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Page 58
The sovereign brings this about in all sorts of ways, but he does not
fail, if, without flattering him, you trust him. Of this sovereign the
name is--"the Public." Fausta and I are apt to call ourselves his
children, and so I name this story of our lives,
"THE CHILDREN OF THE PUBLIC."
CHAPTER II.
WHERE IS THE BARREL?
"Where is the barrel this time, Fausta?" said I, after I had added and
subtracted her figures three times, to be sure she had carried her tens
and hundreds rightly. For the units, in such accounts, in face of Dr.
Franklin, I confess I do not care.
"The barrel," said she, "is in FRANK LESLIE'S OFFICE. Here is the mark!"
and she handed me FRANK LESLIE'S NEWSPAPER, with a mark at this
announcement:--
$100
for the best Short Tale of from one to two pages of FRANK LESLIE'S
ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER, to be sent in on or before the 1st of
November, 1862.
"There is another barrel," she said, "with $5,000 in it, and another
with $1,000. But we do not want $5,000 or $1,000. There is a little
barrel with $50 in it. But see here, with all this figuring, I cannot
make it do. I have stopped the gas now, and I have turned the children's
coats,--I wish you would see how well Robert's looks,--and I have had a
new tile put in the cook-stove, instead of buying that lovely new
'Banner.' But all will not do. We must go to this barrel."
"And what is to be the hook, darling, this time?" said I.
"I have been thinking of it all day. I hope you will not hate it,--I
know you will not like it exactly; but why not write down just the whole
story of what it is to be 'Children of the Public'; how we came to live
here, you know; how we built the house, and--all about it?"
"How Felix knew Fausta," said I; "and how Fausta first met Felix,
perhaps; and when they first kissed each other; and what she said to
him when they did so."
"Tell that, if you dare," said Fausta; "but perhaps--the oracle says we
must not be proud--perhaps you might tell just a little. You
know--really almost everybody is named Carter now; and I do not believe
the neighbors will notice,--perhaps they won't read the paper. And if
they do notice it, I don't care! There!"
"It will not be so bad as--"
But I never finished the sentence. An imperative gesture closed my lips
physically as well as metaphorically, and I was glad to turn the subject
enough to sit down to tea with the children. After the bread and butter
we agreed what we might and what we might not tell, and then I wrote
what the reader is now to see.
CHAPTER III.
MY LIFE TO ITS CRISIS.
New-Yorkers of to-day see so many processions, and live through so many
sensations, and hurrah for so many heroes in every year, that it is only
the oldest of fogies who tells you of the triumphant procession of
steamboats which, in the year 1824, welcomed General Lafayette on his
arrival from his tour through the country he had so nobly served.
But, if the reader wishes to lengthen out this story he may button the
next silver-gray friend he meets, and ask him to tell of the broken
English and broken French of the Marquis, of Levasseur, and the rest of
them; of the enthusiasm of the people and the readiness of the visitors,
and he will please bear in mind that of all that am I.
For it so happened that on the morning when, for want of better lions to
show, the mayor and governor and the rest of them took the Marquis and
his secretary, and the rest of them, to see the orphan asylum in Deering
Street,--as they passed into the first ward, after having had "a little
refreshment" in the managers' room, Sally Eaton, the head nurse, dropped
the first courtesy to them, and Sally Eaton, as it happened, held me
screaming in her arms. I had been sent to the asylum that morning with a
paper pinned to my bib, which said my name was Felix Carter.
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