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- and say! there was a book in that library - oo-oo! "Cast up by the Sea," all about wreckers, and false lights on the shore, and adventures in Central Africa, and there's a nigger queen that wants to marry him, and he don't want to because he loves a girl in England - I think that's kind of soft - and he kills about a million of them trying to get away. You want to get that book. Don't let them give you "Patient Henry" or "Charlie Watson, the Drunkard's Little Son." They're about boys that take sick and die - no good.
It was a bully library, but the report wasn't interesting. Major Humphreys's always was. He was the treasurer because he worked in the bank. He came from the Western Reserve, and said "cut" when he meant coat, and "hahnt" when he meant heart. I can shut my eyes and hear him read his report now: "Infant-class, Mrs. Sarah M. Boggs, one dolla thutty-eight cents; Miss Dan'ells's class, fawty-six cents; Miss Goldrick's class, twenty-faw cents; Mr. Pahnker's class, ninety-three cents; Miss Rut's class, naw repawt."
Poor old Miss Root! There was hardly ever any report from her class. Often she hadn't a penny to give, and perhaps the other old ladies, who found the keenest possible delight in doing what they called "running up the references," had no more, for they were relics of an age when women weren't supposed to have money to fling right and left in the foolish way that women will if they're not looked after - shoes for the baby, and a new calico dress every two or three years or so.
Yes, it is rather interesting for a change now and then to hear these folks go on about what a terrible thing the Sabbath-school is, and how it does more harm than good. They get really excited about it, and storm around as if they expected folks to take them seriously. They know, just as well as we do, that this wouldn't be any kind of a country at all if we couldn't look back and remember the Sabbath-school, or if we couldn't fix up the children Sunday afternoons, and find their lesson leaves for them, and hunt up a penny to give to the poor heathen, and hear them say the Golden Text before they go, and tell them to be nice. Papa and mamma watch them from the window till they turn the corner, and then go back to the Sunday paper with a secure sort of feeling. They won't learn anything they oughtn't to at the Sabbath-school.
THE REVOLVING YEAR
"'It snows!' cries the schoolboy, 'Hurrah!' And his shout is heard through parlor and hall."
MCGUFFEY's THIRD READER.
(Well, maybe it was the Second Reader. And if it was the Fourth, what difference does it make? And, furthermore, who 's doing this thing, you or me?)
Had it not been that never in my life have I ever heard anybody say either "It snows!" or "Hurrah!" it is improbable that I should have remembered the first line of a poem describing the effect produced upon different kinds of people by the sight of the first snowstorm of winter. Had it not been for the plucky (not to say heroic) effort to rhyme "hall" with "hurrah" I should not have remembered the second, and still another line of it, depicting the emotions of a poor widow with a large family and a small woodpile, is burned into my memory only by reason of the shocking language it contains, the more shocking in that it was deliberately put forth to be read by innocent-minded children. Poor Carrie Rinehart! When she stood up to read that, she got as red as a beet, and I believed her when she told me afterward that she thought she would sink right through that floor. Of course, some had to snicker, but the most of us, I am thankful to say, were a credit to our bringing up, and never let on we heard it. All the same it was a terrible thing to have to speak right out loud before everybody. If any of the boys (let alone the girls), had said that because he felt like saying it, he would have been sent in to the principal, and that night his daddy would have given him another licking.
Even now I cannot bring myself to write the line without toning it down.
"'It
It was a bully library, but the report wasn't interesting. Major Humphreys's always was. He was the treasurer because he worked in the bank. He came from the Western Reserve, and said "cut" when he meant coat, and "hahnt" when he meant heart. I can shut my eyes and hear him read his report now: "Infant-class, Mrs. Sarah M. Boggs, one dolla thutty-eight cents; Miss Dan'ells's class, fawty-six cents; Miss Goldrick's class, twenty-faw cents; Mr. Pahnker's class, ninety-three cents; Miss Rut's class, naw repawt."
Poor old Miss Root! There was hardly ever any report from her class. Often she hadn't a penny to give, and perhaps the other old ladies, who found the keenest possible delight in doing what they called "running up the references," had no more, for they were relics of an age when women weren't supposed to have money to fling right and left in the foolish way that women will if they're not looked after - shoes for the baby, and a new calico dress every two or three years or so.
Yes, it is rather interesting for a change now and then to hear these folks go on about what a terrible thing the Sabbath-school is, and how it does more harm than good. They get really excited about it, and storm around as if they expected folks to take them seriously. They know, just as well as we do, that this wouldn't be any kind of a country at all if we couldn't look back and remember the Sabbath-school, or if we couldn't fix up the children Sunday afternoons, and find their lesson leaves for them, and hunt up a penny to give to the poor heathen, and hear them say the Golden Text before they go, and tell them to be nice. Papa and mamma watch them from the window till they turn the corner, and then go back to the Sunday paper with a secure sort of feeling. They won't learn anything they oughtn't to at the Sabbath-school.
THE REVOLVING YEAR
"'It snows!' cries the schoolboy, 'Hurrah!' And his shout is heard through parlor and hall."
MCGUFFEY's THIRD READER.
(Well, maybe it was the Second Reader. And if it was the Fourth, what difference does it make? And, furthermore, who 's doing this thing, you or me?)
Had it not been that never in my life have I ever heard anybody say either "It snows!" or "Hurrah!" it is improbable that I should have remembered the first line of a poem describing the effect produced upon different kinds of people by the sight of the first snowstorm of winter. Had it not been for the plucky (not to say heroic) effort to rhyme "hall" with "hurrah" I should not have remembered the second, and still another line of it, depicting the emotions of a poor widow with a large family and a small woodpile, is burned into my memory only by reason of the shocking language it contains, the more shocking in that it was deliberately put forth to be read by innocent-minded children. Poor Carrie Rinehart! When she stood up to read that, she got as red as a beet, and I believed her when she told me afterward that she thought she would sink right through that floor. Of course, some had to snicker, but the most of us, I am thankful to say, were a credit to our bringing up, and never let on we heard it. All the same it was a terrible thing to have to speak right out loud before everybody. If any of the boys (let alone the girls), had said that because he felt like saying it, he would have been sent in to the principal, and that night his daddy would have given him another licking.
Even now I cannot bring myself to write the line without toning it down.
"'It