W. L. Alden

“ Sue, I've run an awful pin into my leg. Why can't you girls be more careful about pins?" Sue replied that she hadn't any pins where they could run into anybody, and was going to say something more, when she screamed as if she was killed, and began to jump up and down and shake herself. Just then Dr. Jones jumped about two feet straight into the air, and said, "Oh my!" and Miss Travers took to screaming, "Fire! murder! help!" and slapping herself in a way that was quite awful. I began to think they were all going crazy, when all of a sudden I remembered the wasps' nest. ”

“ Remorse is a dreadful thing to have. Some people have it so bad that they never get over it. There was once a ghost who suffered dreadfully from remorse. He was a tall white ghost, with a large cotton umbrella. He haunted a house where he used to walk up and down, carrying his umbrella and looking awfully solemn. People used to wonder what he wanted of an umbrella, but they never asked him, because they always shrieked and fainted away when they saw the ghost, and when they were brought to cried, "Save me take it away take it away." ”

“ There's nothing meaner than to pretend that you haven't done wrong when everybody knows you have. I didn't mean anything by it, though, and Sue ought to have stood by me, when I did it all on her account, and just because I pitied her, if she was my own sister, and it was more her fault, I really think, than it was mine. ”

“ I've always thought that I'd rather have a monkey than be a million heir. There is nothing that could be half so splendid as a real live monkey, but of course I knew that I never could have one until I should grow up and go to sea and bring home monkeys and parrots and shawls to mother just as sailors always do. But I've actually got a monkey and if you don't believe it just look at these pictures of him that Mr. Travers made for me. ”

“ Tom was so frightened at the awful name she called him that he ran home, and father told me I could come right up-stairs with him.
They couldn't have treated me worse if I'd let Harry stay in the tree and starve to death. I almost wish I had done it. It does seem as if the more good a boy does the more the grown folks pitch into him. The moment Sue is married to Mr. Travers I mean to go and live with him. He never scolds, and always says that Susan's brother is as dear to him as his own, though he hasn't got any. ”

“ Tom McGinnis had come to see me, and all the folks had gone out to ride except Aunt Eliza's little boy Harry. We were talking about Christmas, and I was telling Tom how all the children were to sleep in the back parlor, and how there was a chimney there that was just the thing for Santa Claus. We went and looked at the chimney, and then I said to Tom what fun it would be to dress up and come down the chimney and pretend to be Santa Claus, and how it would amuse the children, and how pleased the grown-up folks would be, for they are always wanting us to amuse them. ”

“ Let's run away, and chop down a tree, and make a canoe, and sail down the brook till we get to the Spanish Main, and then we can capture a schooner, and be regular pirates."
"Hurrah!" says Tom. "We'll do it. Let's run away to-night. I'll take father's hatchet, and the carving-knife, and some provisions, and meet you back of our barn at ten o'clock."
"I'll be there," said I. "Only, if we're going to be pirates, let's be strictly honest. Don't take anything belonging to your father. I've got a hatchet, and a silver knife with my name on it, and I'll save my supper and take it with me." ”

“ Neither mother nor Sue showed any gratitude to me for saving their lives, though father did say that for once that boy had showed a little sense.
When Mr. Travers came that evening and I told him about it he said, "Jimmy! there's such a thing as being just a little too smart."
I don't know what he meant, but I suppose he was a little cross, for he had hurt himself some way—he wouldn't tell me how—and had court-plaster on his cheek and on his hands and walked as if his legs were stiff. Still, if a man doesn't feel well he needn't be rude. ”

“ Aunt Eliza is one of those women that always know everything, and know that nobody else knows anything, particularly us men. She was visiting us, and finding fault with everybody, and constantly saying that men were a nuisance in a house and why didn't mother make father mend chairs and whitewash the ceiling and what do you let that great lazy boy waste all his time for? ”

“ Martin should come and be sitting comfortably on the piazza, I was to give the warwhoop and scalp him.
[Pg 12]
Well, in a few minutes Mr. Martin came, and he and Mr. Travers and Susan sat on the piazza, and talked as if they were all so pleased to see each other, which was the highest-pocracy in the world. After a while Mr. Martin saw me, and said, "How silly boys are! that boy makes believe he's an Indian, and he knows he's only a little nuisance." Now this made me mad, and I thought I would give him a good scare, just to teach him not to call names if a fellow does beat him in a fair game. ”

“ I suppose our brains are so well oiled that they don't creak at all when we use them. However, Mr. Travers told me of a boy he knew when he was a boy. His name was Ananias G. Smith, and he would run round all day without any hat on, and his hair cut very short, and the sun kept beating on his head all day, and gradually his brains dried so that whenever he tried to think, they would rattle and creak like a wheelbarrow-wheel when it hasn't any grease on it. ”

