The Angel Children<br />or, Stories from Cloud-Land, Charlotte M. Higgins [e books for reading .txt] 📗

for the fruit and bunch of violets in her pocket, she would have believed it a dream; but, when she went into the house, and gave Grace and Jessie the peaches, and her mother the big, beautiful violets, and began doing all sorts of kind things for every one, she felt how very real it all had been. And then, too, she would sing that beautiful song she had heard in the old woman's star, and her father, delighted, caught her up in his arms, kissing her again and again.

Ruth did not forget what the old woman had told her—how she might bring the beauty of heaven about her form; and when she grew up people loved her, and said, "I would rather look like Ruth, to smile and speak like her, than to have the brightest hair and bluest eyes of any court beauty."[Pg 102]

THE OLD MAN'S STORY.

Come about me, little ones, and I will tell you my story. I seem old to you now; but once I was as young as you. I had twelve brothers and sisters; but now they are all gone before me into the better land, and I remain here alone upon the earth without them.

I am very old. My teeth have fallen away from my mouth one by one, until they are all gone. My bald head has a very few gray hairs; my ears are deaf, so I can scarcely hear your young, sweet voices: and the bright sky is dimmed to my eyes. Slowly my footsteps totter along the earth, as when I first stepped into my mother's outstretched arms.

My wife long ago went before me to the grave, and I have left many children there. Many a time have I seen the green sod laid over the grave of loved ones. Often have I wept at the sight[Pg 103] of God's servant, Death; but when next he comes I shall hail him with joy, for he will be to me the beloved friend who bears me to my home above.

Now that I am grown old, God lovingly carries me back to the days of my childhood. He sends many a loving spirit upon the wings of consolation to bear me into the fair region of youth. The scenes of the few years since—all the noise and bustle of my manhood's prime—are banished far away from me, and only the stillness and quiet of my childhood close around the last moments of my earthly existence. Thus, dear children, bathing me in the innocence and trustful spirit of my childhood, does God prepare me for my home in his beautiful garden.

I told you I had twelve brothers and sisters. O, well do I recall them all! They come near, and I feel their presence as of old! I am glad to linger mostly on their early days; for, in after life, their hearts were filled with sorrow, their fresh spirits wearied, and care brought and filled their souls with other feelings than those of love and sympathy to others.

Our fairest and brightest brother was Fred. I[Pg 104] was only one year younger than he, and I remember well how I watched my mother while she nursed him, and sent me away from the arms which a little before had been my sole possession. I could not understand it, and my little heart was filled with dismay. I would creep away by myself, sit down, and in the most pitiful manner repeat to myself, "Poor Sammy! poor Sammy!" The sense of desolation was very great; and in the whole course of my life I do not remember to have known a more distressing grief. When I grew to be a man, and disappointments came upon me; when I laid my wife and children in their graves, and knew there was not one left of my line but myself—a miserable old man—there was hope in my sorrow, light in my darkness; for I knew the love of God and the life of eternity. These deep sorrows had, also, bright heights; but it was not so then. I could not feel God's love. My mother's care had been all I knew; and, now that it seemed given to another, I was alone and wretched. There was a terrible sense of injustice, which nearly broke my heart. I could not under[Pg 105]stand how my little brother could have the right to what was denied me.

I have always tenderly pitied children who had griefs; then they need our care more than the grown children, who feel God's love and wisdom. But these little ones grope in a kind of darkness. Suffering is a mystery to them; they can perceive no cause or end for it; they only know they suffer.

After a while, I, too, was allowed to sit on my mother's lap with this brother, and then I began to love him, he was so beautiful. There was no child in the county which could be compared with him, and, simply because of his beauty and his cunning ways, he gained the power of a king over the household, so that as soon as he began to run about he ruled it, and me even more than the rest.

The country was very new then, and all the gay, flourishing towns and villages, which are now scattered in every direction, scarcely existed even in the minds of the first sanguine settlers. Dark woods and sombre swamps covered the surface; and what do you think we had instead of roads,[Pg 106] when we wanted to go from one town to another? The first one who found his way along cut pieces of bark out of the trees, and others followed these marks, until after a time they cut down the trees and made a road. I think this is the reason old roads in this country are so crooked; for you know a man cannot walk very straight through a forest.

Our near neighbors lived a mile from us, and it was quite a little journey to go and see them. We had a village, too, in which were but two buildings, the meeting-house and blacksmith's shop. You children would hardly think you could live in such a place; yet such was the state of things ninety-three years ago.

