Caleb in the Country

CHAPTER VI.

ENGINEERING

When Caleb awoke it was almost evening. The rays of the setting sun were shining in at the window. Caleb opened his eyes, and, after lying still a few moments, began to sing. He thought it was morning, and that it was time for him to get up. Presently, however, he observed that the sun was shining in at the wrong window for morning: then he noticed that he was not undressed; and, finally, he thought it must be night; but he could not think how he came to be asleep there at that time.

Caleb went out into the parlour. David and Dwight were just putting the chairs around the tea table. At tea time, the boys talked a good deal about the mole, and they asked Mary Anna if she would help them rig some vessels to sail in the Maelstrom.

“Sail in the Maelstrom!” said Mary Anna; “whoever heard of sailing in the Maelstrom? That is a great whirlpool, which swallows up ships; they never sail in it. You had better call it the Gulf Stream.”

“Well,” said Dwight, “we will; and will you help us rig some vessels?”

“Yes,” said Mary Anna, “when you get the mole done.”

Mary Anna was a beautiful girl, about seventeen years old, with a mild and gentle expression of countenance, and very pleasant tone of voice. She helped the children in all their plays, and they were always pleased when she was with them. She had great stores of pasteboard and coloured papers, to make boxes, and portfolios, and little pocket-books, and wallets of; and she had a paint-box, and pencils, and drawing-books, and portfolios of pictures and drawing lessons.

She rigged the boys' vessels, and covered their balls, and made them beautiful flags and banners out of her pieces of coloured silk. She advised them to have a flag-staff out at the end of the mole, as they generally have on all fortifications and national works. She told them she would make them a handsome flag for the purpose.

After tea she went down with them to see the works. She seemed to like the mole very much. The whirlpool was moving very regularly, and she advised them to build the mole out pretty far.

“Yes,” said Dwight; “and we are going to have a piece across up and down the stream, at the end of it, so as to make a T of it.”

“I think you had better make a Y of it,” said Mary Anna.

“A Y!” said Dwight, “how?”

“Why instead of having the end piece go straight across the end of the mole, let the two parts of it branch out into the stream, one upwards and the other down.”

“What good will that do?” said David.

“Why, if you make it straight like a T, the current will run directly along the outer edge of it, and so your vessels will not stay there. But if you have it Y-shaped, there will be a little sort of harbour in the crotch, where your vessels can lie quietly, while the current flows along by, out beyond the forks.”

“That will be excellent,” said Dwight, clapping his hands.

“And besides,” said she, “the upper part of the Y will run out obliquely into the stream, and so turn more of the current into your eddy, and make the whirlpool larger.”

“Well, and we will make it so,” said David; “and then it will be an excellent mole.”

“Yes,” said Mary Anna, “there will be all sorts of water around it;—a whirlpool above, a little harbour in the crotch, a current in front, and still water below. It will be as good a place for sailing boats as I ever saw.”

But the twilight was coming on, and they all soon returned to the house.

Madam Rachel had a little double-bedroom, as it was called, where she slept. It was called a double-bedroom, because it consisted, in fact, of two small rooms, with a large arched opening between them, without any door. In one room was the bed, which moved in and out on little trucks, for Caleb. In the other room was a table in the middle, with books and papers upon it. There was a window in one side, and opposite the arched opening which led to the bedroom was a small sofa.

Now, it was Madam Rachel's custom every evening, before the children went to bed, to take them into her bedroom, and hear them read a few verses of the Bible; and then she would explain the verses, and talk with them a little about what had occurred during the day, and give them good advice and good instruction. At such times the children usually sat upon the sofa, on one side of the table, and Madam Rachel took her seat on the other side of the table, in the chair, so as to face them. The children generally liked this very much; and yet she very seldom told them any stories at these times. It was almost all reasonings and explanations; and yet the children liked it very much.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SOFA

The boys took their places on the sofa, and afterwards laid their books upon the table. After that Madam Rachel began to talk about the occurrences of the day, as follows:—

“There are two or three things, boys, that I have been keeping to talk with you about this evening. One is the question you asked, Dwight, about Caleb's disobeying me, when he fell into the water.”

“Yes, mother,” said Dwight, looking up at once, very eagerly; “you told him never to go near the bank; and yet he went, and so he fell in.”

“But I could not help it,” said Caleb.

“Why, yes, mother, he certainly could help it; for he walked there himself of his own accord.”

“Very well; that is the question for us to consider; but, first, we must all be in a proper state of mind to consider it, or else it will do us no good. Now, Dwight, I am going to ask you a question, and I want to have you answer it honestly:—Which way do you wish to have this question, about Caleb's disobedience, decided?”

