THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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come to the door for the girls, where their bodies strengthen and develop that they may lay by a large store of constitution to draw upon when the real work of life begins, will confer a greater benefit on mankind than Promethius, who brought fire from Heaven that the blood of man might be warmed into quicker motion. Another fire we need to keep alive the one that glows but never burns, or burns out all too soon in our dwindling race. Our best men and women are breaking down and passing to dumb inactive dust, with work half finished. Children whose lives begin in the city are apt to take up the serious questions and purposes of existence before the body is able to bear their weight.
They are generally reckoned far in advance of the country child in knowledge,' but I think the difference consists rather in kind than quantity. This often makes an exchange of ideas between the city and country child most amusing. They are both kept in a state of perfect amazement during the interview. This is an example: “ Mother, Laura says she never saw Washington’s monument; ” and “ Auntie, Charlie says there is no such thing as a spring of nice water running out from a hill, and Charlie won’t talk about anything but the mint, and I don’t know what is the mint.” Then Charlie complains: “ Mother, Laura says she sees at her home in the country every colored bird growing loose in the fields and woods—woodchucks, rabbits and squirrels; what are they, mother, and why don’t they come to the city to live?”
One little country miss, anxious to improve her manners, and learning from a city cousin that calling was visiting, was noticed to take up the expression and was soon calling on the cat, the dog, the flowers, and even the garden.
In my life, or in my dreams, it was once.my good fortune to see a home created by nature expressly for the children, and as the bees know where to find the sweetest flowers, the children far and near found this ideal home. Often its hospitable roof sheltered as many as thirty of them on a single night, and oh, what happy times they had.
Passing through a long rolling pasture, with its carpet of blue grass, you came to the old-fashioned farmhouse, green with its vines and its flowers, and all the air fragrant with the breath of the honeysuckle and the rose. Its beauties began to burst upon you the moment the gate of the dusty highway closed, and one thought filled all your mind—the thought of “ Home, Sweet Home.” Large sturdy oaks stood as sentinels in speaking distance of each other near the entrance to the farm, and through their midst a tiny stream meandered, just that its miniature banks might be ornamented with wild flowers and beautiful dark stones, some of them large enough for the children, on the rare summer days when they wandered that far from home, to call cliffs of the far-famed Hudson; or if the fancy struck them the stream was the Kentucky River, and they legislated about “locking and damming,” making thrilling speeches from the pinnacles of the largest stones. I can not think of one thing lacking in this ideal home for children. It had its haunted house, that dream of childhood, just in sight about half a mile from the dwelling, a heavy structure built of rough, undressed stones, tall, angular and cold. Near to the ground a black hole yawned, in reality, the entrance to the cellar, but to the imaginative child well instructed in such lore by the more imaginative negro, the very entrance to the unseen world. The children were proud of the possession of the old “ stone house.” Only half believed the stories about it, but took their strolls in other parts of the grounds unless strongly guarded. Whenever they passed near its tall, cold walls it was with bated breath, turning their heads away and unconsciously quickening their steps. If perchance a stray sheep was noisily licking salt in the open, unused pantry, it was to them “ a confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ.”
Pmtering the inclosure near the home, the whole country around seemed under the shade of the royal locusts which grew there. Over ‘a hundred feet in height, and measuring from three to five feet in diameter, they told of many years gone by, and as the bold boy climbed into their dizzy heights, and dropped the snowy flowers on the heads and into the aprons of the children playing below, the locusts whispered and the children heard: