Part 20

"Mother dear, this is New Year," he cries. He draws our two heads together with his arms, and kisses us anywhere at random, with his fresh lips. I feel his dimpled hand wandering about my neck; his little fingers are entangled in my beard. My mustache pricks the end of his nose. He bursts out laughing, and throws his head back.

His mother, who has recovered from her fright, draws him into her arms. She pulls the bell.

"The year begins well, my dears," she says, "but we need a little light."

"Tell me, mamma, do naughty children have presents at New-Year's?" says the young dissembler, with an eye on the mountain of boxes and packages visible in the corner, in spite of the gloom.

The curtains are drawn apart, the blinds are opened, there is a flood of daylight, the fire crackles gayly on the hearth, and two large packages, carefully wrapped up, are placed on the bed. One is for my wife; the other for the boy.

What is it? What will it be? I have heaped up knots, and tripled the wrappings; and I watch with delight their nervous fingers, lost in the strings.

My wife gets impatient, smiles, is vexed, kisses me, and asks for scissors. Baby on his side bites his lips, pulls with all his might, and at last asks me to help him. He longs to see through the paper. Desire and expectation are painted on his face. The convulsive movement of his hand in the folds of the quilt rustles the silk, and he makes a sound with his lips as though a savory fruit were approaching them.

The last paper is off, finally the cover is lifted, there is an outcry of joy.

"My tippet!"

"My menagerie!"

"Like my muff,--my dear husband!"

"With a real shepherd, on wheels, dear papa, _how_ I love you!"

They hug me, four arms at once wind round and press me close. I am stirred--a tear comes to my eyes; two come to those of my wife; and Baby, who loses his head, utters a sob as he kisses my hand.

How absurd! you will say. I don't know whether it is absurd or not, but it is charming, I promise you. After all, does not sorrow wring tears enough from us to make up for the solitary one which joy may call forth? Life is less happy when one chances it alone; and when the heart is empty, the way seems long. It is so good to feel one's self loved; to hear the regular steps of one's fellow travelers beside one; and to think, "They are there, our three hearts beat together;" and once a year, when the great clock strikes the first of January, to sit down beside the way with hands clasped together and eyes fixed upon the dusty unknown road stretching on to the horizon, and to embrace and say:--"We will always love each other, my dear ones; you depend upon me and I on you. Let us trust and keep straight on."

And that is how I explain that we weep a little in looking at a tippet and opening a menagerie.

Translated by Jane G. Cooke, for 'A Library of The World's Best Literature.'

THEIR LAST EXCURSION

From 'Making an Omelette': from Lippincott's Magazine, 1871, copyrighted

In this strange, rude interior, how refined and delicate Louise looked, with all her dainty appointments of long undressed kid gloves, jaunty boots, and looped-up petticoat! While I talked to the wood-cutters she shielded her face from the fire with her hands, and kept her eye on the butter beginning to sing in the pan.

Suddenly she rose, and taking the pan-handle from the old woman, said, "Let me help you make the omelette, will you?" The good woman let go with a smile, and Louise found herself alone, in the attitude of a fisherman who has just had a nibble. She stood in the full light of the fire, her eyes fixed on the melted butter, her arms tense with effort; she was biting her lips, probably in order to increase her strength.

"It's rather hard on madame's little hands," said the old man. "I bet it's the first time you ever made an omelette in a wood-cutter's hut--isn't it, my young lady?"

Louise nodded yes, without turning her eyes from the omelette.

"The eggs! the eggs!" she suddenly exclaimed, with such a look of uneasiness that we all burst out laughing--"hurry with the eggs! The butter is all puffing up! Be quick--or I can't answer for the consequences."

The old woman beat the eggs energetically.

"The herbs!" cried the old man. "The lard and salt!" cried the young ones. And they all set to work chopping, cutting, piling up, while Louise, stamping with excitement, called out, "Make haste! make haste!" Then there was a tremendous bubbling in the pan, and the great work began. We were all round the fire, gazing with an anxious interest inspired by our all having had a finger in the pie.

The old woman, on her knees beside a large dish, slipped a knife under the edge of the omelette, which was turning a fine brown. "Now, madame, you've only got to turn it over," she said.

"Just one little quick blow," suggested the old man.

"Mustn't be violent," counseled the young one.

"All at once; tip with it, dear!" I said.

"If you all talk at once--"

"Make haste, madame!"

"If you all talk at once I never shall manage it. It is too awfully heavy."

"One quick little blow."

