Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) Fun and Thought for Little Folk

VIII

Doris was not long in mourning her lost dollar. “I’m sorry, Dearie,” her mama said, “but it’s bad enough to have wasted one dollar without crying about it, too. When you and I go out, we’ll try to get such good things for the next dollar that it will make up for our mistake about this one.” On the next bright day, they returned to the bank and withdrew another dollar. Doris’s mama, being a wise person, led her to a store where some books had been lightly damaged by firemen. There Doris found a large, fine book of animal stories with pictures, originally priced at fifty cents, now sold for a dime because the back cover and edge bore water-and-smoke stains. That left ninety cents. Six glass marbles for five cents and a hoop with a stick for another five left eighty cents. When Doris asked about roller skates, the shopman quoted a full dollar, so she resolved to save her eighty cents until she had enough. But then she noticed a small boy gazing longingly through the toy-shop window at a red ball. Doris bought it for five cents and gave it away, leaving seventy-five. By the time they reached home, papa had located roller skates downtown for seventy-five cents, and the deal was made. Doris learned, by losing her first dollar, to fill her second with lasting things.

“A Dutch Treat” by Amy B. Johnson unfolds along a Dutch canal. Colonel Easton and his daughter Katharine glide toward the home of Marie, Katharine’s devoted nurse, who has just returned to Holland after caring for the child since infancy. Katharine, in a sulk, complains that she hates Holland, hates the queer windmills and baggy-clothed little girls in clogs, and longs for New York, her dolls, and Marie. The colonel, patient and tender, reminds her that Marie has sisters she has not seen for twelve years. At the landing, seven shy Hollander children wait to meet her, and Katharine greets them with stiff solemnity. Their wooden shoes clatter behind her as they walk to the cottage, where the klompen are neatly lined up outside the door. Inside, Katharine is plied with gingerbread, a doll to admire, a model boat, Edam cheese, a white kitten, carved clogs, fishing tackle, and a knitting lesson offered by little Mayken. By dinnertime, homesickness has loosened its grip, and the fish-and-rye-bread meal tastes wonderfully good.

But on the afternoon walk, a thick fog blots out the world. The children link hands and stretch across the road, Katharine holding one end beside Gretel. Suddenly her feet slip; she tumbles down the steep dike and splashes into a cold pool below. Bruised, soaked, and half-stunned, she calls weakly for Gretel but hears nothing. Plunging from ditch to ditch, she wanders further from her frantic friends, until at last she bumps against a door. Dame Donk, a kind neighbor, hears her pitiful Dutch and pulls her in. The little American is stripped of her wet clothes, wrapped in blankets by the fire, fed hot broth, and falls asleep. When she wakes, Marie and a host of cousins have arrived with a complete change of clothing—even klompen—and Katharine, dressed in Gretel’s too-small Dutch costume, peers into a mirror and bursts out laughing at herself. That evening, when her tall father appears on the threshold asking, “Where is Katharine?” one of the eight near-identical little Dutch dolls leaps into his arms. Before leaving Amsterdam, the colonel purchases a full Dutch outfit for his daughter to keep as a memento, and Katharine declares she adores Holland, calling her new friends the dearest things she has ever seen.

Then comes “The Jingle of the Little Jap” by Isabel Eccleston Mackay, a lilting rhyme about Nami-Ko of Chu-Bo, whose ABC’s look astonishing in her copy-book. Her tiny shoes have such peculiar heels and toes that a stranger might topple onto her “little Jap nose.” When she goes calling, she carries a parasol instead of a hat, as her mother does, and at bedtime her pillow is so hard it resembles a brick—all to protect her smooth black Japanese hair.

In “The Seventh Birthday of the Little Cousin from Constantinople” by Emma C. Dowd, the Little Cousin wakes on her special day with mumps, two poultices pressed against her cheeks. She cannot have her party, and smiling proves impossible, but the Merry Mother understands. She hints at mysterious “visitors” and slips out, closing the door. Outside, hushed voices and scurrying footsteps can be heard. When the door opens, a string comes flying toward the bed with a wooden block that reads “PULL.” The Little Cousin tugs, and an oblong package slides in. It is a doll with brown eyes and yellow curls, wrapped only in a blanket. A second block arrives on the end of another string: “When you are ready, PULL again!” The next pull brings a small trunk holding complete doll-clothes—blue dress, pink dress, white dress, sash ribbons, coat and hat, tiny comb and brush. So it goes, package by package: a chair for Dolly, a dining-table set with china, a real luncheon of biscuits, apple turnovers, frosted cakes, and two little bottles of chocolate. Then a doll carriage, and finally a little white bedstead with mattress, sheets, and pillows. After tucking Dolly in, the Little Cousin shuts her own eyes to keep her company, and when the Merry Mother peeks in later, mother and dolls are fast asleep among their treasures.

“Little Red Riding-Hood,” retold from Grimm, follows the sweet child whose red velvet hood gave her her famous name. Sent by her mother with cake and wine to her ailing grandmother, she is warned to walk straight and not tarry. Inside the wood she meets a wolf, and though she is not afraid, she answers his polite questions, telling him where grandmother lives. While she strays to gather flowers, the wolf rushes ahead, finds grandmother out, dons her nightgown and cap, and climbs into bed. When Red Riding-Hood arrives, his gruff voice seems only the effect of a cold. She pulls back the curtains and is puzzled when she sees only the nightcapped head. “Grandmother, what great ears you have!” “The better to hear with, my dear.” “What great eyes you have!” “The better to see you.” “What great teeth you have!” “The better to eat you up!” The wolf springs from the bed, but at that very moment the door flies open and the grandmother enters with woodmen who save the trembling girl.

“Dolly’s Doctor” follows, a sprightly dialogue in verse. Mary, the small mother of an unwell doll, calls in Doctor John. The physician tastes the offered cake, finds it too rich in plums and currants, and taste after taste leaves nothing for the patient. He prescribes a draft and powder, a piece of bread, and warmth in bed, and departs cheerily, assuring Mary her baby will be quite right by tomorrow.