United States or South Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Gim me yer hand, Prue; I'm a big boy, 'n I'm takin' care er you." "Yes, you're taking care of me real good," Prue answered sweetly, "and I love you fer taking me to my Randy, but Hi," she continued, "I'll have to sit down a minute, my feets are so tired." "Oh, there's time 'nough," said Hi. "We'll rest a while, an' then, after we've walked a little ways, fust thing you'll see'll be the deepot.
Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he feels like goin' there. Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot." "Of course," assented Constance; and her father nodded. "That'd be fair, and it'd be easy," went on Tom. "We'll fix it up that-a-way, me and Miss Constance not you.
It will be the making of us, for our land is first-rate for small crops, and the children can help at that, and with a deepot close by it would be such easy work. That's what I call helping folks to help themselves. Won't it be grand?" Becky looked so enthusiastic that Emily could not remain uninterested, though market-gardening did not sound very romantic.
Walter Babson was born in Kansas. His father was a farmer and horse-doctor, a heavy drinker, an eccentric who joined every radical political movement. In a country school, just such a one as Una had taught, then in high school in a near-by town, Walter had won all the prizes for essays and debating, and had learned a good deal about Shakespeare and Cæsar and George Washington. Also he had learned a good deal about drinking beer, smoking manfully, and tempting the giggling girls who hung about the "deepot." He ran away from high school, and in the most glorious years of his life worked his way down the Mississippi and up the Rio Grande, up to Alaska and down to Costa Rica, a butt and jester for hoboes, sailors, longshoremen, miners, cow-punchers, lunch-room owners, and proprietors of small newspapers. He learned to stick type and run a press. He returned to Kansas and worked on a country newspaper, studying poetry and college-entrance requirements in the evening. He had, at this time, the not entirely novel idea that "he ought to be able to make a lot of good fiction out of all his experiences." Actually, he had no experiences, because he had no instinct for beauty. The proof is that he read quite solemnly and reverently a vile little periodical for would-be authors, which reduced authorship to a way of earning one's living by supplying editors with cheap but ingenious items to fill space. It put literature on a level with keeping a five-and-ten-cent store. But Walter conned its pompous trade journal discussions as to whether the name and address of the author should be typed on the left or the right side of the first page of a manuscript; its lively little symposia, by such successful market-gardeners of literature as Mamie Stuyvesant Blupp and Bill Brown and Dr. J.
Upon the low stone wall they perched, and a pretty picture they made, sharing their lunch and throwing the crumbs to the sparrows that twittered in the dusty road. "We've been walking so long, we must be most to the deepot, Hi," said Prue. "I guess so," the small boy answered, "so now we've finished the lunch, we'll just start along.
"No, I guess not," said Hi, "but it's a little longer'n I thought to the deepot." "Don't you know the way?" she asked when upon reaching a fork in the road Hi stopped and stared about him as if puzzled as to which to choose. "Oh, yes, I know the way to the deepot," said Hi, "only I was a thinkin' which was the nearest way.
Ain't I been to the deepot times 'nough?" was the confident reply. "You jest come 'long with me, Prue, an' I tell ye we'll find your Randy. I'm bigger'n you be 'n I know." "When will we go, Hi?" asked Prue, now confident that her little champion could take her safely to Randy. "Now," said Hi, "right off now.
"Yes," she said, "there's a pink gingham I want to wear to the barbecue to-morrow. There ought to be a hat to match. Did the hats come, Mandy?" "Calvin he say there's another box, but he ain' brought it up from the deepot. He was ridin' dat Jo-mule, and this yer basket was all he could ca'y." In the pink frock Becky looked like a lovely child.
"What train shall I be able to take to Greentown," he managed to call after the conductor. "Don't know, sonny! Ask the ticket agent in the Lowell deepot; he's an old hand and he'll know!"
As Jabe had passed the store, a few minutes before, one of the boys had called out, facetiously, "Shet yer mouth when ye go by the deepot, Laigs; the train's comin' in!" But he only smiled placidly, though it was an ancient joke, the flavor of which had just fully penetrated the rustic skull; and the villagers could not resist titillating the sense of humor with it once or twice a month.
Word Of The Day