"But I can't; it's going over. Oh gracious!"

In the heat of action, her hood had fallen off. Her cheeks were like a peach, her eyes shone, and though she lamented her fate, she burst into peals of laughter. At last by a supreme effort the pan moved, and the omelette rolled over, somewhat heavily, I confess, into the large dish which the old woman was holding. Never did an omelette look better!

"I am sure the young lady's arms must be tired," said the old man, as he began cutting a round loaf into enormous slices.

"Oh no, not so very," my wife answered with a merry laugh; "only I am crazy to taste my--our omelette."

We had seated ourselves round the table. When we had eaten and drunk with the good souls, we rose and made ready to go home. The sun had set, and the whole family came out of the cabin to see us off and say good-night.

"Don't you want my son to go with you?" the old woman called after us.

It was growing dark and chilly under the trees, and we gradually quickened our pace. "Those are happy people," said Louise. "We will come some morning and breakfast with them,--shan't we? We can put the baby in one of the donkey panniers, and in the other a large pasty and a bottle of wine.--You are not afraid of losing your way, George?"

"No, dear; no fear of that."

"A pasty and a bottle of wine--What is that?"

"Nothing; the stump of a tree."

"The stump of a tree--the stump of a tree," she muttered. "Don't you hear something behind us?"

"It is only the wind in the leaves, or the breaking of a dead branch."

He is fortunate who at night, in the heart of a forest, feels as calm as at his own fireside. You do not tremble, but you feel the silence. Involuntarily you look for eyes peering out of the darkness, and you try to define the confused forms appearing and changing every minute. Something breaks and sounds beneath your tread, and if you stop you hear the distant melancholy howl of your watch-dog, the scream of an owl, and other noises, far and near, not so easily explained. A sense of strangeness surrounds you and weighs you down. If you are alone, you walk faster; if there are two of you, you draw close to your companion. My wife clung to my arm.

"Let us turn wood-cutters. We could build a pretty little hut, simple, but nice enough. I would have curtains to the windows, and a carpet, and put my piano in one corner." She spoke very low, and occasionally I felt my hand tremble on her arm.

"You would soon get enough of that, dearest."

"It isn't fair to say so." And in another minute she went on:--"You think I don't love you, you and our boy? Oh yes, dear, I love you. Yes, yes, yes! The happiness that comes every day can't be expressed: we live on it, so we don't think of it. Like our daily bread--who thinks of that? But when you are thinking of yourself, when you put your head down, and really think, then you say, 'I am ungrateful, for I am happy, and I give no thanks for it.' Or when we are alone together, and walking arm-in-arm, now, at this very moment,--not that I mean only this moment,--I love you, I love you." She put her head down on my arm and pressed it earnestly. "Oh," she said, "if I were to lose you!" She spoke very low, as if afraid. What had frightened her? The darkness and the forest, or her own words?

She went on:--"I have often and often dreamed that I was saying good-by to you. You both cried, and I pressed you so close to my heart that there was only one of us. It was a nightmare, you know, but I don't mind it, for it showed me that my life was in your lives, dear. What is that cracking noise? Didn't you see something just in front of us?"

I answered her by taking her in my arms and folding her to my heart. We walked on, but it was impossible to go on talking. Every now and then she would stop and say, "Hush! hark! No, it is nothing."

At last we saw ahead of us a little light, now visible, now hidden by a tree. It was the lamp set for us in our parlor window. We crossed the stile and were at home. It was high time, for we were wet through.

I brought a huge log, and when the fire had blazed up we sat down in the great chimney-place. The poor girl was shivering. I took off her boots and held her feet to the fire, screening them with my hands.

"Thanks, dear George, thanks!" she said, leaning on my shoulder and looking at me so tenderly that I felt almost ready to cry.

"What were you saying to me in that horrid wood, my darling?" I asked her, when she was better.

"You are thinking about that? I was frightened, that is all, and when you are frightened you see ghosts."

"We shall be wood-cutters, shan't we?"

And kissing me, with a laugh, she replied: "It is bedtime, Jean of the Woods."

I well remember that walk, for it was our last. Often and often since, at sunset on a dark day, I have been over the same ground; often and often I have stopped where she stood, and stooped and pulled aside the fern, seeking to find, poor fool that I am! the traces of her vanished footsteps. And I have often halted in the clearing under the birches which rained down on us, and there in the shadow I have fancied I caught the flutter of her dress; I have thought I heard her startled note of fright. And on my way home at night, at every step I have found a recollection of her in the distant barking and the breaking branches, as in the trembling of her hand on my arm and the kiss which I gave her.

