Read Ebook: Harper's Young People July 20 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

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Ebook has 317 lines and 20423 words, and 7 pages

of berries this year."

IN THE SWING.

BY M. M.

Oh, swing me high, and swing me low, Under the linden-tree, Whose fragrant blossoms, like a shower, Fall down and cover me.

The sunshine flickers through the leaves As to and fro I swing; Gay butterflies go flashing by; Birds in the tree-top sing.

The brook tells stories to the flowers The livelong summer day; And everywhere the earth is bright, And all the world is gay.

So swing me high, and swing me low, Under the linden-tree, And let the blossoms, like a shower, Fall down and cover me.

PEARLS--REAL AND IMITATION.

FROM ADVANCE SHEETS OF "THE BOY TRAVELLERS IN THE FAR EAST." PART SECOND.

While on their way from Bangkok to Singapore, Frank and Fred were much interested in accounts of some of the wonders of the Eastern seas given them by Captain Johnson, a fellow-passenger. In answer to some of their inquiries about pearls, he gave them the following information:

"One of the favorite fishing grounds for pearls is at Bahrein, on the Persian Gulf. The divers bring in the oysters from the fishing banks in the Gulf, and pile them on the shore in great heaps. Here they lie till they are rotted; and the stench that arises is enough to turn any inexperienced stomach. When the substance of the oyster is quite decomposed, the shells are opened, and the mass of matter they contain is thrown into tubs, and washed with water. It is necessary to pass the pulp very carefully through the fingers, for fear that some of the pearls will be lost, and consequently the washing is very slow. When a pearl beyond a certain size is found, the washer receives a handsome present; but below the regulation figure he gets nothing but his daily wages. Large pearls are very rare, and consequently the chances that a pearl-washer will make a fortune by a lucky find are exceedingly small.

"There is a belief quite current through the East that the pearl is a drop of rain-water which has fallen into the shell of the oyster when he was at the surface, and been afterward hardened. This is a pretty bit of sentiment; but as the oyster never goes to the surface unless he is carried there, the story does not have much foundation to rest upon."

"If the pearl is so valuable, and so difficult to get, I should think there would be men who would try to imitate it," Frank remarked.

"You are quite right," was the reply; "and men have tried a great many times to make false pearls."

"Have they succeeded?"

"Partially, but not altogether. No counterfeit pearls have yet been made that could pass all the tests of the genuine; but their lustre is quite equal sometimes to the best pearls of Ceylon, and they can be made to deceive anybody but an expert."

"How do they make them?"

"The best of the false pearls," said the Captain, "are made by what is known as Jaquin's process. M. Jaquin was a manufacturer of beads in France, and he spent a great deal of time and money in trying to make his beads better than any other man's. One day he was walking in his garden, and observed a remarkably silvery lustre on some water in a basin. It instantly occurred to him that if he could put that lustre on his beads, he would have something decidedly new.

"M. Jaquin was very glad, for once, that she had neglected her duty. He began experimenting with the scales of the ablette, or bleak--a little fish about the size of a sardine, and very abundant in certain parts of Europe. After several trials he adopted the plan of washing the scales several times in water, and saving the sediment that gathered at the bottom of the basin. This was about the consistency of oil, and had the lustre he desired. Next, he blew some beads of very thin glass, and after coating the inside of a bead with this substance, he filled it up with wax, so as to give it solidity. Thus the fish scales gave the lustre, the glass gave the polish and brilliancy that we find on the genuine pearl, and the wax furnished a solid backing to the thin glass. It is fortunate that the bleak is very abundant, or he would run the risk of extermination."

"Is the manufacture of false pearls so great as that?" Fred inquired.

"It is pretty extensive," was the Captain's response, "but not enormously so. The fact is, it requires more than a thousand of these little fish to make an ounce of the 'essence d'Orient,' as the French call it, or essence of pearl. Other substances have been tried, in the hope of obtaining the same result for a smaller outlay, but none of them have been entirely successful.

"In China and Japan the natives have long followed the practice of putting small beads of porcelain inside the oyster, and then returning him to the water, where he is left undisturbed for three or four years. At the end of that time he is taken up and opened, and the beads are found to be coated with the pearly substance. They also have the trick of putting little images or idols into the oyster, and in course of time these become coated over in the manner I have described."

THE MORAL PIRATES.

BY W. L. ALDEN.

The next morning the boys awoke early, having had a thoroughly good night's rest. Tom, whose turn it was to go for milk, found a well-stocked farm-house, where he obtained not only milk, bread, and eggs, but a supply of butter, and a chicken all ready for cooking. After breakfast the boat was put in the water, and, to the delight of all, proved to be almost as tight as she was before running into the rock. A little water came in at first under the edges of the zinc, but in a short time the wood swelled, and the leak entirely ceased.

The boat was loaded, and the boys were ready to start soon after six o'clock. There was no wind, but the two long oars, pulled one by Tom and the other by Jim, sent her along at a fine rate. They rowed until ten o'clock, resting occasionally for a few moments, and then, as there were no signs of a breeze, and as it was growing excessively hot, they went ashore, to wait until afternoon before resuming their journey.

