text:
Janey and the Stork

HE sunlight poured through the sixteen-paned windows of the Blair dining-room. It oozed like a lustrous golden varnish along the side-board of ancient San Domingo mahogany. It filled the plates and platters of old Canton in the china-cabinet with pools of light. It turned the smoothly-laundered breakfast doilies into circles of silver. It twinkled in the coffee-silver. It sparkled in the finger-bowls. It brought out streaks of flaxen-gold in Janey Blair's straight hair, and revealed to the smallest pin-point dot the colony of freckles on her absurd little nose. Also it revealed the scowl of discontent on her forehead.

Of all times, it was hardest for Janey Blair to keep silent at breakfast. Floods of sun seemed to bring out in her floods of chatter. But she knew as well as she knew her name that the most tiny remarks would be met by the most gigantic of rebukes. For with the exception of Janey and Caroline everybody was opening mail.

Stout, grizzled, twinkling, his outing-shirt turned away in a broad V from his hairy chest, Mr. James Warriner, or Uncle Jim, the bachelor head of the house, sat at one end of the table. With the precision of a machine, he slit the flaps of the long business-like-looking envelopes, extracted, studied, crumpled and dropped their contents. Tall, slender, blonde, very fresh and womanly in her starched white morning dress, Mrs. Blair, his widowed sister, mother of Janey, presided at the head of the table behind a pile of correspondence of all shapes and colors. At Uncle Jim's right sat their cousin, Mrs. Benton, Aunt Marcia, mother of Caroline, a stout, dumpy little woman with a sallow look of lassitude. Only one letter lay at her plate. Beside her sat five-year old Caroline, roly-poly, tanned, whispering. Opposite, sat Janey.

Janey, who saw everything, noted that Uncle Jim's correspondence was all type-written. “Editors!” was her brief mental comment. She noticed that the pretty pages which came out of her mother's trim envelopes were covered with a billowy hand-writing through which, to Janey's great admiration, Mrs. Blair skimmed like a bird. “Ladies!” Janey said to herself. She noticed that Aunt Marcia's letter had a yellow stamp on it. “From Uncle Joe,” Janey conjectured. Uncle Joe, Janey knew, was away on a six months engineering job. Because, as Mrs. Blair had explained to Janey, Aunt Marcia was not well, the three older children had been sent to New Hampshire, and Aunt Marcia had come with little Caroline to spend the whole summer in Scarsett.

“Oh, Marcia!” Mrs. Blair exclaimed suddenly. “Do listen, Jim! Hilda Morris has just had another baby—a little girl. Oh, isn't it too lovely? Jim, you remember Hilda—she went to St. Agnes' with me.”

Jim did not display a glimmer of that enthusiasm with which every female at the table was immediately fired. “She's got six already, hasn't she?” he remarked in the tone of one who presents damaging evidence.

“Well—what's that got to do with it?” his sister asked in a nonplused tone.

“And Stuffy Morris gets only forty dollars a week,” Uncle Jim persisted, standing by his guns.

“Yes, but Hilda's tickled to death and so is Edward. Please don't call him Stuffy, Jim.”

“I see I'm getting in bad,” Uncle Jim commented. “As mere man I really can't see how it's an occasion for fireworks, Miriam. It's their funeral, of course.”

“Now Jim,” his sister remonstrated, “You know you were perfectly crazy when Janey was born.”

“Sure! I was strong for Janey.” Mr. Warriner smiled across the table at his little niece. That young person was using an extraordinary feat in oatmeal-architecture as an excuse for dumping half a bowl of powdered sugar into her saucer. “I wouldn't sell Janey for ten million dollars but I'd sell her successor for ten cents.” Mr. Warriner's look became gloomily reminiscent. “Remember, Miriam, I used to walk the floor nights with her.”

Mrs. Blair's sense of humor did not cover the subject of babies. She frowned at the blasphemy. “I'd give anything I own,” she said, “if Janey had a little brother.”

Janey dropped the sugar bowl. Her mother's words flew like a flock of doves into her heart and nestled there cooing. A little brother! Somehow—she was not conscious of this herself—but that remark seemed to crystallize a great deal that was floating vague and dim in her mind. Ever since Aunt Marcia had come, she and mother had talked about nothing but babies, their care, their training, their inherent lovability. In another instant, Janey had made up her mind that she had been wanting a baby in the house ever since she could remember. A little brother! She and Caroline, left stranded on the shores of infancy by the older children of Scarsett, often ran out of schemes for entertainment. But with a baby in the house, one could dispense entirely with games. A little brother! And mother would like one just as much as she. How lucky! Janey's imagination suddenly soared into inter-stellar space. Janey's heart suddenly gave a great thump. Janey's active mind had suddenly said: “Why not?”

Absorbed in dazzling meditation, Janey docilely ate everything that was put before her.

Immediately after breakfast, she followed Mrs. Blair up to the sewing room: “Mother,” she said, “I have made up my mind that I would just love to have a little brother. Won't you please buy one for me. You can have all the money in my bank.”

“No, dear,” Mrs. Blair said. “I'm afraid I can't, so don't ask me again.”

Experience had taught Janey that mothers could be reasoned with. “Let me say just one thing more,” she pleaded. “Why not?”

“Because,” Mrs. Blair said. Her tone indicated that the conversation was at an end. But the mother of Janey had learned the utter futility of the “because'” answer as far as her daughter was concerned. “Little girls who haven't any fathers can't have any brothers and sisters,” she added.

This silenced Janey, but only for an instant. Then, “I should think if they didn't have any father, that would be all the more reason why they could have more brothers and sisters.”

Mrs. Blair had given up trying to cope with Janey's remorseless logic. “Well, I can't talk all the morning, Janey,” she said impatiently. “You can't have a little brother and that's all there is to it. Now run out and play”

But the seed of determination had been planted in Janey's mind. As ordered, she went out on to the piazza. She did not play. She sat down beside confiding little Caroline. For a long time she did not speak. She was thinking. Caroline kept silent too, for wonderful things always happened when Janey took to thought.

“Caroline,” Janey said after a long while, “do you know what we need in this house?”

“No,” Caroline replied placidly.

“We need a baby. What's more—we're going to have one. You've prob'ly noticed, Caroline Benton, that grown folks never 'tend to matters. That's why you don't get a lot of things you want. Now I'm going to 'tend to this myself. And you watch what happens, Caroline Benton. There'll be a baby in this house 'fore I get through. I know presackly where to go to ask for one. Do you know who brings the babies, Caroline? The doctor—in a green bag.”

Caroline demurred. “In kindergarten,” she said, “Wilthon thaid the sthork brought them.”

Janey shook a superior head, although inwardly she was reconciling conflicting theories. “Sometimes the stork does bring them, Caroline dear,” she admitted in her most saccharin tones of patronage. “And sometimes the doctor. Most genally the doctor. How I know is, Hazel Snow said Dr. Bigelow brought her cousin a baby. She saw him go into the house with a green bag. It was full of something. When he came out, there was nothing in it, but there was a baby lying beside her cousin in the bed. When the stork brings it, the doctor gives it to him. Now let's walk up the road till we meet Dr. Bigelow. He goes to see Grandpa Wade every morning since he cut his leg off.”

The two little girls trotted across the bridge and along the sliver of dusty road pulled taut and gray between stretches of emerald marsh. At the cross-roads they disappeared under a green Gothic arch made by meeting branches of huge old wine-glass elms. Came along presently a comfortable old buggy, filled with the comfortable bulk of a big middle-aged man. He was sitting back, half asleep, the reins caught in a hook on the buggy hood.

“Dr. Bigelow!” Janey called in her soft voice. “Dr. Bigelow! Oh please stop!”

“Whoa, Bess.” Dr. Bigelow caught the reins and peered over the wheel. “What's this—breakers on the lee bow? Oh, it's you Janey. What do you want? Here, wait a minute. Suppose you two young women come aboard. I'll take you for a little cruise. Look out for the larboard rein there, Janey.”

Dr. Bigelow helped them in. He deposited Caroline on the seat beside him and Janey on the floor between his knees, facing him. He hung up the reins. Old Bess jogged on.

“Now what is it, cap'n?” Dr. Bigelow asked.

Janey looked trustfully up into the snapping eyes. She liked Dr. Bigelow. Dr. Bigelow had followed the sea in his youth. He did not look like a doctor and he certainly did not talk like one. His short thick black beard was cut square; it was shaped like a dust-pan. His voice was always pretending to be gruff, and his blue eyes were always pretending to be stern; but neither voice nor eyes had ever deceived his most devoted follower, Miss Jane Elizabeth Blair. He had seen her through every terror of childhood from tummy-upset to measles. He mostly gave her nice medicines—sugary pills which came out of pretty, slender, thin-glassed bottles. After all the pills were taken, she could have the bottle. Surreptitiously, Janey was always swallowing extra doses that the bottle might empty quicker. Janey came straight to her point. “Dr. Bigelow, I want a little brother dreadfully. I've come to ask you to bring one to my mother.”

Dr. Bigelow seemed to think this a perfectly natural request. You might almost suppose that he had often met it before. His face screwed up into its most serious expression. But a twinkle in his eye, which even heavy iron-gray brows could not conceal, showed Janey that he was quite in sympathy with her.

“Well, cap'n,” he said in a regretful tone, “you've come at a bad time—a very bad time. I'm just out of babies. All gone except one little pickaninny. How about a black baby, Janey. Don't suppose it would do, would it?”

“Oh, Dr. Bigelow,” Janey said rapturously, “I'd love it, and so would Uncle Jim. He'd be just crazy about it. But mother would send it back the moment it came into the house. I know her.”

“That's what I was afraid of,” Dr. Bigelow said, and he seemed disappointed. “Brightest little black thing you ever saw.”

“When I grow up,” Janey said, “I'm not going to be fussy like my mother. I'm going to have a black baby and a Chinese baby and a Japanese baby and an Indian baby and an Eskimo baby—just like in 'Seven Little Sisters'—aren't you, Caroline?”

“Yeth,” said Caroline, “and loths of twinths. Dr. Bigelow, where do you keep the babieth?”

“Caroline,” Dr. Bigelow answered impressively, “I can't possibly answer that question, for you see, if it got out where I kept the babies, little children would always be stealing them from me. I don't mean nice little girls like you two.” He looked hard at his small interlocutors and they managed to develop an expression of conscious rectitude. “Promise me if you ever happen to find out my hiding-place, you'll never tell it to a living soul. Cross your throats.”

Awed, the little girls performed this dreadful function.

“And where do you keep the sthork?” Caroline continued with undiminished curiosity.

