Mary Stoyell Stimpson

“ A military band played inspiring airs as the French minister and Paul Jones walked toward the center of the lawn. Paul Jones was pale but happy. He was receiving an honor never before given a man who was not a citizen of France, but as his eyes lighted on the stars and stripes floating above him, they filled with tears, for his greatest joy of all was that he had left the sands of Dee to become a citizen and defender of his beloved America. ”

“ If the sun shone, all the boys in the neighborhood went over to New Jersey on the ferry-boat. Augustus's father always gave him and his brothers five cents each. Two cents took a boy over to New Jersey, two cents brought him back, and there was the other cent for candy or gum. It was good sport to chase each other through the green fields, hunt birds' nests, and climb trees, but the best fun came on the way back, when the boys sat in a long row at the front of the boat, letting their legs dangle over the edge, watching the life on the river. ”

“ America had her first President!
Washington ruled the people for eight years wisely and well. He was greatly beloved at home and he was praised in other countries. A German ruler said Washington was the greatest general in the world. A prime minister of England said Washington was the purest man in history. But we like to say Washington was the Father of our country, and we like to remember that he said: "Do justice to all, but never forget that we are Americans!" ”

“ He loved America, and he was proud of her heroes. Perhaps he loved Abraham Lincoln best of all. He had seen Lincoln a good many times, and he had read and studied about his beautiful life until every line of that man's face and figure was clear in his mind. Still, when he was asked to make a statue of Lincoln for the city of Chicago, he worked on it many years. On his statue of General Sherman which stands in Central Park, New York, he labored eleven years. On the beautiful Robert Gould Shaw monument which stands in front of the State House in Boston, he spent twelve years. ”

“ Anyway, she proved a good teacher, and the children loved her and never disobeyed her.
After keeping this school for a year, she studied again in Boston until she was nineteen. Then she not only taught a day and boarding-school in that city, but looked after her brothers and opened another school for poor children whose parents could not afford to pay for their lessons. She took care of her grandmother's house, too. While every one was wondering how one young girl could do so much, she made them open their eyes still wider by writing three or four books. ”

“ No one ever tells a story about the early days in America without bringing in the name of George Washington. In fact he is called the Father of our country. But he did not get this name until he was nearly sixty years old; and all kinds of interesting things, like taming wild colts, fighting Indians, hunting game, fording rivers, and commanding an army, had happened to him before that. He really had a wonderful life.
George Washington was born in Virginia almost two hundred years ago. ”

“ Then he began to color them. He did love gay tints, and as both men and women wore many buckles and jewels, and brocades and velvets of every hue in those days, he could make these portraits as dazzling as he chose. [28]
There is no doubt John loved to make pictures. He had drawn many a one on the walls of his nursery when he was scarcely more than a baby. He later covered the blank pages and margins of his school-books with faces and animals. And instead of playing games with the other boys in holidays, he was apt to spend such hours with chalks and paints. ”

“ By and by there were clubs for boys at Hull House, kindergartens for children, parties for old folks, and Halstead Street began to look cleaner, for Miss Addams went up and down those thirty-two miles of street and made it understood that she was there to help people grow healthy and clean. All the time, she was helping to nurse the sick and urging the rich people at their end of the city to come down to Halstead Street to see how the poor lived. At Hull House an idiot child or a drunken woman was helped as quickly and willingly as if they had been a clean member of the royal family. ”

“ The boy was a portrait of his half-brother, Henry Pelham. Copley sent no name or letter, and it was against the rules of the Academy to hang any picture by an unknown artist, but the coloring was so beautiful that the rule was broken, and crowds stopped before the Boston lad's canvas to admire it. When it was discovered that John Copley painted it, and it was known he had received no lessons at that time, he was urged to go abroad at once. At the time he could not. But the praise encouraged him to keep on, and before he had a chance to visit Italy, he had painted nearly three hundred pictures. ”

“ When Thomas was twenty-two, he had made his ideas worth three hundred dollars a month. Probably the school teacher who thought the little Edison boy was "addled" never earned that much at any age! From that time until now Thomas Edison's experiments have meant a fortune to him and no end of pleasure and comfort to the world. You cannot go into a city in the United States that is not fitted with electric lights—Edison lights. When you hear a phonograph, remember it is an Edison invention ”

