The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-06-03
THOSE DUNNING BOYS.

80, yes! it's g good soil for melons
first-rate along this slope. Sandy, S,
there's never standin' water; and W,
could have 'em easy enough, but, yol
see, those Dunning boys"
q should certainly think those boy,
had as many legs as centipede," sale
Ruth. Il hear of them in every gar
den in town, yet nobody ever catche.
them. They seem to have more force
of character than all the village put to
gether, for when l ask why there isn't
more fruit, or why somebody doesn't
have a strawberry-bed or some raspber
ries, there is always the same answer,
90, YOU can't on account of the Dun.
ming boys They look harmless, too,
and seem good-natured; but it's an alb
solute despotism, and, as good Ameri-
cans, | should say the time had come
for revolt. You are an old soldier,
Hiram. Tell me the way"
Hiram chuckled as Ruth looked al
him. The two had become great
friends, and he often came down from
his old shop where he now and then
tried his former trade of cobbling, and
leaning over the garden gate, watched
her among her flower-beds, which
bloomed as no other beds in Lowgate
had ever done. Hiram had for many
years driven the sage between Low
gate and the Springs, till rheumatism
disabled him, and now lived with his
wife in the little house back of the shoe
makers shop his son had used till sent
to the West by the hopelessness of max
ing a living from it. Hiram himself
was too old for change, and indeed the
neighborhood could i'll have spared him.
Grave-digger, bell-ringer, genealogical
register for every family in the town
ship, and, above all, story-teller at
large, remembering everything that had
ever happened to anybody, and with a
dry humOr which played in every
wrinkle and lighted up his rath-
er melancholy brown eyes. A lit
tie dismayed at first by his free
dom. Ruth had come to find him an I'M
falling source of amusement, and often
of something deeper, and to talk over
many things which puzzled or troubled
her in this new life, in which unexpect-
ed difficulties were always cropping up.
You can't expect them boys to be
any other way" said Hiram, after a
pause. - You see it was in their father
before them and it will out Didn't
ever tell you about old Dunning?"
" Never" Ruth said.
Wal, there's one story think of
just this minute that's goods any to
show the way he come up an the way
they come up. I'll just sit down on the
steps here while you're pullin' off them
dead leaves. It GURUS l hain't said
anythin' about him before. Old Dun
ming stood for more tOm-foOlery, do
suppose, than any other ten men in the
township. You see he was lake-mad,
like a good many about here, and bound
from the time he was ten years old to
get his livin' out o. the lake. Now
Champlain looks plain sailin' enough,
but you that Just come down in pleas
ure-boat from Whitehall, you don't
know much about it. Up there in them
Narrers Eve seen the boat draw so
much water the fish'd just be floppin'
up an down along the banks, an not a
pint for 'em to swim in. An there
rocks an shoals, an a man has to keep
his eyes open or he'll be aground, sure
as fate.
Wal, old Dunning began Just after
the war of y, when a good many sloops
was runnin,' an he was cabin-boy, an
he went on, first one thing an then
another, an there wasn't one captain
on that lake that didn't make up his
mind he'd as soon try a saw-horse for
cabin-boy. Somehow or 'nuther old
Dunning didn't ever get the hang of
anything but slowing away his victuals
and stealin' whatever come handy. He
couldn't see atenpenny nail lynn round
loose but what he wanted it, an he'd it
too, and all SO sort of easy and nat raj
that somehow he never got took up for
it the way other folks do. His mother
had a farm Just over the Canada line,
an when he couldn't sail the lake he
struggled, an ! could tell you some o
the ways if YOU cared TO know any time.
He got married finally to a French
gal. an took her home, an they
scratched along somehow, but it wasn't
Till his boys was fifteen or SO that he
managed somehow or other to get a
sloop of his own. That set him up,
can tell We! An he might have made a
good livin' if he hadn't spent so much
time gettin' aground, or lettin' his sails
blow off, or some such nonsense. They'd
see signals flynn an they'd all say:
'0ld Cummings in another muss,' and
sometimes they'd hurry and sometimes
they wouldn't.
These two boys took TO stealin' Just
as easy as their father. / don't know
why they shouldn't. 1t was in the
blood on both sides. These boys couldn't
read, an there wasn't a man nor woman
neither that seemed to think it was any
O their business. | don't know. l
can see through knot-hole, rs easy as
anybody. but l hain't seen yet what the
right O. this thing is
wal. the long an short of it is, Old
Dunning an them boys got to be kind
o pirates in a small way, an wherever
that Sloop came folks was on the watch
for their gardens an hen-roosts. Most
everybody along the shore has ducks an
geese. an it was mighty handy to get
one or two o these. An the queer
thing-waS. everybody knew, an nobody
ever caught EN-. Old Cunning had a
whecdly kind o way, an he'd 60 up
into the VILLAGE. an sit an tell stories