“Oh it's this way about the stork,” Dr. Bigelow said carelessly. “I let him fly about loose. Now, when I am too busy to attend to the matter myself, I just whistle up Johnny—his name's Johnny, you know—tie a basket to his claw, put the baby in the basket and send Johnny off with it.”

Janey bounced. “Dr. Bigelow, you'll be getting some new babies in pretty soon, won't you? Will you please save one for us.”

Dr. Bigelow took from an inner pocket a narrow thin, red note-book. He poised a pencil over a blank page. “What kind of a baby do you want, Janey?” he said in a business-like tone.

“I want him to be a fat baby,” Janey answered immediately, “with curly golden hair—wouldn't you have it golden, Caroline?”

“And dimpleth in hith elbowth,” Caroline added.

“Fat boy baby,” Dr. Bigelow wrote, “golden curls, dimples in his elbows. All right. Next time a new cargo comes in, I'll be on the lookout. Here's Grandpa Wade's now. What do you suppose I'm bringing him?”

Neither Janey nor Caroline could guess.

“A nice new wooden leg. You two little ladies better disembark now and steer a straight course home.”

He helped the children out of the buggy, clucked to old Bess and resumed his half-asleep position. But in another instant, Janey came running alongside. “What is it now, cap'n?” Dr. Bigelow asked.

“Oh, Dr. Bigelow,” Janey panted, “don't have him too red, please. And please don't leave him to the stork. You bring him yourself. I feel you 're more—more—'sponsible.”

“All right, cap'n,” Dr. Bigelow said gravely.

For the next week, two better behaved little girls could not have been found in all Scarsett. Janey exhausted herself in preparations for the addition to the family. It was not a period of unmixed delight for elders, because the children stuck close to the house. They did not dare to leave for fear that in their absence Dr. Bigelow, carrying a bulging, squirming green bag, would drive up to the house. “Just think, Caroline, of not being here to thank him!” Janey said whenever temptation offered. By the sixth day the restraint was beginning to wear upon them.

Early Saturday morning, Janey went down to the beach to collect some shells and stones for her little brother. While she worked little Julia Riley came flying out of one of the mossers' cottages. “Oh, Janey, Janey, Janey,” she shrilled joyously, “I've got sumpin lovely to tell you.”

When. Janey reappeared at the Blair household, she looked quite a different child. Her eyes emitted sparks of wrath and her lips made two horizontal pink lines across the puffy indignation of her face: “Come Caroline,” she called. And Caroline knew by the tone that Janey was on the war-path. Wondering but dumb, Caroline ran to her side, seized her hand and pattered along— always a little in the rear of Janey's swift, determined stride. Janey made for the village. The buggy was standing at the Bigelow gate. Dr. Bigelow, just emerging from the house, seemed to recall something, turned and started back.

“Dr. Bigelow,” Janey called.

The doctor swung about. “Oh, hullo, cap'n!” he said absently.

Janey planted herself solidly on the gravel walk. She talked with considerable precision, and in one breath delivered the following:

“Dr. Bigelow, I think you are the horridest, hatefulest, meanest doctor I ever knew in my life. You promised me that you'd bring me a baby brother. And I've waited a whole week for him to come. And this morning, Julia Riley told me that last night you brought her mother two whole babies. And I asked Julia partickly and she said they were boys. And she said they had golden hair. And you know just as well as anything that Mrs. Riley doesn't need any babies. She's got six children already. And little Mike's still a baby. And I shall never trust you again. And I want you to distinkly understand that when I'm sick I'm never going to have you again. Not even if I'm dying. I'll scrooch right down in the bed and shut my mouth tight and if you make me take any medicine I shall spit it right out. I shall tell my mother to have Dr. Robinson. Because I don't believe he'd tell me he'd bring me a brother and then go and give two away to people that don't need them.

She turned and pulling the sympathetic Caroline along, made rapidly back up the street.

Dr. Bigelow listened to this address, wordless. At its close, he went into the house. He, going one way and Janey going another, presented a study in backs—his, shaking, as with a terrific inner convulsion, Janey's rigid as if it were in a plaster cast.

Scarsett village was small and news scarce. The story of Dr. Bigelow's dismissal must have gained wide circulation. For a week after, grown people were stopping Janey to consult her gravely about Dr. Bigelow's professional standing.

“He's very good,” Janey said always, a steely glitter in her gray eyes, “for some things.” But she could not be made to commit herself further.

With Janey, however, opposition was the best fuel to determination. That night, in the lovely, dark, dozy time between hopping into bed and falling into slumber, she thought out a new plan. Medicine had failed her. She would turn to religion.

During the summer months, Janey always attended the Sunday-school of the Episcopal church in Scarsett. The Reverend Silas Lawton, its pastor, governed his tiny parish with a gentle, lovable inefficiency. He was a tall, lean, scholarly-looking gentleman whose long, wavy hair always left a faint shower of dandruff on his shiny shoulders. He was as strong a friend as Janey had in all Scarsett. Their friendship grew out of a tete-a-tete.

Once, running over to the village on an errand, Janey had descried the Reverend Silas ahead, caught up with him, slipped her warm little hand in his, proceeded to make conversation.

“Mr. Lawton,” she said, “I know how you could have a lot more children coming to your Sunday-school if you want them.”

“Do you indeed, Janey,” her companion said pleasantly, “How's that?”

“Well, I found out what children like in Sunday-school last fall. You know mother went away for two months to Florida and I staid with Cousin Margaret in Brookline. I didn't like 'Piscopal Sunday-school because it wasn't any fun. And so every Sunday I went to a different Sunday-school to find out which I'd like best. I went to the Baptist and the Methodist and the Orthodox and the Swedenborgian and the Unitarian—it was dreadful hard learning to pronounce the names. And where do you suppose they had the most children?”

By this time, Mr. Lawton was regarding his young friend with considerable amusement. “I haven't the remotest idea, Janey. Which was it?”

“The Unitarian,” Janey said, “and I'll tell you why. They gave us crayons and let us color a Bible picture every Sunday. My Adam-and-Eve-in-the-Garden-of-Eden wasn't so good because they hadn't enough clothes on to do anything with. Oh, but Mr. Lawton, if you could have only seen my Joseph's-coat-of-many-colors. It was the most bee-you-tifullist picture I 'bout ever saw. Joseph looked like people at the Hippodrome that Uncle Jim took me to once. But mother would not save it. She burned it up. Oh, how I did like that Sunday-school. I went all the time mother was gone. She was mad when she came home, and made me go to the 'Piscopal again. There were a great many more children at the Unitarian—and I think it was the crayons.”

What Mr. Lawton thought of this gratuitous advice is not a part of this story. But by a curious coincidence, crayon-drawing was instituted in his Sunday-school within a month.

This morning when Janey called, he took her in his lap at once. “Well,” he said jocularly, “isn't the church being run to suit you yet. I guess I'll have to send you to the bishop.”

“Oh Mr. Lawton,” Janey said in great distress, “of course it is! I just love Sunday-school now. I've come to ask a favor of you. Will you pray for me to have a little brother?”

Mr. Lawton's manner did not flame with the immediate response which Janey expected. In fact, he bit his lip, looked down, fiddled with his watch-chain, gave every appearance of a man in a puzzled frame of mind.

“Marilla,” he called helplessly at last.

Mrs. Lawton came in from the other room. She was a big middle-aged woman with a helpless look of majesty. She had a mole on her chin. She wore her brown hair parted in the middle and smoothed down over her ears, and she always dressed in black silk. The brooch which confined her neck-ruche held the painted portrait of a little girl.

“Janey's called to ask me to pray for her to have a little brother,” Mr. Lawton explained.

Janey had no idea that Mrs. Lawton could be so sympathetic. “The lamb!” she exclaimed and she lifted Janey on her lap. “Don't you remember, Si, how Lily used to pray for a little brother.”

Janey knew who Lily was. The Lawton's only child. Lily had died at twelve. It was her picture in the brooch. Every child in Scarsett had heard of Lily Lawton's angelic goodness.

“Did she get one?” Janey asked.

“No, dear,” Mrs. Lawton said with a sigh.

“I didn't know that good little girls ever prayed for things without getting them,” Janey said in a disillusioned tone. “But perhaps if she had asked you to pray too. Will you please pray for me?”

The Reverend Silas turned to his books with the air of a man who leaves a woman's work to the women. For a moment, Mrs. Lawton looked nonplussed. Then her face lighted up as if a wonderful idea had occurred to her. “Why of course we will, Janey dear. We'll pray every night for a little baby to come to your house.”

Janey sighed a long sigh of relief. “Oh thank you so much,” she breathed.

But Janey was nothing if not thorough. Whatever her game, she never failed to use all its possibilities, and she left nothing to chance.

Returning home from her call on the Lawtons, she met Mr. Lucas and Miss Dale. Mr. Lucas was a very young man who, by a mysterious process of graduation, would become a clergyman in a year. Miss Dale was a very young lady who, by a process equally mysterious, was to become Mrs. Lucas immediately after this event. Janey thought them the two prettiest people she knew. Mr. Lucas looked like a statue. When he played tennis, his wavy brown hair blew in all directions from his face. Miss Dale resembled the pictures in magazines which Janey cut out for young-lady dolls. Her gray eyes were just like soft lamps hung in her face, although people said that that face was a little too pale for perfect health.

Janey stopped them.

“Mr. Lucas,” she said. She trembled a little for she did not know him half so well as Mr. Lawton, “Would you do a great favor for me as long as you're going to be a minister pretty soon?”

Mr. Lucas's brown eyes surveyed her in some curiosity, a little amusement and a great deal of embarrassment.

“Of course, Janey. What is it?”

“Won't you please pray for me to have a little brother? Most every little girl I know has one and some little girls keep having them all the time. My little cousin Caroline has two brothers and a sister. I want a little brother more than anything in the world. And you pray too, Miss Dale,” Janey concluded. For it seemed discourteous to leave her out.

Miss Dale was carrying a big bunch of wild roses. Janey observed that her cheeks suddenly showed a color their exact counterpart. Mr. Lucas just stood and looked at her as if he had forgotten how to talk, but Miss Dale plumped down to her knees on the grassy roadside. She hugged Janey and kissed her again and again. “Oh you dear, darling little duck you! Of course we will!” As she passed on with Mr. Lucas, Janey heard her say, “Edmund, I do hope that there's an angel somewhere in heaven who does nothing all day long but listen to the prayers of very little children.”

As for Janey, she went to bed that night in a state of perfect contentment. With religion doubly enlisted on her side, she could snap her fingers at medicine. She arose the next morning, confident, care-free, proud. The aroma of this certainty spread over an entire week. In fact, ten days had gone by before Janey began to wonder why such systematic work produced no results. In a day or two doubt piled on uncertainty until Janey was visibly cross.

