Young Folks’ Comer.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1056, 26 May 1892, Page 6

Young Folks’ Comer.

EDITED BY * UNCLE TOBY.’ Dear Nephews and Nieces, We have a good deal of rain in New Zealand at times. We have had perhaps a little too much of it of lately. Our rain comes steadily, we know when it is coming, but a downfall of rain in a tropical country is so different that I thought you might like a description of it. You know where Cuba is, of course, that long beautiful fertile island in the West Indies, which belongs to Spain, and which, they do say, the Americans would very much like to have. Well here is a little description of HOW IT RAINS IN CUBA. A writer in St Nicholas’ Magazine tells the story. He was travelling on the cars —all Americans call the train the ‘ cars ’ —from Havana, the capital of Cuba, the place celebrated for its cigars, to Matanzas, another town, and now he shall tell his story in his own words : * The first intimation that I had of the likelihood that something was going to happen, came from my seeing a dense jetblack cloud over against the southern horizon. All around me lay a peaceful and prosperous scene. Beside the track were some hut-like negro cabins, with black women seated in the doorways, and funny little half-naked piccaninnies playing in the dirt. A long row of gaint palms was behind the huts, bordering a wide clearing, and throwing great black patches of shade on the sunlit earth. Beyond the clearing were woods and a jungle. The train came to a standstill, and I drank in the beautiful scene, all yellow and green and hot. I noticed that not a breath of air was stirring, and I envied the Cubans around me in the car, dressed for the climate in white duck and loose shirts and spreading straw hats. But the black cloud grew bigger and blacker. It was advancing toward us with very great, and evident, speed; and presently I saw that it was all fretted with bolts of lightning, toothed with white darts of fire. Never before or since did I see such a dreadful display of the electrical force. The bolts were so close together that it seemed as if they must destroy every living thing in the pathway of the cloud. When the black and terrible mass in the sky came still nearer, it seemed as no longer toothed or fringed, but it spat the lightning with vicious force straight down upon the forest beneath it. Next came a sucking, roaring sound of wind, the sky grew black, and with the last glimmer of daylight, before it vanished into night, I saw the giant palm-trees throw up their huge fan-like arms like mortal creatures that were hurt and panicstricken. Then the storm burst over the train, and through its din I heard the crashing of the falling palm-branches that had been snapped off and thrown to the earth. In another minute the worst of the darkness was over, and in the half light that remained I saw such rain as I never had dreamed could fall in drops, or in 4 ropes,’ as I once heard an Englishman say of a severe downpour of rain, but it descended in vast thick sheets, layer upon layer. You could see one thickness tumbling after the other as so many great plates of glass might he thrown down. It grew lighter still, and I saw that the beautiful palms were wrecked, and were still writhing in their misery, tossing up their broad hands and thick arms, many of which were broken and disjointed, while others had been snapped off*