“Why,—I don't know,” said Dwight.

“Suppose I should come to the conclusion that Caleb did right, and should prove it by arguments, should you feel a little glad, or a little sorry?”

Dwight hung his head, and seemed somewhat confused, but said, doubtfully, that he did not know.

“Now, I think, myself,” said his mother, “that you have a secret wish to have it appear that Caleb is guilty of disobedience. You said he disobeyed, at first, from unkind feelings, which you seemed to feel towards him at the moment; and now, I suppose, you wish to adhere to it, so as to get the victory. Now, honestly, isn't it so?”

Dwight did not answer at first. He looked somewhat ashamed. Presently, however, he concluded, that it was best to be frank and honest; so he looked up and acknowledged that it was so.

“Yes,” said his mother; “and while you are under the influence of such a prejudice, it would do no good for us to discuss the subject, for you would not be convinced; so you had better give it up.”

Madam Rachel saw, while she was speaking, that Dwight did not look sullen and dissatisfied, but good-natured and pleasant; and so she knew that he had concluded to listen, candidly, to what she had to say.

“I think that Caleb was not to blame at all,” said Madam Rachel, “for two reasons. One is, that he was probably overwhelmed with terror. To be sure, as you say, the cow did not push him. He walked himself,—yet still he was impelled as strongly as if he had been pushed, though in a different manner.”

“Then there is another reason why Caleb is innocent of any disobedience. When I told him that he must not go to the high banks, I did not mean that he never must go, in any case whatever.”

“I thought you said he never must,” said David.

“I presume I did say so, and I made no exceptions; but still some exceptions are always implied in such a case. In all commands, however positive they may be, there is always some exception implied.”

“Why, mother?” said Dwight with surprise.

“It is so,” said his mother. “Suppose, for instance, that I were to tell you to sit down by the parlour fire, and study a lesson, and not to get out of your chair on any account. And suppose that, after I had gone and left you, the fire should fall down, and some coals roll out upon the floor, would it not be your duty to get up, and brush them back?”

“Why, yes,” said Dwight.

“So in all cases, very extreme and extraordinary occurrences, that could not, by possibility, have been considered, make exceptions. And Caleb, thinking, as he did, that he was in great danger from the cow, if he had thought of my command at all, he would have done perfectly right to have considered so extraordinary a case an exception, and so have retreated towards the brook, notwithstanding my commands. And now that question is settled.”

Here little Caleb, who had been sitting up very straight, and looking eagerly at his grandmother and at the other boys, during the progress of the conversation, drew a long breath, and leaned back against the sofa, as if he felt a good deal relieved.

“And now, Dwight, there is one thing I have seen in you to-day, which gave me a great deal of pleasure, and another which gave me pain.”

“What, mother,” said Dwight.

“Why, after I talked with you at noon, about teasing Caleb, you began to treat him very kindly. That gave me a great deal of pleasure. I saw that your heart was somewhat changed in regard to Caleb; for you seemed to take pleasure in making him happy, while before you took delight in making him miserable.”

Dwight looked gratified and pleased while his mother was saying these things.

“But then, in the course of the afternoon,” she continued, “the old malignant heart seemed to come back again. When I came down to see the mole, I found you in such a state of mind as to take pleasure in Caleb's suffering. You wanted to prove that he had told a lie, and looked disappointed when I shewed you that he had not. Then you wanted to prove he had disobeyed me, when, after all, you knew very well that he had not.”

“O, mother,” said Dwight.

“Yes, Dwight, I am very sorry to have to say so; but you undoubtedly had no real belief that Caleb had done wrong. Suppose I had told you I was going to punish him for disobeying me in retreating to the brook, should you have thought that it would have been right?”

“Why, no, mother,” said Dwight.

“You would have been shocked at such an idea. And now don't you see that all your attempts to prove that he had done wrong, was only the effect of the ill-will you felt towards him at the time. It was malice triumphing over your judgment and your sense of right and wrong. I told you, you know, that your resolutions would not reach the case.”

“Well, mother, I am determined,” said Dwight, very deliberatively and positively, “that I never will tease or trouble Caleb any more.”

“The evil is not so much in teasing and troubling Caleb, as in having a heart capable of taking any pleasure in it. That is the great difficulty.”

“Well, mother, I am determined I never will feel any pleasure in his trouble again.”

“I am afraid that won't depend altogether upon the determination you make. For instance, when you went to Caleb to-day, and kindly tried to persuade him to go down, and offered to carry his rocking-chair for him, your heart was then in a state of love towards him. Do you think you could then, by determination, have changed it from love to hate, and begun to take pleasure in teasing him?”

