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St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, September 1878
The Fox and the Turkeys;
or, Charley and the Old Folks
by Susan Coolidge
[A cunning fox perceived some turkeys roosting securely on the bough of a
high tree. Unable to climb, he resolved to get at them in another way. Night
after night he stationed himself beneath the tree, and there played off all
sorts of curious tricks. He jumped, he capered, he turned somersaults, he
walked on his hind legs, he pretended to be dead, he raised and expanded his
tail until, in the moonlight, it looked like a flame of fire,—in short, he
performed every antic conceivable. The turkeys, who, to sleep in safety, had
only to turn their backs and forget the fox, were so agitated and excited by
his pranks that for whole nights they never closed their eyes; the
consequence was that they lost strength, and one by one dropped from the
bough and into the jaws of the fox, who soon made an end of them.
Moral: It is unwise to concern one's self with the tricks and antics of
mischievous persons.
— La Fontaine's Fables]
It was midsummer at the old Brush Farm. When I say "midsummer," how many
pretty things it means,—woods at their freshest and greenest, meadows sweet with
newly cut hay, cinnamon-roses in the hedges and water-lilies in the ponds, bees
buzzing in and out of the clove-pinks and larkspurs which edge the beds of
cabbages and carrots in the kitchen-garden, a humming-bird at work in the
scarlet trumpets of the honeysuckle on the porch,—everywhere the sense of
fullness and growth, with no shadow as yet of rankness or decay. August is
over-ripe. September's smile is sad, but midsummer is all rosy hope, the crown
and blossom of the year.
Charley Brush lay under an apple-tree, face downward, and absorbed in "The Red
Rover," a book he had read at least ten times before. Stories about ships and
sea-life and freebooters and buccaneers were his favorite reading, and,
unfortunately, what with illustrated papers and cheap novels, and so-called
"Boys' books," plenty of such tales abound nowadays. I say unfortunately, for
beside teaching him nothing, these books made Charley utterly dissatisfied with
his life at home. Hoeing vegetables, chopping wood, and going to the district
school, seemed dull work indeed to a boy who was longing to stand sword in hand
on a blood-stained deck, in a gory uniform trimmed with skulls and cross-bones,
and order his enemies to be thrown one by one into the sea. "The shark awaits
your car-casses!" spouted the imaginary desperado with a vicious snap of his
teeth; and when Aunt Greg interrupted by asking him to bring in an armful of
kindling, he glared at her like the Red Rover himself. Poor Aunt Greg! how
little she guessed what was passing in his mind!
"You look real pale to-day," she said. "I was afraid all that mince-pie for
supper would be bad for you. Here, Charley, I'll mix you some ginger-and-water.
That'll settle you, and make all right again."
"Mis-cre-ant!" was what Charley yearned to say, but instead he muttered,
gruffly, "I aint sick, and I don't want no ginger." Very bad grammar, as you
perceive; but grammar seemed such an unnecessary accomplishment for a would-be
buccaneer, that Charley never could be induced to pay the least attention to it.
That afternoon, under the apple-tree, he made up his mind. A pirate he must and
he would be, by fair means or by foul. He was cunning enough to know that the
very word "pirate" would frighten his grandmother into fits, so he only asked
her leave to go to sea. Going to sea was, to his mind, a necessary first step
toward the noble profession he desired to enter.
"I want to so bad," he whined. "Please say I may."
Grandmother began to cry. Aunt Hitty was sure he must be out of his mind, and
ran for the Epsom salts. Aunt Greg quoted, "There's no place like home," and
told a story about a boy she once heard of who ran away to sea and never came
back, "foundered or drowndered," she couldn't remember which. Aunt Prue seized
his shoulders and gave him a sound shake. This was what came of idling over
story-books all day long, she said,—he could just shut up and go and give the
pig its supper, and not let her hear any more trash like that—making them all
feel so bad about nothing.
Charley twisted his shoulder out of her grasp with a scowl, but he took the pail
and went out to the pen. All the time that piggy ate, he was considering what to
do. "I'll tease 'em," he decided, "and tease and tease, and then they'll let me
go."
So he did tease, and plead and expostulate, but it was all in vain. Grandmother
and the aunts could not be reached by any of his entreaties, and at the end of a
week he seemed as far from his desire as ever.
You will wonder, perhaps, that Charley did not run away, as so many boys do in
books, and a few out of them. Somehow he never thought of that. He was not a
hardy, adventurous fellow at all. His desire to go to sea was a fancy born of
foolish reading, and he wanted to have his going made easy for him.
"I must set to work in another way," he thought at last. "Asking of 'em aint no
use. I must make 'em want to have me go." Then he fell to thinking how this
could be done.