“We've got to try something else, Caroline,” she said.

But it was one thing to say “try something else.” It was another to find it. Janey racked her brain in vain. And then suddenly when they were in bathing, Pink Hollis opened the vista to a new possibility.

“Where do you suppose I'm going to-morrow?” she said jubilantly. “Over to Brockton to see my Aunt Cad's new baby. Jessie and Ethel were down over Sunday and they said she's the darlingest little thing. They told me all about how they came to have her. They begged and begged their mother to get them a little sister. She paid no attention to them for a long time and then one day she told them to put sugar outside the window and maybe if the stork happened to be flying by, he'd stop to eat the sugar and then they could take the baby from the basket. So every night they put two lumps of sugar outside the window. And their mother kept saying to them, 'You keep your eyes wide open to catch the stork, for he'll come when you least expect it.' And they did. And one day their father asked them if they'd like to go to Boston to spend the day and go to Keith's. And they said they would. So they went with Mrs. Burton next door. And when they came back, what do you think?”

Pink's voice sank. Janey's and Caroline's eyes nearly popped out of their heads. They could not speak.

“The stork had come,” Pink said, “and left a little girl baby. And after they'd kissed her, Jessie went up to her room. And the sugar was gone.”

Pink plunged into the surf. Janey clasped Caroline's hand tight and the two little girls ran home as fast as they could go. And running they trod clouds of glory.

A week of rain followed. “Gracious?” Mrs. Blair said once. “I never saw anything like the way the loaf sugar disappears in this house. I would suspect the children if they 'd ever cared for it before. I declare I think Hattie eats it.”

In other ways it was not a week of unalloyed delight. In the first place, Mrs. Benton was weak and ailing and the children were forbidden any noisy play. Dr. Bigelow, running the gauntlet of Janey's stony glare, came every day. The rain did not permit them to go out-doors, but as far as childhood permits pre-occupation, Janey lived in another world. She had played her trump-card and she knew that it would not fail.

Mrs. Blair's chamber adjoined Mrs. Benton's and the big center dormer window was divided between the two rooms. Every night Janey looked out of her window and every night Caroline looked out of hers. Their faces almost touched over a crumbling mound of sugar, half-way between.

After a while the rain ceased. A week of dazzling sunshine baked the cliffs bone-dry, sweetened the air as if with honey, melted the gray cold ocean until it boiled sapphire.

“How would you and Caroline like to go on a picnic to-day,” Mrs. Blair asked one morning.

“We'd love it,” Janey answered promptly.

“I've just called up Mrs. Snow and she says that you and Caroline and Hazel can go on a picnic in the pine woods back of their barn. Now remember, children, you are not to go off the Snow place. Here are two lunches. You can eat one the moment you get there. You must save the other until noon. And don't start home until I telephone you, for I may decide to let you stay there all night.”

Janey had never seen her mother so flustered. She seemed anxious to get the children out of the house. She kissed them both, but to Janey's bewilderment, just before they were leaving, she seized little Caroline and kissed her again and again.

Such a day they had in the pine grove! As Mrs. Blair had foreseen, they ate their first lunch immediately on arrival—at fifteen minutes after nine. Then they played for three hours with acorn cups and pine-cones, wandered afield, gathered flowers, ate their second lunch and spent the afternoon in the big shadowy Snow barn.

About five, Mrs. Snow appeared. “Your mother's just called up, Janey,” she said, “and you're to go home at once.” Mrs. Snow seemed excited too. She kissed both the children but she hugged Caroline much longer than Janey.

It was a disappointment to go, but the two children obediently trotted down the road which lead marshwards and seawards, and cliffwards—home.

Mrs. Blair was standing where the drive curved into the road. “What do you suppose has happened while you've been gone, children?” she said, seizing them both by the hand. “The stork has been here and left the darlingest baby-boy.”

Caroline and Janey exchanged one stunned look. Then they jumped up and down like a pair of mad little tops. “Oh, goody, goody, goody,” Janey said. “I knew I'd do it. I always do what I make up my mind to do.” Then she sighed, “I guess they always manage to come when you've not at home though. Oh, show it to us mother,” she entreated.

“If you'll be as quiet as mice,” Mrs. Blair agreed. “You must not say a word and you must walk on tip-toes.”

A pair of teetering shadows, the children followed her into the house and upstairs into the room which led from Mrs. Benton's chamber. There a strange woman in a gingham dress and a white cap, sat beside the old wooden Blair cradle. The strange woman smiled and drew down the clothes from under the hood.

Janey was conscious, one instant, of acute disappointment. Brother's face was not red, it was purple. He was crumply as to skin and quite hairless. By some curious vagary of the child-mind, Janey had expected that he would make his first appearance in a navy-blue sailor-suit trimmed profusely with brass buttons. For an instant, the tantalizing vision of a fat, dimpled, golden-haired cherub floated in her mind. Then it disappeared forever and the little wad of flesh before her became of all human things, the most desirable.

“You may touch your little brother's hand, Caroline, if you want to,” Mrs. Blair said indulgently.

Caroline's brother! Just in time, Mrs. Blair caught Janey by the shoulders for there was whirlwind in her face. Her hand over her child's mouth, Mrs. Blair hustled her into her own room. “Janey, if you cry when Aunt Marcia is so sick, I'll spank you,” she threatened sternly.

“I'm not going to cry, mother,” Janey gasped heroically, pounding her face among the pillows and then coming up for air. “But, oh, I could skriek!” Even in that tumultuous moment, Mrs. Blair perceived that her daughter had blended 'screech' with 'shriek.' “For, mother, I made a dreadful mistake. I put the sugar between the two windows and the stork went in the wrong dormer. That baby-brother really belongs to me.”

title: Janey and the Stork


text: Talk:Janey and the Stork

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Janey and the Stork


text:
The Red Book Magazine/Volume 17/Number 2/Janey Discovers the Great Illusion

ANEY examined herself in the mirror. It was the dulled and fly-specked glass indigenous to the country store. There peered back at her a little, triangular wedge of face that began in a pearly brow, continued under a heavy fall of freckles and ended in a point of pearly chin.

Avidly Janey searched the combination of friendly blue eyes, ridiculous dab of nose and wistful pink mouth for a trace of incipient young-ladyhood.

Mrs. Blair, turning suddenly from the counter, caught the picture—reflected for the hundredth time that Janey had never lost her baby face.

“Mother,” Janey said as they stepped from the gloom of the store into the shaded brightness of the main street, “I shall be perfickly happy when I'm ten years old.”

“Well, I shall be perfectly happy when you're grown up,” said her mother. “This ordering a pattern to fit a child of nine who will soon be ten and is no bigger than six and yet has just started to grow, is something that requires genius. I shall be glad when you reach standard size and stay there.”

“Just think—my birthday'll be here in two weeks! Oh it doesn't seem as if I could wait,” Janey said. “When I'm ten—”

“Good morning, girls!” her mother interrupted. Janey started. Then her face turned blank: she could never accustom herself to her mother's calling ladies'  girls. Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Kingdon, crossing from the other side of the street, had joined them from behind. There was a flurry of greetings and laughter. Janey withdrew into herself. She knew that all chances of a free expression of her opinion were gone. Any contribution that she would make to the conversation of the three mothers would be greeted by Mrs. Blair with a “Yes, dear—but don't ask any more questions, dear—mother doesn't want to talk with you now.”

The talk submerged her for an instant, then flowed over and past. She contented herself with a consideration of the raptures and triumphs and glories of being ten.

Why when you became ten, you entered a new world as definitely as if one's ninth birthday were a little doorway in that endless Wall of Time which stretched from the clear, familiar, lovely Land of Now to the vague, strange, terrifying Land of Forever. Opening it, you passed into—

In the first place you would feel a whole extra year older than the awed and humble little Caroline—who, nevertheless, would glide with equal pace from five to six: you would feel a whole extra year nearer a proud and lofty Elsa Morgan—who, notwithstanding, would leap with equal agility from twelve to thirteen. Janey recalled vaguely that she had experienced the same sensations in going from eight to nine. But she had been mistaken—nine had turned out to be a dead level of existence, much like eight. Whereas ten—You would go into a higher class in school. There would be ten candles on your birthday cake. There would be ten little guests at your birthday party. Moreover, Janey felt certain that her tenth birthday, like a ticket, magically endowed, would carry her straight into the heart of that grown-up “crowd” which twelve-year-old Elsa Morgan and thirteen-year-old Colette Kingdon ruled as twin queens. Ah yes, there was something fairly intoxicating about ten-ness. Janey drew the long breath of him who casts aside forever cramping and deforming fetters.

And then over this rosy-hued mood suddenly slimed the inevitable serpent.

“perfectly boy-crazy!” Mrs. Morgan was saying. “It seems as if I would fly out of my skin. Ordinarily, it's Edward Hollis all day long. But if any new boy comes to town, she talks about nothing but him.”

“I'm sure Elsa isn't a circumstance to Colette,” Mrs. Kingdon took it up. “Colette is so silly, trying to conceal from me that she's exchanged rings with Stubby West and is wearing his sweater. At first, I thought I'd put my foot down hard and stop it all. Then Wentworth recalled to me that when we were children we went through pretty nearly the same experience—you know Wentworth and I were brought up in the same town. My mother discovered that I used to take walks with Wentworth and she very foolishly made an awful fuss about it to father. I was so ashamed, I remember; I cried and cried for days and days. Well, when Wentworth recalled that to me, I just made up my mind that I wouldn't repeat mother's mistake. And, as Wentworth says, what difference does it make anyway? They're all nice boys and I'm sure they play very gently with the girls.”

“But Mrs. Kingdon,” Mrs. Morgan asked, “have you realized what heart-burnings there have been at the various parties? It seems that the Virginia Reel is the climax of the evening's entertainment and, as Edward Hollis is the best dancer in Scarsett, all the girls are simply crazy to dance with him. I didn't realize it until I saw how Elsa manœuvered to have him for a partner at her fairy party.”

“Yes, and Colette fixed it so that he danced with her at her Mother Goose party. I really never did see anything so shameless.” Mrs. Kingdon laughed indulgently. “Oh, I'm so glad that the parties are over!”

“Oh, it just makes me feel envious to hear you talk like this,” Mrs. Blair exclaimed. “I shall love it when Janey's a big girl and can have real dancing-parties.” Janey could hear in her mother's voice a note of the same rapture with which she, herself, anticipated the golden age of ten. “Elsa looked so lovely as the white-and-silver fairy and Colette was such a wonderful Queen of Hearts—I just envied you two, fussing over their pretty clothes. Oh, if Janey would only grow up!”

