Robert Merry's Museum, Volumes I-II (1841)

VOLUMES I. II.

Boston: PUBLISHED BY BRADBURY & SODEN, 10, SCHOOL STREET.

1842.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by S. G. Goodrich, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

INDEX TO THE FIRST VOLUME.

FROM FEBRUARY TO JULY 1841, INCLUSIVE.

Address to the Reader, page 1 About Labor and Property, 3 Anecdote, 102 Absence of Mind, 126 Antiquities of Egypt, 149 A Drunkard’s Home, 152 Architecture of Birds, 158 A Philosophical Tea-pot 171 Astonishing Powers of the Horse 172 A Good Reply, 187 Chinese Spectacles, 18 Contentment, 50 Curious way of Keeping Accounts, 189 Death of the President, 127 Fanny Gossip and Susan Lazy; a Dialogue, 145 Hogg’s Father, 102 Hunting Wild Animals in Africa, 111 Hymn, 159 Importance of Attention; a Dialogue 174 Instinct, 190 John Steady and Peter Sly, a Dialogue 38 My First Whistle, 4 My own Life and Adventures; by Robert Merry, 9, 33, 65, 129, 161 Music--Jack Frost, a Song, 32 Madagascar, 168 Napoleon’s last Obsequies 51 Night, 101 Owls and Eagles, 5 Origin of ‘The House that Jack Built,’ 7 Origin of Words and Phrases, 35 Our Ancestry, 53 Plain Dealing, 26 Peach Seeds, 37 Professions and Trades, 94 Peter Pilgrim’s account of his Schoolmates, No. 1, 107 Pet Oysters, 187 Poetry and Music, 192 Queen Elizabeth of England, 103 Swallows, 15 Story of Philip Brusque 19, 47, 73, 97 Spring is Coming; a Song, 64 Sketches of the Manners, Customs, and History of the Indians of America, 116, 140, 141, 181 Something Wonderful, 141 The Sociable Weavers, 2 The Human Frame likened to a House 18 The Sailor’s Family, 21 The Groom and the Horse, 23 The Druids, 24 The Re-entombment of Napoleon 27 The Pelican, 36 The Three Friends, 41 The Fox and the Tortoise, 43 The Travels, Adventures and Experiences of Thomas Trotter, 44, 81, 120, 138 The Month of March, 60 The Child and the Violets, 62 The Great Northern Diver, or Loon 71 The Spectre of the Brocken 79 Trifles, 80 The New Custom House, Boston, 86 The New Patent Office, Washington 89 The River; a Song, 96 The Sun, 101 The Kingfisher and the Nightingale 125 The April Shower,--a Song, 128 The Artist’s Cruise, 133 The Boastful Ass, 157 Travelling Beehives, 158 The Secret, 158 The Logue Family, 159 The Humming Birds, 167 The Moon, 173 The Horse and the Bells, 178 The Crane Family, 179 The Shetland Pony, 188 Varieties, 30, 62, 127, 190 What is Truth? 28 What sort of Heart have you got? 90 What is Poetry? 95

Address to the Reader.

Kind and gentle people who make up what is called the Public--permit a stranger to tell you a brief story. I am about trying my hand at a Magazine; and this is my first number. I present it to you with all due humility--asking, however, one favor. Take this little pamphlet to your home, and when nothing better claims your attention, pray look over its pages. If you like it, allow me the privilege of coming to you once a month, with a basket of such fruits and flowers as an old fellow may gather while limping up and down the highways and by-ways of life.

I will not claim a place for my numbers upon the marble table of the parlor, by the side of songs and souvenirs, gaudy with steel engravings and gilt edges. These bring to you the rich and rare fruitage of the hot-house, while my pages will serve out only the simple, but I trust wholesome productions of the meadow, field, and common of Nature and Truth. The fact is, I am more particular about my company than my accommodations. I like the society of the young--the girls and the boys; and whether in the parlor, the library, or the school-room, I care not, if so be they will favor me with their society. I do not, indeed, eschew the favor of those who are of mature age--I shall always have a few pages for them, if they will deign to look at my book. It is my plan to insert something in every number that will bear perusal through spectacles.

But it is useless to multiply words: therefore, without further parley, I offer this as a specimen of my work, promising to improve as I gain practice. I have a variety of matters and things on hand, anecdotes, adventures, tales, travels, rhymes, riddles, songs, &c.--some glad and some sad, some to make you laugh and some to make you weep. My only trouble is to select among such variety. But grant me your favor, kind Public! and these shall be arranged and served out in due season. May I specially call upon two classes of persons to give me their countenance and support--I mean all those young people who have black eyes, and all those who have not black eyes! If these, with their parents, will aid me, they shall have the thanks and best services of

ROBERT MERRY.

The Sociable Weavers.

