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Was there ever anything, I said, like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations, inventing or finding them, since the time of Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly.
The sap stirs early in the legs of a country-boy, and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes, which get tired of boots, and want to come out and touch the soil just as soon as the sun has warmed it a little. The country-boy goes barefoot just as naturally as the trees burst their buds, which were packed and varnished over in the fall to keep the water and the frost out.
It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. These harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad.
Do you s'pose I'm going to let myself be beaten in such a matter by a mere country-boy like Dabney Kinzer?" "Father," said Ford, "if you'd seen how Dick behaved, that night, out there on the ocean, in 'The Swallow'!" "Just as well, just as well, my son." "Hurrah!" shouted Ford. "Then it's all right, and Dick Lee'll have a fair shake in the world!" "A what, my son?" exclaimed his mother.
John had got thus far in his studies, which were apparently arithmetic and geography, but were in reality the Arabian Nights, and other books of high and mighty adventure. He was a simple country-boy, and did not know much about the world as it is, but he had one of his own imagination, in which he lived a good deal.
Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it the brown curls, or the large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut features, or the charming little figure of this fairy-like person? Was this expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing a country-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in him what John felt himself to be?
You will understand now why the young man wanted me to give him a certificate of his fitness to teach, and why I did not choose to urge him to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received. Go he must, that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise.
If you are a teacher, you know what to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a pointer or a setter to his field-work. The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of life it has lived.
Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it the brown curls, or the large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut features, or the charming little figure of this fairy-like person? Was this expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing a country-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in him what John felt himself to be?
I did not choose to urge him to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received. Go he must, that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise.
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