Mary E. Wilkins - The Pot of Gold

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"Five times twenty-five Black Cats are one hundred and twenty-five
Black Cats," added the Wise Woman, with a chuckle.

[Illustration: SHE SANG IT BEAUTIFULLY.]

Then the Mayor and the Aldermen and the high-Soprano Singer fled
precipitately out the door and back to the city. One hundred and
twenty-five Black Cats had seemed to fill the Wise Woman's hut full,
and when they all spit and miauled together it was dreadful. The
visitors could not wait for her to multiply Black Cats any longer.

As winter wore on, and spring came, the condition of things grew more
intolerable. Physicians had been consulted, who advised that the
children should be allowed to follow their own bents, for fear of
injury to their constitutions. So the rich Aldermen's daughters were
actually out in the fields herding sheep, and their sons sweeping
chimneys or carrying newspapers; while the poor charwomen's and
coal-heavers' children spent their time like princesses and fairies.
Such a topsy-turvy state of society was shocking. Why, the Mayor's
little daughter was tending geese out in the meadow like any common
goose-girl! Her pretty elder sister, Violetta, felt very sad about it,
and used often to cast about in her mind for some way of relief.

When cherries were ripe in spring, Violetta thought she would ask the
Cherry-man about it. She thought the Cherry-man quite wise. He was a
very pretty young fellow, and he brought cherries to sell in
graceful little straw baskets lined with moss. So she stood in the
kitchen-door, one morning, and told him all about the great trouble
that had come upon the city. He listened in great astonishment; he had
never heard of it before. He lived several miles out in the country.

"How did the Costumer look?" he asked respectfully; he thought
Violetta the most beautiful lady on earth.

Then Violetta described the Costumer, and told him of the unavailing
attempts that had been made to find him. There were a great many
detectives out, constantly at work.

"I know where he is!" said the Cherry-man. "He's up in one of my
cherry-trees. He's been living there ever since cherries were ripe,
and he won't come down."

Then Violetta ran and told her father in great excitement, and he at
once called a meeting of the Aldermen, and in a few hours half the
city was on the road to the Cherry-man's.

He had a beautiful orchard of cherry-trees, all laden with fruit.
And, sure enough, in one of the largest, way up amongst the topmost
branches, sat the Costumer in his red velvet short-clothes and his
diamond knee-buckles. He looked down between the green boughs.
"Good-morning, friends," he shouted.

The Aldermen shook their gold-headed canes at him, and the people
danced round the tree in a rage. Then they began to climb. But they
soon found that to be impossible. As fast as they touched a hand or
foot to the tree, back it flew with a jerk exactly as if the tree
pushed it. They tried a ladder, but the ladder fell back the moment
it touched the tree, and lay sprawling upon the ground. Finally, they
brought axes and thought they could chop the tree down, Costumer and
all; but the wood resisted the axes as if it were iron, and only
dented them, receiving no impression itself.

Meanwhile, the Costumer sat up in the tree, eating cherries, and
throwing the stones down. Finally, he stood up on a stout branch and,
looking down, addressed the people.

"It's of no use, your trying to accomplish anything in this way," said
he; "you'd better parley. I'm willing to come to terms with you, and
make everything right, on two conditions."

The people grew quiet then, and the Mayor stepped forward as
spokesman. "Name your two conditions," said he, rather testily. "You
own, tacitly, that you are the cause of all this trouble."

"Well," said the Costumer, reaching out for a handful of cherries,
"this Christmas Masquerade of yours was a beautiful idea; but you
wouldn't do it every year, and your successors might not do it at all.
I want those poor children to have a Christmas every year. My first
condition is, that every poor child in the city hangs its stocking for
gifts in the City Hall on every Christmas Eve, and gets it filled,
too. I want the resolution filed and put away in the city archives."

"We agree to the first condition!" cried the people with one voice,
without waiting for the Mayor and Aldermen.

"The second condition," said the Costumer, "is that this good young
Cherry-man here, has the Mayor's daughter, Violetta, for his wife. He
has been kind to me, letting me live in his cherry-tree, and eat his
cherries, and I want to reward him."

"We consent!" cried all the people; but the Mayor, though he was
so generous, was a proud man. "I will not consent to the second
condition," he cried angrily.

"Very well," replied the Costumer, picking some more cherries, "then
your youngest daughter tends geese the rest of her life, that's all!"

