Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Girl's Own Paper Vol. XX. No. 996 January 28 1899 by Various
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 343 lines and 21680 words, and 7 pages
"Sh--h! Roy, be careful. You'll certainly get yourself into trouble."
Roy's excitement went beyond bounds. He seized a solid ball, belonging to the baby, and aimed with precision.
Down came the bust, with a crash, into the fender, and was smashed.
Roy stood still, conscious of having done a very silly thing, and a shriek sounded in his rear. The door had just been opened, the landlady had appeared, and she was now shaking her fists, and executing a dance of rage.
"I say, Roy, stop! Don't go on fooling like this. You'll get us all into trouble." Curtis spoke roughly, realising in a moment that matters might become serious. "Tell her you mean nothing by it."
"Roy! Will you hold your tongue? Stop this foolery!"
Roy obeyed, while the woman, shaking her fists, continued to pour out a torrent of abuse, in the midst of which occurred several times the ominous word "gendarmes."
Curtis went nearer to her, and spoke in his quietest tones.
"Madame is mistaken," he said. "Nothing is intended. Monsieur is but a boy, and Monsieur was but in jest."
"It is an insult to l'Empereur! It shall be made known," screamed the other.
"I beg of you to hear me. It is no insult. This gentleman had no wish, none whatever, to break the figure. He did but aim at it in jest--as English Messieurs love to do. Not because it was a bust of the Emperor, but to have something to aim at," explained Curtis.
He might as well have addressed himself to the winds.
"Madame shall have full value for the bust."
Roy felt in his pockets. "I've only five francs here. But it can't be worth more."
"You won't get off with the mere market value of the thing," Curtis said in English. "I have five more, and not a sou besides in the house. Here, offer her the ten."
Roy's hand was thrust contemptuously aside.
"Non, vraiment! Dix francs! Does Monsieur think ten francs will pay for that!" tragically pointing towards the fragments in the fender. "An image of the Emperor! Non, Monsieur! I go to the General."
"How much?" Curtis tried to make her say. She gesticulated furiously, and declined payment. It was an insult to the Emperor. Did Monsieur imagine that money would wipe out that? Did Monsieur suppose that she cared only for her own loss? Bah!--nothing of the kind, though Madame was a widow, and could ill afford to lose anything. But this was a profound matter. Madame had a duty to perform, and incontestibly she would perform it.
With which declaration the irate landlady disappeared.
"That's awkward," Curtis said seriously. "She is the first of the kind that I have come across yet. We had a nice little landlady at Valenciennes. Roy, you had better be off, sharp. She may not know your name."
"And leave you to bear the blame for what I've done! I'm not so mean!"
"It's not meanness. She may cool down when she does not see you, and I must make another attempt. Of course I know that your father will pay anything in reason to get you out of the difficulty. Be off, Roy."
"But she knows my name well enough. She has seen me before, I'm pretty sure."
"All the more reason why you shouldn't stay here. Get home as fast as you can, and tell your father at once. Don't put off. I hope it will come to nothing; but Wirion is certain not to lose his chance of putting on the screw, and squeezing some money out of your people. Run off, as fast as you can. I'll tackle her again."
Roy obeyed, by this time rather serious. "I wonder what does come over a fellow sometimes to make him make a fool of himself," he cogitated.
FOOTNOTES:
Not superior to that of the small force under Moore; but perhaps superior to that of the bulk of the then British Army.
See footnote, p. 162.
IN THE TWILIGHT SIDE BY SIDE.
BY RUTH LAMB.
HOW TO GROW OLD.
"The hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness."--Proverbs xvi. 31.
You, my dear girl friends, will not have forgotten our last talk about growing old, or that we left the most important part of it for this evening. We then dealt with externals, yet we realised that these were the outcome of our inner selves, and inseparable from them.
Let me ask you to impress on your memories the text I have just quoted--
"The hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness."
There is no glory in gray hairs unless accompanied by the holy, Christ-like life. On the contrary, anything in a character which is pitiable, degrading, impure, or contemptible, seems more lamentable in old age than at any other period of life. Childhood is emphatically the "age of innocence," or ought to be such. Of the children those sweet lines were written:
"They've the least taint of earthly sod; They're freshest from the hand of God,"
and even when their young minds have been polluted and their simplicity smirched through evil surroundings, there is room for hope that in the years to come the seeds of evil may be uprooted, and the stains removed.
Girlhood is the step in advance, and suggestive of the opening bud which promises fulness of beauty to come.
Old age, that last stage in Life's journey, ought to be the season of ripe wisdom, the period when everything that is good in us should be at its best, despite our failing bodily powers. Naturally, then, the sight of soured, unlovable, or degraded old age shocks us most of all, on account of its almost hopelessness. There is so little likelihood of any change for the better.
A bad habit long indulged in is a tyrant whose claim has been tightening round its wearer with every day's indulgence in it. How small a chance is there that its hold will be relaxed in the time of hoar hairs and bodily weakness.
Let us look together at some types of old age, those which we admire, revere, love, and long to imitate, and others which make the very thought of age repulsive. From such a contemplation you must turn to yourselves, my dear ones, and search your hearts and lives in order that you may find out what they promise for that, to you, far-away future, old age.
If you discover the germs of an evil growth which will reach maturity with hoar hairs if left to increase, and will make your latest days a trouble to yourselves and to others, do not rest until you have exterminated them.
On the contrary, you must cherish every thought and aspiration after what is higher, holier, better, and more in harmony with the teaching of our perfect Pattern. The longings must find expression in prayer that they may become habits, which will grow and cling to you and gain strength daily, until the end of your earthly lives.
A good old age! What a beautiful expression this is! A Bible phrase applied, however, to very few even of the most famous of Bible characters.
Some of us may be apt to think that it merely refers to the great number of a person's years. Surely this cannot be the only qualification for a good old age; for if so, it would have been written of Methuselah, the oldest man that ever walked this earth. His days were nine hundred and sixty-nine years. "And he died." But of his father, who did not attain to half that age, we are told, "He walked with God and was not; for God took him."
Abraham, again, was less than half the age of Enoch when he died "in a good old age."
David, the man after God's own heart, died, we are told, "in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour."
Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years old when "God took him." Abraham, one hundred and seventy-five, and David only threescore years and ten, yet the term "good old age" was applied to both the last named, so it is plain that mere length of years was not all.
To you, to me, to every true servant of God who is spared to reach the season of hoar hairs, a good old age is as possible as it was to those of whom we read in the sacred pages of the Bible.
None of us can tell what was meant by the four words in which the story of Enoch's earthly pilgrimage is told. God's life histories are alike, so brief and yet so full. "Enoch walked with God," says so little, but means so much, that we are lost in wonder at the vast possibilities suggested to our minds. Is not the first effect of the words good to ourselves? Do they not fill us with new yearnings and longings for closer communion with God than we have hitherto known?
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page