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FRETFUL ELLEN

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 15, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 35.

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FRETFUL ELLEN.

SHE had very bright eyes, rosy cheeks, a sweet, laughing mouth, and her name was Ellen ; but I am sorry to add, she was sometimes called "fretful Ellen."
She had a great many trials. I suppose that was the reason she had become fretful so early in life. If she went to walk, it was too warm, or the wind was too cold. She found the potatoes too hot for breakfast, and mamma would not allow her to drink coffee. If she was left alone with her little brother Archie, he was certain to pull her hair or tear her book. At school she complained very often to the teacher that some one was pinching her; but the worst trial of all was brother Tom. He had a hateful red book, and every time she cried or whined he would take it out and write down something like this:—
"8 A. M. Ellen cried because her boots buttoned hard."
8.30. Ellen cried because there were no sponge cakes for lunch.
One day there were twenty-seven such entries, every one of which Tom read aloud at tea. You can see she had a very trying life, and things seemed to get worse as she grew older.
One warm day in early summer, after an unusual number of trials, the climax was reached when she saw there were no strawberries for tea. She made every one so uncomfortable that she was sent away to stay in her own room. Ellen sat down by the window where she could look into the pleasant little yard and see the tulips and syringas. She saw some robins flying about the maple tree, and the cat crawling under the bushes looking as contented as possible. She wondered why everything looked so happy when she was so miserable.
Suddenly everything in the yard seemed to change in a most astonishing manner, and the queerest looking old man, with his face puckered up into a scowl, came walking on the piazza roof toward her.
When he spoke his voice was crosser than the crossest child's you ever heard.
"How do you like my country?" he said.
"I don't know," replied Ellen. "Where am I?"
"In the Fretful Land," said the scowling man. "Here you will see all the cross and discontented people and things. Those tulips over there in the corner, with their heads bent down and covered with dust, did not like to bloom so early in the season, so we brought them here where nothing blooms. That rough looking robin, with his head under his wing, would not sing because his song was not as sweet as a canary's. Nothing sings here."
"But what is the matter with that tree?" interrupted Ellen.
"That," said the man, "that is a maple-tree that was discontented because it could not bear acorns like an oak."
"What does ail that cat?" said Ellen forgetting her fright in her curiosity. "It does nothing but stand there and growl, looking as if its fur had been rubbed the wrong way."
"All cats look so in the Fretful Land," said the queer man. "Would you like to see how little girls look?" Quick as wink he drew a little mirror out of his pocket and held it before her. She saw her own face so twisted up in an ugly frown that it looked like the queer man's, and try as hard as she could she could not make it straight.
"Oh!" she cried, "will it always look so?"
"Of course; you are in the Fretful Land now."
"But I don't want to stay here," cried Ellen.
"That makes no difference," said the cross voice, "it's the only place for you."
Ellen started up in horror, thinking she would run away from the dreadful country. As she did so there was a great crash which made her open her eyes, to find that the cross man was gone, and she was in her own room with her chair tipped over at her feet. It was dark, and the moonbeams were stealing across the carpet. Before she could realize what had happened, her mother came in exclaiming, "What a noise! You must have fallen out of your chair. You have been sleeping so soundly that I did not like to disturb you."
"I tried to get away from Fretful Land, and my chair tipped over," said Ellen, still rubbing her eyes.
"You have been dreaming," said her mamma; "now you must get into bed for a nice long sleep."
"Good-night mamma," said Ellen, wondering if her face looked as cross as it did in the queer man's mirror.
The next day Ellen was very quiet and subdued, and Tom had only three cries in his book, and gradually there was a decided improvement in her manner. She never told any one of the Fretful Land; but I fancy she thought the more.
-Congregationalist.