Once I went into the wood-hut. I saw it all as before,--the family, the smoky interior, the little bench on which we sat,--and I asked for something to drink, that I might see the glass her lips had touched.

"The little lady who makes such good omelettes, she isn't sick, for sure?" asked the old woman.

Probably she saw the tears in my eyes, for she said no more, and I came away.

And so it is that except in my heart, where she lives and is, all that was my darling grows faint and dark and dim.

It is the law of life, but it is a cruel law. Even my poor child is learning to forget, and when I say to him most unwillingly, "Baby dear, do you remember how your mother did this or that?" he answers "Yes"; but I see, alas! that he too is ceasing to remember.

Translation of Agnes Irwin.

HENRY DRUMMOND

(1851-)

[Illustration: HENRY DRUMMOND]

One of the most widely read of modern essayists, Henry Drummond, was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851. Educated for the ministry, he passed through the Universities of Edinburgh and Tübingen, and the Free Church Divinity Hall, and after ordination was appointed to a mission chapel at Malta. The beauty and the historic interest of the famous island roused in him a desire for travel, and in the intervals of his professional work he has made semi-scientific pilgrimages to the Rocky Mountains and to South Africa, as well as lecturing tours to Canada, Australia, and the United States, where his addresses on scientific, religious, and sociological subjects have attracted large audiences.

A man of indefatigable industry, he has published many books, the most widely read of these being 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World' a study of psychological conditions from the point of view of the Evolutionist. This work has passed through a large number of editions, and been translated into French, German, Dutch, and Norwegian. Scarcely less popular were 'The Greatest Thing in the World' (love), and 'Pax Vobiscum.' In 1894 he published a volume called 'The Ascent of Man,' in which he insists that certain altruistic factors modify the process of Natural Selection. This doctrine elicited much critical commentary from the stricter sects of the scientists, but the new view commended itself at once to the general reader.

The citations here given are selected from Mr. Drummond's book of travels, 'Tropical Africa,' a book whose simplicity and vividness enable the reader to see the Dark Continent exactly as it is.

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE

From 'Tropical Africa'

Nothing could more wildly misrepresent the reality than the idea of one's school days that the heart of Africa is a desert. Africa rises from its three environing oceans in three great tiers, and the general physical geography of these has been already sketched:--first, a coast line, low and deadly; farther in, a plateau the height of the Scottish Grampians; farther in still, a higher plateau, covering the country for thousands of miles with mountain and valley. Now fill in this sketch, and you have Africa before you. Cover the coast belt with rank yellow grass; dot here and there a palm; scatter through it a few demoralized villages; and stock it with the leopard, the hyena, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus. Clothe the mountainous plateaux next, both of them, with endless forests; not grand umbrageous forest like the forests of South America, nor matted jungle like the forests of India, but with thin, rather weak forest,--with forest of low trees, whose half-grown trunks and scanty leaves offer no shade from the tropical sun. Nor is there anything in these trees to the casual eye to remind you that you are in the tropics. Here and there one comes upon a borassus or fan-palm, a candelabra-like euphorbia, a mimosa aflame with color, or a sepulchral baobab. A close inspection also will discover curious creepers and climbers; and among the branches strange orchids hide their eccentric flowers. But the outward type of tree is the same as we have at home--trees resembling the ash, the beech, and the elm, only seldom so large except by the streams, and never so beautiful. Day after day you may wander through these forests, with nothing except the climate to remind you where you are. The beasts to be sure are different, but unless you watch for them you will seldom see any; the birds are different, but you rarely hear them; and as for the rocks, they are our own familiar gneisses and granites, with honest basalt dikes boring through them, and leopard-skin lichens staining their weathered sides. Thousands and thousands of miles, then, of vast thin forest, shadeless, trackless, voiceless,--forest in mountain and forest in plain,--this is East Central Africa.