The Mayor was in great distress; but the thought of his youngest
daughter being a goose-girl all her life was too much for him. He gave
in at last.

"Now go home, and take the costumes off your children," said the
Costumer, "and leave me in peace to eat cherries!"

Then the people hastened back to the city and found, to their great
delight, that the costumes would come off. The pins staid out, the
buttons staid unbuttoned, and the strings staid untied. The children
were dressed in their own proper clothes and were their own proper
selves once more. The shepherdesses and the chimney-sweeps came
home, and were washed and dressed in silks and velvets, and went to
embroidering and playing lawn-tennis. And the princesses and the
fairies put on their own suitable dresses, and went about their useful
employments. There was great rejoicing in every home. Violetta thought
she had never been so happy, now that her dear little sister was no
longer a goose-girl, but her own dainty little lady-self.

The resolution to provide every poor child in the city with a stocking
full of gifts on Christmas was solemnly filed, and deposited in the
city archives, and was never broken.

Violetta was married to the Cherry-man, and all the children came to
the wedding, and strewed flowers in her path till her feet were quite
hidden in them. The Costumer had mysteriously disappeared from the
cherry-tree the night before, but he left, at the foot, some beautiful
wedding presents for the bride--a silver service with a pattern of
cherries engraved on it, and a set of china with cherries on it, in
hand-painting, and a white satin robe, embroidered with cherries down
the front.

DILL.

Dame Clementina was in her dairy, churning, and her little daughter
Nan was out in the flower-garden. The flower-garden was a little plot
back of the cottage, full of all the sweet, old-fashioned herbs. There
were sweet marjoram, sage, summersavory, lavender, and ever so many
others. Up in one corner, there was a little green bed of dill.

Nan was a dainty, slim little maiden, with yellow, flossy hair in
short curls all over her head. Her eyes were very sweet and round and
blue, and she wore a quaint little snuff-colored gown. It had a short
full waist, with low neck and puffed sleeves, and the skirt was
straight and narrow and down to her little heels.

She danced around the garden, picking a flower here and there. She was
making a nosegay for her mother. She picked lavender and sweet-william
and pinks, and bunched them up together. Finally she pulled a little
sprig of dill, and ran, with that and the nosegay, to her mother in
the dairy.

"Mother dear," said she, "here is a little nosegay for you; and what
was it I overheard you telling Dame Elizabeth about dill last night?"

Dame Clementina stopped churning and took the nosegay. "Thank you,
Sweetheart, it is lovely," said she, "and, as for the dill--it is a
charmed plant, you know, like four-leaved clover."

"Do you put it over the door?" asked Nan.

"Yes. Nobody who is envious or ill-disposed can enter into the house
if there is a sprig of dill over the door. Then I know another charm
which makes it stronger. If one just writes this verse:

"'Alva, aden, winira mir,
Villawissen lingen;
Sanchta, wanchta, attazir,
Hor de mussen wingen,'

under the sprig of dill, every one envious, or evil-disposed, who
attempts to enter the house, will have to stop short, just where they
are, and stand there; they cannot move."

"What does the verse mean?" asked Nan.

"That, I do not know. It is written in a foreign language. But it is a
powerful charm."

"O, mother! will you write it off for me, if I will bring you a bit of
paper and a pen?"

"Certainly," replied her mother, and wrote it off when Nan brought pen
and paper.

"Now," said she, "you must run off and play again, and not hinder me
any longer, or I shall not get my butter made to-day."

So Nan danced away with the verse, and the sprig of dill, and her
mother went on churning.

She had a beautiful tall stone churn, with the sides all carved with
figures in relief. There were milkmaids and cows as natural as life
all around the churn. The dairy was charming, too. The shelves were
carved stone; and the floor had a little silvery rill running right
through the middle of it, with green ferns at the sides. All along the
stone shelves were set pans full of yellow cream, and the pans were
all of solid silver, with a chasing of buttercups and daisies around
the brims.

