Margie Hargrave: and the Percy children

Chapter I. March Winds

Imagine a wide kitchen, with an open fireplace in which logs of oak and hickory wood are brightly burning. A plain pine table, freshly scoured, stands in front of the fireplace. Upon it lies an open Bible, with a partly-knitted stocking and a ball of yarn placed upon its divided pages. The lamp in the middle of the table seems hardly needed, for the firelight shines so gayly, lighting every corner of the room, and shedding its cheerful glow upon the children’s faces.

Children in this picture ? Why not, indeed ? On the low cushioned lounge drawn

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near the chimney-corner lies little Alice curled up like a kitten, watching the glowing embers under the logs. In one corner of the ample fireside, her brown eyes looking troubled to-night, sits Margie, a girl of nine, while opposite her, on a bench just large enough for two, sit the twin boys, Rob and Phil, just twelve years old and the exact image of each other. At the left hand of the chimney-place the door stands ajar, and through the opening a homely face peers into the room, as Aunt Elsie calls out,

“ Hab patience, chillens. I ’ll be in dar soon ’s I smokes one leetle whiff more. Dese yere windy nights ’pears like one pipe don’t no ways satisfy.”

Do you like the picture ? Then listen to the story.

Mr. Hargrave, the father of Rob and Phil, Margie and Alice, had lived in a city nearly all his life. Only a year from the time our story begins, he had bought a farm in South Missouri, and had removed his little

MARCH WINDS.

family to the low-roofed log-house that they now called home. It was a great change from the nice, well-furnished house on the avenue in the city, but fortune had gone all awry with Mr. Hargrave, of late years, and he was very glad to save enough out of his once large property to buy for himself the little farm in a far-away region, where land was cheap and a living to be had for the tilling of the ground.

The children were ready, as children are, for the change, and the novelty of moving into the country, which they fancied to be a lovely plain, covered with strawberries and hedged in by hills and forests, where roved cows and sheep without number, and where grew blackberries, and grapes, and nuts, in delicious abundance. Mrs. Hargrave, if not so delighted with the change, was yet willing to leave the city and to try the experiment of making a home and a living on a farm ; and so, as I said, about a year before the night of our introduction to the family, they had

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taken possession of the log-house that stood in the middle of the small farm which Mr. Hargrave worked with his own hands. Mrs. Hargrave had her share of the labor too, as all farmers’ wives have, and she did the household work, with the exception of the washings, which Aunt Elsie, an old colored woman, who lived not far off, came every week to do. Mrs. Hargrave planned to have her washing done on Wednesdays, so that Aunt Elsie might remain over night with the children, thus affording their parents the pleasure of attending the weekly prayer-meeting that was held in the schoolhouse, about a mile away. Mrs. Hargrave said the prayer-meeting always rested her.

It was Wednesday night, and the washing was snugly folded down in the great round ironing-basket, the supper things were cleared away, and Mr. and Mrs. Hargrave were gone to the distant schoolhouse, when the little circle of children gathered around the pleasant lire, as we saw them in our picture.

MARCH WINDS.

It was near the close of the stormy month of March. This year it seemed stormier than ever to the Hargrave children as they gathered nightly round the ingle, and listened to the howling of the winds, the rattling of the loosely-fitting windows, the creaking of the rusty-hinged gates, and the forlorn sound of the leafless branches of the locust-trees as they were tossed against the eaves of the house. Margie and Phil were particularly averse to the voices of the winds, but Rob, who was somewhat of a poet, I should think, was never weary of listening to the grand old choruses of Boreas, old Zero, and the like. To-night, the wind blew in great eddying gusts, gathering force as they came across the farm-sprinkled prairies, and sighing and wailing as they drove on relentlessly toward the distant forest. Margie crouched nearer the fire as each fresh blast swept round the kitchen corner, rattling the little windows that she often declared were too little for any other use than to rattle on stormy nights.

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When Elsie put her head in the door, promising to come soon, Margie looked ruefully towards the washroom, and said,

“ I do n’t see why mamma likes to go to meeting on stormy nights. That old schoolhouse door creaks awful, and there’s a pane of glass out, and it smokes and everything. I should n’t think it would rest her, when she ’s been starching and sprinkling and everything, all day.”

