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Story-Tell Lib
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Story-Tell Lib
By
Annie Trumbull Slosson
Author of "Fishin' Jimmy"
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK . . . . . 1908
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_Copyright, 1900_
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_All rights reserved_
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CONTENTS
PAGE
I. STORY-TELL LIB 3
II. THE SHET-UP POSY 13
III. THE HORSE THAT B'LEEVED HE'D GET THERE 25
IV. THE PLANT THAT LOST ITS BERRY 37
V. THE STONY HEAD 47
VI. DIFF'ENT KIND O' BUNDLES 57
VII. THE BOY THAT WAS SCARET O' DYIN' 71
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STORY-TELL LIB
I
Story-Tell Lib
That was what everybody in the little mountain village called her. Her
real name, as she often told me, ringing out each syllable proudly in
her shrill sweet voice, was Elizabeth Rowena Marietta York. A stately
name, indeed, for the little crippled, stunted, helpless creature, and I
myself could never think of her by any name but the one the village
people used, Story-tell Lib. I had heard of her for two or three summers
in my visits to Greenhills. The village folk had talked to me of the
little lame girl who told such pretty stories out of her own head, "kind
o' fables that learnt folks things, and helped 'em without bein' too
preachy." But I had no definite idea of what the child was till I saw
and heard her myself. She was about thirteen years of age, but very
small and fragile. She was lame, and could walk only with the aid of a
crutch. Indeed, she could but hobble painfully, a few steps at a time,
with that assistance. Her little white face was not an attractive one,
her features being sharp and pinched, and her eyes faded, dull, and
almost expressionless. Only the full, prominent, rounding brow spoke of
a mind out of the common. She was an orphan, and lived with her aunt,
Miss Jane York, in an old-fashioned farmhouse on the upper road.
Miss Jane was a good woman. She kept the child neatly clothed and
comfortably fed, but I do not think she lavished many caresses or loving
words on little Lib, it was not her way, and the girl led a lonesome,
quiet, unchildlike life. Aunt Jane tried to teach her to read and write,
but, whether from the teacher's inability to impart knowledge, or from
some strange lack in the child's odd brain, Lib never learned the
lesson. She could not read a word, she did not even know her alphabet. I
cannot explain to myself or to you the one gift which gave her her
homely village name. She told stories. I listened to many of them, and I
took down from her lips several of these. They are, as you will see if
you read them, "kind o' fables," as the country folk said. They were all
simple little tales in the dialect of the hill country in which she
lived. But each held some lesson, suggested some truth, which, strangely
enough, the child herself did not seem to see; at least, she never
admitted that she saw or intended any hidden meaning.
I often questioned her as to this after we became friends. After
listening to some tale in which I could discern just the lovely truth
which would best help some troubled soul in her audience, I have
questioned her as to its meaning. I can see now, in memory, the
short-sighted, expressionless eyes of faded blue which met mine as she
said, "Don't mean anything,--it don't. It's jest a story. Stories don't
have to mean things; they're stories, and I tells 'em." That was all she
would say, and the mystery remained. What did it mean? Whence came that
strange power of giving to the people who came to her something to help
and cheer, both help and cheer hidden in a simple little story? Was it,
as I like to think, God-given, a treasure sent from above? Or would you
rather think it an inheritance from some ancestor, a writer, a teller of
tales? Or perhaps you believe in the transmigration of souls, and think
that the spirit of some AEsop of old, who spoke in parables, had entered
the frail crippled body of our little Lib, and spoke through her pinched
pale lips. I leave you your theories, I keep my own.
But one thing which I find I have omitted thus far may seem to you to
throw a little light on this matter. It does not help me much. Lib was a
wonderful listener, as well as a narrator. Miss Jane sometimes took an
occasional boarder. Teachers, clergymen, learned professors, had from
time to time tarried under her roof. And while these talked to one
another, or to some visitor from neighboring hotels, little Lib would
sit motionless and silent by the hour. One would scarcely call it
listening; to listen seems too active a verb in this case. The girl's
face wore no eager look of interest, the faded, short-sighted eyes did
not light up with intelligence, nor the features quiver with varied
emotions. If she received ideas from what fell upon her ears, it must
have been by a sort of unconscious absorption. She took it in as the
earth does the rain or the flower the sunshine. And so it was with any
reading aloud from book or paper. She would sit, utterly quiet, while
the reader's voice went on, and nothing could draw her away till it was
ended. Question her later as to what was read or spoken of, and you
gained no satisfaction. If she had any idea of what she had heard, she
had not the power of putting it into words. "I like it. I like it lots,"
she would say; that was all.
