The Haven Children; or, Frolics at the Funny Old House on Funny Street — Inside the Classic

FROLICS AT THE FUNNY OLD HOUSE ON FUNNY STREET

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 713 BROADWAY 1876

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

To CHRISTIAN BAYARD BÖRS,

WHO, FOR FOUR YEARS, GAVE TO THE FUNNY HOUSE ON FUNNY STREET, SO MUCH OF ITS LIFE AND BRIGHTNESS, AND A MERRY BAND OF NIECES AND NEPHEWS, THIS LITTLE BOOK IS INSCRIBED, BY THEIR LOVING AUNT, “Who asks not a life for those dear ones, All radiant, as others have done, But that life may have just enough shadow To temper the glare of the sun.”

_I. The Great Surprise_, 7

_II. The Haven Family_, 19

_III. Journey to Providence_, 30

_IV. Sunday in the Nursery_, 47

_V. Rainy-day Frolics in the Old Garret_, 69

_VI. Frolics in the Garden_, 86

_VII. The Fairy Feast_, 98

_VIII. On the Road_, 114

_IX. The Old Brown Farm_, 129

_X. Tea Under the Great Elm_, 148

_XI. A Sail down Narragansett Bay_, 160

_XII. Jem, Kit, Ned, Grace, May, and Alice_, 179

_XIII. Fourth of July at Harmony Hall_, 193

_XIV. Shore Dinner and Clam Bake_, 214

_XV. Tiger and Ranger_, 234

_XVI. On the Yacht, bound for Rocky Point_, 250

_XVII. Farewell to the Funny House on Funny Street_, 260

_FROLICS AT THE FUNNY OLD HOUSE ON FUNNY STREET_.

“A dreary place would be this earth, Were there no little people in it; The song of life would lose its mirth, Were there no children to begin it.”

Daisy Havens was awakened from a sound sleep, one bright June morning, by a fearful banging on her bedroom door, and as she rubbed her sleepy eyes, and curled herself up for another nap, there came a shrill volley of boy’s talk through the key-hole.

“I say, Daisy Havens, I’d be ashamed to be such a sleepy-head. There’s no end of fun going on in the nursery. The Menagerie are all up and dressed, and Mamma has invited them to feed in the dining-room. I say, sleeping beauty, open your ears, if your eyes _are_ shut. Mamma has a letter from Papa, with a surprise for us. So there--sleep on now, as much as you _can_. I’m off, for one.”

The last shot through the key-hole has taken effect, and Daisy’s bare feet patter quickly across the hall, where, leaning over the bannisters, she catches a glimpse of Artie’s blue sailor-suit, disappearing through the nursery door, from whence proceeds a merry clangor of high-pitched young sopranos and the deeper tones of desperate nurses.

Daisy hastens back, almost forgetting the surprise in store, for very vexation that “Artie couldn’t just wait a minute.”

What trials await her now! Those little elves from the “city of mischief,” so prone to visit children all agog with excitement about some expected pleasure, are all about and around her; now tangling her crimped locks, and cruelly waylaying her comb in its way through them, now whisking off a button or the tin of a boot-lace, now shaking her arm and tumbling her tooth-brush into the slop-jar. Poor Daisy! tears are in her eyes, as she bends over to fish for the troublesome little brush. Alas! her trials are not over, for turning hastily around, she forgets the full pitcher, which, in her bewilderment, she placed on the floor, and now a cool douche reminds her of its presence.

“There’s water, water all around, But not a drop to drink.”

The pretty rose-buds and fern-leaves on the new carpet are completely drowned. Daisy’s neat boots are weighed down with their additional weight of water, and Daisy herself stands upon a chair, “sending coals to Newcastle,” as the torrent pours from her blue eyes. Just then the door bursts open, and Jacko, the little monkey, escaped from the family menagerie keeper, shouts out, “Oh, Daisy, ain’t you coming to the exprise?” then lowering his tones as he catches sight of the catastrophe and tearful Daisy on her high perch, cries--

“Was you shipwrecked, Daisy dear, and was you throwed on the rocks? Oh, isn’t it fun to paddle? I think water is the best fun of anything.”

“Dais-y! where _is_ the child?” sounds out a loud, ringing voice, as Rosie, the companion monkey of the family collection, appears on the threshold. “Doesn’t she know what’s going on? Oh, dear, dear, what a awful splash! What ever’ll happen to you, Miss Daisy?”

