Little Men. Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys. Alcott Louisa May
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He was truly grateful for this, and toiled away so diligently that Mr. Bhaer said, smiling, when he saw his hot face and inky fingers, —
“Don’t work so hard, my boy; you will tire yourself out, and there is time enough.”
“But I must work hard, or I can’t catch up with the others. They know heaps, and I don’t know any thing,” said Nat, who had been reduced to a state of despair by hearing the boys recite their grammar, history, and geography with what he thought amazing ease and accuracy.
“You know a good many things which they don’t,” said Mr. Bhaer, sitting down beside him, while Franz led a class of small students through the intricacies of the multiplication table.
“Do I?” and Nat looked utterly incredulous.
“Yes; for one thing, you can keep your temper, and Jack, who is quick at numbers, cannot; that is an excellent lesson, and I think you have learned it well. Then, you can play the violin, and not one of the lads can, though they want to do it very much. But, best of all, Nat, you really care to learn something, and that is half the battle. It seems hard at first, and you will feel discouraged, but plod away, and things will get easier and easier as you go on.”
Nat’s face had brightened more and more as he listened, for, small as the list of his learning was, it cheered him immensely to feel that he had any thing to fall back upon. “Yes, I can keep my temper – father’s beating taught me that; and I can fiddle, though I don’t know where the Bay of Biscay is,” he thought, with a sense of comfort impossible to express. Then he said aloud, and so earnestly that Demi heard him, —
“I do want to learn, and I will try. I never went to school, but I couldn’t help it; and if the fellows don’t laugh at me, I guess I’ll get on first rate – you and the lady are so good to me.”
“They shan’t laugh at you; if they do, I’ll – I’ll – tell them not to,” cried Demi, quite forgetting where he was.
The class stopped in the middle of 7 times 9, and every one looked up to see what was going on.
Thinking that a lesson in learning to help one another was better than arithmetic just then, Mr. Bhaer told them about Nat, making such an interesting and touching little story out of it that the good-hearted lads all promised to lend him a hand, and felt quite honored to be called upon to impart their stores of wisdom to the chap who fiddled so capitally. This appeal established the right feeling among them, and Nat had few hindrances to struggle against, for every one was glad to give him a “boost” up the ladder of learning.
Till he was stronger, much study was not good for him, however, and Mrs. Jo found various amusements in the house for him while others were at their books. But his garden was his best medicine, and he worked away like a beaver, preparing his little farm, sowing his beans, watching eagerly to see them grow, and rejoicing over each green leaf and slender stock that shot up and flourished in the warm spring weather. Never was a garden more faithfully hoed; Mr. Bhaer really feared that nothing would find time to grow, Nat kept up such a stirring of the soil; so he gave him easy jobs in the flower garden or among the strawberries, where he worked and hummed as busily as the bees booming all about him.
“This is the crop I like best,” Mrs. Bhaer used to say, as she pinched the once thin cheeks now getting plump and ruddy, or stroked the bent shoulders that were slowly straightening up with healthful work, good food, and the absence of that heavy burden, poverty.
Demi was his little friend, Tommy his patron, and Daisy the comforter of all his woes; for, though the children were younger than he, his timid spirit found a pleasure in their innocent society, and rather shrunk from the rough sports of the elder lads. Mr. Laurence did not forget him, but sent clothes and books, music and kind messages, and now and then came out to see how his boy was getting on, or took him into town to a concert; on which occasions Nat felt himself translated into the seventh heaven of bliss, for he went to Mr. Laurence’s great house, saw his pretty wife and little fairy of a daughter, had a good dinner, and was made so comfortable, that he talked and dreamed of it for days and nights afterward.
It takes so little to make a child happy, that it is a pity in a world full of sunshine and pleasant things, that there should be any wistful faces, empty hands, or lonely little hearts. Feeling this, the Bhaers gathered up all the crumbs they could find to feed their flock of hungry sparrows, for they were not rich, except in charity. Many of Mrs. Jo’s friends who had nurseries sent her the toys of which their children so soon tired, and in mending these Nat found an employment that just suited him. He was very neat and skilful with those slender fingers of his, and passed many a rainy afternoon with his gum-bottle, paint-box, and knife, repairing furniture, animals, and games, while Daisy was dressmaker to the dilapidated dolls. As fast as the toys were mended, they were put carefully away in a certain drawer which was to furnish forth a Christmas-tree for all the poor children of the neighborhood, that being the way the Plumfield boys celebrated the birthday of Him who loved the poor and blessed the little ones.
Demi was never tired of reading and explaining his favorite books, and many a pleasant hour did they spend in the old willow, revelling over “Robinson Crusoe,” “Arabian Nights,” “Edgeworth’s Tales,” and the other dear immortal stories that will delight children for centuries to come. This opened a new world to Nat, and his eagerness to see what came next in the story helped him on till he could read as well as anybody, and felt so rich and proud with his new accomplishment, that there was danger of his being as much of a bookworm as Demi.
Another helpful thing happened in a most unexpected and agreeable manner. Several of the boys were “in business,” as they called it, for most of them were poor, and knowing that they would have their own way to make by and by, the Bhaers encouraged any efforts at independence. Tommy sold his eggs; Jack speculated in live stock; Franz helped in the teaching, and was paid for it; Ned had a taste for carpentry, and a turning-lathe was set up for him in which he turned all sorts of useful or pretty things, and sold them; while Demi constructed water-mills, whirligigs, and unknown machines of an intricate and useless nature, and disposed of them to the boys.
“Let him be a mechanic if he likes,” said Mr. Bhaer. “Give a boy a trade, and he is independent. Work is wholesome, and whatever talent these lads possess, be it for poetry or ploughing, it shall be cultivated and made useful to them if possible.”
So when Nat came running to him one day to ask with an excited face, —
“Can I go and fiddle for some people who are to have a picnic in our woods? They will pay me, and I’d like to earn some money as the other boys do, and fiddling is the only way I know how to do it,” —
Mr. Bhaer answered readily, —
“Go, and welcome. It is an easy and a pleasant way to work, and I am glad it is offered you.”
Nat went, and did so well, that when he came home he had two dollars in his pocket, which he displayed with intense satisfaction, as he told how much he had enjoyed the afternoon, how kind the young people were, and how they had praised his dance-music, and promised to have him again.
“It is so much nicer than fiddling in the street, for then I got none of the money, and now I have it all, and a good time besides. I’m in business now as well as Tommy and Jack, and I like it ever so much,” said Nat, proudly patting the old pocket-book, and feeling like a millionaire already.
He was in business truly, for picnics were plenty as summer opened, and Nat’s skill was in great demand. He was always at liberty to go if lessons were not neglected, and if the picnics were respectable young people. For Mr. Bhaer explained to him that a good plain education is necessary for every one, and that no amount of money should hire him to go where he might be tempted to do wrong. Nat quite agreed to this, and it was a pleasant sight to see the innocent-hearted lad go driving away in the gay wagons that stopped at the gate for him, or to hear him come fiddling home tired but happy, with his well-earned money in one pocket, and some “goodies” from the feast for Daisy or little Ted, whom he never forgot.
“I’m going to save up till I get enough to buy a violin for myself, and then I can earn my own living, can’t I?” he used to say, as he brought his dollars to Mr. Bhaer to keep.
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