The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (140 page)

SCIENTIFIC COLUMN

In this so-called Nineteenth Century Science is but too little considered in the nurseries of the rich and proud. But we are not like that.

It is not generally known that if you put bits of camphor in luke-warm water it will move about. If you drop sweet oil in, the camphor will dart away and then stop moving. But don’t drop any till you are tired of it, because the camphor won’t any more afterwards. Much amusement and instruction is lost by not knowing things like this.

If you put a sixpence under a shilling in a wine-glass, and blow hard down the side of the glass, the sixpence will jump up and sit on the top of the shilling. At least I can’t do it myself, but my cousin can. He is in the Navy.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

Noël. You are very poetical, but I am sorry to say it will not do.

Alice. Nothing will ever make your hair curl, so it’s no use. Some people say it’s more important to tidy up as you go along. I don’t mean you in particular, but every one.

H. O. We never said you were tubby, but the Editor does not know any cure.

Noël. If there is any of the paper over when this newspaper is finished, I will exchange it for your shut-up inkstand, or the knife that has the useful thing in it for taking stones out of horses’ feet, but you can’t have it without.

H. O. There are many ways how your steam engine might stop working. You might ask Dicky. He knows one of them. I think it is the way yours stopped.

Noël. If you think that by filling the garden with sand you can make crabs build their nests there you are not at all sensible.

You have altered your poem about the battle of Waterloo so often, that we cannot read it except where the Duke waves his sword and says some thing we can’t read either. Why did you write it on blotting-paper with purple chalk?—ED. (Because YOU KNOW WHO sneaked my pencil.—NOEL.)

POETRY

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,

And the way he came down was awful, I’m told;

But it’s nothing to the way one of the Editors comes down on me,

If I crumble my bread-and-butter or spill my tea.

NOEL.

CURIOUS FACTS

If you hold a guinea-pig up by his tail his eyes drop out.

You can’t do half the things yourself that children in books do, making models or soon. I wonder why?—ALICE.

If you take a date’s stone out and put in an almond and eat them together, it is prime. I found this out.—SUB-EDITOR.

If you put your wet hand into boiling lead it will not hurt you if you draw it out quickly enough. I have never tried this.—DORA.

THE PURRING CLASS (Instructive Article)

If I ever keep a school everything shall be quite different. Nobody shall learn anything they don’t want to. And sometimes instead of having masters and mistresses we will have cats, and we will dress up in cat skins and learn purring. ‘Now, my dears,’ the old cat will say, ‘one, two, three all purr together,’ and we shall purr like anything.

She won’t teach us to mew, but we shall know how without teaching. Children do know some things without being taught.—ALICE.

POETRY

(Translated into French by Dora)

Quand j’etais jeune et j’etais fou

J’achetai un violon pour dix-huit sous

Et tous les airs que je jouai

Etait over the hills and far away.

Another piece of it—

Mercie jolie vache qui fait

Bon lait pour mon dejeuner

Tous les matins tous les soirs

Mon pain je mange, ton lait je boire.

RECREATIONS

It is a mistake to think that cats are playful. I often try to get a cat to play with me, and she never seems to care about the game, no matter how little it hurts.—H. O.

Making pots and pans with clay is fun, but do not tell the grown-ups. It is better to surprise them; and then you must say at once how easily it washes off—much easier than ink.—DICKY.

SAM REDFERN, OR THE BUSH RANGER’S BURIAL

By Dicky

‘Well, Annie, I have bad news for you,’ said Mr Ridgway, as he entered the comfortable dining-room of his cabin in the Bush. ‘Sam Redfern the Bushranger is about this part of the Bush just now. I hope he will not attack us with his gang.’

‘I hope not,’ responded Annie, a gentle maiden of some sixteen summers.

Just then came a knock at the door of the hut, and a gruff voice asked them to open the door.

‘It is Sam Redfern the Bushranger, father,’ said the girl.

‘The same,’ responded the voice, and the next moment the hall door was smashed in, and Sam Redfern sprang in, followed by his gang.

CHAPTER II

Annie’s Father was at once overpowered, and Annie herself lay bound with cords on the drawing-room sofa. Sam Redfern set a guard round the lonely hut, and all human aid was despaired of. But you never know. Far away in the Bush a different scene was being enacted.