Men find it convenient to devote themselves to different trades. One spends his time in one trade, and another in another. So we find the various kinds of birds brought up and occupied in different trades. The woodpecker is a carpenter, the hawk a sportsman, the heron a fisherman, &c. But in these cases we remark, that the birds do not have to serve an apprenticeship. It takes a boy seven years to learn to be a carpenter; but a young woodpecker, as soon as he can fly, goes to his work without a single lesson, and yet understanding it perfectly.

This is very wonderful; but God teaches the birds their lessons, and his teaching is perfect. Perhaps the most curious mechanics among the birds, are the Sociable Weavers, found in the southern part of Africa. Hundreds of these birds, in one community, join to form a structure of interwoven grass, (the sort chosen being what is called Boshman’s grass,) containing various apartments, all covered by a sloping roof, impenetrable to the heaviest rain, and increased year by year, as the increase in numbers of the community may require.

“I observed,” says a traveller in South Africa, “a tree with an enormous nest of these birds, to which I have given the appellation of Republicans; and, as soon as I arrived at my camp, I despatched a few men with a wagon to bring it to me, that I might open the hive and examine the structure in its minutest parts. When it arrived, I cut it to pieces with a hatchet, and saw that the chief portion of the structure consisted of a mass of Boshman’s grass, without any mixture, but so compact and firmly basketed together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This is the commencement of the structure; and each bird builds its particular nest under this canopy, the upper surface remaining void, without, however, being useless; for, as it has a projecting rim and is a little inclined, it serves to let the water run off, and preserves each little dwelling from the rain.

“The largest nest that I examined was one of the most considerable I had anywhere seen in the course of my journey, and contained three hundred and twenty inhabited cells, which, supposing a male and female to each, would form a society of six hundred and forty individuals. Such a calculation, however, would not be exact. It appears, that in every flock the females are more numerous by far than the males; many cells, therefore, would contain only a single bird. Still, the aggregate would be considerable; and, when undisturbed, they might go on to increase, the structure increasing in a like ratio, till a storm, sweeping through the wood, laid the tree, and the edifice it sustained, in one common ruin.”

About Labor and Property.

All the things we see around us belong to somebody; and these things have been got by labor or working. It has been by labor, that every article has been procured. If nobody had ever done any labor, there would have been no houses, no cultivated fields, no bread to eat, no clothes to wear, no books to read, and the whole world would have been in a poor and wild state, not fit for human beings to live happily in.

Men possess all things in consequence of some person having wrought for these things. Some men are rich, and have many things, although they never wrought much for them; but the ancestors, or fathers and grandfathers, of these men, wrought hard for the things, and have left them to their children. But all young persons must not think that they will get things given to them in this way; all, except a few, must work diligently when they grow up, to get things for themselves.

After any one has wrought to make a thing, or after he has a thing given to him, that thing is his own, and no person must take it from him. If a boy get a piece of clay, and make the clay into a small ball or marble to play with, then he has labored or wrought for it, and no other boy has any right to take it from him. The marble is the property of the boy who made it. Some boys are fond of keeping rabbits. If a boy have a pair of these animals, they are his property; and if he gather food for them, and take care of them till they have young ones, then the young rabbits are his property also. He would not like to find, that some bad boy wished to take his rabbits from him! He would say to the bad boy, “I claim these rabbits as my property; they are mine. You never wrought for them; they are not yours.” And if the bad boy still would take the rabbits, then the owner would go to a magistrate, and tell him of the bad boy’s conduct, and the bad boy would be punished. All things are the property of some persons, and these persons claim their property in the same way that the boy claims the marble that he has made, or the rabbits that he has reared. It is very just and proper that every person should be allowed to keep his own property; because, when a poor man knows that he can get property by working for it, and that no one dares to take it from him, then he will work to have things for his own use. If he knew that things would be taken from him, then he would not work much, and perhaps not at all. He would spend many of his days in idleness, and live very poorly.

When one person wishes to have a thing which belongs to another, he must ask permission to take it, or he must offer to buy it; he must never, on any account, take the thing secretly, or by violence, or by fraud; for that would be stealing, and he would be a thief. God has said, “Thou shalt not steal;” and every one should keep his hands from picking and stealing. Some boys think, that, because they find things that are lost, they may keep these things to themselves. But the thing that is found is the property of the loser, and should be immediately restored to him without reward; it is just as bad as stealing to keep it, if you can find the owner.

My First Whistle.

Of all the toys I e’er have known, I loved that whistle best; It was my first, it was my own, And I was doubly blest.

’Twas Saturday, and afternoon, That school-boys’ jubilee, When the young heart is all in tune, From book and ferule free.

I then was in my seventh year; The birds were all a singing; Above a brook, that rippled clear, A willow tree was swinging.

My brother Ben was very ’cute, He climbed that willow tree, He cut a branch, and I was mute, The while, with ecstasy.

With penknife he did cut it round, And gave the bark a wring; He shaped the mouth and tried the sound,-- It was a glorious thing!