UCSB LIBRARY WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY WE WOULD ALL RUN DOWN TO OPEN THE GATE. WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY BY THOMAS WOOD PARRY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. WOOD BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1918 Copyright, 1907 BY THOMAS WOOD PAF.RY All rights reserved DEDICATION. THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY WIFE AND OUR TWO BOYS. THOMAS WOOD PARRY. PREFACE There probably never was a father who did not have to face the demand, "Daddy, tell me a story about when you were a little boy." And there probably never was a boy who did not find a story about his own father's boyhood more fascinating than any other. The stories which follow were in answer to such demands. Many of them are partly true, even the one Negro folk-lore story having this element of truth that it was told to me in my boyhood, with many others of the Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox kind, by my own old black folks around the cabin fire. I incorporate this one as a sample, yet I use only one because they have all been published before. Some expressions, many of them colloquial, will be found in the stories which might be questioned from a rhetorical standpoint. Of these I have only to say that the stories were told, not written, and that they were told to children. They are printed for children, and have therefore been kept as much like the told story as possible. THOMAS WOOD PARRY. CONTENTS PAGE MY OLD B'ACK MA'Y 11 THE NEGRO CABIN 18 OLD BUSTER AND THE SOLDIER 24 OLD TOPKNOT AND HER DUCKS 30 OLD TOPKNOT AND THE HAWK 36 LITTLE BROTHER'S CAT 44 HUNTING BEARS 48 THE COUNTRY WOODPILE 54 THE OLD GOOSE'S NEST 64 THE NEST OLD TOPKNOT MADE 73 WADING IN THE BRANCH 77 RIDING ON THE PLOW 87 EATING GRAVEYARD BLACKBERRIES .... 102 THE OLD TURKEY'S NEST Ill THE TAR MAN 123 FINDING THINGS 130 SHEP 140 CATCHING BIRDS 151 THE MILL-DAM 159 THE WOODS OWL 170 SHEP AND THE LAMB 176 THE LOOM-HOUSE 182 FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR . 187 viii CONTENTS PAGE LITTLE DICK 202 THE HAY HARVEST TRAPPING "I WCW'T Do IT" . GRANDPA'S DOG COALY THE FOX-HUNT . "ABERPERDABER" JOE AND THE DEAD INDIAN "GRANDPAP'S COME" THE CIRCUS FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS "We would all run down to open the gate" Frontispiece PAGE " 'Deed I will be good to dis baby, I will" .... 13 "And Mammy would call me her onliest baby" . . 19 "And he didn't get to shoot old Buster" .... 25 " Away they went, right into it " 31 "The old hen told them to run and hide" .... 37 " Fro' down yo' gun en clam er tree " 49 " The horses started and he fell off backward " . . 55 "GoodLawdy! What '11 Mammy say ?" .... 79 "En heah you all's a-settin' on top o' dey bones!" 103 " Three heads just showing above the straw " . . 113 "He knew every cow, and would bring them all" . 141 " Elephant, tigers, and birds of paradise " .... 161 " He carried the lamb and they followed " .... 177 " It's Billy, and Dan's ridin' him" 189 " Many a fine day in that old meadow " 211 " The finest music that you ever heard " 245 "The doors are now open; crawl under the tent" . 273 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT " And then we giggled " 44 "Oh, yes, it was a fox" 64 ' ' What a fine nest I Ve made ! " . 73 x ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "And watched it as it cut through the sod" ... 87 "Lemme loose, I tell you!" 123 "Go on, niggah; I ain't afeard" 131 "The light from the candle would blind the birds" 151 "On-twis' 'im! On-twis' 'im!" 170 "They were coming in" 182 "In all sorts of mischief" 202 "Ready for company" 221 "I won't do it Yas, suh; yas, suh, I will" . . . 233 "Go after him, Coaly!" 238 "Aberperdaber!" 257 "OLawdy, Mr. Injun!" 262 1 ' Hev a sweetcake ? " 267 MY OLD B'ACK MA'Y. THE LITTLE boy was fretful and cross. He was a very little boy, and he was cutting a tooth. No wonder he was cross. His gums hurt, his little legs were chafed, and he had a touch of something very much like the colic, which he was supposed to have outgrown. So he just cried and fretted; it was all he could do, poor little boy, and no one blamed him a bit. Maybe there was a pin sticking him or a band too tight, and he couldn't tell a word about it, or get any of the big people around to understand what was the matter; but he could cry, and that expressed all his troubles, so he just cried. "Hello! little man," said papa, coming into the room. "What is the matter with daddy's boy?" The little boy looked up expectantly, for he had begun to like daddy pretty well and to find out that he was of some use in the world, after all. His crying stopped with a few mild little sobs, and he put up his arms. 11 12 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. Papa took him up and began to walk with him. The little boy looked up, expecting to hear a song about "Yankee Doodle," "Old Dan Tuck- er," or "Little Boy Blue." He did not know what any of them meant, of course, but he had heard them and liked them all. Daddy had sung until he was tired, however, and he wasn't much of a singer, anyway. "Suppose I tell you a story about when I was a little boy," said papa. It is hard to say just how much of this the little boy understood, but very little boys under- stand a great deal more sometimes than older people think they do. Anyway, it seemed to please him, and he gave a little grunt of approval, and put up one of his chubby hands on his father's chin, with the tips of four pink fingers between his lips. Maybe he was wondering how a big man like papa could ever have been a little boy; and also, if a little bit of a boy like himself could ever get to be as big a man as papa. "Well," said papa, "when I was a little bit of a baby, just the littlest kind of a baby, my mamma gave me away to a black negro girl. When I was just a day old, my mamma sent out to the cabin for the blackest kind of a negro " 'DEED i WILL BE GOOD TO DIS BABY, i WILL. MY OLD B'ACK MA'Y. 15 girl named Mary. Mary came in where the little baby was, and stood looking at him and grinning. "'Oh, my! Ain't he p'ity!' said Mary. 'Kin I tech him, Miss Ella?' " 'Mary,' said my mamma, 'I am going to give this baby to you to take care of. You can call him your baby, and when he gets big enough you can take him out in the yard and in the fields with you. You won't have anything to do but take care of him. He is your baby now, and you must be good to him.' " 'Yes 'm, I sho'ly will take ca'h ob 'im,' said Mary, ' an' I 's awful proud ob 'im. Lemme hoi' him right now. 'Deed I will be good to dis baby, I will. Nobody ner nuffin bettah nevah tech 'im, dey hadn't.' ' ' So Mary took him in her arms and coddled him up and loved him. "When he got bigger, she used to take him out in the yard under the apple-trees and put a big quilt on the grass and lay him down on it. Then she would bring him big red apples to play with; he was too little to eat them. Sometimes she would hold him on old Buster's back that was the dog and let him ride; and every time the little boy rode on old Buster's shaggy back he clapped his hands and squealed because he 16 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. was glad. And old Buster was proud to be carrying the little boy, and held his head and tail up high, and went easy to keep from drop- ping him off. But Mary always had her fat black hands under the little boy's arms, holding him so he couldn't fall; and if old Buster went too fast, he would just walk out from under the baby boy and leave him in Mary's arms she never would let the baby fall; then old Buster would turn around and come back, wagging his tail, to take the little boy another ride. Wasn't he a good old dog? I will tell you some time how the little boy paid old Buster back one day for being good to him." Papa stopped talking a minute, and the little boy grunted two or three times and put his hand up to his father's lips again. 1 ' Well, Mary nursed the baby and took care of him and called him 'my baby.' Sometimes she said, 'my onliest baby,' and when the little boy got old enough to talk, he called her 'my old b'ack Ma'y.' And one time not long ago, after daddy had been away from the old home ever so many years, he went back, and while he was in a store a big, fat, black woman came running into the store and said: 'Lawd bress my soul, ef thah ain't my baby!' It was MY OLD B'ACK MA'Y. 17 daddy's old b'ack Ma'y sure enough, and she just threw her arms around her baby and gave him a good hug. Her baby was a grown man with a big black mustache, and didn't look very much like anybody's baby, but it made no difference to Mary; it was her baby just the same, and I suppose he would be yet if she could see him. And the big grown-up baby was just as glad to see her, and he patted her on the shoulder and said: 'Well! Well! Well! If it isn't my old black Mary! Bless your good old heart! I 'm awfully glad to see you.' " ' Why, bress my soul! you 's des as purty as you was when you was a little baby,' said Mary. "Then Mary and her big baby talked a long while about old times, and each one asked about the other's folks, and wished that they could all be back on the old farm again as they used to be. "Wouldn't you like to see papa's good old b'ack Ma'y? Well, maybe when we get rich we can go to see her or get her to come out here." And then papa fell to thinking hard about something, and the little boy closed his eyes and went to sleep. THE NEGRO CABIN. THE NEXT TIME papa came in when the little boy was feeling real bad, he stopped crying and held up his hands. Papa picked him up and started to walking and singing ' ' Old Dan Tucker"; but the little boy was not sat- isfied and was about to cry again. Finally, papa said: "Well, let 's tell another story. I '11 tell you about Henry and Jimmy." And then the little boy put his fingers up to his father's lips again. "Well, Henry was a little black negro boy and Jimmy was a little yellow negro boy. Hen- ry was the oldest and I was next and Jimmy was the youngest. Their pappy's name was John and their mammy's name was Maria, and I used to call their pappy Uncle John and their mammy well, I sometimes called her Mammy Maria, but most all the time I just called her Mammy, as the little negro boys themselves did. And Mammy Maria used to call me her onliest baby, and used to give me cookies and maple 18 AND MAMMY WOULD CALL ME HER ONLIEST BABY. THE NEGRO CABIN. 21 sugar, and make doughnuts for me that looked like little dolls and some that looked like ducks and some like pigs. She would bake them and give them to me, and I would always give some to Henry and Jimmy. ' ' At night I would go down to the cabin and listen to Uncle John play the fiddle, and some- times I would see the negroes dance, and then Uncle John and all of them would tell stories. They would tell all about the bears and foxes and 'coons and rabbits and the opossums. The negroes knew how all the animals and birds out in the woods and fields lived, and they told stories about them and called them ' Bre'r Rab- bit ' and 'Bre'r Fox' and 'Bre'r Bear.' And then when it got to be bed-time, Uncle John would take me in his arms and carry me up to the house. Sometimes Mammy would carry me and sometimes Mary. ' ' I loved Uncle John and Mammy and Mary and Henry and Jimmy almost as much as I did my own father and mother, and I loved Johnny and Harrison and Sam and Liz and all the rest too, but Mary and Mammy and Henry and Jim- my were the ones I loved best. ' ' Whenever any of them would carry me up to the house, grandpa would make them come 22 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. in and sit down, and they would be mightily pleased. He would ask Uncle John about the horses and crops and cattle, and grandma would ask Mammy about the soap-making or when the geese ought to be picked and all about the pre- serving, and when they went back to the cab- in they would always carry some little present with them. "One night when I had been to the cabin and the negroes had told lots of stories, and it was later than we thought it was, grandpa called Uncle John and told him to bring me up to bed, and when he started with me, I said, ' I want Mammy to go too"; so Mammy put her shawl over her head and came along too, but we hadn't got out of the door until I said, ' I want Ma'y too, and Henry and Jimmy,' and before they could get me up to the house I had made nearly every negro in the cabin go along with me. "When granpa opened the door the negroes began to back off in the dark so he couldn't see them, but he saw them, and Uncle John told him why they had all come. Then grandpa laughed and asked all of them to come in; then he sent Johnny back for Uncle John's fiddle and handed it to him before he knew it was there, and Uncle John said his finger was sore and he couldn't play much, but he soon forgot all about THE NEGRO CABIN. 23 his sore finger, and in a little while was playing just as if he were down in the cabin, only a little better maybe. They all had apples and pop- corn, and everybody had a good time. Grand- ma gave Mary and Liz some new ribbons and Mammy some linen for aprons and sent Aunt Nina some yarn to knit socks, and then grandpa gave Uncle John a set of new fiddle-strings and the boys some gloves. Mammy Maria was the best talker of them all, so she said: " 'Lawsy! Mahs Ben, anybody 'd think all these heah niggas still b'longed to you, jes like dey used to, an' you wasn't payin' us good wages an' us a-layin' aroun' heah a-eatin' up yo' co'n an' bacon an' bu'nin' yo' fiah-wood.' " ' Well, I can't get rid of you,' said grandpa, winking at Uncle John, ' so I might as well take care of you.' "But they all knew he was joking, and they all grinned and kept right on eating apples and popcorn, and they all knew he was in earnest when he said: 'I need you all, Maria, and you are working for small wages, and we won't forget that we have all belonged to the same family for fifty years and more.' "Then they all said good-night and went back to the cabin, and by that time I was sound asleep on the rug in front of the fire." OLD BUSTER AND THE SOLDIER. AFTER the stories about the darkies at the cabins and Uncle John and his fiddle, there were many stories, and the little boy would put up his arms and smile for them whenever his father came near. Pretty soon he got big enough to say, " 'To'y, daddy, 'to'y"; and one night papa said, "Really, this is getting to be a habit, this story-telling; I didn't realize what I was getting into. ' ' But he kept on telling stories just the same, and mamma said she believed that papa enjoyed them as much as the baby. The little boy was told all about "Bre'r Bear" and "Bre'r Fox" and "Bre'r Rabbit," just as the same stories had been told to him when he was a little boy, and finally his father bought a book called "Uncle Remus," and read to the little boy the very same stories he had been tell- ing him the same stories that every little Southern boy has heard in the negro cabins on the old plantations. Then he began to hear other stories about a particular little boy and 24 "AND HE DIDN'T GET TO SHOOT OLD BUSTER." OLD BUSTER AND THE SOLDIER, 27 the little negroes that he was raised with, and the dogs and horses on the old Kentucky farm. The little boy had grown very fast, and had learned to talk and ask for the stories he liked best to hear. "Tell me 'bout Shep or sumpin' 'bout a dog," he said one day, as he climbed up between papa and the paper he was reading. "Oh, yes!" said papa; "I promised a long time ago that I would tell you something more about old Buster. He was the dog we had when I was a little bit of a baby. Well, when I got to be a big boy about four years old, just as old as you are now, why old Buster was getting to be a very old, old dog, because he was a great big dog when I was born. "Well, when I was four years old, an awful war had been going on for a long time. One day some soldiers rode up in grandpa's yard, and one of them, the captain, told grandpa to go to the stable and get him a horse. The soldier came up real close to the house, and old Buster ran out and barked at him. The soldier was mad and cross, and old Buster barked so loud and fast that the soldier couldn't hear what grandpa was saying; and the first thing we knew the old soldier took his gun from behind his saddle and 28 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. pointed it right at old Buster. I was standing by listening, and when I saw the gun pointed at my good old dog, I just ran and grabbed him around the neck. The soldier put his gun down and didn't shoot, and I didn't let go of old Bus- ter until the soldier was gone. He took one of grandpa's best horses with him, but he didn't get to shoot old Buster. I remember that one of the negro boys held me on old Buster's back and I rode him back to the house. No, we never got that horse back; but we were used to losing horses in those times. ' ' One of the first things that I can remember is riding on old Buster. Mary would hold me on his back, and when he got to going too fast and would run out from under me, Mary would hold me right up and keep me from falling, and then old Buster would turn around and come back to get me again. "It wasn't long after I saved him from the soldier until he got too old and I got too big for him to carry me. Then when I would get on his back he would sit right down and slide me off behind ; but he would always look up at me and wag his tail and rub his nose against me when he would slide me off that way, as much as to say, 'I love you just as much as ever, little master, OLD BUSTER AND THE SOLDIER. 28 but you are getting big and heavy now, and old Buster is getting old and weak.' " Yes, that 's all this time. Go to sleep now: get on a great big old yellow dog's woolly back and ride right into Nodtown." OLD TOPKNOT AND L HER DUCKS. 46 J'T^UCKY 'to'ies to-night?" asked the lit- tle boy, raising his eyebrows and nod- ding his head at papa. ' ' Well, let 's see, " said papa. ' ' I don't think of any right now, but "Oh! think right hard, daddy. Something about Shep or a hawk or the chickens." "Oh, yes! Now I have one. It 's about the old hen that raised the family of ducks. " One time grandma got some very fine duck eggs from one of her neighbors, and she wanted to take extra care with them, and have all of them to hatch out. So I heard her say to grandpa one day: ' Well, if I set these eggs under a duck, she is liable to go off swimming and forget all about them, so I think I '11 make old Topknot raise the ducks. She has been on the nest two days and nights now, and nothing under her but one old white door-knob." "Oh, yes!" laughed the little boy; "the old 30 AWAY THEY WENT, RIGHT INTO IT.' OLD TOPKNOT AND HER DUCKS. 33 hen thought that was an egg, didn't she ? You told me about grandma giving the hens door- knobs for nest-eggs, didn't you? Tell me that one again sometime, papa, won't you? Go on, daddy." "Well, old Topknot was a great big old speckled hen, and grandma knew that she would never leave her nest long enough to spoil the eggs, because she had been tried before. So grandma went and lifted old Topknot off the nest, and she squalled and scolded and ruffled her feathers up, but she didn't peck at grandma like some of the hens did, because she was gentle. While grandma held her, grandpa cleaned out the nest and put some nice fresh dirt in the bottom of it and then some nice clean straw, and patted it into a round nest, and then put the fourteen eggs in it; then they set old Topknot back on the eggs. The old hen went right to work, fixing the eggs around with her feet and wings and bill, and then she settled down to business. "Well, sir, in four weeks there was a little duck under that old hen for every egg she had set on. The old hen turned her head to one side and looked at them as funny as if she thought, ' Well, these are the strangest-looking chickens I 34 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. ever saw; but I suppose they will come out all right.' "Next day grandpa put her and the little ducks in a three-cornered board pen, and pretty soon he let them out during the day so they could run around and get something to eat. One day the old hen wandered down by the branch with her family. She had been running and catching grasshoppers until she didn't real- ize how far she was from home. "Well, sir, the very minute those little ducks saw the water, away they went, pell-mell right into it. Some of them just fell over on their backs, on their heads, and any way, just so they got into the water. As soon as the old hen saw what was happening, she ran to the bank, squawking and clucking and trying in every way in the world to keep her children from drowning themselves. " 'Oh, my goodness!' wailed the old hen; 'I always knew there was something wrong with these chickens. They never were built right from the very first, and now they haven't got sense enough to keep from drowning themselves. Squ-a-w-k, k-, k-e, r-r-h!' "And the old hen stopped and threw up her head and looked all around, as if she were looking OLD TOPKNOT AND HER DUCKS. 35 for help, and I believe she was; but she didn't see anybody, so she went to fussing along the bank again, and reaching out after a little duck with her bill every time one came near enough. ''All this time the little ducks were having the finest time they ever dreamed of, paddling and chasing mosquitos and sticking their heads under water and their bills in the soft mud. At last the ducks got tired and came out of the water, and the old hen hurried them home. ' ' Next morning she started out in a different direction, but the little ducks soon found their way to the branch again, and before long they wouldn't follow the old hen at all; they just made a bee-line every morning for the branch, and" "What 's a 'bee-line/ daddy?" "That means a straight line. I '11 tell you sometime why it is called a bee-line. "And the old hen had to follow the ducks. She did it, too, and took care of them until they got big enough to take care of themselves. "Then grandma said, ' Well, old Topknot has had enough trouble for one summer, and has been pretty faithful; I '11 set her on hen eggs next time." OLD TOPKNOT AND THE HAWK. ^6 T T 70ULD you like to hear another story y y about old Topknot?" said papa, one warm summer day, as he and the little boy sat on the front porch and looked at the little grass-plot and the hot, dusty street. "Goon, daddy." "Well, it's a short story, but it is one I would like to tell you and one that, I want you to remember, is true. ' ' One real warm summer day grandpa was sitting on the big side porch, with his chair tilted back against the wall, reading his paper. He had just noticed old Topknot and her big family of chickens away down in the yard under some big apple-trees, and he was thinking how nice they looked. I expect grandpa had just about gone to sleep, for the paper had fallen on the floor, when suddenly he heard the old hen squall. He jumped up and there was a great big gray hawk flying right down towards old Topknot and her chickens 36 THE OLD HEN TOLD THEM TO RUN AND HIDE. TOPKNOT AND THE HAWK. 39 "Grandpa knew before he got his eyes open just exactly what was the matter, for he had been on the farm and around among fowls and animals too long not to know what old Top- knot's squall meant. He didn't stop a second to think what to do; he jumped up so quickly that his glasses fell on the floor, and ran in the house and picked up the shotgun from behind the door. It didn't take him a minute, for grandpa was mighty quick, even if he was getting old. When he got back on the porch, the hawk was on the ground and the old hen was fighting him to keep him from getting the chickens. " The little chickens had all run and hidden in the grass and under the weeds, and every time the hawk would get away from the old hen long enough to find a chicken, the old hen would be right on him again. The hen and hawk were so mixed up that grandpa couldn't shoot, because if he had, he would have killed both of them. They rolled over and over on the ground, the hawk fighting with his wings and claws and the old hen fighting with her beak, wings, and feet. "At last the hawk got tired of fighting such a brave old hen, and flew up on a limb. He was going to stay there until he could see one of the little chickens, and then fly down right sud- 40 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. denly and get it before the old hen could reach him. The old hen seemed to know that, too, and to realize that he would certainly get one this time, for she gave a cry of distress that would have brought help if any brave fowls had been near. But old Mr. Hawk didn't get to look for any chicken, for while the fight was going on grandpa had his gun pointed right at him, and the hawk had not more than touched the limb before grandpa pulled the trigger. 'Bang!' went the gun, and down tumbled the hawk, kicking and flopping right by the old hen. As soon as he touched the ground the old hen was on top of him again. "He was too near dead to fight back any more, and pretty soon he stretched out on the ground as dead as a door nail. The old hen was still pecking at him. Then she stood back a little and looked at him. She thought she had killed him, but she was so mad that she kept on pecking him and beating him with her wings; then she stopped and walked all around him. She was the proudest hen you ever saw. If she had not been a modest, well-behaved sort of hen, I believe she would have crowed; but as it was, she just looked at the hawk awhile and gave him a few more pecks, and then OLD TOPKNOT AND THE HAWK. 41 fussed around and gathered up her chickens and walked off to the house with them." "Why, papa, weren't the little chickens afraid to come out from under the grass and weeds where they had been hiding?" asked the little boy. "Not a bit of it," said papa. "Just as soon as the old hen had told them that there was danger and to hide, they didn't stop to ask what was the matter and why they must hide; they just hid, and did it quickly, too; if they hadn't, why one of them would have gone up through the air in that old hawk's claws. And then when she told them to come to her, they did it right away, without any questions or waiting." "Oh, papa! the hen couldn't tell them all of that, now could she? Hens can't talk." "Yes, she could," said papa, with a funny kind of smile. "She could tell them all of that just as easily as your mamma could tell you." "Oh! I was talking about the hen," said the little boy, twisting around in his seat. "Yes," said papa, "the old hen makes one kind of a noise that means one thing and another kind of a noise that means another thing, and the little chickens all understand her perfectly; 42 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. they understand just as soon as they are born, which is more than little children do. Don't you think that there must be a mighty good God somewhere, Who teaches the little chickens and things to take care of themselves that way?" ' ' Yes, sir. Then what did she do ? " "Well," said papa, laughing a little, "she kept them all close about her until she got almost to the house, clucking and ruffling her feathers up and turning around, looking to see if they were coming, and every once in a while knocking them over with her feet and stepping on them; and then after she got them home, where she knew they were safe, she dropped her feathers all close to her sides and stuck up her head and said, 'Clack-kah-kah!' That was because she was scared and excited. Now that the danger was all over, she was just beginning to think about what a tight place she had been in." "Wasn't that a good old hen, daddy? Is that all about her ? " "Well, yes; but suppose that when she told those chickens to run and hide, one of them had said, ' I don't want to hide, I want to scratch; what do you want me to hide for?' OLD TOPKNOT AND THE HAWK. 43 What do you suppose would have happened to that "I-e-e-yum!" yawned the little boy; "'scuse me; I believe it's time for my nap." "Yes, that's all. Now run and bring me the paper." LITTLE BROTHER'S CAT. ADDY," said the little boy, "didn't "Pi I you have any kittie when you were a little boy?" And he threw his tin horse and wagon in the corner and his rag doll on top of them, and came and stood in front of papa and looked up at him. "Say, papa, tell me about your little kit- tie." And by the time papa had laid his paper down the little boy was up in his lap, getting settled in a good, com- fortable place, ready to hear a story. "Let me see," said papa, pretending to think real hard; "it seems to me that we used to have plenty of cats on the farm, but they didn't do anything but sleep and steal milk and chickens and make a fuss at night." "And then we giggled." 