CHEERFUL CHIRPERS
Reading edition
THE NEWS
The katydids say it as plain as can be And the crickets are singing it under the trees; In the asters’ blue eyes you may read the same hint, Just as clearly as if you had seen it in print. And the corn sighs it, too, as it waves in the sun, That autumn is here and summer is done. Persis Gardiner.
HOW THERE CAME TO BE A KATY-DID
Patten Beard
From “The Bluebird’s Garden.” Used by special permission of the author and the Pilgrim Press.
Long, long, long ago—so long that this story has had time to grow into a garden legend—two green grasshoppers went out, one fine day, to play with a cricket. They played tag, and I’m on gypsyland. At last they decided to have a game of hide-and-seek.
The goal was a blade of grass, and they counted out to see who should be goal man. It fell to the little cricket, Katy-did. She was to hide her eyes behind the grassblade, and count up to one hundred by tens, while the two grasshoppers went off to hide.
So the cricket hid her face so that she could not see, and began: “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred! Coming!”
Though there were plenty of good places in which to hide in the garden, one green grasshopper had been slow to suit himself. He had not yet hidden when the little cricket turned about and caught him.
And he began, “You didn’t count up to a hundred! I didn’t have time to hide! You should have hollered, ‘Coming!’ It’s no fair! I’m not going to play any more—you didn’t count up to a hundred!”
At this, the other grasshopper came out of hiding. “She did count up to a hundred,” he said, “Katy did!”
She didn’t” She did!” She didn’t!” Katy did, did, did!” Katy didn’t, didn’t, didn’t!” Did, did, did!” Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t!” Katy did!” Katy didn’t!” She did!” She didn’t!” Katy did!” Katy didn’t!”
To this very, very day, you can hear the dispute still going on in the garden, and the game of tag has never yet been finished. Ever since that time the grasshoppers who started the discussion have been called katydids, and the whole garden is full of the controversy. You can hear hundreds of little voices keeping it up, though nothing is ever decided. So it goes on eternally, Katy did—Katy didn’t, did, did, did, didn’t, didn’t, she did, she didn’t—for nobody has ever yet settled a dispute by contradiction. By this time, too, everyone has forgotten what the quarrel was about.
OLD DAME CRICKET
Old Dame Cricket, down in a thicket, Brought up her children nine,—— Queer little chaps, in glossy black caps And brown little suits so fine. “My children,” she said, “The birds are abed: Go and make the dark earth glad! Chirp while you can!” And then she began,—— Till, oh, what a concert they had! They hopped with delight, They chirped all night, Singing, “Cheer up! cheer up! cheer!” Old Dame Cricket, Down in the thicket, Sat awake till dawn to hear. “Nice children,” she said, “And very well bred. My darlings have done their best. Their naps they must take: The birds are awake; And they can sing all the rest.”
MISS KATY-DID AND MISS CRICKET
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Miss Katy-Did sat on the branch of a flowering azalia in her best suit of fine green and silver, with wings of point-lace from mother nature’s finest web.
Her gallant cousin, Colonel Katy-Did, had looked in to make her a morning call.
“Certainly I am a pretty creature,” she said to herself when the gallant Colonel said something about being dazzled by her beauty.
“The fact is, my dear Colonel,” said Miss Katy, “I am thinking of giving a party, and you must help me make out the lists.”
“My dear, you make me the happiest of Katy-Dids.”
“Now,” said Miss Katy, drawing an azalia leaf towards her, “let us see—whom shall we have? The Fireflies are a little unsteady, but they are so brilliant, everybody wants them—and they belong to the higher circles.”
“Yes, we must have the Fireflies,” said the colonel.
“Well, then—and the Butterflies and the Moths, now there’s the trouble. There are so many Moths, and they’re so dull. Still if you have the Butterflies you can’t leave out the Moths.”
“Old Mrs. Moth has been ill lately. That may keep two or three of the Misses Moth at home,” said the colonel.
“I thought she was never sick,” said Miss Katy-Did.
“Yes, I understand she and her family ate up a whole fur cape last month, and it disagreed with them.”
“Oh, how can they eat such things as worsted and fur?” then sneered Miss Katy-Did.
“By your fairy-like delicacy one can see that you couldn’t eat such things,” smiled the colonel.