“ When Augustus went to school, at the age of ten, he did more drawing on his slate than arithmetic. How the pupils craned their necks to see his pictures! He did not draw just one man, a bird, or a single house, but whole armies shooting guns and cannon. These soldiers looked alive. On his way home, Augustus was apt to draw charcoal sketches on every white house he [135] passed. The sketches were fine, but the housekeepers scolded. Few people noticed the real talent of the boy, but one old doctor became much excited and urged Augustus's father to let him study art. ”

“ Thoreau started out for a long saunter in the woods, he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, stout shoes, and strong gray trousers that would not show spots too easily, and would stand tree-climbing. Under his arm he usually carried an old music book in which to press plants, and in his pocket he kept a pencil, his diary, a microscope, a jack-knife, and a ball of twine. He and a friend, William Ellery Channing, agreed that a week's camping was more fun than all the books in the world. ”

“ Henry liked music and books far better than fighting. He read a great deal with his mother, and they took long walks together, for they both loved flowers and birds. Twice every Sunday Henry went to church with his mother. In the cold weather he carried her foot-stove for her (a funny little box which held coals) and in the summer her nosegay, because she never went to service, after the flowers began to bloom, without a bunch of sweet smelling blossoms. This odd foot-warmer can be seen any time in the old Wadsworth-Longfellow house in Portland. ”

“ A few years ago every one who went to California tried to see Luther Burbank, for the newspapers and magazines were filled with stories of the wonderful things he was doing. Plenty of men make houses, automobiles, ships to go on the water, and ships that sail through the air, clothing, and toys, but this man makes new fruits and flowers. It is not an easy thing to do, and Mr. Burbank has found that he needs all his strength and time for his work. ”

“ Nobody ever felt sorry that Dorothea ran away from those tiresome tracts. For probably all the tracts ever written by Joseph Dix never did as much good as a single day's work of his daughter, among the wounded soldiers. And as for her reforms—they will go on forever. She has been called the most useful woman of America. That is a great name to earn. ”

“ ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The more you find out about Abraham Lincoln, the more you will love him.
Abraham was born in Kentucky and lived in that State with his parents and his one sister until he was eight years old.
The Lincolns were very, very poor. They lived in a small log cabin on the banks of a winding creek. They need not have been quite so poor, but the truth of the matter is that Mr. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, was lazy. ”

“ But Hull House is the leading settlement house in the United States.
Jane Addams still dresses simply. She does not care to have the best clothes in the neighborhood, or jewels, or luxuries for herself. She does not believe in talking a great deal about what she intends to do later on. She has found that the world needs busy workers more than ready talkers. She is a busy, good woman who has done noble work in America. ”

“ One of his uncles, who loved him dearly, used to say: "It's enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds (this was a great English painter, who had died years before) come out of his grave to paint Jimmie asleep!" Jimmie had delicate features and long, silky, brown curls that hung about his face. In among these was one white lock that dropped straight down over his forehead. This looked like a tiny feather. More than all his playthings he liked a pencil and paper. From the time he could scribble at all he drew pictures of everybody and everything in sight. ”

“ Colonel Robert E. Lee was a very handsome man. When he and Mrs. Lee were going out in the evening, the children always begged to sit up and see them start. They never saw any man or any picture of a man they thought so beautiful as their own father.
General Lee was not just a good leader of soldiers; he knew how to make everyone mind, and although he was the best playmate his children had, he was very firm with them. ”

“ It is a nuisance, sometimes, to be as tall as Phillips was. But he never minded all these things. He only felt in a hurry to finish his studies so that he could preach and work among the poor.
After he had preached at two churches in Philadelphia, he was asked to be the rector of Trinity Church in Boston. He was rector there for twenty-two years—until he was made Bishop of Massachusetts. He spoke so beautifully from the pulpit that strangers traveled from all parts of the country to hear him. So many flocked to Trinity Church that the pews would not hold them. ”

“ A man who loved birds and knew a great deal about them drew pictures of all the kinds to be found in our country, calling these drawings, when they were colored and bound together The Birds of North America. It took four volumes to hold all these pictures, and each one of these books costs a thousand dollars. There were only seventy-five or eighty of these sets of bird books made, but you can see them in the Boston Public Library, the Lenox and Astor libraries in New York city, and at several colleges and private homes. ”

