Fifty Famous Stories Retold, James Baldwin [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗
- Author: James Baldwin
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The captain, with puss under his arm, reached the palace just in time to see the table crowded with rats. The cat leaped out upon them, and oh! what havoc she did make among the trou-ble-some creatures! Most of them were soon stretched dead upon the floor, while the rest scam-pered away to their holes, and did not dare to come out again.
The king had never been so glad in his life; and the queen asked that the creature which had done such wonders should be brought to her. The captain called, "Pussy, pussy, pussy!" and the cat came up and rubbed against his legs. He picked her up, and offered her to the queen; but at first the queen was afraid to touch her.
However, the captain stroked the cat, and called, "Pussy, pussy, pussy!" and then the queen ventured to touch her. She could only say, "Putty, putty, putty!" for she had not learned to talk English. The captain then put the cat down on the queen's lap, where she purred and purred until she went to sleep.
The king would not have missed getting the cat now for the world. He at once made a bargain with the captain for all the goods on board the ship; and then he gave him ten times as much for the cat as all the rest came to.
The captain was very glad. He bade the king and queen good-by, and the very next day set sail for England.
V. THE FORTUNE.One morning Mr. Fitzwarren was sitting at his desk in his office. He heard some one tap softly at his door, and he said,—
"Who's there?"
"A friend," was the answer. "I have come to bring you news of your ship 'U-ni-corn.'"
Mr. Fitzwarren jumped up quickly, and opened the door. Whom should he see waiting there but the captain, with a bill of lading in one hand and a box of jewels in the other? He was so full of joy that he lifted up his eyes, and thanked Heaven for sending him such good fortune.
The captain soon told the story of the cat; and then he showed the rich present which the king and queen had sent to poor Dick in payment for her. As soon as the good gentleman heard this, he called out to his servants,—
"Go send him in, and tell him of his fame; Pray call him Mr. Whittington by name."
Some of the men who stood by said that so great a present ought not to be given to a mere boy; but Mr. Fitzwarren frowned upon them.
"It is his own," he said, "and I will not hold back one penny from him."
Dick was scouring the pots when word was brought to him that he should go to the office.
"Oh, I am so dirty!" he said, "and my shoes are full of hob-nails." But he was told to make haste.
Mr. Fitzwarren ordered a chair to be set for him, and then the lad began to think that they were making fun of him.
"I beg that you won't play tricks with a poor boy like me," he said. "Please let me go back to my work."
"Mr. Whittington," said Mr. Fitzwarren, "this is no joke at all. The captain has sold your cat, and has brought you, in return for her, more riches than I have in the whole world."
Then he opened the box of jewels, and showed Dick his treasures.
The poor boy did not know what to do. He begged his master to take a part of it; but Mr. Fitzwarren said, "No, it is all your own; and I feel sure that you will make good use of it."
Dick then offered some of his jewels to his mistress and little Alice. They thanked him, and told him that they felt great joy at his good luck, but wished him to keep his riches for himself.
But he was too kind-heart-ed to keep everything for himself. He gave nice presents to the cap-tain and the sailors, and to the servants in Mr. Fitz-warren's house. He even remembered the cross old cook.
After that, Whittington's face was washed, and his hair curled, and he was dressed in a nice suit of clothes; and then he was as handsome a young man as ever walked the streets of London.
Some time after that, there was a fine wedding at the finest church in London; and Miss Alice became the wife of Mr. Richard Whittington. And the lord mayor was there, and the great judges, and the sher-iffs, and many rich mer-chants; and everybody was very happy.
And Richard Whittington became a great merchant, and was one of the foremost men in London. He was sheriff of the city, and thrice lord mayor; and King Henry V. made him a knight.
He built the famous prison of New-gate in London. On the arch-way in front of the prison was a figure, cut in stone, of Sir Richard Whittington and his cat; and for three hundred years this figure was shown to all who visited London.
CASABIANCA.There was a great battle at sea. One could hear nothing but the roar of the big guns. The air was filled with black smoke. The water was strewn with broken masts and pieces of timber which the cannon balls had knocked from the ships. Many men had been killed, and many more had been wounded.
The flag-ship had taken fire. The flames were breaking out from below. The deck was all ablaze. The men who were left alive made haste to launch a small boat. They leaped into it, and rowed swiftly away. Any other place was safer now than on board of that burning ship. There was powder in the hold.
