Слике страница
PDF
ePub

The prize I'll bring, and you shall see,
And won't you then be proud of me?"
A tear I saw in Bessie's eye

Glisten as she made reply:

5. "O, Harry, brother, kind and good!
I see a picture in a wood:

A cold and dark and gloomy dell,
But there a little household dwell.
A tiny brother, a tinier sister,

For mother cry; an hour they've missed her,
Forgot the cold and hunger pain;

One cry, 'O, mother, come again!'
Is all I hear, and then I see
Another picture; painfully

I con it o'er and o'er again

That mother dies a death of pain.
Wild wails the wind, fast falls the snow,
The night grows colder; could I go,

I'd go this very hour and try
To give that creature liberty."

6. Now sobbing, Rosy murmurs out,
"O, go!" and Jimmy wheels about
His soldiers from the battle-field,
And Grant-like cries, "I will not yield
Till Harry lets the captive go

Back where those babies love her so!"
Stout Harry, listening to all,
Standing with back against the wall,
Tried to be firm, but tried in vain,
Then said, "I'll let her go again!"
And Bessie, Rose and little Jim
With kisses almost smothered him.

LOUISE V. BOYD.

H

XXXIV. THE CARRYING TRADE.

1. Come, Lottie and Lula and Lina and Mary; all bring your maps. I want to teach you what is meant by the carrying trade, and how merchants do business with foreign countries.

2. Lottie shall have the bark Rosette, and sail from Boston to Calcutta; Lula, the steamer North Star, from New York to Liverpool; Mary shall take the Sea-Gull, from Philadelphia to San Francisco; and Nina shall be owner of the Racer and make voyages up the Mediterranean. Are you all ready for the game?

3. Lottie, you may begin. You must find out what Boston has to send to Calcutta. Do not take indigo, or saltpetre, or gunny-bags, or ginger; for even should Boston have these articles to spare, Calcutta has a greater abundance of them. You must carry to Calcutta something that she needs but does not possess something that will sell there at a sufficient profit to pay for carrying.

4. "Ice?" suggests Lottie. "Yes, that is just the thing, because Calcutta has a hot climate and can not produce her own ice; so, Lottie, load the Rosette with great blocks of ice, pack them well, and start at once, for your voyage is long."

5. And now we will go with Lula to the pier, where her great steamer lies, and see what she intends to carry to Liverpool. Bales of cotton, barrels of flour, of beef, and of petroleum. All very good; for New York has all these things to sell, and Liverpool has them to buy. So good-by to her. In a few weeks we will see what she brings back.

6. Come, Mary, what has Philadelphia for San Francisco? O, what a load the Sea-Gull must take of

machinery, steam-engines, tobacco and oil; and such a quantity of other things, that she will need to make many voyages before she can take them all.

7. We will load her at this busy wharf, where the coal-vessels are passing in and out for New York and Boston, and where the steamers are loading for Europe, and the little coasters are crowding in one after another. And away goes the Sea-Gull for a voyage round the "Horn," where she will meet her namesakes, and perhaps some stormy winds besides.

8. Meantime Nina's Racer has been stored full of cotton cloths and hardware, and has raced out of Boston harbor so swiftly that fair winds will take her to Gibraltar in three weeks.

9. But as yet you have carried only one way. To complete the game, we must wait for Lottie to bring the Rosette safely home with saltpetre and indigo and hides and ginger and seersuckers and gunny-cloth.

10. And the North Star must steam her way across the Atlantic, and return with salt and hardware and anchors and steel, and with woolens and linen cloths. Mary must beat her way round Cape Horn, and home again with wool and gold and silver. And the swift Racer must bring the figs and prunes and raisins, and the oranges and lemons, and she must make a quick trip home, too, for they will spoil if they are too long on the

way.

11. And so children may play at the carrying trade, and so their fathers and uncles may work at it in earnest ; and so also hundreds of little workers are busy all the world over in another carrying trade which keeps you and me alive from day to day; and yet we scarcely think at all how it is going on, or stop to thank the hands that feed us.

12. England and Italy are kingdoms, Germany is an

empire, France and the United States are republics, and they all engage in this business, and are constantly sending goods one to another; but there are other kingdoms, not put down on any map, that are just as busy as they, and in the same sort of work too.

13. The earth is one of the kingdoms, the water is another, and there is the great republic of the gases surrounding us on every side, only we can not see it, because its inhabitants have the fairy gift of walking invisible.

14. Each of these kingdoms has products to export, and is ready to trade with the others, if only some one will supply the means. Frenchmen might stand on their shores and hold out to us wines and prunes and silks and muslins, and we might stand on our shores and hold out to them gold and silver, but no exchange could thus be made, because there must be ships to carry the goods

across.

15. "Ah," you may say, "that is not at all the case here; for the earth, the air and the water are all close to each other and close to us, and there is no need of ships; we can exchange hand to hand."

XXXV. THE CARRYING TRADE.

(CONCLUDED.)

1. But here comes a difficulty. Read carefully, and I think you will understand it. Here is Ruth, a little growing girl, who wants phosphate of lime to build bones with; for, as she grows, of course her bones must grow too. Very well, I answer, there is plenty of phosphate of lime in the earth; she can have all she wants. Yes, but does Ruth want to eat earth? Do you? — does anybody?

2. Certainly not; so, although the food she needs is close beside her, even under her feet, she can not get it, any more than we can get the French goods, excepting by means of the carrying trade. Where now are the little ships that shall bring to Ruth the phosphate of lime she needs and can not reach, although it lies in her own father's field?

3. Let me show you how her father can build the ships that will bring it to her. He must go out into that field and plant wheat-seeds; and, as they grow, every little kernel gathers up phosphate of lime and becomes a tiny ship freighted with what his little daughter needs.

4. When that wheat is ground into flour and made into bread, Ruth will eat it; but she would not have been willing to taste of the phosphate of lime had not the useful little ships of the wheat-field brought it to her; and indeed it would have done her injury and not good if she had eaten it.

5. Now let us send to the republic of the gases for some supplies, for we can not live without carbon and oxygen; and although we do breathe in oxygen with every breath we draw, we need to receive that and carbon, too, in other ways.

6. The sugar-cane and the maple-trees engage in the carrying trade to bring these gases to us. They take in carbon and oxygen by their leaves and send them through their bodies, and when they reach us they are sugar, and a very pleasant food to most of you it is, I dare say.

7. But we can not take all we need of these gases in the form of sugar, and there are many other ships that bring them to us. The corn gathers them up and offers them in the form of meal or of corn-starch puddings.

8. The grass brings them to the cow, since you and I refuse to take them from the grass ships, but the cow

« ПретходнаНастави »