Why should a seanyour in a colledge tromp onto the young chaps that
come in there to learn? Have you forgot how I fatted up the old cow and
beefed her so that you could go and monkey with youclid and aigebray?
Have you forgot how the other boys pulled you through a mill pond and
made you tobogin down hill in a salt barrel with brads in it? Do you
remember how your mother went down there to nuss you for two weeks and I
stayed to home, and done my own work and the housework too and cooked my
own vittles for the whole two weeks?
And now, Henry, you call yourself a seanyour, and therefore, because you
are simply older in crime, you want to muss up Mr. Williams's features
so that his mother will have to come over and nuss him. I am glad
that your little pleated coat is ripped up the back. Henry, under the
circumstances, and I am also glad that you are wearing the belt--over
your off eye. If there's anything I can do to add to the hilarity of the
occasion, please let me know and I will tend to it.
The lop-horned heifer is a parent once more, and I am trying in my poor,
weak way to learn her wayward offspring how to drink out of a patent
pail without pushing your old father over into the hay-mow. He is a cute
little quadruped, with a wild desire to have fun at my expense. He loves
to swaller a part of my coat-tail Sunday morning, when I am dressed up,
and then return it to me in a moist condition. He seems to know that
when I address the Sabbath school the children will see the joke and
enjoy it.
Your mother is about the same, trying in her meek way to adjust herself
to a new set of teeth that are a size too large for her. She has one
large bunion in the roof of her mouth already, but is still resolved to
hold out faithful, and hopes these few lines will find you enjoying the
same great blessing.
You will find enclosed a dark-blue money order for four eighty-five. It
is money that I had set aside to pay my taxes, but there is no novelty
about paying taxes. I've done that before, so it don't thrill me as it
used to.
Give my congratulations to Mr. Williams. He has got the elements of
greatness to a wonderful degree. If I happened to be participating in
that college of yours, I would gently but firmly decline to be tromped
onto.
So good-bye for this time.
YOUR FATHER.
ECCENTRICITY IN LUNCH.
Over at Kasota Junction, the other day, I found a living curiosity. He
was a man of about medium height, perhaps 45 years of age, of a quiet
disposition, and not noticeable or peculiar in his general manner.
He runs the railroad eating house at that point, and the one odd
characteristic which he has, makes him well known all through three or
four States. I could not illustrate his eccentricity any better than by
relating a circumstance that occurred to me at the Junction last week.
I had just eaten breakfast there and paid for it. I stepped up to the
cigar case and asked this man if he had "a rattling good cigar."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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