So! After she and Caroline had cried themselves to sleep because they were not invited to participate in these functions, their mothers had treacherously deserted their offspring to go, themselves, to the parties. For an instant—betrayed by her nearest and dearest—Janey seemed to hang in the most icy and isolated of voids.

“Edward Hollis is a nice dancer,” Mrs. Blair continued, “I don't wonder the girls want him for a partner. Then he's so strong—that appeals to them. Which reminds me, I'm going to have a young athlete on my hands for the next two weeks—Bobby Mackintosh. Do you remember Mrs. Mackintosh, Lou? She sat at our table that time you came to luncheon with me last winter—a pretty woman with red hair and the complexion that goes with it.”

“Oh perfectly!” said Mrs. Morgan. “I thought her charming.”

“Heaven only knows what I'm going to do with him—he's so active. He's as strong as a young giant—exercises all the time. He's a beautiful dancer too, though his mother positively has to drive him to dancing-school. He actually won a prize for fancy dancing at the close of the season last year.”

And then the talk, turning to peach-plum jelly, left Janey to meditation. Bobby Mackintosh, the most abhorred of boys, was coming to their house for two weeks. Elsa Morgan's crowd loved new boys. Elsa Morgan's crowd liked strong boys. Elsa Morgan's crowd liked dancing better than anything else in the world. Elsa Morgan's crowd fought for partners in the Virginia Reel. Bobby was new, strong and a dancer. These thoughts boiled, sizzled, fermented and finally exploded in Janey Blair's little head.

The explosion did not occur until noon however; and then, it was so carefully veiled in Janey's airiest aspect of composure, her politest tone of entreaty, that even Uncle Jim, wizard though he was, did not recognize it as an explosion.

“Mother, when are you going to get me the paper to send out invitations for my birthday party?”

Mrs. Blair sighed. Uncle Jim groaned. But Janey only set her pink lips the firmer. It was always thus when she labored with the hide-bound conservatism of adults. “You promised when I was sick,” she reminded them collectively.

“Go on, Miriam, pay up,” said Uncle Jim, deserting his sister for the enemy. “Be a sport! And may it be a lesson to you!”

Janey had observed that men were much more susceptible to conversion than women.

“Well, a little one maybe,” Mrs. Blair said feebly. “Just ten little girls, one for each year.”

“Mother,” Janey interposed again, “you know Bobby Mackintosh will be here and he's a great big boy—he wont [sic] want to play with little girls.”

“Oh my pities!” Mrs. Blair exclaimed in the depths of self-commiseration. “You're right, Janey. Heavens, Jim, I haven't words to describe how I dread two weeks with that Bobby Mackintosh. Mrs. Mackintosh is the nicest woman I know. But Bobby—oh he's so trying; one of those boys with an inquiring mind. Isn't it wonderful how children forget!” she added in an aside. “He used to tickle Janey and trip her up and pull her hair and make fun of her clothes and it's all gone out of her head. Well,” she concluded, “I always have to go to bed for a day after Janey's parties and this one will probably land me in a rest cure. But if I promised, I suppose I must. We'll have to have dancing.”

“Oh yes, mother, we must have a Virginia Reel,” Janey said guilelessly.

“Oh, of course. Now Janey, I'm not going to have any quarreling about partners. I shall pick two of as many kinds of flowers as there are couples. I'll give out one set to the girls and one to the boys and these whose flowers match will have to dance together. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Janey. “Caroline, let's go down to the beach!”

Caroline seizing her pail and shovel, pattered over to Janey's side. “Do you like Bobby Mackintosh?” she asked of her preöccupied chief, when they were well out of ear-shot.

“I hate him,” Janey said with the simple brevity which characterized all her expressions of opinion. “More than I hate other boys,” she added after a pause.

“It'th too bad heeth coming down here,” said Caroline.

“I'm glad he's coming down,” said Janey. “And you'll see why, Caroline Benton, before I get through.”

The ocean stretched like a pulsating carpet of gray satin from the dish-shaped curve of the beach to the roll of gauze that veiled the horizon. To the satin of the middle distance, a group of moss-boats, the mossers calling and laughing as they pulled at the weedy rocks, gave the sound of activity. To the gauze far off, a file of sail-boats, beating their silver wings for balance on the horizon-line, gave a note of motion. To the long, hummocky, dun-colored stretch of sand, a group of boys and girls in bathing-suits gave a splendid splash of color.

The girls sat in a line with their backs against a boat. Head and front of them was Elsa Morgan—a frail, blonde elf, her glittering hair loose and streaming like a golden cataract over her pale-blue princess bathing-suit. Next in importance came Colette Kingdon—an incipient goddess in crimson, gray-eyed and chestnut-haired, a subtle foreshadowing in face and figure of the massively-handsome woman into which she was predestined to grow. Lower in the scale reclined two handmaids: Cordy West—a little, thin brunette, carved of ivory by nature and colored amber by the sun, included in the “crowd” because boys appealed to her only as creatures whom she must try to outrun or outswim—and Pink Hollis, like a full-blown peony, sweet, amiable, rosy-cheeked, who bore the proud distinction of being sister to the season's hero, Edward Hollis. But if Cordy and Pink served but as ladies-in-waiting, the other three girls—sly, spiteful, hook-nosed Hannah Merrill, stupid, dumpy, spectacled Betsy Clark, shy, silent, hazel-eyed Lucy Locke—merged with one another into a mere unconsidered background for Elsa and Colette.

Opposite this array of femininity, the boys, more or less buried in the sand, presented to the eye only their shaved, bullet heads and a heterogeneous collection of arms and legs, the color of rust and bulging with muscle. There was Edward Hollis, clean-skinned and athletic-looking. There were Stubby Keith and Jakey West, the replica of each other except for an inch or two of height, all tanned to a ferocious black and still peeling. There were Tom and Wentie Kingdon, of a Swede-like blondness, so shaved as to head that their ears almost flapped in the breeze and so freckled as to be virtually featureless. There was last and least of all, Kim Morgan, mediocre brother of Elsa.

Janey: saw none of these details. She only knew that here was the holy of holies of junior society in Scarsett, that here was the Mecca of her social pilgrimage.

Elsa Morgan, glancing up, caught sight of the children. Her face changed subtly. But before she could submit Janey to the freezing-out process that always sent her home raging, Janey spoke.

“Mother says,” she announced in her clear, decided treble, “that I can have a party on my birthday. That's week after next—Thursday. And I want you to come.”

Had Janey thrown a lighted hay-mow into their midst, the effect could not have been more sudden. You could almost hear the ice crack. You could almost see the ice melt.

“Going to have ice cream, Janey?” asked Stubby West, who was the cut-up for the crowd. “I don't go to parties where they don't have ice cream.”

“Of course we're going to have ice cream,” said Janey indignantly. “How could it be a party without ice cream?” However deficient Janey was in sense of humor, she was as strong as most children in sense of diplomacy. “You see,” she went on, “besides being my birthday, Bobby Mackintosh is coming down for two weeks and my mother says we ought to do something to make him have a good time.”

The stir of interest that this statement elicited was not confined entirely to the boys.

“How old is this Bobby Mackintosh?” Elsa asked in a tone that she labored to make languid.

“Fifteen,” Janey answered.

“What kind of a boy is he?” Elsa went on.

“Heeth a horrid boy,” little Caroline put in indignantly. “Janey hatesth him and tho do I. He pullth her hair and makth fun of her rompers and tripth her up—”

“He does tease me,” Janey said with exactly as much sweetness as if Caroline, by this untimely abuse, had not put a spoke in the wheel of her diplomacy. “But that's only because he doesn't like little girls.” She paused an instant, then played her trump card. “You see he likes girls old enough to dance. He won a prize for being the best dancer in his dancing-school last winter.”

“Oh!” said Elsa and “Oh!” said Colette and “Oh!” said all the satellites.

“Are you going to have dancing at your party?” Colette asked.

“Oh, of course,” said Janey brightly. “Nothing but dancing.”

“Are you going to have a Virginia Reel?” Elsa continued, not attempting now to conceal her eagerness.

“Oh, of course,” Janey replied again.

“What school does this Bobby Mackintosh go to?” Edward Hollis asked in a deep, masculine voice.

“He's going away to school next year—I don't know what kind of a school it is. His mother calls it a prep school. He's awful strong. He has dumb-bells in his room and those things that look like nine-pins and he plays base-ball and foot-ball.”

Edward Hollis said nothing, but doubling up his fist and swinging his mighty forearm, he contemplated a swelling biceps with satisfaction.

“Is it going to be a costume party?” Colette asked.

Janey thought rapidly. Elsa had given a fairy party, Colette a Mother Goose party. Her imagination, swimming in possibilities, perceived an idea, dived for it, emerged with it in its teeth, so to speak. “I think it will be a flower-party,” she said sweetly. And drawing Caroline to her side, she took her place among the “crowd” as one who has presented credentials and been approved.

That afternoon, Elsa Morgan strolled over to the Warriner place for the first time in weeks. She presented Janey with a string of beads.

“Who's going to dance with you in the Virginia Reel—at your party, Janey?” she asked carelessly.

“I don't know,” said Janey truthfully.

“Well, I thought I'd stop in and tell you that I'll dance it with Bobby Mackintosh instead of Edward Hollis.” Elsa announced in her usual tone of command. “I want to help you all I can,” she added with a politeness that Janey had not for a long time met at her hands.

“Oh thank you, Elsa,” Janey said.

The next morning Colette Kingdon dropped in on her way to the Post-office. She was carrying a doll's high chair. “Janey,” she said winningly, “I found this among my things to-day and I remembered that you always liked it when we used to play dolls together. I don't play dolls any more myself, so I thought I'd bring it down and give it to you.”

“Oh Colette,” Janey said, with a real delight in her voice. “What a darling you are!”

“Oh—that boy who's coming to see you hasn't got here yet, has he?” Colette asked in an incidental sort of way.

“No,” Janey answered. “Mother got a letter from Mrs. Mackintosh to-day and she said she'd be down to-morrow.”

“I was thinking,” Colette went on, “that, perhaps, you'd like somebody to pay special attention to him, as he is a stranger here. And I was going to say that I'd promise to dance the Virginia Reel with him if you wanted me to.”

“Oh thank you, Colette,” Janey said.

That afternoon on her way to the beach, Betsy Clark dropped in.

“Oh, Janey,” she said, “last night I came across a whole lot of paper-dolls that I used to play with and I thought you and Caroline might like them, so I brought them over to-day. Of course I wont come in if that new boy, Bobby Mackintosh, is here. Except, perhaps, you'd like somebody to get acquainted with him. It would be dreadful if the night of your party, he didn't have anybody to dance the Virginia Reel with. I'll promise to be his partner, rather than have him feel hurt.”

“Oh, thank you, Betsy,” Janey said.