Dwight remembered how kindly and pleasantly he had felt towards Caleb at that time, and he thought that it would have been impossible for him then to have found any pleasure in tormenting him; and so he said, “No, mother, I could not.”

“And so, when you are angry with a person, and your heart is in a state of ill-will and malice towards him, does it seem to you that you can merely by a determination change it all at once, and begin to be filled with love, so as to feel pleasure in his happiness?”

Dwight was silent at first; he presently answered, faintly, that he could not.

“And if you cannot change your heart by your mere determination at the time, you certainly cannot by making one general determination, now beforehand, for all time to come.”

Dwight saw his helpless condition, and sighed. After a pause, he said,

“Mother, it seems to me you are discouraging me from trying to be a better boy.”

“No, Dwight; but I don't want you to depend on false hopes that must only end in your disappointment. Your determination will help in not indulging the bad feelings; but I want to have your heart changed so that you could not possibly have such feelings. I hope mine is. I once shewed the same spirit that you do; but now I don't think it would be possible for me to take any pleasure in teasing Caleb, or you, or David.

“I hope,” added Madam Rachel, “that God will give you a benevolent and tender heart, so that there shall be no tendency in you to do wrong. He will change yours, if you pray to him to do it. In fact, I hope, and sometimes I almost believe, that he has begun. I do not think you would have gone to Caleb to-day so pleasantly, and acknowledged your fault, as you did by your actions, and felt so totally different from what you had done, if God had not wrought some change in you. I have very often talked with children about such faults, as plainly and kindly as I did with you, and it produced no effect. When they went away, I found, by their looks and actions afterwards, that their hearts were not changed at all. And so, Dwight,” said she, “I have not been saying this to discourage you, but to make you feel that you need a greater change than you can accomplish, and so to lead you to God that you may throw yourself upon him, and ask him, not merely to help you in your determinations not to act out your bad feelings, but to change the very nature of them, or rather, to carry on the change, which I hope he has begun.”

Dwight remembered, while his mother was talking, how full his heart had been of kindness and love to Caleb, while he was helping him that afternoon, and he perceived clearly that he had not produced that state of mind by any of his own determinations that he would feel so before he actually did. He remembered how happy he had been at that time, and how discontented and miserable after he had been troubling Caleb; and he had a feeling of strong desire that God would change his heart, and make him altogether and always benevolent and kind.

Now, it happened that Caleb had not understood this conversation very well, and he began to be weary and uneasy. Besides just about this time he began to recollect something about his grandmother's beginning a story for him, when she took him up in her lap, after he came in from the mole. So, when he noticed that there was a pause in the conversation, he said,

“Grandmother, you promised to tell me a story about blind Samuel.”

“So I did,” said his grandmother smiling, “and I began it; but before I got through you got fast asleep.”

David and Dwight laughed, and so in fact did Caleb; and Madam Rachel then said that if he would tell David and Dwight the story as far as she had gone, she would finish it.

“Well,” said Caleb, “I will. Once there was a blind boy, and his name was Samuel; and, you see, he was going through the woods, and his father was with him. And his father walked along, and he walked along, and it was stony, and he said he would do just what his father said, because his father knew best,—and—and so he took hold of the string again.”

“What string?” said Dwight.

“Why, it was his father's string,” said Caleb, eagerly, looking up into Dwight's face.

“What did he have a string for?” said David.

“Why to lead him along by,” said Caleb.

“Yes—but why did not he take hold of his father's hand?” asked Dwight.

“Why,—why,—there was a snake in the road, I believe,—wasn't there, grandmother?”

His grandmother smiled,—for Caleb had evidently got bewildered, in his drowsiness, so that he had not a very distinct recollection of the story. She, therefore, began again, and told the whole. When she got to the place where she left off before, that is, to the place Samuel heard a splash in the water, Dwight started up, and asked, eagerly,

“What was it?”

“A stone, I suppose,” said David, coolly.

“No,” said Madam Rachel, “it was only the end of the stem of a small tree, which Samuel's father was trying to fix across the brook, so that he could lead his blind boy over. It was lying upon the ground, and he took it and raised it upon its end, near the edge of the bank, on one side, and then let it fall over, in hopes that the other end would fall upon the opposite bank. But it did not happen to fall straight across, and so the end fell into the water, and this was the noise that Samuel heard.

“He drew the stick back again, and then contrived to raise it on its end once more; and this time he was more successful. It fell across, and so extended from bank to bank. In a few minutes he succeeded in getting another by its side, and then he came back to Samuel.

“'Samuel,' said he, 'I have built a bridge.'

“'A bridge!' said Samuel.

“'Yes,' said he, 'a sort of a bridge; and now I am going to try to lead you over.'

