Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 2, 1906)
1 , - . . i . A " n -. - T -f -p r' " ," .. . liUULI LU. - i i . -; ' . n' AS j ' ' COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY THE NEW YORK HERALD COMPANY. I TELL you that a boy has a lot ofience it will make, any -way, for when I trouble in thia world. It iau't all play am grown up I am going to be a broker nor all work, not even all school, tout I like dad, and separate the country sometimes it's even worse than tbat,;PPle from their income,, and Cousin if you can believe me. ' Bob says that IT your own income is big Grandma gave us a party out at theieuough the world-won t turn its back on farm Saturday afternoon, and if anything , you even if you turn your toes in. Grand ought to be all joyfor a fellow it's whatma,s want you to do the things which hi cxmndmother does for -him. for BOme-'Pake a difference now, which is why they Vnr m fttUrtw'a frranrimil wnntn him toilet bare a good time always, and doesn't get the fidgets over verbs and such things which make life a double trouble, espe cially irregular verbs, which I hope Mr. Roosevelt will attend to when he'has time to think of little folks. Mothers are al ways fussing over what you will be when you grow up, and they even don't tell you to turn your toes out and your chin up for the difference it makes to you now v.n h rfifforpnra it will make when you vou eat all the cake and urn you want without telline you that you will be a dyspeptic when you are grown up. Well, anyway, mamma and papa were up on a visit when we naa our party, and the trouble I had in taking care of them taught me what a bard life a leader of society must have. Papa said that he had brought mamma up for a visit because he wanted to look at some real lambs. He hadnH seen one in wall street, he said. for 89 long a tune that he had fori iimij iim auas tawejKBXOlBsaL iorgot tne 1 But dad must have been joking then, for when I took him over theviarm to show him where the woodcock had been and the squirrels are, and the trees we got the most nuts from, and how the cider mill worked, and where the pond is we are going to skate on, we passed a meadow' with a herd of pigs rooting around and dad said : "There's ;.soirie lambs . now. How good they do look!" I had. never before seen my mamma with grandma, and it was good fun to hear her bossed about just as much as she bosses me about. Grandma : told mamma that she wanted her and. dad to lead the Virginia reel, and mamma said she had forgot it. Grandma looked sur prised, and said: "I should just as soon chink of yoae forgetting your Dravers. Ton it right down there and call over the figures to sua unal vou jcet tham. ntj- And, by gee! mamma did, looking- as scared as Pussy Wentworth when she gets hauled up at school for making eyes across aisle, instead of studying to fand out where Troy is, which everybody ought to know is near Albany, and I'd like to have been there when they had all that row about Helen. Well, grandpa told dad to string some apples and hang them up in front of the log fire to roast. I asked dad if he knew how and he said be was considered one of the finest roasters on the Street. He's no good. He tied strings to .the stems of the big red apples all right and hung them from tacks in front of the fire and then went away because he said he had to find out if all the things were true that they said about grandpa's hard cider, and when I went in to see how the apples were getting oa all the strings were .burned wnich and tiiay ad fallen, onto 1 the hearth. One, which was oozing red I hot juice, fell on the cat's back, aud she made a leap which landed her in the bowl of popcorn, and there 1 was, master of ceremonies, witn no roasted apples auu the popcorn to do all over again. I'll never go in for- social leadership when I'm grown up.. I set Eggy at work on a new lot of apples, and Pussy Wentworth got busy popping some more corn, and when I got around to her again she said it burned her hands to hold the popper over the coals; so she put it oa them, and when I got back all tne corn in the popper was turning merrily and Eggy .had made a sneak to hear mamma playing Broadway tunes. Afte that everything I wanted done I did myself, and I got so hot from the popping and so sticky with the apple juice that when I went to help pull the molasses candy unfiTT"" ordered me to ecrub u to; half an hour or else I'd form untidy hab its, which would be fixed on me when I was a grown up. But grandma, told her to let me alone, for if I didn't see to the candy pulling it wouldn't be pulled. I'm just telling you this to let you see what a lot of trouble a-fellow has in life: but there was good fun, too, for when it came to the Virginia reel, with grandpa playing his flute and Mary the piano, you didn't have to know how to dance it to dance it all right. I think that was a bluff of mamma's about not knowing how, because when she and dad got started they whooped it up and down, crosswise and the march around nutil the littlest kids were screaming with delight. All the afternoon and during the dance I saw dad and mamma looking at Pussy Wentworth as if she might be a Turkish rug they were thinking of buying, and were wondering how she would match the curtains and furniture iu the parlor. After supper, when the grown ups were getting the kids ready for the, wagon to drive back into town, I heard dad say to Pussy, "Well, my young lady, what are you going to be when you grow up?" Pussy looked him over, not a bit afraid, and said, "I had been thinking some of being your daughter-in-law, but if I would have to go to Xew York and live I don't believe I'll marry Ham." "Really, now," said dad, "that might disappoint Ham. What's the matter with New xork?" "I'll tell you," said Pussy, slowly and solemnly, "I don't believe I'd like to be a New York lady if I had to wear a prin cess gown that buttons up in the back like your wife's; the principal thing I want to be grown up for is not to have to wear a frock that I can't button mj self." ,