On her way to the village, Cordy West caught up with her. “Say, Janey,” she said in her boyish, straight-to-the-point way. “I wish you'd fix it so I could dance the Virginia Reel at your party with that new boy, Bobby Mackintosh. Not that I care anything about dancing with him. But I'd like to cut out Elsa and Colette for once. You know both those girls try to get every new boy that comes to this town and one of them always does. Besides, I feel as if he'd feel kinder lonesome and queer with no partner. And I wouldn't mind dancing with him—even if he was a bad dancer.”

“Oh thank you, Cordy,” Janey said.

In Mallon's, Hannah Merrill stopped her with—“Oh Janey! I've been trying to think to tell you something every time I saw you. I know how hard it is to make girls dance with strange boys at a party. And so if you want to tell that new boy, Bobby Mackintosh, that he's to dance the Virginia Reel with me, why of course I'm perfectly willing to be his partner.”

“Oh thank you, Hannah,” Janey said.

In fact, Janey's reply had become so stereotyped that whe1 Lucy Locke came panting up to her side with a—“Janey, dear, I just stopped to ask you—” Janey's lips were all made up for her opening—“Oh thank you,” the instant Lucy opened her mouth.

But Lucy had a surprise for her.

“—if at your party, you'd be sure not to make me dance the Virginia Reel with that new boy who's coming—Bobby—I forget his last name—”

“Mackintosh,” Janey replied.

“Oh yes—Mackintosh. For Janey—oh I'd be awfully ashamed if Elsa or Colette knew this—but I'm terribly bashful with new boys. I'll tell you a secret, Janey, if you'll cross your throat never to tell anybody: I'm terribly bashful with all boys. I always feel frightened when they ask me to dance. Are you afraid of them, Janey?”

“No,” Janey said, “I'm not afraid of them. But I hate them just as much as if I was.”

“Well, I'd really much rather not dance at all. And Janey, mother asked me to ask you if I might bring my little cousin, Carl Norris? He's coming over to stay with us for a few days 'and that's his last night. I wouldn't like to leave him at home.”

“Why of course,” Janey said cordially.

“He's only ten. And he's bashful too. And I thought if you didn't mind, Janey, I'd dance every dance with him—Virginia Reel and all.”

“All right, Lucy,” said Janey.

“Oh, mother!” Janey said at luncheon, “only eleven days more! I'll be perfickly happy when I'm ten.”

“And I'll be perfectly happy,” said her mother, “when you're grown up.”

Bobby Mackintosh arrived that afternoon. Janey observed with disapproval that he had not changed. His thatch of red hair, full of unmanageable cowlicks, still stuck up in all directions. His big blue eyes still protruded from his head in a hateful, staring, pop-eyed way. His prevailing expression of a sense of superiority to all little girls of nine had not softened an atom. In many other ways his development had not proceeded. Before he had been in the house five minutes, Henry James, the Maltese cat, had retreated wrathfully to the top shelf of the book-case, and George Meredith, the English bull-dog, had degenerated to a yowling, snapping, welter of indignation. Ten minutes more and he had broken Janey's music-box, smashed Caroline's swimming-doll and put Uncle Jim's typewriter out of commission. Two minutes later, proclaiming hunger, he had made way with one glass of milk, two slices of bread and butter, a huge square of ginger-bread and an apple.

The strange part of it was that Uncle Jim, on whose sapience in judging people, Janey could, hitherto, always depend—Uncle Jim seemed to regard him as a human being. For one thing, when Bobby discovered that Mr. Warriner was the author of a favorite foot-ball story, he asked him at least a hundred questions. In fact, the two males had a very interesting talk. Afterwards, Janey heard Uncle Jim tell Mrs. Mackintosh that Bobby had patronized him less than any young person he had met in the last five years.

As soon as possible, Janey took Bobby to the beach—a delighted Caroline tagging these grown-up happenings—and turned him loose on Elsa Morgan's crowd.

After all, Bobby had the virtues of his faults and he fulfilled every prophecy that Janey had made of him. In the dash for the raft, which of course Janey and Caroline could watch only from the shore, he distanced all competitors with a mighty stroke that tore the water into fountains on either side. Once on the raft, he gave an exhibition of fancy diving that brought the girls about him, clamoring for instruction. Coming back, he swam so long under water that even the boys began to look serious. In the warming-up game of ball in which, subsequently, all the males engaged, he caught flies that were the admiration of the girls and made hits that were the envy of the boys.

Trailing Bobby's arrival, Janey Blair swung immediately to the loftiest pinnacle of social success. Elsa offered to teach her how to play tennis. Colette invited her to her house for croquet. Cordy West included her among her guests on a hay-ride. But, better even than this, the girls were always running over at odd times to help her with her doll's clothes. Her family bloomed with an entire fall outfit.

Indeed the Warriner house became temporary rendezvous for the “crowd.”

“Just think,” Janey said for the hundredth time during the week, “I'm almost perfickly happy. I shall be perfickly happy when I'm ten.”

“And I shall be perfectly happy,” her mother reiterated with an emphasis that the last week seemed to have increased, “when you're grown-up.”

There was only one fly in the ointment. Even all this excitement could not seem to hurry the passage of time. “Mother, I feel as if my birthday would never come,” Janey said again and again.

The last day of her ninth year was the worst of all. “It does seem as if to-morrow would never get here,” Janey said fretfully. “I didn't sleep a wink all last night, waiting for to-day.”

Mrs. Blair and Mrs. Mackintosh received this dreadful intelligence with surprising serenity. They even smiled. Mentally, Janey condemned them for their heartlessness. How was she to know that her mother, entering the nursery at a precise quarter after eight, had found her little daughter securely locked in the arms of Morpheus.

But to-morrow did come, passing through the inevitable translation to to-day, during the process—and Elizabeth Jane Blair entered into the blissful state of ten-ness. Not quite blissful however—in spite of such delightful incidents as birthday presents plus ten pats and ten kisses from everybody. For if the last day of nine seemed long, what can be said of the first day of ten? With a birthday-party at its end, it simply prolonged itself through the ages and æons.

But at last an irresponsible sun, having wallowed for hours about the horizon-line, discovered no further excuse for staying above and gradually rolled below. At last, the treacherous stars—late to their appointment, every mother's son of them—began to pin-point their way through the sky. At last, an utterly criminal moon—due hours earlier—lifted a timid head out of the sea and peered about in a shamefaced way, as if, at the first sign of a rebuke, it would slink back into the water. At last, all the vases were filled with flowers and all the fire-places with greens. At last, the dinner-dishes cleared away and the table set with the beautiful Warriner heirlooms, Mrs. Blair, Mrs. Mackintosh and Mr. Warriner went about, lighting lamps, candles and lanterns and whittling paraffin on the bared library floor. At last the music-people came and took their places in the pretty, vine-hung corner. At last, the mothers inserted a flushed and sparkling little Janey into her costume of a white and gold daisy, and a flushed and sparkling little Caroline into her costume of a brown and gold daisy.

Then after one more æon of waiting, there came a step on the piazza—another—a few more—many—the babble of voices—the entrance into the room of what might be a file of girls with the bodies of flowers or a garland of flowers with the faces of girls—and the party had begun.

Begun I said. But for Janey Blair, it really began twice. The first time was when everybody arrived, and she settled herself down with a sigh of relief to watch, knowing full well that none of those big boys would ask her to dance. The second time was when the music struck up and little Carl Norris, the extra guest, suddenly arose, walked the length of the room, paused before her, presented her with a marvelous bow that bi-sected him exactly in the middle, adding in the trained accents of the dancing-schools:

“May I have the pleasure of the first dance?”

Exactly her height, exactly her size, little Carl had a delicate, pale, dark face over which his heavy brown curls were constantly trying to fall. He wore a little duck sailor-suit, the trousers of which came to the very ground and flared starchily there. He wore a wonderful tie of knotted cord, the ends of which disappeared into his blouse-pocket. He wore on one sleeve a mysterious device embroidered in colors.

To Janey it seemed as if the glass of fashion and the mould of form had stooped to her.

She rose trembling. Trembling, Carl put his arm about her. The two children teetered and see-sawed until they fancied they had caught the swing of the music, then, like two frail crafts that, having waited for fair weather, embark trustingly on a glassy sea, they whirled off. One instant, Janey thought with horror of Lucy and her promise to her; the next she caught sight of her spinning past with Bobby.

Finding Lucy a dancer perfectly adapted to his methods, Bobby Mackintosh economized time, trouble and energy by dancing every dance with her. In vain, Elsa Morgan, a vision of cool, blonde loveliness in her water-lily costume, waved white petals of coquetry in his very face. In vain, Colette—the most full-blown of pink roses—held out a thornless hand to him. In vain, Cordy, a bachelor-button, Betsy, a poppy, and Hannah, a morning-glory, assailed him with all kinds of hints, suggestions, invitations, opportunities. When the flowers were distributed for the Virginia Reel, he calmly seized two dahlias, presented one to his partner and then triumphantly led her forth.

Stubby West, maddened to fury by Colette's indifference, left the party prematurely. For three dances, Colette experienced the novel sensation of playing wall-flower. Bridling at first, her chagrin finally conquered. Hysterics ensued. Mrs. Blair and Mrs. Mackintosh haled her upstairs and spent an hour calming her.

Perhaps strangest of all was the metamorphosis of Lucy Locke. Never before had Lucy reigned belle. Never before had she been even courted. The color of excitement began to sift into her pale cheeks. The light of coquetry began to star her hazel eyes. Her little violet cap cocked itself rakishly over one ear. She danced like a fairy. Incessantly she talked. Incessantly she rang the chime of her silvery little laugh. The boys, following their leader, began to crowd about her. It was literally her début.

None of these events, however, excited such comment as the instantaneous romance of Janey Blair and Carl Norris.

They danced every dance together. In the pauses of the music, they sat side by side, rapturously exchanging ten-year-old points of view.

After the first waltz, Carl said—“Janey, will you dance every dance with me?”

And Janey said, “Yes.”

After the first two-step, Carl said—“Janey: when we eat our ice cream, will you sit with me?”

And Janey said, “Yes.”

In the intermission, Carl said—“Janey, will you be my girl? I never had a girl before.”

And Janey said, “Yes.”

After the Virginia Reel, Carl said—“Janey, I'm going home to-morrow but I'll come back again next year to Scarsett so's to be at your party when you're eleven. Will you dance every dance with me then?”

And Janey said, “Yes.”

After he had said his last good-night, he suddenly darted again to Janey's side. “Janey,” he whispered, “I think you're an awful pretty little girl. And when you're eleven, you'll be even prettier.”

Pretty!

