Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1879-01-21
Bobb Rurdette,s Rox.

NuClC tuC uiol SuuN -ulOp Illus ana
where the last Indian paint fingers.
His pockets are cabinets. He drags
from them curious fossils that he don't
know the names of. He knows where
the herbs grow that have marvellous
medical properties, and he nearly sends
the rest Of the family to the grave
yard by making pratical tests upon
them, The boy has his superstitions,
and he carries in his pocket one par
ticular marble-be it brummie, agate
or blood alley-which when he loses
he sees panic and bankruptcy coming.
and retires before the crash comes,
with his pockets full Of shillings and
a creditors meeting in the back room.
lie has a charm to cure warts on the
hand he has a marvellous instinct for
the woods. As he grows older he
wants to be a missionary, or a pirate,
and so far as there is any preference
he would rather be a pirate-a pro-
fession in which there are more op-
portunities of making money and few
er chances of being devoured raw.
He hates company, for it carries him
to the second table and leaves him no
pie. He never walks down stairs, but
adopts the single-rail, narrOw-gauge
passenger tramway, and soon cures
the other members of the family of
the practice of setting the water
pitcher on the balluster post. He
asks with alarming frequency for a
new hat, and wears it in the air or on
the ground ten times more than on his
head. Poor Tom loves as he makes
mischief. He muses. his sisters
ruffle and gets severely reprimanded.
But some neighbor's Tom comes in
and makes the most helpless, hopeless,
abject, chaotic wreck of that rufle
that it can be distorted into. and all
the reproach he gets is, Must he 60
so sOon2" But poor Tom gets
weary and drops off into the wonder
land of a boys dreams, and no mother
who has not dragged a sleepy boy off
the lounge at 8 o'clock and led him
upstairs can understand the Herculean
grasp with which a square sleep takes
hold of a boy, how fearfully timber
and limp it makes him and how it de-
velops innumerable joints that works
both ways. He never relates his
dreams till every one else in the family
has told theirs, and there and then
comes in like a back county with the
necessary majority. In time Tom
comes to desire a tail-cOat and glove
fitting boots. Before he has worn his
fathers arctics-on his feet, and his
mothers slippers-on his jacket. 1t
dawns upon Tom that he has hands
a para good hand. And when he
goes to the first church sociable with
his sister on account Of the absence Of
some other Tom, he finds that he has
eleven hands, and he wonders where
the eleventh one came from. Now his
mother never cuts his hair with a pair
Of scissors that have cut miles and
miles Of calico. and vast %eternities of
paper, and snarls and tangles of string.
and have snuffed candles, and pared
apples, and trimmed lamp-wicks. and
pried up carpet-tacks, and trimmed
the family nails, and have done their
level best at the annual struggle Of
cutting stove-pipe lengths in two.
Now he knows that mans upper lin
was destined by nature to be a mus
tache pasture. How exquisitely re-
served he is with what delicate action
does he make the first preliminary in
yestigation in order that he may de-
tect the first symptoms Of a y%elyety as
sistance. And when he has found
thatit is there and only need to be
brought out, how he walks down TO
the BARRIERS shop, gazing anxouslyinto
the window and-walks past. At last.
when he musters up courage enough
to 60 inside and climbs into the chair
and is just on the point Of whisper
ing to the barber that he would
like a shave, in comes some modern
ksau, with beard as long as Toms
arm, and frightens it out of him and
he has his hair cut again for the third
time that week, so short that the bar
Der holds it in his teeth, cuts it with
a file, trims it with a smoothing plane
and parts it with a straight edge and
a scratch-awl. No body ever did
know how a boy gets hold of his
iathers razor, and when the boy gets
u he hardly knows what to do with
It. In the course of a few minutes
the blade buckles on him and cuts
every one Of his four fingers. Then
he cuts the strop with it, and would
cut It o%ftener if the strOp lasted long
er; Then he knocks It against the
side OF the mug, drops it ON the floor
and steps on it; but is pleased to
lind that none of the hicks in it are as
large as saw-teeth. Then he wonders
that a man nose is so put on his face
that a man cannotget athis own lin with
2 razor without standing on his head.
lie slashes his nose, cuts the corners
# his mouth, and makes a disagree
cut on his lip that makes IL look
though It had just come out of a
free fight with a straw-cutter. But
he learns just before he cuts his upper
lip clean off and his mustache comes
On again. Although without color IL
can be felt-yery soft felt. And then
Tom has to endure in quiet every sort
II attack from the other members Of
he family about his face being dirty {
hat he had better use a teaspoonfii
If cream and a piece of the cats tail +,
o lather his upper lip and the
Of his sister and younger ]
brother, who ask him and cry to the f,
company respectively, Tom, what /
you got on your upper lip? ?" !
Toms raisin' a mustache. /
But it grows-short in the middle (
md very no longer at the ends. Don't
augh at it; encourage il; coax il !
llongj draw it out speak kindly Of {
I. Even after it has grown long ]
,nough to be felt it causes trouble. I
Z smore obstinate than ameerschaum