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12 THE SOUTHERN WORLD, NOVEMBER 1, 1882, “ The world, dear child, !■ aa we take It, and Life, be giire, U what we make It." Written specially for the Southern World. MAItY’M DULL. Mary bad a lovely doll— Ita teeth were white oa mow— And every time ibe let It fau lt cried aloud, '-Oho!" Mary W doll had tiny feet, And ten exquisite toes, And every time It tried to walk, It fell and hurt Its nose. Mary told her doll one day. That she must go to school, And sternly bade her on the way, When there, to heed each rule. Bo Mary proudly took her sent, Beside her dolly there, And when the boys and girls did meet, It made them laugh and stare. And so the teacher took the doll, Without a single word. And crammed It roughly In hla desk TUI every class was heard. And then he kindly gave It back, To hush poor Mary's tears- Bbe stuffed It 'neath her woollen sack And silenced all lu fears. —Athalia Jaiob. “BOY WASTED.” People laughed when they saw the sign again. It seemed to be always in Mr. Peters' window. For a day or two, sometimes for only an hour or two, it would be missing, and passers-by would wonder whether Mr. Peters had at last found a boy to suit him; but sooner or later, it was sure to appear again. “ What sort of a boy does he want, any way ? ” one and another would ask, and then they would say to each other, that they sup posed he was looking for a perfect boy, and in their opinion, he would look a good while before he found one. Not that there were not plenty of boys—as many as a dozen used sometimes to appear in the courscof a morn ing, trying for the situation. Mr. Peters was said to be rich and queer, und for one or both of these reasons, boys were very unx- ious to try to suit him. " All he wants is a fellow to run of errands; it must be easy work and sure pay. ” This was the way they talked to each other. But Mr. Peters wanted more than a boy to run of errands. John Simmons found that out, and this was the way he did it. He had been engaged that very morning, and had been kept busy' all the forenoon, at pleasant-enough work, and although he was a luzy fellow, he rather en joyed the place. It wus towards the middle of the afternoon that he was sent up to the attic, a dark, dingy place, inhabited by mice and cob webs. “ You will And a long deep box there, ’’ said Mr. Peters, “ that I want to have put in order. It stands right in the middle of the room, you can't miss it. ” John looked doleful. “ A long deep box, I should think it was I ” he told himself, as the attic door closed after him, “ It would weigh most a ton, I guess; and what is there in it? Nothing in the world but old nuils, and screws, and pieces of iron, and broken keys and things; rubbish, the whole of it! Nothing worth touching, and it is as dark as a pocket up here, and cold, besides, how the wind blows in through those knot-holes! There’s a mouse! If there isanything that I hale, it's mice ! I’ll tell you what it is, if old Peters thinks I’m going to stay up here and tumble over his rusty nails, he’s much mistaken. I wasn’t hired for that kind of work. ” Whereupon John bounced down the attic stairs, three at a time, and was found loung ing in the show window, half an hour after wards, when Mr. Peters appeared. " Have you put that box in order already ? ” was the gentleman's question. “I didn't And anything to put in order! there was nothing in it but nails and things. ’’ “ Exactly ; it was the ‘nails and things’ that I wanted put in order; did you do it? ” "No. sir, it was dark up there, and cold; and I didn’t see anything worth doing; be sides, I thought I was hired to run of er rands. ’’ “Oh," said Mr. Peters, "I thought you were hired to do as you were told. ” But he smiled pleasantly enough, and at once gave John an errand to do down town, and the boy went off chuckling, declaring to himself that ho knew how to manage the old fellow; all it needed was a little standing up for your rights. Precisely at six o'clock John was called and paid the sum promised him for a day’s work, and then, to his dismay, he was told that his services wonld not be needed any more. He asked no questions; Indeed he had time for none, as Mr. Peters immediate ly closed the door. The next morning the old sign " Boy Wanted ’’ appeared in its usual place. Before noon it was taken down, and Char lie Jones was the fortunate boy. Errands, plenty of them; he was kept busy until within an hour of closing. Then, behold he was Bent to the attic to put the long box in order. He was not afraid of a mouse, nor of the cold, but he grumbled much over that box; nothing in it worth his attention. However, he tumbled over the things, growl ing all the time, picked out a few straight nails, a key or two, and Anally appeared down-stairs with this message: “ Here’s all there is worth keeping in that old box; the rest of the nails are rusty, and the hooks are bent, or