Margie’s sentences were not constructed according to the strictest rules of grammar, but I suppose the wind had blown her rules all out of her head, if, indeed, she had ever had them in. Phil understood her meaning, however, without the aid of rules, and answered, according to her model,

“ Neither should I ; but then, folks a’ n’t alike. My! Wasn’t that a screecher? I ’spect our marten-box ’ll come down next. One good thing, she ’s got her woollen hood, and the big brown veil, so she can’t hear so plain, and papa always walks either before or

MARCH WINDS.

ii behind, or which ever way it blows, so as to break it off. I wish Elsie ’d hurry up.”

Phil edged a little closer to Rob, who was whittling a stick, and not seeming to mind the great blow that was going on outside. Certain it was that the wind had not succeeded in scattering Rob’s parts of speech, for he looked up, and quite properly requested Phil to move a little farther from his elbow. Phil glanced uneasily towards the washroom door, and rather reluctantly moved a very little.

“ Sit over there by Alice,” said Rob, “ and I ’ll tell you what the wind says. Hear that, now?” and Rob, who was a capital mimic, imitated the rise and swell and fall of the blast, as he intoned the words, “ So poor , so poor , oh-oh-oh, o-o, o-o, o-o, so poor . Do lit scorn the p-o-o-o-orS

Margie shuddered, and wondered if she ever had scorned the poor. Elsie came in just then, and at that moment a fierce, high gust came shrieking around the corner, and

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seemed to break right over the farmhouse gable, for it sent a great puff of smoke down the chimney and out at the wide-mouthed fireplace.

“There!” said Rob, his voice coming in surges from his chest, “ I heard it just as plain, ‘Feed the hungry; warm the freezing. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ ”

“O Rob!” said Margie, “you oughtn’t. That ’s in the Bible. Jesus said that in the Bible.”

“ I know it,” said Rob. “ He said it just now, in the wind, too.”

Phil looked up as if he did n’t quite know what to make of him, but Rob was whittling away in earnest, and neither laughed nor frowned. Presently little Alice spoke from her corner on the lounge :

“ There ’s another wind, Robbie. What did that say? It seems to speak to us very loud and plain. I ’ll ‘ remember the poor,’ and

MARCH WINDS.

give my new ten cents to old Jimmy, to-morrow, on account of that last wind.”

Old Jimmy was a very poor lame man who lived not far from Mr. Hargrave’s, and who made his living by driving teams for the farmers occasionally, and doing little odd jobs when he could get them. He was very infirm, however, and in winter time he often needed the help of the charitable. Little Alice thought of poor old Jimmy at once, when Robby wailed out, “Feed the hungry; warm the freezing;” and she inwardly resolved to obey the voice that Rob said was to be heard in the wind. Alice was Rob’s pet sister; and as soon as she spoke, he threw down his stick and said, “Come, sit in Rob’s lap and listen to a nice little story, all out of the winds.” Alice ran to her brother and jumped into his lap; and, with her little clinging arms around his neck, Rob began :

“ That ’s a fine breeze to start with, now. This is what it says :

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“ ‘ Pretty near done with sno-o-ow !

Haven’t many more weeks to blo-o-ow!

Should n’t think it would bother you so 1

Are n’t you sorry to have me go ?

Say Good-by to old Zero !’ ”

“ Oh, say another, Robby !” said Alice, laughing gayly. Margie’s face looked brighter, too, and Aunt Elsie, seated square in front of the fire, fairly shook with laughter at Rob’s droll translation of the March winds.

“ Dat a’ n’t de way J’se heerd it, chile,” said she. “ Dat a’ n’t de way I ’se heerd it. Do n’t say your way a’ n’t de bestest, howsomedever.”

“What did you hear, Aunt Elsie?” asked Phil.

“ Oh, g’long, chile,” said Elsie. “’T a’ n’t no kind o’ use pesterin’ ’bout what I ’se heerd. Listen to yer brother.”