‘Must be Injuns,’ said a tall man to himself as he pushed his way through the brushwood. It was Jim Carlton, the celebrated detective. ‘I know them,’ he added; ‘they are Apaches.’ just then ten Indians in full war-paint appeared. Carlton raised his rifle and fired, and slinging their scalps on his arm he hastened towards the humble log hut where resided his affianced bride, Annie Ridgway, sometimes known as the Flower of the Bush.

CHAPTER III

The moon was low on the horizon, and Sam Redfern was seated at a drinking bout with some of his boon companions.

They had rifled the cellars of the hut, and the rich wines flowed like water in the golden goblets of Mr Ridgway.

But Annie had made friends with one of the gang, a noble, good-hearted man who had joined Sam Redfern by mistake, and she had told him to go and get the police as quickly as possible.

‘Ha! ha!’ cried Redfern, ‘now I am enjoying myself!’ He little knew that his doom was near upon him.

Just then Annie gave a piercing scream, and Sam Redfern got up, seizing his revolver. ‘Who are you?’ he cried, as a man entered.

‘I am Jim Carlton, the celebrated detective,’ said the new arrival.

Sam Redfern’s revolver dropped from his nerveless fingers, but the next moment he had sprung upon the detective with the well-known activity of the mountain sheep, and Annie shrieked, for she had grown to love the rough Bushranger.

(To be continued at the end of the paper if there is room.)

SCHOLASTIC

A new slate is horrid till it is washed in milk. I like the green spots on them to draw patterns round. I know a good way to make a slate-pencil squeak, but I won’t put it in because I don’t want to make it common.—SUB-EDITOR.

Peppermint is a great help with arithmetic. The boy who was second in the Oxford Local always did it. He gave me two. The examiner said to him, ‘Are you eating peppermints?’ And he said, ‘No, Sir.’

He told me afterwards it was quite true, because he was only sucking one. I’m glad I wasn’t asked. I should never have thought of that, and I could have had to say ‘Yes.’—OSWALD.

THE WRECK OF THE ‘MALABAR’

By Noël

(Author of ‘A Dream of Ancient Ancestors.’) He isn’t really—but he put it in to make it seem more real.

Hark! what is that noise of rolling

  Waves and thunder in the air?

‘Tis the death-knell of the sailors

  And officers and passengers of the good ship Malabar.

It was a fair and lovely noon

  When the good ship put out of port

And people said ‘ah little we think

  How soon she will be the elements’ sport.’

She was indeed a lovely sight

  Upon the billows with sails spread.

But the captain folded his gloomy arms,

  Ah—if she had been a life-boat instead!

See the captain stern yet gloomy

  Flings his son upon a rock,

Hoping that there his darling boy

  May escape the wreck.

Alas in vain the loud winds roared

  And nobody was saved.

That was the wreck of the Malabar,

  Then let us toll for the brave.

—NOEL.

GARDENING NOTES

It is useless to plant cherry-stones in the hope of eating the fruit, because they don’t!

Alice won’t lend her gardening tools again, because the last time Noël left them out in the rain, and I don’t like it. He said he didn’t.

SEEDS AND BULBS

These are useful to play at shop with, until you are ready. Not at dinner-parties, for they will not grow unless uncooked. Potatoes are not grown with seed, but with chopped-up potatoes. Apple trees are grown from twigs, which is less wasteful.

Oak trees come from acorns. Every one knows this. When Noël says he could grow one from a peach stone wrapped up in oak leaves, he shows that he knows nothing about gardening but marigolds, and when I passed by his garden I thought they seemed just like weeds now the flowers have been picked.

A boy once dared me to eat a bulb.

Dogs are very industrious and fond of gardening. Pincher is always planting bones, but they never grow up. There couldn’t be a bone tree. I think this is what makes him bark so unhappily at night. He has never tried planting dog-biscuit, but he is fonder of bones, and perhaps he wants to be quite sure about them first.

