READING-LITERATURE: Third Reader by Harriette Taylor Treadwell
Tom Becomes a Man
Tom was delighted with the home of the water-babies, which was on an island full of
caves. There were blue caves and white caves draped with seaweed, purple and
crimson, green and brown; and there was soft white sand where the water-babies
slept every night. The rocks were covered with ten thousand anemones and corals,
which kept the water clean and pure. The fairies dressed them in the most
beautiful colors and patterns, till they looked like great flower-beds.
But Tom did not give up teasing the sea creatures. He frightened the crabs to
make them hide in the sand and peep out at him. He put stones into the anemones'
mouths to make them think their dinner was coming. The other children warned him
and said, "Take care what you do. Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did is coming." But Tom
never heeded them. One Friday morning Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did came. She had
on a black bonnet and a black shawl,
and a pair of large green spectacles. She
had a hooked nose, and under her arm she carried a birch rod. She was so ugly
that Tom wanted to make faces at her, but he was afraid of the birch rod under
her arm.
When the children saw her, they stood in a row, and put their hands behind
them. She looked at them one by one and gave them all sorts of nice sea
things—sea-cakes, sea-apples and sea-oranges.
Little Tom watched all these sweet
things till his mouth watered, and his
eyes grew as round as an owl's. He hoped that his turn would come soon, and so
it did. The lady called Tom up and held something in her fingers, and popped it
into his mouth. But lo and behold, it was a cold, hard pebble!
"You are a cruel woman," said Tom, and he began to cry.
"And you are a cruel boy to put pebbles into the sea-anemones' mouths. As you
did to them, so I must do to you."
"Who told you that?" said Tom.
"You did yourself, this very minute."
Tom had never opened his lips, so he was very much surprised.
"Yes, every one tells me exactly what he has done, and that without knowing
it. There is no use trying to hide anything from me. Now go, and be a good boy,
and I will put no more pebbles into your mouth."
"I did not know there was any harm in it," said Tom.
"Then you know now," said she. "The lobster did not know there was any harm
in the lobster pot, but it caught him all the same."
"Dear me," thought Tom, "she knows everything!" And so she did. "Well, you
are a little hard on a poor lad," he said.
"Not at all. I am the best friend you ever had in all your life. I only
punish people when they do wrong. I like it no more than they do. I am often
sorry for them, poor things!" And the strange fairy smiled at Tom and said, "You
thought me very ugly just now, did you not?"
Tom hung down his head, and grew very red about the ears.
"I am ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in the world and I shall be, till people
behave themselves. Then I shall grow as handsome as my sister, who is the
loveliest fairy in the world. Her name is Mrs. Do-as-you-would-be-done-by. She
begins where I end and I begin where she ends. Those who will not listen to her,
must listen to me, as
you will see. And now be a good boy, and do as you would
be done by. And when my sister, Mrs. Do-as-you-would-be-done-by, comes, she will
take notice of you," and the fairy went away.
One morning Mrs. Do-as-you-would-be-done-by came. All the little children
began dancing and clapping their hands, and Tom danced too with all his might.
As for the pretty lady, Tom could not tell the color of her hair or her eyes.
When he looked at her, he thought she had the sweetest, kindest face he had ever
seen. She understood babies and she loved to play with them. When the children
saw her, they all caught hold of her, and pulled her till she sat down on a
stone. Then they climbed into her lap, and clung round her neck, and caught hold
of her hands. Those who could get no nearer, sat on the sand at her feet. Tom
stood staring at them, for he could not understand what it was all about.
"Who are you, my little darling?" she asked.
"Oh, this is the new baby!" they all cried, "and he never had any mother."
"Then I will be his mother, and he shall have the best place." So she took
Tom into her arms and kissed him, and patted him, and talked to him, and Tom
looked up and loved her. Then he fell fast asleep. When he awoke she was telling
the children a story.
"Now," said the fairy to Tom, "will you be a good boy and torment no more
beasts?"
Tom promised to be a good boy, and he did not tease the sea-beasts after
that.
So this fairy taught Tom to do as he would be done by. She taught him to go
where he did not like to go, and to help someone that he did not like. This was
hard for Tom, and he said, "You want me to go after that horrid old Grimes. I
don't like him and, if I find him, he will turn me into a chimney-sweep again."
"Come here, and see what happens to people who do only what is pleasant,"
said the fairy. She showed a book full of pictures of Do-as-you-likes. They had
left the country of Hardwork because they wanted to play all day long, and do
only what they liked.
When Tom came to the end of the book he looked sad. The fairy turned to him
and said, "My dear, they should have behaved like men, and they should have done
what they did not like. The longer they waited and behaved like beasts, the more
like them they grew. You came very near being turned into a beast once or twice,
little
Tom. Indeed, if you had not made up your mind to go to see the world like
a man, you might have ended as an elf in a pond."
"Oh, dear me!" said Tom, "sooner than that, I'll go to the end of the world
to find Grimes."