With this crumb of doubtful comfort dropped, Rosie runs off panting to the nursery, to tell how “Miss Daisy, that’s always preaching to us children, is behaving a purpose.”

Now Daisy, be it known, is the family owl, and has the habit of looking very grave and wise, and using those aggravating words, “I told you so,” to the younger members of the family, so Daisy’s misfortune, this morning, is rather “nuts” for the companion monkeys to crack.

The news of the “shipwreck” reaches the nursery, and Charlotte, who has a very soft spot in her heart for little folks in distress, and whose office it is to mend the family jars and straighten out the family tangles, hastens to the floating island, rescues the family owl, dries the dripping feathers, and then marshals the chattering group to the dining-room for the rare pleasure of a “high breakfast” with Mamma and Aunt Lellie.

A smiling greeting there awaits them, and then Mamma bids Artie take Papa’s place at the head of the table, and after a simple grace, enters into the general fun.

“Mamma,” pleads one, “need nobody count our cakes this morning, and may we make our own spread of marmalade?”

“Mamma, dear, can’t we have two helps of strawberries. They are so very delicious, and Charlotte will give us peppermint and sugar if they hurt.”

Aunt Lellie’s suggestion that, by way of preventive, the strawberries should be seasoned with peppermint and sugar, was received with merry laughter, and then the clamor went on.

“Oh, Mamma, just look at Rosie!”

“Bee’s in the honey-pot Up to its eyes,”

“Oh, I ain’t either, I was just peering to see if the honey would last for another ‘go-round,’” indignantly replied Rosie, whilst the delicate touches of sweets on the end of her “tip-tilted” little nose, and on her round forehead, produced a merry laugh from all, and proved nearly fatal to Jacko, with his mouth full of buttered cakes.

The din of mingled voices, with their interrogations and exclamations, re-echoed by Baby Mocking-Bird’s accompaniment of Pap-spoon Tatto on her plate, began to grow terrific, so Mamma, by a single word, summoned the little ones to perfect quiet, whilst she unfolded “the surprise” in Papa’s letter.

Let us pass over the pleas used to convince Mamma, to the single sentence--

“I want you to send on the whole Menagerie (little Birdie excepted) with one of the nurses, by the Shore-line train, to Providence, Saturday, to accept Aunt Emma’s kind invitation to visit her. Hugh and I will meet them at the station.”

The reading of the letter was followed by an almost painful calm. Its meaning was too great to be taken in all at once, but gradually it dawned upon their bewildered little intellects that this was Saturday, and in less than four hours they would be on their journey to the far-away city and “Aunt Emma,” who was, to them, a sort of good fairy, who always remembered the six birthdays, and seemed a kind of familiar friend of Santa Claus, or, as Rosie said--“She guessed they had growed up together, and been to the same school.”

However that may be, certain fact it was, that whatever wishes they had whispered up the dark chimney the week before, were sure to be realized when, Christmas morning, the Adams Express wagon left a huge box marked “Providence,” with Aunt Emma’s card fastened on to the plum pudding, so sure to form the first layer, with the good Auntie’s assurance to Mamma, “It was made, by Celia, very weak, to suit the children.”

The nurses now appeared to carry off the younger folk to the nursery, thereby making short work of Jack’s series of joy-speaking somersaults, whose chief feature, much to his elder brother’s scarcely veiled contempt, seemed to be, that the heels never reached their destination, but remained dangling in the air.

Whilst the little ones, in the nursery, are riding astride the trunks which had appeared there, or tumbling over the piles of clean clothes spread out by Kitty; Artie and Daisy, as eldest son and daughter, are listening to some good advice from Mamma, who is putting the younger members of her flock under their care, urging Artie not to tease poor little Bear, who is really not well, and apt sometimes to be a little tiresome, and--cross, if we must say it. Daisy, too, is to try to be more gentle and patient with her little sister and brother. Then she bids them remember the verse which formed the subject of last Sunday evening’s talk,--“Be ye kindly affectionate one toward another, in honor preferring one another.”

She had then told them in how many ways they might bring sunshine into their own homes, the great outside world, and into their own hearts too, if they were constantly striving to be “kindly affectionate” and studying how they might

“Yield their way to others’ way,”

not selfishly seeking for themselves the best. She begged them to keep this little verse ever in their childish hearts, that so, with the dear Lord’s blessing, its echo might be found in their lives.

