Eyebright: A Story

"'Poor old fellow,' thought Hans. 'I wish I had something for him to eat; but I haven't, because there is nothing for my own dinner except a piece of bread and a cup of milk.' But then he thought, 'I can do with a little less for once. I'll give the old man half of that.' So he broke the bread in two, and poured half the milk into another cup, and gave them to the old man, who thanked him, and ate it up. But he still looked so hungry, that Hans thought, 'Poor fellow, he is a great deal older than I. I can go without a dinner for once, and I'll give him the rest.' Wasn't that good of Hans?"

"Yes, very good," replied the children, beginning to get interested.

"When the old man had eaten up all the bread and milk, he looked much better. And he got up to go, and said, 'You have been very good, and given me all your own dinner. I wish I had something to give you in return, but I have only got this,' and he took from under his cloak a shabby, old coffee-mill – the shabbiest old thing you ever saw, all cut up with jack-knives, you know, and scratched with pins, with ink-spots on it," – Eyebright, drawing on her imagination for shabby particulars, was thinking, you see, of her desk at school, which certainly was shabby.

"Hans could hardly keep from laughing; but the old man said severely, 'Don't smile. This mill is better than it looks. It is a magic mill. Whenever you want any thing, you have only to give the handle one turn, and say, "Little mill, grind so and so, open sesame," and, no matter what it is, the mill will begin of itself and grind it for you. Then when you have enough, you must say, "Little mill, stop grinding, Abracadabra," and it will stop. Good-by,' and before Hans could say a word, the old man hurried out of the door and was gone, leaving the queer old mill behind him.

"Of course Hans thought he must be crazy."

"I should have thought so," said Bessie Mather, who was cuddled in the hay close to Eyebright.

"Well, he wasn't! Hans at first thought he would throw the mill away, it looked so dirty and horrid, but then he thought, 'I might as well try it. Let me see, what do I want most at this moment? why, my dinner to be sure. I gave mine to the old man. I'll ask for a goose – roast goose, with hot buttered rolls and coffee. That's a dinner for a prince, let alone a tailor like me.'

"So he gave the handle a turn, and said to the mill, 'Little mill, grind a fat roast goose, open sesame,' – not believing a bit that it would, you know. And, just think! all of a sudden, the handle began to fly round as fast as the wind, and, in one second, out of the top came a beautiful roast goose, all covered with stuffing and gravy. It came so fast that Hans had to catch hold of its drumsticks and take it in his hand, there wasn't time to fetch a dish. He was so surprised that he stood stock-still, staring at the mill with his mouth open, and the handle went on turning, and another goose began to come out of the top. Then Hans was frightened, for he thought, 'What shall I do with two roast geese at once?' and he shouted loudly, 'Little mill, stop grinding, Abracadabra,' and the mill stopped, and the other goose, which had only began to come out, you see, doubled itself up, and went back again into the inside of the mill as fast as it came.

"Then Hans fetched a pitcher, and he said, 'Little mill, grind hot coffee with cream and sugar,' and immediately a stream of coffee came pouring out, till the pitcher was full. Then he ground some delicious rolls and butter, and then he set the mill on his shelf, and danced about the shop for joy.

"'Hans,' he said, 'your fortune is made.'

"And so it was. Because, you know, if people came and asked, 'How soon could you make me a coat?' Hans just had to answer, 'Why, to-morrow of course;' and then, when they were gone, he would go to the mill, and say, 'Little mill, grind a coat to fit Mr. Jones,' and there it would be. The coats all fitted splendidly and wore twice as long as other coats, and all the town said that Hans was the best tailor that ever was, and they all came to him for things, and he got very rich and took a big shop. But he was just as kind to poor people as ever, and the mill did every thing he wanted. Wasn't it nice?"

"I wish there really was a mill like that; I know what I would grind," said Romaine.

"Well, what would you, Romy?"

"A guitar with a blue ribbon, like my cousin Clara Cunningham's. She puts the ribbon round her neck and sings, and it's just lovely."

"But you don't know how to play, do you?" inquired Molly.

"No, but afterwards I'd grind a big music-box, and just as I began to play – no, to pretend to play – I'd set it off, and it would sound as if I was playing."

"Pshaw, I'd grind something a great deal better than that," cried Kitty. "I'd grind a real piano, and I'd learn to play on it my own self. I wouldn't have any old make-believe music-boxes to play for me."

"You never saw a guitar, I guess," rejoined Romaine, pouting, "or you wouldn't think so."

"I'd grind a kitten," put in Rosy, "a white one, just like my Snowdrop. Snowdrop has runned away. I don't know where she is."

"How funny she'd look, coming out of the coffee-mill, mewing and purring," said Eyebright. "Now stop telling what you'd grind, and let me go on. Hans had a neighbor, a very bad man, whose name was Carl. When he saw how rich Hans was getting to be, he became very enverous."

"Very what?"

"Enverous. He didn't like it, you know."

"Don't you mean envious?" said Molly Prime.

"Yes, didn't I say so? Mother says I mispronounce awfully, and it's because I read so much to myself. I meant enver – envious, of course. Well, – Carl noticed that every day when people had gone home to their dinners, Hans shut his door, and stayed alone for an hour, and didn't let anybody come in. This made him suspect something. So one day he bored a little round hole in the back door of Hans' house, and he sat down and put his eye to it, and thought, 'Here I stay, if it is a month, till I find out what that little rascal does when he is alone.'