Well, my father and mother had come up from a town near Boston, because my grandfather could give them some land here, and they built their house, and made it their home. The house stands now; it is the very one in which my brothers and sisters were all born.

In her parlor my mother had a very nice piece of furniture, which her mother had given her as a wedding present, and of which she was very proud,[Pg 107] inasmuch as no parlor in the county could boast the like. It was a looking-glass!

Well, laugh! No wonder it seems funny to you that any one should so prize a looking-glass, when you all have so many of them; but you can have no idea how different everything was then. The people were very poor, and, although they owned many acres of land, yet they could frequently sell it but for one dollar an acre, and thought that a fine bargain. You see we had no money to buy the elegant luxuries you have in your houses—the carpets, and sofas, and rocking-chairs. Our floors were hard, covered now and then with a little sand, perhaps, as a great luxury. The chairs were straight and high, while our tables were small and low, and the cups from which we drank our tea as small as those you play with. But, before I say any more, I want to tell you of the fate of mother's looking-glass.

The great room (as mother's parlor was called) was always kept carefully closed, and a very sacred, awful and mysterious place it was to us children. It so happened, one day when mother had gone away, that my little brother Fred began[Pg 108] to be acted upon very powerfully by a desire to take one peep into that room. By some strange neglect mother had left the door unlatched—for she kept her bonnet in there, and always put it on before the glass. The temptation to go in was altogether too powerful for Fred to withstand, and, especially as others had never pronounced the little monosyllable no, to him, he had no mind to begin by saying it to himself. So in he went, and almost the first thing he saw was mother's looking-glass, hanging over the table between the two front windows. As he went towards it he saw a little boy, who seemed to be peering and staring at him from between the windows. He had no idea it was himself he saw, never having seen the looking-glass before, nor his own reflected image. You may be sure he looked right earnestly upon the strange child. If he stepped forward, so did the boy; if he turned away, and then looked cautiously back to watch the boy, there he was, looking at him in a very sly manner. Freddy, enraged at this, rushed out for a stone, and, bringing it in, hurled it at the looking-glass. But it was all in vain, for, even after the glass rattled[Pg 109] down and strewed the floor with its many pieces, that impudent boy peeped at him from every bit of glass in which he looked.

When my mother came home, and went to put away her bonnet in the great room, as usual, she found her beautiful looking-glass lying on the floor, broken into a hundred pieces. When she came out, and demanded of us what it meant, Fred told her of a little boy he saw behind it, at whom he was offended and hurled a stone, but that still the boy looked at him from the pieces of glass and made him very angry.

Then mother laughed when she heard Fred's story, and, catching him up in her arms, kissed him again and again. She forgot to chide him for his disobedience in going where he had been forbidden to go, and for his foolish anger at the supposed boy. She was so much amused at his version of the story, that she did not explain to him what the boy was, and how the looking-glass reflected figures before it, but he was left to find that out by his experience afterwards.

If my brother, long before that, had learned lessons of love and forbearance, this circumstance,[Pg 110] slight as it may seem, would never have occurred. Instead of the threatening and distrustful look in the mirror, he would have found a laughing face, and a tiny, loving hand would have been given him. O, my dear children, this story has a higher meaning than I thought of when I commenced! In the feelings of those whom we approach we see the reflection of our own; if we approach any one with love, it is given to us from them. Think of this: it will serve you well, and teach you to be careful, ere you hurl the stone, to know what is the object of your anger.

I have often thought that we all helped to make my brother selfish. He was so very beautiful that we indulged him in every whim he had; so he came to look upon us at last as bound to serve him. I do not blame him only; they who had the nurturing of him, they to whom his young spirit was sent so fair from God's heavenly gardens, in their unwise love taught him to think of himself, and make others serve his purposes.

These dear, helpless little ones—they come to us in fresh beauty like a spring morning, and[Pg 111] we taint their spirits with selfishness, and darken them with worldly care!

Years after, when my brother and myself had grown to men, we bound our interests in one. He had quicker parts than I—was a much better scholar; so I trusted all our business confidently in his hands. But I grieve to say he did not meet my confidence with honor—he took from my purse to enrich his own; and when I stood by his bedside, at last, and saw how the deep wrinkles were worn in by care upon his once round cheek, I wept. I wept that he should die without having found in life that peace which any