The Independence Day Horror at Killsbury — John Shaqi
The Independence Day Horror at KillsburyCoolidge, Asenath Carver
General
The Independence Day Horror at Killsbury
Coolidge, Asenath Carver
Children -- Death -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Fireworks -- Fiction; Fourth of July -- Fiction
"O! it's only a little scare I'll treat him to. Boys like to be scared,
you know. That's the secret of success in the money end of the Pyrotechnic
business."
Before he got back to the Cornwallis lot, he saw the baggage-man coming up
the hill.
"Heigho," he exclaimed, slapping his leg--"just in the nick of time!
Providence permits! Now I _will_ have some fun. Stop a bit, Dan. I want
an assortment of that patriotic fervor. I am going to have a little picnic
with some boys right here if nothing happens."
After he had selected the things he wanted, he slipped a dollar into Dan's
hand, saying, "you may go on now, but you'd better stay up with us today,
you and your nag, and help us celebrate. The women folks didn't come and
you haven't any of those 'pull backs,' Schwarmer tells me, so we can have
a very free time."
Dan laughed and moved on. Fons carried his boxes to a shady nook on the
steep bank just opposite the lot where Laurens Cornwallis was still flying
his kite. After he had arranged them he stopped and looked at them with a
satisfied air. Then he selected a thing with spiral stripes of red, white
and blue.
"This will take the boy's eye at once," he said to himself as he climbed
the hill to go to the Cornwallis lot. "I must have invented it for his
kind of eye--a sort of Aaron's rod--yes, that's what I'll name it--a bible
name. That will be ahead of King Pang's 'Sacred Mandarin.' It's just the
ticker for a little Sunday school chub like Laurens."
When he got to the fence he saw that Laurens was having trouble with his
kite.
"Providence permits again," he muttered as he jumped over into the lot.
"Hello there! my dear fellow," he called out. "I see Mistress Kite has
gone back on you. They are always doing that sort of trick. I had about a
hundred when I was your age. I know all about the pesky things. I can
doctor it for you." He left Aaron's rod by the first tree he came to and
went on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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