So Rob went on : “ Hark, now, to that fine blow !

“‘We ’re most tired of pinching noses,

Guess we ’ll try some gentle breezes,

Swelling buds out on the treeses,

MARCH WINDS .

*5

Opening out the spring-time posies,

Coaxing up the summer roses.

March winds never blow for malice ;

We ’re good friends to little Alice.’ ”

They were all laughing by this time, and Phil said the spring was coming, sure enough, for he had found a spring-beauty under a heap of leaves in the south pasture.

“ And I know where there ’s a lot of violets up,” said Margie.

“ And I know where there ’s a lot of apples up,” said Rob ; “ up on the dresser, and I feel like roasting some of them before this jolly fire.”

Soon Rob had a nice lot of apples hanging by threads from the mantel and twirling round and round before the open fire. The children, busied in watching their apples roast, forgot the howling winds, and were merrily chatting, when the outer door opened, and their papa and mamma entered the room, none the worse for their long tramp in the blustering gale.

“ We are a little late,” said Mrs. Hargrave, “but we stopped to see old Jimmy. He was poorly, and your father split some wood for him, and we tidied up the room and made it a little more comfortable. I hope, boys, that you will rise early to-morrow and carry some breakfast to him. I saw nothing in his cupboard but some broken pieces of dry food. I do n’t think he can have had a cup of coffee very lately, judging from the looks of his little tin coffeepot.”

“ Let us go now,” cried Rob and Phil. “We can cut across the field in five minutes.”

“ I 'll go ’long wid ’em,” said Elsie, rising and pouring a pitcher of cold coffee into a tin pail which she placed upon some glowing coals. “ Dat ar coffee ’ll be bilin’ by de time I ties up myself in my big shawl.”

“ Take our roast apples,” said Margie and Alice at once.

Mrs. Hargrave made no objection, but began to pack a small basket with bread and meat and butter and a nice applepie. Rob l7 and Phil put on their caps and coats and mittens, and in a minute were ready to start, munching their hot roast apples as they waited for Elsie, who was a little slower in her motions than they.

“Ye see I heerd de Lord’s gospel to-night,” said Elsie to Mrs. Hargrave. “ De winds an’ de waves obey him, an’ out of de moufs of babes an’ sucklins he hab perfected praise. Arter dat ar what Rob heerd in de wind, I could n’t sleep a wink ef I did n’t tote dis coffee to dat poor lone critter.”

“ She means that about ‘Ye have done it unto me,’ in the Bible, you know,” said Margie. “ Rob heard the winds say it.”

Mrs. Hargrave smiled. She knew Rob’s way.

When Rob and Phil and Aunt Elsie returned, the stars were shining and the winds had ceased to blow. The cheerful fire seemed to them brighter than ever as they entered the warm kitchen, and repeated to the family old Jimmy’s grateful thanks.

Margie Hargi aye

“ He must have been hearing the winds too,” said Phil, “ for he said that very same verse to us when we were coming away.”

“ It ’s wonderful,” said Margie; “it’s like being in church in the kitchen and hearing the winds for a minister.”

“ The winds are His ministers,” said Mrs. Hargrave ; and with that sweet thought in their minds the children went to their beds, and, I doubt not, dreamed pleasant dreams.

SUMMER WORK.

x9

CHAPTER II*

SUMMER WORK.

March winds had ceased to blow ; April showers had brought May flowers, and May had placed her flowery crown upon the rosy brow of June, and June had covered all the landscape with her beauty, and she too had followed in the vanishing procession of the months. -

July had come. The hay was cut, and the golden wheat-fields waved in ripening beauty over Mr. Hargrave’s fertile acres. Soon the great mower and reaper would begin to sound its busy whir-r-r up and down the fields, and the binders and stookers would follow in its wake, and last would come the stackers and the thrashers, and the harvest would be over.

It was a very busy time on the Hargrave farm. Wheat-harvest is always a busy time

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with farmers. The farmers’ wives have more to do at this season of the year than at other times, for it is the usual custom for the hired men who help the farmers gather in their crops to board in the farmer’s family while at work for him.