She had always yearned to be pretty. But nobody had ever called her pretty before. Once she had asked her mother if she thought her pretty. Mrs. Blair had answered—“If you behave as well as you look, you'll do very well.” And once, not extracting much encouragement from that cryptic remark, she had inquired of the same authority if she thought she would be pretty when she grew up. Mrs. Blair had replied—“I don't know, I'm sure. Pretty is as pretty does.”

Pretty! Eleven! Eleven! !

Missing her daughter after the last guest had departed, Mrs. Blair went upstairs in search of her. Janey was not in the nursery. Mrs. Blair passed on to her own room. There in the corner, a small white-and-gold figure stood before the long pier-glass. But Janey was not looking at that reflection. She was peering at the smaller, closer one which peered back at her from a hand-mirror. Gazing into the taller glass, Mrs. Blair caught the whole picture.

The expression on Janey's face was new—a little happy smile, half the wonder of revelation, half self-satisfaction, ran riot there. Staring at her, Mrs. Blair caught the first budding in her daughter's look of another Janey—the Janey of eighteen years. Slim, virginal, delicate, dewy, the freckles vanished forever from the white skin, the incorrigible hair roped into a coronal softly burnished, softly brown, the red lips smiled with the unthinking joy of youth, the blue eyes shone with star-dreams.

Something warned Janey that she was not alone. She looked up. “Mother,” she said radiantly, “I shall be perfickly happy when I'm eleven.”

“Janey Blair,” her mother said, a desperate catch of the breath roughing her voice, “don't you dare grow up!”


text: Talk:The Red Book Magazine/Volume 17/Number 2/Janey Discovers the Great Illusion


text: The Bee Hunter (serial)

title: The Bee Hunter (serial)


text: Talk:The Bee Hunter (serial)

title: Talk:The Bee Hunter (serial)


text:
Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/14

x Kalevala. The history of the Kalevipoeg will be found in my work entitled The Hero of Esthonia, published by Nimmo in 1895, in two volumes. However, the Esthonians make him not a slave, but a king. In the Kalevala we meet with no kings, but only patriarchs, or chiefs of clans.

The principal heroines of the Kalevala are Ilmatar, the Daughter of the Air, the Creatrix of the world, in the first Runo, whose counterpart is Marjatta, the mother of the successor of Väinämöinen, in the last Runo; Aino, a young Lapp girl beloved of Väinämöinen, whose sad fate forms one of the most pathetic episodes in the Kalevala; Louhi, the Mistress of Pohjola, or the North Country; and her daughter, afterwards the wife of Ilmarinen. The character of the daughter of Louhi presents three phases, which illustrate more than anything else the composite character of the poem, for it is impossible that any two can have been drawn by the same hand.

Firstly, we find her as the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the witch, playing the part of a Medea, without her cruelty.

Secondly, we find her as a timid and shrinking bride, in fact almost a child-bride.

Thirdly, when married, she appears as a wicked and heartless peasant-woman of the worst type.

The heroes are all skilled in magic, and to some extent are able to command or propitiate even the gods. A peculiarity of Finnish magic is what is called “the word of origin.”

To control or banish an evil power, it is sufficient to know and to repeat to it its proper name, and to relate the history of its creation.

Before concluding the Introduction, it may be well to give a brief summary of the principal contents of the fifty Runos of the poem.

Runo I. After a preamble by the bard, he proceeds to relate how the Virgin of the Air descended into the sea, was tossed about by the winds and waves, modelled the earth, and brought forth the culture-hero Väinämöinen, who swims to shore.

Runo II. Väinämöinen clears and plants the country, and sows barley.

Runo III. The Laplander Joukahainen presumes to contend with Väinämöinen in singing, but is plunged by him into a

title: Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/14


text:
Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/15

Rh swamp, till he pledges to him his sister Aino; after which he is released, and returns home discomfited. But Aino is much distressed at the idea of being obliged to marry an old man.

Runo IV. Väinämöinen makes love to Aino in the forest; but she returns home in grief and anger, and finally wanders away again, and is drowned while trying to swim out to some water-nymphs in a lake. Her mother weeps for her incessantly.

Runo V. Väinämöinen fishes up Aino in the form of a salmon; but she escapes him, and his mother advises him to seek a bride in Pohjola, the North Country, sometimes identified with Lapland, but apparently still further north.

Runo VI. While Väinämöinen is riding over the water on his magic steed, Joukahainen shoots the horse under him. Väinämöinen falls into the water, and is driven onwards by a tempest, while Joukahainen returns to his mother, who upbraids him for shooting at the minstrel.

Runo VII. Väinämöinen is carried by an eagle to the neighbourhood of the Castle of Pohjola, where the chatelaine, Louhi, receives him hospitably, and offers him her beautiful daughter if he will forge for her the talisman called the Sampo. He replies that he cannot do so himself, but will send his brother Ilmarinen, so Louhi gives him a sledge in which to return home.

Runo VIII. Väinämöinen, on his journey, finds the daughter of Louhi sitting on a rainbow weaving, and makes love to her. In trying to accomplish the tasks she sets him, he wounds himself severely, and drives away till he finds an old man who promises to stanch the blood.

Runo IX. The old man heals Väinämöinen by relating the origin of Iron, and by salving his wounds.

Runo X. Väinämöinen returns home, and as Ilmarinen declines to go to Pohjola to forge the Sampo, he causes a whirlwind to carry him to the castle. Ilmarinen forges the Sampo, but the maiden declines to marry him at present, and he returns home disconsolate.

Runos XI.—XV. These Runos relate the early adventures of Lemminkainen. He carries off and marries the beautiful Kyllikki, but quarrels with her, and starts off to Pohjola to woo the daughter of Louhi. Louhi sets him various tasks, and at

title: Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/15


text:
Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/26

 And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,

And mocks her tyrant! Venice lives again,

New risen from the waters! and the cry

Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,

Is heard in lordly Genoa, and where

The marble spires of Milan wound the air,

Rings from the Alps to the Sicilian shore,

And Dante's dream is now a dream no more.

But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,

Thy ruined palaces are but a pall

That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name

Burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame,

Beneath the noonday splendour of the sun

Of new Italia! for the night is done,

The night of dark oppression, and the day

Hath dawned in passionate splendour: far away

The Austrian hounds are hunted from the land,

Beyond those ice-crowned citadels which stand

Girdling the plain of royal Lombardy,

From the far West unto the Eastern sea.

I know, indeed, that sons of thine have died

In Lissa's waters, by the mountain-side

Of Aspromonte, on Novara's plain,—

Nor have thy children died for thee in vain:

And yet, methinks, thou hast not drunk this wine

From grapes new-crushed of Liberty divine, 12

title: Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/26


text: Index:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/1


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/2


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/3


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/4


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/5


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/6


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/7


text: Poems (Blind)/The Torrent

title: Poems (Blind)/The Torrent


text: Page:The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).webm/8


text:
Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/16

xii ength he is slain, cast into the river of Tuoni, the death-god, and is hewed to pieces; but is rescued and resuscitated by his mother.

Runos XVI.—XVII. Väinämöinen regrets having renounced the daughter of Louhi in favour of Ilmarinen, and begins to build a boat, but cannot complete it without three magic words, which he seeks for in vain in Tuonela, the death-kingdom, but afterwards jumps down the throat of the dead giant, Antero Vipunen, and compels him to sing to him all his wisdom.

Runos XVIII.—XIX. Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen travel to Pohjola, one by water and the other by land, and agree that the maiden shall make her choice between them. She prefers Ilmarinen, who is aided by his bride to perform all the tasks set him by Louhi.

Runos XX.—XXV. The wedding is celebrated at Pohjola, an immense ox being slaughtered for the feast; after which ale is brewed by Osmotar, “Kaleva’s most beauteous daughter.” Every one is invited, except Lemminkainen, who is passed over as too quarrelsome and ill-mannered. Before the bride and bridegroom leave, they have to listen to long lectures about their future conduct.

Runos XXVI.—XXX. Lemminkainen is enraged at not being invited to the wedding, forces his way into the Castle of Pohjola through the magical obstacles in his path, and slays the lord of the castle in a duel. He flies home, and his mother sends him to hide in a distant island where all the warriors are absent, and where he lives with the women till the return of the men, when he is again obliged to fly. He returns home, and finds the whole country laid waste, and only his mother in hiding. Against her advice, he persuades his old comrade Tiera to join him in another expedition against Pohjola, but Louhi sends the Frost against them, and they are driven back in great distress.

Runos XXXI.—XXXVI. A chief named Untamo lays waste the territory of his brother Kalervo, and carries off his wife. She gives birth to Kullervo, who vows vengeance against Untamo in his cradle. Untamo brings Kullervo up as a slave, but as he spoils everything he touches, sells him to Ilmarinen.

title: Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/16


text: The Fall of the House of Usher (film)

title: The Fall of the House of Usher (film)


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations


text:
Author:Melville Webber

As director

 * The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), with James Sibley Watson

title: Author:Melville Webber


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/I.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/I.


text:
Author:James Sibley Watson

As director

 * The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), with Melville Webber

title: Author:James Sibley Watson


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/II.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/II.


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/367

dialect treated in this paper is that spoken in a large irregularly shaped plain of some 250 square miles in area, lying about midway between Sendai Bay and Niigata, just on the west of that central range of mountains which stretches like a back-bone from Kôdzuké to Awomori.

The word Yonézawa formerly designated the territory of the Uyésugi family, but being the name neither of a shiu nor of a kôri should perhaps now be restricted to their castle-town, the present capital of the Okitama Ken. In common parlance, however, the name is still extended to the whole of the plain at the southern extremity of Uzen, (the new southern division of Déwa), of which a part belongs to the prefecture of Yamagata, a handsome town about 42$1⁄2$ ri to the north. Besides the central range already referred to, which marks the boundary between Déwa and Ôshiu, lofty mountains separate this plain from Aidzu on the south, and Echigo, and Sakata on the west, so that it is entirely hemmed in by these natural barriers, except on the north, where a narrow gorge communicates with Yamagata and the rest of Déwa.

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/367


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/III.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/III.


text:
Page:NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 18; CZECHOSLOVAKIA; THE SOCIETY CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110015-7.pdf/29

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110015-7

responsible for church affairs with liberals who were in favor of restoring some of the rights lost by the church, the Dubcek leadership reinstated several bishops to their dioceses and lifted restrictions on seminaries and other church activities. In 1968 the Minister of Culture and Information, under whose province church affairs fell, went on record as saying that "religion is the private affair of every citizen," and that religious education might be patterned after the system of Sunday schools in the United States. The number of children enrolled in religious classes rose sharply, in some areas to 80%. There were fewer than 800 students enrolled in 1968 in the country's two seminaries, however.