Throughout the whole summer in which I knew the child, the summer which
came so quickly, so sadly, to an end, little Lib sat, on bright, fair
days, in a low wooden chair under the maples in front of the farmhouse.
And it had grown to be the custom of her many friends, both young and
old, to gather there, and listen to her stories, if she had any to tell.
I often joined the group of listeners. On many, many days, as the season
advanced, Lib had no words for us. She had always been a fragile, puny
little creature, and this year she seemed to grow weaker, thinner, more
waxen white, each day. She had a wonderful voice, shrill, far-reaching,
but strangely sweet and clear, with a certain vibrating, reedy,
bird-like quality, which even yet thrills me as I recall it.
I am going to tell you a few of the little stories, pictures, fables,
parables, allegories,--I scarcely know what to call them,--which I heard
Story-tell Lib relate. The words are her own, but I cannot give you the
sweet tones, the quaint manner, the weird, strange personality, of the
little narrator. Let me say here that often the little parables seemed
meant to cheer and lift up Lib's own trembling soul, shut up in the
frail, crippled body. Meant, I say; perhaps that is not the right word.
For did she mean anything by these tales, at least consciously? Be that
as it may, certain of these little stories seemed to touch her own case
strangely.
The Shet-up Posy
II
The first story I ever heard the child tell was one of those which
seemed to hold comfort and cheer for herself or for humble little souls
like her. It was a story of the closed gentian, the title of which she
announced, as she always did, loudly, and with an amusing little air of
self-satisfaction.
The Shet-up Posy
Once there was a posy. 'T wa'n't a common kind o' posy, that blows out
wide open, so's everybody can see its outsides and its insides too.
But 't was one of them posies like what grows down the road, back o' your
pa's sugar-house, Danny, and don't come till way towards fall. They're
sort o' blue, but real dark, and they look 's if they was buds 'stead
o' posies,--only buds opens out, and these doesn't They're all shet up
close and tight, and they never, never, never opens. Never mind how much
sun they get, never mind how much rain or how much drouth, whether it's
cold or hot, them posies stay shet up tight, kind o' buddy, and not
finished and humly. But if you pick 'em open, real careful, with a
pin,--I've done it,--you find they're dreadful pretty inside.
You couldn't see a posy that was finished off better, soft and nice,
with pretty little stripes painted on 'em, and all the little things
like threads in the middle, sech as the open posies has, standing up,
with little knots on their tops, oh, so pretty,--you never did! Makes
you think real hard, that does; leastways, makes me. What's they that
way for? If they ain't never goin' to open out, what's the use o' havin'
the shet-up part so slicked up and nice, with nobody never seem' it?
Folks has different names for 'em, dumb foxgloves, blind genshuns, and
all that, but I allers call 'em the shet-up posies.
Well, 't was one o' that kind o' posy I was goin' to tell you about.
'Twas one o' the shet-uppest and the buddiest of all on 'em, all
blacky-blue and straight up and down, and shet up fast and tight.
Nobody'd ever dream't was pretty inside. And the funniest thing, it
didn't know 'twas so itself! It thought 'twas a mistake somehow, thought
it had oughter been a posy, and was begun for one, but wa'n't finished,
and 'twas terr'ble unhappy. It knew there was pretty posies all 'round
there, goldenrod and purple daisies and all; and their inside was the
right side, and they was proud of it, and held it open, and showed the
pretty lining, all soft and nice with the little fuzzy yeller threads
standin' up, with little balls on their tip ends. And the shet-up posy
felt real bad; not mean and hateful and begrudgin', you know, and
wantin' to take away the nice part from the other posies, but sorry, and
kind o' 'shamed.
"Oh, deary me!" she says,--I most forgot to say 'twas a girl
posy,--"deary me, what a humly, skimpy, awk'ard thing I be! I ain't
more 'n half made; there ain't no nice, pretty lining inside o' me, like
them other posies; and on'y my wrong side shows, and that's jest plain
and common. I can't chirk up folks like the goldenrod and daisies does.
Nobody won't want to pick me and carry me home. I ain't no good to
anybody, and I never shall be."
So she kep' on, thinkin' these dreadful sorry thinkin's, and most
wishin' she'd never been made at all. You know 't wa'n't jest at fust
she felt this way. Fust she thought she was a bud, like lots o' buds all
'round her, and she lotted on openin' like they did. But when the days
kep' passin' by, and all the other buds opened out, and showed how
pretty they was, and she didn't open, why, then she got terr'ble
discouraged; and I don't wonder a mite.