44 LITTLE BROTHER'S CAT. 45 ' ' Oh, daddy ! tell me about some nice kitties. ' ' "Well, cats don't amount to much, any way," said papa, "but I do remember one that had almost as much sense and loved a boy almost as much as an ordinary dog not as much as Shep, of course, or any real smart dog, but just an ordinary, every-day sort of a dog. "When your Uncle Ben was a little bit of a fellow, smaller than you are now, he had a cat that followed him everywhere. One time he got very sick, and the cat couldn't be kept out of the house at all. One night the poor little boy was worse than usual, and grandpa had picked him up and was trying to walk him to sleep. Just as soon as he began to walk, the cat began to follow him, because he was carrying the baby. Every time the baby would cry the cat would "M-e-o-w!" as if it wanted to help take care of him. For a long time the cat would follow right close to grandpa's heels and sometimes rub against his ankles. Sometimes when he went to turn to start back across the room the cat would rub against him so close that it almost tripped him; then it would stop to rub against a chair-leg or table-leg. You know how cats do: it would rub its neck against a chair or table-leg, then raise up its back and stick its tail 46 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. straight up and lean against the leg and turn around it right slowly and purr. By that time grandpa would be nearly across the room again, and the cat would miss him and start after him as fast as it could go; then it would try to rub against grandpa's ankles again and would some- times get upset, because grandpa wasn't paying any attention to the cat at all. ' ' I was playing with a little girl who was vis- iting at our house, and Mary and Liz, the two black girls, were playing with us too. We were having a supper for our dolls, but were laughing so much at grandpa and the cat that I 'm afraid the dolls didn't get fed very well. The more we giggled the funnier it got, and we had to stuff handkerchiefs in our mouths to keep from laugh- ing out loud we didn't dare to do that for fear of waking the baby. Grandpa didn't like it much because we were giggling so, and he didn't know that we were laughing at him and the cat. Every now and then he would give us a pretty sharp look, and that would make it all the worse. ' ' After a while one of the dolls fell over with her head in her coffee-cup, and when Mary set her back in her chair the cup still stuck to her head. 'Set up, dah!' said Mary. 'Ain't you LITTLE BROTHER'S CAT. 47 got no manners 'tall? goin' to sleep heah an' fallin' ovah in yo' cheah.' Mary gave her a good shake, but the coffee-cup still stuck to her head, and that was more than we could stand, and we all broke right out and laughed out loud. Just then the cat made another run to catch up, and then we all just rolled over and laughed. It wasn't much to laugh at, but we wanted to laugh all the more because we knew we oughtn't to do it. Then the baby awoke and cried, and grandpa gave us two or three more good hard looks and grandma took us all away to bed, and one of the crowd got a little spanking. Grandpa didn't say a word, but just went ahead walking the baby, and pretty soon everybody was asleep ; and in a few days the baby was as well as ever, and dragging the cat around by the tail." HUNTING BEARS. "I I"" U ~ R R! U u rr! Ou uu II u u!" growled the little boy, as he prowled around under the table and clawed at papa's legs. "There's that bear again, mamma. I '11 have to feed him mighty quick now, or he'll eat us all up. Here, old bear, take this now and go away and let me alone. I don't want you to eat up mamma and me and my little boy. " And papa handed the bear a piece of chicken wing under the table, and mamma frowned a little bit and then looked resigned. "Now please, Mr. Bear, be careful and don't get any grease on the carpet," added papa, as as if he would like mighty well to please mamma, but was very much afraid he would offend the bear. " ' I 'oon't,' ; said the bear in a real mild way, and soon the bear was out from under the table and standing by papa's side, eating the chicken wing. 48 "FRO' DOWN YO' GUN EN CLAM ER TREE. HUNTING BEARS. 51 "Let me tell you how I used to hunt bears when I was a little boy," said papa, taking the little boy up in his lap. Dinner was over, and it was a pretty good time to tell stories, anyway. The little boy was ready, as usual, so papa began: "Away off in one corner of our yard, when I was a little boy, there was a big grove of sumac-bushes. These bushes grew up close to- gether and about six feet high before the limbs began to spread out; then the limbs with their thick, long leaves were so close together that hardly a single sunbeam could get through to the ground, and the bushes were as flat and level on top as if they had been cut off with a great big scythe. Coming down the pike towards home it looked like a big dark green spot all summer, and in the fall, when the sumac leaves were red, it looked like a great big red carpet spread out there on the green grass. When Henry and Jimmy and I got into the middle of that, we couldn't see out in any direction and couldn't see a bit of the sky above us. Of course it was a great place for bears, and I used to go bear-hunting in there almost every day. ' ' I had a little wooden gun that grandpa had made for me, and Henry and Jimmy would be the bears, and they would hide from me and I 52 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. would always find them, and then ' Bang! ' would go the gun, and a big black bear would fall over dead every time. I most always made them be the bears, and I was the hunter. I suppose I was pretty badly spoiled and was very selfish, or I would sometimes have been the bear myself and let them have the gun." ' ' Didn't you ever let them have the gun and go 'Bang!' at you?" "Oh, yes, once in a great while, I believe; but I 'm afraid I was pretty selfish. "One time Johnny that was one of the big negro boys went out in the grove with us, and I wanted them all to be bears, and let me have a big bear-killing; so they all hid, and when I found them, I found them all at once. They started to run, and I threw my gun up to my shoulder and said, 'Bang! Bang! Bang!' Henry and Jimmy rolled over dead, but the other bear turned around and came right after me. 'Bang! Bang!' I said again, pointing the gun at him. ' Why don't you fall over ? ' ' 'They ain't no gun shoots more 'n two times,' said the bear, ' an' you done killed two ob 'em an' de odder one gwine eat you all up. Fro' down yo' gun an' clam er tree,' yelled the bear as he came humping after me on his hands and feet. I saw HUNTING BEARS. 53 that the bear was right and that I had more bears on hand that time than I could attend to, so I threw down the gun and made for a big sumac-bush. But that old bear was bent on mischief, and before I got up the tree he had me by the legs and pulled me down and ate me all up, and then went away growling. Then the dead bears and the dead bear-hunter all came to and went away together." THE COUNTRY WOODPILE. I ever tell you about the old goose that made her nest in the woodpile?" asked papa one night, when he and the little boy had been talking about nests. "What is a 'woodpile' just a little pile of wood? How could a goose make a nest in a pile of wood?" The little boy's idea of a woodpile was con- fined to what he had seen in the city, and he couldn't think of a woodpile as anything but a stack of hard sawed wood without any of the chips and sticks and rich black dirt that go to make up a country woodpile. Poor little boy! He had never been in the country. Papa sighed and thought hard for a minute, for he knew how difficult it was to make a boy know about things that he had never seen. "I'll tell you what we'll do," said papa, after thinking awhile, "I '11 tell you all about a country woodpile this time and about the goose and her nest next time." 54 THE HORSES STARTED AND HE FELL OFF BACKWARD. THE COUNTRY WOODPILE. 57 "Tell me about both, won't you? I 'm not sleepy." And the little boy hugged up closer to his father and put both arms around his neck. Papa had taken the little boy in his own bed to-night, because mamma was sick in the other room. "Only one story to-night. We will save the goose story for to-morrow night. "You know, that in Kentucky there are lots of forests the ground all covered with big trees. I Ve told you about them. Well, when I was a little boy, we didn't burn much coal; we used wood to make nearly all of our fires. The country folks used to go out in the woods with the big wagon with four horses hitched to it and haul great big loads of wood up to the house. They didn't trim up the wood into nice even sticks out in the woods; they would sometimes haul in whole big limbs with a good many of the little limbs still on them. Sometimes they would bring limbs longer than the wagon. They would haul hundreds of these limbs and sticks and then load after load of big logs as long as the wagon and as big around as this," and papa put up his arms in as big a circle as he could make with them. "Well, they would haul this up and throw it out in a great 58 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. big pile somewhere in the back lot, and they would throw it in the same place year after year. Sometimes the pile would cover more ground than our whole yard." "Do they just pile it up out doors?" asked the little boy. "Wouldn't somebody 'teal it?" "No," said papa, "not out in the country." "Don't they have any 'tealin' people in the country?" ' ' Oh, yes, there are bad people in the coun- try, but not as many as in the city; and then wood is too plentiful in the country for anybody to steal; they can get all they want for nothing." "Wouldn't it rain or snow on the wood?" "Yes; but we used to have a long shed near the woodpile, and when the wood was chopped up for the stove, it was piled in the shed. "Who sawed it?" "We didn't saw it; we chopped it with an ax, and that made lots of chips, especially when we chopped the big logs in two. Then, when I was about your size, I used to go out with Mary you know who Mary was, don't you? and help her fill a big basket with the chips, and we kin- dled the fires with them. The little chips that were too small to pick up just lay there on the ground and decayed and made a soft black dirt THE COUNTRY WOODPILE. 59 that grandma used to get to put around her flowers just the same kind that we got out of the old hollow stump in the park don't you remember? to plant your flowers in." "Oh, yes, I 'member," said the little boy, taking a fresh hitch around papa's neck with his soft little arm. "Why didn't they cut the wood up 'way out in the woods, so the chips and dirt wouldn't be in the back lot ? " asked the little boy. ' ' Well, ' ' said papa, " I '11 tell you. That was because it was easier to haul the wood in big sticks than in little ones, and you know if it had been chopped up away out in the woods, lots of the chips would have been wasted. And then the farmers liked to have the wood near the house, so that whenever they or their hired men got out of work, they could just step out to the woodpile and chop wood. For instance, when Uncle John got up in the morning and fed the horses and pigs and milked the cows, then, if his breakfast wasn't ready, he could step right out to the woodpile and chop wood. You see, he couldn't go away out to the woods to chop, be- cause by the time he got there he would have to come right back to breakfast. Then sometimes grandpa would chop a little wood, and grandma 60 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. would sit on a big log and watch him. If he hadn't had the big sticks in the lot close to the house, he couldn't have had grandma with him when he was working. "Sometimes when there was a big snow the men wouldn't do much all day but feed the stock and chop wood. Then, when I got to be a big boy, I used to get my sled and have two or three of the little colored boys to help me, and we would haul the nice sticks to the kitchen and put them in the big wood-box, and then the men would cut off a big log, and we would haul it to the house for a back-log for the big fireplace in the dining room. And when I was a little bit of a boy like you, the colored children used to put me on the sled and haul me to the woodpile, and then load the sled and put me on top of it with a whip, and they would all pull. I re- member once I had four of them for a team, and they pretended they couldn't pull the sled, and I pretended to whip them with the whip, and then they kicked and squealed, and one of them lay right down in the snow, as old black Fanny used to do when she didn't want to pull." "Did you whip 'em, daddy?" "No, I just pretended to be whipping them, as I had seen one of our neighbor's drivers do. THE COUNTRY WOODPILE. 61 Then I got off the sled and went around and patted all my horses and talked to them and fixed the harness, as I had seen grandpa do. Then I got back on the sled and took up the lines and said, ' Whoa, boys! Now, get. up! ' and they all pulled and away they went, and the driver went off backwards in the snow with his little legs flying in the air, and all the horses unhitched themselves and ran around and picked up the driver and brushed the snow off, and Mary, who had been old Till, the lead-horse, hugged him up and asked him if he was hurt, and then she scolded Johnny, who was old Kit, the saddle-mare, for starting too suddenly. But the driver was laughing, if he did have snow down his back and up his sleeves, and he got on, and away they went again, Mary saying: ' Now you go studdy thah, Kit; you always goin' by jumps anyhow. Ef you aint a-flyin' forrid too sudden, you 's a-flyin' back. You jes' as ap' t' break a breas' chain ez you is a singletree. Dey got you in de right place, Johnny, dey is. You jes' 'zackly like ol' Kit fer all de worlY "And if we hadn't reached the kitchen door about that time and had other troubles, the lead-mare and the saddle-horse might have un- hitched themselves and taken a fall out of each 62 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. other in the snow; but Aunt Nina met us at the door about like this: 'Go on out o' heah, you niggahs. I jes' scrubbed dis flo', an' you shan't come trompin' in heah lak a pack o' hosses wid all dat snow an'dirt on you; an' what you been a-doin' to dat chile? Lawd bress my soul, honey!' and she grabbed me up and carried me to the* stove. ' Bress my soul! dese yere niggahs jes' gib you yo' death o' col' a-wollerin' you 'roun' in dis snow. I '11 whup evah las' one uv 'em, I will.' "But while she was coddling me, Mary and Johnny and Henry and Jimmy unloaded the stove wood, and it wasn't five minutes before I was back at the woodpile, with all my horses tied up in the stable, which we made in a great opening under a big forked limb that had brush and wood on top of it and that all cov- ered thick with snow. A lot of leaves had blown under there before the snow came, and, together with broken twigs and chips and soft black dirt, made it quite a warm stable. " By the way, that was the sort of a place the old goose made her nest in. We almost forgot that goose, didn't we? Well, I '11 tell you that to-morrow night. It 's time you were asleep. THE COUNTRY WOODPILE. 63 It 's been so long since you said your prayers you '11 have to say them again, won't you? " "My!" said the little boy, with a long sigh, ' ' didn't boys in the country have a lot of ways to have fun?" And in a minute he was asleep and dreaming of a sled with a pile of wood on it as high as a house and drawn by four little negroes with horses' heads, and a little boy on top of the wood with red mittens on his hands and a big gray goose for a cap; and papa could tell ex- actly when the little boy fell off of the sled in his dreams by the start and chuckle, for by that time the dream had reduced the size of the load of wood from as high as a house to about as high as the little boy himself, and it only made him laugh out in his sleep when he fell off in the snow. "N THE OLD GOOSE'S NEST. OW, DADDY, tell me about the old goose that built her nest in the wood- pile," said the little boy, climbing on his father's lap and getting his tow-head be- tween papa and the even- ing paper. "All right," said dad- dy. "Goose stories and little boys are better than newspapers any day. "Well, one time, along about the first of March, when there was still snow on the ground and the wind was blowing cold, one of grand- ma's old geese waddled along by the woodpile. She went on past it first, and then she seemed to think she had forgotten something and came waddling back. She walked slowly around the woodpile, poking her long neck in between the logs and limbs. She was talking low to herself "Oh, yes, it was a fox." 64 THE OLD GOOSE'S NEST. 65 all the time. ' Clack, clack, clack, gabble, gabble, gabble,' she said over and over a good many times, which I suppose meant: 'This looks like a good place to make a nest. I think I '11 look around a little, and maybe I'll settle here.' 'Clack, clack, clack-k-k,' she said again, drawing her head back out of an opening under a limb. ' That 's too little ; that won't do at all. ' Finally she found a larger opening right between two big logs that had a lot of limbs over them and back of them just such a place as I stabled my four black horses in, but not nearly so big. Well, that old goose poked her head in there and cocked her eye up on one side and looked all around in the opening; then she ducked her head down to dodge the limbs and went in. There were some small broken sticks, some chips, and quite a lot of dry leaves piled up against the logs, and old Mrs. Goose pushed them around with her strong bill, and went outside again to look at it; then she waddled off a little way to the water-trough and said something in a real low voice to the old gander, and they both started off to the woodpile again. "She led the old gander straight to her new house and looked in, and then stood back and let him look in. He was so much pleased that 66 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. he said something real complimentary right away; then he went in and tried the nest; then he came out, and they both talked at once. They stretched their long necks out toward each other and put their breasts down almost to the ground and gabbled until you would have thought that if they were really talking they couldn't possibly understand what was being said. I suppose the old gander was telling the goose that she was about the smartest goose that ever lived and a lot of such nonsense, and the old goose was telling him just how she happened to find it and how nice a place it would be." "Can geeses talk to each other, daddy?" asked the little boy. "Well, I don't know nobody knows; but they can let each other know about things in some way, for all animals and birds can. For instance, when an old hen is out in'the yard with her brood of chickens and finds a nice lot of worms or bugs, she makes a certain noise, and all the little chickens run to her with their wings flapping and their eyes shining; then, after a while, the old hen sees a hawk sailing through the air, and she makes another kind of noise, and all the little chickens fall down on the ground and hide under the leaves and grass. THE OLD GOOSE'S NEST. 67 "But I '11 tell you how the old goose and gander talked to each other. They stood bow- ing and stretching out their necks and gabbling and every now and then raising up their wings to emphasize what they said. Finally they went away. "A few days later grandpa was cutting wood, when he happened to look in the open- ing between the logs, and what do you think he saw? Three great, big goose eggs, almost covered up with sticks and leaves. He was just about to pull the roof off of old Mrs. Goose's house and cut it up into stovewood, but he saw the eggs in time, and did not disturb a single stick; then he told the black men where the nest was and told them not to use any wood near it. Pretty soon old Mrs. Goose had ten nice, big, white eggs in her nest that is, the eggs would have been white if they hadn't been so dirty; but, you know, the nest wasn't any- thing but a little hollow in the black dirt with a few small sticks and chips and leaves in it. Every time the old goose laid an egg she would cover it all up with sticks and leaves. Well, when she got ten eggs in the nest, she concluded that she would sit on them until she hatched out ten little geese. Little geese are called goslings, 68 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. you know. So she sat right still on the eggs all day and all night and kept them warm with her thick, soft feathers. The old gander slept on the sticks and chips near by with his head under his wing, and every time a dog or anything came near, he set up such a clatter and hissing that grandpa said if that old gander didn't quit making so much fuss, he would put him in a pen somewhere all by himself; but grandma said that the gander was so good and faithful to the old goose that she would not let him be dis- turbed. Well, every morning when the old gander would wake up he would go to the nest and stick his head in and gabble and the old goose would gabble back at him. I suppose he would say: " 'Good morning, Mrs. Goose, flow did you spend the night ? ' " 'Oh, nicely, thank you,' old Mrs. Goose would say. 'I slept nearly all night and felt perfectly safe, for I knew you were outside keeping watch. How did you sleep ? ' " ' Oh, pretty well,' answered old Mr. Gander. 'I was disturbed a little; I saw a fox go across the yard, but I scared him away.' " ' Oh, my! ' said Mrs. Goose with a start. THE OLD GOOSE'S NEST. 69 " 'Don't be afraid,' said Mr. Gander. 'I scared him away all right.' " 'Maybe it was the cat,' suggested Mrs. Goose. " 'No, I am sure it was a fox,' said Mr. Gander, and then he changed the subject." "Oh, now, daddy! they didn't say all that sure enough; do you think they did ? " "Oh, I don't know; all I know is that they did a lot of gabbling, and from the way the old gander raised his wings and took on, they might have been saying that very thing. "Well, after a while the old gander would come up to the back kitchen door. If there wasn't anything there to eat, he would call back, 'Honk, honk'; then the goose would answer him. After a while Mammy would throw out a lot of scraps and maybe some corn; then the old gander would call out in a different tone, ' Honk, honk, honk,' and then the old goose would an- swer and come flying. I suppose the old gander said: 'Come on, come on, old lady; here is some breakfast.' And the old goose would say: 'All right, all right; I 'm coming. Save some for me, for I 'm hungry.' Then the old goose would eat and get a drink of water and go back to her nest. " I forgot to tell you about the time I went to 70 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. peep in at old Mrs. Goose. She stuck out her head and went this way at me." (Here papa stuck out his tongue and hissed as much like a goose as he could.) "I got back a little, but here came old Mr. Gander with his head stuck out and hissing in the same way; then he gave a big squawk and grabbed the back of my trousers in his mouth and flapped me with his wings, and I screamed and the old goose squawked, and grandma came running and shoved the old gander away, and then she just sat down on a log and laughed. I didn't go back any more. "Well, one morning, just four weeks from the time the old goose went to sitting, we heard a great commotion among the geese out at the woodpile. Your grandma took me by the hand and went out there, and what do you think we saw? Why, nine little yellow, fluffy goslings, the prettiest little things you ever saw." "Why weren't there ten goslings? There were ten eggs." 1 ' Well, one of the eggs didn't hatch. Maybe the old goose got careless some cold night and let that egg get out from under her warm feath- ers, or maybe she forgot to turn that one over for two or three days. Did you know that when THE OLD GOOSE'S NEST. 71 the old goose is sitting on her eggs, she turns all of them over every day ? " "What does she do that for?" "Well, that is done so that all the inside of the eggs will not settle down to one side and spoil, and so both sides of the eggs will get the moisture from the ground and the warmth from the goose's breast." "How does she turn them over ? " "Just with her bill." "Now, daddy, sure enough, does a goose know enough to do all that?" "Well, honey, I don't know whether the goose knows why she does it or not; but God made the goose that way and gave her what we call 'instinct,' instead of sense and reason, and she does all these things and does them right. because God directs everything she does." "Oh, my!" said the little boy with a sigh. "God must be awful busy. But I wonder why He didn't make her hatch out that other egg?" Just then mamma broke into the story, and said something to papa that the little boy didn't understand, about getting into deep water. Then she laughed and papa laughed; then he said: "Well, now, about those little goslings. 