“'But, father, I am afraid.'

“'You said you would trust yourself entirely to me, and go wherever I should say.'

“'Well, father,' said Samuel, 'I will. You know best, after all.'

“So Samuel took hold of his father's hand, and, with slow, and very careful steps, he got over the roaring torrent, and then they soon came out into a broad smooth road, and so got safely home.”

“Now, Caleb,” continued Madam Rachel, after she had finished her story, “do you remember what I meant to teach you by this story?”

“Yes, Grandmother; you said that I was like blind Samuel, and that God knew what was best for me, and that I must let him lead me wherever he pleases.”

“Yes; and what was it that you said that reminded me to tell you the story?”

“I said that I wished that I was well and strong, like the other boys.”

“Yes,” said his grandmother, “I do not think you said it in a fretful or impatient spirit; but I thought that this story of Samuel would help to keep you patient and contented.”

“Yes, grandmother, it does,” said Caleb.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CART RIDE

A week after this, Caleb had his whip to mend. He had broken off the lash, by whipping in sticks and little pieces of drift-wood to the mole. David and Dwight worked a little every day upon the mole, and had carried it out pretty far into the stream, and had almost finished the lower branches of the Y. So, one morning, after the boys had gone to school, and Caleb had had his reading lesson, he sat down upon the steps of the door, behind the house, and began to tie on his lash with a piece of twine which Mary Anna had given him.

Behind the house where Caleb's grandmother lived, there was a lane which led to the pasture. At the head of the lane, where you entered it from the yard, were a pair of bars. While Caleb was mending his whip, he accidentally looked up, and noticed that the bars were down.

“There, Mr. Raymond,” said Caleb, talking to himself, as he went on winding his twine round and round the whip-handle; “for once in your life, you have been careless. You have left your bars down. Now we shall have the cattle all let out, unless I go and stop the mischief.”

Caleb thought he would go and put the bars up again, as soon as he had tied the ends of his twine; but before he got quite ready, he heard a noise, as of something coming in the lane. He could not see down the lane far, from the place where he sat, for the barn was in the way. But he wondered what could be coming, and he looked towards the bars, and sat waiting for it to appear.

In a moment, the head and horns of a great ox came into view, and, immediately after, the body of the ox himself, walking slowly along towards the bars.

“There now,” said Caleb, “there comes Lion, and he'll get away.” So he jumped up, and ran towards the ox a few steps, brandishing his whip, and shouting out to drive him back. Old Lion, however, seemed to pay no attention, but came steadily forward, stepping carefully over the ends of the bars, and then, advancing a little way into the yard, began quietly to feed upon the grass. Before Caleb got over his surprise at the entire indifference which old Lion seemed to feel towards him and his whip, he heard the bars rattling again, and looking there, he saw Star, Lion's mate, following on.

“O dear me,” said Caleb, “what shall I do? All our oxen are getting away. I'll run and call Raymond.”

So he began to shout out “Raymond,” as loud as he could call; and immediately afterwards, he heard Raymond's voice answering just down the lane and, looking that way, he saw him coming over the bars himself, as if he had been following the oxen along up the lane.

“Raymond, Raymond,” he cried out, “come quiet; all your oxen are getting away.”

“O, no,” said Raymond, quietly, as he was putting up the bars after the oxen, “they cannot get away—I have fastened the outer gate.”

Then Caleb looked around and observed that the outer gate was fastened, so that they could not get out of the yard.

“O, very well,” said he. “I did not know you were driving them up;” and so he quietly returned to his seat, and went on playing with his whip. Raymond, in the mean time, proceeded to yoke up the cattle.

“Raymond,” said Caleb, at length, “where are you going with the cattle?”

“Out into the woods,” said Raymond.

“What are you going to do in the woods?” said Caleb.

“I am going to make a piece of fence.”

“May I go with you?”

“I don't think you can help me much about the fence,” said Raymond.

“I can pull bushes along,” said Caleb.

Raymond made no reply, but began to drive the oxen towards a cart that was standing in a corner of the yard, and, after a few minutes, Caleb renewed his request.

“Raymond, I wish you would let me go with you.”

“Well—it is just as your grandmother says,” replied Raymond.

So Caleb ran to ask his grandmother; and she came to the window, and enquired of Raymond how long he expected to be gone. He said it would take him more than half a day to make the piece of fence, and he was going to take his dinner with him. This was an objection to Caleb's going; but yet his grandmother concluded on the whole to consent. So they put up some bread and butter, and some apples, with Raymond's dinner, for Caleb. These things were all put in paper parcels, and the parcels put into a bag, which was thrown into the bottom of the cart.