Mr. Hargrave had engaged four men to help him during harvest, and of course this added greatly to Mrs. Hargrave’s cares. It was grand weather for the ripening grain. The sun shone, and the prairie flowers held up their bright faces and tossed their glowing colors to his light, and the tasselling cornfields waved their greenness joyfully. All nature seemed to sing

“ I love the merry, merry sunshine.’1

Mr. Hargrave’s twin boys loved it too. They liked the green fields and the growing grain. They delighted in the summer work of the country. They enjoyed the early morning walk to bring the cows from the distant pasture, and they enjoyed equally the

SUMMER WORK.

2 I sunset herding of the cattle. They had found the country in many ways far different from what they had fancied it to be before they moved from the city ; but I think, on the whole, they were quite satisfied with the beautiful country that God had made. They grew stout and rosy-cheeked, and were as sunburnt, before May was out, as any of the country boys who had lived all their lives under the bright skies and out in the open air.

Margie and Alice liked the new home, but in a milder way than did the boys. They could n’t get over their fear of snakes, and were afraid to go very far from the door-yard, or out of the well-beaten cattle-paths. Still they had ventured, more than once, into the meadows to gather flowers and strawberries, and had sometimes rambled in the grove, on the edge of which was built the district schoolhouse, in which they were taught.

On the first of July, however, school closed, and for the next two months the scholars were to have vacation. The boys,

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for the most part, were to work in the harvest-fields, and the girls to assist about the various duties of the house. In farming communities the school-children do not, as a general thing, go on summer excursions to watering-places during the holidays, as many city children do. I believe they have just about as good a time, though. Their pleasures are simple, but hearty and wholesome. Kissed by the sun, caressed by the breezes, their limbs made active by healthful labor, and their appetite fed by nourishing food, they work and play and sleep and grow as God means children should do.

One morning, early in July, as Mrs. Hargrave stood at the table near the open kitchen window, rolling out pastry, while Margie and Alice were stemming a pan of cherries — for the harvesters were to come to-day, and there was to be much cooking done — Mr Hargrave, passing by the window, stopped to say to his wife that the wheat was in prime condition for harvesting, and that if he got it in the stack as well as he hoped to do, he should feel a hundred per cent, better off than he was last harvest.

Mrs. Hargrave smiled and said, “ We have everything for which to be thankful.”

“ Not everything, mamma,” said Margie, as her father passed on to his work. “ You forget that we have n’t any Sunday-school.”

“True,” said her mamma, “yet we have the Bible, and our dear children, at least, have religious instruction. Yet I, too, wish we might have a Sunday-school.”

Now, though there was preaching every Sunday in the district schoolhouse, and a prayer-meeting every Wednesday night, yet there had never been a settled minister of the gospel in that neighborhood. The preaching was done by the pastors of the different churches in the neighboring villages. They had made an arrangement to take turns in keeping up the worship of God in this district, and so, one Sunday, the Baptist minister from the town of W. would conduct di-

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vine services ; and the next, the Methodist minister did the same, and the next, the Presbyterian from the village of D. preached the gospel, and the next Sunday the Congregational minister from the same village would do his part in the good work. Meantime the Christian people in the community were praying that God would send them the means of building a meetinghouse in which to gather a church. But the farms were few and far between, and most of the people were poor, and the time seemed yet far off, even to the most hopeful, when they should have a place of worship and a pastor.

Ever since the Hargraves had moved to this locality, Margie had longed and prayed for a Sunday-school. She had said little about it, but she had never forgotten to pray that God would provide one.

I think she must have been talking to some of her little friends at the school, however, about her own loved Sunday-school, for she answered her mother,

SUMMER WORK.

“Yes, mamma, but there are other children who do n’t have, and they would like to be taught the Bible and our pretty hymns, and to have nice concerts, and say verses and the Commandments; and I know ten girls who would always come, if we only had a Sunday-school.”

“ I suppose there are children enough,” said Mrs. Hargrave, “but where the teachers are to come from, I can’t think.”

