Chapter I: Front Matter

ROBERT MERRY’S
MUSEUM:

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!

I blew that whistle, full of joy--
It echoed o’er the ground;
And never, since that simple toy,
Such music have I found.

I’ve seen blue eyes and tasted wines--
With manly toys been blest,
But backward memory still inclines
To love that whistle best.

Owls and Eagles.

It has been remarked, that, as mankind apply themselves to various trades and pursuits, some being carpenters, some house-builders, some hunters, some fishermen, so we find that the animal tribes appear to be severally devoted to various professions. And as we find among men bold, open pirates, who rob by day, and secret thieves, who plunder by night; so, among animals, we find those that seem to have taken up similar vocations.

The eagles, for instance, are daylight robbers; and it is wonderful to observe, how well adapted they are for the life they are designed to lead. They are strong of wing, with powerful talons to grasp their prey, and a sharp, hooked beak, calculated, like the knife of a butcher, to cut their food in pieces. Their eye is keen and long-sighted, so that they can mark their victim afar off; and their flight is swift, so that they may strike down upon it with certainty. Thus qualified to pursue a life of rapine and plunder, their very air and bearing correspond with their profession. They have a bold, haughty, and merciless look. The description in the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, portrays the character of these birds in a few sentences, and it is impossible to mend the description: “Doth the eagle mount up at thy command,” saith the inspired writer, “and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones, also, suck up blood; and where the slain are, there is she.”

Thus, if the eagles are the open, daylight robbers, the owls are the secret thieves and plunderers by night. And it is interesting to observe how well these creatures, also, are fitted for their vocation. In order to see at night, they need large eyes, and, accordingly, they have large heads to accommodate these organs. Their business is to steal upon their prey in the darkness and silence of the night. Accordingly, they are covered with an abundance of light, yielding feathers, so that they may glide through the air on a noiseless wing, and come upon their victim unheard and unsuspected. If you have ever seen an owl at evening, or during a cloudy day, (for it is seldom that they venture abroad in the sunshine,) you must have noticed, that he skims along as if he were almost as buoyant as a soap-bubble. How different is this from the whistling rush of the pigeon, or the whirring flight of the partridge!

Among the owls there are at least fifty kinds; and, taken all together, they are a most curious and interesting family. Among these, the largest is the great eagle owl, which is found in Europe. Its home is among the deep recesses of mighty forests, and the clefts of rocks amidst the mountains. From its lonely retreat, where it reposes in silence during the day, it issues forth, as the dusk of evening throws a yet deeper gloom over the dark pine forest or rocky glen, to prowl in quest of prey. On silent wing it skims through the wood, and marks the fawn, the hare, or the rabbit nibbling the herbage. Suddenly wheeling, it sweeps upon the unsuspecting victim, and, if not too large, bears it off in its talons. Other and less noble game is also to be reckoned as its prey, such as rats, mice, squirrels, and frogs. These are swallowed entire, after being merely crushed into a mass by the efforts of the bill; the bones, skins, feathers, or hair, rolled into a ball, are afterwards ejected from the stomach.

In our American forests, we have an owl very similar to the one I have described, both in looks, size, and habits. These large owls seldom approach the abodes of men; but the little barn owl is more familiar. He often takes up his residence in a barn, and, hiding in some nook by day, sallies forth at night, making prey of such little animals as he can find. He is very useful in destroying rats and mice. Mr. Waterton says that he has seen one of these little owls bring a mouse to its nest of young ones, every twelve or fifteen minutes during the evening. It is also stated, that this bird will sometimes take up its residence in a pigeon-house, and live there, without giving the pigeons the least disturbance, or even taking their young ones.

The ancients called the owl the bird of wisdom, because he looked so sober and solemn. Many superstitious people now-a-days look upon him with foolish dread. The owl is frequently mentioned in the Bible; but the most interesting allusion is that of Isaiah, chap. xiii., in which the prophet foretells the coming destruction and desolation of Babylon, then a great and powerful city. His words are, “Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there.” This prophecy has been literally fulfilled. Many years after the time of Isaiah, Babylon was destroyed, and the place became a scene of desolation. Travellers tell us, that now the place is surrounded with caverns, which are the refuge of jackals and other savage animals, and that in these cavities there are numbers of bats and owls.

Origin of “The House that Jack
Built.”

The following curious article shows that the idea of the popular legend of “The House that Jack built,” is of ancient date, and derived from the Jews. That famous story is in fact modelled after an ancient hymn, conceived in the form of a parable, sung by the Jews at the feast of the passover, and commemorative of the principal events of the history of that people. The original, in the Chaldee language, is known to scholars; and, as it may not be uninteresting to my readers, I will furnish the literal translation, which is as follows:

1. A Kid, a Kid, my Father bought for two pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

2. Then came the Cat, And ate the Kid, That my Father bought
for two pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

3. Then came the Dog, And bit the Cat, That ate the Kid,
That my Father bought for two pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

4. Then came the Staff, And beat the Dog, That bit the Cat,
That ate the Kid, That my Father bought for two pieces of
money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

5. Then came the Fire, And burned the Staff, That beat the
Dog, That bit the Cat, That ate the Kid, That my Father
bought for two pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

6. Then came the Water, And quenched the Fire, That burned
the Staff, That beat the Dog, That bit the Cat, That ate
the Kid, That my Father bought for two pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

7. Then came the Ox, And drank the Water, That quenched the
Fire, That burned the Staff, That beat the Dog, That bit
the Cat, That ate the Kid, That my Father bought for two
pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

8. Then came the Butcher, And slew the Ox, That drank the
Water, That quenched the Fire, That burned the Staff,
That beat the Dog, That bit the Cat, That ate the Kid,
That my Father bought for two pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

9. Then came the Angel of Death, And killed the Butcher,
That slew the Ox, That drank the Water, That quenched the
Fire, That burned the Staff, That beat the Dog, That bit
the Cat, That ate the Kid, That my Father bought for two
pieces of money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

10. Then came the Holy One, blessed be He!
9. And killed the Angel of Death,
8. That killed the Butcher,
7. That slew the Ox,
6. That drank the Water,
5. That quenched the Fire,
4. That burned the Staff,
3. That beat the Dog,
2. That bit the Cat,
1. That ate the Kid that my Father bought for two pieces of
money.
_A Kid, a Kid._

The following is the interpretation:

1. The Kid, which was, among the Jews, one of the pure animals, denotes the Hebrews. The Father by whom it was purchased is Jehovah, who is represented as sustaining this relation to the Hebrew nation. The two pieces of money signify Moses and Aaron, through whose mediation the Hebrews were brought out of Egypt.

2. The Cat denotes the ancient Assyrians, by whom the ten tribes were carried into captivity.

3. The Dog is symbolical of the ancient Babylonians.

4. The Staff signifies the Persians, a powerful nation of antiquity.

5. The Fire indicates the Grecian empire, under Alexander the Great.

6. The Water betokens the Romans, or the fourth of the great monarchies, to whose dominion the Jews were subjected.

7. The Ox is a symbol of the Saracens, who subdued Palestine and brought it under the Caliphs of Bagdad.

8. The Butcher, that killed the Ox, denotes the Crusaders, by whom the Holy Land was wrested out of the hands of the Saracens, for a time.

9. The Angel of Death signifies the Turkish power, by which the land of Palestine was taken from the Crusaders, and to which it is still subject.

10. The commencement of the 10th stanza is designed to show, that God will take signal vengeance on the Turks, immediately after whose overthrow the Jews are to be restored to their own land, and to live under the government of the long-expected Messiah.

My own Life and Adventures; by Robert Merry.

CHAPTER I.