Short stories and selections for use in the secondary schools
General
Short stories and selections for use in the secondary schools
English prose literature; Readers; Short stories
music was not interdicted, [Footnote: Interdicted: forbidden.] being
supposed to have a soothing, tranquillizing quality, and one song, sung
by "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor, from her majesty's Australian
colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of
the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending
with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-o-o-o-ard
of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck,
rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning
forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or
the length of his song,--it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued
with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby
generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at
full length under the trees, in the soft summer twilight, smoking their
pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that
this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o'
think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow,
"is 'evingly." It reminded him of Greenwich.
On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch from
whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket
spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the
ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower
with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would
bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted
blossoms of Las Mariposas. [Footnote: Las Mariposas: the Mariposa
lilies; also called butterfly lilies.] The men had suddenly awakened to
the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which
they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of
glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from
the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and
strengthened, and were invariably put aside for The Luck. It was
wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would
do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of
fairyland had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He
appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity
about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes
worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded
that once, having crept beyond his "corral," [Footnote: Corral: an
inclosure for animals.]--a hedge of tessellated [Footnote: Tessellated:
checkered.] pine boughs which surrounded his bed,--he dropped over the
bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs
in the air in that position for at least five minutes with unflinching
gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the
many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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