Little Lucys Wonderful Globe | Page 4

still more strange, her brothers
declared these were the stars in the sky, and this was the way people
found their road at sea; but if Lucy asked how, they always said she
was not big enough to understand, and it had occurred to Lucy to ask
whether the truth was not that they were not big enough to explain.
The other globe was all in pale green, with pink and yellow outlines on
it, and quantities of names. Lucy had had to learn some of these names
for her geography, and she rather kept out of the way of looking at it
first, till she had really grown tired of all the odd men and women and
creatures upon the celestial sphere; but by and by she began to roll the
other by way of variety.


CHAPTER II
. VISITORS FROM THE SOUTH SEAS.
"Miss Lucy, you're as quiet as a mouse. Not in any mischief?" said Mrs.
Bunker, looking into the museum; "why, what are you doing there?"
"I'm looking at the great big globe, that Uncle Joe said I might touch,"
said Lucy. "Here are all the names just like my lesson-book at home:
Europe, Africa, and America."
"Why, bless the child! where else should they be? There are all them
oceans and seas besides that I've crossed over, many's the time, with
poor Ben Bunker, who was last seen off Cape Hatteras."
"What, all these great green places, with Atlantic and Pacific on them;
you don't really mean that you've sailed over them! I should like to
make an ant do it on a sunflower seed! How could you, Mother Bunch?
You are not small enough."
"Ho! ho!" said the housekeeper, laughing; "does the child think I sailed
on that very globe there?"
"I know one learns names," said Lucy; "but is it real?"
"Real! Why, Missie, don't you see it's a sort of a picture? There's your
photograph now, it's not as big as you, but it shows you; and so a chart,
or a map, or a globe, is just a picture of the shapes of the coast-line of
the land and the sea, and the rivers in them, and mountains, and the like.
Look here!" And she made Lucy stand on a chair and look at a map of

her own town that was hanging against the wall, showing her all the
chief buildings, the churches, streets, the town hall, and at last helping
her find her own Papa's house.
When Lucy had traced all the corners she had to turn in going from
home to Uncle Joe's, and had even found little frizzles for the five
maple trees before the Parsonage, she understood that the map was a
small picture of the situation of the buildings in the town, and thought
she could find her way to some new place if she studied it well.
Then Mrs. Bunker showed her a big map of the whole country, and
there Lucy found the river, and the roads, and the names of the villages
near, as she had seen or heard of them; and she began to understand
that a map or globe really brought distant places into an exceedingly
small picture, and that where she saw a name and a spot she was to
think of houses and churches; that a branching black line was a flowing
river full of water; a curve in, a pretty bay shut in with rocks and hills;
a point jutting out, generally a steep rock with a lighthouse on it.
"And all these places are countries, Bunchey, are they, with fields and
houses like ours?"
"Houses, yes, and fields, but not always like ours, Miss Lucy."
"And are there little children, boys and girls, in them all?"
"To be sure there are, else how would the world go on? Why, I've seen
them by swarms, white or brown or black, running down to the shore as
soon as the vessel cast anchor; and whatever color they were, you
might be sure of two things, Miss Lucy, in which they were all alike."
"Oh, what, Mrs. Bunker?"
"Why, in making plenty of noise, and in wanting all they could get to
eat. But they were little darlings, some of them, if I only could have got
at them to make them a bit cleaner. Some of them looked for all the
world like the little bronze images your Uncle has got in the museum,
which he brought from Italy, and they hadn't a rag more clothing on
either. They were in India. Dear, dear, to see them tumble about in the
surf!"
"Oh, what fun! what fun! I wish I could see them."
"You would be right glad, Missie, I can tell you, if you had been