The indiscriminate praise, formerly lavished on tropical vegetation, has received many shocks from recent travelers. In Kaffir-land, South Africa, I have seen one or two forests fine enough to justify the enthusiasm of arm-chair word-painters of the tropics; but so far as the central plateau is concerned, the careful judgment of Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace respecting the equatorial belt in general (a judgment which has at once sobered all modern descriptions of tropical lands and made imaginative people more content to stay at home) applies almost to this whole area. The fairy labyrinth of ferns and palms, the festoons of climbing plants blocking the paths and scenting the forests with their resplendent flowers, the gorgeous clouds of insects, the gayly plumaged birds, the paroquets, the monkey swinging from his trapeze in the shaded bowers--these are unknown to Africa. Once a week you will see a palm; once in three months the monkey will cross your path; the flowers on the whole are few; the trees are poor; and to be honest, though the endless forest-clad mountains have a sublimity of their own, and though there are tropical bits along some of the mountain streams of exquisite beauty, nowhere is there anything in grace and sweetness and strength to compare with a Highland glen. For the most part of the year these forests are jaded and sun-stricken, carpeted with no moss or alchemylla or scented woodruff, the bare trunks frescoed with few lichens, their motionless and unrefreshed leaves drooping sullenly from their sapless boughs. Flowers there are, small and great, in endless variety; but there is no display of flowers, no gorgeous show of blossom in the mass, as when the blazing gorse and heather bloom at home. The dazzling glare of the sun in the torrid zone has perhaps something to do with this want of color effect in tropical nature; for there is always about ten minutes just after sunset when the whole tone of the landscape changes like magic, and a singular beauty steals over the scene. This is the sweetest moment of the African day, and night hides only too swiftly the homelike softness and repose so strangely grateful to the over-stimulated eye.

Hidden away in these endless forests, like birds' nests in a wood, in terror of one another and of their common foe the slaver, are small native villages; and here in his virgin simplicity dwells primeval man, without clothes, without civilization, without learning, without religion--the genuine child of nature, thoughtless, careless, and contented. This man is apparently quite happy; he has practically no wants. One stick, pointed, makes him a spear; two sticks rubbed together make him a fire; fifty sticks tied together make him a house. The bark he peels from them makes his clothes; the fruits which hang on them form his food. It is perfectly astonishing, when one thinks of it, what nature can do for the animal man, to see with what small capital after all a human being can get through the world. I once saw an African buried. According to the custom of his tribe, his entire earthly possessions--and he was an average commoner--were buried with him. Into the grave, after the body, was lowered the dead man's pipe, then a rough knife, then a mud bowl, and last his bow and arrows--the bowstring cut through the middle, a touching symbol that its work was done. This was all. Four items, as an auctioneer would say, were the whole belongings for half a century of this human being. No man knows what a man is till he has seen what a man can be without, and be withal a man. That is to say, no man knows how great man is till he has seen how small he has been once.

The African is often blamed for being lazy, but it is a misuse of words. He does not need to work; with so bountiful a Nature round him it would be gratuitous to work. And his indolence, therefore, as it is called, is just as much a part of himself as his flat nose, and as little blameworthy as slowness in a tortoise. The fact is, Africa is a nation of the unemployed.

THE EAST-AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

From 'Tropical Africa'

Somewhere in the Shiré Highlands, in 1859, Livingstone saw a large lake--Lake Shirwa--which is still almost unknown. It lies away to the east, and is bounded by a range of mountains whose lofty summits are visible from the hills round Blantyre. Thinking it might be a useful initiation to African travel if I devoted a short time to its exploration, I set off one morning, accompanied by two members of the Blantyre staff and a small retinue of natives. Steering across country in the direction in which it lay, we found, two days before seeing the actual water, that we were already on the ancient bed of the lake. Though now clothed with forest, the whole district has obviously been under water at a comparatively recent period, and the shores of Lake Shirwa probably reached at one time to within a few miles of Blantyre itself. On reaching the lake a very aged female chief came to see us, and told us how, long, long ago, a white man came to her village and gave her a present of cloth. Of the white man, who must have been Livingstone, she spoke very kindly; and indeed, wherever David Livingstone's footsteps are crossed in Africa, the fragrance of his memory seems to remain.

The waters of Shirwa are brackish to the taste, and undrinkable; but the saltness must have a peculiar charm for game, for nowhere else in Africa did I see such splendid herds of the larger animals as here. The zebra was especially abundant; and so unaccustomed to be disturbed are these creatures, that with a little care one could watch their movements safely within a very few yards. It may seem unorthodox to say so, but I do not know if among the larger animals there is anything handsomer in creation than the zebra. At close quarters his striped coat is all but as fine as the tiger's, while the form and movement of his body are in every way nobler. The gait, certainly, is not to be compared for gracefulness with that of the many species of antelope and deer who nibble the grass beside him, and one can never quite forget that scientifically he is an ass; but taking him all in all, this fleet and beautiful animal ought to have a higher place in the regard of man than he has yet received.