She'd see the dew a-layin' soft and cool on the other posies' faces, and
the sun a-shinin' warm on 'em as they held 'em up, and sometimes she'd
see a butterfly come down and light on 'em real soft, and kind o' put
his head down to 'em, 's if he was kissin' 'em, and she thought 'twould
be powerful nice to hold her face up to all them pleasant things. But
she couldn't.
But one day, afore she'd got very old, 'fore she'd dried up or fell
off, or anything like that, she see somebody comin' along her way. 'Twas
a man, and he was lookin' at all the posies real hard and partic'lar,
but he wasn't pickin' any of 'em. Seems 's if he was lookin' for
somethin' diff'rent from what he see, and the poor little shet-up posy
begun to wonder what he was arter. Bimeby she braced up, and she asked
him about it in her shet-up, whisp'rin' voice. And says he, the man
says: "I'm a-pickin' posies. That's what I work at most o' the time. 'T
ain't for myself," he says, "but the one I work for. I'm on'y his help.
I run errands and do chores for him, and it's a partic'lar kind o' posy
he's sent me for to-day." "What for does he want 'em?" says the shet-up
posy. "Why, to set out in his gardin," the man says. "He's got the
beautif'lest gardin you never see, and I pick posies for 't." "Deary
me," thinks she to herself, "I jest wish he'd pick me. But I ain't the
kind, I know." And then she says, so soft he can't hardly hear her,
"What sort o' posies is it you're arter this time?" "Well," says the
man, "it's a dreadful sing'lar order I've got to-day. I got to find a
posy that's handsomer inside than 't is outside, one that folks ain't
took no notice of here, 'cause 'twas kind o' humly and queer to look at,
not knowin' that inside 'twas as handsome as any posy on the airth. Seen
any o' that kind?" says the man.
Well, the shet-up posy was dreadful worked up. "Deary dear!" she says to
herself, "now if they'd on'y finished me off inside! I'm the right kind
outside, humly and queer enough, but there's nothin' worth lookin' at
inside,--I'm certin sure o' that." But she didn't say this nor anything
else out loud, and bimeby, when the man had waited, and didn't get any
answer, he begun to look at the shet-up posy more partic'lar, to see why
she was so mum. And all of a suddent he says, the man did, "Looks to
me's if you was somethin' that kind yourself, ain't ye?" "Oh, no, no,
no!" whispers the shet-up posy. "I wish I was, I wish I was. I'm all
right outside, humly and awk'ard, queer's I can be, but I ain't pretty
inside,--oh! I most know I ain't." "I ain't so sure o' that myself,"
says the man, "but I can tell in a jiffy." "Will you have to pick me to
pieces?" says the shet-up posy. "No, ma'am," says the man; "I've got a
way o' tellin', the one I work for showed me." The shet-up posy never
knowed what he done to her. I don't know myself, but 'twas somethin'
soft and pleasant, that didn't hurt a mite, and then the man he says,
"Well, well, well!" That's all he said, but he took her up real gentle,
and begun to carry her away. "Where be ye takin' me?" says the shet-up
posy. "Where ye belong," says the man; "to the gardin o' the one I work
for," he says. "I didn't know I was nice enough inside," says the
shet-up posy, very soft and still. "They most gen'ally don't," says the
man.
The Horse that B'leeved he'd Get there
III
Among those who sometimes came to listen to little Lib's allegories was
Mary Ann Sherman, a tall, dark, gloomy woman of whom I had heard much.
She was the daughter of old Deacon Sherman, a native of the village, who
had, some years before I came to Greenhills, died by his own hand, after
suffering many years from a sort of religious melancholia. Whether the
trouble was hereditary and his daughter was born with a tendency
inherited from her father, or whether she was influenced by what she
had heard of his life, and death, I do not know. But she was a dreary
creature with never a smile or a hopeful look upon her dark face.
Nothing to her was right or good; this world was a desert, her friends
had all left her, strangers looked coldly upon her. As for the future,
there was nothing to look forward to in this world or the next. As Dave
Moony, the village cynic, said, "Mary Ann wa'n't proud or set up about
nothin' but bein' the darter of a man that had c'mitted the onpar'nable
sin." Poor woman! her eyes were blinded to all the beauty and brightness
of this world, to the hope and love and joy of the next. What wonder
that one day, as she paused in passing the little group gathered around
Lib, and the child began the little story I give below, I thought it
well fitted to the gloomy woman's case!
The Horse that B'leeved he'd Get there
You've seen them thrashin' machines they're usin' round here. The sort,
you know, where the horses keep steppin' up a board thing 's if they was
climbin' up-hill or goin' up a pair o' stairs, only they don't never get
along a mite; they keep right in the same place all the time, steppin'
and steppin', but never gittin' on.
