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In the early years of children’s literature, often their short stories were sad and dark. The following short story is such a one. This is from the 1883 Chatterbox that is first mentioned here.
Gertie
Boys of ten or twelve, seen on the street, appear heartless and without sympathy, and yet you wrong them. Among the houses on Wellington Street, is one which has missed many a pane of glass in its windows. Rags and papers are used to keep the cold air out, or it may blow in and whistle through the desolate rooms without let or hindrance. A girl of ten, whose life had been one long period of hunger, pain, and unhappiness, was taken sick one day in March, and people passing by could see her lying on a miserable bed near one of the windows. It was curious that any of the boys, coming or going, should have stopped to think or care about it, but they did. One of them, feeling sad at the sight of the sufferer’s pale face, handed an orange through a broken pane, saw it clasped by slender white fingers, and then ran away. He told other boys, and by and by there wasn’t a day that some lad didn’t halt at the window to pass in fruit or flowers. None of them knew the family or ever spoke to the girl, and so they gave her the name of Gertie, and called her their orphan. Boys went without marbles to buy some simple flower for Gertie, and their anxiety for her to get well was fully great as the doctor’s or mother’s. Whatever present they had they handed it through the broken pane, waited for her to reach up, and never lingered longer than to hear a soft “thank you” from her lips. Days went by, but the boys did not grow weary, nor did they miss a day. It was romance and charity so well combined that it gladdened their hearts and made them fond of each other. Yesterday morning a lad’s hand, holding a sweet flower, and a big orange, went up to the window. No white fingers touched his as they grasped the offering. He waited a moment, and then with beating heart looked through the room. The bed had been taken away. On a table lay a pine coffin, and on the coffin was a bunch of faded flowers which had been handed through the window the day before. Death had been there, and the boys no longer had a mission.
You might not have seen the boy hiding in a doorway and wiping tears from his eyes. He was there, however, and when asked the cause of his sorrow, he sobbed out the whole sad romance in four words:
“Our Gertie is dead.”
At first look, this is a sad story about a suffering child who dies in the end. In reality, this is a wonderful lesson in empathy and caring. Though this little girl suffered greatly in her short life and ultimately succumbed to her illness, the little boys in the area cared enough to brighten her days with small kindnesses at the sacrifice of their own little joys. When they could have spent their money on anything else, they decided to do what they could in their own way to lessen the ailing girl’s suffering, even just a little. We only see things from the perspective the boys in this story, but we can easily imagine what happiness Gertie must have felt, what gratefulness her mother must have had, that the other children, (strangers no less!) were so kind to the little girl she loved so much.
I hope you find your own way to brighten someone’s day, even if it’s just a smile or a compliment. You may never realize how much those tiny kindnesses mean to the recipient.
This was a disconcerting story (you gave fair warning 🙂 ), and on finishing it, I couldn’t really see any purpose other than to descend the reader into gloom. But your thoughts at the end did a lot to rescue it for me. Yes, that last paragraph—that’s what the story is really about, after all, isn’t it?
Yes, it sure is!