It was not a common dairy, and Dame Clementina was not a common
dairy-woman. She was very tall and stately, and wore her silver-white
hair braided around her head like a crown, with a high silver comb
at the top. She walked like a queen; indeed she was a noble count's
daughter. In her early youth, she had married a pretty young dairyman,
against her father's wishes; so she had been disinherited. The
dairyman had been so very poor and low down in the world, that the
count felt it his duty to cast off his daughter, lest she should do
discredit to his noble line. There was a much pleasanter, easier way
out of the difficulty, which the count did not see. Indeed, it was a
peculiarity of all his family, that they never could see a way out of
a difficulty, high and noble as they were. The count only needed to
have given the poor young dairyman a few acres of his own land, and a
few bags of his own gold, and begged the king, with whom he had great
influence, to knight him, and all the obstacles would have been
removed; the dairyman would have been quite rich and noble enough for
his son-in-law. But he never thought of that, and his daughter was
disinherited. However, he made all the amends to her that he could,
and fitted her out royally for her humble station in life. He caused
this beautiful dairy to be built for her, and gave her the silver
milk-pans, and the carved stone churn.

"My daughter shall not churn in a common wooden churn, or skim the
cream from wooden pans," he had said.

The dairyman had been dead a good many years now, and Dame Clementina
managed the dairy alone. She never saw anything of her father,
although he lived in his castle not far off, on a neighboring height.
When the sky was clear, she could see its stone towers against it. She
had four beautiful white cows, and Nan drove them to pasture; they
were very gentle.

When Dame Clementina had finished churning, she went into the cottage.
As she stepped through the little door with clumps of sweet peas on
each side, she looked up. There was the sprig of dill, and the magic
verse she had written under it.

Nan was sitting at the window inside, knitting her stent on a blue
stocking. "Ah, Sweetheart," said her mother, laughing, "you have
little cause to pin the dill and the verse over our door. None is
likely to envy us, or to be ill-disposed toward us."

"O, mother!" said Nan, "I know it, but I thought it would be so nice
to feel sure. Oh, there is Dame Golding coming after some milk. Do you
suppose she will have to stop?"

"What nonsense!" said her mother. They both of them watched Dame
Golding coming. All of a sudden, she stopped short, just outside. She
could go no further. She tried to lift her feet, but could not.

"O, mother!" cried Nan, "she has stopped!"

The poor woman began to scream. She was frightened almost to death.
Nan and her mother were not much less frightened, but they did not
know what to do. They ran out, and tried to comfort her, and gave her
some cream to drink; but it did not amount to much. Dame Golding had
secretly envied Dame Clementina for her silver milk-pans. Nan and her
mother knew why their visitor was so suddenly rooted to the spot, of
course, but she did not. She thought her feet were paralyzed, and she
kept begging them to send for her husband.

"Perhaps he can pull her away," said Nan, crying. How she wished she
had never pinned the dill and the verse over the door! So she set off
for Dame Golding's husband. He came running in a great hurry; but when
he had nearly reached his wife, and had his arms reached out to grasp
her, he, too, stopped short. He had envied Dame Clementina for her
beautiful white cows, and there he was fast, also.

He began to groan and scream too. Nan and her mother ran into the
house and shut the door. They could not bear it. "What shall we do,
if any one else comes?" sobbed Nan. "O, mother! there is Dame Dorothy
coming. And--yes--Oh! she has stopped too." Poor Dame Dorothy had
envied Dame Clementina a little for her flower-garden, which was finer
than hers, so she had to join Dame Golding and her husband.

Pretty soon another woman came, who had looked with envious eyes at
Dame Clementina, because she was a count's daughter; and another, who
had grudged her a fine damask petticoat, which she had had before she
was disinherited, and still wore on holidays; and they both had to
stop.

Then came three rough-looking men in velvet jackets and slouched hats,
who brought up short at the gate with a great jerk that nearly took
their breath away. They were robbers who were prowling about with a
view to stealing Dame Clementina's silver milk-pans some dark night.

[Illustration: A STRANGE SAD STATE OF THINGS.]

All through the day the people kept coming and stopping. It was
wonderful how many things poor Dame Clementina had to be envied
by men and women, and even children. They envied Nan for her yellow
curls or her blue eyes, or her pretty snuff-colored gown. When the
sun set, the yard in front of Dame Clementina's cottage was full of
people. Lastly, just before dark, the count himself came ambling up
on a coal-black horse. The count was a majestic old man dressed in
velvet, with stars on his breast. His white hair fell in long curls
on his shoulders, and he had a pointed beard. As he came to the gate,
he caught a glimpse of Nan in the door.

"How I wish that little maiden was my child," said he. And,
straightway, he stopped. His horse pawed and trembled when he lashed
him with a jeweled whip to make him go on; but he could not stir
forward one step. Neither could the count dismount from his saddle; he
sat there fuming with rage.