Well, I knew a horse once, that worked on one o' them things. His name
was Jack, and he was a nice horse. First time they put him on to thrash,
he didn't know what the machine was, and he walked along and up the
boards quick and lively, and he didn't see why he didn't get on faster.
There was a horse side of him named Billy, a kind o' frettin', cross
feller, and he see through it right off.
"Don't you go along," he says to Jack; "'t ain't no use; you won't never
get on, they're foolin' us, and I won't give in to 'em." So Billy he
hung back and shook his head, and tried to get away, and to kick, and
the man whipped him, and hollered at him. But Jack, he went on quiet and
quick and pleasant, steppin' away, and he says softly to Billy, "Come
along," he says; "it's all right, we'll be there bimeby. Don't you see
how I'm gittin' on a'ready?" And that was the ways things went every
day.
Jack never gin up; he climbed and climbed, and walked and walked, jest's
if he see the place he was goin' to, and 's if it got nearer and nearer.
And every night, when they took him off, he was as pleased with his
day's journey 's if he'd gone twenty mile. "I've done first-rate
to-day," he says to cross, kickin' Billy. "The roads was good, and I
never picked up a stone nor dropped a shoe, and I got on a long piece.
I'll be there pretty soon," says he. "Why," says Billy, "what a foolish
fellow you be! You've been in the same place all day, and ain't got on
one mite. What do you mean by _there_? Where is it you think you're
goin', anyway?"
"Well, I don't 'zackly know," says Jack, "but I'm gittin' there real
spry. I 'most see it one time to-day." He didn't mind Billy's laughin'
at him, and tryin' to keep him from bein' sat'sfied. He jest went on
tryin' and tryin' to get there, and hopin' and believin' he would after
a spell. He was always peart and comfortable, took his work real easy,
relished his victuals and drink, and slept first rate nights. But Billy
he fretted and scolded and kicked and bit, and that made him hot and
tired, and got him whipped, and hollered at, and pulled, and yanked. You
see, he hadn't got anything in his mind to chirk him up, for he didn't
believe anything good was comin', as Jack did; he 'most knowed it
wasn't, but Jack 'most knowed it was. And Jack took notice of things
that Billy never see at all. He see the trees a-growin', and heered the
birds a-singin', and Injun Brook a-gugglin' along over the stones, and
he watched the butterflies a-flyin', and sometimes a big yeller 'n black
one would light right on his back. Jack took notice of 'em all, and he'd
say, "I'm gettin' along now, certin sure, for there's birds and posies
and flyin' things here I never see back along. I guess I'm most there."
"'There, there!'" Billy'd say. "Where is it, anyway? I ain't never seen
any o' them posies and creaturs you talk about, and I'm right side of
you on these old boards the whole time."
And all the children round there liked Jack. They'd watch the two horses
workin', and they see Billy all cross and skittish, holdin' back and
shakin' his head and tryin' to kick, never takin' no notice o' them nor
anything. And, again, they see Jack steppin' along peart and spry,
pleasant and willin', turnin' his head when they come up to him, and
lookin' friendly at 'em out of his kind brown eyes, and they'd say, the
boys and girls would, "Good Jack! nice old Jack!" and they'd pat him,
and give him an apple, or a carrot, or suthin' good. But they didn't
give Billy any. They didn't like his ways, and they was 'most afraid
he'd bite their fingers. And Jack would say, come evenin', "It's gittin'
nicer and nicer we get further on the road,--ain't it? Folks is
pleasanter speakin', and the victuals 'pears better flavored, and
things is comfortabler every way, seems 's if, and I jedge by that we're
'most there." But Billy'd say, a-grumblin' away, "It's worse'n
worse,--young ones a-botherin' my life out o' me, and the birds
a-jabberin' and the posies a-smellin' till my head aches. Oh, deary me!
I'm 'most dead." So 't went on and kep' on. Jack had every mite as hard
work as Billy, but he didn't mind it, he was so full o' what was comin'
and how good 't would be to get there. And 'cause he was pleasant and
willin' and worked so good, and 'cause he took notice o' all the nice
things round him, and see new ones every day, he was treated real kind,
and never got tired and used up and low in his mind like Billy. Even the
flies didn't pester him's they done Billy, for he on'y said, when he
felt 'em bitin' and crawlin', "Dog-days is come," says he, "for here's
the flies worse and worse. So the summer's most over, and I'll get there
in a jiffy now."
"What am I stoppin' for," do you say, 'Miry? 'Cause that's all. You
needn't make sech a fuss, child'en. It's done, this story is, I tell ye.
