each other. Down at the foot of my lawn I have a largeshallow pan placed, which is kept half-filled with water in summer. Ican see it from my bedroom window, and it is very pleasant to watch thebirds having a bath in the morning. There is neither jealousy norhatred displayed during the performance of this most healthfuloperation. I sometimes see blackbirds, thrushes, and sparrows alltubbing at one time, and quite hilarious over it.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
HARRY'S HOLIDAY--KING JOHN; OR, THE TALE OF A TUB--SINDBAD; OR, THE DOGOF PENELLAN.
"Country life,--let us confess it, Man will little help to bless it, Yet, for gladness there We may readily possess it In its native air.
"Rides and rambles, sports and farming, Home, the heart for ever warming, Books and friends and ease, Life must after all be charming, Full of joys like these."
Tupper.
"I'm not sure, Ida, that you will like the following story. There istruth in it, though, and a moral mixed up with it which you may unravelif you please. I call it--"
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HARRY'S HOLIDAY.
"The hero of my little story was a London boy. Truth is, he had spentall the days and years of his young life in town. I do not think thathe had ever, until a certain great event in his life took place, seeneven the suburbs of the great city in which it was his lot to reside.His whole world consisted of stone walls, so to speak, of aninterminable labyrinth of streets and lanes and terraces, for everfilled with a busy multitude, hurrying to and fro in the pursuit oftheir avocations. I believe he got to think at last that there wasnothing, that there _could_ be nothing beyond this mighty London; and ofcountry life, with all its joys and pleasures, he knew absolutelynothing. A tree to him was merely a dingy, sooty kind of shrub, thatgrew in the squares; flowers were gaudy vegetables used in windowdecorations; a lark was a bird that spent all its life in a box-cage,chiefly, in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials. As to trees growing inwoods and in forests where the deer and the roe live wild and free; asto flowers carpeting the fields with a splendour of bloom; as to larksmounting high in air to troll their happy songs--he had not even thepower of conception. True, he had read of such things, just as he hadread of the moon as seen through a telescope, and the one subject wasjust as vague to him as the other.
"Harry at this time was, I fear, just a little sceptical. He lacked ina great measure that excellent quality, without which there would bevery little real happiness in this world--I mean faith. He onlybelieved in what he really saw and could understand, from which, ofcourse, you will readily infer that his mind was neither a verycomprehensive nor a very clever one. And you are right.
"Harry was not a strong boy; his face was pale, his eyes were large andlustrous, his poor little arms and legs were far from robust, and youcould have found plenty of country lads who measured twice as much roundthe chest as Harry. Well, his parents, who really did all they couldfor their boy, were very pleased when one morning the postman broughtthem a letter from the far north, inviting their little son to come andspend a long autumn holiday at the farm of Dunryan, in the wilds ofAberdeenshire. He was to go all alone in the steamboat, simply in careof the steward, who promised to be very kind to him and look well afterhis comforts. And so he did, too; but I think that from the very momentthat the great ship began to drop down the river, leaving the citybehind it, with all its smoke and its gloom, Harry began to be a newboy. A new current of life seemed to begin to circulate in his veins, abetter state of feeling to take possession of his soul. There was noend to the wonders Harry saw during his voyage to Aberdeen. The seaitself was a sight which until now he could not have imagined--could nothave even dreamed of. Then there was the long line of wonderful coast.He had seen a panorama, but that couldn't have been very large, becauseit was contained within the four stone walls of a concert-room. Buthere was a panorama gradually unrolling itself before his astonishedgaze hundreds and hundreds of miles in extent. No wonder that his eyesdilated as he beheld it: the black, beetling cliffs that frowned overthe ocean's depths; the beautiful sandy beaches; the broad bays, withcities slumbering in the mists beyond; the green-topped hills; thewaving woods; the houses; the palaces; and the grey old ruined castlesthat told of the might and strength of ages past and gone. All andevery one of these seemed to whisper to Harry--seemed to tell him thatthere were more wonderful things even in this world than he had everbefore believed in.
