Pages for Laughing Eyes | Page 3

A TRUE STORY.
Bertie Gale lived near a noisy little brook, which went singing through
the meadow. Just below the house in which he lived was a dam. It
made a large pond above it, and the water was used to turn the wheel of
a small woollen-mill.

It was such fun to watch the water pouring over the wheel, turning it
swiftly round and round.
Bertie was never tired of looking at it, but it made his mother very
anxious if her little boy was long out of her sight. But he had promised
never to go into the water without permission.
But one summer the water was shut off for a while, and the mill was
silent. The old wheel was badly decayed and broken, and Mr. Gale said
a new wheel must be built.
[Illustration]
Every day Bertie hurried home from school to watch his father and the
workmen, as they built the new wheel.
One day when he came home, he ran down to the mill as usual. The
wheel was in its place all ready for action.
How new and clean it looked! The workmen had gone, and no one was
in sight.
"What a nice playhouse it would make," thought the boy. Then he
stepped carefully into the wheel.
[Illustration]
"This is my castle," said Bertie to himself, "and the brook is the river
Rhine, and"--
Bertie did not finish his sentence. Suddenly there was a terrible roaring
over his head, and the wheel began to go slowly around. The next thing
the boy knew he was lying upon a pile of blocks and shavings, feeling
very much as if he had been through his mother's sausage-mill, but very
thankful that he was not still going around that swiftly-moving wheel.
He was not very much hurt, but it was a long time before he cared to
look at the water-wheel again.

JAMIE.
One day lit-tle Jam-ie went with some friends to see some mov-ing
pic-tures and a play called "The Johns-town Flood." He had been told
the sto-ry be-fore and knew how it turned out. So he sat ver-y still
through three acts, and then he saw a man who had been giv-en the
name of "Paul Re-vere" just for that play, be-cause he was go-ing to do
some-thing such as a real and great Paul Revere once did, more than a
hun-dred years be-fore, a thing to warn the land of dan-ger and help the
peo-ple to be free.
[Illustration]
The man in the play had to mount a horse and gal-lop down a val-ley
shout-ing to the peo-ple to go to the hills to get out of the way of a
great flood which had bro-ken out from a res-er-voir a-bove the cit-y.
Just then, as the man mount-ed the horse, on the stage, little Jam-ie left
his seat and ran home as fast as he could.
"Why, Jam-ie," said his moth-er "The show can't be o-ver yet, it's on-ly
four o'clock."
"I know it is-n't o-ver yet, mam-ma," said Jam-ie, "but the ver-y next
act was to be the flood, and I thought that if I staid I'd be drowned!"

MOTHER'S CHILDREN
[Illustration]
"El-sie, just mind the ba-by for a few min-utes while I fin-ish Jack's
lit-tle trou-sers. He tears his clothes so that it's just patch, patch, put in
pockets and sew on but-tons all the time."
"Oh, moth-er, look! Ba-by has tak-en a step! Come quick and look at
him!"

So moth-er ran to see her ba-by-boy, and kiss the brave lit-tle fel-low
who had dared to do this won-der-ful thing. She a-gain seat-ed her-self
at her work, when she heard El-sie call, "Oh, mam-ma! Sa-die has got
hold of grand-ma's bas-ket, and is toss-ing all the things out of it on the
floor. She'll scream when I take it from her, but don't wor-ry, I think I
can man-age her."
[Illustration]
It was not long aft-er that when mam-ma cried out, "Why, there must
be some-thing burn-ing! Oh, where is Tom-my? He has so many tricks
with fire!"
[Illustration]
Up jumped mam-ma a-gain, and run-ing in-to the li-bra-ry, found
Tom-my in high glee at play in front of a bright coal fire in the grate,
on the top bar of which was a row of small fig-ures made from dough
that cook was work-ing in the kitch-en. Tom had seized a big piece of
dough, ran off with it to the li-bra-ry, and mould-ed it up to suit him in
the shape of a row of small boys tak-ing hold of hands. He set them on
the hot i-ron bar, and was brown-ing them ready to eat!
"This is great fun, moth-er!" said Tom. "I'll give the chil-dren some
when they are baked!"

VICTOR.
[Illustration]
"It's a nice thing