72 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. They looked like little balls of yellow fur, each with a yellow bill and two yellow feet sticking out, and, just above the bill, a pair of the round- est, blackest little eyes you ever saw; and they waddled about so cute, and made the sweetest little noise talking to their mamma." "How do they go ' Peep, peep,' like a little chicken?" "No, indeed; but I can't go like a little gos- ling; I might try, but it wouldn't sound a bit like one." "Try, won't you, daddy?" But papa didn't try. He only promised again to take the little boy to the country some- time, where he could see and hear the little gos- lings for himself; and about that time the little boy went to sleep. THE NEST OLD TOPKNOT MADE. "N OW, tell me how an old hen makes her nest," said the little boy. "You said you would." "Well," said daddy, "an old hen doesn't make her nest at all, as a general thing. Sometimes a hen will go out in the weeds and grass and hollow out a nest in the ground by scratching, and then scratch some dry grass in it and even put some in with her bill, if she finds it right by the side of the place she has selected for the nest; but she never uses any material but what she can reach from the nest, and never carries any straw or anything to it. She will make a nest in a fence-corner on the bare ground, when there is a bunch of dry grass all around 78 'What a fine nest I've made I" 74 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. her, and not use a bit of it in her nest. A hen will make a nest in the hay-mow up in the stable loft, of course, but she has to use the hay there, for there is nothing but hay. The old tame hens that stay about the house always use nests that have been made for them; but it 's the funniest thing in the world to see an old hen think she is making a nest. "One day, when I was a little fellow, I was sitting on the porch with my father, and old Topknot came along through the yard. Every now and then she would pick up a straw or a piece of dry grass in her bill and throw it over her back; then she would go along a few steps and pick up another piece and throw that over her back. Pretty soon she stopped and looked back. Then she stood on one foot awhile and then walked on, throwing a straw over her back every time she came to one. " 'What is that old hen doing that for?' I asked. " 'She thinks she is making a nest,' said grandpa. 'She forgets that she walks a few feet between every two straws that she finds, and that the straws are just as far apart when she gets through as they were when she began; THE NEST OLD TOPKNOT MADE. 75 but watch me make her think she has made a fine nest.' "Just then old Topknot disappeared around the big stone chimney of the cabin. Then grandpa got a barrel in a hurry and turned it down in the chimney-corner. Then he put a narrow board across the bottom of the open end of the barrel, and drove two stakes down to hold the board and barrel in place. Then he got some nice, clean, yellow straw from the stable and put it in the barrel and rounded it into a nice nest, with some of the straw sticking out of the barrel. Then he placed an egg in the nest. " 'Now,' he said, 'let 's watch her.' ' ' Pretty soon the old hen came back around the house, still picking up and throwing over her back the same old straws she had thrown before. Then, all of a sudden, she saw the nest, and tip- toed over to the barrel and stretched out her neck and looked in. "My!' said grandpa. 'What a smart hen I have been to make such a splendid nest and lay such a fine egg! I don't just remember when I laid it, but it 's all right.' "Grandpa said that just as if he were the old hen talking, and we both laughed. Then the 76 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. old hen went in and did a big lot of scratching around, and before long we heard a great cack- ling out there, and I went out and there was a new egg in the barrel. And that was old Top- knot's barrel until after she hatched out that gang of ducks I was telling you about." WADING IN THE BRANCH. DADDY > this is a g od time for 'Tucky 'tones. 'Ittie boy likes 'Tucky 'tories." And the little boy hugged up so close to papa that the pillow which mamma threw fell across both heads and stopped all the talking for a minute. "Now, mamma," said the little boy, drop- ping the baby talk that he always used when asking for stories, "you made us stop; now you are throwing pillows." And the little boy laughed and tried to get hold of the pillow to throw back. "Oh! did that pillow hit you angels over there? I just laid it on the bed from across the room I hope it didn't break off any wings; let 's see." And they each got a pinch which would have started another romp if mamma hadn't skipped out. "Now go on, daddy; tell a dood 'tory." The little boy wasn't a baby any longer, and 77 78 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. only talked baby talk when he was asking for stories. "Well," said papa, "I was about your age just about five when one day Henry and Jim- my and I were running about the yard trying to find something new to do. Finally we played around until we got down to the spring-house, away off under the hill. Then we climbed the fence into the branch lot. We called it the branch lot, you know, because two branches ran through it. One little branch ran out of the spring-house, and through the little culvert under the lane and went into the big branch, which ran from away off on the next farm and through the big culvert under the turnpike." "What is a 'culvert'?" "Why, it is a stone bridge under a road. You can see the big one and the little one both in the picture over there on the wall. "Well, 'Pig' and 'Pokey' I mean Henry and Jimmy, but we sometimes called them ' Pig ' and 'Pokey'; I '11 tell you about that some- time well, we played along the little branch, putting sticks in it for boats, and damming up the water to make little ponds, until we reached the big branch. The little branch was so little that we could step across it, and the water was "GOOD LAWDY ! WHAT'LL MAMMY SAY?" WADING IN THE BRANCH. 81 just about deep enough to cover 'Pig's' big black foot when he stepped in it. 'Pig' and 'Pokey' were both barefooted, while I had my shoes and stockings on. Sometimes ' Pig ' would put both of his black feet in and ' Pokey ' would put both of his feet in and make a dam across the stream; and all that time I had to stand on the bank and watch the other boys having fun that I couldn't have because I wasn't bare- footed. Well, when we reached the big branch, I tell you it was nice. The water from the little branch fell into the big one over a little bank and made just the sweetest noise, and a little further down the big branch there were some rocks sticking up out of the water and the water running against these rocks made another kind of a pretty noise." ' ' How did it sound like the water running in the bath-tub?" interrupted the little boy. "Oh, my!" answered papa, with a pained expression. "You town people really excite my compassion that is, you know, I am real sorry for you, you know so little. Why, that was as much prettier and sweeter music than the bath- tub splash as mamma's piano is sweeter than Rosie scraping the dishpan. The water just bubbled and splashed and gurgled, and it looked 82 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. white on top, and pretty little drops flew up in the air when it struck the rocks. Oh! it was pretty, I tell you; but we were so used to seeing it and hearing it that we didn't pay much at- tention to it; and, to tell the truth, I never did realize just how nice it was until this minute when I am telling about it. You know, some- times the very nicest and best things that we have seem to come to us so naturally and we get so used to having them that we don't know they are nice until we don't have them any more; then we begin to miss them and wish that we had enjoyed them more when we did have them. "Well, we played along the branch, watching our little boats run against the rocks or whirl around in the whirlpools, and then we came to a place where the branch was wider and the water ran smoothly over a big flat green rock. The rock looked green because it had moss on it." " How big was the rock, dad?" " Well, just about as wide and as long as that rug say about six by ten feet. It may have been wider, but that was as wide as the branch was. You know there may have been more of the rock under the dirt that made the banks of the branch. "Well, sir, the water looked so smooth and WADING IN THE BRANCH. 83 clear and nice that Henry got right in it with his old black feet and then Jimmy followed him. They had their pants rolled up to their knees little boys wore long pants in those days and the water came up just above their ankles. It looked so nice that the first thing I knew I was sitting down on the bank, pulling off my shoes and stockings. You know it was real early in the spring, and grandma had not yet let me go barefooted any. The next thing I knew I was paddling in the water with the little negroes. The rock was nice and smooth and felt good to our feet. We took hold of each other's hands, with me in the middle, and started down the stream. Directly we came to a place where the moss was thicker and we stuck our toes in it and had a fine time. Then the first thing you know my feet slipped they went right up out of the water, and as we all had hold of hands, that made the other boys' feet slip, and down we all sat right in the water. You ought to have seen us scramble out of there. Henry put his hands back and felt to see how wet he was, and then Jimmy and I put ours back. We were wet enough, I tell you, and the water began to trickle down our legs and made us feel mighty sorry. 84 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "'Good Lawdy!' said Henry. 'What 11 mammy say ? ' " ' You went in fust,' said Jimmy. ' ' Then they both helped me to put my shoes on, and we went to the house. We sneaked around to the back door of the kitchen. Mammy Maria was washing, and when she saw us come in, she looked right hard at her two boys, because she thought we had been up to some mischief. We wanted to get behind the stove, you know, and get dry, but Mammy Maria watched us so closely that when we got past her we backed toward the stove to keep her from seeing the wet places. When we went to back- ing, although we thought we were doing it in a very innocent and natural sort of way, she knew something was wrong, so she grabbed Henry by the collar and jerked him around to the light. " 'What you niggahs up to now?' she said. 'Tu'n 'roun' heah! My gracious erlive, ef dey ain't been a-settin' down in de brainch!' "And she gave the wet place on Henry's pants a spat that sounded like a big wet towel struck against the wall and made him jump clear behind the stove at one jump. Jimmy got one just like it, then she turned to me. I was stand- WADING IN THE BRANCH. 85 ing there, laughing at the others. She gathered me up in her arms and said: " 'Nevah min', honey. Mammy jes git you 'nothah paih o' breeches, an' de missus nevah know nuffin' 'bout it; an' I git you some clean stockin's, too, an' make dese yeah niggahs brack yo' little shoes.' "And in a little while I was sitting behind the stove, eating pie, while Henry and Jimmy were standing with their backs to the stove, eating pie too. " 'Goodness! You eats a heap o' pie fo' one little boy,' said Mammy Maria, after I had gone for the third piece. 'Now don't you go an' gib dem niggah chill'n no pie cawn braid plenty good ernough fo' dem.' ' "Is that all, daddy? Oh! wake up, now. You know you are snoring just for fun. What made you call them 'Pig' and 'Pokey'?" "Oh, yes!" said papa, waking with a start. "One time we had a party, and had all the dolls and cats invited, and while we were gathering up the guests, Henry came in and ate up every bit of the party. Then grandma gave us a lot more cookies and things for the party, and Henry and Mary and Liz and I ate them all up, and after it was all over, here came Jimmy with a cat 86 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. under one arm and a pet chicken under the other, so we called Henry 'Pig' and Jimmy 'Pokey.'" "Say, dad, that was a bully one, wasn't it? Say, did Henry and Jimmy and 'Pig' and and " But the little boy fell asleep just then, and pretty soon papa was asleep too. RIDING ON THE PLOW. T~X ADDY," said the little boy one night, I as he was being tucked into bed, " I 'm almost six years old; don't you know I am?" AND WATCHED IT AS IT CUT THROUGH THE SOD." "In just about two months now you will be six, ' answered papa. "Why, are you beginning to feel old?" "Wouldn't it take about two months to pick out a pony ? " asked the little boy, sitting straight 87 88 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. up in bed and pulling the covers loose that papa had just tucked in. "You know grandpa is going to get me a pony when I am six. Say, daddy, did you have a pony when you were six years old? Tell me about it. Did you have a little saddle too?" "Well, now," said papa, "you do take me back to old times. I remember the day I got that first saddle as well as if it were yesterday. Grandpa had gone to town on horseback, and I knew he was going to bring home something for me, so I spent a good deal of time out in the yard or on the big side porch, looking up the pike to see him when he first came in sight of the house. Well, I watched and watched, and along in the afternoon here he came jogging down the pike on his horse, and what do you think he had on his arm? Why, the prettiest little saddle that you ever laid your eyes on. The seat was made of red leather and all stitched with pretty yellow thread, and the skirts were brown. It had a red blanket fastened to the under side of it and a red girth. The stirrups were pretty iron ones, and as grandpa jogged along, the stir- rups bobbed up and down and shone in the sun. I was so tickled that I ran all the way down to the big yard gate to meet him. I climbed up on RIDING ON THE PLOW. 89 the fence, and grandpa put the little saddle down in front of him across his horse's shoul- ders, and then he took me off the fence in his arms and put me on the new saddle, and held me to keep me from falling off. I rode up to the house in that way, and was about the proudest boy in the world. 1 ' As soon as grandpa rested a little he put the saddle on old Phoebe that was our old black mare and fixed the stirrups so they would fit me, and let me ride around by myself. I must have been a good deal younger than you are now, for I couldn't guide the horse very well, and the first thing I knew she was walking right under a big apple-tree. There was a big limb just high enough for her to walk under, and she ducked her head and went right under it. I pulled at the bridle, but couldn't stop her, and the limb dragged me right off over her tail. I jumped up squalling, but I wasn't hurt much, and old Phoebe went right along eating grass, as if noth- ing had happened. Grandpa came running and asked me if I was hurt. '"I bet my saddle's just scratched all to pieces,' I blubbered. 'Old Phoebe 's just as mean as she can be.' " But the new saddle was not hurt a bit, and 90 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. I was soon happy again, standing in front of it where grandpa had hung it on the porch, and showing it to the little negro boys; and the next time I went riding I let them take turn about with me riding on it." "Was that the first time you ever rode on a horse?" "No, indeed; I had been riding ever since I was a baby. I believe I remember about the first time I ever rode on a horse. Grandpa put a pillow in front of him on his saddle and set me on the pillow and let me hold the bridle reins. I used to want to ride that way every time I saw him riding through the yard. I was as fond of that as you used to be of riding on the street- cars. I suppose I learned that before I was old enough to talk, and then after I got bigger I used to stand up on the saddle in front of grandpa and balance myself by putting my hands on his shoulder. I would ride all over the farm in that way." ' ' Didn't you ever fall off ? " "No, I don't remember ever having fallen off when I was riding with grandpa; I remember one fall I got, though, after I grew to be a big boy. One day there were seven of us three negro boys and four white boys all on one horse, old RIDING ON THE PLOW. 91 Kit. We were packed like sardines all the way from old Kit's neck to her tail. We got along pretty well, and were laughing and yelling and having a fine time until the boy at the back end of the line tickled the boy in front of him. The boy that was tickled humped up his back and jumped, and the boy behind him, who didn't have much room anyway, fell off. He grabbed the next boy and that boy grabbed the next, and so on clear up to the front, and the whole string of us fell off, each one holding to the one in front of him, and the front boy holding to old Kit's mane, and all yelling like a lot of young Indians. We fell on the soft grass in a heap, some on top of the others and some sprawling out on the ground. The grass was nice and soft, though, and nobody was hurt. "I '11 tell you how I used to like to ride. When grandpa was out plowing, I liked to ride on the plow. We never used anything but old- fashioned plows in those days, so grandpa walked behind the plow and guided it by holding the handles, and the big iron plowshare turned the ground over in front of him. The plowshare, you know, is the iron part that cuts the ground and turns it over. I '11 take you down to one of the implement houses some day and show you 92 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. some plows. I suppose that will do until we can get out into the real country. "One day grandpa was plowing in the old meadow, and as it was just back of the garden I went up there to see him. The ground was nice and smooth and didn't have any rocks or stumps in it at least not many. I walked along beside grandpa for a while, and then he said, 'Whoa!' The horses stopped, and grandpa picked me up and put me on the plow, setting me on one of the rounds between the handles with my feet resting on the lowest round just above the plowshare. ' Now, hold on tight,' he said, and started up the horses. It was a nice seat. I could sit there with my hand on grandpa's hand, and I always felt safe when I was near him. Right under me the bright plowshare was cutting through the sod and turning it over in nice rows. It was springtime, and every once in a while he would plow under a nice little wild flower. The poor little flower would go face down in the furrow, and the black dirt that had been under it would be turned on top of it. I felt real sorry for the little flowers and the nice young grass, but grandpa said that maybe the same little flower roots would go to sleep in the ground and grow up again next year, when the field was in grass RIDING ON THE PLOW. 93 again. Once he plowed up a little ground mouse's nest. There were five or six little bits of mice in it, and when the sod was turned over the young mice were thrown sprawling out on the plowed ground. The plow had torn their nice warm fur nest all to pieces, and they looked as if they would be mighty cold after coming out of such a warm nest. The little old mother mouse ran off, scared almost to death, but grandpa said she would gather up the little ones and make a new nest for them. "After a while the plow turned out a lot of little white balls that looked like marbles. ' Oh papa!' I said, nearly falling off of my seat, 'get them for me, won't you?' " 'Whoa!' said grandpa. 'Do you know what they are? They are snake's eggs.' And grandpa got a rock and mashed all of them. 'There are snakes enough around here now,' said grandpa, as he mashed the last egg. ' ' I knew that everybody killed snakes when- ever they found them, so I knew that it was right for grandpa to break the eggs. "We hadn't gone far before I saw something right in front of the plow that looked like a big snake. 94 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. " 'Oh, look, look, papa!' I cried, pulling up my feet as high as I could get them. " ' Whoa! ' said grandpa again, and the horses stopped. 'Now what have you found?' " 'Just look! It 's a big, brown snake!' I said, pointing at it as it lay still, right by old Logan's feet. " 'That 's a snake skin,' said grandpa, turn- ing it over with his foot. It broke in two when he turned it over, and I settled back in my seat again, for I knew now that it couldn't hurt me. " 'Well, where is the snake?' I said. 'Is it dead?' " ' No, sir,' said grandpa, and he sat down on the plow beside me and let the horses rest while he told me about the way snakes shed their skins. 'You know,' said grandpa, 'that when winter comes and it gets cold, the snakes all hunt some warm place to stay until warm weather comes again. Some of them get in stone fences, some in hollow trees, and some go in holes in the ground. They stay there and sleep all winter, and their skins turn brown and hard and a new skin grows on Mr. Snake under the old one. When spring comes, and the old snake begins to get warm, he crawls out in RIDING ON THE PLOW 95 the sun. He feels stiff and awkward in his old dead skin, but pretty soon he works around in it and loosens it and then crawls out of it altogether, looking as black and sleek as a brand- new wagon- whip that is, the black snakes look that way and the striped and spotted ones look as if they had been freshly painted and var- nished. This fellow was a black snake, and a big one too. Well, when the snake gets out of his old skin, he crawls up on a log or a rock or something where the sun can shine on him, and lies there and suns himself, for he is pretty chilly when he first comes out.' "Then grandpa got up to go to plowing, but he stopped short, and, pointing to a big old stump near by, said: " 'Well, just look at that, will you? Wait till I get a stick.' I looked where he pointed, and sure enough there lay the old snake on top of the stump, sunning himself. " ' Oh, papa! papa! ' I yelled. ' Kill him! kill him!' " 'Don't you have a fit now and scare him away,' said grandpa quietly; 'sit still until I go down to the fence and get a stick.' Grandpa never got excited about anything and never said any bad words; he never even said, ' Oh, gee! ' 96 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. The little boy looked up and laughed a funny little laugh, and papa went on with the story: "Well, grandpa came back with a big stick, and Mr. Snake never knew what hit him. "We went ahead plowing, and had gone but a round or two more when we plowed up a mole." "What is a 'mole'?" "What is a mole? Why, didn't you ever see a mole? You town boys don't know any- thing, do you?" "Go on, daddy; tell me about it." ' ' Well, a mole is a little animal about as big as a rat and about the same color, but his fur is finer and sleeker. His legs are so short that he can hardly run at all, and he can see but a very little bit; that is because he lives under ground. Moles burrow along just under the ground, and eat roots and corn and anything they can find. Sometimes when we plant corn they come along and eat it, and they spoil lots of corn crops in the country. When they are going along under the ground they keep close to the top and push up a row of dirt just above their holes. Sometimes you can see the dirt moving, and you know that a mole is under there; then you can take a shovel and. if you are quick, RIDING ON THE PLOW. 97 you can shovel Mr. Mole right out of the ground. This old mole was in pretty hard luck, for grandpa put his boot-heel on his head and said: 'There, now! You won't eat any more of Mahs Ben's corn.' "The next thing that we plowed up was a bees' nest, but, as it was early in the spring, the bees were not wide enough awake to sting us. That reminds me of another time late in the summer when we plowed up a live bees' nest no, it was a yellow jackets' nest." "Tell me about it." "Well, the plow turned the nest over, and the yellow jackets came swarming out and stung the horses; they started to run, and grandpa held on to them until they got away from the nest. I wasn't on the plow that time, or I might have been hurt. Well, the next time the plow came around grandpa went around the nest, and didn't plow near them any more until they got settled; then he threw some straw on the nest and set fire to it, and that finished the yellow jackets." "Tell me more about riding around on the plow," said the little boy; "I like that. Did you plow up any more things?" "No; but I 11 tell you about something that 98 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. we didn't plow up. Once I noticed a stick standing up in the ground just ahead of us, and when grandpa got near the stick he turned out his horses and drove clear around it, and left a little patch of ground not plowed. " ' What did you do that for ? ' I asked. " 'Whoa!' said grandpa. 'Come back here and I '11 show you.' ' ' And he pointed to a place right by the stick that looked like a hole in the ground, filled with dry grass and a little soft fur of some kind stick- ing up through it. Grandpa lifted up the dry grass with the stick, and in a nest of fur were six little young rabbits. As soon as they were un- covered they all began to squeal. They thought it was their mother coming to them. " 'Don't touch them,' said grandpa, as I started to pick up one. 'The old rabbit would know the minute she got back to them that somebody had been here, and would move them to a new nest.' " 'How would she know it?' I asked. " 'She can tell by smelling them if anybody has even touched the nest,' said grandpa; 'and then she would move them as soon as it got dark.' RIDING ON THE PLOW 99 " 'Is that the reason you moved the grass with a stick ? ' ' Certainly,' said grandpa. ' Now let 's cov- er them up again, ' and he pushed the grass back over them with a stick. ' ' I asked grandpa if he was not going to plow that piece of ground, and he said he would come back and plow it when the little rabbits had gotten big enough to run away. Grandpa was good to everything.' ' ' He must have been a mighty good daddy, ' ' said the little boy, "but he wasn't a bit better than my daddy. Did you ride on the plow any more?" "Yes, I rode around several times more, and we plowed up some more mice and bugs and worms and cocoons." "What kind of coons?" asked the little boy. "No, not coons. I said cocoons." ' ' What are they ? Tell me about them. ' ' "Oh! they are just worms that wrap them- selves up in a sort of silk when the summer is gone, and get in the ground and go to sleep, and next spring they wake up as butterflies." "Where do they get the silk? Tell me all about them." "Oh! that would be a dry story. Get mam- ma to explain that to you sometime." 