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  A CHRISTMAS MORALITY




  [Illustration: Remember my ears are so quick I can hear the grass
  grow. _Frontispiece._]




  [Illustration]

  LITTLE PETER

  A Christmas Morality
  for Children of any Age

  By LUCAS MALET
  AUTHOR OF 'COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE' ETC.

  [Illustration]

  WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL HARDY

  LONDON
  KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
  1888




  TO
  CECILY
  IN TOKEN OF AFFECTION
  TOWARDS HERSELF, HER MOTHER, AND HER STATELY HOME
  THIS LITTLE STORY IS DEDICATED
  BY
  HER OBEDIENT SERVANT

      LUCAS MALET




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                                        PAGE

     I. Which deals with the opinions of a Cat, and the sorrows of
        a Charcoal-burner                                           1

    II. Which introduces the Reader to an Admirer of the Ancient
        Romans                                                     19

   III. Which improves our acquaintance with the Grasshopper-man   36

    IV. Which leaves some at Home, and takes some to Church        50

     V. Which is both Social and Religious                         68

    VI. Which attempts to show why the Skies fall                  84

   VII. Which describes a pleasant Dinner Party, and an
        unpleasant Walk                                            95

  VIII. Which proves that even Philosophic Politicians may
        have to admit themselves in the wrong                     115

    IX. Which is very short because, in some ways, it is rather
        sad                                                       132

     X. Which ends the Story                                      143




_ILLUSTRATIONS._


  'Remember my ears are so quick I can hear
  the grass grow'                                      _Frontispiece_

  'What will happen? please tell me'                  _To face p._ 10

  'Go to bed when you are told'                            "       34

  'You all despise me'                                     "       66

  Going to Church                                          "       72

  Lost                                                     "      110

  Waiting                                                  "      120

  Found                                                    "      138

  The Charcoal-burner visits Little Peter                  "      150




[Illustration: Little Peter.]

CHAPTER I.

WHICH DEALS WITH THE OPINIONS OF A CAT, AND THE SORROWS OF A CHARCOAL
BURNER.


The pine forest is a wonderful place. The pine-trees stand in ranks
like the soldiers of some vast army, side by side, mile after mile, in
companies and regiments and battalions, all clothed in a sober uniform
of green and grey. But they are unlike soldiers in this, that they are
of all ages and sizes; some so small that the rabbits easily jump
over them in their play, and some so tall and stately that the fall
of them is like the falling of a high tower. And the pine-trees are
put to many different uses. They are made into masts for the gallant
ships that sail out and away to distant ports across the great ocean.
Others are sawn into planks, and used for the building of sheds; for
the rafters and flooring, and clap-boards and woodwork of our houses;
for railway-sleepers, and scaffoldings, and hoardings. Others are
polished and fashioned into articles of furniture. Turpentine comes
from them, which the artist uses with his colours, and the doctor in
his medicines; which is used, too, in the cleaning of stuffs and in a
hundred different ways. While the pine-cones, and broken branches and
waste wood, make bright crackling fires by which to warm ourselves on a
winter's day.

But there is something more than just this I should like you to think
about in connection with the pine forest; for it, like everything else
that is fair and noble in nature, has a strange and precious secret of
its own.

You may learn the many uses of the trees in your school books, when
men have cut them down or grubbed them up, or poked holes in their
poor sides to let the turpentine run out. But you can only learn the
secret of the forest itself by listening humbly and reverently for it
to speak to you. For Nature is a very great lady, grander and more
magnificent than all the queens who have lived in sumptuous palaces and
reigned over famous kingdoms since the world began; and though she will
be very kind and gracious to children who come and ask her questions
modestly and prettily, and will show them the most lovely sights and
tell them the most delicious fairy tales that ever were seen or heard,
she makes very short work with conceited and impudent persons. She
covers their eyes and stops their ears, so that they can never see her
wonderful treasures or hear her charming stories, but live, all their
lives long, shut up in the dark fusty cupboard of their own ignorance,
and stupid self-love, and self-satisfaction, thinking they know all
about everything as well as if they had made it themselves, when they
do not really know anything at all. And because you and I dislike fusty
cupboards, and because we want to know anything and everything that
Nature is condescending enough to teach us, we will listen, to begin
with, to what the pine forest has to tell.

When the rough winds are up and at play, and the pine-trees shout and
sing together in a mighty chorus, while the hoarse voice of them is
like the roar of the sea upon a rocky coast, then you may learn the
secret of the forest. It sings first of the winged seed; and then of
the birth of the tiny tree; of sunrise and sunset, and the tranquil
warmth of noon-day, and of the soft, refreshing rain, and the kindly,
nourishing earth, and of the white moonlight, and pale, moist garments
of the mist, all helping the tree to grow up tall and straight, to
strike root deep and spread wide its green branches. It sings, too, of
the biting frost, and the still, dumb snow, and the hurrying storm,
all trying and testing the tree, to prove if it can stand firm and
show a brave face in time of danger and trouble. Then it sings of the
happy spring-time, when the forest is girdled about with a band of
flowers; while the birds build and call to each other among the high
branches; and the squirrel helps his wife to make her snug nest for the
little, brown squirrel-babies that are to be; and the dormice wake up
from their long winter sleep, and sit in the sunshine and comb their
whiskers with their dainty, little paws. And then the forest sings of
man--how he comes with axe and saw, and hammer and iron wedges, and
lays low the tallest of its children, and binds them with ropes and
chains, and hauls them away to be his bond-servants and slaves. And,
last of all, it sings slowly and very gently of old age and