"Aunt Hitty wouldn't hold out long if the others didn't," he thought. "I could
coax her into it as easy as fun. She'll do anything if I kiss and pet her a bit.
Then there's Aunt Greg,—she thinks so much of poetry and such stuff. I'll hunt
up the pieces in the 'Reader' about 'The sea, the sea, the deep blue sea,' and
all that, and learn 'em and say 'em to her, and I'll tell her about coral groves
and palm-trees, and make her think it's the jimmiest thing going to sail off and
visit 'em. Grandmother's always bothering about my being sick, and afraid of
this and afraid of that; so I'll just be sick—so sick that nothing but a
viyage'll cure me! As for Aunt Prue, 'taint no use trying to impose on her. I
guess I'll have to be real hateful and troublesome to Aunt Prue. I'll tease
pussy and slop on the pantry shelves, and track up the floor every time she mops
it, and leave the dipper in the sink, and all the other things she don't like,
and by and by she'll be just glad to see the last of me! Hi!—that'll fetch 'em
all!" He ended his reflections with a chuckle. Charley wasn't really a bad
boy,—not bad through and through, that is,—but he had a cunning, tricky side to
his nature which made him like to play on the weaknesses of his grandmother and
aunts. A sharp boy may prove more than a match for four unsuspecting old women;
and though in this case they were in the right and he in the wrong, none the
less was he likely to succeed in his crafty plans.
He waited a few days to let opposition subside, and then began his tricks.
Charley's first victim was Aunt Hitty. She was a gentle, weak-minded person,
easy to persuade, and when Charley put his head into her lap and called her
coaxing names, and was sure she was too kind to disappoint him in the thing he
was set upon, her heart softened, and she began to think that they all had been
hard and unkind. "The dear boy wants to go awful bad," she told Aunt Greg, and
to her surprise Aunt Greg did not fly out and scold as she had expected, but
answered, with a sigh, "I suppose sailing on the ocean is beautiful!" Aunt Greg
had never seen the ocean in her life, but she was naturally romantic; and
Charley, who had been hard at work at the "Reader," had crammed her with all
sorts of poetical quotations and fancies concerning it. Flying fish, coral
islands, pole stars, dolphins, gallant mariners, wet sheets and flowing seas,
figured largely in these extracts, but there was no mention whatever of storms,
sharks, drowning, hard work, or anything disagreeable. Aunt Greg could not see
the charm of "wet sheets," but all the rest sounded delightful; and gradually a
picture formed itself in her mind of a sea which was always blue and always
smooth, and of Charley standing on the deck of a ship repeating poetry to
himself in the moonlight; and her opposition grew feebler and feebler.
"Charley's got a lot of ideas in his head," she said one day when she and her
sisters were slicing apples for drying. "He aint no common boy, Charley aint.
He'll make a mark yet—see if he don't."
"Dear little fellow!" sighed Aunt Hitty. "So lovin' and affectionate! He used to
be a little worrisome in his ways at times, but he's got all over that!"
"Oh, has he?" snapped Aunt Prue. "I'd like to know when? He's been more of a
plague the last six weeks than ever in his life before. When he upset that milk
last night I could have cuffed him. It's the third time since Wednesday. Mark,
indeed! The only mark he'll ever make is a dirt-mark on clean floors. The
kitchen looks like Sancho at this moment. I've washed it up twice as often as
ordinary, but as sure as I get it clean, in he comes stamping about with his
muddy boots and tracks it from end to end. I believe he does it a-purpose."
"O, Prue!" began Aunt Hitty, in a pleading tone, while Aunt Greg broke in,
indignantly:
"A-purpose! Well! Charley's mind is on other things, I can tell you, and it it's
no wonder he sometimes forgets to wipe his feet."
"Other things! Getting off to sea, I suppose you mean?" remarked Aunt Prue,
grimly. "He's pulled the wool over your eyes and Hitty's finely, I declare. As
for me, if he's goin' on to behave as he has done for a spell back, the sooner
he quits the better. I wash my hands of him," and Aunt Prue flounced into the
buttery just as Grandmother came in at the other door.
"Charley is it you was talking about?" she asked. "Did you hear him coughin'
last night? I did, and I couldn't sleep a wink for worrying about it. A real
deep cough it was. Do you suppose it the lungs, and what's good for him to
take?"
"He's well enough except for mischief," put in Aunt Prue through the buttery
door.
"Prue never thinks anything ails anybody," said Mrs. Brush, sinking her voice to
a whisper. "I'm really consarned about Charley. He don't eat hardly anything at
dinner. That aint a bit natural for a growin' boy. And he says he lies awake a
great deal of nights. He thinks it's the air about here makes him feel bad, but
I don't know if he's right about it. I wish we'd a doctor here to say if going
off to sea—or somewhere—would be the best thing for him. I'm clean confused as
to what we'd best do about it, but I'm real uneasy in my mind."