100 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "Goodness!" said the little boy. "Do you always plow up that many live things?" " No, not always. I '11 tell you how so many little animals happened to be living in that par- ticular piece of ground. It was an old meadow. A meadow, you know, is a field that we raise hay on, and hay or any kind of grass does not have to be sowed every year, but the roots live all winter, and the grass grows up again next spring; then when it gets high and ripe we cut it and make hay of it; in the fall the grass has had time to grow up tolerably high again, and when the cold weather comes it turns brown and dry and falls over and makes a good place for the little animals and things to make their nests and keep warm; then in the spring again the nice tender grass and roots are good to eat and make a good place to hide in. This old field had been in grass a long time, and the little wild things had been living there for a good many years. That was a fine old meadow. Sometime I '11 tell you what fun we boys had in haying-time in that old field." "What else did you plow up that day, daddy?" ' ' I believe that 's all, except that we turned under lots of nice young grass and clover and RIDING ON THE PLOW. 101 little wild flowers. I was very sorry for them, and sat still on the plow a long time thinking about it. As the plow cut through the tender grass and roots, the sweetest, freshest smell came up, and then*when the soft, black ground fell over them, the smell of the fresh earth and of the flowers and grass together was just fine. Did you ever smell the fresh dirt just plowed over away out in the country? Of course you didn't. Well, you can't begin to imagine how nice it is until you go to the country and find out for yourself. "Pshaw! old man, let 's go to sleep. I 'm just lying here making myself homesick." EATING GRAVEYARD BLACKBERRIES. ONE TIME Henry and Jimmy and I were in the big locust grove, eating black- berries. The locust grove was directly across the turnpike from the house and on the highest point of the farm. It was in one corner of a big field that was nearly always in blue- grass or meadow. The finest blackberries I ever saw grew in that locust grove; some of them were as big as the end of my thumb, and they were as soft and sweet as they could be. Well, we ate blackberries until we couldn't hold any more. Our faces and hands were just covered with blackberry stain. We had eaten so much that it began to hurt us under our little jackets, and we sat down on a big rock to rest. We were talking about snakes and bears, and what we would doaf a sure-enough bear should come, and had just about concluded that it was time to go home. It was pretty wild-looking in there anyway, and we had just begun to notice that the trees were so thick that the sun couldn't 102 " EN HEAH YOU ALL'S A-SETTIN' ON TOP o' DEY BONES ! " EATING GRAVEYARD BLACKBERRIES. 105 shine through at all; then under the trees the tall blackberry bushes and the weeds made it thick and close, and a boy could hardly walk for catching his feet in the grass and weeds. Just then we heard something coming towards us. " Le's go home," said Jimmy. "Pshaw!" said Henry. "I don't believe dar 's any beahs eroun' heah, an' der hain't no ve'y big snakes neither. I got 'nough black- be'ies, though, an' I jes' as soon go home. I 'specks mammy wants some stove wood ca'ied in by dis time, anyhow." " 'Tain't nothin' but Unca' Jim Speaks," I said, peeping out between the bushes. ' ' You boys is all time afraid of beastes of some kind or 'nother. I wasn't afraid." Just about that time Uncle Jim saw us and stopped. He had a big water-bucket on each arm and a quart tin cup in one of the buckets. "What you chillen doin' heah?" he said, stopping short and looking at us; " 'way off from de house an' in dis heah wilderness o' un- derbresh an' sich, 'mongst de hants an' eveh- thing. Didn't you chillen know dis heah was a graveyahd?" he asked, walling up his eyes and looking solemn. ' ' An' heah you is a-settin' right on top o' somebody's bones on dey headstone! I 106 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. 'speck dem bones kinder oneasy anyhow, 'caise de haidstone done fall obah on top ob 'em. You bettah git off'n dat stone. You hev hants all eroun' you in 'bout er minit." Old Jim looked so solemn that our hair began to stand up straight and cold chills crept up our backs, and we got off that stone and stood before the old negro like three little criminals. "Goodness gracious me!" said old Jim, look- ing as if he was astonished almost to death. "What's dat you boys got on yo' han's an' moufs? You sholy hain't been eat in' de black- be'ies what growed off'n dese heah daid people! " "W'y w'y we got 'em 'way over yonder," I said, pointing to a fine patch a little way off. "Laws a-massy!" groaned old Jim, "an' dat 's 'zackly whah dat Johnson niggah wuz be'ied what died wid de smallpox. W'y, some o' de people be'ied in dis heah place died wid de cholery, an' dese heah blackbe'ies growin' right up off'n dey bones, dey is. You chillen 's lierble to staht a plague o' some kin' right heah in dis neighborhood. You bettah run home jes' ez quick ez you kin an' take a big spoonful o' ve'mifuge an' put distemfectum on yo 'selves." Jimmy was crying by this time, and Henry's eyes were sticking out with all the white showing EATING GRAVEYARD BLACKBERRIES. 107 and looking as if they could be scraped off his face with a shingle. I was scared, too, but I thought that maybe we could take something that would keep us from being sick, so I said: "Come on, let 's go home. I don't believe we 've got no cholery nor smallpox neither. Let 's get a drink down there at the spring, and maybe it '11 wash us out real good." "What spring?" said Uncle Jim, looking more horrified than ever. "Dat spring down undahdehill?" "Yes," I said, weakly. "We got a good drink there just a while ago. "Dat spring? Dat spring?" yelled Uncle Jim, pointing to the spring. "Don' you know dat de watah what cum out o' dat spring runs troo dis heah groun' fust an' trickilates right froo de daid people's bones 'fore hit gits to de spring? Good Lawd a-massy! de onliest hope I had dat you boys wouldn't die fum eatin' dese heah blackbe'ies was dat de watah had washed all de cholery an' smallpox an' quick consumpshun out'n de bones an' down to dat spring. You run home ez quick ez you kin an' take dat ve'mifuge, or der likely to be er eper- dermic break out in dis heah neighbo'hood 'fore to-morrow night." 108 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. That was enough for us, and by the time Uncle Jim had got through we were all crying and running for home. We went straight to Mammy, who was out in the back yard picking four Dominecky chickens, and demanded verm- ifuge. We felt like our little insides were full of all the diseases that a person ever died with, and we would have taken anything that we thought would do us any good. "What in de name o' goodness you chillen want wid vermifuge ? ' ' asked Mammy. ' ' What 's done happened to you, anyway?" "Quick, Mammy! Give us the vermifuge, and we '11 tell you afterwards," I said. "I feel kinder sick right now." ' ' What you chillen been a-doin' ? ' ' shrieked Mammy, getting real excited. "You been a- playin' wid wild pa'snips, or eatin' Injun tur- nips, or dem fool toadstools de city folks a- projeckin' wid ? Tell me quick, or I '11 gib you some physic 'at '11 tu'n you wrong side out'ards." "Oh, we been a-eatin' blackbe'ies!" blub- bered Henry, "dat growd off'n daid peoples up in de locus' grove!" "Yes, an' drinkin' out'n de old Johnson spring what de watah runs right froo de coffins," slobbered Jimmy. EATING GRAVEYARD BLACKBERRIES. 109 "Uncle Jim said they died wif de cholery an' the smallpox an' consumption an' some of 'em was killed in the war, an' we 'd die ever one o' them ways if we didn't take something quick," I added. Mammy Maria just wilted right down on a big rock and looked as if she had lost her breath. Then she looked as if she would laugh, and then she looked mad. "Did dat ol' fool niggah tell you chillens all dat nonsensicalness ? Drat dat ol' high-hipped, long-jawed, flat-headed, blue-gummed Guinea niggah! He all de time scarin' somebody what he ain't 'feared ob. Heah, I '11 gib you sumpin' what '11 fix you all right in a minit, an' don't you be skeered now, 'cause Mammy knows all about it. Dem blackbe'ies ain't gwine to hu't you a bit." So she gave us some water with a little soda in it, and loosened our waists right over where we had stored the blackberries and water, and told us to go lie down on the porch. "She didn't say the watah wouldn't hu't us," said Jimmy. "But I don't feel half as much like I had de cholery ez I did erwhile ago." Pretty soon we all went to sleep, and when 110 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. we awoke we saw grandpa coming up from the gate, so away we went to ask him about it. "Did old Jim tell you that?" said grandpa, smiling. "I thought he looked a little sheepish just now, when I met him going out of the grove with two big buckets of blackberries. I saw him stop at the spring, too, and get a big drink of water, and from the looks of his mouth he had eaten as many blackberries as he had in his bucket. Maybe he wanted all of the blackber- ries for himself, or didn't want you boys in the way and tramping down the bushes. "Go on and eat all of the blackberries you want out of the locust grove; they won't hurt you. I believe I would come back home to get a drink though. I don't think the water in the old Johnson spring is very good, anyway." THE OLD TURKEY'S NEST. 46 1~"X ID I ever tell you about how the tur- I keys made their nests?" asked daddy one night when the little boy asked for a story. "Tell me," said the little boy, and he hugged up close, just as usual when he expected a good story. "Well, now, are you sure that you know the difference between turkeys and the other fowls ? ' ' "Yes, sir," answered the little boy eagerly. "The old gobble turkey goes this way," and the little boy hopped up in bed, spread his fingers out and put them down by his side, and gave a pretty good imitation of a strutting turkey gobbler. " Isn't dat right?" he asked, proud to know about the old gobble turkey. "Yes, that 's the way the old gobble turkey goes; but I am going to tell you about the old hen turkey when it is springtime and she begins to think about making her nest to lay her eggs in. You know turkeys are not gentle and home- like, as the chicken hens are, and they don't in 112 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. like to stay around the house and barn, as the chicken hens do." "Why?" promptly asked the little boy. "Well, that's pretty hard to explain to a little boy, but I '11 tell you. The turkeys that we raise are descended from wild turkeys that is, their great-great-grandmas were wild turkeys, and flew around in the woods and never heard of such a thing as people, and when they made their nests they had to hide them away away some place where the foxes and coons and other wild animals couldn't find them and eat up their eggs and little turkeys, and they had to hide them from the crows and hawks and other big birds too. The crows were bad about stealing their eggs and hawks about stealing their little turkeys. It hasn't been so very many years since the turkeys were wild, and they still have the instincts and habits of the wild turkeys; so in the springtime the old turkey hen gets it into her head somehow that she has to slip away off and hide her eggs, where the foxes and coons and polecats and snakes and crows and hawks can't get them." "Why," asked the little boy in surprise, "wouldn't the eggs be safer right around the house in the chimney-corner or in the hen- THREE HEADS JUST SHOWING ABOVE THE STRAVv THE OLD TURKEY'S NEST. 115 house or in the stable? The wild things wouldn't come after them there." ' ' Of course, but the old turkey doesn't know that. She can't reason as we can. What little sense she has is only what we call instinct; that is the sense that taught them to take care of themselves and raise their little ones when they were wild. You know a turkey hasn't room enough in her head for a very big lot of brains any way, and what few she has seem to be a very poor kind of brains. But, if you keep asking questions, I never will get to tell about how she makes her nest. Well, she goes around the farm with the other turkeys every day until she gets ready to make her nest, and then some nice morning she starts out with them as if she were going to stay with them, but pretty soon she begins to stray off from the rest. She picks at the grass and clover-blossoms and catches grass- hoppers, just as if she wasn't thinking of any- thing but getting something to eat, but every minute or two she stops and looks around to see if anything or anybody is watching her; then she picks along a little further and looks around again. All the time, I expect, she is thinking about some nice, quiet place that she has picked out as a good place for a nest; any way, she 116 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. keeps on until she gets clear away by herself, and usually she finds a place in a fence-corner, where the last year's blue grass has fallen over and where the last year's dry leaves have drifted. The briars are growing thick there, and there are generally two or three little trees, so the old turkey creeps in between the trees and briars and under the dead grass and scratches out a place in the ground; she then puts some sticks and leaves and grass in the hollow place she has scratched out, and when she lays her egg she covers it up with more leaves and dead grass, and slips away just as quietly as she can." "How could you ever find her nest?" asked the little boy. " Well, that old turkey would come home for two or three evenings from a different direction from that which the other turkeys came from, and grandma would say: " 'Well, I do believe that old brown turkey that raised such a large flock last year has gone to laying already. She hasn't come home with the other turkeys for two or three days. Now I want you boys to watch her to-morrow and find her nest.' "So the next morning Henry and Jimmy and I watched the turkeys until that one started THE OLD TURKEY'S NEST. 117 off by herself; then Henry and I each climbed a tree so we could see a long way and so that old turkey couldn't see us, and Jimmy perched him- self up between the stakes of an old rail fence. The old turkey soon struck off pretty fast to- ward a big briar-patch that had grown up along an old fence. About that time one of the boys from one of grandpa's tenant-houses came across the field, and old Mrs. Turkey stopped and went to picking grass and chasing grasshoppers and bugs, just as if she wasn't going anywhere in particular. She fooled around that way for half an hour until she was sure that no one was watching her, then she began to steal off to- wards the briar-patch again. Presently she went * around a strawstack, and we couldn't see her; then we got down from our perches and went as fast as we could towards the strawstack, and what do you think that old turkey did? Just about the time we reached the strawstack she came back around it and saw us. Well, sir, she went walking off toward home again, as if she had never dreamed of a nest. She walked off, look- ing unconcerned and innocent, just as much as to say: ' I wonder what you boys are doing, any way? If you are out looking for turkeys' nests, I 'm sure I can't tell you anything about them. 118 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. I am just out taking a stroll myself and getting something to eat. I think it 's pretty early for turkeys' nests, any way.' And that miserable old turkey didn't do a thing but wander all the way back to the orchard and stand around as if she wished night would come so she could go to roost. We boys got to throwing rocks at the frogs down at the pond, and the first thing we knew that old turkey had disappeared. She didn't get home that night until about dark long after the other turkeys and we all knew that somewhere out on the farm there was an- other big, speckled egg hid away in a nest. Grandma said something about a big fat cherry pie that she had made for whoever found that turkey's nest, but ' reckoned ' she wouldn't have any use for it, as nobody seemed to be finding turkeys' nests; so we got our heads together and fixed up a plan to fool old Mrs. Turkey. Next morning when she passed the strawstack there were three black heads barely showing above the straw on the very top of the stack two woolly heads and one white-boy head, and there were six eyes in those three heads and they were all on that old turkey. After she passed the strawstack, she went on very fast until she reached the very thickest of the grass and weeds THE OLD TURKEY'S NEST. 119 and briars. We couldn't see her at all, but could tell where she was by seeing the weeds shake. Pretty soon we saw the weeds in a thick fence-corner shake; they shook a good long while in the same place, then they were still. " 'Dah 's dat ties', right beside dat li'l elum- tree,' said Jimmy. " 'Tain't no elum, hit 's a hackberry - tree,' said Henry, ' an' hit 's de one right by de long pinted fence-stake. Now, keep yo' eyes on dat ve'y same tree an' stake, 'cause dey 's a whole lot o' trees an' stakes along dat fence.' " 'Jimmy, you lay up here, and keep your eyes on the right place, and me and Henry will go and find the nest, and you tell us when we are hot or cold,' said the little white boy, who some- times talked almost as badly as the little ne- groes. Jimmy didn't like that, but he stayed, and Henry and I scampered off. We reached the place where we thought it was, and then we began to get confused. The tree didn't look like the same tree at all, and there were lots of fence-stakes with sharp points high above the fence. We knew Jimmy was yelling, 'Cold!' but we couldn't hear him, and he began to motion with his hands to show us which way to go. Finally, Jimmy got down and came tearing 120 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. through the bushes like a steer running away. He went on past us, and, climbing the fence, went straight to an old dead tree, and looked back at the strawstack. 'Now I 's gwine fin' er tu'key's nes',' he said, 'an' den who'll eat pie ? ' And he did find it. He had noticed that he could look right over the place where we last saw the turkey and see the dead tree, which was near the fence; then when he reached the tree he could look back at the place on the straw- stack and tell just where to look along the fence for the nest. There were six big speckled eggs in it. We took all of them, and left an old hen egg for a nest-egg. Of course, the old turkey had sneaked away as soon as she saw us coming. Then we marked the place by tying some grass around a fence-stake, and went home. "We went every day and got the egg, but one day we saw a crow sitting on the fence near the nest, and when we got there the egg was gone and so was the old nest-egg. Next morn- ing grandpa took an old suit of clothes and stuffed them with straw and put tobacco-sticks in the legs and arms to make them stand straight; then he tied an old hat on his straw man and took it out and tied it on the fence over THE OLD TURKEY'S NEST. 121 the turkey's nest; then the crow didn't bother the nest any more. ' ' One day when we went to get the egg there was nothing left of the scarecrow but a little pile of straw and four tobacco-sticks. When we told grandpa about it, he said: 'Well, I saw old Harrison Whaley go across that field yester- day. I wonder if that had anything to do with it ?' "One day pretty soon after that grandpa met old Harrison on the pike. He didn't see grandpa until they were right together, or he would have climbed over the fence as if he were going somewhere else. " 'Whoa!' said grandpa. 'Good morning, Harrison. Do you know where I can get a good strong man to help me cut oats next week ? ' " 'Mornin', Mahs. No, sah; no, sah, I does not. I 'd go mahsef , but I 's so weak in de laigs dese days dey feels like dey would crumple all up right undah me. Dey feels dat way dis ve'y minit.' " 'Why, Harrison,' said grandpa, winking, 'you ought to have a couple of good tobacco- sticks in your pants legs; that would keep a straw man from crumpling up.' "Old Harrison jumped clear off the ground, he was so surprised, and said, pretending to 122 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. laugh: ' Yas, sah; yas, sah; I 'specs dey would. Mornin', boss; mornin', sah.' And away went old Harrison, shaking his head and talking to himself." "Did the crows get the turkey eggs after the scarecrow got stoled?" asked the little boy. "No; she went to sitting pretty soon, and grandpa fixed her the same way he fixed all the old wild turkeys when they wanted to sit and hatch out little turkeys. He turned a barrel down out in the back yard and made a nice nest and put twenty nice eggs in it; then he went out to the nest and got the old turkey and brought her home and put her on the nest in the barrel, then he fastened up the barrel so she couldn't get out, and she settled down on the eggs and was perfectly satisfied. For two or three days she was fed while on the nest; then she was al- lowed to walk around a little, and someone would have to watch her to keep her from going back to her old nest. She soon began to get gentle, though, and by the time the little turkeys hatched out, she was almost as gentle as an old chicken hen. "Good night, now. Let 's go to sleep. T '11 tell you about the little turkeys some other time." "D THE TAR MAN. ADDY, tell me about you in the niggah cabin at night," said the little boy, "when all the little niggahs sat around the log fire." "Let 's see," said papa; "did I ever tell you about that?" ' 'Yes; and they played the fiddle and told stories about Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear, as if they were all people, and about Mr. Rabbit and the Tar Man and about Mr. Fox catching fish with his tail, and Mr. Crow and Mr. Possum and all of them goin' visitin'." "Yes, they used to tell me all those old tales; but everyone that ever lived where colored folks lived has heard all those stories. Why, you can read those stories in lots of books, and they are 123 "Lemme loose, I jell you!" 124 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. the same that every little Southern boy used to hear from his own colored folks." "Tell me again, daddy." "Well, on winter nights, when we would have supper early and the men would get the milking and feeding done and get plenty of wood up ready for the fires, I used to ask grandpa to let me go down to the cabin; so he would call one of the negro boys and he would take me down to the cabin. Uncle John would be playing the fiddle, and sometimes some of them would be dancing. The rest would be seated around the fire, eating apples or roasted potatoes or pop- corn or sometimes parched corn just big corn like that the horses eat, parched in a skillet or in a shovel. "I would sit in a little chair, or very often on Mammy Maria's or Mary's lap. Sometimes I would climb up on Uncle John's knee and try to play his fiddle, but I never tried long, because I would rather hear him play. 'After they got tired playing and singing, they would tell stories, and I never got tired hearing them tell about Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear.'' ' ' Tell me about Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear and Mr. Terrapin and Mr. Possum." THE TAR MAN. 125 "Well, I 11 tell you about one of them now and the others some other time. Here 's one they used to tell me about the Tar Man. I '11 tell you just as old Aunt Nina told me. "Old Mr. Fox had some fine cabbage in 'is gyahden one summah, an' evah night somebody stole some o' 'is cabbage. He couldn't tell who was stealin' dat cabbage, so by'm-by he went an' tol' ol' Mr. Coon 'bout it. Ol' Mr. Coon say, 'I know who 's stealin' yo' cabbage; I 'low it 's oT Mr. Rabbit.' "Den Mr. Fox think how he gwine to ketch ol' Mr. Rabbit. By'm-by he made a man out o' tah and set him up in his cabbage-patch. 'Long 'bout midnight ol' Mr. Rabbit cum hoppin' er- long in the gyahden. He hopped erlong de walk an' smelt o' de vegetables, an' evah now an' den took a little bite o' sumpin', but all de time he wuz a-thinkin' 'bout dat cabbage - patch. Aftah a while he saw de Tah Man. " ' Oh, yes! ' he said, ' now we 's done got you, we has. We 's been wonderin' who it was stealin' Br'er Fox's cabbages, an' now we 's caught you, you brack niggah. Oh! you needn't stan' thah an' say nothin'. Why don't you an- sah me ? ' said ol' Mr. Rabbit, gittin' mad. ' Who 126 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. is you, anyway? I 11 come ovah thah an' slap you ovah, ef you don't ansah me.' "De ol' Tah Man jes' stood thah an' nevah say a word, an' ol' Mr. Rabbit went ovah an' stood up on 'is hin' feet an' hauled off wid 'is right foot an' slapped de Tah Man right on de side o' de haid. Ol' Mr. Rabbit tried to get 'is foot loose an' couldn't, fer it done stuck tight. " ' Lemme go!' say Mr. Rabbit. 'You bettah lemme go, I tell you! I got 'nuther han'. I '11 knock de othah side yo' haid off." An' he fotch him a lick on de othah side o' de haid, an' dat han' stuck tight too. " 'Who you foolin' wid?' say ol' Mr. Rabbit. ' I got a foot lef; I kick you all to pieces.' An' he pulled back he hin' foot an' kicked de Tah Man on de shin, an' de foot stuck; den he kicked wid de othah foot, an' it stuck too. " 'Lemme go, I tell you! Ef you don't let loos'n me, I haul off wid my haid an' butt de life out'n you. "But de ol' Tah Man nevah say nothin', an' ol' Mr. Rabbit so mad by dis time he sock 'is haid right in ol' Mr. Tah Man's chis', an' dar he was stuck fas' an' tight. " 'Long 'bout daylight ol' Mr. Fox cum a- walkin' out in 'is gyahden an' he saw ol' Mr. THE TAR MAN. 127 Rabbit stuck to de Tah Man. He pick 'im up an' say, ' Now I 's got you. I 's gwine to fix you. You won't steal no mo' my cabbage.' "Mr. Rabbit didn't say nuffin,' but he keep up a mighty thinkin' 'bout how he gwine to git loose. Mr. Fox took him ovah to Mr. Coon's home an* say to Mr. Coon: ' Heah 's de man what been a-stealin' my cabbage. Now, what we gwine to do wid 'im?' "Mr. Coon he considah an' considah, an* by'm-by he say, ' You mus' fro 'im in de fiah an' bu'n 'im up, er fro 'im in de briahs an' scratch 'is eyes out. Ax 'im which way he ruthah die, an' ef he say, "Fro me in de fiah," you fro 'im in de briahs, an' ef he say, "Fro me in de briah- patch," you fro 'im in de fiah.' So Mr. Fox ax 'im an' he say: ' Oh, please, Mr. Fox, fro me in de fiah! Don't fro me out in dat briah-patch an' scratch me to deaf. Oh, please, Mr. Fox, jes' fro me in de fiah an' be done wid it!' So Mr. Fox he heave 'im out ez fur ez he could fro 'im in de briah-patch. Ol' Mr. Rabbit lit 'way out in de briahs, an' when he got froo to de groun' he kick up 'is heels an' say, 'Good-bye, Mr. Fox; I wuz bawn an' riz in de briahs; I likes briahs.' An' he struck out lickety-split, an' nevah stopped twell he got home." 128 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. " Now, daddy, tell me about the bear catching fish with his tail, and how the coon got rings on his tail, and a whole lot of 'em." "No, no," said papa; "not to-night. I'll tell them again sometime; but you can read all of them, and the Tar Man too, in books when you get bigger. They were told to all the little boys who lived down South before all the ne- groes got to be 'coons,' and everybody who writes about the old-time negroes tells the same old stories. You can find all of them just about as I have told you in half a dozen books, but I have told them to you just as they were told to me. Sometimes when I was at the negro cabin they would tell ghost stories and get me so scared that it would take two or three of them to take me up to the house at bedtime. No, I won't tell you any ghost stories, because there aren't such things as ghosts. That 's all this time." "Ain't stories about Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear and Mr. Rabbit a whole heap like fairy stories, daddy?" Papa shifted both feet and cleared his throat, as he frequently did when the little boy's ques- tions puzzled him. THE TAR MAN. 129 "But I like them better than I do fairy stories," added the little boy. "Well, of course they are not exactly true, like our own stories, but they are not quite so bad as fairy stories, because there are such things as foxes and bears and rabbits, and while they can't talk, they can make each other un- derstand a good many things. Everybody knows there are no such things as fairies." "Good-night, daddy," said the tired little boy. "But wasn't old Mr. Rabbit smart?" FINDING THINGS. "I OOK, DADDY," said the little boy, holding up a marble, "see what I found? Didn't you used to find lots of things when you were a little boy on the farm and had so much room to find things in? " "Yes, I used to find lots of things." "Tell me about 'em," said the little boy. "Well, we didn't find things like those you find here in town, but we found different kinds of things." "Tell me all about 'em," said the little boy. "Well, when I was a little bit of a fellow, we found lots of things that the Indians used a long, long while ago. We found arrow-heads made out of flint. These were hard rocks cut like this." And papa went to a drawer and took out a fine flint arrow-head. "Did the Indians make that?" "Yes, the Indians made that a long, long while ago, before any of us were born." "Goodness!" said the little boy. "It must be awful old." 130 FINDING THINGS. 