Ingratitude.
By-and-by, when Benny and George grow up, they will find that their father lives upon a fine farm, with a good house and good furniture, and with every comfort around them. They will hardly know how much care and pains their father, and mother, and grandmother took to save them from all suffering, and to provide for them a comfortable and happy home. How ungrateful it would be in them to be unkind or disobedient to their father, and mother, and grandmother, when they grow up.
GOING ALONE
Emigrant going alone.
Sometimes, when a man is intending to emigrate to America, he goes first himself alone, in order to see the country, and choose a place to live in, and buy a farm, intending afterward to come back for his family. He does not take them with him at first, for he does not know what he should do with his wife and all his young children while he is traveling from place to place to view the land.
When the emigrant goes first alone in this way, leaving his family at home, the parting is very sorrowful. His poor wife is almost broken-hearted. She gathers her little children around her, and clasps them in her arms, fearing that some mischief may befall their father when he is far away, and that they may never see him again. The man attempts to comfort her by saying that it will not be long before he comes back, and that then they shall never more be separated. His oldest boy stands holding his father’s staff, and almost wishing that he was going to accompany him. He turns away his face to hide his tears. As for the dog, he sees that his master is going away, and he is very earnestly desirous to go too. In fact, they know he
would go if he were left at liberty, and so they chain him to a post to keep him at home.
A sorrowful parting.
It is a hard thing for a wife and a mother that her husband should thus go away and leave her, to make so long a voyage, and to encounter so many difficulties and dangers, knowing, as she does, that it is uncertain whether he will ever live to return. She bears the pain of this parting out of love to her children. She thinks that their father will find some better and happier home for them in the New World, where they can live in greater plenty, and where, when they grow up, and become men and women, they will be better provided for than they were in their native land.
The ship. The emigrants.
In the distance, in the engraving, we see the ship in which this man is going to sail. We see a company of emigrants, too, down the road, going to embark. There is one child walking alone behind her father and mother, who seems too young to set out on such a voyage.
SILVER BOWL STOLEN
Bruno belonged to several different masters in the course of his life. He was always sorry to leave his old master when the changes were made, but then he yielded to the necessity of the case in these emergencies with a degree of composure and self-control, which, in a man, would have been considered quite philosophical.
The hunter of the Alps, whose life Bruno had saved, resolved at the time that he would never part with him.
“I would not sell him,” said he, “for a thousand francs.”
They reckon sums of money by francs in Switzerland. A franc is a silver coin. About five of them make a dollar.
Bruno’s master is obliged to sell him. The reason why.
However, notwithstanding this resolution, the hunter found himself at last forced to sell his dog. He had concluded to emigrate to America. He found, on making proper inquiry and calculation, that it would cost a considerable sum of money to take Bruno with him across the ocean. In the first place, he would have to pay not a little for his passage. Then, besides, it would cost a good deal to feed him on the way, both while on board the ship and during his progress across the country. The hunter reflected that all the money which he should thus pay for the dog would be so much taken from the food, and clothing, and other comforts of his wife and children. Just at this time a traveler came by who offered to buy the dog, and promised always to take most excellent care of him. So the hunter sold him, and the traveler took him away.
Bruno is sold and carried away to England.
Bruno was very unwilling at first to go away with the stranger. But the hunter ordered him to get into the gentleman’s carriage, and he obeyed. He looked out behind the carriage as they drove away, and wondered what it all could mean. He could not understand it; but as it was always a rule with him to submit contentedly to what could not be helped, he soon ceased to trouble himself about the matter, and so, lying down in the carriage, he went to sleep. He did not wake up for several hours afterward.
The traveler conveyed the dog home with him to England, and kept him a long time. He made a kennel for him in the corner of the yard. Here Bruno lived several years in great peace and plenty.
At length the gentleman was going away from home again on a long tour, and as there was nobody to be left at home to take an interest in Bruno, he put him under the charge, during his absence, of a boy named Lorenzo, who lived in a large house on the banks of a stream near his estate. Lorenzo liked Bruno very much, and took excellent care of him.3
There was a grove of tall trees near the house where Lorenzo lived, which contained the nests of thousands of rooks. Rooks are large black birds, very much like crows. Bruno used to lie in the yard where Lorenzo kept him, and watch the rooks for hours together.
How gipsies live.
In a solitary place near where Lorenzo lived there was an encampment of gipsies. Gipsies live much like Indians. They wander about England in small bands, getting money by begging, and selling baskets, and they build little temporary huts from time to time in solitary places, where they live for a while, and then, breaking up their encampment, they wander on till they find another place, where they encamp again.
Their ingenuity in stealing.
Sometimes, when they can not get money enough by begging and selling baskets, they will steal. They show a great deal of ingenuity in the plans they devise for stealing. In fact, they are very adroit and cunning in every thing they undertake.
At one time Lorenzo’s father went away, and one of the gipsies, named Murphy, resolved to take that opportunity to steal something from the house.
Murphy’s plan.
“We can get in,” said he to his comrade, “very easily, in the night, by the back door, and get the silver bowl. We can melt the bowl, and sell it for four or five sovereigns.”
The silver bowl which Murphy referred to was one which had been given to Lorenzo by his uncle when he was a baby. Lorenzo’s name was engraved upon the side of it.
Lorenzo used his bowl to eat his bread and milk from every night for supper. It was kept on a shelf in a closet opening from the kitchen. Murphy had seen it put there once or twice, when he had been in the kitchen at night, selling baskets.
“We can get that bowl just as well as not,” said Murphy, “when the man is away.”
“There’s a big dog there,” said his comrade.
“Yes,” said Murphy, “but I’ll manage the dog.”
“How will you manage him?” asked his comrade.
“I’ll try coaxing and flattery first,” said Murphy. “If that don’t do, I’ll try threatening; if threatening won’t do, I’ll try bribing; and if he won’t be bribed, I’ll poison him.”
Bruno is on the watch.
That night, about twelve o’clock, Murphy crept stealthily round to a back gate which led into the yard behind the house where Lorenzo lived. The instant that Bruno heard the noise, he sprang up, and went bounding down the path till he came to the gate. As soon as he saw the gipsy, he began to bark very vociferously.
Lorenzo was asleep at this time; but as his room was on the