The Angel Children<br />or, Stories from Cloud-Land, Charlotte M. Higgins [e books for reading .txt] 📗
- Author: Charlotte M. Higgins
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THE ANGEL CHILDREN;
OR,
STORIES FROM CLOUD-LAND.
BY
CHARLOTTE M. HIGGINS.
BOSTON:LEE AND SHEPARD.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Stereotyped by
HOBART & ROBBINS,
New England Type and Stereotype Foundery
BOSTON.
6 volumes. Each volume handsomely illustrated. 80 cents.
WORTH NOT WEALTH.
COUNTRY LIFE.
THE CHARM.
KARL KEIGLER.
WALTER SEYTON.
HOLIDAYS AT CHESTNUT HILL.
6 volumes. Each volume handsomely illustrated. 80 cents.
THE GREAT ROSY DIAMOND.
DAISY; or, The Fairy Spectacles.
VIOLET: A Fairy Story.
MINNIE; or, The Little Woman.
THE ANGEL CHILDREN.
LITTLE BLOSSOM'S REWARD.
These volumes are finely and profusely illustrated from designs by Hoppin and other eminent artists. They are elegantly bound, and neatly packed in ornamental boxes. As gifts for holidays and birthdays, where a uniform value and appearance is desired, they are excellent.
LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.[Pg 5]
STORIES. HEPSA AND GENEVIEVE.Genevieve lived in a large, handsome house, which had beautiful gardens all about it. She had no brother or sister, but she had a large play-room, filled with the nicest toys, so that a good many children who came to play in it thought she must be perfectly happy; but Genevieve had often thought how willingly she would give the room and all its playthings for a little brother of her own, whom she might take out in the garden for a walk, and watch carefully, just as her mother watched her.
One day, while she was walking in the garden, thinking of the little brother she so much wanted, who she was sure would look like her dear mother, with her blue eyes, and golden curls, what should she hear but the noise of some one crying[Pg 6] outside the garden fence. Now, as she could not look through the fence,—for it was quite high and made of thick boards,—she ran quickly to the gate, and then round to the place where she had heard the crying. There she saw a little girl sitting upon the side-walk, with bare feet and legs, which were none of the whitest, wearing a dress of brown cloth with many tatters in it, and short black hair hanging over her face and head. Genevieve looked at her in amazement.
"Dear me!" she at last exclaimed, "where do you live?"
At this question the child stopped her crying, and pulling away her hair with both of her hands from her face, disclosed a pair of large black eyes, which, swollen with tears, regarded little Genevieve with sly, sleepy wonder.
It was not wonderful she should be astonished to behold so neat and pretty a child close by her side. Genevieve wore a blue frock and white apron, neat stockings and slippers, and pantalettes with broad ruffles. So she only gazed at Genevieve, without dreaming of answering her question.[Pg 7]
"What is your name?" asked Genevieve.
"What is yours?" demanded the child.
"Mine is Genevieve. Tell me what yours is?"
"Hepsa. Do you live in there?" and Hepsa nodded her head towards the fence. Genevieve replied that she did.
"But tell me why you were crying?" she asked.
"Because Tom beat my black cat this morning and threw her into the pond, and she was everything I had." Hepsa burst into tears again, and little Genevieve's heart was so filled with compassion, that she sat down upon the dirty ground, at the side of the afflicted child, without ever thinking of the blue frock and clean pantalettes she was soiling.
"O, dear, dear!" she cried, shocked at Tom's cruelty. "How wicked he was! What made him do so,—your brother, too?" Genevieve thought in her heart that little brother, of whom she so often thought, never would have done such a thing.
Hepsa looked up half angrily, as she replied:
"You needn't keep telling me he is my[Pg 8] brother! I'm sure I don't want him to be, and wish he wasn't. I don't love him a bit, he always plagues me so much."
"O, Hepsa, don't say so; pray don't!" cried Genevieve, shocked at Hepsa's passion. "If he is your brother, you ought to love him, you know."
"I don't know any such thing, I tell you! You may love him yourself if you want to; but I guess, when he kicks you, and beats you, and steals your things, and knocks your mud-houses down, you won't love him. I'd like to know why I've got to love him?" Hepsa demanded this of Genevieve in a very fierce manner.
"Because he is your brother I suppose, and because he ought to be good; and perhaps he plagues you because you don't love him," answered Genevieve, somewhat perplexed how she should answer the question, thinking in her own heart Hepsa had a very wicked brother. "At any rate," she continued, "God gave him to you; and I have read how he tells us all to love each other."
"I never did," replied Hepsa; "and if God[Pg 9] gave Tom to me, I wish he'd take him back, for I don't want him."
"Why, Hepsa; how wicked you are! You shall not talk so!" almost shrieked Genevieve. The tears came fast into her eyes, she was so grieved to hear Hepsa talk in that way.
