Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-04-14
''Pauper that ever disgraced a family"
cared the elder hrothor

III MS outrage yet While you're walking,
for all his worthlessness. Now you'd
better go, my son, and get your temper
IN order. Tell Hannah Jane to come up
tomorrow night with the children.
Marquis went nutting with the boys
yesterday, and we've got q lot of chest
tut to roast. Marquis says"
"Marquis be blamed!" said Bel, and
slammed the door behind him.
AS he went out, Mark was lying on a
low bench in the sun, playing with a
rude toy, which every now and then he
tossed off, but to which he had charac.
terlstlcally tied a string, in order that il
might return and he not have the trouble
of going for it. Bel lifted his foot; he
had half a mind to kick him into the
middle OF the lilac clump. But if he did
ne would only have had to go and pick
him up; he would never have picked
himself up. "Fine SPORT" he grum.
bled. '.You'd better patent the thing"
"Going to-" said Marquis, who was
opposed to any waste of breathin words,
and having hardly any moro idea OF
what the word meant than if it had been
Cherokee, but answering in one of his
old formuln when told to do anything;
the other formula was "Won't."
But Marquis vouchsafed him no further
reply, regarding him only as something
that cast a shodow between him and the
sun, but continued to shoot off the little
toy and catch the string again till his
brother was out of sight. Then he went
into thelhouse, to find his mother bathed
in hysterical tears. There never was
such q pack of children" she sobbed.
"After all I've done for them, and asking
nothing of them now, to make me such
trouble in my old age. And II really
Il thought he was going to walk right
over you"
"Mho? Oh, Bel. He always did,"
"What did he say to you, then?
What did you say to him?"
che told me to patent the thing.
And l wasn't going to have him tell me
what to do, and I said l was going to-"
"Patent what thing? That?'-as
her eye followed his hand shooting off
the toy and catching it by the string
again. "And you said you were going
to? Oh, Marquis, did you mean it?
Let me see it. Tell me about it," And
Mrs. Eastershead was on her feet, wiping
her eyes, and glowing with %volubillty.
"Well, that beats all! Nobody but
you'd have thought of it. I always
knew it was in you, Marquis Lafayette.
Bel better talkP"
81 don't know what you're talking
about" said Mark, sullenly, with q dim
idea that his mother was making fun of
him.
Talking about? Didn't you make
this thing?"
"No"-with a contemptuous laugh.
"I tied the string on it because it hurt
me so to walk and pick it up every
time,'
"1t's the string that's the whole thing.
And if it was ~laziness that made you do
it, as Bel will be sure to say, laziness is
going to have its own reward this time.
For you won't have to walk any more;
you'll ride in your carriage, Marquis,
There's money in it, Marquis.
"Money in a string?"
You always are so modest! It's
something beautiful in you," she said.
How happy she was! no balloon that
ever went sailing up the sky was more
light-hearted. cit seems like a festi-
val," she said. "Yet it isn't Christmas,
nor yet New-Year's, nor Thanksgiving,
and it certainly is not Fourth of July. It
is. as you may say, the birthday of Mar
quis Lafayette" And in accordance
with her feeling that night Mrs. Casters
head INDUCED herself in a perfectly
reckless half-gill of whisky, which she
invited a crony to share, with sugar, hot
water, and nutmeg thrown in; and un-
der its unwonted warmth she expanded
into such a genial rapture of exaltation
about Marquis Lafayette that the crony
felt certain the whisky was a rare eN-
perience on the, part of Marquis Lafay-
cites mother, and that, on the whole,
she needn't tell the parson about it.
She did, though, all the same. And
the parson decided that q little paro.
chial duty was in order. And Marquis
Lafayette's mother laughed in his face.
The idea that she needed to be stimu-
lated in order to praise Marquis!-Mar-
quis, the inventor of this toy, whose
charms she demonstrated to the parson
out of hand. 81 was coming owe t o
you with it," she said. "You've always
been my best friend, and you would tell
us what to do next, [ thought"
"You would have done right" said
the parson. 81 am just going to Wash
ington to attend a session of the Bibli-
cal Congress, and 1 will take the toy
along and see what can be done with it.
1t would not surprise me if there were
money in it. And as for the other bust
ness, some people always take several
scruples to a dram; and so far as our
friend the informer is concerned, I Think
she will get her moiety when 1 remind
her that the tongue is a fire, Mother
Eastershead."
And the parson was as good as his
word, and the toy was patented and
sold on the same day for a fixed sum
and a royalty on the manufacture. And
after all There is not a scrap of
moral in this story! But one can not
always arrange facts to suit f%ancies;
this is the way it happened, and can't
help it; [ had much rather it had been
Bel, as it ought to have been, who rode
in his carriage, but it really was Mark,
and l saw him yesterday stop and take
Bel on the box with the coachman; his
Observation-Disclosures not quite fit to 60
Speaking of that, it may have
been great-grandfather Dupanloup
cropping up in the ~superfine broadcloth
that MARQUIS wore. But for all his