing to thrash him.

On this particular day, when everything was a world of snow, and the temperature was twenty degrees below zero, the old man had been slowly following Ada to her mother’s home. He had long since learnt that Wednesdays were the visiting days in this house of sorrow, and that Ada Nicoli never failed to be there in her lunch hour. The house was in a quiet street, where there was little traffic or noise, and Ada hurried along as fast as her numbed feet would carry her. In the old man’s eyes she had never looked so beautiful, for the cold, crisp air had brought a lovely colour to her cheeks, and her hair was bright gold in the winter sunlight. Suddenly he saw her stop, and bend over something that had fallen in the snow on the side-walk. It was the figure of a man, and from his position it looked as if he was intoxicated, rather than overcome with the cold. There was no one in sight but the old man who was following her. Ada touched the man, and spoke to him, but he could give no coherent answer. He was too drunk to tell her even what his name was. When the old man came up to her she was searching the road with a troubled look.

“There is no sleigh in sight,” she said, “and he must not lie here, he will freeze to death.”

“Perhaps he ain’t of much account living,” the old man said; “folks like that are better dead.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Ada cried, in a reproachful voice; “he may have a wife and family dependent upon him.”

“A mighty poor thing to depend on, lying drunk on the side-walk at midday. Don’t you waste your pity on the likes of him.” The old man knew that he would have been grievously disappointed if his pretty young lady with the sweet blue eyes had gone on her way and left a fellow creature to freeze to death.

“It may be hours before a policeman passes this way,” Ada said. “It’s sheer murder to leave him. I will run down this side street and see if I can find a cab.” The old man waited for the girl’s return, walking up and down the side-walk where the drunken man lay in an unconscious sleep. Soon he heard the sound of sleigh-bells, and in another instant one appeared round the corner with Ada seated in it. She jumped out when she reached the spot where the man lay, and told the hackman to get down and lift him into the cab. “Take him to the nearest police-station,” she said, “and keep him there until he is himself again.”

“And who’s going to pay me?” the man asked sullenly.

“I will,” Ada replied proudly, “if you do not care to do it for charity.”

“If I was plying round the city looking out for driving acts of charity, I guess my wife and young ’uns would be as badly off as these drunken brutes are.”

Ada took her thin little purse from her pocket. “Will you do it for a dollar?” she said; “it is all I have to give you. Will you help the hackman to lift him in,” she said, turning to the old man. But as she looked at his shrivelled old figure, in his badly-fitting clothes, she seemed to regret what she had said, and stooped down to take the man by the shoulders, while the hackman took his feet; but the old man quickly put her aside, with almost a cry in his cracked old voice, as he said, “Don’t touch him, don’t touch him. To think of you defiling your pretty fingers on a drunken brute.”

Ada looked at him in mild surprise, and gave up her place. When the hackman drove off she turned and thanked the old man.

“If the friendless and poor aren’t kind to each other,” she said sadly, “where can we look for help?” She thought that he did not understand that she was placing herself amongst the list of the poor and friendless. She, his daintily-reared lady, standing there, a slight, proud figure, with her queenly little head thrown back, and her cheeks as delicate as the pink apple-blossom in his old garden at home. In all the big city of New York where he had worked and toiled for forty years, this girl was the one glad and beautiful thing for him; he felt his time-worn heart beat young again when he looked at her.

(_To be concluded._)

SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS.

## PART VIII.

FICTION AND ROMANCE.

Self-culture by the reading of stories! One can imagine some pedant of a generation or two ago shaking his head over such a suggestion. As well write of education by the playing of games! And yet it has come to be recognised that neither connection of ideas is, in itself, at all absurd or preposterous. The influence of fiction is a force to be reckoned with in the formation of character—a force, indeed, of no small magnitude; for there are an enormous number of girls whose reading begins and ends with the story.

This is, of course, a mistake. In an earlier chapter of this series we have sought to explain why fiction, even of the very best type, should not form the staple of reading for anybody. But it will probably always constitute a very large proportion of the mental food of young people, and it is better to look the fact in the face than to bewail it and preach!

The first form in which literature appeals, with any charm or interest, to the child is as the story; and children of larger growth love the story still. What would those do, whose lives are dull, sordid, or depressing, without the power to transport themselves into the lives of other people? It is an actual necessity to exchange their own experience, even for a brief time, for the experience of others. The novel, the imaginative work, appeals more perhaps to girls than to any other section of the community. If they are lonely, ill, unhappy from any cause, they find their solace, companion, anodyne, here. If they are happy, they seek the reflection of their own light-heartedness, and greater happiness yet to come, in the story pages.

The imagination is a factor too little understood in the training of character. It is of the utmost importance to give this faculty something good wherewith to nourish it, or it will prey upon itself. Silly, vapid, or morbid girls might perchance have been made different if they had been provided with books that were at once strong and artistically beautiful, instead of the sentimental novelette.

