Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile literature; Children's poetry; Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile literature
“We will both be different,” said George. “It won’t do to plan such
things as we had to remember. We will begin now and plan to have nice
pleasant things, so that when—that when”—But his voice trembled and
broke; he had been too near parting with Davie forever to put in words
the thought that some time the parting would surely come.
But I fancy that they must have kept their words and begun over again,
for this happened several years ago. George and Davie are young men
now, and yesterday I heard them called “model brothers.” They really
seem to be planning to have only pleasant things to remember of each
other when the time comes for one of them to go away.
PANSY.
MUSIC AND WAR.
GEORGE NOYES—that is not his real name—is now in Europe sightseeing. He
spends one week in beautiful Paris, where the people talk French, and
do not do everything quite as do Americans or Englishmen.
George is learning to speak French. He has got on so far that he can
tell in French to the waiters just what he will have of the bill of
fare.
Yesterday he and his Uncle Fred went to Pont Neuf, a bridge more than a
thousand feet long, and three hundred years old. King Henry the Fourth
had it built. Visitors of Paris must needs see this wonderful bridge,
or they have not seen Paris. That’s what they say.
[Illustration: ON DRILL.]
While George was looking this way and that from the bridge, and
thinking of the war times of kings and princes, he heard sweet music,
and turning to see whence it came, he saw a company of boys playing on
drums and bugles, under the leadership of a soldier and one of their
own companions.
There they drill every pleasant afternoon, and delight the multitudes
who gather on Pont Neuf.
However, it is not all for fun they are playing charming French music,
and among the rest the Marseillaise Hymn. They are getting ready for
war times, for fierce battles and blood and death.
Most nations have had many wars, and millions of their people have been
slain, and no words can tell the suffering. Some day I fear those nice
French boys, grown to be men, will be playing the Marseillaise Hymn on
some awful battle field, while thousands of French and Germans, or some
other people, will be falling and dying!
All this because one nation wants some of the other nation’s land, or
for some other wicked cause.
“Blessed are the peace makers, for”—
L.
JEAN.
COME now, the good ship _City of Paris_ sails in a few days, so let us
away over the ocean to France.
Here we are in Paris, the most beautiful, though not the best city in
the world, they say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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