Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

THE ATTEMPT
19
hands. What was he to do? His companions would call for him in a few minutes,
and it was clear he could not undertake the proposed excursion in his house-shoes.
“ Oh! mamma has one,” thought the boy, and away he rushed to his mother’s room.
Yes, there the mother-of-pearl shoehorn lay, bright and beautiful as ever. The boy
seized it, thrust it into his shoe, gave a tremendous pull, and snapt the horn in two
pieces. The delicate shoehorn was intended to assist a satin slipper on the small foot
of a lady, and could not stand its present rough usage. The boy was really sorry for
what he had done; but he was a truthful child, and not at all afraid of his mother,
so he ran down stairs with the broken pieces in his hand, and told her all about it.
“ Mamma,” said he, “ I did not mean to break it, and you shall have mine instead, if
I find it.” His mother could not be angry with him, but she was vexed at such a
pretty thing being broken; so she took the pieces and put them carefully away, “for,”
thought she, “ they are still too pretty to be lost.”
And now many years have passed away, and have brought with them their
usual changes; but the pieces of shoehorn remain the same as ever, and the mother
sometimes looks at them, for they have grown dear to her: they remind her of her
absent soldier son, fighting for his country in a distant land—and as she looks, she
longs that he were at home again, though it were only to break more two-guinea
shoehorns.
des Eaux.
A BALLAD.
Kind ladies, list my sad, true tale
Of humble cottage life,
But when the raging tempest roared
In wrath across the lea,
Of all the joys and sorrows known
To a poor sailor’s wife.
My Jamie wasna by my side,
For he was far at sea.
Well Jamie lo’ed me, and I him,
And we together wed,
Ah ! slowly, slowly passed the days
When I was all alane,
And swiftly, swiftly, o’er our heads
Our honeymoon time fled.
And aye, when ae day passed, I thocht
That he’d be nearer hame.
c