We hold a high opinion of the value of fairy-tales of the best kind for children, and are always stirred to wrath by the superior infant who says: “There are no such things as fairies.” Fortunately there are not many children who cannot, for instance, enjoy the charm and pathos of such a story as _The Little Sea Maiden_ or _The Snow Queen_, by Hans Christian Andersen, with many others by that great author too numerous to mention. There are also the exquisite creations of the Countess d’Aulnoy and Perrault, not forgetting two French authors who were the delight of our own childhood—Madame la Comtesse de Ségur and Léon de Laujon. Those delicious volumes, the “Blue,” the “Green,” and the “Red” fairy-book, by Andrew Lang, are a real treasure-store of delight. And it must not be forgotten that some of the fairy-legends they contain are of wonderful antiquity, being found, under different forms, in the early literature of many lands.

Girls, who are elder sisters, and possibly past the fairy-tale stage, be gracious in the telling of stories to the little ones who cannot read! It may be a trouble to hunt in your memory for these stories and put them into words, but it is really worth while to do it, and do it well, avoiding what is gruesome and fearful, but choosing all that is charming and attractive. Even in the way of “self-culture” the task will be good for you, and still better if you can succeed in telling a story “out of your own head.” The present writer began her work in this way when a child, writing fairy-tales, and recounting one by word of mouth, entitled, _The Precipice Passage_, which continued from day to day during many months, and was of the most thrilling description, as well as of superhuman length.

A most beautiful book, though not exactly a fairy-tale, for children is _The Story without an End_, translated by Sarah Austin from the German of Carové (Sampson Low & Marston). The child who possesses this book, with the original coloured illustrations, to pore over, will have a foundation of graceful and tender fancies for the “culture” of riper years.

“But,” you may object, “this paper is for girls, not for children, and we have outgrown fairy-tales.”

There is one fairy-tale which you ought to read whatever your age, if it is not already familiar to you—_Undine_, by De la Motte Fouqué. If you can understand German, you should certainly read it in the original. If not, an English translation is to be obtained. It is, perhaps, the sweetest and most pathetic legend of all romance.

Romance! The charm of that word! One loves, even in middle age, to linger regretfully upon it, and dream over the poet’s vision of—

“Magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn.”

We do not envy the youth or maiden whose pulse is not thrilled by those immortal lines; yet who can give a reason for their charm and spell?

The present generation, it is to be feared, do not read the prose works of Longfellow as they should. _Hyperion_ and _Kavanagh_ are tender mystical romances, full of charm.

It is, however, an impossible task to stand at the door of this vast library of the world’s fiction, and point you to the volumes you may take down from the shelves. One general observation may be made, seeing that our title is “Self-Culture.”

The best novels will aid you indirectly in “self-culture.” The worst will not leave you where they found you, but will do you actual harm. You will be just one little bit farther removed from “self-culture”—will be nearer that which is vulgar and paltry, and poor and mean, to go no farther—for the reading of a “trashy” novel.

It is, therefore, not the indifferent matter you may think it, to take up the silly sentimental story for the sake of an hour’s amusement. Find your amusement where there is no need of repentance.

How ashamed one feels, even if quite alone, while reading a really foolish book! and the feeling of shame is a right and healthy one.

Perhaps the type of story which does most harm to girls of the middle and lower classes, is that in which a titled lover of fabulous wealth appears suddenly like a “god out of a machine” to wed the heroine, who is remarkable only for her beauty. He has a great deal to answer for, that young aristocrat, whom we have not met outside the pages of such literature.

No girl would deliberately reflect: “I am going to read such and such a novel to improve my mind.” If she did, she would show she had not much mind to improve. But she may bear in mind one or two general principles and suggestions.

It is very desirable to read the best historical novels. For example, _The Last Days of Pompeii_, by Bulwer Lytton, and _Hypatia_, by Charles Kingsley, will help you to realise the early centuries of the Christian era. _Hereward the Wake_, by Kingsley, and _The Last of the Barons_, by Bulwer Lytton, may be read in connection with Freeman’s _History of the Norman Conquest_. _The Cloister and the Hearth_, a magnificent historical novel by Charles Reade, throws light upon the fifteenth century, and _Romola_, by George Eliot, does the same so far as Italy is concerned. _Westward Ho!_ by Charles Kingsley, is a stirring tale of the sixteenth century. _John Inglesant_, by Shorthouse, will do more to explain the Stuart period than any number of dry “Outlines,” while Thackeray’s _Esmond and The Virginians_ may follow on. The _Tale of Two Cities_, by Charles Dickens, will help you to realise the terror of the French Revolution, and _The Shadow of the Sword_, by Robert Buchanan, gives a forcible picture of the days of Napoleon.

There are many other good historical novels; but, as Scott is always regarded as _facile princeps_ in such work, it may be useful to arrange his novels in chronological order.