“ Martin, says he, "Why, Sonny, nobody couldn't possibly draw that peg."
"I've drawn worse pegs than that," said I. "You've got to clear away the earth with your chin and front teeth, and then you can draw it."
"That is nonsense," said Mr. Martin, growing red in the face.
"This is a fair and square game," says I, "and you gave your word to draw the peg if I beat you."
"I do hope Mr. Martin will play fair," said Sue. "It would be too bad to cheat a little boy." ”

“ SUE'S WEDDING.
Sue ought to have been married a long while ago. That's what everybody says who knows her. She has been engaged to Mr. Travers for three years, and has had to refuse lots of offers to go to the circus with other young men. I have wanted her to get married, so that I could go and live with her and Mr. Travers. When I think that if it hadn't been for a mistake I made she would have been married yesterday, I find it dreadfully hard to be resigned. But we ought always to be resigned to everything when we can't help it. ”

“ It was the best fun I ever knew. I just rolled on the ground and laughed till I cried. Sue and Mr. Travers didn't roll, but they laughed till Sue got up and ran into the house, where I could hear her screaming on the front-parlor sofa, and mother crying out, "My darling child [Pg 9] where does it hurt you won't you have the doctor Jane do bring the camphor."
Mr. Martin gnawed away at the earth, and used swear-words to himself, and was perfectly raging. ”

“ Then you put a dry plate, which is a piece of glass with chemicals on it, in the camera, and then you take it out and put it in some more chemicals, the right name of which is a developer, and then you see a picture on the dry plate, only it is right side up, and not like the one on the ground-glass door.
It's the best fun in the world taking pictures; and I can't see that it improves your mind a bit—at least not enough to worry you. You have to practise a great deal before you can take a picture, and everybody who knows anything about it tells you to do something different. ”

“ He said that bull-fighting was awfully cruel, and that he told us about it so that we might be thankful that we are so much better than those dreadful Spanish people, who will watch a bull-fight all day, and think it real fun. ”

“ OUR BALLOON.
I've made up my mind that half the trouble boys get into is the fault of the grown-up folks that are always wanting them to improve their minds.
I never improved my mind yet without suffering for it. There was the time I improved it studying wasps, just as the man who lectured about wasps and elephants and other insects told me to. If it hadn't been for that man I never should have thought of studying wasps. ”

“ Art is done with mud in the first place. The art man takes a large chunk of mud and squeezes it until it is like a beautiful man or woman, or wild bull, and then he takes a marble gravestone and cuts it with a chisel until it is exactly like the piece of mud. If you want a solid photograph of yourself made out of marble, the art man covers your face with mud, and when it gets hard he takes it off, and the inside of it is just like a [Pg 58] mould, so that he can fill it full of melted marble which will be an exact photograph of you as soon as it gets cool. ”

“ So I said, "Look here, Tom, what's the use of [Pg 108] our staying at home and being laid onto with switches and our best actions misunderstood and our noblest and holiest emotions held up to ridicule?" That's what I heard a young man say to Sue one day, but it was so beautiful that I said it to Tom myself. ”

“ Travers doesn't always tell the truth. What did he mean by telling Sue the other night that he loved cats, and that her cat was perfectly beautiful, and then when she went into the other room he slung the cat out of the window, clear over into the asparagus bed, and said get out you brute? We cannot be too careful about always telling the truth, and never doing anything wrong.
Tom and I talked about the circus all the next day, and we agreed we'd have a circus of our own, and travel all over the country, and make heaps of money. ”

“ Withers is Sue's new young man, as I have told you already. He comes to see her every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening, and Mr. Travers comes all the other evenings, and Mr. Martin is liable to come any time, and generally does—that is, if he doesn't have the rheumatism. Though he hasn't but one real leg, he has twice as much rheumatism as father, with all his legs, and there is something very queer about it; and if I was he, I'd get a leg of something better than cork, and perhaps he'd have less pain in it. ”

“ Deceit and ingratitude are the monster vices of the age and they are rolling over our beloved land like the flood. (I got part of that elegant language from the temperance lecturer last week, but I improved it a good deal.)
There is Aunt Eliza. The uncle that belonged to her died two years ago, and she's awfully rich. She comes to see us sometimes with Harry—that's her boy, a little fellow six years old—and you ought to see how mother and Sue wait on her and how pleasant father is when she's in the room. ”

“ Every time I try to improve my mind with science I resolve that I will never do it again, and then I always go and do it. Science is so dreadfully tempting that you can hardly resist it. Mr. Travers says that if anybody once gets into the habit of being a scientific person there is little hope that he will ever reform, and he says he has known good men who became habitual astronomers, and actually took to prophesying weather, all because they yielded to the temptation to look through telescopes, and to make figures on the black-board with chalk. ”

“ I've had another dog. That makes three dogs that I've had, and I haven't been allowed to keep any of them. Grown-up folks don't seem to care how much a boy wants society. Perhaps if they were better acquainted with dogs they'd understand boys better than they do.
About a month ago there were lots of burglars in our town, and father said he believed he'd have to get a dog. Mr. Withers told father he'd get a dog for him, and the next day he brought the most beautiful Siberian blood-hound you ever saw. ”