But the captain's son, young Ca-sa-bi-an´ca, still stood upon the deck. The flames were almost all around him now; but he would not stir from his post. His father had bidden him stand there, and he had been taught always to obey. He trusted in his father's word, and be-lieved that when the right time came he would tell him to go.
He saw the men leap into the boat. He heard them call to him to come. He shook his head.
"When father bids me, I will go," he said.
And now the flames were leaping up the masts. The sails were all ablaze. The fire blew hot upon his cheek. It scorched his hair. It was before him, behind him, all around him.
"O father!" he cried, "may I not go now? The men have all left the ship. Is it not time that we too should leave it?"
He did not know that his father was lying in the burning cabin below, that a cannon ball had struck him dead at the very be-gin-ning of the fight. He listened to hear his answer.
"Speak louder, father!" he cried. "I cannot hear what you say."
Above the roaring of the flames, above the crashing of the falling spars, above the booming of the guns, he fancied that his father's voice came faintly to him through the scorching air.
"I am here, father! Speak once again!" he gasped.
But what is that?
A great flash of light fills the air; clouds of smoke shoot quickly upward to the sky; and—
"Boom!"
Oh, what a ter-rif-ic sound! Louder than thunder, louder than the roar of all the guns! The air quivers; the sea itself trembles; the sky is black.
The blazing ship is seen no more.
There was powder in the hold!
A long time ago a lady, whose name was Mrs. Hemans, wrote a poem about this brave boy Ca-sa-bi-an-ca. It is not a very well written poem, and yet everybody has read it, and thousands of people have learned it by heart. I doubt not but that some day you too will read it. It begins in this way:—
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
As born to rule the storm—
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud though childlike form."
ANTONIO CANOVA.
A good many years ago there lived in Italy a little boy whose name was An-to´ni-o Ca-no´va. He lived with his grand-fa-ther, for his own father was dead. His grand-fa-ther was a stone-cut-ter, and he was very poor.
An-to-ni-o was a puny lad, and not strong enough to work. He did not care to play with the other boys of the town. But he liked to go with his grandfather to the stone-yard. While the old man was busy, cutting and trimming the great blocks of stone, the lad would play among the chips. Sometimes he would make a little statue of soft clay; sometimes he would take hammer and chisel, and try to cut a statue from a piece of rock. He showed so much skill that his grandfather was de-light-ed.
"The boy will be a sculp-tor some day," he said.
Then when they went home in the evening, the grand-moth-er would say, "What have you been doing to-day, my little sculp-tor?"
And she would take him upon her lap and sing to him, or tell him stories that filled his mind with pictures of wonderful and beautiful things. And the next day, when he went back to the stone-yard, he would try to make some of those pictures in stone or clay.
There lived in the same town a rich man who was called the Count. Sometimes the Count would have a grand dinner, and his rich friends from other towns would come to visit him. Then Antonio's grandfather would go up to the Count's house to help with the work in the kitchen; for he was a fine cook as well as a good stone-cut-ter.
It happened one day that Antonio went with his grandfather to the Count's great house. Some people from the city were coming, and there was to be a grand feast. The boy could not cook, and he was not old enough to wait on the table; but he could wash the pans and kettles, and as he was smart and quick, he could help in many other ways.
All went well until it was time to spread the table for dinner. Then there was a crash in the dining room, and a man rushed into the kitchen with some pieces of marble in his hands. He was pale, and trembling with fright.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" he cried. "I have broken the statue that was to stand at the center of the table. I cannot make the table look pretty without the statue. What will the Count say?"
And now all the other servants were in trouble. Was the dinner to be a failure after all? For everything de-pend-ed on having the table nicely arranged. The Count would be very angry.
"Ah, what shall we do?" they all asked.
Then little Antonio Ca-no-va left his pans and kettles, and went up to the man who had caused the trouble.
"If you had another statue, could you arrange the table?" he asked.
"Cer-tain-ly," said the man; "that is, if the statue were of the right length and height."
"Will you let me try to make one?" asked Anto-nio "Perhaps I can make something that will do."
The man laughed.
"Non-sense!" he cried. "Who are you, that you talk of making statues on an hour's notice?"
"I am Antonio Canova," said the lad.
"Let the boy try what he can do," said the servants, who knew him.
And so, since nothing else could be done, the man allowed him to try.
On the kitchen table there was a large square lump of yellow butter. Two hundred pounds the lump
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