something. ’’ “ Very well, ’’ said Mr. Peters, and sent him to the post-office. What do you think ? by the close of the next day, Charlie had been paid and discharged, and the old sign hung in the window. " I’ve no kind of a notion why I was dig. charged, ” grumbled Charlie to his mother; “ lie said he had no fault to And, only he saw that I wouldn’t suit. Ii’s my opinion he doesn’t want a boy at all, and takes that way to cheat. Mean old fellow! ’’ It was Crawford Mills who was hired next. He knew neither of the other boys, and so did his errands in blissful ignorance of the " large box," until the second morning of his stay, when in a leisure hour he was sent to put it in order. The morning passed, dinner time came, and still Crawford had not appeared from the attic. At lost Mr. Peters called him, “ Got through ? ’’ “ No, sir, there is ever So much more to do. ’’ “ All right; it iff dinner time now; you may go back to it after dinner. ’’ After din ner buck he went; all the short afternoon he was not heard from, but just as Mr. Peterg was deciding to call him again, he appeared. *• I've done my best, sir," he said, "and down at the very bottom of the box I found this. ” " This ” was a Ave dollar gold-piece. " That’s a queer place for gold, ’’ said Mr. Peters. "It’sgood you found it; well, sir, I suppose you will be on hand to-morrow morning? " This he suid as he wus putting the gold piece in his pocket-book. After Crawford had said good-night and gone, Mr. Peters took the lantern and went slowly up the attic stairs. There was the long deep box in which the rubbish of twenty Ave years had gathered. Crawford had evident ly been to the bottom of it; he had Atted in pieces of shingle to make compartments, and in these different rooms he had placed the articles, with bits of shingle laid on top and labeled thus ; “ Good screws, ’’ " Pret ty good nails’ ’’ “ Picture nails, ” “ Small keys, somewhat bent," “ Picture hooks, ’’ "Pieces of iron whose use I don't know,’> So on through the long box. In perfect order it was at last, and very little that could really be called useful, was to be found with, in it. But Mr. Peters os he bent over and read the labels, laughed gleefully and mur mured to the mice: “ If we are not both mis taken, I have found a boy, and he has found a fortune. ’’ Sure enough; the sign disappeared from the window and was soon no more. Craw ford became the well-known errand boy of the Arm of Peters & Co. He bad a little room neatly Atted up, next to the attic, where he spent his evenings, and at the foot of the bed hunga motto which Mr. Peters gave him. "It tells your fortune for you, don't forget it, ” he said when he handed it to Crawford; and the boy laughed and read it curiously: "lie that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much. ” “ I’ll try to be, sir, ” he said ; and he never once thought of the long box over which he had been faithful. All this happened years ago. Crawford Mills is errand boy no more, but the Arm is Peters, Mills, <fc Co. A young man and a rich man. "He found liis fortune in a long box of rubbish, ” Mr. Peters said once, laughing. "Never was a Ave dollar gold piece so successful in business os that one of his has been ; it is good be found it. ” Then after a moment of silence he said gravely: “ No, he didn’t; he found it in his mother’s Bible. 1 He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much. ’ It is true ; Mills the boy was faithful, and Mills the man we trust.—Selected. THE ACADIAN LOGGED. “Here, Henri, you will take care of the children and not let them fall in the water," Madame Louis Baptiste said to her son, an intelligent-looking boy about twelve years old. "Your father and I can not get back before night, lor we have got to see to the ruft in 'Bayou noir’ that this wind doesn’t scatter it. A bard day's work; and you must help us by taking care of the little ones," and Madame Baptiste hurried off to rejoin her husband, who was waiting at the door for her in his skiff. Madame Baptiste I call the plain-faced sturdy, little woman, and she was known by that name far and near. Two years before that, an agent was seeking amongst the log gers for a certain Monsieur Desmarais, who had inherited two or three hundred dollars by the death of a distant relative in New Or leans. "Desmarais?” said the loggers; “there is no such man here. It is a mistake." “Desmarais?” said Madame Baptiste, whose house was the last he visited; "why, my friend, I was born here, I married here, and I never heard the name before in my life." “Very strange!” grumbled the agent to the gentleman whoffiad directed him to the Aca dian loggers; "why on earth did you send me on such a wild goose chase? The name of Desmarais it utterly unknown among those people.” The gentleman Arst stared at the speaker and then burst into a hearty At of laughter “I beg your pardon," he said at last, "i forgot to tell you to ask for Louis