Charley, coming in just then, chuckled to himself as he heard her.
So things went on, and by October Charley had his wish. It was settled that he
should go to sea. Aunt Greg drove over to Wachuset Center and consulted with old
Mr. Greg, her father-in-law, who was the wise man of the neighborhood.
"Let him go—let him go," was Mr. Greg's advice. "When a chap like that gets the
bit between his teeth, it's no use to keep yanking at the reins. Let him go for
one long cruise, and see how he likes it. Ten to one he'll come back then and be
glad to settle down. He aint the kind of boy to make a sailor of, I judge.
There's Ben Bradley,—my first wife's cousin,—captain of one of them China
traders; ship Charley with him. I'll write a line, and I guess Ben'll kind of
keep an eye on him for the sake of the connection."
So, late in the fall, Charley went to sea. Grandmother and the aunts felt
dreadfully sad when it came to the parting; but he was full of satisfaction and
triumph, and never shed a tear. The "Helen Weeks," as Captain Bradley's ship was
named, sailed from Boston on the second of November, and for fifteen months
nobody at home heard a word of Charley.
Those were sad days at the old Brush Farm. Grandmother fell ill from anxiety,
and even Aunt Prue looked white and miserable. Aunt Greg and Aunt Hitty spent
their time crying in corners, and "Why did we let him go?" was the language of
all their hearts. But in February, when everything was at its coldest and
iciest, Charley came back,—Charley or his ghost, for the tall, thin,
starved-looking ragged boy set down at the gate was very unlike the stout, rosy
lad of the year before.
He was so weak and forlorn that it was several days before he recovered enough
to explain what had happened to him, and then it was little by little, and not
as I give it, in one connected story.
"I don't ever want to go to sea again," he began. "It aint a bit like what we
thought it was. I don't know why them chaps in the 'Reader' called it 'blue.'
It's green and black and yellow, and all kinds of colors, but I never see it
look blue exceptin' when folks was looking at it from the land. It's cold, too,
and wet and nasty. I wasn't dry once for the first two months, it seems to me.
Ugh! I hate it. Never let to sleep till you're rested, and such horrid stuff to
eat, and sick—my, how sick I was! Captain Bradley was a fair enough sort of man,
but he fell ill of China fever, and we had to leave him behind in Canton, and
Bill Bunce, the first mate, took his place. After that we had a hard time
enough. I thought it was bad at first, but it wasn't nothing to that. He was
always walloping us boys, and swearing and kicking and cuffing us about. Then we
had a storm, and lost our mainmast, and came near foundering; and then we were
stuck in a calm for three weeks, and the water aboard ran short. That was the
time I had the fever. I'd have died, I know, if it hadn't been for Tad Brice. He
was one of the sailors, and a real nice man. His boy at home was just as old as
I am, and he sort of took an interest in me from the start. He used to come in
and feed me, and when we were put on allowance, he saved half his water ration
for me; and when I got to crying, and thinking about home and you all, he'd—"
Here Charley choked and was silent. Aunt Hitty, who sat next, possessed herself
of his thin hand and wept silently over it.
"When I went away I meant to be a pirate, you know," went on Charley.
"A pirate!" cried Aunt Hitty and Aunt Greg in awe-struck voices.
"Yes. I didn't know much about what it meant, but it sounded somehow nice in the
books, and I wanted to be one. But when I asked 'em about it aboard they roared
and hooted and made fun, and they all called me Captain Kidd from that time on.
And once, when we were in Shanghai" (Charley's voice sounded full of horror),
"we saw two pirates. Tad Brice said they was pirates. The folks was taking 'em
to jail. They was dreadful, black and ugly, and their eyes were so fierce and
bad that it made me cold to look at 'em. I never wanted to be a pirate any more
after that, but Bunce and the others, they all kept on calling me Captain Kidd
just the same."
"You absurd, ridiculous boy!" began Aunt Prue, but Grandmother hushed her up.
"Now, Prue, I wont have poor Charley scolded when he's been so sick," she
said—"He's only a boy, anyhow, and he's going to turn over a new leaf now; aint
you, Charley? and go to school regular, and do his chores, and be the comfort of
his granny's life. He's had enough of goin' to sea; haven't you, Charley? and
he'll stay on the farm now, and we wont ever talk about this bad time he's had,
and just be thankful to get him back home again."
Charley didn't answer in words, but he turned and gave Grandmother a big kiss,
which she knew meant "yes," and they were all very happy that night as they sat
together around the fire.
So you see that the fox, though he succeeded in his tricks, was not a
particularly happy fox after all. Too much turkey may not be good for a fox, and
too much of his own way is certainly not good for a boy.
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