Middletown transcript., 1881-06-10
BOB BURDETTE's BOY.
ABSTRACT OF THE LECTURE ON SRIsE
AND FALL OF THE MUSTACHE. y

!
AND FALL OF THE MUsTACHE." !"
A boy asks questions. If there was
any truth in the theory of transmigra-
tion, when boy dies he would go into
an 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 them curious fossils that he don't
know the names of. He knows where
the herbs grow that have marvellous
medicinal properties, and he nearly
sends the rest of the family to the
graveyard by making practical tests
upon them. The boy has his supersti-
tions, and he carries in his pocket one
particular marble-be it brummie, agate
OF blood alley-which when he loses he
sees panic and bankruptcy coming, and
retires before the crash comes, with his
pocket full of shillings and a creditors
meeting in the back room. He has a
charm to cure warts on the hand he
has marvellous love for the woods.
AS he grows older he wants to be
missionary or a pirate, and so far as
there is preference he would rather be
pirate-a profession in which there is
more opportunities for making money,
and fewer 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
passengers tramway, and soon cures
the other members of the family of set
ting 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
bn his head. Poor Tom loves as he
makes mischief. He muses. his sisters
rufie and gets severely reprimanded.
But some neighbor's Tom comes in
and makes the most helpless, hopeless,
abject, chaotic wreck of that ruff1e that
it can be distorted into, and all the
reproach he gets is, ''Must he go soon?"
But poor Tom gets weary and drops
off into the wonderland of a boys
dreams, and no mother who has not
dragged sleepy son off the lounge at
nine O'Clock and led him upstairs can
understand the Herculean grasp with
which a square sleep takes hold of
boy, how fearfully timber and limp it
makes him and how it developes innu-
merable joints that work 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 major
ity. In time Tom comes to want a
tail-coat and glove-ftting boots. Be-
fore he has wore his fathers arctic's |
on his feet, and his mothers slippers
on his jacket, it dawns upon Tom that |
he has hands-a pair, 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
where the eleventh one came
from. Now his mother never cuts his
hair with pair of scissors that have
cut miles and miles of calico, and vast |
eternities Of paper, and snarls and tan
giles of string, and have snuffed candles,
and have 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 stovepipe lengths in
two. Now he knows that mans upper |
lip was destined by nature to be a
mustache pasture. How exquisitely |
reserved he is, with what delicate ac-
tion does he make the first preliminary
in order that he may de-
tect the first symptoms of velvety re-
sistance. 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 anxiousg into the window
and-walks past. At last when he
up courage enough to go inside
and climbs into the chair and is just on
the point of whispering to the barber
that he would like a shave, in comes
some modern 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 file, trims it with smoothing
plane and parts it with straight-edge |
and scratch awl. Nobody ever did
know how boy gets hold of his faith
er's razor, and when the boy gets it he
hardly knows what to do with it. In
the course of a few minutes the blade
buckles on him and he cuts every one
of his four fingers. Then he cuts the
strop with it, and would cut it oftener
if the strop lasted longer. Then he
knocks it against the side of the mug,
drops it on the floor and steps on it
but is pleased to find that none of the
hicks in it are as large as saw teeth.
Then he wonders that a mans nose is
80 put on his face that man cannot
get at his own without standing on his
head. He slashes his nose, cuts the
corners of his mouth, and makes dis
agreeable cut on the lip that makes it
look as though it had just come out of
a free fight with a strawcutter. But
be learns just before he cuts his upper
lip clear off and his mustache comes on
again. Although without color it can
be felt-very soft felt. And then Tom
has to endure in quiet every sort of at
tack from the other members of the
family about his face being dirty that
he had better use teaspoonful Of cream
and a piece of the cats tail to lather