"Ah!" said the fairy, "that is a brave, good boy. But you must go further
than that if you want to find Mr. Grimes. He is at the Other-end-of-nowhere."
So away Tom went for days and months, asking all he met if they had seen Mr.
Grimes. At last he came to the great iron door of a prison. Tom knocked at the
door.
"Who is there?" asked a deep voice.
"If you please, sir, I want to see Mr. Grimes."
"Grimes? He is the most hard-hearted fellow I have in charge. He is up
chimney number 345. You will have to go to the roof."
As Tom walked along the dirty roof, he
was surprised to see that the soot did
not stick to his feet or make them dirty. At last he came to chimney number 345.
Out of the top of it stuck poor -Mr. Grimes. He was sooty and ugly, and in his
mouth was a pipe.
Grimes looked up and said, "Why it's Tom! I suppose, Tom, you have come to
laugh at me."
"No," said Tom, "I only want to help you."
"I do not want anything except a light to this pipe, and that, I can't get,"
said Grimes.
"I'll get you one," said Tom. He took up a live coal and put it to Grimes'
pipe, but it went out instantly.
"But can't I help you in any other way? Can't I help you to get out of this
chimney?" asked Tom.
"No, it is no use," said Grimes, "I get nothing I ask for. Did I ask to sweep
these chimneys? Did I ask to stick fast in the very first chimney because it was
so full
of soot? Did I ask to stay here a hundred years and never get my pipe
nor anything fit for a man?"
"No," answered a voice behind. "Neither did Tom ask it when you behaved to
him in the same way."
It was Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did. Tom made a low bow.
"Oh, Ma'am," said Tom, "don't think about me. That is all past and gone, but
may I not help poor Mr. Grimes? May I try to get some of these bricks away so
that he can move his arms?"
"You may try, of course," said the fairy, and she disappeared.
For a long time Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks, but he could not move
one. Then he tried to wipe Mr. Grimes' face, but the soot would not come off.
"Oh, dear!" he said, "I have come all this way to help you, and now I am of no
use after all."
"You had best leave me alone," said Grimes. "You are a forgiving little chap,
and that's the truth; but you had better be off. The hail is coming soon and it
will beat the eyes out of your little head."
"What hail?" said Tom.
"Hail that falls here every evening. Till it comes close to me it's like warm
rain. Then it turns to hail over my head and hits me like small shot. So you go
along, you kind little chap, and don't look at a man crying, that's old enough
to be your father. I am beat now, and beat I must be. 'Foul I would be and foul
I am,' as an Irishwoman said to me once. It is all my own fault, but it is too
late." And he cried so bitterly that Tom began crying too.
As poor Grimes cried, his tears washed the soot off his face and off his
clothes. Then they washed the mortar away from between the bricks. The chimney
crumbled down, and Grimes began to get out of it.
"Will you obey me, if I give you a chance?" asked the fairy, returning
suddenly.
"I beg pardon, Ma'am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I never had
the honor of setting eyes upon you till I came to this place," said Grimes.
"Never saw me? Who said to you, 'Those that will be foul, foul they will
be?'"
Grimes looked up, and Tom looked up too. It was the Irishwoman who met them
the day they went into the country. "I gave you warning then," said she. "Every
bad word that you said, every cruel and mean thing that you did, every time that
you got tipsy, every day that you went dirty, you were disobeying me, whether
you knew it or not."
"If I had only known, Ma'am!" said Grimes.
"You knew well enough that you were disobeying something. But, come out and
take your chance."
So Grimes stepped out of the chimney, and looked as clean as a man need look.
"Take him away;" said she to the keeper, "and give him his ticket-of-leave."
"Now," said the fairy to Tom, "your work here is done. You may as well go
back again."
"I should be glad to go," said Tom, "but how am I to get out of this place?"
"I will take you out, but first I must bandage your eyes," she said. So the
fairy tied the bandage over his eyes with one hand, and with the other she took
it off.
Tom opened his eyes very wide, for he thought he had not moved a single step.
He looked around him and the first thing he saw was a lovely little creature
looking down from a rock where she was sitting. When he came close to her, she
looked up and said, "Why, I know you! You are the little chimney-sweep who came
into my room."
"Dear me!" cried Tom, "I know you, too. You are the little lady of the white
room. How you have grown!"
"And how you have grown, too!" said she.
Then they heard the fairy say, "Attention, children!" They looked up and
there stood the Irishwoman. She looked so beautiful that Tom was delighted. She
smiled and turned to the little girl and said, "You may take him home with you,
Elsie. He has won his spurs in the great battle because he has done the thing he
did not like to do." So Tom went home with Elsie.
Tom is now a great man of science. He can plan railroads, he can make steam
engines, he can build electric telegraphs, and he knows everything about
everything. All this he learned when he was a water-baby under the sea.
|
— Arranged from Charles Kingsley's "Water Babies."
|
| 