131 "Well, I don't know how old it is, but it will look just the same way a hundred years from now, if nobody breaks it. I found this when I was a little boy, not much bigger than you, and I found all these others about the same time." -^p "GO ON. NIGGAH; I AIN'T AFEARD." And papa pulled open a drawer that was filled with flint arrow-heads, stone axes, and stone skin-dressers. The little boy asked what each thing was for, and asked especially about the flint arrow-heads. Papa explained to him how 132 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. the Indians made their bows and arrows, and how they split the ends of the arrows and fitted the arrow-head in and tied it with strong strings. "What did the Indians use these for, papa?" "Why, to kill game with, to shoot rabbits and deer with, and to fight with when they got mad at the white people." "Didn't they have any guns?" "No, the Indians did not have any guns, but they sometimes killed lots of people with these bows and arrows. Sometimes they would make poison out of the different kinds of roots and dip these arrow-heads in the poison, and then any- body shot with these arrow-heads would die from the poison." ' ' Goodness ! Indians must be awful bad. ' ' "Yes; but they thought they were fighting for their country. Some of them were pretty bad, though." "Where did you find all of these things, daddy?" "Oh! we found them scattered over the ground everywhere, and sometimes we would dig into a grave where an Indian had been buried and find a great many of these things in the grave." 1 ' What else did you find ? " FINDING THINGS. 133 "Well, we used to go, when we were little boys, to different places on the farm where old houses had stood, and we would find pieces of china. There were blue pieces and red pieces and yellow pieces, and sometimes we found al- most a whole plate or saucer with the funniest things painted on them you ever saw. That was the kind of china used over one hundred years ago. "Grandpa's farm was a very old one, and the old big road used to run through it the old road that ran through the center of Kentucky and one of the old houses that used to be on grand- pa's farm was a tavern, and all the wagons and stages stopped there, sometimes to stay all night and sometimes to get dinner and feed and water their horses. We used to find old silver pieces, too, around these places. There was one hole that was once a cellar, where we 'would take our hoes and dig, and we could nearly always find some silver pieces, and one time I found a silver half-dollar nearly a hundred years old. One day grandpa had the negro men taking up an old fence near this place, and one of them found an old silver dime. After a while he reached down and picked up another dime and put it in his pocket; then he pulled 134 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. away another rail and picked up something and put it in his pocket real quick and said, ' I 've found a whole handful of money.' He went right along picking up things and putting them in his pocket, and eveiy time he put something in he would say it was a bigger piece, until after a while he was rinding dollar and five-dollar pieces. Henry and Jimmy and I were looking everywhere and could not find any, but Har- rison would just pull up a rail and run his hand under it and then put his hand in his pocket and shake his pocket, and we thought he was getting rich just as fast as could be. After a while grandpa came along, and I said: " 'Papa, Harrison is going to quit work, I expect, because he has found a whole fortune under this old fence. Before he gets through he will have pretty near a barrel of money.' ' ' Harrison looked up at grandpa and looked real silly, but he did not find any more money while grandpa was there, and I noticed that after the fence was torn down Harrison did not seem to have any more money than he had before. I asked grandpa about it afterwards, and he said he suspected Harrison was picking up little rocks and making us boys think it was money; but he did find a dime, because he showed it to us afterwards. FINDING THINGS. 135 1 ' The biggest find we ever made on the farm, though, was a lot of marbles. I will tell you where we found them. When we were little bits of fellows, we used to play marbles on the big back porch. There was a great big crack at one end of the porch, and we lost lots of marbles under the house. One time, when we were pretty big boys, we got to talking about all the marbles we had lost under the house, until you would think there was a whole marble store under there; so Henry said, 'Let 's go under there an' get 'em.' So we looked all around the house for a place we could get under. Grandpa heard us talking about it, and he took a rock out of the foundation and made a hole big enough for a boy to crawl in. We all looked through the hole, one at a time, and thought it was awfully dark, and we were afraid we could not find any marbles anyway. There were little, weak-look- ing trees growing up under there, and it was dark and smelt damp, and we did not care very much about going in, after all; but finally one of us went under a little way, and then another one came in, and at last Jimmy came in too; then we were all under the house. Pretty soon we got used to the darkness and the damp smell, and we went ahead looking for marbles. The 136 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. first thing we knew Henry found a big glass marble and then I found one and Jimmy found a ball. We had not been under the house ten minutes before we had our pockets nearly full of marbles and balls and tops and had one or two knives. After that a marble could not hide from us by rolling under that porch, for in less than five minutes there would be a boy hunting it, and before long there would be a boy getting into trouble for having his clothes dirty. We crawled around under there so much and got so much mud and dirt on our clothes that grandpa threatened to fasten up the hole. One day I crept back in such a tight place under the porch that I got fastened, and I had to scratch the dirt away before I could get out. After that I was more careful about rolling marbles under the porch, and pretty soon grandpa fastened the hole up sure enough to keep us from soiling all the clothes we had. "There was another place about the old house where we used to find things. After we got big enough to climb around, we noticed that directly over the door on the back porch there was a big hole leading to a loft over the back room. We used to wonder what was in there, and we imagined that Santa Claus lived there. FINDING THINGS. 137 We had all sorts of stories about what might be in that loft. Finally, one day we got a ladder and went in. We found old door-knobs and locks and keys and chains and all sorts of things that a boy likes to have and that he ought not to have. Grandpa told us that the house that used to be there had burned down, and that all these iron things had been taken out of the ashes and had been put up there to keep. We country boys did not have as many playthings as you city boys have, so we used these for play- things and had a pretty good time with them. "There was something else we used to find that you boys in town never find we called them terrapins. They are like the tortoise that you read about in your books and like the turtles, only they stay on dry land. Whenever we found a terrapin we would bring him to the house and make him stick his head and legs out of his shell and walk by putting a coal of fire on his back. You know he has a hard shell all over him, and it wouldn't burn him much to put a small coal on top of his shell and leave it there a little while. He would open his shell and stick his feet and head out and try to get away from the fire; then we would take the coal off and he would draw in his feet and head, close up his 138 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. shell, and be right still again. Before we took him back in the fields and turned him loose, we would cut our names and the date on his shell. One time, when I was a grown man, I found one that I had cut my name on just twenty years before. He may be there on the old farm yet for all I know. I don't know how long they live." "Didn't you find any birds' nests?" "Yes; but grandpa and grandma would not let us take the eggs; they would let us go and look at them and watch when the little birds hatched out, but we couldn't touch them. Sometimes they would let us catch fishing-worms and go and give one to each of the little birds- You know that just as soon as the little birds in the nest hear anything near them they think it is their mamma, and they open their mouths wide for her to drop a worm in. Then we used to watch the little birds when they got big enough to fly. Sometimes they would fall out of the nest before they could fly, and then we would put them back again to keep the cats from get- ting them. Whenever there would be a storm at night, we would always find a lot of little birds that had been blown out of their nests. Sometimes they would be drowned, but nearly FINDING THINGS. 139 always the old birds would be able to take care of them somehow." "What else did you find, daddy?" "Oh! sometimes a nest full of little rabbits out in the grass somewhere." "Didn't you ever find the eggs before the little rabbits hatched out? Why didn't you go out early Easter morning? and you could have found the eggs." "That reminds me of how we used to color eggs out in the country," said papa, changing the subject. "We would take some green wheat and boil it with the eggs, and they would be colored a nice green. Sometimes we would wrap them in colored calico and boil them, and they would be made just like the calico. We didn't have any nice dyes like those you have." "Yes, but you had lots of fun. Wish I was a country boy, and could find things like you and Henry and Jimmy used to find." SHEP. 4 4 ET ME tell you about a dog we had once on the farm," said papa. "I want you to know about this dog, because he was the best and smartest dog I ever saw. We had not had any dog for a long while, and one day grandpa came home with a basket that had a cloth tied over the top of it. We took the cloth off, and there was the prettiest little yellow shepherd dog that you ever saw. He was as round and soft as a ball and had long curly hair just as soft as grandma's muff, and had a little sharp black nose and pretty big brown eyes. We asked grandpa what kind of a dog he was, and he said: " 'He is a shepherd dog, and you can name him "Shep" right now. If you treat that dog right, he will be worth as much on the farm as two or three boys. As soon as he gets big enough you can teach him to drive the cows and sheep and look after the stock in a good many ways/ "We took the little dog out and played with 140 HE KNEW EVERY COW, AND WOULD BRING THEM ALL.' SHEP. 143 him and gave him some milk, and he wagged his tail and began to feel pretty much at home. " 'Now,' said grandpa, 'you raise that dog just as if he were one of the family, only don't let him forget that he is a dog. If you take him and teach him things, he will be worth a great deal to us; but don't let him stay in the house and get lazy. Keep him out in the yard, where a dog belongs.' "Well, Shep grew up and was soon a big pretty shepherd dog. He did not know very much about other dogs, because he was raised on the farm at home, and hardly ever saw any- thing or anybody except the family and stock, and by the time he was grown he knew every cow on the place and every horse, and was fa- miliar with even the sheep and the hogs. We used to send him half a mile from home after the cows all by himself, and he would bring them and not let any of the rest of the cattle come with them. All we had to do was to open the gate and send him into the pasture. "One time, when he was about half grown, he thought he would undertake to drive an old sheep out of a lot. The sheep had a little lamb around there somewhere, and she wasn't feeling very friendly to dogs, so Shep got too fresh and 144 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. the old sheep ran him into a fence-corner and nearly butted him to death. After that he was a little more afraid of sheep, but when he grew up he got over that so that he would go after them and drive them home; but if they turned and started after him, he ran away. However, this did not happen very often, for they gen- erally knew him and knew that he would not hurt them. When he was driving a cow, he would run close up behind her heels and bark, and then fall down behind on the ground and let the cow kick over him. Sometimes he would not fall quite quick enough, or the cow would not kick quite as high as he expected, and he would get some pretty hard kicks; but he 'most always managed to dodge. "One day grandpa killed a beef and put it out in the yard to cool, thinking that he would go back later and put it away. He did not hang it high enough to keep it out of the reach of the dogs, but he thought he would get it again be- fore anything touched it. However, he lay down and went to sleep, and away in the night he thought about his beef. He jumped up and said, 'Now, I'll bet the dogs have ruined half my beef.' So he put on his clothes, and went very hurriedly out to where he had hung the SHEP. 145 beef, and just as he got near it, Shep jumped up and growled. Grandpa stopped suddenly, and then saw that it was Shep. He said, 'Why, Shep, what are you doing here ? Have you been eating my beef?' Shep knew who it was then, and walked up to grandpa wagging his tail; then he went back and lay down near the beef again. Grandpa looked around, and there was a row of cats and dogs standing at a respectful distance from the beef and looking at it two of the neighbors' dogs and all of the cats on the place. Not one of them dared to come any nearer, because Shep was watching, and not one of them had gotten near enough to touch it, and, of course, Shep had not touched it himself. 'Well,' said grandpa, 'if you are going to watch the beef, I will go to bed.' And he went to bed and left Shep to watch the beef all night. "Another time, grandpa had been working out in the field and Shep had been with him all day. When he came home at night he missed the dog and wondered what had become of him. After supper he called and called, but could not find Shep anywhere. The next morning he got up early and looked out, expecting to see Shep. Shep was not there. He felt very sorry, for fear something had happened to the dog, but when 146 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY he went out to work away out in the field the first thing that he saw was his coat lying on the ground and Shep lying beside it. He had watched it all night. Grandpa thought that was very smart and very good, and so he picked up his coat, and told Shep to run home and get his breakfast. Shep seemed to understand, so off he trotted for home. As soon as grandma saw him, she said, ' Why, Shep, where have you been?' Shep wagged his tail and barked; that was the best he could do, and grandma knew that he had not been in any mischief, so she gave him a good breakfast, and he went back out in the field again. ' ' One night I heard Shep barking out in the yard, and he kept barking and barking, and finally I went out to see what was the matter. As soon as I came out in the yard, Shep started off towards the field across the turnpike. I fol- lowed him a little piece, and he ran back to me and then ran down towards the pike again. I concluded that he was barking at some dogs on the turnpike or at somebody passing along, and I started back, but he kept running after me and starting towards the pike again. I looked all around and could not see anything wrong, so I went back to bed again, and left Shep barking SHEP. 147 all night. After a while I heard him over in the field across the pike, barking. The next morn- ing when I got up I found four or five cows in that field. The gate had been left open, and Shep had been trying to get me to go with him and help him drive those cows out of the corn- field, and I was not smart enough to find out what he was after. He had done everything but talk to me about it, and I would not under- stand; so when I refused to go with him, he went into the field and worked all night trying to get the cows out; but there were too many of them, and the field was too large, and he could not do it. When I helped him drive them out the next morning, he looked at me as if to say: 'You don't know much about cows or dogs. If you had come on and helped me last night, we would have saved a whole lot of corn. Now I am going to the house and take a nap.' "We used to go to school about two miles from home, and nearly every evening Shep would meet us about a quarter of a mile away and come home with us. Whenever we got home and grandpa wasn't about the house, we could ask Shep where he was, and if he knew, he would take us straight to him. All we had to do was to say, 'Shep, where 's daddy?' 148 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "When Shep was a small puppy, we had taught him to shake hands and to bark when he wanted something to eat. We would hold up a piece of meat and say, 'Speak, Shep,' and he would bark; so when he got older, whenever he was hungry he did not wait for us to tell him to speak; he would come around and speak any- way. Whenever any stranger came around and Shep began to like him, he would come and put up his paw to shake hands; but when there was anybody around that he didn't know and didn't like, he would watch him just as long as he stayed about the place. "Shep wasn't much of a hunting dog, but he used to follow us when we went hunting, and he knew as well what a gun would do as we did. One day he got after a weasel and ran it into the old stone wall of the culvert under the turnpike. The weasel got into the wall where he was safe and Shep could see him, but could not reach him. The weasel would come to the edge cf the wall and show his teeth at Shep, and that would make Shep so mad that he tried to tear the wall down to get at the weasel. He would bite at the rocks and then run around the wall to try to get at the other side of it, and, all together, act a good deal as if he were crazy. I heard SHEP. 149 him barking, so I took the gun and went where he was. Shep knew in a minute that it was all up with Mr. Weasel. Just as soon as he saw me coming with the gun he ran 'round and 'round, and acted as if he were laughing; then he got out of the way and looked at me and then looked at the hole in the wall. The weasel was still there, showing his teeth at the dog, and thinking he was perfectly safe. I took aim quickly and shot the weasel, and then Shep was so glad that he almost howled." "Didn't Shep ever run the cats and treat 'em bad, like the dogs here?" "No; Shep was friendly with the cats about the place, and many a time I have seen him asleep out in the back yard with two or three kittens rolled up between his feet. "I will tell you how he used to play with us boys when we were little fellows. We would sometimes get after him out in the yard and try to catch him. He would run around and around in a circle, and we would think every minute that we would catch him, and just as soon as we were about to get hold of him, he would dodge and run somewhere else. Then sometimes he would get after us. He would let us get far away from him, then we would run and he would 150 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. start after us. Anybody who didn't know about him would have thought that when he caught us he would eat us up, but we would nearly always get to a tree or a fence before he caught us; then he would bark at the tree or fence as if he would tear us up if he could just get to us; then we would climb over the fence as if we were going the other way, and he would jump the fence to be there to catch us. Sometimes when we were running from him, we would fall down, and he would pounce right on us, but he would not hurt us any more than a kitten would. "One day when we met some other boys one of them said, ' I believe I '11 see what Shep would do if I should lick one of you fellows." So he pitched into one of us, just for fun, but before he could say 'Jack Robinson,' Shep jumped on him and almost tore his coat off. It took all four of us boys to explain to Shep and get him in a good humor; but he never did like that boy after that." CATCHING BIRDS. ONE EVENING when papa came home from his work, he found the little boy in bed. "Hello! little man. Are you sick?" asked papa in some sur- prise, although from the little boy's countenance papa judged that it was something besides a case for the doctor. The little boy didn't answer at once, but finally said: "Daddy, did you ever do any- thing naughty and have to go to bed in the daytime When yOU Were a The light from the candle would blind little boy?" the birds." 151 152 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "Well, there seemed to be a shorter way out of it when I was a little boy. I used to be naughty sometimes, there 's no doubt about that, but grandma never seemed to like to muss the beds up in the daytime. There was a dark closet pretty convenient, and, besides, the peach- trees grew right up close to the porch, and it seemed that they always needed trimming just about the time I got real naughty, and say, did you ever notice what good switches grow on the peach-trees? That reminds me those little peach-trees that I planted in the back yard last spring are getting pretty bushy right now." "Now, daddy, don't joke with me; I don't feel a bit like it." "I never was more serious in my life, and if you have been bad to mamma, you know you ought to be punished." " I 'd a heap rather be whipped a little bit than to be put to bed," said the little boy with a sigh. "Will you please tell mamma I 'm awful sorry? But you mustn't ask her to let me get up, 'cause then I might forget about it and be bad again some other time." After mamma had come in the room and kissed her little boy and told him she loved him and that she knew he did not mean to be bad, he CATCHING BIRDS. 153 turned over in bed, as if he were resigned to any kind of punishment; then he turned back again, and said pleadingly: "Papa, won't you tell me about some time when you were bad and had to go in the dark closet?" "Not to-night, little man; that would be like arresting a fellow and then sending him to the hotel instead of to jail. Some time, though, I will tell you. Good-bye, now. Mamma will send you up some supper after a while, and then you must go to sleep." And papa kissed the little boy and went down on the porch, but he was restless and didn't read the paper very long, and didn't seem to be contented until he found himself down in the basement working away like everything on a wagon that he was making for the little prisoner. Next evening, when papa had read the paper and was watching the boy play with the wagon that he had finished the evening before, the little fellow came and stood beside him. ' ' Now, daddy, tell me about some time when you were a bad little boy, and what they did to you." ' ' Well, let 's see. I was bad so many times that I hardly know which time to tell you about. Oh, yes! I '11 tell you about the time Henry and 154 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. Jimmy and I caught so many birds and grandpa got after us about it; but you mustn't tell any of the boys about this, because they might go and do the very same thing. I know you won't do it yourself, because I am telling you right now how wrong and how foolish it is." " I won't tell anybody at a-1-1," said the lit- tle boy, drawing out the last word as long as he could and gravely shaking his head; " 'cause you know we talks lots of secrets that we don't tell a-n-y-body, don't we, papa?" Papa smiled and said: "That's right. I know you won't tell. "Well, you know where we lived our yard was about as big as two whole blocks here in the city, and was full of trees of all kinds. There were a great many cedar-trees, and they were so thick and the branches so close that it was a great place for the birds to roost, so about dusk every evening the birds would begin to gather from all around the neighborhood. There were lots of doves, but they roosted in the apple- trees. In the cedar-trees, though, there were robins and sparrows and jaybirds, and a few redbirds and bluebirds, and several other kinds. Late in the evening, just as it began to get dark, we would go past a big, bushy cedar-tree with CATCHING BIRDS. 155 our hands full of rocks, and when one would say, ' Ready! ' we would all throw in the tree at once, and out would fly a whole flock of birds of all kinds. Sometimes one would fall dead or crip- pled under the tree, and then we would feel very mean; but the temptation to throw at something was so strong that we would go ahead and throw in the other trees. We had been at that only a few days, though, when grandpa caught us. I think some town boy had put Henry up to that mischief, and he had got the rest of us into it. Well, the first time grandpa caught us at that, he gave us such a talking-to that we felt very sheepish, and we stopped our throwing for a while; but one evening, when we saw the birds unusually thick, we armed ourselves with rocks, and all threw at once into the best tree we could find. A lot of birds flew out, and one robin fell under the tree and fluttered a few times and then was dead. Grandpa was watching us, and he came out where we were, and, taking Henry and Jimmy by the arms, he said, ' Now you boys go to your mammy.' They knew what that meant, and they would a good deal rather grandpa would have attended to them himself, because I tell you Mammy Maria didn't make it any play matter when she gave those little darkies a 156 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. dressing-down. Grandpa took me by the arm and led me right under a big peach-tree and into the carriage-house, and well, what happened there was worth a good deal to the birds and to me too, I suppose. It was not long after that when Henry told us that if we wanted a nice lot of pet birds, he knew how we could catch them without hurting them a bit. " 'An' dey ain't no thin' wrong 'bout takin' keer o' pet birds in a cage,' said Henry. 