"When night came on, the stars shone out--stars more beautiful than hehad ever seen before--so clear, so large, so bright. And they carriedhis thoughts far, far beyond the earth. In their pure presence he felta better boy than ever he had felt before, but at the same time he couldnot help feeling ashamed of that feeling of unbelief that had possessedhim in London. He was beginning to have faith already--a little, at allevents. Were I to tell you of all Harry's adventures, and all thestrange sights he saw ere he reached Aberdeen, I would have quite a longstory to relate. His uncle met him at the pier with a dog-cart, intowhich he helped him, the handsome, spirited horse giving just one lookround, to see who was getting up. When he saw this mite of a hero ofours,--
"`Oh,' said the horse to himself, `he won't make much additional weight.I'd trot along with a hundred of such as he is.'
"So away they went. Now Harry had been taught to look upon London asthe finest and prettiest town in the world; but when he rattled alongthe wide and magnificent streets of the capital of the north, he foundample reason to alter his opinion. Here was no smoke--here was a sunshining down from a sky of cerulean hue, and here were houses builtapparently of the costliest and whitest of marble. On went thedog-cart, and the closely-built streets gave place to avenues andterraces, and rows of palatial buildings peeping up through the greeneryof trees.
"Harry was a little tired that night before he reached the good farm ofDunryan; but his aunt and cousins were kindness itself, and after abigger and nicer supper than ever he had eaten before in his life, hewas shown to his snow-white couch, and the next thing he becameconscious of was that the sun was shining broad and clearly into hischamber, and there was a perfect babel of sounds right down under hiswindow, sounds that a country boy would easily have understood, butwhich were worse than Greek to Harry. He soon jumped out of bed,however, washed and dressed, and then opened the casement and lookeddown. I have already told you that Harry's eyes were large, but thesight he now witnessed made him open them considerably wider than he haddone for many a day. A vast courtyard crowded with feathered bipeds ofevery kind that could be imagined. Harry hurried on with his toilet, sothat he might be able to go downstairs and examine them more closely.
"Everybody was glad to see him, but he had to eat his breakfast allalone nevertheless, for his cousins had been up and had theirs hours andhours before. One of his relatives was a pretty little auburn-hairedlass of some nine or ten summers, with blue, laughing eyes, and modestmien. She volunteered to show Harry round the farm. But Harry feltjust a little afraid nevertheless, and considerably ashamed for beingso, when he found himself in the great yard quite surrounded by hens andducks and gobbling geese and turkeys. I think the animals themselvesknew this, and did all they could to frighten him. The hens werecontent with cackling and grumbling, evidently trying to incite thecocks to acts of open hostility against our trembling hero. The cockscrew loudly at him, or defiantly approached him, looking as if theymeant to imply that he owed it entirely to their generosity that hislife was spared. The turkey-cocks put themselves into all sorts ofqueer shapes--tried to look like fretful porcupines, elevated the redrag that Harry was astonished to see depending from their noses, andmade terrible noises at him. The ducks were content with standing ontiptoe, clapping their snow-white wings, and crying, `What! what! what!'at the top of their voices. The peahens were merely curious andimpertinent; but the geese were alarmingly intrusive. They stretchedout their necks to the longest extent, approached him thus, and gavevent to hissings u
nutterable by any other creature than a goose.
"`They won't bite or anything, will they?' faltered our hero, feelingvery small indeed.
"But his little companion only laughed right merrily. Then takingHarry's hand, she ran him off to show him more wonders--great horsesthat looked to the London boy as big as elephants; enormous oxen as bigas rhinoceroses; donkeys that looked wiser than he could have believedit possible for a donkey to look; and goats that looked simplymischievous and nothing else. What a blessing it was for Harry that hehad such a wise little guardian and mentor as his Cousin Lizzie. Shewent everywhere with him, and explained away all his doubts anddifficulties. Ay, and she chaffed him not a little either, and laughedat all his queer mistakes; but I think she pitied him a good deal at thesame time. `Poor boy,' Lizzie used to think to herself, `he has neverbeen out of London before.