The sun became hotter and hotter. The boys tried to fish, but there was no shade near the bank of the river, and it was too hot to stand or sit in the sunshine and wait for fish to bite. They went in swimming, but the sun, beating on their heads, seemed hotter while they were in the water than it did when they were on the land. Jim and Joe tried a game of mumble-to-peg, but they gave it up long before they had reached "cars." It was probably the hottest day of the year; and as it was clearly impossible to row or to do anything else while the heat lasted, the boys brought their blankets from the boat, and going to a grove not far from the shore, lay down and fell asleep.

They were astonished to find, when they awoke, that it was two o'clock. None of them had been accustomed to sleep in the daytime, and they could not understand how it came about that they had all slept for fully two hours. They had yet to learn that one of the results of "camping out," or living in the open air, is an ability to sleep at almost any time. All animals and wild creatures, whether they are beasts or savages, have this happy faculty of sleeping in the daytime. It is one of the habits of our savage ancestors that comes back to us when we abandon civilization, and live as Aryan tribes, from whom we are descended, lived in the far East, before they marched with their wives and children and cattle from India, and made themselves new homes in Europe.

After lunch the boys prepared to start, although there was still no wind; but when they went down to the boat they found that the sun was as hot as ever. So they returned to the shade of the grove, and made up their minds to stay there until the end of the afternoon.

"Harry," said Tom, "we've been on the river three days, and we are only a little way above Hudson. How much longer will it be before we get to Albany?"

"We ought to get there in two days more, even if we have to row all the way," replied Harry.

"And after we get to Albany, what are we to do next?"

"We are going up the Champlain Canal to Fort Edward. There we will have a wagon to carry us and the boat to Warrensburg, on the Schroon River, and will go up the river to Schroon Lake. Uncle John laid out the route for us."

"How many days will it take us to get to the lake?" asked Tom.

Harry thought awhile. "There's two days more on the Hudson, two on the canal, and maybe two on the Schroon River. And then there's a Sunday, which don't count. It'll be just a week before we get to the lake."

"I've got to be home by two weeks from next Monday," continued Tom, "so I sha'n't have much time on the lake. Can't we get along a little faster? There's a full moon to-night, and suppose we sail all night--or row, if the wind doesn't come up?"

"That's a first-rate idea," exclaimed Harry. "We can take turns sleeping in the bottom of the boat. Why, if the breeze comes up in the night, we might make twenty or thirty miles before morning."

All the boys liked the plan of sailing at night, and they resolved to adopt it. While they were yet discussing it, a light breeze sprang up, from the south as usual, and they hastened to take advantage of it. In the course of an hour more the sun began to lose its power; and when they went ashore at six o'clock to cook their supper, they had sailed about fifteen miles.

As they expected to make so much progress during the night, they were in no hurry about supper, and it was not until after seven o'clock that they again made sail. Harry divided the crew into watches--one consisting of himself and Joe Sharpe, and the other of Tom and Jim. Each watch was to have charge of the boat for three hours, while the other watch slept. At eight o'clock Tom and Jim lay down in the bottom of the boat, and Joe came aft to take Tom's customary place at the sheet. Harry, of course, steered.

All went well. The breeze was light but steady, and Harry kept the boat in the middle of the river to avoid another shipwreck. The watch below did not sleep much, for they had had a long nap at noon, and, besides, the novelty of their position made them wakeful. They had just dropped asleep when eleven o'clock arrived, and they were awakened to relieve the other watch. Tom went sleepily to the helm, and Harry and Joe gladly "turned in," and were soon fast asleep.

Tom always declares that he never closed his eyes while he was at the helm, and Jim also asserts that he was wide-awake during his entire watch, though neither he nor Tom spoke, for fear of waking up the other boys. It was strange that these two wide-awake young Moral Pirates did not notice that a large steamboat--one of the Albany night boats--was in sight, until she was within a mile of them, and it is just possible that, without knowing it, they were a little too drowsy to keep a proper look-out.

"Oh, there's no danger!" replied Tom; "we shall get out of her way easy enough."

It was certainly very doubtful if they could avoid the steamboat, and Tom was well aware of it. He told the other boys that, if they were sure to be run down, they must jump before the steamboat struck them, and dive, so as to escape the paddles. "I'll tell you when to jump, if worst comes to worst," said he; "but don't you look around now, nor do anything but row. Row for your lives, boys."

It was almost miraculous that the boat was not capsized; but she was actually lifted up and thrown over the piles, without taking more than a few quarts of spray into her. When they saw that they were absolutely safe, the boys began to wonder how in the world they could get the boat back into the river, and Jim proposed to light the lantern and see if anything was missing out of the boat, and if she had been injured.

"Now I see why the steamboat did not notice us," exclaimed Tom.

"Why?" asked all the others together.

"Because," he replied, "we have been such everlasting idiots as to sail at night without showing a light."

HOW GIL PLAYED VENTRILOQUIST.

BY JAMES B. MARSHALL.

It was before Dora and Gil Norman came back to the city last fall with their mamma from Farmer Jonathan's, where their papa joined them every Saturday afternoon and staid until Monday morning. If you had asked Dora or Gil what the farmer's full name was, the answer would probably have been, "Why, Farmer Jonathan, of course." Every one called him Farmer Jonathan, but his letters were usually directed, "Mr. Jonathan Wainwright."

One morning he came to the house from his great barn, and told Dora and Gil to go down there and see the largest load of hay that he had ever had on his hay-wagon.

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