“ If you should look through all four books, you would see [99] more than a thousand kinds of birds, all drawn as big as life, and each one colored like the bird itself.
You may be sure it took the maker of these books many, many years to travel all over the United States to find such a number of birds. The man's name was John James Audubon. He slept in woods, waded through marshes and swamps, tramped hundreds of miles, and suffered many hardships before he could learn the colors and habits of so many birds. He always said his love for birds began when his pet parrot was killed. ”

“ Peabody gave money for museums at Yale and Harvard, an Academy of Science at Salem, a memorial church at Georgetown, the birthplace of his mother, and large sums of money for schools in the South, because he [123] realized that after the Civil War there would be much disorder and poverty. Some men could not have kept perfectly friendly with two countries, but Mr. Peabody loved both England and America and in all he did and said tried to bind the two nations together. The very last time he spoke in public was at the National Peace Jubilee in Boston. ”

“ When the city of Boston, Massachusetts, was just a small town in which there were no schools where boys and girls could learn to draw and paint, one little fellow by the name of John Singleton Copley was quite sure to be waiting at the door when his stepfather, Peter Pelham, came home to dinner or supper, to ask why the pictures he had been drawing of various people did not look like them. ”

“ Concord, Massachusetts, is one of the New England towns that everybody likes to visit. When tourists reach Boston they usually make a point of going to Concord, either by electric or steam train, because they have read about its famous battle ground, where the first British soldiers fell in the great Revolutionary War, and because they want to see the very house in which Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, and the homes of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau. ”

“ In Paris strangers used to ask who the young artist was who had the snow-white lock among his black curls, for the brown curls had grown as black as jet, and the map-drawing had grown [210] so tiresome that James had given up West Point and settled down to painting and etching in Paris. He had decided that there was nothing in the world which suited him but the life of an artist. He worked quite steadily and people began to say: "I think young Whistler is going to do great things some day." ”

“ He kept on and on until it was time for the teacher to dismiss school. Mr. Tappan said: "Well, there is no doubt you deserve the prize. How many more chapters did you learn?"
"Oh, a lot more," answered Dan, laughing.
After Daniel was twelve, he began to grow stronger and did his share of work on the farm. One day when he was helping his [129] father in the hayfield, Mr. Webster said: "Daniel, it is the men who have fine educations that succeed in this world. I do not intend that you shall be a drudge all your days. I am going to send you through college." ”

“ And there is never much talk of theaters, actors, and plays but some one is apt to say: "Ah, but you should have seen Joe Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle!" All Americans are very proud of the fact that this man was born in the United States; that he lived and died here. There have been four actors in the Jefferson family by the name of Joseph, but it was Joe Jefferson Number Three who played the part of the queer old Dutchman, Rip Van Winkle, for thirty years, whose life is told of now.
Joe was born in Philadelphia, but his parents went to Washington soon after. ”

“ Morse expected others to be as pleased as he with his invention, but they did not even believe in it. "The idea," said they, "that a man in New York can talk with another in San Francisco!"
Of course, if people did not believe Morse's idea was right, they naturally would not give any money to try it out, so for years this man almost starved while he lived in one small room that had to serve for work-shop, bedroom, kitchen, and artist's studio, while he took pupils, did small pictures, anything, in fact, to get money for his machine and to pay for his room and food. ”

“ Luther Burbank is a handsome, courteous gentleman, fond of fun, of young people and children, but you can see how busy he has been in the odd science of making new plants and trees, and as he has plans for a great many more, you will also understand why he really has to have those signs put up around his farm at Santa Rosa. ”

“ When Clara was twelve, she was very shy of strangers, and her parents thought it might help her to get over it if she went away from home to school in New York. She was a bright pupil and decided she would like to be a teacher like her two sisters.
Clara made an excellent teacher, but was not very well and went to Washington, D.C., to work. While there, the Civil War broke out, [79] and she offered her services as a nurse. Nobody doubted she would be good at nursing, for when she was only ten years old, she took all the care of her dear brother David, who was sick for nearly two years. ”

“ Their eyes opened wide at the sight of real chairs and tables. She made Abraham and Sarah pretty new clothes. They had neat, comfortable beds, and the two sets of children were very happy. Mrs. Lincoln loved Abraham and saw that there was the making of a smart man in him. She helped him study, and when there was school for a short time in a distant log hut, she sent Abraham every day. When the school ended, there were four years when there was no school anywhere near their settlement, so she read [84] with Abraham and kept him at his lessons in reading and arithmetic all that time. ”