Part 17 (1/2)

”This is a picture of the _Princess Charlotte_,” handing Emma Jane his drawing.

”It is night, and the captain is pacing the lonely deck; he has set his lantern on a small stand, and has put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. The second verse goes this way:

'Up aloft! up aloft!' our gallant captain cried; Blow high, blow low, so sailed we.

'Look ahead, look astern, look aweather, look alee,'

Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

'Oh, I've seen on ahead, and I've seen on astern,'

Blow high, blow low, so sailed we; 'And I see a ragged wind and a lofty s.h.i.+p at sea,'

Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

'Ahoy! s.h.i.+p ahoy!' our gallant captain cried, Blow high, blow low, so sailed we; 'Are you a man-of-war, or a privateer?' says he; Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

'Oh! I am no man-of-war or privateer,' says he, Blow high, blow low, so sailed we; 'But I am a jolly pirate seeking for my fee,'

Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

”This is the picture of the pirate s.h.i.+p and the fight. Captain Kidd has cut off the head of one of the men who boarded his s.h.i.+p. One of his men is firing a cannon, the rest of his crew may be seen between-decks.

'Twas broadside to broadside, so quickly then came we; Blow high, blow low, so sailed we; Until the _Princess Charlotte_ shot her masts into the sea, Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

Then 'Quarter! oh, quarter!' the pirate captain cried; Blow high, blow low, so sailed we; But the quarters that we gave them were down beneath the sea, Cruising down on the coast of Barbaree.

”Grandfather called it the story of Captain Kidd, because he thought he must have been the pirate whose s.h.i.+p the _Princess Charlotte_ sunk.

Captain Kidd was taken to London and hanged in chains, and I've made a picture of that too.”

Emma Jane hardly approved of the sanguinary spirit displayed by these drawings, but she could not expect that the boy's antecedents and surroundings would produce an angel. She endeavored to draw his attention to gentler subjects for his pencil, recited tender and loving ballads, and changed the current of the boy's thought and aspiration, realizing that here was material which, in the fostering atmosphere of Rickett's Court, might easily develop into an anarchist--a menace to the state.

The Sandy girls were the last to be received from the court. The father had been a truckman, but a heavy box had fallen upon him, and he had lived in pain and misery for a year and had then died. Mrs. Sandy, by making men's clothing, managed to keep the wolf from the door--no, only snarling _at_ the door with fierce, hungry eyes. All of her six children helped her. The oldest girl did the ironing and finis.h.i.+ng; the next child, a boy, carried the great bundles back and forth in the intervals of his profession as a bootblack; the second girl did all of their poor housework; the twins sewed on b.u.t.tons and pulled out basting threads, and the youngest boy sold newspapers, while Mrs. Sandy herself ran the sewing-machine ten or twelve hours in the day.

When Mrs. Hetterman asked her why she did not give up this desperate battle with the point of the needle, and leave her vile surroundings to take service in some good family, she replied that she had often thought of this, but she must keep a home, however poor, for the children. ”The two boys could live at the Newsboys' Lodging-House, for they earn enough to support themselves, but what would I do with my four girls?”

When Mrs. Hetterman a.s.sured her that there was a Home where they could all be cared for in cleanliness, health, and comfort, and have time for study and schooling and industrial education, which would fit them to earn their own living in future, and all for a sum quite within the means of any domestic, she brought her cramped hand down with a heavy blow upon the sewing-machine.

”I don't mind if I break every bone in yer body, ye Satan's grindstone!”

she said to the machine; ”it's the last time that Mary Sandy'll grind soul and body thin at ye, praise be to a delivering Providence!”

Mrs. Hastings, one of the managers of the Home, had had great trouble with incompetent and ungrateful servants, and she gladly took the faithful Scotch woman into her family.

These, then, were the guests of the Elder Brother, for that first summer, from Rickett's Court:

1 Jim Halsey, American.

3 Hettermans, English.

3 Amatis, Italian.

4 Babies from Mrs. Grogan's, Irish.

2 Carl and Gracie Rumple, German.

1 Lovey Dimple, American.