Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe

CHAPTER XVI.

THE AMERICAN GUEST

"What can that be, coming at this time of day?"

No; supposing very hard did not bring poor little French Coralie home with Lucy; but something almost as wonderful happened. Just at the time in the afternoon, blind man's holiday, when Lucy had been used to ride off on her dream to visit some wonderful place, there came a knock at the front door; a quite real substantial English knock and ring, that did not sound at all like any of the strange noise of the strange worlds that she had lately been hearing, but had the real tinkle of Uncle Joe's own bell.

"Good morning. Where do you come from?"

"Well," said Mrs. Bunker, "what can that be, coming at this time of day? It can never be the doctor coming home without sending orders! Don't you be running out, Miss Lucy; there'll be a draught of cold right in."

Lucy stood still; very anxious, and wondering whether she should see anything alive, or one of her visitors from various countries.

"There is a letter from Mr. Seaman," said a brisk young voice, that would have been very pleasant if it had not gone a little through the nose; and past Mrs. Bunker there walked into the full light a little boy, a year or two older than Lucy, holding out one hand as he saw her and taking off his hat with the other. "Good morning," he said, quite at his ease; "is this where you live?"

"Good morning," returned Lucy, though it was not morning at all; "where do you come from?"

"Well, I'm from Paris last; but when I'm at home, I'm at Boston. I am Leonidas Saunders, of the great American Republic."

"Oh, then you are not real, after all?"

"Real! I should hope I was a genuine article."

"Well, I was in hopes that you were real, only you say you come from a strange country, like the rest of them, and yet you look just like an English boy."

"Of course I do! my great grandfather came from England," said Leonidas; "we all speak English as well, or better, than you do in the old country."

"I can't understand it!" said Lucy; "did you come like other people, by the train, not like the children in my dreams?"

And then Leonidas explained all about it to her: how his father had brought him last year to Europe and had put him to school at Paris; but when the war broke out, and most of the stranger scholars were taken away, no orders came about him, because his father was a merchant and was away from home, so that no one ever knew whether the letters had reached him.

So Leonidas had gone on at school without many tasks to learn, to be sure, but not very comfortable: it was so cold, and there was no wood to burn; and he disliked eating horses and cats and rats, quite as much as Coralie did, though he was not in a part of the town where so many shells came in.

At last, when Lucy's uncle and some other good gentlemen with the red cross on their sleeves, obtained leave to go and take some relief to the poor sick people in the hospitals, the people Leonidas was with told them that he was a little American left behind. Mr. Seaman, which was Uncle Joe's name, went to see about him, and found that he had once known his father. So, after a great deal of trouble, it had been managed that the boy should be allowed to leave the town. He had been driven in an omnibus, he told Lucy, with some more Americans and English, and with flags with stars and stripes or else Union Jacks all over it; and whenever they came to a French sentry, or afterwards to a Prussian, they were stopped till he called his corporal, who looked at their papers and let them go on. Mr. Seaman had taken charge of Leonidas, and given him the best dinner he had eaten for a long time, but as he was going to Blois to other hospitals, he could not keep the boy with him; so he had put him in charge of a friend who was going to London, to send him down to Mrs. Bunker.

Fear of Lucy's rash was pretty well over now, and she was to go home in a day or two; so the children were allowed to be together, and they enjoyed it very much. Lucy told about her dreams, and Leonidas had a good deal to tell of what he had really seen on his travels. They wished very much that they could both see one of these wonderful dreams together, only—what should it be?

CHAPTER XVII.

THE DREAM OF ALL NATIONS

Oh! such a din!

What should it be? She thought of Arabs with their tents and horses, and Leonidas told her of Red Indians with their war-paint, and little Negroes dancing round the sugar-boiling, till her head began quite to swim and her ears to buzz; and all the children she had seen and she had not seen seemed to come round her, and join hands and dance. Oh, such a din! A little Highlander in his tartans stood on a whisky-barrel in the middle, making his bagpipes squeal away; a Chinese with a bald head and long pigtail beat a gong, and capered with a solemn face; a Norwegian herd-boy blew a monstrous bark cow-horn; an Indian juggler twisted snakes round his neck to the sound of the tom-tom; and Lucy found herself and Leonidas whirling round with a young Dutch planter between them, and an Indian with a crown of feathers upon the other side of her.

"Oh!" she seemed to herself to cry, "what are you doing? how do you all come here?"

"We are from all the nations who are friends and brethren," said the voices; "we all bring our stores: the sugar, rice, and cotton of the West; the silk and coffee and spices of the East; the tea of China; the furs of the North: it all is exchanged from one to the other, and should teach us to be all brethren, since we cannot thrive one without the other."

"It all comes to our country, because we are clever to work it up, and send it out to be used in its own homes," said the Highlander; "it is English and Scotch machines that weave your cottons, ay, and make your tools."

"No; it is America that beats you all," cried Leonidas; "what had you to do, but to sit down and starve, when we sent you no cotton?"

"If you send cotton, 'tis we that weave it," cried the Scot.

Lucy was almost afraid they would come to blows over which was the greatest and most skilful country. "It cannot be buying and selling that make nations love one another, and be peaceful," she thought. "Is it being learned and wise?"

"But the Prussian boys are studious and wise, and the French are clever and skilful, and yet they have that dreadful war: I wonder what it is that would make and keep all these countries friends!"

And then there came an echo back to little Lucy: "For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they war any more."

Yes; the more they learn and keep the law of the Lord, the less there will be of those wars. To heed the true law of the Lord will do more for peace and oneness than all the cleverness in book-learning, or all the skilful manufactures in the world.

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See the Net, June 1, 1867.