Meanwhile, poor Dame Clementina and little Nan were overcome with
distress. The sight of their yard full of all these weeping people
was dreadful. Neither of them had any idea how to do away with the
trouble, because of their family inability to see their way out of a
difficulty.

When supper time came, Nan went for the cows, and her mother milked
them into her silver milk-pails, and strained off the milk into her
silver pans. Then they kindled up a fire and cooked some beautiful
milk porridge for the poor people in the yard.

It was a beautiful warm moonlight night, and all the winds were sweet
with roses and pinks; so the people could not suffer out of doors; but
the next morning it rained.

"O, mother!" said Nan, "it is raining, and what will the poor people
do?"

Dame Clementina would never have seen her way out of this difficulty,
had not Dame Golding cried out that her bonnet was getting wet, and
she wanted an umbrella.

"Why, you must go around to their houses, of course, and get their
umbrellas for them," said Dame Clementina; "but first, give ours to
that old man on horseback." She did not know her father, so many years
had passed since she had seen him, and he had altered so.

So Nan carried out their great yellow umbrella to the count, and went
around to the others' houses for their own umbrellas. It was pitiful
enough to see them standing all alone behind the doors. She could not
find three extra ones for the three robbers, and she felt badly about
that.

Somebody suggested, however, that milk-pans turned over their heads
would keep the rain off their slouched hats, at least; so she got
a silver milk-pan for an umbrella for each. They made such frantic
efforts to get away then, that they looked like jumping-jacks; but it
was of no use.

[Illustration: NAN RETURNS WITH THE UMBRELLAS.]

Poor Dame Clementina and Nan after they had given the milk porridge to
the people, and done all they could for their comfort, stood staring
disconsolately out of the window at them under their dripping
umbrellas. The yard was fairly green and black and blue and yellow
with umbrellas. They wept at the sight, but they could not think
of any way out of the difficulty. The people themselves might have
suggested one, had they known the real cause; but they did not dare to
tell them how they were responsible for all the trouble; they seemed
so angry.

About noon Nan spied their most particular friend, Dame Elizabeth,
coming. She lived a little way out of the village. Nan saw her
approaching the gate through the rain and mist, with her great blue
umbrella and her long blue double cape and her poke bonnet; and she
cried out in the greatest dismay: "O, mother, mother! there is our
dear Dame Elizabeth coming; she will have to stop too!"

Then they watched her with beating hearts. Dame Elizabeth stared with
astonishment at the people, and stopped to ask them questions. But she
passed quite through their midst, and entered the cottage under the
sprig of dill, and the verse. She did not envy Dame Clementina or Nan,
anything.

"Tell me what this means," said she. "Why are all these people
standing in your yard in the rain with umbrellas?"

[Illustration: SUCH FRANTIC EFFORTS TO GET AWAY.]

Then Dame Clementina and Nan told her. "And oh! what shall we do?"
said they. "Will these people have to stand in our yard forever and
ever?"

Dame Elizabeth stared at them. The way out of the difficulty was so
plain to her, that she could not credit its not being plain to them.

"Why," said she, "don't you take down the sprig of dill and the
verse?"

"Why, sure enough!" said they in amazement. "Why didn't we think of
that before?"

So Dame Clementina ran out quickly, and pulled down the sprig of dill
and the verse.

Then the way the people hurried out of the yard! They fairly danced
and flourished their heels, old folks and all. They were so delighted
to be able to move, and they wanted to be sure they could move. The
robbers tried to get away unseen with their silver milk-pans, but some
of the people stopped them, and set the pans safely inside the dairy.
All the people, except the count, were so eager to get away, that they
did not stop to inquire into the cause of the trouble then.

Afterward, when they did, they were too much ashamed to say anything
about it.

It was a good lesson to them; they were not quite so envious after
that. Always, on entering any cottage, they would glance at the door,
to see if, perchance, there might be a sprig of dill over it. And if
there was not, they were reminded to put away any envious feeling they
might have toward the inmates out of their hearts.

[Illustration: DAME ELIZABETH STARED WITH ASTONISHMENT.]

As for the count, he had not been so much alarmed as the others, since
he had been to the wars and was braver. Moreover, he felt that his
dignity as a noble had been insulted. So he at once dismounted and
fastened his horse to the gate, and strode up to the door with his
sword clanking and the plumes on his hat nodding.