After the fall of the Dubcek regime, church-state relations reverted to those of the 1950's, but protracted and difficult negotiations between the Vatican and the representatives of the Czechoslovak Government resumed in November 1972 and resulted in a partial compromise agreement in February 1973 on the appointment of four new bishops to fill some of the numerous vacancies in the hierarchy, a problem that had grown especially acute with the death of three bishops in 1972. With the consecration of these four new bishops—three of whom filled vacancies for Slovakia—by a representative of the Vatican, the Catholic Church has reestablished bishops in six of the 12 dioceses in Czechoslovakia. Although at least three of the four new bishops have previously participated in the activities of the regime-sponsored organization for priests—Pacem in Terris, the successor to the Catholic Clergy for Peace organization abolished by the Dubcek government in 1968—a Vatican official noted that the Pope took into consideration "valid pastoral achievements." In addition, the Vatican has made allowance for the fact that a large number of Catholic clergy had joined the Pacem in Terris movement under pressure from state authorities because to refuse to do so would have resulted in the church in Czechoslovakia being without priests. Therefore if the Czechoslovak Government has desired to improve its international image and, like Poland and Hungary, establish a policy of limited cooperation with the Catholic Church, the Vatican at the same time has afforded another example of its concern over the inadequacy of its presence in Czechoslovakia, which has compelled it to come to terms with Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the interests of preserving and extending its influence.

Policy changes and official attitudes apparently extend only to Czechoslovakia's external relations with the Vatican. On the domestic front, the activities of the some 3,300 priests are still severely restricted, with many not permitted to perform their pastoral duties even though hundreds of communities in Czech and Slovak dioceses are without priests. Admission to the two Catholic seminaries was again restricted in 1973, thereby restoring the situation as it existed before 1968. Notwithstanding the February 1973 accord, the Czechoslovak Government antireligious campaign has continued unabated in the mass media. Also, according to recent reports, children of practicing Catholics may no longer be admitted to general secondary schools. Therefore, from the Vatican's standpoint, key issues remain unresolved.

Another event which may affect church-state relations in Czechoslovakia was the formal installation of Stepan Trochta, bishop of Litomerice, as a cardinal on 12 April 1973. On that occasion the Pope told the new cardinal that his elevation might contribute to the solution of church-state problems in Czechoslovakia. The second secretary of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Rome was among those who attended the ceremony.

In addition to the Catholic Church, two other important pre-Reformation churches existed in the territory of the Czechoslovak First Republic—the Greek Orthodox or Uniat, and the Orthodox. Both of these churches were ethnically based upon the Ukrainian population of Carpathian Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia. After the cession in 1945 of Carpathian Ruthenia to the Soviet Union, the Orthodox Church became insignificant, with a remnant within Czechoslovakia of only slightly over 25,000 communicants. The Uniat Church, left with a membership of nearly 200,000 and with a hierarchy subordinate to Rome (although its rite is similar to that of the Orthodox Church), was forcibly merged by the government in 1950 into the smaller Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow in order to sever the Vatican ties of the Greek Catholic Church and promote Czechoslovak-Russian relations. Most of the Greek Catholic parishes are located in eastern Slovakia. The results of a 1966 survey conducted in Slovakia seeking information on religious affinities indicate that the official pressure on the Greek Catholics to accept allegiance to the Orthodox Church was not too successful. Only 25% considered themselves as Orthodox. Another survey in 1968 showed that the overwhelming majority of the Greek Catholics who had become Orthodox in the 1950's would return to Catholicism if they had the option. During the liberalization period in 1968 the Greek Catholics began to reestablish their own parishes but it is not known whether their connection to the Orthodox Church has been permanently severed.

Protestant churches rapidly expanded their membership in the 1920's and 1930's, particularly in

23

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110015-7


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/IV.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/IV.


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/V.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/V.


text:
Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 07.djvu/24

Rh with distance. Still, we could see Juba clinging to the window-grating, although at every instant I expected him to fall.

But Edmund would not despair. His eyes shone as he drove the machinery of the plane to its utmost limit. The crew were stupefied, and offered no opposition.

"We must not lose sight of them," said Edmund, his self-control becoming more perfect as the minutes passed. "We must never lose sight of them for an instant."

"But surely," I exclaimed, "you cannot hope to overtake them?"

"Yes," he said almost fiercely, "I hope even that! Remember," he added more coolly, "that Ingra really knows nothing of the management of the controllers. He has watched me operate them long enough to know how to start the car; Unless Heaven is against us, he will not be able to work it up to its best speed, and he can hardly direct it with certainty. At any moment he may find himself descending. Heaven grant that they do not come down with a rush."

"But there is Ala," I said. "She knows how to manage the machinery. Perhaps he will be compelled to entrust it to her."

Edmund ground his teeth in rage at my; words,

"Yes, Ala is there, a prisoner!"

"And Juba," I added.

"But how long can he remain on that fearful perch? And what can he do?"

"If they are aware of his presence," I suggested, "perhaps Ala may find a way to communicate with him, and aid him in his efforts."

The idea seemed to strike Edmund, and he joyfully replied:

"Yes, yes, surely she will find a way. She is a great woman—a woman to trust in an emergency. What a brave act that was of Juba's! Who could have dreamed that under his shaggy exterior there was a heart of gold, and so quick a brain?"

"He was the head blacksmith in the cavern," said Jack. "If there is any way to get into that car, he will find it."

"It can only be done by aid from within," replied Edmund. "But I trust to Ala. She will find a way."

"They cannot but be aware that Juba is on the car," I said. "They must surely hear him, and his mere presence will have its effect."

"If Ingra does not eontrive to throw him off," suggested Jack.

"He cannot get at him," was Edmund's reply. "If only he doesn't lose his breath with the swift motion, and if his strength holds out, all may be well. But we must keep them in sight. It is our only chance, and theirs."

The ear was now so far away that it looked very small; but, being thrown in silhouette against the softly glowing cloud-dome—for it was at a greater elevation than ours—we could still, with the aid of a glass, clearly see Juba clinging to the outside.

It was a comfort to know that he was yet able to retain his perch. If he could stay there to the end, he might ba of estimable service when the crisis should arrive

T first I was somewhat surprised that Edmund kept at so low an elevation compared with that of the fleeing car. We were not more than a half-mile above the ground, while the object of our pursuit was at least three miles high. But in a little while it became obvious that the course which Edmund had adopted was a very wise one. In the first place, by keeping at a low elevation we could always see the car projected against the bright sky, and there was thus less danger of its escaping us.

In the next place, as Edmund pointed out, when the car came down, as it must do some time, we could cut in under it, so to speak, and approach the landing-point along a base-line shorter than the diagonal that the car would have to pursue.

"The higher he goes," said Edmund, "the greater our advantage will be. Fortunately, he seems to he rising all the time. There is no danger that he will run away in that direction.

"He has no conception of anything above the cloud-dome, and his only object is to get as far away as possible, in order to defy pursuit before landing. I expect every moment, now, to see him begin to descend."

"But are you sure that he can manipulate the controllers well enough to make a safe descent?" I asked.

"Let us pray that he can," replied Edmund. "I will give him credit for great Intelligence. If he did not possess extraordinary capacity, he would never have learned, simply by watching me, how to run the machinery.

"The fact that he could penetrate so far gives me hope, that he has learned enough to insure their safety. The highspeed controllers, used when astride the atmosphere, are in a different location from the others, and are manipulated somewhat differently.

"I did not touch them during our journey, so that I have little fear that he will discover their use. It is now evident that we can at least keep the car in sight.

"The resistance of this dense atmosphere is a serious obstacle to a machine which, unlike the plane, does not derive an advantage from that very circumstance."

E were now many miles from the capital, and traveling toward the tropical belt. It was evident that Ingra intended to take refuge again in the wilderness, though at a point far distant from the place where we had so recently encountered him.

"Ala has told me," said Edmund, "that Ingra, who is very fond of wild sports, and who until our arrival seems to have exhibited no evil characteristics, has a number of hunting-lodges in this vast wilderness, and it was due to the unlucky fate that guided us in our descent that we fell into his hands.

For"For [sic], unknowingly, we came down within a half-mile of one of his lodges. He always has a retinue in attendance at his lodges, and probably he is now making for one of these places."

"Do you think they are aware that we are following?"

"Of course, they will expect to be pursued, but


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/VI.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/VI.


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/VII.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/VII.


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/VIII.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/VIII.


text:
Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/35

30

Early in the nineteenth century American beaver trappers began to penetrate through the Apache-infested mountains that bordered Pimería on the north and east. Beaver were then fairly abundant in the mountain streams and down the Colorado Grande to the very end in the burning lowlands. The annals of the Pimas make no mention of these earliest visitors from the United States, but it is known that several parties reached the "Pimos Gileños," who were found uniformly friendly. The Patties, father and son, journeyed from the Rio Grande to trap beaver in the Gila country between 1825 and 1828, and in the latter year pushed on to California. Kit Carson, with a party of trappers, returned from his first trip to California by this route during the winter of 1829–30. The famous trapper, Paul Weaver, inscribed his name on the walls of Casa Grande in 1833.

Besides the self-reliant and well-armed trappers, a few parties of settlers made their way to California through the Gila valley while it was yet in the possession of the Mexicans, though the best-known route was then north of the Colorado canyon. With the opening of the new era of American ownership began the journeys of surveyors and explorers. The first military invasion was by General Kearney, with a party of 200 troopers, in 1846. Emory's excellent Notes of a Military Reconnoissance and Johnston's Journal give details of this journey with the first reliable information concerning the Pimas. Kearney was followed by Lieutenant-Colonel Cooke in command of the Mormon battalion, which opened a practicable wagon road to California by way of Tucson and the Pima villages. In his official report Colonel Cooke states:

title: Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/35


text:
Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 07.djvu/25

600 I am in hopes that Ingra has not seen us, and does not know that we have kept within eyesight. You remember that the car has no window in the rear—a mistake of construction which until now I have regretted. It has not swerved from its course since starting, and I have been careful to keep directly behind it.

"Consequently, there is every reason to think that Ingra, trusting to the speed of the car, has not even taken the trouble to look behind. Besides, we have kept comparatively close to the ground, where it is not easy to see us from a distance, and the moment I perceive the car beginning to descend I shall run down to the very tree-tops in order to be the better concealed."

Our hopes now rose high. We had demonstrated an ability to keep the car in view, though, to be sure, it had become little more than a dark speck in the sky, and its steady motion relieved our anxiety concerning a possible disaster from Ingra's inability to manage it.

Several hours passed, and once more we had left the inhabited lands behind and were passing over the border of the wilderness, where the luxuriance of the vegetation surpassed that of the Amazonian forests of the wilds of Borneo.

Suddenly, Edmund uttered an exclamation.