“Mamma says she doesn’t know what keeps me alive. Half a dewdrop and a little bit of the nicest part of a rose-leaf often lasts me for a day. But to our list. Let’s see,—the Fireflies, Butterflies, Moths. The Bees must come, I suppose.”
“The Bees are a worthy family,” nodded the colonel.
“Yes, but dreadfully humdrum. They never talk about anything but honey and housekeeping.”
“Then there are the Bumble Bees.”
“Oh, I dote on them,” said Miss Katy-Did. “General Bumble is one of the most dashing, brilliant fellows of the day.”
“He’s shockingly fat!” said the colonel.
“Yes, he is a little stout,” nodded Miss Katy-Did, “but he is very elegant in his manners,—something soldierly and breezy about him.”
“If you invite the Bumble Bees, you must have the Hornets.”
“Ah, they are spiteful,—I detest them.”
“Nevertheless, one must not offend the Hornets, and how about the Mosquitoes?” asked the Colonel.
“They are very common. Can’t one cut them?”
“I think not, my dear Miss Katy. Young Mosquito is connected with some of our leading papers, and he carries a sharp pen. It will never do to offend him.”
“And I suppose one must ask all his dreadful relations, too,” sighed Miss Katy.
At this moment they saw Miss Keziah Cricket coming. She carried her workbag on her arm, and she asked for a subscription to help a poor family of Ants who had just had their house hoed up by some one who was clearing the garden walks.
“How stupid of the Ants,” said Katy, “not to know better than to put their house in a garden-walk.”
“Ah, they are in great trouble,” said Miss Cricket. “Their stores are all destroyed, and their father killed—cut quite in two by a hoe.”
“How very shocking! I don’t like to hear such disagreeable things. But I have nothing to give. Mamma said yesterday she didn’t know how our bills were to be paid,—and there’s my green satin with point lace yet to come home,” said Miss Katy, shrugging her shoulders.
Little Miss Cricket hopped briskly off. “Poor, extravagant little thing,” she said to herself.
“Shall you invite the Crickets?” said Colonel Katy-Did.
“Why, Colonel, what a question! I invite the Crickets? No, indeed.”
“And shall you ask the Locusts or the Grasshoppers?”
“Certainly. The Locusts, of course—a very old and fine family, and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be asked. But one must draw the line somewhere—and the Crickets! Why, I can’t think of them.”
“I thought they were very nice, respectable people,” said the colonel.
“Oh, perfectly nice and respectable,—but——”
“Do explain, my dear Katy.”
“Why, their colour, to be sure. Don’t you see?”
“Oh!” said the colonel. “That’s it, is it? And tell me, please, who decides what colour shall be the reigning colour?”
“What a question! The only true colour—the only proper one—is our colour to be sure. A lovely pea green is the shade on which to found an aristocratic distinction. Of course, we are liberal; we associate with the Moths, who are gray; with the Butterflies, who are blue and gold coloured; with the Grasshoppers, yellow and brown; and society would become dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered that the Crickets are as black as jet. The fact is that a class to be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the Crickets were not black we could not keep them down. Everybody knows they are often a great deal cleverer than we are. They have a vast talent for music and dancing; they are very quick at learning, and would be getting to the very top of the ladder if we allowed them to climb. Now, so long as we are green and they are black, we have a superiority that can never be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”
“Oh, yes, I see exactly,” said the colonel. “Now that Keziah Cricket, who just came in here, is quite a musician, and her old father plays the violin beautifully; by the way, we might engage him for our orchestra.”
And so Miss Katy’s ball came off. It lasted from sundown till daybreak, so that it seemed as if every leaf in the forest were alive. The Katy-Dids, and the Mosquitoes, and the Locusts, and a full orchestra of Crickets made the air perfectly vibrate.
Old Parson Too-Whit was shocked at the gaieties, which were kept up by the pleasure-loving Katy-Dids night after night.
But about the first of September the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic broke out. Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin, and point lace, was one of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad shower of last year’s leaves.
The worthy Cricket family, however, avoided Jack Frost by moving in time to the chimney corner of a nice little cottage that had been built in the wood. There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home. When the storm howled without, and lashed the poor, naked trees, the crickets on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to the happy family in the cottage.
(Adapted.)
THE CRICKET
Little cricket, full of mirth, Chirping on my kitchen hearth; Wheresoever be thine abode, Always harbinger of good. Pay me for thy warm retreat With a song more soft and sweet; In return thou shalt receive Such a strain as I can give. William Cowper.