Read Ebook: Harper's Young People April 6 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 310 lines and 18821 words, and 7 pages

eavy, and affords only a very rough idea of the time. But the one we are going to tell them about will show the time as precisely as a clock. And it is quite easy to make. It has, in the first place, a face set up slanting on a pedestal. The proper slant answers to the latitude of the place. At and near New York it should be about forty-one degrees from the perpendicular, or a little more than half upright. The face is divided into hour spaces, just like the face of a clock, but the whole circle is not used. A semicircle is all that the sun can traverse, except in the long days of summer. The fourth part of a circle is about all that can be used in ordinary windows. It will answer for the hours between nine o'clock and three. It is divided into six equal parts for the hour spaces, and each of these is subdivided for the minutes. If the radius of the circle be one foot, the minute spaces will be about one-sixteenth of an inch, or about the same as on the face of a watch. The dividing is easily done with a pair of compasses, a ruler, and a sharp lead-pencil.

Now we will explain the indicator. It is made of three pieces--a base and two uprights. The base is fifteen inches long, three wide, and three-quarters of an inch thick. The uprights are of the same thickness, and about seven inches high. They are morticed into the base, and have the shape shown in the picture. A hole half an inch in diameter is bored through the upright at A, and another at B. Over each of these holes pieces of tin are tacked, with a little hole in the centre about as large as a pin's head. When the sun-dial is placed in position, the sun shines through these holes, and makes a little bright circle on the other upright. The upper hole, A, is for summer, when the sun is high, and the lower one, B, for winter. The indicator is pivoted by a large screw to the centre, C, of the face, so that it can be turned round like the hand of a clock. At the upper end of the indicator a little pointer is fastened directly over the scale of hours and minutes. A needle, or a pin with the head cut off, makes a good pointer.

ACROSS THE OCEAN; OR, A BOY'S FIRST VOYAGE.

A True Story.

BY J. O. DAVIDSON.

FRANK AND THE CAPTAIN.

Austin was still the centre of an admiring group, when a deep voice made itself heard from behind.

"Say, mates, ye'd better let the lad git on some dry duds, 'stead o' fussin' over him that way; why, he's as wet as the lee scuppers."

Frank recognized old Herrick, the quartermaster, who had roused him from his nap on the coil of rope the first night of the voyage.

"Come, youngster," pursued the old man, "hurry up and git a dry shirt on. What d'ye look so queer for?--hain't ye got nary one?"

Frank explained that his bag and bundle had "disappeared somehow," before they had been two days at sea.

"Stolen, I reckon," growled a sailor; "but 'twarn't nobody on the fo'c'stle as done it, anyhow. It's been some o' them blessed firemen--thievin' wharf-rats every one!"

All agreed, and the drowned man's chest was pulled out and rummaged. Out came caps, jackets, trousers, shirts, sea-boots. Out came three or four letters and a photograph, which were laid aside to be handed over to the purser; and lastly, out came a small, well-thumbed Bible of old-fashioned look, which Herrick put into his own pocket.

"Whew! who'd ha' thought Allen kep' a Bible?"

But, as might have been expected, everything was "miles too big," and bagged about him in such a way as to make one of the men remark, with a grin, that "if he carried so much loose canvas, he'd founder in the first squall."

"We must take in a reef or two, then, that's all," said Herrick. "Bear a hand, my boy, and we'll soon turn you out ship-shape."

To work went the two amateur tailors, while Frank seized the chance of taking a good look at his new friend. The old tar was certainly well worth looking at. Tall, broad-shouldered, active, with his brown hard face framed in iron-gray hair and beard--a pleasant twinkle in the keen blue eyes that looked out from beneath his bushy brows, and a kindly smile flickering over his rugged features ever and anon, like sunshine upon a bare moor--he looked the very model of one of those sturdy old sea-dogs who held their own against England's stoutest "hearts of oak" in the old days of '76.

As he worked on, making stitches which, though they would have horrified a fashionable tailor, were at least strong and durable, he began to pour forth a series of yarns, a tithe of which would "set up" any novelist for life. Fights with West-Indian pirates; hair-breadth escapes from polar icebergs; picturesque cruises among the Spice Islands; weary days and nights in a calm off the African coast, on short allowance of water, with the burning sun melting the very pitch out of the seams--were "reeled off" in unbroken succession, while Frank listened open-mouthed, and more than once forgot his tailoring altogether.

But the stroke of a bell overhead broke in upon the talk.

Frank was indeed improved. His shore clothes, which, with grease, coal-dust, tar, salt-water, and the rents made by the fight with Monkey, were "not fit for a 'spectable scarecrow to wear of a Sunday," were exchanged for a blue flannel shirt and a pair of trim white canvas trousers. A neat black silk handkerchief was knotted around his neck, and his battered "stiff-rim" replaced by a jaunty sailor cap.