Mamma did not make her sober talk very long, for she knew the little heads and hearts had just about enough to fill them now, and she saw Artie’s big blue eyes were growing hazy, for with all his faults, he was a boy of loving heart, where Mamma reigned supreme, and just then a little cloud was drifting over the bright sunny prospect before him, as he thought of leaving her without Papa or eldest son to care for her.

Little boys know how soon their sailor-coat-sleeves will dry up tearful eyes and let bright sunshine again into boy-hearts (for mammas and nurses well know that a little boy’s handkerchief is a myth), and Artie was soon chasing his sister up the stairs, “two steps at a time,” to hunt for his fishing-line, which, in New York, had only caught such fish as might present themselves, whilst angling over the bannisters, or from between the bars of nursery windows, but now the young fisherman’s eyes sparkled as he thought of squirming perch, silvery scup and tautog to be caught in old Narragansett Bay, as his Papa had done in his boy-days.

“I pray you hear my song of this nest, For it is not long.”

I suppose I must follow the fashion of all story-tellers, and introduce my young readers to the Haven family, one by one. I grant it is rather tiresome, but you know, the first thing in the study of grammar is to get some knowledge of all the little parts which make up the great Family of Speech; so, in your Geography, you must make the separate acquaintance of little streams and bays as well as of great rivers and oceans, tiny capes, huge promontories, and continents, before you can have much idea of the great world; so, in every-day life, we get on better, and feel much more at our ease with new acquaintances, after we have learned something about them, so I will begin by telling you that Mr. and Mrs. Havens lived in a brown stone house on Madison avenue, and if you had chanced to pass Forty-second street early some Spring morning, and looked up to the third story windows of one of the houses on your left, you, most likely, would have seen six little faces looking out, six little noses and six pairs of chubby cheeks flattened against the window-panes, earnestly studying the movements of that little girl in soiled dress. Poor child! her tatters, flapping apart with the motion of the warm south wind, show two thin, stockingless, shoeless legs, telling a tale of want and neglect at home, as her little iron hook clinks against the curb-stones, seeking to find hidden treasures of rags or bread-crust to fill the bag she bears. Do you guess why the thin, soiled, childish face looks up so earnestly at the window of No. 310, as she passes? It is because there she finds the one little rift of cheer which steals into the poor heart, the day long. Child as she is, knowing nothing of a true home and mother’s tenderness, she reads, with a child’s instinct, the sympathy and companionship in those bright young faces, and well remembers how, early every Sunday morning, a little basket is let down from those windows filled with nice bits which the children have saved from their Saturday’s dinner and Sunday’s breakfast, gifts costing them often a little self-denial, for which they are well repaid by the bright look in the girl’s face as she draws out the apple or the orange which, yesterday, was handled over so many times, and wistfully gazed at before its owner could quite willingly consign it to the little basket. Can you not see, now, why Papa and Mamma, gazing from the windows, regard that poor child’s bag with so much interest, nay, almost reverence? They feel as if, somehow, it became the little altar on which, each Lord’s day, their dear ones offered up their gifts of that which had cost them something of self-denial, and they prayed that the Holy Dove might ever nestle in their young hearts, prompting to love and kindly deeds which, offered to those little neglected city waifs, is indeed offered to Him who has said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me.”

Those third-story windows let _in_, too, a deal of sunlight to the Family Menagerie, in the nursery, where the Keeper, Master Artie, a bright boy of ten, when not engaged--as, very sorry I am to say it, he sometimes is--in teasing the little animals in the nursery cage, is often to be found quirled up in the wide window-seat, following Napoleon Bonaparte through his snowy Russian marches, or on the bloody, fatal field of Waterloo, or reading aloud to the never-wearied trio of the wonderful content and skilful management of that remarkable Swiss Family Robinson, who seem to have borrowed the brains as well as the daring of the great Crusoe.

Daisy, the family Owl, has a wise look beaming from her large full eyes. Seldom does eight years bring such a deal of wisdom to a young mind, such wonderful acuteness in discovering family faults, and such readiness in reproving the same; but Daisy is loving, perfectly truthful, and really a great help to the nurses in the care of the little ones. She is a most devoted mother to two wax, two china, and one large rag doll. Patiently and uncomplainingly, has she watched over their sick-beds, nursing them tenderly through their various stages of whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever, and the nurses tell “how pale Miss Daisy looked, one morning, when, on going to Felicie’s little bed, she saw the face of the young French beauty quite disfigured with what was, probably, the very disease which was then raging in New York.”