At the feet of the palms there was no longer any ground. The surface of the earth had become a lake. The water stood high in the doorways of the negro cabins. The litter of palm-branches floated about on the rain-pelted water. I remember waiting to see the train demolished by the lightning, but it was not, nor could I see that the fiery bolts had harmed anything around us. Another minute passed, —perhaps not more than five minutes had passed since the shower began—and the daylight came back grandly, disclosing the great flood everywhere. A Cuban, sitting on the other side of the car from me, passed me his cigarette-box ; and as he did so he said in a labored effort to be polite in a foreign tongue : ‘ I t’ink it will rain. Wat you t’ink ?’ The cars moved on. The black cloud had gone far to the north. The sun burst through the sky, and the water began to sink into the ground. Presently we were passing through a region where millions of jewel-like raindrops on the trees were all that told of the furious shower which had ushered in the rainy season of the year.’ And now for some funny rhymes from the same delightful magazine. They are called ; THE CURIOUS CASE OE AH-TOP. (A CHINESE LEGEND.) The slant-eyed maidens, when they spied The pigtail of Ah-Top, they cried, ‘ It is some mandarin !’ The street-boys followed in a crowd ; No wonder that Ah-Top wasp oud And wore a conscious grin I But one day Ah-Top’s heart grew sad. ‘ My fate,’ he !-aid, ‘ is quite t o bad I My pigtail will hang behind me. While others may its beauty know, To me there’s naught its grace to show, And nothing to r.mind mo.’ At length he hit upon a plan, Exclaiming, ‘l’m a clever man 1 I know what I will do : I’ll simply wheel myself around, And there the pigtail will be found Where I can see it, too.’ He spun himself upon his toes, He almo3t fell upon his nose, He grew red in the face. But when Ah-Top could whirl no more, He found his pigtail as before, Eesolved to keep its place. ‘Alia!’ he cried, * I turned too slow. Next time, you see, l’il faster go. Besides, I stopped too soon. Now for a good one ! Ah, but stay— I’ll turn mys-lf the other way !’ He looked like a balloon! So fast he whirled, the tail flew out And carried Ah-Top round about. An awful moment carne— The helpless spinner could not stop ! Tho poor man had become a top ! This gave the toy its name. MR. MARTIN’S SCALP. (By Jimmy Bkoivn.) An American paper tells a funny story about a boy who had read a certain 4 scalping tale,’ and made a slight mistake. I think you will agree with me that the story is vastly amusing. Here it is : After that game of mumble-te-peg that me and Mr Martin played, he did not come to our house for two weeks. Mr Travers said perhaps the earth he had to knaw while he was drawing the peg had struck to his insides and made him sick, but I knew it couldn’t be that. I’ve drawn pegs that were drove into every kind of earth, and it never hurt me. Earth is healthy, unless it is lime ; and don’t you ever let anybody drive a peg into lime. If you were to swallow the least bit of lime, and then drink some water, it would burn a hole through you just as quick as anything. There was once a boy who found some lime in a cupboard, and thought it was sugar, and of course he didn’t like the taste of it. So he drank some water to take the taste out of his mouth, and pretty soon his mother said : 1 1 smell something burning ; goodness gracious ! the house is on fire.’ But the boy he gave a dreadful scream, and said, 4 Ma, it’s me t’ and the smoke curled up out of his pockets and around his neck, and he burned up and died. I know this is true, because Tom McGinnis went to school with him, and told me about it. Mr Martin came to see Susan last night for the first time since we had our game ; and I wish, he had never come back, for he got me into an awful scrape. This was the way it happened. I was playing Indian in the yard. I had a wooden tomahawk and a wooden scalping knife and a bown’arrow. I was dressed up in father’s old coat turned inside out, and had six chicken feathers in my hair. I was playing I was Green Thunder, the Delaware chief, and was hunting for palefaces in tho yard. It was just after supper, and I was having a real nice, time, when Mr Travers came, and he said, 4 Jimmy, what are you up to now ?’ So I told him I was Green Thunder and was on the warpath. Said he, 4 Jimmy, I think I saw Mr Martin on his way here.. Do you think you would mind scalping him ?’ I said I wouldn’t scalp him for nothing, for that would be cruelty ; but if Mr Travers was sure that Mr Martin was the enemy of the red man, then Green Thunder’s heart would ache for revenge, and I would scalp him with pleasure. Mr Travers said that Mr Martin was] a notorious enemy and oppressor of the Indians, and he gave me ten cents, that as soon as Mr Martin should come and be sitting comforably on the piazza, I was to give the war-whoop and scalp him. Well, in a few minutes Mr Martin came, and he and Mr Travers and Susan sat on t the piazza, aud talked as if they wei’O all

so pleased to see each other, which was the highestpocracy in the world. After a while Mr Martin saw me, and said, ‘How silly boys are 1 that boy makes believe he’s an Indian, and he knows he is only a a little nuisance.’ Now this made me mad, and I thought I would give him a good scare, just to teach him not to call names if a fellow does beat him in a fair game. So I began to steal softly up the piazza steps, and to get around behind him, When I had got about six feet from him I gave a war-whoop, and jumped at him. I caught hold of his scalplock with one hand and drew my wooden scalping knife around his head with the other. I never got such a fright in my whole life. The knife was that dull that" it wouldn’t have cut butter ; but, true as I sit here, Mr Martin’s whole scalp came right off in my hand, I thought I had killed him, and I dropped his scalp, and said, 4 For mercy’s sake ! I didn’t go to do it, and I’m awfully sorry.’ But he just caught up his scalp, stuffed it in his pocket, and jammed his hat on his head, and walked off, saying to Susan. 4 1 didn’t come here to be insulted by a little wretch that deserves the gallows.’ Mr Travers and Susan never said a word until he had gone, and then they laughed till noise brought father out to ask what was the matter. When he heard what had happened instead of laughing, he looked very angry, said that 4 Mr Martin was a worthy man. My son you may come up stairs with me.’ If you’ve ever been a boy, you know what happened up stairs, and I needn’t say any more on a very painful subject. I didn’t mind it so much, for I thought Mr Martin would die, and then I would be hung, and put in jail; but before she went to bed Susan came and whispered through the door that it was all right; that Mr Martin was made that way, so he could be taken apart easy, and that I hadn’t hurt him.

I shall have to stay in my room all day to-day and eat bread and water ; and what I say is if men are made with scalps that may come off any minute if a boy just touches them, it isn’t fair to blame the boy.