“ Papa and you would be two,” began Margie, “ and Miss Betty Gaylord, and Mr. Hunt, and — and — ”

“ Those are all I can possibly think of myself,” said Mrs. Hargrave. “ It does n’t look very encouraging; but we will hope for the best. These fine rich lands must soon be settled, and we will pray God to send us Christian families.”

“ There ’s never even been a Sunday-school missionary here, such as used to come to our city Sunday-school, and tell about visiting destitute places, and starting schools 4

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in log-houses, and giving library books, and all that. I wish one would come here.”

She did not know that God had already found a Sunday-school missionary, who was to do great things in His name, in that very place, and in that house.

By-and-by dinner-time came, and the hungry harvesters gathered around the well-spread table on the shady porch, and refreshed themselves with Mrs. Hargrave’s nicely cooked dinner. After the meal was over, while the men were resting on the porch, Margie asked one, whom the rest called Dike, and with whom she was pretty well acquainted, as he had often worked for Mr. Hargrave before, whether he had ever been to* Sunday-school.

“No,” said he; “that sort war n’t pop’lar whar 1 was raised.”

“ Nor any other sort, I guess,” whispered Phil to Robbie.

Margie looked disappointed, and the man, noticing it, said, “And what made you take me for a Sunday-school chap?”

SUMMER WORK .

“You sing so nice,” said Margie, “I’ve heard you sing ‘ Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.’ ”

“Yes I can sing some,” the man replied.

“ I wish you could sing Sunday hymns,” said Margie.

“Is ‘ Title clear ’ one of ’em?” asked Dike.

“Yes,” said Margie slowly, “if you sing it to this tune,” and she sang the first verse, with the chorus :

“I do bfelieve, I now believe,

That Jesus died for me,

And on the cross he shed his blood,

From sin to set me free.”

“Well that’s a pretty tune,” said Dike; “ sing it over again, and I ’ll know it perfect by that time. I ’m a master-hand to catch the turn of a tune.”

Dike pronounced the word “ tune ” as if it were spelled tchewn , much to Robbie’s and Phil’s amusement. But Margie did n’t notice it, and she sang the verse again, and when she came to the chorus, Dike joined in, and his rich, musical voice rang loud and clear on the prairie breeze as he sang.

“ Can you sing ‘ Come to Jesus,’ if I start it for you ?” asked Margie, when they had finished —

“When I can read my title clear.”

“ I reckon,” said Dike ; “ I never heard it, but I ’low I could larn it.”

Margie ran into the house for her little hymn-book. Finding the hymn, she gave the book to Dike, and she sang the first verse over twice, by herself. At the beginning of of the second verse, Dike’s voice joined in, and Mr. Hargrave and Robbie and Phil, from under the locust-tree, added their voices, and the music sounded so sweet that the tired mother left the unwashed dishes, while she came to the porch-door and united with the rest in the singing of the entire hymn.

“Well now, that’s nice,” said the man who owned the mower. “ Teach him another one, little miss, can’t you ? He leads off

SUMMER WORK .

masterful. We Ve got just about ten minutes more of nooning.”

O

So Margie turned over to the hymn,

“ Come to the Sunday-school.”

And presently Dike had learned that, and all the family again joined in singing,

“ Come to the Sunday-school, we really wish you would, Wont you come and join a class? We ’ll surely do you good.

Bright eyes and happy hearts, and voices sweet and clear, Just walk in and look around, you ’ll surely find them here.

Come then, for now ’s the time,

Come, in your youthful prime,

Come, while you ’re free from crime,

Come, come, come.”

Mr. Hargrave sang bass to this, and Mrs. Hargrave alto, and the effect was very pleasing. The men said they enjoyed the singing as well as they had the dinner, and that both were tiptop.

“Now if we only had a Sunday-school, and you would lead the singing, what a good thing that would be,” said Margie.

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Well,” laughed Dike, “ I a’ n’t no ways used to that sort, but, tell you what, you git the Sunday-school started, and I ’ll make a hand at the singing.”

“ Will you, certain sure?” cried Margie, with sparkling eyes.

“ Sure ’s I ’m a sinner,” called out Dike, who was halfway to the barn.

