American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Sunday schools -- United States -- Periodicals
"Never mind," responded the pin, "don't interrupt me, please. This
gentleman was an author, as I said before. He had papers and papers
and papers! He had pens and pens and pens! He had stylographic pens,
Mackinnon pens, and Paragon pens, and Todd's pens, and other pens! He
came there to be quiet, he said, but he made more noise than anybody
else in the house, except the solo singer, who roomed at our right, and
the elocutionist (female, of course) who roomed at our left.
"One day the old gentleman announced to the porter that he couldn't
stand it in that horrid place any longer, and he must help him get
away the very next day. So he went. And as he was packing up, he found
one roll of manuscript that wasn't pinned together, and so he drew me
out from my long resting-place, much to my joy, and fastened the roll
together with me.
"I was packed up in his satchel, and we journeyed quite a while.
When it was opened, we were in a pleasant little room in a country
boarding-house"--
"My mother's!" I again interrupted.
"Will you please be so kind as not to interrupt me again?" said the
pin, his sharp voice growing sharper than ever. "I found myself, as I
remarked before, in a pleasant little room in a country boarding-house.
The scenery all around was very beautiful. There were fields, a meadow,
a brook and some woods." (I very much wanted to interrupt again, but I
bit my tongue, and squealed instead.)
"My master took long walks, and would sit down every little while on
stone, stump, or fence, and write. One day as he was going out he asked
the lady of the house to give him some lunch, as he would probably not
be back for a good while"--
"My mother!" I burst forth.
"I think you are very impolite," the pin replied. "However, to pacify
you, I will tell you that you are correct--it was your mother, and she
put him up a nice lunch. He took quite a little walk, meditating the
while, and every few moments he would lift up his arms, and discourse
enthusiastically on the beauty of Nature. These talks were very
uninteresting to me, as I felt quite competent to decide for myself
what I thought of Nature, but I listened silently and patiently. At one
point in the road the gentleman saw a good seat ahead, in the form of
a stump, and so he slung his satchel on his arm, after getting some
papers out, which he commenced to pin together with me. But at this
point, as he was not engaged in looking where he was going, his toe
unfortunately collided with the root of a stump which was firmly fixed
in the ground, and he fell flat! A breeze coming up at the time, his
papers, and so forth, were scattered to the four winds as you might say
(though there was but one at the time), and he probably will never find
the most of them again. His pens flew into a hollow stump near by, I
flew over to the roots of another stump, and he fell on the satchel of
lunch that your mother had prepared for him, squeezing it all out on
the ground. Then he picked himself up and went home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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