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But even the wanderers come back after a short time, and settle beside their parents, as you remember the one who met the star- fish was about to do. It was not very easy for you or me to think back so many thousand years to the very beginning of Coraltown, nor is it less difficult to realize how many, many years were passing while the little town grew, even as far as I have told you.
"What strange people!" thought the star-fish; but, with all his learning, he didn't know every thing, and had never heard how people sometimes live in communities, and divide the work as suits their fancy. While we leave him wondering, let us go back to Coraltown.
And the polyps, who do not know how to live in the light and air, had all died; or those who were wanderers had emigrated to some new place. Poor little things, their useless lives had ended, and what good had they done in the world? And now let us look at Coraltown once more. It is the first day of June of 1865.
And he worked himself off into a branch water-train that was setting that way, and, without so much as bidding the polyps good-by, turned his back upon Coraltown, and presently found a fellow-passenger fine enough to absorb all his attention, a passenger, I say, but we shall find it rather a group of passengers in their own pretty boat; some curled in spiral coils, some trailing like little swimmers behind, some snugly ensconced inside, but all of such brilliant colors and gay bearing that even the star-fish felt his inferiority; and, wishing to make friends with so fine a neighbor, he whirled a tempting morsel of food towards one of the swimming party, and politely offered it to him.
"Oh, I went to the Coral School for Girls," answered the Mermaid Princess, and she sighed, for she suddenly remembered she was a long way from home. Just then the little Star Fish met a soft little body, much smaller than himself, who invited him to visit her relatives, who live, by millions, in this mountain region. So off they started for Coraltown, where this little Miss Polyp lived.
So we have come to a second settlement of Coraltown: first the polyps; then the men, women, and children. Do you see how the good Father teaches all his creatures to help each other?
It is the beginning of Coraltown, just as the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth was the beginning of Massachusetts. Now we will see how it grows. First of all, notice this curious fact, that each settler, after once choosing a home, never after stirs from that spot; but, from day to day, fastens himself more and more firmly to the rock where he first stuck.
This fine, great vessel sailed out of New York harbor a week ago to carry all these people to Greytown, on their way to California; and here she is now at Coraltown instead of Greytown, and the poor people, nearly a hundred miles away from land, are waiting through the weary hours, while they see the ocean swallowing up their vessel, breaking it, and tearing it to pieces, and they do not know how soon they may find themselves drifting in the sea.
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