SAM REDFERN, OR THE BUSHRANGER’S BURIAL

By Dicky

CHAPTER IV AND LAST

This would have been a jolly good story if they had let me finish it at the beginning of the paper as I wanted to. But now I have forgotten how I meant it to end, and I have lost my book about Red Indians, and all my Boys of England have been sneaked. The girls say ‘Good riddance!’ so I expect they did it. They want me just to put in which Annie married, but I shan’t, so they will never know.

We have now put everything we can think of into the paper. It takes a lot of thinking about. I don’t know how grown-ups manage to write all they do. It must make their heads ache, especially lesson books.

Albert-next-door only wrote one chapter of the serial story, but he could have done some more if he had wanted to. He could not write out any of the things because he cannot spell. He says he can, but it takes him such a long time he might just as well not be able. There are one or two things more. I am sick of it, but Dora says she will write them in.

LEGAL ANSWER WANTED.

A quantity of excellent string is offered if you know whether there really is a law passed about not buying gunpowder under thirteen.—DICKY.

The price of this paper is one shilling each, and sixpence extra for the picture of the Malabar going down with all hands. If we sell one hundred copies we will write another paper.

* * * *

And so we would have done, but we never did. Albert-next-door’s uncle gave us two shillings, that was all. You can’t restore fallen fortunes with two shillings!

CHAPTER 9

THE G.B.

Being editors is not the best way to wealth. We all feel this now, and highwaymen are not respected any more like they used to be.

I am sure we had tried our best t
o restore our fallen fortunes. We felt their fall very much, because we knew the Bastables had been rich once. Dora and Oswald can remember when Father was always bringing nice things home from London, and there used to be turkeys and geese and wine and cigars come by the carrier at Christmas-time, and boxes of candied fruit and French plums in ornamental boxes with silk and velvet and gilding on them. They were called prunes, but the prunes you buy at the grocer’s are quite different. But now there is seldom anything nice brought from London, and the turkey and the prune people have forgotten Father’s address.

‘How
can
we restore those beastly fallen fortunes?’ said Oswald. ‘We’ve tried digging and writing and princesses and being editors.’

‘And being bandits,’ said H. O.

‘When did you try that?’ asked Dora quickly. ‘You know I told you it was wrong.’

‘It wasn’t wrong the way we did it,’ said Alice, quicker still, before Oswald could say, ‘Who asked you to tell us anything about it?’ which would have been rude, and he is glad he didn’t. ‘We only caught Albert-next-door.’

‘Oh, Albert-next-door!’ said Dora contemptuously, and I felt more comfortable; for even after I didn’t say, ‘Who asked you, and cetera,’ I was afraid Dora was going to come the good elder sister over us. She does that a jolly sight too often.

Dicky looked up from the paper he was reading and said, ‘This sounds likely,’ and he read out—

‘£100 secures partnership in lucrative business for sale of useful patent. £10 weekly. No personal attendance necessary. Jobbins, 300, Old Street Road.’

‘I wish we could secure that partnership,’ said Oswald. He is twelve, and a very thoughtful boy for his age.

Alice looked up from her painting. She was trying to paint a fairy queen’s frock with green bice, and it wouldn’t rub. There is something funny about green bice. It never will rub off; no matter how expensive your paintbox is—and even boiling water is very little use.

She said, ‘Bother the bice! And, Oswald, it’s no use thinking about that. Where are we to get a hundred pounds?’

‘Ten pounds a week is five pounds to us,’ Oswald went on—he had done the sum in his head while Alice was talking—‘because partnership means halves. It would be A1.’

Noël sat sucking his pencil—he had been writing poetry as usual. I saw the first two lines—

I wonder why Green Bice

Is never very nice.

Suddenly he said, ‘I wish a fairy would come down the chimney and drop a jewel on the table—a jewel worth just a hundred pounds.’

‘She might as well give you the hundred pounds while she was about it,’ said Dora.

‘Or while she was about it she might as well give us five pounds a week,’ said Alice.

‘Or fifty,’ said I.

‘Or five hundred,’ said Dicky.

I saw H. O. open his mouth, and I knew he was going to say, ‘Or five thousand,’ so I said—

‘Well, she won’t give us fivepence, but if you’d only do as I am always saying, and rescue a wealthy old gentleman from deadly peril he would give us a pot of money, and we could have the partnership and five pounds a week. Five pounds a week would buy a great many things.’