GRANDFATHER THUNDER. 651 



doings of poor fanatics of Mecca. Such is the solidarity of the 

 modern world that at the present moment it is the doings of these 

 people, who seem so far away (geographically thousands of miles, 

 socially and as regards their sympathies and interests quite in 

 another sphere), which threaten us now with a repetition of such 

 epidemics as that which not so many years ago carried off one in 

 every forty-seven residents in Whitechapel, one in fifty-seven in 

 Ratcliffe, one in sixty-seven in Rotherhithe, and which only last 

 year killed off people in Hamburg at the rate of two hundred to 

 three hundred per day for weeks together. 



This is no fanciful speculation, applicable only to days gone 

 by. Last month five thousand pilgrims died in Mecca ; their 

 infected and scattered companions are reaching Jiddah and El 

 Tor, and are spreading over the world to their various homes. 

 To them we may look with fear and doubt for the probable initia- 

 tion of an epidemic in Europe, to follow close upon the footsteps 

 of that which is now at our doors. 



GRANDFATHER THUNDER. 



By ABBY L. ALGER. 



DURING the summer of 1892, at York Harbor, Me., I was in 

 daily communication with a party of Penobscot Indians 

 from Oldtown, among whom were an old man and woman, from 

 whom I got many curious legends. The day after a terrible thun- 

 derstorm I asked the old woman how they had weathered the 

 storm. She looked searchingly at me and said, " It was good." 

 After a moment she added, " You know the thunder is our grand- 

 father ? " I answered that I did not know it, and was startled 

 when she continued : " Yes, when we hear the first roll of the 

 thunder, especially the first thunder in the spring, we always go 

 out into the open air, build a fire, put a little tobacco on it, and 

 give grandfather a smoke. Ever since I can remember, my father 

 and my grandfather did this, and I shall always do it as long as 

 I live. Fll tell you the story of it and why we do so. 



"Long time ago there were two Indian families living in a 

 very lonely place. This was before there were any white people 

 in the land. They lived far apart. Each family had a daughter, 

 and these girls were great friends. One sultry afternoon in the 

 late spring, one of them told her mother she wanted to go to see 

 her friend. The mother said : ' No, it is not right for you to go 

 alone, such a handsome girl as you ; you must wait till your 

 father or your brother are here to go with you/ But the girl in- 

 sisted, and at last her mother yielded and let her go. She had 



