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 algebray? 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 inclosed 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
colledge 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.”
[Illustration: THE ANTIQUE LUNCH.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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