Poor Felicie was taken, for fear of infection, to the attic, and even now, bears traces of the sad disease. It was a most curious fact that Master Artie, too, was kept, that very day, in solitary confinement by Mamma for some reason, and it _was_ whispered among the servants that _he_ could tell, better than any one else, just how and where Felicie caught the disease. Two kittens claim Daisy as their Mamma also; she is very careful of them, fearful that their lives may be brief, like those of most of her pets; and it is strange that kittens, grown in the same house with small boys, are not generally long-lived.

There is quite a miniature cemetery at the farther end of the little garden. A thrifty fish geranium shelters the grave of three little pets who once inhabited the aquarium in the nursery and delighted the little ones by their golden flashes, as they gayly tossed about.

One morning the little lake was very, very smooth and still. No more golden rays flashed forth. Three little fishes lay quite dead! Somehow, for a careful search revealed the fact, their bill of fare had been changed, and Papa’s science proved very clearly that their new diet had been too rich for them.

A little farther on, tiny rose-bushes adorn the graves of kittens numberless whose life’s tales had been very short. Two tiny tablets mark the graves of a lovely bullfinch and a rare canary, whose last resting-places have been moistened by true mourners’ tears.

In the attic, a miniature house may be seen. Daisy alone keeps the key, and rarely allows visitors to enter. Peeping through the little windows, the invalid chairs and snow-white beds reveal the fact that this is the “Doll Hospital.” Incurables are admitted too, for there is a headless doll, apparently standing to look out of the window. There lies a patient with an abscess or hole in her side. I can guess what young surgeon’s knife explored there. By this poor, thin dolly sits another, with bandaged head slightly turned on one side. In the male ward there are no end of patients, one-legged, no-legged, armless, toothless, eyeless, noseless.

“Ah, it is pitiful! In this whole housefull, Sound-limbed--not one.”

A little vase of flowers on a white covered table, and various other little tokens plainly show that the little “Sister of Mercy’s” visits to the Hospital are very frequent.

I have wandered far from the nursery, and now must quickly retrace my steps, for still there is Rosie’s round, chubby face, whose archness is partly veiled by the shower of golden curls which screen the mischief their owner is sure to be hatching, and funny, laughing Jack, the companion monkey. These two little folk are, generally, to be found with their heads together, conscious that the eyes of the two nurses are on the watch for their schemes.

Beg pardon Bear, or Master Harry, your six years, with their little burden of hours of pain and languor, which give your dark eyes such a wistful look, as of longing for the great health-gift which makes child-life such

“A thing of joy and beauty,”

entitle you to be introduced before the pair of rollicking young monkies. Dear little Bear, do you know why Mamma and nurses deal so gently with your impatience, and Sister Daisy soothes you with such loving tones? Ah me! there is a cloud-fleck somewhere in the bluest sky,--a shadow on each sun-lit path, a withered leaf on every plant,--the dear Lord places a cross in every Eden, side by side with richest earthly blessings.

One more little figure attracts us, whose sunny ringlets, like a golden setting, encircle the fair face of the peerless little Lily, the Nursery Queen, at whose shrine brothers and sisters bow most loyal subjects.

Yes, little Mocking-bird, your sway is undisputed, you may pull off Aunt Kitty’s cap-strings, wring young Jacko’s saucy nose, tear the leaves of Artie’s book, or even, unrebuked, hurl your rattle at poor little Bear’s pale face. It is all right! The acts of Queen Baby are never questioned by her willing subjects.

“Whirled on with shriek and whistle.”

Let us draw a curtain over the scenes of the last hour at home, for partings, though some have called them

have a deal of the bitter mingled with them, when a dear Mamma and baby-sisters have to be left behind.

The last bell has sounded, the last trunk been hurled into the baggage-car, the last “All aboard” has been shouted, and the “Shore-Line Express Train,” with its precious load of human life, is steaming out from under the shelter of the Grand Central, rushing through the Forties, Fifties, Sixties, and past the beautiful Park, with hasty glimpses at its trees, Casino, lakes, and glittering equipages.