"So he watched and watched, and for a long time he didn't see any thing but Hans sewing away and waiting on his customers. But at last the clock struck twelve, and then Hans shut his door and locked it tight, and Carl said to himself, 'Ha, ha, now I have him!'

"Hans brought out the coffee-mill, and set it on the table, and Carl heard him say, 'Little mill, grind roast veal, open sesame,' and a nice piece of veal came out of the mill, and fell into a platter which Hans held to catch it, and then Carl snapped his fingers and jumped for joy, and ran off to the wharf, where there was a pirate ship whose captain was a friend of his, and he said to the pirate captain, 'Our fortunes are made.'

"'What do you mean?" asked the pirate.

"'I mean,' said Carl, 'that that little villain, Hans the tailor, has got a fairy mill which grinds every thing he asks for, and I know where he keeps it, and what he says to make it grind, and if you will go shares, I'll steal it this very night, and we'll sail off to a desert island, and there we'll grind gold and grind gold till we are as rich as all the people in the world put together. What do you say to that?'

"So the pirate captain was delighted, of course, because you know that's all that pirates want, just to get gold, and he said 'Yes,' and that very night, when Hans was asleep, Carl crept in, stole the mill, ran to the wharf, and he and the pirate captain sailed away, and Hans never saw his mill again."

"Oh, what a shame! Poor little Hans," cried the children.

"Well, it didn't make so much matter," explained Eyebright, comforting them, "because Hans by this time had got to be so well known, and people liked him so much, that he kept on getting richer and richer, and was always kind to the poor, and happy, so he didn't miss his mill much. The pirate ship sailed and sailed, and by and by, when they were 'way out at sea, the captain said to Carl, 'Suppose we try the mill, and see if it is really as good as you think.'

"'Very well,' said Carl, 'what shall we grind?'

"'We won't grind any gold yet,' said the captain, 'because gold is heavy, and we can do it better on the desert island. We'll just grind some little thing now for fun.' Then he called out to the cook, and said, 'Hollo, cook, is there any thing wanting there in your kitchen?'

"'Yes, sir, please,' said the cook, 'we're out of salt; we sailed so quick that I couldn't get any.'

"So Carl fetched the mill, and set it on the cabin table, and said, 'Little mill, grind salt, open sesame.'

"And immediately a stream of beautiful white salt came pouring out, till two bags which the cook had brought were quite full, and then the captain said, 'That's enough, now stop it.'

"Just at that moment Carl recollected that he didn't know how to stop the Mill."

Here Eyebright made a dramatic pause.

"Oh, what next? What did he do?" cried the others.

"He said all the words he could think of," continued Eyebright; "'Shut, sesame!' and 'Stop!' and 'Please stop!' and 'Don't!' and ever so many others; but he couldn't say the right one, because he didn't know it, you see! So the salt kept pouring on, and it filled all the bags, and boxes, and barrels, and – and – all the – salt-cellars, in the ship, and it ran on to the table, and it ran on to the floor; and the pirate captain caught hold of the handle and tried to keep it from turning; and it gave him such a pinch that he put his fingers into his mouth, and danced with pain. Then he was so mad that he got an axe and chopped the mill in two, to punish it for knocking him. But immediately another handle sprouted out on the half which hadn't any, and that made two mills, and the salt came faster than ever. At last, when it was up to their knees, Carl and the pirate captain ran to the deck to consult what they should do; and, while they were consulting, the mills went on grinding. And the ship got so full, and the salt was so heavy, that, all of a sudden, down they all sank, ship and Carl and the pirates and the mills and all, to the bottom of the sea."

Eyebright came to a full stop. The children drew long breaths.

"Didn't anybody ever get the mill again?" asked Bessie.

"No, never. There they both are at the bottom, grinding away as hard as they can; and that's the reason why the sea is so salt!"

"Is it salt?" asked little Rosy, who never had seen the sea.

"Why, Rosy, of course. Didn't you ever eat codfish? They come out of the sea, and they're just as salt as salt can be," said Tom, who was about a year older than Rosy.

"Now, Molly, you tell one," said Eyebright. "Tell us that one which your grandma told you, – the story about the Indian. Don't you recollect?"

"Oh, yes; the one I told you that day in the pasture. It's a true story, too, every bit of it. My grandma knew the lady it happened to. It was ever and ever so long ago, when the country was all over woods and Indians, you know, and this lady went to the West to live with her husband. He was a pio-nary, – no, pioneer, – no, missionary, – that was what he was. Missionaries teach poor people and preach, and this one was awfully poor himself, for all the money he had was just a little bit which a church in the East gave him.

"Well, after they had lived at the West for a year, the missionary had to come back, because some of the people said he wasn't orthodox. I don't know what that means. I asked father once, and he said it meant so many things that he didn't think he could explain them all; but ma, she said, it means 'agreeing with the neighbors.' Anyhow, the missionary had to come back to tell the folks that he was orthodox, and his wife and children had to stay behind, in the woods, with wolves and bears and Indians close by.

"The very day after he started, his wife was sitting by the fire with her baby in her lap, when the door opened, and a great, enormous Indian walked in and straight up to her.

"I guess she was frightened; don't you?