'De bestes' kin' o' people has pet birds, an' you kin feed 'em an' take keer ob 'em bettah 'an dey kin take keer o' deyse'ves.' ' ' Of course we wanted to know how it could be done, and Henry told us that it was ' jes' as easy as goin' out an' pickin' 'em up.' All we had to do was to wait until the birds had settled in the trees, and then take a candle and go under the trees real quietly. The light from the candle would blind the birds, and we could just pick them right off the roost. We did not more than half believe that it could be done, but we could hardly wait for night to come so that we could try it. We got our candles ready, and soon after dark we went out. We sneaked up under a bushy cedar-tree, and then suddenly CATCHING BIRDS. 157 put the candle up in the branches. At the first tree we tried we scared all the birds out without getting any, but the next time we caught two robins and a redbird; at the next we caught several sparrows and two bluebirds. Before we stopped we had nearly a dozen birds of one kind and another in the box we had brought along. When we took them to the house we were terribly surprised to find that grandpa and grandma did not believe in keeping pet birds at all, and that anyway there was a big difference between birds raised in a cage and those caught out of the trees. Grandpa explained that these birds would never get gentle and that they would always try to get away, even if they lived ; but that the chances were that not one in a dozen birds caught in that way would live. " 'Why,' said grandpa, 'most of these birds have little mates sitting on their nests right now, and some of them have little birds depending on them for all they get to eat. "'Now,' said grandpa, looking serious, 'the birds are pretty and innocent, and make the sweetest music in the world around here every day, and, besides, they catch lots of bugs and worms that would almost ruin the garden and 158 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. the trees; and I never want to have to tell you boys any more to let the birds alone. Do you hear? Now go and turn those birds loose, every one of them.' "And grandpa never had any more trouble with us about birds." THE MILL-DAM. { l "X ADDY, tell me a story about you and I the niggah boys getting in the branch and getting all wet," pleaded the little boy. "Oh! that was when we were little bits of fel- lows," said papa; "and besides, I have told you that so often that you are tired hearing it. Let me tell you something about the branch and about when we grew to be larger boys." "All right," said the little boy; "and when the baby gets as big as I used to be when you told me that story, you '11 tell him about it, won't you? and I can listen and help you tell it, can't I?" "Why, of course," said papa, smiling at the little boy's scheme to get to hear the same story again. ' ' But now about that branch. You know there was a little bit of a branch that ran out of the spring-house and under the little culvert and then ran off down the hollow and emptied into the big branch that came through the big culvert under the turnpike. When there had been a 159 160 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. good deal of rain, the little branch would be full of water, and we could wade in it and have lots of fun. About half-way down to the big branch there was a big flat rock in the bottom, and the water spread out over the rock and fell down about two feet into a deep hole. That is where we used to make our water-mills." "Sure-enough water-mills that would -run?" cried the little boy. "Tell me all about them." "Of course they would run. We would take a dry corn-stalk and split it up into flat blades and stick these blades through another piece of corn-stalk; then we would set up a forked stick on each side of the branch just under where the water fell, and put the ends of the corn-stalk in the forks of the sticks; then the water, falling on the blades, would make the wheel turn and splash water like a sure-enough mill. We called that aflutter-mill. ' ' One time grandpa made us a big wheel out of pine, with big, broad paddles on it, and built a little wooden house that looked just like a miii, and he put a leather belt on the wheel and fixed it so it would turn two round pieces of wood that looked like real mill-stones. The mill had windows in it and you could look in the windows and see the mill-stones turning just like a sure- enough mill. ELEPHANT, TIGERS, AND BIRDS OF PARADISE. THE MILL-DAM. 163 "One day we got tired playing in the little branch and went down to the big branch. It was a very dry time, and there was very little water in the little branch so little that it would not even turn a flutter-mill so we went where we could get more water. Even the big branch was running pretty slow, so we concluded we would build a dam across it like one we had seen across the big creek, where the sure-enough corn- mill was; so we got a hoe and some shovels, and rolled up our pants, and went to work. We worked all day, digging and piling up dirt, and I expect that if we had been made to work that hard all day pulling or cutting weeds out of the garden, we would have been tired almost to death. We made a wall of dirt clear across the branch, except right in the middle; we left that open at first so the water could get through and not get in the way of our work. We piled the dirt up about two feet high, and made it wide at the bottom, so it would not wash away easily; then we carried big, flat rocks and put them on both sides of the ridge of dirt to help hold it. After we got everything else done, we filled up the opening we had left in the middle just as quickly as we could, and put several big, flat rocks against it. Of course, we had dug the 164 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. place above the dam a good deal deeper than it had been at first, and all together it was about three feet deep from the bottom of the hole to the top of the dam. By the time we got through it was nearly night, and oh, we were tired and muddy!" "Did grandma get after you about being muddy?" asked the little boy, thinking of some of his own troubles in that direction. "No; we had on some of our oldest clothes, and they all knew what we were doing, and they just let us get muddy. Your Uncle Ben was a pretty big chunk of a boy at that time, and there were four of us in it, but Uncle Ben wasn't big enough to do much of anything but get muddy and wet. ' ' Before we went to the house that night we could see our lake beginning to fill up nicely, and when we went down to the branch next morning it was full clear up to the top and running over. Oh, it w r as a fine lake! It was about eight feet across, and the water was deep away back up the branch quite a long way. The first thing we did was to roll up our pants and take a good wade, but we didn't go in the deepest part, for that would have got our clothes wet, and the water would have been almost up to our necks. THE MILIv-DAM. 165 "That day and the next we had everybody on the place making boats. We had steamboats with big smokestacks, and one of them even had a big paddle-wheel at the back of it that turned and splashed water like everything when the boat was going. We pulled the boats with strings and furnished the puffing and whistle with our mouths. Then we had a lot of flat- boats that we would put in front of the steam- boats and pretend that they were being towed by the steamboats, just as we had seen them on the river. We loaded the boats with small rocks for coal, and we broke up sticks and piled them up on the boats for flour-barrels and tobacco hogsheads. ' ' Finally we concluded that we would take a load of horses and mules down to New Orleans, so when we went to the house to dinner we gath- ered up about six kittens, two or three chickens, and the pup. The kittens were the mules, and we had a terrible time to get the mules to stay on the boats. At last we tied them on two of the flatboats. " 'Let 's play it 's a circus, and have the pup for the elephant,' said one of the boys; so we im- mediately turned the mules into tigers and lions. and the chickens into wild birds, and the pup 166 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. from a horse into an elephant, and started out with the whole show. We had the kittens on two of the flatboats, the chickens on another, and the elephant on the steamboat. When we got them about half-way across the pond, the elephant got over on one side of the boat and upset it. That knocked the boats full of tigers and lions over, and the birds of paradise and fine ostriches all went over with them. You never saw such a splatter and scramble of an- imals in your life. The elephant didn't mind it a bit, and just proceeded to swim ashore and wag his tail; but the tigers and lions spit and sneezed and spluttered and meowed terribly. Some of the fine birds came near drowning be- fore we could bring them to shore, and two of us got our clothes all wet and got scratched by the wild beasts like everything before we managed to straighten things out again. That night we got a scolding for the way we treated the chick- ens and cats, so we went out of the live-stock and show-transporting business. "The next day we dug a little ditch around the hillside, leading from the lake to a point be- low it, so that when the lake was full the extra water would run out that way instead of over the dam. We fixed it like mill-races we had THE MILL-DAM. 167 seen at sure-enough mills, and where it emptied into the branch, we built our mill again. "We played around that lake every day for over a week, starting something new nearly every day. Grandpa let a carpenter, who was doing some work at the stable, make us a fine, big boat, and put two side wheels on it, and one of the men painted it for us, and he painted her name, Water Queen, in red letters on her side. The rest of the boat was painted white. 1 ' One morning when we got up it was raining hard, and we couldn't go down to the branch all day. Next morning the sun was out, and as soon as we had our breakfast, away we went in great excitement to see our lake. " 'I '11 bet that old mill-race is jes' a-boomin' and the mill-wheel a-turnin' like sixty,' said one of the boys. " 'An' de Watah Queen jes' a-dancin' on de wabes,' said Jimmy. ' ' When we came in sight of the branch, it was twice as high as we had ever seen it and was running fast and roaring like everything, and was muddy and had sticks of wood and pieces of bark and weeds and all sorts of things in it. We started on a run to our lake, beginning to wonder if any of it had been washed away. 168 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. When we got there the branch was running over the place just as if there had never been a darn there. There wasn't a thing left. Our beauti- ful boats that we had left tied up to the bank were all gone, and the mill was gone too. We couldn't find a thing. The dam had all disap- peared we couldn't even find the place where it had been. We felt pretty bad, I tell you, and I suppose if Uncle Ben had been with us that morning and discovered that his particular boat had been washed away, we would have had some pretty good howling. He was a brave little fel- low, though, and didn't do very much crying. "Well, we went to the house with very seri- ous faces, and just as we got to the big side porch grandpa called us from the cabin. We went to him, and there in the middle of the floor was our whole collection of boats, mill, and everything, and Uncle Ben down on the floor playing with them as if nothing had ever happened. " 'Why. papa!' I cried, running and grab- bing him around the neck; 'where did you find them?' " 'Well,' said grandpa, 'I saw that storm coming up the other night after you boys were all sound asleep, and went down to the branch and got your boats and things. Sorry I couldn't THE MILI/-DAM. 169 bring the dam along, but I couldn't save that.' " 'Well, you are the best daddy that ever lived,' I said, giving him another hug. "And I believe he was, too,' " said papa. "I Ve got a pretty good one myself," said the little boy, giving his own papa a good, tight hug. " But, goodness me! what a good time you must have had when you were a little boy ! ' ' THE WOODS OWL. ONE DAY late in the fall the men were cutting down some big sugar- trees. The trees were partly decayed and full of holes, and they were cutting them down to get them out of the way of the young trees. The hollow places in those trees had all sorts of things in them; one had a big rac- coon in it, and when the tree fell, out jumped old Mr. Coon, and all the dogs jumped on him at once. S h e p was there and two other dogs that belonged to one of the neighbors. The coon tried his best to get away, but the dogs were right after him. He would back up against a tree and look as if he would turn over on his back, and then the first dog that ran in on him got his face clawed and his nose 170 "On-twis > 'imi On-twis' 'im." THE WOODS OWL. 171 bitten by the coon. There was a creek close by, and at last the coon reached the creek, then he jumped in, still holding to one of the dogs by the nose, and they both went under. The coon didn't mind it a bit, but the dog was nearly drowned, and if there had been but one dog, the coon would have whipped him; but be- fore long all the dogs got hold of him at once, and then poor old Mr. Coon had to give up. One of the men in the neighborhood made a fine cap out of his skin, just like those Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton used to wear. After the coon was killed, the men went back to the tree, and in one of the holes they found an old owl and caught it; they brought it to the house at noon and gave it to me, and told me all about the coon-fight. The owl was larger than a screech owl, but not as large as a horned owl. He was what we call a woods owl. Well, when we got through asking questions about the coon- fight, and quarreling because they had not taken us with them, we turned our attention to the owl. We were getting to be pretty big boys then. Henry was about eleven and Jimmy and I ten and your Uncle Ben just five. Uncle John told us that the owl couldn't see very well in day- light, so they caught him without any trouble; 172 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. but we had always known that; we had known it ever since we were babies. Owls' eyes are made that way, so they can see to hunt at night. Well, Uncle John tied a string to the owl's leg and tied him in a dark corner of the kitchen, and every time anyone went near him, he would raise his wings and snap his bill so hard and fast that it sounded like bones rattling. We didn't get very close to him, either, and no matter which way I would turn when I was close to him, he would keep his eyes on me. Finally, Uncle John said that if we would take the owl out in the yard and tie him to a stake and then walk around him 'round and 'round a great many times the owl would keep turning his head watching the boy that was going around him until he would twist his head off. It didn't take us long to try it. Henry and I grabbed the string and dragged the poor old owl out in the yard, his wings flapping and his bill snapping like everything. We drove a stake in the ground and tied the owl to it, and then I said: "I bid to go around him. Now, you boys keep still, so he will watch me." So off I started around the owl, very slowly at first, because I wanted to see how he would go about twisting his head off. When I had got directly behind him, I stopped, THE WOODS OWL. 173 and there was his bill still pointing at me and his two big yellow eyes looking right into my face; then I started up slowly and the owl's bill start- ed at the same time, just like the hand of a clock. I got back to where I had started, and there were the owl's eyes still looking straight at me. I went around again, and the owl's head kept turning; then I went a little faster, but the owl's head kept following me. I was beginning to feel pretty mean, but I wanted to see just what would happen, so I kept on going. Henry and Jimmy were getting terribly ex- cited, and Henry yelled out: ' ' Oh, he 's a-twis'in' it off! Hit 's a-comin'! Jes' look at de fedders a-raisin' 'roun' his neck! Keep a-goin'! Keep a-goin' ! Hit 's put 'n nigh off ! " Then Jimmy broke in : "On-twis' 'im! On- twis' 'im! I wouldn't kill no po' bird dat a-way no, I wouldn't. On-twis' 'im! Hit 's put'n nigh off now!" I was beginning to feel very sorry for what I had done, so I turned and ran the other way as fast as I could until I thought I had run around as many times as I had the first way. "Go 'roun' 'im once mo'!" yelled Jimmy. "You went de uddah way ten times, and you didn't go dis a-way but nine times; I counted." 174 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "No, it was nine times bofe ways," insisted Henry. "I counted, too." "I knows bettah," said Jimmy. "He's still got a twis' in he's neck. See dem fedders all ruffled up?" I didn't know what to do, as I hadn't count- ed, so I stood still and watched the owl, and while I was watching, the "ruffles" came out of his feathers and they lay down as smooth on his neck as they had at first. "Oh! I reckon he's all right," I said; "but I 'd like to feel and see if he has got a twist in his neck." But when I went to feel it, his bill snapped so fast that I ran the risk of leaving the twist in his neck, and let him alone. "I believe his neck is made out of Injy rubber, anyhow," I said as I stood back. "Maybe his head's set on a kind of swivel," suggested Henry, "an' when he dies I'm a-goin' to fin' out." "Oh, you boys all de time wantin' to kill sumpin' ! " said Jimmy, who was a tender-hearted boy. "I'm gwine to turn 'im loose an' let 'im straighten he's neck out hese'f. He sholy got a awful tough neck, dough." About that time your grandpa came along, and we all tried to tell him about it at once. THE WOODS OWL. 175 Grandpa listened the best he could, and then he said: "Now, let me tell you about that owl's neck. When you go around him, he follows you with his eyes until his bill is where the back of his head ought to be, then he turns it back clear around the other way so quickly you can't see him do it unless you watch very closely. Now look while I walk around him." And sure enough, we could all see him do it when we looked closely and knew what he was going to do, for we never doubted grandpa; we always knew that he would tell us exactly what was true, and we believed that he knew every- thing. That night grandpa told us to turn the owl loose, and he untied the string and let the owl go, and it slipped away so quietly in the moonlight that you would have thought it was just a big shadow gliding off among the trees. SHEP AND THE LAMB. 44 /^"NH! YOU can't drive sheeps and cows, II and bark at burgles; you 's des a play dog," said the little boy one evening as he threw his woolly toy dog over in the cor- ner with the rest of his playthings. "Tell me a sure-enough story about a sure- enough dog," he said as he put both hands on his papa's knees. "Can't you think of one about Shep?" : ' You just reminded me of one, and a good one, too," said papa as he helped the little boy to climb up on his lap. "One time early in the spring grandpa had about fifty fine sheep. He kept them all day long in a nice grassy lot about half a mile from the house, and at night put them in a big shed back of the barn. He kept them there at night so the dogs wouldn't kill them, for you know bad dogs kill sheep like everything, and there are mean dogs in every neighborhood. Well, every morning grandpa would let the sheep out and open the gate from the barn-lot into the lane 176 HE CARRIED THE LAMB AND THEY FOLLOWED. SHEP AND THE LAMB. 179 and drive them down the lane to the turnpike; then he would open another gate and let them out on the turnpike and drive them to the lot where they stayed all day. Shep always went with him, and pretty soon all that grandpa would have to do was to go ahead and open the gates, and Shep would come trotting along behind the sheep. Along in the afternoon, when the sun was about to set, grandpa would go and bring the sheep home. Shep would al- ways be waiting outside on the porch or out in the yard, and would go along and help. One afternoon grandpa was real busy about something else, and it was very late before he was ready to start. When he went out and looked around for Shep he couldn't see him anywhere; then he called him, but Shep was nowhere to be found. ' Well, I wonder what has become of Shep ? ' he said. ' I heard him barking out there a little while ago, and I thought he was barking then for me to come on and go after the sheep, and now I can't find him.' ' ' So grandpa went on by himself, wondering all the time what had become of the dog, and a little disappointed in him because he had gone away just when he was needed to help bring the 180 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. sheep home. He had been bragging that Shep never forgot anything, and he was afraid that he had bragged on the dog too soon. When he reached the gate of the sheep-lot, there were all the sheep gathered up around the gate, ready to come out and be driven home, and what do you think? There was Shep behind them, running back and forth to keep them from straying away. " 'Well! well! well!' said grandpa. 'Shep, you are the smartest dog I ever saw.' "Then Shep barked and smiled. Don't you think a dog can smile? I do. He can look pleasant and unpleasant, anyway, and Shep looked so pleasant when he was particularly pleased about anything that you would think he was going to laugh right out loud. "Well, grandpa opened the gate, and the sheep came running out. " 'Come on, Shep,' he said; 'come on, now; it 's getting late.' But Shep only stood and looked at grandpa a minute, and then started off down through the lot, barking and looking back. " 'Well,' said grandpa to himself, ' I couldn't count those sheep as they crowded through the gate, and I '11 bet that dog knows there 's an- other one somewhere. Go on, Shep; I 'm com- ing,' he said, and then away they went down through the lot, grandpa walking fast and Shep * SHEP AND THE LAMB. 181 jumping up and barking and then running a little way ahead. He led grandpa to the far corner of the lot, and there behind a big alder-bush was an old sheep and a little young lamb. She stamped her foot and shook her head at Shep, but he didn't try to go close to her. He just sat down and wagged his tail at grandpa, as much as to say, ' There, now. Wasn't I right ? That 's what I wanted to tell you.' "Then grandpa patted Shep on the head, and said: 'Well! well! well! Shep, you surely are a wonder. Good old smart dog. I knew there was something you wanted to tell me.' ' ' Then grandpa went and picked up the lamb, and the old sheep just touched him with her nose and didn't butt him at all; then away they all went, grandpa carrying the lamb and the old sheep following close at his heels and Shep trot- ting along behind. Every once in a while the little lamb would go, ' Ma-a-a,' and the old sheep would say, ' Ba-a-a,' and in a little while the big flock of sheep was in the shed, the old sheep and lamb were in a little place to themselves, Shep was in his box on the back porch, and grandpa was in the house, telling the rest of the family how smart the dog was." THE LOOM-HOUSE. ^ IV I OW*, I believe I '11 tell you one on grand- \ pa," said papa one day when he and the little boy had been talking about real old, old times. "This is one grandpa told me himself. You know, when he was a lit- tle boy it was away back in early times, and you couldn't go to the store and buy things ready made as you can now. 'Most all the clothes that they wore were made from the cotton and flax and wool raised right on their own farm. ' ' They had a big house, called the loom-house, where the cloth was woven. Grandpa's mother had two negro women who did nothing but weave cloth, and another one or two who spent their time making clothes. All of the clothes 182 "They were coming in." THE LOOM-HOUSE. 183 for the negroes and nearly all for the big family of boys were made from this home-made cloth. "Grandpa said that one day when he was a boy about ten years old he tore a great big hole in his breeches. They always called them 'breeches' in those days. He asked his mother for another pair, but she said: " 'No; you 'can't have another pair. You boys would tear up all the clothes that Tildy and Mary could make, if I would let you. Just go into the loom-house and throw your breeches out to Tildy, and she will mend them for you.' "So he did as he was told, and when he had thrown those breeches out the window, he had nothing left on him but a long coarse cotton shirt. "Well, about the time the negro girl started to fix the breeches, some company came in, and her mistress called her for something else, and they both forgot all about the half-clothed boy in the loom-house. He waited and waited, and at last he heard someone coming. He peeped out the window, and, instead of seeing Tildy coming with his clothes, there was his mother with a lot of company, and lady company at that. They might be going to the garden, he thought, but, if they were, it was a round-about 184 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. way they were taking, and it looked mightily to him as if they were coming directly to the loom- house. He looked around quickly to see where he could hide, but didn't see any good, safe place. Then he thought they were surely going some- where else; then he heard them talking, and, looking out through a crack, saw them coming right on towards the door. He even heard them talking about a new carpet that his mother had on the carpet-loom. "There was an empty barrel in the room, and, as it was a case of getting out of sight some- where and doing it in a hurry, he jumped in the barrel, and pulled a board about half-way over the top of it just as his mother opened the door and asked the ladies in. They looked at the carpet that was being made and then at some cloth and the flax and the spinning-wheel. ' ' ' Good gracious ! ' he said to himself ; ' there ''s old Mrs. Durbin; I know her by her voice, and if she can get out of here without looking in this barrel, it will be the first thing that she ever failed to look into.' "But he remembered that old Mrs. Durbin had a holy horror of cats; she was terribly afraid of them, and then he thought, ' If she does peep into this barrel, I 'm going to make her THE LOOM-HOUSE. 