Leastways I don't know any more on it. I told you all about them two
horses, and which had a good time and which didn't, and what 'twas made
the differ'nce 'twixt 'em. But you want to know whether Jack got there.
Well, I don't know no more 'n the horses did what _there_ was, but in my
own mind I b'leeve he got it. Mebbe 't was jest dyin' peaceful and quiet,
and restin' after all that steppin' and climbin'. He'd a-liked that,
partic'lar when he knowed the folks was sorry to have him go, and would
allus rec'lect him. Mebbe 't was jest livin' on and on, int'rested and
enjoyin', and liked by folks, and then bein' took away from the hard
work and put out to pastur' for the rest o' his days. Mebbe 'twas--Oh! I
d'know. Might 'a' been lots o' things, but I feel pretty certin sure he
got it, and he was glad he hadn't gi'n up b'leevin' 't would come. For
you 'member, all the time when Billy 'most knowed it wasn't, Jack 'most
knowed 'twas.
The Plant that Lost its Berry
IV
It was a sad day in Greenhills when we knew that Susan Holcomb's little
Jerusha was dead. We all loved the child, and she was her mother's
dearest treasure. Susan was a widow, and this was her only child. A
pretty little creature she was, with yellow curls and dark-blue eyes,
rosy and plump and sturdy. But a sudden, sharp attack of croup seized
the child, and in a few hours she fell asleep. I need not tell you of
the mother's grief. She could not be comforted because her child was
not. One day a little neighbor, a boy with great faith--not wholly
misplaced--in the helpfulness of Story-tell Lib's little parables,
succeeded, with a child's art, in bringing the sad mother to the group
of listeners. And it was that day that Lib told this new story.
The Plant that Lost its Berry
Once there was a plant, and it had jest one little berry. And the berry
was real pretty to look at. It was sort o' blue, with a kind o' whitey,
foggy look all over the blue, and it wa'n't round like huckleberries and
cramb'ries, but longish, and a little p'inted to each end. And the stem
it growed on, the little bit of a stem, you know, comin' out o' the
plant's big stem, like a little neck to the berry, was pinky and real
pretty. And this berry didn't have a lot o' teenty little seeds inside
on it, like most berries, but it jest had one pretty white stone in it,
with raised up streaks on it.
The plant set everything by her little berry. She thought there never
was in all the airth sech a beautiful berry as hern,--so pretty shaped
and so whitey blue, with sech a soft skin and pinky neck, and more
partic'lar with that nice, white, striped stone inside of it. She held
it all day and all night tight and fast. When it rained real hard, and
the wind blowed, she kind o' stretched out some of her leaves, and
covered her little berry up, and she done the same when the sun was too
hot. And the berry growed and growed, and was so fat and smooth and
pretty! And the plant was jest wropped up in her little berry, lovin' it
terr'ble hard, and bein' dreadful proud on it, too.
Well, one day, real suddent, when the plant wasn't thinkin' of any storm
comin', a little wind riz up. 'T wa'n't a gale, 't wa'n't half as hard a
blow as the berry'd seen lots o' times and never got hurt nor nothin'.
And the plant wa'n't lookin' out for any danger, when all of a suddent
there come a little bit of a snap, and the slimsy little pink stem
broke, and the little berry fell and rolled away, and, 'fore you could
say "Jack Robinson," 't was clean gone out o' sight. I can't begin to
tell ye how that plant took on. Seem 's if she'd die, or go ravin'
crazy. It's only folks that has lost jest what they set most by on airth
that can understand about it, I s'pose. She wouldn't b'leeve it fust
off; she 'most knowed she'd wake up and feel her little berry a-holdin'
close to her, hangin' on her, snugglin' up to her under the shady
leaves. The other plants 'round there tried to chirk her up and help
her. One on 'em told her how it had lost all its little berries itself,
a long spell back, and how it had some ways stood it and got over it.
"But they wa'n't like mine," thinks the poor plant. "There never, never
was no berry like mine, with its pretty figger, its pinky, slim little
neck, and its soft, smooth-feelin' skin." And another plant told her
mebbe her berry was saved from growin' up a trouble to her, gettin' bad
and hard, with mebbe a worm inside on it, to make her ashamed and sorry.
"Oh, no, no!" thinks the mother plant. "My berry'd never got bad and
hard, and I'd 'a' kep' any worm from touchin' its little white heart."
Not a single thing the plant-folks said to her done a mite o' good.
Their talk only worried her and pestered her, when she jest wanted to be
let alone, so's she could think about her little berry all to herself.