Before the end of the fourteenth century come _Ivanhoe_, _Count Robert of Paris_, _The Betrothed_, _The Talisman_, and _The Fair Maid of Perth_. After 1400—_Quentin Durward_, and _Anne of Geierstein_: 1500, _Kenilworth_, _The Abbot_, _The Monastery_, _Marmion_ (poem): 1600, _Fortunes of Nigel_, _Legend of Montrose_, _Woodstock_, _Old Mortality_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _Peveril of the Peak_: 1700, _The Antiquary_, _Guy Mannering_, _Waverley_, _Rob Roy_, and _Heart of Midlothian_.

That history should be made real is a matter of no small importance. After all, it is the story of men and women like ourselves, and Professor Seeley’s remark in _The Expansion of England_ (a valuable book) is worth remembering—

“When I meet a person who does not find history interesting, it does not occur to me to alter history—I try to alter _him_!”

There has, during the last few years, been a decided increase in the writing of romances and tales of adventure, pure and simple, removed from everyday experience, and one need only suggest the names of Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Hope, Max Pemberton, to illustrate the class of story which much delights the author, and probably also her young friends.

For the general run of fiction, here are a few names: Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Kingsley and his brother, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell, R. D. Blackmore (be sure you read _Lorna Doone_), George Macdonald, Sir Walter Besant, Mrs. Oliphant, Charlotte Brontë—that wonderful, fiery, lonely genius—you will read her _Shirley_ and _Villette_, whether we advise you to do so or not. And, indeed, the list of writers of good fiction is so enormous that it is absurd to attempt to give it. As soon as a few names are written down, others press for mention. Therefore, we will renounce the task; first, perhaps, reminding you not to omit Mrs. Oliphant’s _Little Pilgrim in the Unseen_. All the stories of this writer which have a tinge of the atmosphere of the spiritual borderland, are deeply suggestive.

Do not read a novel only because it has a startling title and “everybody” is talking about it. In these days that is no proof of excellence. A story shoots up like a rocket, and its swift trail of brilliance dies down as suddenly.

Do not read books which leave the impression that life is after all rather a hopeless struggle, not worth the trouble. There are a great many such stories in the present day, whose motto is Despair. Let them alone. They may be works of art, beautiful and pathetic in their tragedy; but you have to live, and make the best of your life; therefore it is unwise to let yourself be paralysed by discouragement near the outset. Some books have a way of arranging a perfectly impossible combination of circumstances, and then calling upon the universe at large to bewail the result. This is hardly fair. Choose rather what makes you better able to live and to act, and inspires you with a feeling that to do and to be your best, even in a world of sorrow, is very much worth while indeed.

There are, broadly speaking, two ways of viewing art and literature: one from the point of the “Realist,” and one from the point of the “Idealist.” In our day the Realists have come much into prominence, especially in France; but they are known in England too.

The Realist school in fiction cries out for “Life,” by which we understand the visible, the material, that which can be seen, heard, touched, handled. A realistic novel, for instance, may be made a mass of information upon obscure and out-of-the-way subjects. Nothing comes amiss—“Life, life above everything” its exponents cry. “You Idealists have long enough been teaching men to dream with their heads in the clouds. We lead them along a plain path and show them the world as it really is. In our way lies safety.”

The Idealist school, on the contrary, has an absolute standard of excellence to which it refers; it loves the hero or heroine in fiction, the beautiful in art, and it sets itself to find out the “reality” which underlies appearances.

To give a simple example. A “realistic” novel of poor life would depict the bareness and misery of the cottage, the unlovely faces and clothing of its inmates, the toil for daily bread; not one depressing item would be spared, and one would rise from the story feeling as if one had indeed looked for a moment into the poor household and shared in its meagreness.

A novel written from the idealist standpoint, while not inventing untrue and therefore inartistic details, would look below the surface and bring out, besides the poverty, the beauty and the pathos that are sure to exist wherever the human affections are found.

As an illustration of our meaning we may quote _A Window in Thrums_, by J. M. Barrie, which, while sacrificing no vestige of truth, is the work of an artist who is an idealist. Set in the humble interior of a Scotch cottage, a lame homely mother, a workingman the father, a daughter of whom we are not told she is startlingly lovely, or indeed startlingly anything—this is the simple little company that, for the main part, act out a drama of such pathos, and beauty, and charm, that the heart is full of “thoughts too deep for tears” after reading some of the inimitable chapters.

This is Life, and life seen in the true way—the idealist’s way—by the artist who has imagination.

For imagination is the faculty, not of inventing falsehoods, but of revealing a deeper truth than that which lies upon the surface of things.

Are we straying into reflections that are too obscure? It is better to suggest some means by which really artistic work shall be detected than to string together a list of books which might not appeal to many of our readers at all, and which might prove unsuitable for others.

Whatever is lovely, noble, and pure in fiction—whether it be the telling of heroic deeds, or the discerning of significance in the “commonplace,” the homely and trivial—choose and delight in it. Avoid what makes you listless and dissatisfied with your daily life; choose what helps you to live and to work, and to do and be the very best that is in you; not forgetting that what is beautiful and exalted will purify your taste, charm your mind, and remain with you as an abiding power for good.

LILY WATSON.

SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN, Author of “Greyfriars,” “Half-a-dozen Sisters,” etc.

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