185 think there 's the biggest cat in here that she ever saw, or the loudest one she ever heard, any- way; but I hope she will go on away and not notice the barrel.' "He was beginning to feel awfully cramped, but finally they all seemed to be ready to go out. Old Mrs. Durbin alone hung back and kept ask- ing questions. Through a crack in the barrel he could see her take a longing look at the trap- door in the loft, but there were no steps to it; there was not even a ladder. "Mrs. Durbin was just turning away with a little sigh when she espied the barrel. She turned quickly, and carelessly passed by the barrel on her way out. As she went by it she moved the board over a little to one side and leaned over to look in. Just then there was a most awful scratching in that barrel, and some- thing said: 'M-e-o-w! Sc! Sc! Phsit! S-s-s-s!' "The scream that old Mrs. Durbin let out would have awakened the dead, if there had been any around there, but they were all very much alive, and got out of that room in double- quick time. Old Mrs. Durbin was the first one out, and then had a fainting spell. When they brought her to herself again, my grandmother, who was a quiet woman and not a bit nervous, started back to drive the cat out. 186 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. " 'Don't go in there!' wailed old Mrs. Dur- bin; 'that's no ordinary cat; it's a wildcat. Don't go. Send for the men and a gun. I saw its eyes and I saw it. It 's a great big yellow wildcat.' " ' Pshaw! ' said my grandmother, who was a little put out. ' It 's nothing but old Tom, and I don't want him in there.' "So in she went, while the other ladies took old Mrs. Durbin to the house. "Grandpa says he didn't know whether to be tickled almost to death or to be scared for fear he had really frightened poor old Mrs. Dur- bin into a serious spell, but he was very much inclined to laugh. "His mother walked right up to the barrel and took the board off . 'Why, Ben! You little rascal,' she said, 'you ought to have a good thrashing.' But she was laughing so much that she could hardly talk, and grandpa says he knew that he would not get any licking. "As grandma never informed Mrs. Durbin whether it was old Tom or a wildcat, Mrs. Dur- bin was reasonably well satisfied that it was old Tom." FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. ^'^^OME ON, daddy, tell me a story about l^ sure-enough horses, ' ' said the little boy one night; and he pushed his hobby- horse into the corner and came and stood by his father. ' ' Sure-enough horses that could go just lickety-split," he added, adopting some of the horse- talk he had heard from the older people. "Did I ever tell you about the first time I went to the fair?" asked papa. ' ' Did they have horses ? " asked the little boy. "Lots and lots of horses," said papa. "Tell me, tell me right now." And the boy climbed up to his regular place and waited. "Well, I believe I will," said papa slowly. ' ' It makes an old fellow feel just like a boy again to think about that first day at the old fair." And papa looked away off, as if he were looking at the fair again, and was talking as much to him- self as he was to the little boy. "Goon, daddy." "Well, one day I was out in the yard under the old sweet-apple tree, filling my little bread- is? 188 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY wagon with apples. Have you got any apples in your bread-wagon now?" said papa, rubbing the little boy's stomach with his hand. ' ' Go on, daddy; tell me about the horses. ' ' ' ' Well, I was eating apples and watching the leaves beginning to turn red, for it was in the fall, you know, and I happened to look down on the turnpike and saw a lot of horses all covered up with white covers and looking for all the world like the horses in your fairy books, only they didn't have any won-der-ful knights on them with sickly-looking, b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l prin- cesses under their arms and four or five big spears and battle-axes in their hands, and a hor-ri-ble old witch after them and a fear-ful dragon in front, and "Oh, daddy! now don't, " said the little boy, getting tired of foolishness. He knew that papa was teasing him about some of the books his friends had given him for Christmas presents. "Well," said papa, going back to his story, "I jumped up and down and yelled as loud as I could: ' Oh, papa, papa! Come and look at the horses. Are they going to the fair?' If I had been a little city boy, I might have said, ' Look at the horses with dresses on,' but I suppose I knew what fair-horses were long before I could IT'S BILLY, AND DAN 's RIDIN' HIM. FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. 191 talk. No doubt I had been to the fair before, too, but I was so little that I had forgotten it. " 'Papa, are they going to have the fair now?' I asked. 'Take me, won't you?' And I was pulling and jerking at his coat and asking questions so fast that he couldn't answer half of them. " 'Yes, I am going to take you to-morrow,' he said. " 'Now, papa, why didn't you tell me about it a week ago, and I could have been thinking about it all this time?' " ' And talking about it too,' said grandpa. "'Where's Billy?' I asked. 'Why don't you take Billy to the fair?' ' ' Billy was grandpa's saddle-horse, and we were all proud of him. Grandpa used to let me ride up in front of him on Billy once in a while. " 'Where 's Billy and Dick, and where 's Dan?' I asked again. "Dan was the boy who attended to the horses, and I had missed him for a day or two. I didn't wait to be answered, though, and ran and got my stick-horse with the sure-enough mane on his neck, and capered around the yard with him until the little legs that made him go got awfully tired, and I was glad to eat an early 192 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. supper and go to bed. I dreamed about fair- horses all night, with big white covers on them, with holes cut for their eyes and ears." " 'es, sir; 'es, sir," said the little boy, getting a little excited. " Didn't it get to be mornin' pretty soon, and you stop sleeping and go to the fair?" ' Yes ; real early next morning grandpa awoke me and said: 'Well, little man, are you ready? We '11 have to start early. We men will go together in the buggy, and Uncle John will bring the ladies after awhile.' "I felt mighty big as grandma dressed me, and when she lifted me in the buggy by the side of grandpa I lifted my cap and said : ' Uncle John will take good care of you all, and when you get there, we will be waiting for you.' ' ' Grandma laughed and kissed me good-bye, and grandpa smiled too. "We had a great big basket in the buggy, with about two dozen fried chickens in it and a big ham and some jars of pickles and preserves. ' 'Now, John,' said grandpa, ' when you start, strap that trunk on the carriage good and tight. We don't want to scatter biscuits and cake all over the turnpike.' "Uncle John grinned and looked sheepish, for FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. 193 he remembered the time he did lose the trunk off the back of the carriage because he was in such a hurry to get to the fair, and they had to drive back a mile to get it. "You know, we had beaten biscuit all the time in Kentucky, like the ones grandma made one day and you called 'dem cracker biscuits.' ''Well, I just couldn't get to that fair fast enough. Every time we came to a turn in the road and saw a gate or a house I would say, ' Is that the fair, papa ? ' ' ' There were so many horses and buggies on the pike, though, that I was kept pretty busy watching them. They kept getting thicker and thicker, and everybody seemed to be in a hurry, and everybody was laughing and talking and having a good time. They were trying to pass each other and get to the fair first, but, I '11 tell you, not many of them passed old Molly. She just trotted along and paid no attention to the rest for a long time, but at last, when a real fast horse came tearing along and passed her, she shook her head and pulled real hard on the lines, and grandpa said: 'If we don't get there pretty soon, old Molly will pull my arms off. I have half a notion to let her pass that old livery- stable horse anyhow.' But grandpa held her in, 194 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. and she shook her head lots of times, and got white froth in her mouth, and was all sweaty un- der the harness. 'I believe it will hurt her less to trot than to fret;' said grandpa, and then he let the lines loose a little, and old Molly kicked dirt all over us." "Let her go, daddy!" exclaimed the little boy, jumping up and down on his papa's knee and shaking his hands up and down as if he were really the other little boy that papa was telling about away back in Kentucky so long ago. Papa stopped talking and leaned back and laughed. "I knew it was in the blood," said papa. 1 ' It will take more than one generation of street- cars and office furniture to get the 'race-hoss' blood out of this boy, won't it, mamma?" And he slapped the little boy on the back so hard that it jolted him. "You had better be careful what you teach that child," said mamma, trying to look serious. "The next thing you know he will be betting on the races." 1 ' Not while he has that kind of spirit in him will you ever catch him hanging around a pool- room or about one of your old cut-and-dried city races." FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. 195 "Go on, daddy. Did old Molly pass him?" "Yes, indeed. The man looked back and saw us coming, and he raised up in his buggy and yelled at his horse and cut him with his whip, but old Molly just gamboled past him as if he were standing still. She passed everything for a mile, and then grandpa made her go slower. "Suddenly we turned a bend, and well, I didn't ask if that was the fair this time ; I just sat still and didn ' t say a word . I looked up at grand - pa and then at it. Away off in a beautiful woods was a great, big round building. There was a sort of a porch clear around it near the top, and it seemed to me that thousands of people were walking around, laughing and talking. Some more were going up the big, broad steps, others were just getting out of their carriages and bug- gies on the long stile-blocks, and further off in the woods the men were unharnessing their horses and hitching them to trees and posts "We were coming to a big gate, where a lot of carriages and buggies were crowding through, and everybody was talking loud, and the horses were neighing, and I felt a little scared and got up pretty close to grandpa. He drove up to a little house with a long window in it and bought some tickets, and then drove through the gate 196 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. and gave the tickets to a man. The man knew grandpa, for he said, 'Good morning, Mr. Fos- ter.' And grandpa said 'Good morning, Jerry, Fine day, isn't it ? ' "As we drove off among the big trees on the soft bluegrass, I heard a band strike up away off toward the big building, and I got over my scare and stood up in the buggy and took off my cap and cheered. Grandpa smiled, but didn't stop me. I was satisfied after I had given two or three good yells, and sat down again. ' ' Well, we went into the fair, and pretty soon the horses and sulkies and buggies began to come into the ring. Then grandma and all the rest came, and I remember thinking that it was mighty strange that they could ever find us in all that crowd. " ' I wasn't right sure whether you said meet you at Number 15 or 50,' said grandma, looking up at the big, white letters on a post. "We had not been there long when a lot of saddle-horses came in. Oh, my, but they were pretty! There were black and bay and sorrel and brown and gray horses. Suddenly I heard a lot of men yell away over by the gate where they all came in, and I looked over that way and saw a big black horse come in with a black boy on FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. 197 him. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Suddenly I jumped up, and, pointing to the new horse and negro boy, I said: ' Look, papa, look! It 's Billy, and Dan on him. Look, mamma, look!' And, waving my cap around my head, I yelled, 'Hoowah for Dan and Billy!' Then everybody yelled again, and I sat down, and everybody laughed, and I got red in the face; but I was too much interested in Billy and Dan to bother very long. Dan took off his cap when they cheered; then he waved his hand over the right side of Billy's neck and Billy stood straight up on his hind legs and then loped off around the ring. When he came in front of us, Dan took his cap off again and showed all his teeth; then he touched Billy's neck and he trotted the rest of the way around the ring, taking great, long steps and snorting at every step. "Pretty soon the gate closed, and the horses got down to business and went all sorts of gaits. Every time Dan and Billy would go around where the most men were they would yell: ' Tie it on the black hoss ! ' ' Give the blue string to the nigger!' 'Give it to Billy and Dan!' And then everybody would laugh, because I had told who Billy and Dan were. "Before long they all gathered around the 198 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. judges' stand in the middle of the ring, and when Billy loped away with the blue ribbon stream- ing from his throat-latch, Dan's teeth showed while he rode all the way around the ring, and he kept his cap in his hand until all the rest had gone out, and then he showed how fast Billy could rack around the ring once, and then he went out. I was wild with joy, and grandpa and grandma were pretty well pleased, too. "After dinner down in the woods we went to see a lot of things in another building; that was where the ladies were trying to find out who could make the finest preserves and cake and jelly and butter and pickles and quilts and all sorts of pretty things, and the farmers were trying to find out who could raise the best ap- ples and peaches and corn and pumpkins and things. Then we went back to the grand-stand, and grandpa slipped away somewhere. Grand- ma said he would be back in a little while. You know, that was a long, long time before they were anybody's grandma and grandpa, and they were both young and handsome, and grandma had right black hair instead of white, as it is now, and her eyes were black, just as they are now. Grandpa's hair was black, too, but his eyes were gray, just as you see them in his picture. FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. 199 "Well, after a while the gates opened again, and the bell rang, and somebody drove in in a red buggy with two big bay horses, and the peo- ple began to yell and wave their hats. Then two gray horses came in, and some more people yelled; then two black horses came in, hitched to a new black buggy. One of the horses was jumping and cutting up like everything and a black boy was holding him by the bridle. It didn't take me long to see that it was Dan, and then it dawned upon me that the horse he was holding was our own Dick, and there was Billy by the side of him, stepping high and snorting, but not cutting up. I looked up in the buggy and there was my own papa, holding the lines and looking as if he could drive a dozen wild horses. Dick was a year younger than Billy, and was awfully wild. " ' Hurrah for the nigger! ' yelled somebody. " 'Let Dan ride him!' somebody else called out. " 'Fifty dollars on the black hosses,' said a man with a deep voice. 'Who wants fifty on the blacks ? ' "Then grandpa said something to Dan, and Dan let go, and Dick stood almost straight up on his hind feet and then jumped forward. 200 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. Grandpa held him and talked to him right low, and he soon quit jumping. ' ' I had got out of my seat with my cap in my hand as soon as I saw who it was, but I didn't yell any more. I was too proud to say a word, and I just stood looking at my papa. " 'Hurrah for the little man!' yelled some- body, but I didn't know that he meant me ' Hurrah for Billy and papa! ' shouted some- body else, and then I sat down. Then a man sat down near me and said: " 'Little man, what 's the other black hoss's name ? ' " 'That's Dick,' I said; ( 'that's Dick and Billy, and papa 's drivin' 'em.' 'Just then grandpa drove around by us, and he looked up at grandma and me and took off his hat, and grandma smiled and waved her handkerchief and threw him a big red rose. 'Hurrah for Billy and Dick and papa!' yelled the man, and he stood up and took me in his arms and waved my cap over his head. "Once in a while somebody called out, 'Tie it on Dick and Billy! ' but nobody else said any- thing about grandpa, except when they said, ' Give it to the Foster hosses! ' They got it, too, and when grandpa drove around with one hand FIRST DAY AT THE FAIR. 201 and with his hat in the other, he got a lot of bouquets thrown at him. Dan met him at the gate as he went out and jumped in the buggy with him to help him take care of the horses." "Goodness! daddy, that 's fine; I tell you, that 's fine. Daddy, let 's get a pony." And that night, when the little boy finally went to sleep, he tumbled and tossed about the bed, and once when mamma heard him mutter "fair" and "Billy," she looked at papa and said: "I'm afraid you will have to keep the rest of your fair stories until he is a little older." LITTLE DICK. ONE TIME we had a little bit of a colt, whose mamma died when it was just a day old. ' ' Poor little fellow ! " grandpa said. "It would be better for him if he were dead too, for I don't think we will be able to raise him; but we will try, anyway. He won't be worth half the trouble we give him, but we can't afford to see anything suffer." So Uncle Ben and I told grandpa that if he would give the colt to us, we would try to raise him. I was almost grown then and Uncle Ben was a big boy. We took him up and carried him into a box-stall in the stable, where there was some nice straw for him to lie on, and we fed him milk every hour in the day and night. We thought a great deal of the colt; but I tell you, when we had to get 202 1 In all sorts of mischief." LITTLE DICK. 203 up every hour in the night to feed him, we began to wonder whether he was worth all the trouble or not; but when we would go to the stable and find him so anxious to see us, we would forget all about the trouble, and we were glad we had him. We were afraid to give him enough milk at one time to satisfy him, for the old horse-doctor told us that would kill him, so we had to give him a little bit at a time. After he had stayed in the box-stall for about two weeks and was beginning to get a little strength, we let him out of the stable one day and turned him into the big yard. The little fellow had never seen anything that he could re- member but us two boys, and he was afraid of everything he saw. So he ran right between us and put his head under my ann and cuddled up just as close to me as he could get, and Uncle Ben put his arm over him, too, and away we went to the house, the little colt trotting right between us. We had already named him "Dick," and when we got to the house and walked up on the porch, little Dick walked right up with us and into the house. "That 's a very nice little colt," said grand- ma, ' ' but are you going to raise him in the house or at the stable?" 204 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. We told her that we would not let him bother around the house very much, and that he was going to be a mighty good colt. After a while he began to feel enough at home to stay around the yard, but we soon put him back in his box- stall, where he felt all right again. When he grew a little bigger he was very playful, but he did not know anything except us two boys. He had never seen a horse that he could remember. One day he was playing around the house, and grandpa rode up on old Beck, his saddle-mare. Grandpa tied the reins up and turned old Beck loose to eat some grass. Dick had been playing on the other side of the house, but pretty soon old Beck walked around that way, and as soon as she saw him, she threw up her head and neighed and started towards him. I suppose she thought, "Why, there is a nice little baby horse all by himself! I will go and make friends with him." But Dick saw her at about the same time that she saw him, and as he had never seen a horse before, he did not know what in the world to make of her. He was scared nearly to death, and when he saw old Beck coming to- wards him, he started to run as hard as he could go. He ran around the house and jumped up on the porch, and just then he saw grandpa sitting LITTLE DICK. 205 leaning against the wall. Grandpa had been reading his newspaper, with his chair tilted back against the wall, and when he heard something clattering up on the porch, he looked up, and there was Dick coming as hard as he could. The little colt ran up to grandpa and ran right be- tween his knees and put his head over grandpa's shoulder. He was scared so badly that his little heart beat as if it would burst through his ribs. So grandpa patted him, and said, "Why, he isn't any colt at all; he is just a nice little boy," and pretty soon he was feeling all right again, but he would not go away from grandpa's arm. Old Beck came on around the house after the little colt, but stopped short when she saw him up on the porch. She didn't know what to make of such things as that, for she always thought that the house was for people; but Dick had never found out yet that he wasn't "people." We used to feed him on sugar and biscuits and cakes, but he liked cakes better than any- thing. Of course, his main food was milk, but when he saw anybody out in the yard eating a piece of cake, he did not ask any questions, but just walked up and took it, if he could get it. One day grandma told us that she was going 206 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. to have company, and wanted that pesky colt put somewhere out of the way; so we took him out of the yard, clear across the turnpike, and put him in the big wheat-field and closed the gate. When we went away and left him, he ran up and down the fence nickering; but pretty soon he saw he could not get out, and went to playing in the shade of a big tree. Grandma was getting along finely with her company, and they were just at dinner. Grand- ma had made some fine puddings and had set them out on the table on the back porch. While they were at dinner grandma heard a terrible clatter on the side porch. Somebody had left the gates open, and Dick had got into the yard again and came tearing up to the house as hard as he could. He jumped on the big side porch and ran the whole length of it, then to the little porch, and seeing the puddings on the table, he grabbed one in his mouth and went on out into the back yard to eat it. Grandma thought it was so funny that she did not have Dick sent away again. She gave him another pudding, and put the rest away where he could not get at them. Later in the day, when the company was all in the parlor, she heard something in another LITTLE DICK. 207 room. She went to see about it, and there was Dick standing in the middle of the room, quietly brushing the flies off. He was hunting a cool place, and concluded that the dining-room was the coolest place he could find. After that she had to have him put up. We used to play with him out in the yard, and he would slip up and take our hats off in his mouth and run away with them. Sometimes he would put his fore feet up on our shoulders and make us carry him along that way. But pretty soon he got so big that it was dangerous to play with him, because he might hurt some- body. When he would be out in the field, we could go and call him, but we could not call him as we did the other horses; we would have to call him just as we would a boy, and he would come running home, knowing very well that he would get a biscuit or a piece of sugar. We made a little harness for him while he was quite a small colt, and hitched him to a little wagon, just as if he were a big horse, and he seemed to think it was lots of fun. When he got to be a full-grown horse, and we would hitch him to the big buggy, he would cut up as much like a boy as a colt. We used to hitch him to the buggy, and start towards the house, and sav, 208 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "Come on, Dick," and he would come after us just as carefully as if we were driving him. One day Uncle Ben said to a visitor: "Do you see that horse out there hitched to the buggy? I 11 bet I can make that horse come up on the porch with the buggy." The visitor thought that was a strange thing, and said he did not believe the horse would do it. Uncle Ben un- tied him and said, "Come on, Dick," and walked up on the porch. Dick walked right ahead, stepped up on the porch, and pulled the front wheels of the buggy up until the top of the buggy caught against the top of the porch; then I had to stop him, because if I had not, he might have broken the top of the buggy off trying to get in the house. He was always a pet, and never got over his mischief. He never got too big to steal your hat and run away with it, or slip up and bite you on the shoulder, no matter where he found you; and sometimes he bit pretty hard, too. When I left Kentucky little Dick was an old horse, and turned out in one of the big pastures of the old place, where he found a home as long as he lived. THE HAY HARVEST. did you ever do any sure- enough farm-work when you were as little a boy as I am ? " said the little boy. as he wiped the perspiration off his face and threw down the rake and then threw himself down on the soft green grass that he had been pretending to rake. Papa was pushing the lawn-mower, and was pretty warm himself, and he was trying real hard to get through before dark, for the only time he had to do his farm- work, as he called it, was early in the morning and very late in the afternoon. "Yes, indeed," said papa. "When I was your age I was driving a horse and doing lots of different kinds of work." "Oh, that was like play! driving a horse," said the little boy. "Tell me about it." "Well," said papa, "if you will rake away real lively now until we get through, I '11 tell you to-night how we used to cut the hay and rake it up on the farm." So the boy kept his little rake going at a great 209 210 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. rate for at least five minutes, and when papa finished cutting, he took the big rake and fin- ished the job, and really admitted that he had less to do than if the little boy had not helped him. Sometimes he thought all to himself that the little boy made more work than he saved. That night, just before bedtime, the little boy said: "Now, daddy, tell me how you used to cut the hay and rake it up." "Oh, yes!" said papa, realizing that he had made a promise and must make his word good right away. "That is a story which I will be mighty glad to tell you, for you will learn some- thing about real farm-work from this story. "About this time every year, or about the middle of July, after we had the wheat all har- vested and threshed, we went to work to put up the hay. We usually had about forty acres of timothy hay, besides the clover. The clover was always cut earlier and was usually out of the way before the wheat was cut. When the timothy was ripe and ready to cut, it was as pretty as anything you ever saw. It was about as high as your head or a little higher and was just begin- ning to turn from green to brown. Grandpa would go out and look at it and say, ' Well, we must cut that hay now, right away'; then he MANY A FINE DAY IN THAT OLD MEADOW. THE HAY HARVEST. 213 would look up at the clouds and see whether he thought it was going to rain; then he would say, ' I think I had better start in after dinner and get enough cut to start the rake in the morning.' So he would hitch two horses to the mower, and start around a big square at one side of the field. The mower would rattle and sing and the sickle would look like a streak of light- ning running to and fro through the grass. When the machine would be on the side of the field next to the house it would sound loud and ' rattly, ' and when it was on the other side of the field it would sound more like the hum of some big insect; then when grandpa would come around on the side next to the house he was apt to find grandma and me there with a good cool drink of water for him, and maybe some cookies. One time when he had a nice level field to cut he took me with him and let me ride on his lap while he drove and managed the mower. I watched the big tall grass fall in nice straight rows and listened to the clatter of the machine, and asked questions. I could always ask plenty of ques- tions. Every now and then a bird would fly up from just in front of the sickle, and grandpa would say, 'There 's another bird's nest; the meadow-larks and ground-sparrows seem to be 214 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. as thick as ants this year'; then he would go back to the nest and show me the eggs, but wouldn't let me touch them; and then he would tie some bunches of grass together and set up over the nest. I asked him what he did that for; and he said, to keep the sun from shining too strong on the old bird and also to mark the place so the nest would not be destroyed when the hay was raked up. After a while there was quite a fluttering almost under the sickle, and grandpa said. ' Whoa! ' and pulled on the lines right quick. The horses stopped, and he went around to the sickle and picked up a big brown bird that was still fluttering a little bit. 'There, now,' said grandpa; 'isn't that too bad? I 've run over a pattridge and killed her, and here she has a whole nest full of eggs and they look as if they were just about ready to hatch. Poor old birdie!' said grandpa, 'if I had known you were there, I would have left you a half -acre of grass before I would have done this. God made you better than some people are, didn't He? You stayed right by your nest when you knew there was danger.' ' "What is a 'pattridge,' daddy?" broke in the little boy. "Well, it was a partridge, but grandpa al- THE HAY HARVEST. 215 ways said 'pattridge.' It is a bird just like our quail, only maybe a little larger. It is some- times called the Bob White, from the way it whistles in the spring and summer. " And papa gave a good imitation of the whistle of the Bob White. ' ' In the spring and summer, when they are making their nests, old Mr. Bob White calls that way to his mate while she sits on the nest, but in the fall and winter, when they are feeding out in the fields and being hunted, they whistle this way." And papa here gave a different whistle, which, for all the little boy knew, was exactly like it; but he thought it safe to ask any- way, so he said, "Is that just zackly like it?" "Well," said papa, "I think, with a little prac- tice, I could fool the birds themselves I used to do it." Then papa gave a little laugh all to himself. "Now, what are you laughing at, daddy? You can't spect me to know all about farms and birds." "I don't," said papa, "and I was not laugh- ing at you at all; I was just thinking that if I should ever put that story in a book and some other little city boy's father, who had always been a city man himself, should read it to his little boy, and the little boy should ask him to 216 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. whistle like the Bob White, that I should like to hear the whistle." "What did grandpa do with the podg-gidge you killed?" "Well, he put it on the ground, and then took me and showed me the nest full of eggs; there must have been twenty of them. 'Well,' said grandpa, 'we have done a good deal of harm; now we will see if we can do any good.' "So he gathered all the eggs up carefully, and then unhitched the trace-chains, so the horses could not run away with the mower, and said: 'Come on and let 's go to the house and set these eggs under one of the old hens.' "So we put the eggs under the gentlest old hen that we could find and gave her eggs to another hen, and in about a week "Oh, you had some little pet birds! didn't you?" broke in the little boy, fairly jumping up and down with excitement. ' ' Not much, ' ' said papa. ' ' Those little birds had not more than got the shells off their heads before they began to run and hide. Why, they even hid from the old hen. They ran under weeds and grass and everything they could find that would cover them up. Grandpa kept them THE HAY HARVEST. 217 in a box with the old hen for about three days, and then they were so lively that he let them all out. They scampered around a little while and then ran away in the weeds, and they led that old hen a merry chase. That night the old hen came home without any little birds with her." "Did they all get losted in the weeds and die ? " asked the little boy. "Not a bit of it," said papa. "You can't very well lose a flock of little partridges, if you just give them a day or two from the time they hatch out to get a little strength in their legs. Those little birds were seen about a week from that time just back of the garden in the stubble- field, and they were twice as big as when they ran away from the old hen, and they looked as if there were as many of them as there were when they first hatched out. After that they were frequently seen in the same place, and they stayed there all the next winter. ' ' But we got off the subject, didn't we ? " said papa. "I was going to tell you how we raked up the hay and stacked it. "Well, the next day after the hay was cut grandpa hitched an old gentle horse to the rake, and one of the small negro boys raked up the hay in great rows; then the men came along with 218 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. their pitchforks and threw it up into nice round piles that we call shocks. By night the day aft- er we found the partridge eggs the whole field was dotted over with these little round-topped shocks; then in a few days we went out to stack the hay. Grandpa had the men haul a lot of rails to a high point in the field right near the old bars, and the rails were placed close to- gether on the ground to make a foundation for the stack; then they took the three horses they had brought out and put just a collar and pair of hames on each one, and tied a big rope about thirty feet long to the left side of each horse's hames; then grandpa put a negro boy on each horse and said, 'Now bring on your hay.' The two men who were going to pitch the hay up on the stack to grandpa took their forks and began to throw on the shocks near by, and grandpa placed it around to make a good start for the stack. The boys on the horses each rode out to a shock and backed his horse up against it; then he jumped off right quick, and, taking the rope in his hand, put it around the shock close to the ground; then he would take the loose end of the rope and hook it on to the other side of the hames; then he would take the line in his hand and jump on top of the hay-shock to ride and THE HAY HARVEST. 219 to keep it from turning over, and then away he would go a-sailing in to the hay-stack. Some- times the load would turn over anyway, and sometimes the rope would slip clear under the hay-shock and leave it sitting out in the field. "Of course I wanted to try my hand at hauling hay, so grandpa let me go out with one of the boys. We rode in together, and it was such fine fun that I begged to go after one by myself; so they put me on old Kit, as she was real gentle, and I struck out. I put the rope around and fastened the other end and jumped on and started up old Kit. Now, old Kit was gentle, but she was a little nervous, and she started up light quickly. I hadn't put the rope far enough under the shock and over it went and I went with it right against old Kit's heels. She knew that there was something wrong, and stopped. I crawled out from under the hay and looked pretty silly. All the rest of them laughed at me, and even grandpa, when he saw that I was not hurt any, smiled a little. I wasn't afraid to try it again, though, and before long I was hauling hay very well; but grandpa wouldn't let me do much of it, because it was too hard work. I was only about eight years old no, I was only seven, for I remember that I had a birthday party on 220 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. my eighth birthday the very next month, and grandpa told about my hauling hay as a great joke on me. I think, though, that he was really proud of my trying to do it. "Goodness! How we used to get stung by the bees out in that old meadow ! ' ' added papa, more to himself than to the little boy. "Tell me about that," asked the little boy. "Not to-night; some other time. That's all this time. Go to sleep now, and dream about the nice fresh hay." TRAPPING. 6 1 "X ADDY, tell me some more about catch- J ing birds and things, " asked the little boy. "You won't have to tell about getting whippings for it, if you don't want too" "All right," said papa, who seemed to be in a pretty good story-telling humor. "I'll tell you first how we used to catch the chickens. O f course, most of the chickens were gentle and stayed around the hen- house and chicken-lot, and some stayed so close about the house and yard that they were always in the way, but there were some that had been raised away out in the weeds and fence- corners and they were almost as wild as the 221 "Ready for company." 222 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. wild birds. By the way, did I ever tell you how the chickens and ducks and all the fowls around the house and stable used to follow grandpa whenever he went out? Well, it was the funniest thing you ever saw. I have told you, of course, that grandpa was good to every- thing as well as to everybody, and he always fed and took care of everything about the place; so when he would start from the house to the stable, it was funny to see the things follow him, especially if it happened to be feeding-time. One of the old ducks, for instance, would see him and she would say, 'Qua-c-k, qua-a-a-c-k,' and flop her wings and start after him. That would be signal enough, and by the time he got to the stable he would have as many as two hundred chickens, twenty or thirty ducks, a few geese, a whole flock of turkeys sometimes a hundred or more and, of course, Shep would be with him, and sometimes even the cats would follow along too. As soon as he got into the stable-yard the pigs would join the procession, and such a squeal- ing and carrying on you never heard. Then he would get into the corn-crib and throw out a lot of corn, and that stopped the racket. "Let 's see. I started out to tell you how we hunted and caught things, didn't I? Oh, TRAPPING. 223 yes! about those wild chickens. Well, they would run and hide in the weeds when they saw anybody, and, of course, as soon as they got big enough to eat they were the first ones to get their heads cut off and be put on the table. "Grandpa would say: 'Boys, you and Shep go out there along the orchard fence and catch four of those wild chickens. Pick out the biggest ones now, and don't let Shep hurt them.' "Old Shep would be standing there listening, and I don't know whether he understood every- thing that was said, but I know he would un- derstand part of it. He knew that he had heard his name called, and I believe he knew what the word ' chicken ' meant, and he saw grandpa point towards the orchard fence. That was about enough for Shep, so away we would go, and as soon as the chickens were found we would pick out one and point it out to Shep. We would separate it from the rest, and it wouldn't be a minute until Shep would have both paws and his chin on that chicken, holding him down until one of us could catch up and take it. The next one wouldn't be quite so easy, because they would be scared, and by the time we had caught the last one of the four, the rest had run and hid in the tobacco barn or away out in the weeds somewhere 224 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "Of course, that was when Uncle Ben and I were pretty big boys; at least, I was a pretty big boy, and Uncle Ben was toddling after. The first thing that I remember of Uncle Ben saying very much was, 'Wa-a-it'; but I didn't always wait very well, and it sometimes caused a lively scrap and sometimes made trouble for me with grandma. "Now, about catching those rabbits and birds that we were allowed to catch: Before we were big enough to have a gun, grandpa taught us how to make bird-traps. He took four flat sticks about three feet long and laid them down in a square; then he took four more a little shorter and then four more a little shorter still, and so on until the trap was real small at the top, and then he fastened a stout stick over the top of it to hold it together, and slipped a shingle over the hole at the top. Then he made what he called a figure 4 trigger and set one side of the trap up on it; then he covered the trap with a little straw after he had set it out where the birds stayed; then when the birds went in the trap after the wheat or whatever it was baited with, they would touch the long stick that was called the trigger, and down would come the trap with the birds inside. Of course, TRAPPING. 225 we would not catch any of the birds right around the house or any but those that were good to eat. We would take the trap away out in the field and catch wild pigeons or partridges. I have seen grandpa set a big trap for wild pigeons and catch as many as twenty at once. That would be in the fall of the year, when the pigeons were in the wheat-fields picking up the wheat that had been sowed. Then in the winter, when the snow was on the ground, we would set the trap away out in the field where the partridges were, and put straw or fodder on it, so they would come there looking for something to eat, and sometimes we would catch eight or ten at a time. Sometimes we would find the trap down, and when we went to it to take out the birds we would find nothing in it and two or three of the sticks gnawed in two, making a hole just big enough for a rabbit to get out; but we got even with Mr. Rabbit by making a strong box-trap out of oak boards and fixing it so that when it closed up there was no place for the rabbit to get hold of with his teeth; then when we lifted up the lid of the box to get the rabbit out, we had a time to catch him, and sometimes he got away." "Didn't the birds sometimes get away too, 226 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. when you lifted up the trap to take them out?" asked the little boy. "We didn't lift up the trap. Don't you know that the trap was small at the top and was closed up by a shingle ? Well, we would slip the shingle to one side just enough to put in one arm and get out the birds. ' ' Grandpa used to tell me how they made traps to catch wild turkeys when he was a boy. At that time, you know, the country was wild and new, and there was a great deal of game of all kinds. Well, when they wanted to catch some wild tur- keys, they first found out where the turkeys were accustomed to feed; then they built a big rail pen and covered it over with boards and cov- ered the boards and sometimes almost the entire pen with weeds and brush; then they would dig a long ditch leading right under the pen; then they would put a wide board over the part of the ditch just inside of the pen, but leaving plenty of room for the biggest turkeys to get under the pen and the board; then they would scatter some corn all along the ditch and into the pen. The turkeys would come along and see the corn and all run along eating it, each one trying to get the most, until they all got inside. As soon as they would get the corn all eaten up TRAPPING. 227 they would raise their heads and find out that they were in a pen; then they would get scared and begin to run around the edge of the pen, trying to get out. They are such foolish birds that they never think about going out by the ditch, the way they came in, but run around and around the edge of the pen and run right over the ditch on the board that had been put there for them. A whole flock of wild turkeys will get into a pen and stay in there all day, and nearly run themselves to death around the pen, and not one of them have sense enough or even enough good luck to go to the middle of the pen and put his head down and go out by way of the ditch. Grandpa said that he and his brothers had caught as many as eight or ten at a time that way, and all they had to do after setting the trap was to go back to it in the afternoon and crawl in through the ditch and catch the turkeys. Then they would have big fat wild turkey to eat for a whole week." "Goodness!" said the little boy. "That was fine. Don't you wish we had lived when there was plenty of turkeys ? ' ' "Well," said papa, "you must remember that if we had, we wouldn't be living now, and that we get a great many things now that they 228 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. never heard of in those days. They got a news- paper but once a week, and very few of them saw one that often. There were no railroads or telegraph lines, and if anybody had come along and told them that some day people would be talking to each other over a wire when they were ten miles apart, they would probably have put him in jail for being crazy. Still, those were pretty good old times, and, after all, it isn't so much the time you live in as the way you live that makes you happy. There have been hap- py people and unhappy people ever since the days of Adam." "What else did you catch in the traps, papa?" "Oh! we used to set steel traps, like the one in the cellar, and catch rats and muskrats and minks and weasels, and sometimes polecats. Let me tell you a true story about an old fox that we tried to catch in a steel trap one time. One day one of the men who was working on the place saw an old red fox jump out of a hole in a big hollow sycamore tree; then he looked in a hole near the bottom of the tree, and saw five little balls of red fur curled up in the bottom of the hole. The tree was hollow clear to the ground, and they had a nice nest of sticks and TRAPPING. 229 leaves and decayed wood. We took them out and looked at them, but they were so young that they did not have their eyes open, so we put them back, thinking that we would get them when they got older, but what do you think? The next morning they were all gone. That old mother fox could tell by the smell that some- body had found her babies, and she had taken them away and hidden them. Well, we looked for those foxes all day, and at last we saw a big sugar- tree with a hole in it about three feet from the ground. We looked in, and there, sure enough, were the little foxes, as snug as you please, and there was a big dead groundhog in the nest with them, that I suppose the old fox had brought there for her supper. We made up our minds that we just had to have those foxes, so we set about a plan to catch the old fox. First, we cut some slabs of wood and fastened them across the inside of the tree about a foot below the opening, so that the old fox when she went to jump down into the hole would have to put her feet on the slabs; then we set a steel trap on the slabs; then, for fear the old fox would be too sharp to go in the hole, we set another trap outside on the ground and covered it up with leaves. Next morning we went out 230 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. to the woods early to get our foxes, and all we could find was a trap with some blood on it and a big hole dug under the roots of that tree. There wasn't a fox in sight, big or little. That old fox had been caught in the outside trap, and some leaves had evidently got in by the side of her foot and that had helped her to get her foot out. There was a good deal of blood on the leaves, though, and we knew that her foot had been badly hurt. Then she had been too smart to go into the hole and get caught in the other trap, but she didn't give up and run away and leave her little ones. She could not get to them on account of the slabs across the hollow in the tree, so she just went to work, with one foot bleeding and probably broken, and dug a hole right under the roots of the tree, and took every one of her little foxes away, and we couldn't find them, either, although we looked all day. Grandpa didn't want us to try to find her any more after she had been so smart and brave, and he was glad when we failed. I expect that if we had found her again, he wouldn't have al- lowed us to disturb her. "Well, about six months later we saw tha.t old fox again. We had a big flock of sheep in that piece of woods that winter, and one day TRAPPING. 231 when grandpa went out to feed the sheep he saw the fox right among the sheep. She was walk- ing on three feet and holding up one front foot, so we knew that it was the same fox. There were no little lambs among the sheep, so the fox was not doing any harm there, and we all saw ner nearly a dozen times that winter, and she always seemed to be staying among the sheep and they never seemed to be afraid of her. That was something that I never exactly under- stood, and I do not believe I ever heard of a case just like it, but I am telling you about it just as it happened. The next winter they chased foxes a good deal with hounds, and we never saw the old lame fox any more." I WON'T DO IT. u \/ ES SIR l will >" said the little b y one Y day, when papa had told him to do something; "I will in des a minute." "You had better do it now, and then you will be sure not to forget it, and besides, you will have it off your mind. You remind me of a negro man by the name of Bill, who used to work for your grandpa. When Bill came to hire out to us, grandpa asked him his name. ' My name, sah, hit 's William Henry Ha'ison Bill Jackson.' " Bill used to say he wouldn't do what he was told, but he always went right along and did it. You say you will, and then don't do it." "Would he tell grandpa he wouldn't do it?" asked the little boy in amazement. ' ' Oh, no ! He wouldn't let grandpa hear him say he wouldn't do it; but there is where the story conies in," said papa. "Oh, tell me about it!" said the little boy, forgetting what his papa had told him to do; but, catching himself suddenly, he said: "Wait till I come back and then tell me about it." So 232 " I WON'T DO IT." 233 away he ran to do what he had been told, and then hurried back. "Now tell me about Bill," he said, settling himself down in a comfortable position to hear a story. "Well, in the winter-time out in the country "I WON'T DO IT YAS, SUH; YAS, SUH, I WILL." there wasn't very much to do but feed the stock, and Bill used to start out every morning, after he had fed the horses and milked the cows, to feed the rest of the stock. He would hitch two horses to the big sled and haul big loads of fod- der to the cattle. We boys always liked to go 234 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. with him, so we could ride on top of the high loads. We liked it especially when there was a little snow on the ground, because then the sled ran more smoothly and we could go faster. One day we had finished hauling the fodder and were about to come to the house, when grandpa called over in the field: "'OBill!' " 'Suh?' answered Bill, stopping his horses. " 'Go down in the woods before you come home and bring some rails up to make a pen for the hogs.' " ' Yas, suh,' answered Bill, calling back loud, so grandpa could hear him; then he went around on the other side of the horses from grandpa, and began to flounce around like a boy when he doesn't want to do something, and said just loud enough for us boys to hear him: " 'I ain't a-goin' to do it. I ain't a-goin' after no rails at all, I ain't. I don't want to get no rails. You don't need no rails nohow. I ain't a-goin' to do it. You kin jes go get yo' ole rails yo'se'f.' "At first we were so surprised we didn't know what to do, but it did not take us a minute to see that Bill was just carrying on to please us boys; and, of course, Bill went rie:ht. along and " I WON'T DO IT." 235 got the rails, but he kept grumbling and saying all the ridiculous things he could think of all the way out to the woods. After a while he began to talk seriously again, and he said: " 'Dat remin's me o' what ole Mistah Clay- brook used to say to his han's. Sometimes some o' de smaht Alecks amonx the han's would think 'at de ole man done made a mistake maybe 'bout tellin' 'em how to do sompin' er nother, er dey 'd think dey knowd a bettah way to do it dan what he tol' 'em, en dey 'd go a- bustin' ahead en do it dey own way. Den de ole man, he 'd come out in de fiel' en see how dey done took en done de work, en den he 'd git aftah 'em good en ha'd. "' "W'y, Mahs Billy," dey 'd say, "I thought hit was a whole heaps bettah dat way dan de way you tole me, en I jes' took en done it what I thought was de bestes' way." "' " Nevah min', nevah min'," say Uncle Bil- ly, a-rantin' 'roun' te'ible; "you do what I tells you to do, an' den if hit 's wrong, hit 's right." An' dem niggahs mighty soon foun' out dat hit was a heap nigher right to be wrong dan it was to be right, jes' so long as dey done what dey was tol' to do.' "And Bill chuckled a good deal to himself over the story about it being right to be wrong. 236 WHEN DADDY WAS A BOY. "One day Uncle Ben and I were out with Bill on the sled again, and grandpa called away across the field: " 'OBill!' " 'Suh?' " * Bring a load of corn when you come in.' "Bill was thinking more about making us boys laugh than he was about what he was doing, so he yelled back to grandpa as loud as ever he could, and pretending to be awfully mad: " 'I won't do it; yas, suh; yas, suh, I will.' ' ' Grandpa looked very much astonished for a minute, and I think he was about to get mad too, but just then he heard us boys laugh, and saw that Bill was very much embarrassed, and he just turned around and went toward the house without saying anything, and I thought I could see him laughing too. Bill was unusually po- lite when he came back, and after a while grand- pa said: " 'Well, you got your lines mixed this morn- ing, didn't you?' " 'No, suh; no, suh, I didn't have de lines crossed. Ole Logan got his tail ovah de line an' kinder run me ofFn de road. You 's de beat- enest man to see bof sides an' 'fore an' behin' I evah did see. Whah 'bouts was you at, any- how?' "I WON'T DO IT." 237 " ' I didn't mean that,' said grandpa, smiling at Bill's mistake, and also to think he had made Bill tell on himself. 'I meant when you were answering me about the corn. You see, I can hear and see, too.' " 'Yas, suh; yas, suh,' said Bill, more con- fused than ever. 'I was jes* a-foolin' wid de chillun, an' I I did git kinder mixed up; I sholy did, suh.'" GRANDPA'S DOG COALY. ADDY '" said the little ^y* <