"But I'm not wicked!" retorted Hepsa indignantly. "I don't know who God is. Why should I? He never comes to see me. I suppose he comes to see you, and is some great person; while I am poor and live in a mean house, and nobody comes to see me, of course." Hepsa looked away from Genevieve's blue frock, and seemed to be searching for something away down the street.
Genevieve could not sit still any longer, but, rising, she remonstrated with Hepsa in this manner:
"God is not a man, Hepsa; and he goes into poor houses as often as into rich ones."
Hepsa looked very sharply upon little Genevieve as she replied,
"Ha! Don't you be telling me stories; why don't I see him ever, I'd like to know? Haven't I got eyes?"[Pg 10]
"I don't know," said Genevieve, doubtfully. "Father was reading this morning about people who had eyes, but could not see."
Hepsa looked at her a moment, and then nodded her head towards her, and said, speaking low as to a third person, "She's cracked a little, I think;" then, as she looked towards the fence, she remembered the garden which was behind it, and asked Genevieve for some flowers. But Genevieve only said "O, yes," and went on to say, "Of course you can't see God, Hepsa! He lives in the skies."
"I shouldn't think he would come down here, then. I wouldn't!"
"But, Hepsa, God loves us; then, too, he is everywhere at once."
"Mercy!" said Hepsa to herself, in a low tone. "Worse and worse!"
"And he made everything you see, Hepsa, and a great deal more beside," continued Genevieve.
"There, there!" said Hepsa, impatiently; "don't talk any more; it sounds odd." Genevieve looked at Hepsa, and the wild, petulant look of[Pg 11] her face grieved and shocked her so much, that she burst into tears.
"What is the matter?" said Hepsa. "I thought you were going to get me the flowers."
"And so I will," said Genevieve, wiping up her tears as well as she could; and she ran into the garden, and picked a large bunch of flowers. There were the sweet mignonette and heliotrope, the pink verbena, and the beautiful white scented verbena, the gay phlox, the pure candytuft, bits of lemon blossoms, and the faithful pansies. It was such a beautiful bunch as to melt poor Hepsa's heart to gratitude.
"I do think I should love to kiss you," she said to Genevieve, "if my face were not so dirty, and you look so clean."
"I don't care!" said Genevieve, and so she kissed Hepsa and said, "Hepsa, I wish you would never again talk so about God, for I love him very dearly, and so do my father and mother."
Hepsa began to think Genevieve was not crazy, and so she became more serious.
"But did you never read about Him, Hepsa?" asked Genevieve.[Pg 12]
"No, indeed; I can't read at all!" exclaimed Hepsa, astonished at Genevieve's questions.
"Not read! Why, Hepsa, why don't you go to school?"
"I can't; mother keeps me at home to tend the baby while she goes to washing."
A bright thought came into Genevieve's little head.
"Where do you live?" she asked.
"O, away down that lane, the other side of the village! I work nearly all the time, some way or other."
"Have you any father?"
"Yes;" and Hepsa looked as though she did not love him better than she loved Tom.
"May I teach you to read?" asked Genevieve, looking into Hepsa's eyes entreatingly. The child turned away her head as she answered,
"I haven't any time. I have to stay at home."
"But," pursued Genevieve, "I'll come down to your house, and bring some books, and help[Pg 13] you tend the baby. O! don't you love the baby?"
"No! he is too cross," was the crusty reply.
"But, he is a baby; he don't know any better."
"That don't make any difference."
"Yes it does, too; your big brother knew better than to kill your pretty pussy, and that is why it was so naughty in him to do it." This was a new kind of argument for Hepsa; but she thought over it a moment, and then told her little teacher she thought she might be right. "I almost wish you would come to teach me to read. I don't know but I might like it; and then it would be rather good to see you. Now, are you sure there is such a person as God?" said Hepsa, glancing at Genevieve from the corners of her eyes.
"Of course I am, Hepsa; who do you think made the sky and the ground, the trees and grass?"
"I don't know," replied Hepsa.
"And the sun and the moon, and the stars," continued Genevieve, with a mysterious tone. Hepsa shook her head by way of saying no.[Pg 14]
"And all the fathers and mothers and children?" at which question Hepsa looked so perplexed.
"I asked mother once," she said, musingly, "who made all these things; but she told me I'd better be minding the cradle. I guess she didn't know; but I've always had spells of wondering about it."
Genevieve looked very gravely at Hepsa as she said,
"It was God who made all these things."
"Well, I don't know but it was," replied Hepsa.
"But I know it was; the Bible says so, and father and mother say so, too; beside, I feel it in my heart, when I see the sun and the flowers, and everything looks so pretty."
"Do you?" cried Hepsa, seeming to feel a new interest in her companion. "I wonder if you ever hear pretty voices in the trees when the wind blows, and in the night when it is
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