Baptiste. He is the heir, though I doubt if the fellow ever knew that he had another name. He was probably christened by the name he bears; certainly married under it. Go back and look him up.” He did so, and had an interview with Mon sieur Louis Baptiste. Afteracourseof ques tions the latter rubbed his hair up, scratched his head, and with a visible effort of mem ory, recalled that he had heard his father say they had another name, but he thought two were enough for any man to carry. Yes, he knew M. Jean Pontages, of New Orleans, was a "petitcousin” (little cousin). He received the legacy, and as the Acadians did not be lieve in banks and knew nothing of proffta- ble investments, he turned it into specie, tied it up in a strong yarn stocking and bid it at the bottom of the big family cbest as a fund for a rainy day. He never slackened bis laborious life for this snug little nest-egg. The children gathered at the window of the cabin to see their parents off. “ Take care of the wuter, Henri, ’’ the mother called out, as she kissed her hand to them. "Don’t let Claude and Margot lean out too far." Come with me to this strange section of the Attakapas country, and you will under stand Madame Baptiste’s warning about water. Amidst a perfect net-work of lakes and bayous these loggers have made their home. Regularly every spring these low, swampy lands are inundated, and for months they live literally in the water. But here they stay, rearing families as well as the mis erable, unhealthy, miasma-poisoned air will lot them. They are gaunt, and yellow as or anges from chills and fevers, but a cheerful, honest, hospitable race. They have no books, no schools, and are as ignorant as any human beings of this nineteenth century can be; but if they have none of the advantages of a higher civilization, neither have they its vices. The most curious thing about them is their houses. They build their one-story log cab ins on rafts, and as the water rises, the rafts Aoat on the surface, and as these rafts are securely fastened by chains to a tree, or strong stakes driven deep in the ground, there is no danger of their drifting aDy dis tance. They build quite near each other, and the houses bob about socially together. The men make log rafts and Aoat them into the Atchafalaya in high water; the women spin and weave, and often help their hus bands with their logs. This spring of 1882, the water was unusu ally high. The Mississippi was breaking through its levees in various places. The Atchafalaya Lake und river were over their banks. The loggers’ huts were tossing about rather wildly, and from Paul Baptiste’s cabin (the nearest to a large lake), there was nothing to be seen but a vast expanse of an gry water. It was a wild, gusty, March day, and the cabin straiued and creaked under the gusts of wind, but the children were accustomed to feel their house bobbing about, and didn’t iniud it in the least. They had no books and pictures and play things like the children in the great world of which they knew nothing. But Henri was rigging for Claude a little boat, which he had curved out himself, and they were very merry Routing it in tlieir mother’s big wush-tub, and pretending that the wind out side wus capsizing it. But the little ones began to weury of the boat, and Margot, who hud forgotten to cry when her mother went away, awakened to her duties, and sobbed and snivelled, until Henri and Claude be came distracted. Suddenly Henri’s eyes fell on a pile of seed-cotton iu the corner, and be drew Margot to it. "Come," he cried, gaily, “let us pick the seeds from the cotton, so that when mamma comes home she will And a famous pile ready for her spinning-wheel. She is going to weave Margot a beautiful blue dress from it.” These Acadian folk had no machinery for ginning their cotton; yet laboriously cleansed by the hand, spun and woven in the most primitive -munuer, Attakapas cbt- tonade, for texture and fast colors, brings the highest market price. The pile of cotton soon diminished under the busy hands of the children, for with the blue dress in per spective little eight-year-old Murgot would have worked her small Augers to the bone. Twilight was creeping on, and the storm be came more furious. " Tell us the story of the white mouse, Henri,” said Claude, “and then we can work famously.” " No, no," Margot cried. " I know it every word by heart. O Henri, «ing us the song of 'Jolie Crnur.’ ’’ “But that makes me cry," Claude per sisted. “ I want to cry, me." " Well, you needn’t," he grumbled; good ness kuows you do enough of that. Besides, who ever heard of a mamma driving her little girl out among the wolves? It’s non sense, and I don't want nonsense." “If it’s nonsense, 1 want it,” the obstinate little child cried. "Our mamma wouldn’t do it, but others would, and 1 like to think how good she is, and how wicked Jolie Cojut’s mamma was, Besides, the wind THE FANTA1L PIGEON—THE BOYS’ PET.