"What," he begun; then he stopped short. He had recognized his
daughter in Dame Clementina. She recognized him at the same moment.
"O, my dear daughter!" said he. "O, my dear father!" said she.

"And this is my little grandchild?" said the count; and he took Nan
upon his knee, and covered her with caresses.

Then the story of the dill and the verse was told. "Yes," said the
count, "I truly was envious of you, Clementina, when I saw Nan."

After a little, he looked at his daughter sorrowfully. "I should
dearly love to take you up to the castle with me, Clementina," said
he, "and let you live there always, and make you and the little child
my heirs. But how can I? You are disinherited, you know."

"I don't see any way," assented Dame Clementina, sadly.

Dame Elizabeth was still there, and she spoke up to the count with a
curtesy.

"Noble sir," said she, "why don't you make another will?"

"Why, sure enough," cried the count with great delight, "why don't I?
I'll have my lawyer up to the castle to-morrow."

[Illustration: THE COUNT THINKS HIMSELF INSULTED.]

He did immediately alter his will, and his daughter was no longer
disinherited. She and Nan went to live at the castle, and were
very rich and happy. Nan learned to play on the harp, and wore
snuff-colored satin gowns. She was called Lady Nan, and she lived a
long time, and everybody loved her. But never, so long as she lived,
did she pin the sprig of dill and the verse over the door again. She
kept them at the very bottom of a little satin-wood box--the faded
sprig of dill wrapped round with the bit of paper on which was written
the charm-verse:

"Alva, aden, winira mir,
Villawissen lingen;
Sanchta, wanchta, attazir,
Hor de mussen wingen."

[Illustration: THEY FAIRLY DANCED AND FLOURISHED THEIR HEELS.]

THE SILVER HEN.

Dame Dorothea Penny kept a private school. It was quite a small
school, on account of the small size of her house. She had only twelve
scholars and they filled it quite full; indeed one very little boy had
to sit in the brick oven. On this account Dame Penny was obliged to do
all her cooking on a Saturday when school did not keep; on that day
she baked bread, and cakes, and pies enough to last a week. The oven
was a very large one.

It was on a Saturday that Dame Penny first missed her silver hen. She
owned a wonderful silver hen, whose feathers looked exactly as if they
had been dipped in liquid silver. When she was scratching for worms
out in the yard, and the sun shone on her, she was absolutely
dazzling, and sent little bright reflections into the neighbors'
windows, as if she were really solid silver.

Dame Penny had a sunny little coop with a padlocked door for her, and
she always locked it very carefully every night. So it was doubly
perplexing when the hen disappeared. Dame Penny remembered distinctly
locking the coop-door; several circumstances had served to fix it on
her mind. She had started out without her overshoes, then had returned
for them because the snow was quite deep and she was liable to
rheumatism. Then Dame Louisa who lived next door had rapped on her
window, and she had run in there for a few moments with the hen-coop
key dangling on its blue ribbon from her wrist, and Dame Louisa had
remarked that she would lose that key if she were not more careful.
Then when she returned home across the yard a doubt had seized her,
and she had tried the coop-door to be sure that she had really
fastened it.

[Illustration: THE SNOW WAS QUITE DEEP.]

The next morning when she fitted the key into the padlock and threw
open the door, and no silver hen came clucking out, it was very
mysterious. Dame Louisa came running to the fence which divided her
yard from Dame Penny's, and stood leaning on it with her apron over
her head.

"Are you sure that hen was in the coop when you locked the door?" said
she.

"Of course she was in the coop," replied Dame Penny with dignity. "She
has never failed to go in there at sundown for all the twenty-five
years that I've had her."

Dame Penny carefully searched everywhere about the premises. When the
scholars assembled she called the school to order, and told them of
her terrible loss. All the scholars crooked their arms over their
faces and wept, for they were very fond of Dame Penny, and also of the
silver hen. Every one of them wore one of her silver tail-feathers
in the best bonnet, or hat, as the case might be. The silver hen had
dropped them about the yard, and Dame Penny had presented them from
time to time as rewards for good behavior.

After Dame Penny had told the school, she tried to proceed with the
usual exercises. But in vain. She whipped one little boy because he
said that four and three made seven, and she stood a little girl in
the corner because she spelled hen with one _n_.

Finally she dismissed the scholars, and gave them permission to search
for the silver hen. She offered the successful one the most beautiful
Christmas present he had ever seen. It was about three weeks before
Christmas.

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