Mexico weekly ledger., 1879-01-30
BObb Burdette's Boy,
Abstract of the Lecture on "The Rise and Fall
of a Mustachep

BObb Burdette's Boy.
Abstract of the Lecture on "The Rise and Fall
of 4 Mustaehe.p
A boy asks questions. If there
was any truth in the theory of trans
migration, when q boy dies he would
60 into On interrogation point. A
boy knows where the first snow drop
lifts and where the last Indian paint
fingers. His pockets are cabinets.
He drags from the curious fossils that
he don't know the names of. He
knows where the herbs grow that have
marvellous medical properties, and
lie nearly sends the rest of the family
to the graveyard by making practi.
cal tests upon them. The boy has
his superstitions, and he carries in
his pocket one particular marble--be
it brummie, agate or blood alley
which when he loses he sees paric
and bankruptcy coming, and retires
before the crash comes, with his pock-
cts full of shillings and a creditors
meeting in the back room. He has q
charm to cure warts on the hand he
has marvellous instinct for the
woods, As he grows older he wants
to be missionary, or pirate, and
so far as there is any preference he
would rather be pirate--a profess
sion in which there are more oppor-
tunities of making money and fewer
chances Of being deyoured 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 tram-way, and soon
cures the other members Of the family
of the practice Of setting the water
pitcher on the baluster 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 ruff
fie and gets severely reprimanded.
But some neighbor's Tom comes in
and makes the most helpless, hope
less, abject, chaotic wreck of that
ruffie that it can be distorted into,
and all the reproach he gets is "Must
he go so soon?" But poor Tom gets
weary and drops off into the wonder
land of boys dreams, and no moth
er who has not dragged a sleepy boy
off the lounge at 8 o'clock and led
him upstairs can understand the Her
culean grasp with which q square
sleep takes hold of boy, how fear
fully timber and limp it makes him
and how it develops innumerable
joints that work both ways, He ney-
er 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 tall
coat AMI gloye-ftting 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 pair, a good
hand. And when he goes to the first
church sociable with his sister on ac-
count 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 apsir
of scissors that have cut miles and
miles of calico, and vast eternities
of paper, and snsrls 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 an
nual struggle Of cutting stove-pipe
lengths In two. Now he knows that
mans upper lip was destined by na-
ture to be mustache pasture. How
exquisitely reserved he is with what
delicate action does he make the first
preliminary investigation in order
that he may detect the first symp-
toms of velvety assistance. And
when he has found that it is there and
only needs to be brought out, how he
walks down to the barber's shop,
gazing anxiously into the window
and-walks past. At last, when he
musters up courage enough to 60 in
side and Climbs into the chair and is
just on the point of whispering to the
barber that he would like shave, in
comes some modorn Esau 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 barber holds it in his
teeth, cuts it with o file, trims it with
smoothing-plane and parts it with
straight-edge and q scratch-awl. No
body ever did know how o boy gets
hold of his fathers razor and when
the boy gets it he hardly knows what
to do with it. In the course of o
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 oftener il the strop last
ed longer. Then he knocksit against
the side Of the mug, drops it on the
floor and steps on it; but Is pleased
to find that none of the nicks in 1t
are as large as saw-teeth. Then he
wonders that o mans nose is so put
on his face that man can not get ct
his own lip with q razor without stand
ing on his head. He slashes his nose,
cuts the corners Of his mouth, and
makes q disagreeable cut on his lip
that makes it look as though il had
Just come out ola free-Asht with .
straw-cutter. But he learns Just be-
fore he cuts his upper lip clean Of
49, -