“ I do believe I can,” said Margie, half to herself, as she turned to answer her mother’s call.

How little she knew what the good God had given her child-hands to do. Only a little nine-year-old girl, and yet she had a work for Jesus.

And in that golden harvest-noon, Margie Hargrave began her summer work.

PLANTING SHARON'S ROSE.

Chapter III. Planting Sharon's Rose

It was quite early in the morning. Mrs. Hargrave was baking gingerbread and creamcookies for the half-past-nine lunch, which she was to send out to the men in the harvest-field. Alice was rolling out a little bit of cake-dough at one corner of the table, with a clothes-pin for a roller; and Margie was stringing snap-beans for the dinner. She had a large pan of harvest apples to pare for sauce, when the beans should be finished; and then she must wash the potatoes, and silk the corn, and pick over the salad greens.

By the time all these duties were done, she knew it would be time to set the long table for dinner. For Margie knew that between-whiles she must run up stairs and down, and out to the barn and spring-house

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a good many times, on one errand or another, to save her over-worked mamma from extra steps.

Margie had become quite a useful child. Although in their city home she had seldom seen the inside of the kitchen, yet since she had moved to the farm she had grown very familiar with kitchen-life, and even little Alice had learned to do many things to assist her mother.

To-day, while Margie’s fingers vrorked away at the beans, her thoughts w^ere also busy. She wras thinking of her much-loved Sunday-school, and how to get one “started,” as Dike said. “ It would n’t be any use,” she thought, “to get the girls and boys together in the schoolhouse, if there were no superintendent and teachers. I do wonder if papa would be superintendent. Mamma and Mr. Hunt and Miss Betty Gaylord wrould be teachers enough to begin writh. Only to begin : maybe after a while some others might be found — Mrs. Nevins, perhaps. As soon

PLANTING SNAP ON’S POST.

as mamma can spare me, I mean to go and ask her.”

Margie did n’t talk much all the morning, but as soon as dinner was over she got out her little hymn-book, and asked Dike if he wanted to learn “ Shining Shore,” and “Nearer, my God, to thee!”

Dike did; and the best of it was, that when Dike once learned a hymn so that he could sing it through, he was sure of it, words, tune and all, ever afterwards. That noon he learned both those hymns and the one beginning,

“ Not all the blood of beasts,

Could give the guilty conscience peace,

Or wash away its stain ;”

with the chorus,

“ I ’m glad salvation ’s free.”

Then little Alice would have them all sing her favorite,

“Jesus loves me.”

Margie’s heart bounded with joyful sur- 5

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prise as Mr. Danvers, the man who owned the machine, asked her to sing again,

“ Come to the Sunday-school.”

“ That e’en a’ most made me wish we had a Sunday-school to go to,” he said. “ I used to teach a class of little girls, when I lived down in York state. Nice school it was we had there. We teachers used to have a sort of conference meeting after school, and study over the lesson for the next Sunday. Beats all, how you do git used to doin’ without things you can’t have.”

“We ought n’t to get used to doing without a Sunday-school though,” said Margie. “ Besides, we can have one, if we can only get teachers enough.”

“Well, I dunno,” said Mr. Danvers; “seems to me all the stiddy meetin’ goers might be counted on for teachers; I’m sure I ’d be willin’ to do my part.”

Margie clapped her hands.

“Now, papa,” she cried, “ wont you be superintendent?”

PLANTING SNAP ON'S POSE.

“That is startling,” said Mr. Hargrave, laughing. “Superintendent of what , Margie dear?”

“Oh, of our Sunday-school — Dike’s, and Mr. Danvers’ and mine.”

“ Dike’s and Mr. Danvers’ and yours ? Well, that is enterprising. When are you expecting to open?”

“ Next Sunday,” said Mr. Danvers promptly, “good a time as any. What’s to hinder? Dike’s been practising psalm tunes all morning. It ’ll seem like old times to get out our Testaments and read with the children again, ‘Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the East and have come to worship him.’ Tell you what, I ’m in for the Sunday-school, and Superintendent Hargrave.”