"Hello, youngster! the cap'n wants yer," shouted a sailor, as Frank appeared on deck.

"You're in luck, my boy," said Herrick. "Keep a stiff upper lip, but don't speak unless you're spoken to, and then say as little as you can."

"Talk 'bout the officers as ye like," was the constant saying on the forecastle, "but nary word agin the old 'deacon.'"

His room was like himself--simple, but perfectly orderly. A neat bed, with snow-white coverlet and pillow; a little cupboard beside it, containing a pitcher and wash-basin; a Bible in a neat wooden rack on a small table; a rifle, cutlass, and two revolvers, all bright and clean, hanging on the wall above it; a cabinet of books, mostly works of travel and navigation; several chairs, on one of which lay the captain's coat and cap; and a curtain along the wall, above which appeared various articles of clothing hung on pegs.

Presently the captain looked up, and after "figuring" a moment on a slip of paper, touched a bell. Instantly a panel flew open, and a hoarse voice shouted, "Ay, ay, sir!"

"How's her head now, quartermaster?"

"S.E. by S., sir."

"All right; keep her so."

"Ay, ay, sir;" and the panel closed again.

"So you're the boy who oiled the outboard bearing to-day? I hear you've been fighting with Monkey. We won't say any more about that now, but don't let it happen again. Can you read and write?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is this your handwriting on the ship's articles, and in the store-room account-book?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you studied arithmetic? Well, then, work me out this example."

Austin obeyed.

"Right," said the captain, glancing at the result. "After this, Mr. Hurst will put you in the place of the oiler who was lost this morning. The fifty dollars reward is in the purser's hands, where I advise you to leave it till you really need it. You may go now. Good-night."

HOUSEHOLD PETS.

An amusing story is told of a modern puss which sailed across the seas. A Polynesian missionary took a cat with him to the island of Raratonga, but Puss, not liking her new abode, fled to the mountains. One of the new converts, a priest who had destroyed his idol, was one night, sleeping on his mat, when his wife, who sat watching beside him, was terribly alarmed by the sight of two small fires gleaming in the doorway, and by the sound of a plaintive and mysterious voice. Her blood curdling with fear, she awoke her husband, with wifely reproaches on his folly in having burned his god, who was now come to be avenged on them.

The husband, opening his eyes, saw the same glaring lamps, heard the same dismal sound, and, in an agony of fright, began to recite the alphabet, by way of an incantation against the powers of darkness. The cat on hearing the loud voices felt as much alarm as she had caused, and fled in the darkness, leaving the worthy pair much relieved.

A short while afterward Puss took up her quarters in a retired temple, where her "mews" struck terror into the breasts of the priest and worshippers who came with offerings to the gods. They fled in all directions, shouting, "A monster from the deep! a monster from the deep!" to return with a large body of their companions in full war array, with spears, clubs, and shields, and faces blackened with charcoal. The cat, however, was too nimble for them, and escaped through the midst of their ranks, sending these brave warriors flying in every direction.

That night, however, Puss, tired of her lonely life, foolishly entered a native hut, and creeping beneath the coverlet under which the whole family were lying, fell asleep. Her purring awoke the owner of the hut, who procured the help of some other models of valor, and with their assistance murdered poor Pussy in her tranquil and confiding slumbers.

But cats, though thus at first misunderstood, were afterward welcomed in Raratonga, which was devastated with a plague of rats. The missionaries imported a cargo consisting of pigs, cocoa-nuts, and cats.

An amusing reason is given for cats washing their faces after a meal. A cat caught a sparrow, and was about to devour it, but the sparrow said,

"No gentleman eats till he has first washed his face."

The cat, struck with this remark, set the sparrow down, and began to wash his face, on which the sparrow flew away. This vexed Pussy extremely, and he said,

"As long as I live I will eat first, and wash my face afterward."

Which all cats do even to this day.

Here is another cat and sparrow fable:

"I wonder," said a sparrow, "what the eagles are about, that they don't fly away with the cats? And now I think of it, a civil question can not give offense." So the sparrow finished her breakfast, went to the eagle, and said: "May it please your Majesty, I see you and your race fly away with the birds and the lambs, that do no harm. But there is not a creature so malignant as a cat; she prowls about our nests, eats up our young, and bites off our own heads. She feeds so daintily that she must be herself good eating. Why do you not feed upon a cat?"

"Ah!" said the eagle, "there is sense in your question. I had a worm here this morning, asking me why I did not breakfast upon sparrows. Do I see a morsel of worm's skin on your beak, my child?"

The sparrow cleaned his bill upon his bosom, and said, "I should like to see the worm that made that complaint."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet