The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1875-09-09
sILAs HIyING BEES.

The old ~gentleman's name is Silas.
and that of his eldest son is George :
his wife's name is Matilda, and his three
pretty daughters are named Helen, Alice
and Susie ; there's a little Silas, too, and
an older boy whose name is too queer to
mention.
The bees had alighted in a great
bunch, as large as a half bushel measure,
on the limb of a peach tree n the yard.
A table is placed under the overhanging
limb, spread with a clean white cloth,
and the hive placed thereon.
Then one of the boys-one that is
good for nothing else-is sent into the
tree with a saw to sever the limb; the
limb comes down slowly and easily, and
the old gent below, dressed in a great
coat, buckskiu gloves, cowhide boots
and a bed-quilt tied around his neck and
face, slyly manipulates a twig from the
tree, and in two minutes has safely
coaxed every bee to enter the hive, dur
ing all of which time Matilda and Helen
and Alice and Susie pound the bottoms
out of just four tin pans; little Silas does
his prettiest yelling, while the boy with
the queer name is just old enough and
sharp enough to slip behind the house
and wait for the thingt to come to a point.
That is the way it ought to have gone
off; but that isn't the way it did. Silas,
the elder, was very comfortably bundled
up for SO warm a day, and he had his
suit well arranged, only he forgot to tie
strings around the bottoms of his pants
legs.
The bees had settled on the limbs of
apeach tree, and Silas, when table and
white cloth and hive were all ready,
commanded
"Now, George, grab that old rusty
saw and climb;I guess you can cut that
small limb off easy enough"
George was just home from a six
months term of school, and he felt a
great tenderness for his father, and
would have gone through a patch of
thistles barefoot to please the old gent,
and yet he had a particular dread for
the business end" of a bee, and par
hcularly of such a crowd of them. But
he obeyed, and began to fiddle away
cautiously upon the particular limb.
One little bunch of bees dropped off and
were Gagged; another, and another small
bunch dropped, and the prospect
seemed good, when suddenly an old
honey-maker, who had been in the bust
ness before, scared upward. George
shut up n eye quick, gave one terrific
surge on the old rusty saw, got out of
that tree at jump, and his anxious
mother caught one glimpse of him as he
flew around the corner of the barn
twenty rods away.
But poor old Silas! The bees came
down, and he thought the bunch as big
as a haystack nov They did not go
into the hive, but they went through
his oyercoat and bedquilt as if these had
been only mosquito bars, and they
climbed up the inside of his PANTS legs, and
the old gent danced as he never danced
before; and he slapped his legs as he
" allowed anyone else to slap them,
and his voice lowered high above the
chatter of the tin pans and the shrieks of
little Silas as he yelled:
"Throw water on me! throw water on
me soak me, wet me DOWN."
He rolled three or four times over in
the grass, and sprang up, shouting,
"Slap me! slap mel Can't you slap
me?" in the midst of which little Silas
crept up behind his Infatuated papa and
dealt him a lively one with a shingle;
but poor little Silas landed the next
second against the milk house, for his
pa took him and his shingle for a thou
sand bees, and gently brushed them off.
o, the agony of that three minutes
jig! He appealed to his wife.
Matilda, for heaven's sake, bring me
another pair of breeches, won't you'll"
But these things don't last always,
any more than any other happiness, and
after a few minutes the old gent came
Tipping out of the cellar with the breeches
on that Matilda brought him, feeling