CRIP'S GARRET-DAY

BY SARAH J. PRICHARD.

Crip was having a dismal—a very dismal time of it. Crip was eleven, it was his birthday, and Crip was in disgrace—in a garret.

Wasn't it dreadful?

It happened thus: Crip's father was a shoemaker. The bench where he worked and the little bit of a shop, about eight feet every way, in which he worked, stood on a street leading down to the town dock, and the name of the town we will say was Barkhampstead, on Cape Cod Bay.

Now and then—that is, once or twice in the year—a whaling vessel set sail from the dock, and sometimes, not always, the same vessels returned to the dock.

The going and the coming of a "whaler" made Crip's father, Mr. John Allen, glad. It was his busy season, for when the seamen went, they always wanted stout new boots and shoes, and, when they came, they always needed new coverings on their feet to go home in.

Two years before this dismal time that Crip was having, the ship "Sweet Home" went away, and it had not been spoken or signaled or heard from in any way, since four months from the time it left the dock at Barkhampstead.

The fathers and mothers and wives and little children of the men who went in the "Sweet Home" kept on hoping, and fearing, and feeling terribly bad about everybody on board whom they loved, when, without any warning whatever, right in the midst of a raging snow storm, the "Sweet Home," all covered in ice from mast-head to prow, sailed, stiff and cold, into Barkhampstead harbor.

Oh! wasn't there a great gladness over all the old town then! They rang the meeting-house bell. It was a hoarse, creaking old bell, but there was music in it that time, as it throbbed against the falling snow, and made a most delicious concert of joy and gratitude in every house within a mile and more of the dock.

Mr. John Allen rushed down to the "Sweet Home," as soon as ever it came in. He hadn't anybody on board to care very particularly about, but how he did rub his hands together as he went, letting the snow gather fast on his long beard, as he thought of the thirty or forty pairs of feet that must have shoes!

Crip, you know, was to be eleven the next day, and his mother, in the big red house next door to the little shop, had made him a cake for the day, and, beside, plum-pudding was to be for dinner.

Before Crip's father had gone down to the dock he had said to Crip: "Now, you must stay right here in the shop and not go near the dock, until I come back;" and Crip had said "Yes, sir," although every bit of his throbbing boy body wanted to take itself off to the "Sweet Home."

The snow kept on falling, and it began to grow dark in the little shop. Crip had just lighted a candle, when the shop door opened, and a boy, not much bigger than Crip himself, came in and shut the door behind him.

Crip jumped up from the bench and said:

"What ——?"

"You don't know me, Crip Allen," said the boy.

"Who be you?" questioned Crip.

"Don't wonder!" said the other, "for we've all come right out of the jaws of ice and death. I'm Jo Jay."

"Jo Jay,—looking so!" said Crip.

"Never mind! Only give me a pair of shoes—old ones will do—to get home in. It's three miles to go, and it's five months since I've had shoes on my feet. Oh, Crip! we've had a bad time on board, and no cargo to speak of to bring home."

"You wont pay for the shoes?" asked Crip.

"No money," said Jo, thrusting forth a tied-up foot, wrapped in sail-rags. "But, Crip, do hurry! I must get home to mother, if she's alive."

"She's alive—saw her to meeting," said Crip, fumbling in a wooden box to get forth a pair of half-worn shoes he remembered about.

He produced them. Jo Jay seized the shoes eagerly, and, taking off his wrappings, quickly thrust his feet, that had so long been shoeless, into them: and, with a "Bless you, Crip! I'll make it all right some day." hobbled off, making tracks in the snow, just before Crip's father came up from the dock.

Mr. John Allen returned in a despondent mood. There was not oil enough on board the "Sweet Home" to buy shoes for the men.

"Who's been here, Crip? Socks in and shoes out, I see."

"Jo Jay, father."

"Where's the money, Crip?" and Mr. Allen turned his big, searching blue eyes on Crip, and held forth his hand.

"Why, father," said Crip, "he hadn't any, and he wanted to go home. It's three miles, you know, and snowing."

"Crip Allen! Do you know what you've done? You've stolen a pair of shoes."

"Oh, I haven't, father," cried Crip, "and 't was only the old, half-worn shoes that you mended for George Hine, that he couldn't wear."

"Christopher!" thundered forth Mr. Allen, in a voice that made the lad shake in his boots, "go into the house and right upstairs to bed. You have stolen a pair of shoes from your own father. You knew they were not yours to give away."

Poor Crip! Now he couldn't get a sight of the "Sweet Home" to-night, even through the darkness and the snow.

His upper lip began to tremble and give way, but he went into the big red house, up the front staircase to his own room, and, in the cold, crept under the blankets into a big feather bed, and thought of Jo plodding his way home.

About eight of the clock, when Crip was fast asleep, the door opened, somebody walked in, and a hand touched the boy, and left a bit of cake on his pillow; then the hand and the somebody went away, and Crip was left alone until morning. He went down to breakfast when called. His father's face was more stern than it had been the night before. Crip could scarcely swallow the needful food. When breakfast was over, Mr. Allen said:

"Christopher. Go into the garret and stay till I call you. I'll teach you not to take what doesn't belong to you, even to give away."

"Father!" beseechingly said Crip's mother, "it is the boy's birthday."

"Go to the garret!" said Mr. Allen.

Crip went, and he was having the dismal time of it referred to in the beginning of this story. Poor little chap! He stayed up there all the morning, his mother's heart bleeding for him, and his sisters saying in their hearts, "Father's awful cruel." It did seem so, but Mr. Christopher Allen, the nation-known shipping merchant, said, fifty years later, when relating the story to a party of friends on board one of his fine steamships:

"That severe punishment was the greatest kindness my father ever bestowed on my boyhood. Why, a hundred times in my life, when under the power of a great temptation to use money in my hands that did not belong to me, even for the best and highest uses, and when I knew that I could replace it, I have been saved by the power of the stern, hard words, the cold, flashing eyes, and the day in the garret. Yes, yes, father was right. I ought to have taken off my own shoes, and gone without any, to give to Jo Jay. That was his idea of giving."