116 PRESENCE OF MIND. WHAT Would you do were your mother to fall down in a fainting fit? Would you stand still and scream, or run out of the house, and leave her lying half dead upon the floor? Or would you have what people call "presence of mind;" that is, would you call for somebody to help her, and do all you could for her till they came ? It is a great thing to have "presence of mind;" there are very few grown people who have it. There are plenty of people who, when a bad accident happens, will crowd round the sick person, keep all the good fresh air away from him, wring their hands, and say oh! and ah! how shocking how dreadful! But there are few who think to run quickly for a doctor, or bring a glass of water, or do any one of the thousand little things which would help so much to make the poor sufferer better. If grown people do not think of these things, we certainly should not feel disappointed if children do not; and yet, wonderful though it may be, they are sometimes quicker witted at such a time than their elders. I will tell you a story, to show you that it is so. Andy Moore was a short, stunted, freckled, little country boy, tough as a pine-knot. Sometimes he wore a cap and sometimes he did not; he was not at all particular about that; his shaggy red hair, he thought, protected his head well enough. As for what people would think of it—he did not live in Broadway, where one's shoe-lacings are noticed; his home was in the country, and a very wild, rocky country it was. He knew much more about beavers, rattlesnakes, and birds' eggs than he did about fashions. He liked to sit rocking on the top of a great tall tree, or to stand on a high hill, where the wind. almost took him off his feet. Andy's house was a rough shanty on the side of a hill it was built of mud, peat, and logs, with holes for windows. There was nothing very pleasant there. Near the hut of Andy's father there was a railroad track; and Andy often watched the black engine with its long tail, as it came puffing past, belching out great clouds of steam and smoke, and screeching through the valleys and under the hills like a mad thing. Although it went by the hut every day, yet he never wished to ride in it; he had been content with lying on the sand-bank, watching it disappear in the distance, leaving a great wreath of smoke curling round the tree-tops. One day, as Andy was strolling across the track, he saw that there was something wrong about it. He did not know much about railroad tracks, because he was as yet quite a little lad; but the rails seemed to be wrong somehow, and Andy had heard of cars being thrown off by such things. Just then he heard a low distant noise. Dear, dear! the cars were coming then! He was but a little boy, but perhaps he could stop them in some way; at any rate there was nobody else there to do it. Andy never thought that he might get killed himself; but he went and stood straight in the middle of the track, just before the bad place on it that I have told you about, and stretched out his little arms as far apart as he could. On, on came the cars, louder and louder. The engine-driver saw the boy on the track, and whistled for him to get out of the way. Andy never moved a hair. Again the engine whistled. Andy might have been made of stone for all the notice he took of it. Then the driver, of course, had to stop the train, saying something in a passion to Andy as he did so "for not getting out of the way." But when Andy pointed to the track, and the man saw how the brave little fellow had not only saved his life, but the lives of all his passengers, his scolding changed to blessing very quickly. Everybody rushed out to see the horrible death they had escaped. Had the cars rushed over the bad track, they would have been tossed headlong down the steep bank into the river. Ladies kissed Andy's rough freckled face, and cried over him; and the gentlemen, as they looked at their wives and children, wiped their eyes and said, “God bless the boy." And that is not all: they took out their purses and contributed a large sum of money for him; not that they could ever repay the service he had done them; they knew that; but to show him in some way besides in mere words that they felt grateful. Now that boy had presence of mind. Good brave little Andy! The passengers all wrote down his name-Andy Moore-and the place he lived in; and if you wish to know where Andy is now, I will tell you. He is in college; and these people whose lives he saved pay his bills, and are going to see him safe through.-Fanny Fern. Plains have a beauty of their own, though not the same sort of grandeur as mountains. us. They give us to feel what a deal of room there is in the world for all of They enable us to see more things at once than we can in a mountain land, unless we take the trouble to climb to the summits. |