"Great Heavens!" he cried, "Look! Something is wrong. It is all to end in disaster at last!"

ACK and I, startled by Edmund's agitation, glanced at the distant car. It was falling from the sky!

It shot hither and thither, sweeping in long descending curves, and darting to one side and another, like a collapsed balloon.

"What can have happened?" I exclaimed. "Good Heavens! If Juba should be flung off now, our only ally would he lost."

"No; we have another," said Edmund quietly, all his self-mastery asserting itself—"Ala, herself."

"Look," he continued, a moment afterward, "the car rights itself. It will come down all right."

It was so. The eccentric movements ceased, and we saw the car descending rapidly, but with a steady motion which indicated that it was again under control. During the ten minutes that the wild tumble lasted, it had fallen within half a mile of the ground, and now it wa3 gliding swiftly away from us, over the top of the great forest.

Edmund strove to increase our speed, making the silent engineer and his men aid him with their utmost exertions. Glancing behind, I now noticed, for the first time, that several airplanes were pursuing us; but they were far behind.

They had probably started in pursuit as soon as possible after our chase began, but we had been so absorbed in watching the car that we had not even thought of looking behind. We had trusted entirely to ourselves, but now I felt a satisfaction in knowing that we should have assistance in an emergency.

I called Edmund's attention to our pursuers, but he gave no heed. His whole mind and soul were fixed upon the car. In a little while it had descended so low that it became necessary for us to rise, in order to keep it in view.

Nevertheless, as Edmund had foreseen, our course, lying so near the ground, had given us a certain advantage, and we had drawn preceptibly nearer while running for the point toward which the car was descending. Still, it now became very difficult to keep the object of our pursuit in view.

At times we lost sight of it entirely against the dark background of foliage. But an occasional gleam from the polished sides of the car enabled us to retain a general notion of its location.

T last it dropped into the great sea of vegetation, and was completely lost. At this time we were apparently, about three miles behind it. "Keep your eyes fixed on the point where it disappeared," said Edmund. "Don't let your sight waver. I shall make straight for the place."

Fortune favored us, for at the spot where the car had sunk from sight a group of enormous trees lifted their mighty tops high above the general surface of the forest, and this landmark was invaluable to us.

When we had run within an eighth of a mile of these trees, Edmund at last slowed up, and got the airplane under perfect control.

We crept silently above the tree-tops, every eye fixed upon the spot where we expected at any moment to see the car.

Suddenly a forest glade appeared, shadowed by the very trees that had served as our guides, and there was the car resting upon the ground! The door was toward us, and open.

In it stood Ala, looking with a horrified countenance upon a spectacle that might well have frozen her blood.

Ingra and Juba were engaged in a terrific battle. At one moment they rolled upon the ground, locked together, looking like a man and a wild beast at death-grips.

Each was fiercely exerting his utmost strength. Now one, now the other, was on top.

Each endeavoring to throttle the other, they revolved so rapidly that the eye could hardly follow the successive phases of the struggle.

Suddenly they rolled against a rock, and the shock releasing their hold, both leaped to their feet. But neither flinched, nor gave back.

They sprang together again with demoniac fury, Juba's huge eyes blazing out of the wild tangle of his hair, while his huge, shaggy arms resembled those of a bear rushing madly to the death-hug.

But Ingra was a foe worthy to encounter so formidable an antagonist. With amazing strength and agility, he hurled his assailant backward, and then, to my horror, I saw that he had his long knife in his hand, while Juba had no weapon.

OWERING his form as he sped to the onset, and with a wicked lunge, Ingra darted upon his foe. For an instant I thought that the blade had reached the vitals of his antagonist, for Juba staggered backward, but a second later Ingra shot away as if the walking-beam of an en-


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/IX.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/IX.


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/X.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/X.


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/368

 It is said, but I have no means of testing the accuracy of the statement, that some of the peculiarities of this dialect are to a certain extent common to the language current in the rest of Déwa and the adjoining monster province of Ôshiu; but that the nasal intonation does not there acquire that intensity which makes a Yonézawa peasant hopelessly unintelligible to a man from Tôkiô. It is possible therefore that some of the facts put forward in this paper may apply to the more widely diffused dialect of Ôshiu, but I limit my responsibility to the assertion of their existence in the dialect of Yonézawa, where I have collected them from the lips of the natives.

Taking the ordinary language of Tôkiô as the standard for comparison, the Yonézawa dialect differs from if,
 * (1) In its peculiar intonation.
 * (2) In the pronunciation of certain syllables.
 * (3) In the meaning attached to certain words.
 * (4) In the possession of certain words not known in Tôkiô.
 * (5) In its phraseology and choice of expressions.

(1).—The intonation is exceedingly unmelodious, being deep, gruff, and intensely nasal, both nose and teeth being kept tightly closed. Among the lower classes this is aggravated by a peculiar lisp, from which as a rule the educated men are free. The difference of the mode of articulation is so great, that apart from the other peculiarities of the dialect, it is alone sufficient to render it a matter of no small difficulty for unaccustomed ears to understand the most ordinary sentence.

(2).—In the pronunciation of the syllables a distinction is made between イ and ヰ both of which are in Tôkiô called i, the latter only retaining this sound, the former being called é. Thus they commence the syllabary é, ro, ha, and say énu ‘a dog,’ éshi ‘a stone,’ but ido ‘a well,’ isha ‘a doctor.’

As at Tôkiô, no distinction is made between the syllables エ and 𛄡, but the initial Y sound is invariably strongly pronounced as Yéchizen, Yéchigo. The

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/368


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/369

 pronunciation according to the spelling Echizen, which from its use in the columns of the Japan Mail I imagine to have the sanction of the highest authority, is not only never heard, but is hardly understood. ‘Echigo’ would be understood to mean the wild strawberry.

The series of aspirate sounds (in Tôkiô ha, hi, fu, be, ho), all take an initial F., thus fa, fi, fu, fe, fo. In the mouths of many of the samurai this F often becomes Fü, thus füana, füata, füato, but the lower classes say decidedly fana, fata, fato, for ‘a flower,’ ‘a flag’ ‘a pigeon.’ This interchange of the initial sound of F and H is of such frequent occurrence in philology as not to require any comment, but I may perhaps mention it as occurring in China, where Foochow becomes Hookchow in the mouths of the Cantonese, while every schoolboy is familiar with the fact of the ancient digamma having been replaced by the rough breathing.

In the T series, チ is pronounced chi as at Tôkiô by the majority of the educated class, but among the common people it becomes a lisping tsi, and as a natural sequence ヂ is pronounced dzi. In the pronunciation of the contracted syllables usually spelt cha, cho, chu (for chi-ya, chi-yo, chi-yu) it is to be noted that the Y of the second component part is preserved: as tsya, tsyo, tsyu. Students of Chinese will remark that this change of ch into ts is identical with one of the differences existing between the Peking and Nanking dialects.

In the S series (at Tôkiô sa, shi, su, se, so) the sh appears to be transposed, and the series runs sa, si, su, she, so. This also chiefly applies to the lower classes who lisp all the sibilants, and say shenshei for sensei, and for ‘seventy-one’ say sitsi dzyu-itsi. The word for ‘seven’ (shichi), which in Tôkiô is pronounced almost in one syllable, has its two syllables distinctly pronounced by all classes, and is made to rhyme with ichi. ヅ has identically the same sound as ヂ, the Yonezawa dialect following the Tôkiô

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/369


text: Index:Holy Bible Berean Standard Bible.pdf


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/XI.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/XI.


text: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/XII.

title: Poems (Blind)/Aspirations/XII.


text: Poems (Blind)/Delight

title: Poems (Blind)/Delight


text:
Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/74

78 vicious from the dawn of history, and every race has reeked with sin. To say of a man that he is like his contemporaries is to say that he is a scoundrel without excuse. The virtues are accessible to all. Athens was vicious, yet Socrates was virtuous. Rome was corrupt, but Marcus Aurelius was not corrupt. To oflfsct Nero the gods gave Seneca. When literary France groveled at the feet of the third Napoleon Hugo stood erect

It will be a dark day for the world when in- fractions of the moral law by A and B are accepted as justification of the sins of C. But even in the days of Columbus men were not all pirates; God inspired enough of them to be merchants to serve as prey for the others; and while turning his honest penny by plundering them, the great Christopher was worsted by a Venetian trading galley and had to pickle his pelt in a six-mile swim to the Portuguese coast, a wiser and a wetter thief. If he had had the hard luck to drown we might none of us have been Americans, but the gods would have missed the revolting spectacle of an entire people prostrate before the blood-beslubbered image of a moral idiot, performing solemn rites of adoration with a litany of lies.


text: Poems (Blind)/A Sigh

title: Poems (Blind)/A Sigh


text: Poems (Blind)/On a Letter

title: Poems (Blind)/On a Letter


text: Poems (Blind)/The Wind

title: Poems (Blind)/The Wind


text: Poems (Blind)/On a Letter/I.

title: Poems (Blind)/On a Letter/I.


text: Poems (Blind)/On a Letter/II.

title: Poems (Blind)/On a Letter/II.


text: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring

title: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring


text:
Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/36

] A battalion of dragoons under Maj. L.P. Graham marched westward to California by way of the Pima villages in 1848. Bancroft states that he has a manuscript diary from Capt. Cave J. Coutts, of this battalion, in which it is recorded that the Pimas were very hospitable and exhibited conspicuous signs of thrift.

The parties of the Boundary Survey Commissioners passed down the Gila in 1851, and the account of the Pimas by J.R. Bartlett, the American commissioner, is by far the best that has been published thus far. Bartlett's party returned eastward through the Pima villages in 1852.

In 1854 Lieuts. J.G. Parke and George Stoneman began at the Pima villages the survey for a railroad which was destined to pass through just a quarter of a century later. In 1855 Lieutenant Parke, with another party, made a second survey and again visited the villages.

From the time of the discovery of gold in California, in 1849, parties of gold seekers, numbering in all many thousand persons each year, followed the Gila route, meeting with hospitality from the Pimas and almost equally uniform hostility from the Apaches. The location of the Pimas in the midst of the 280-mile stretch between Tucson and Yuma was a peculiarly fortunate one for the travelers, who could count upon supplies and if need be protection at a point where their journey otherwise must have been most perilous.

The United States Government first recognized the value of the assistance rendered by the Pimas when by act of Congress of February 28, 1859, $1,000 was appropriated for a survey of their lands and $10,000 for gifts.

title: Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/36


text: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring/I.

title: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring/I.


text: Page:Holy Bible Berean Standard Bible.pdf/1


text: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring/II.

title: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring/II.


text: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring/III.

title: Poems (Blind)/Echoes of Spring/III.