The Penn's Grove record., 1883-09-22
Sis Browns Fortune.

To begin with, | am a young person
with big bones and plenty of them
and l don't care a button if my hair is
red L have good reason to know that
| am not considerable beautiful thai
my nose, for ipstanee-but there's
really no need for such distressing de-
tails.
My father, Peter Brown-the best
| farmer living in all Fairfax, be the
dead one whom he MAYS the unfor-
tunate possessor of thirteen children,
every single one OF them girls-and the
married ones, too, for that matter OF
course, girls are all very well as far as
they go, but n gets too much of a
good thing sometimes, and SO when
poor pa takes a notion to upbraid fate
because all his boys turned out girls, |
must say | rebel against the decree that
condemns me to slavish frocks and
frizzes. Most good folks sing out that
they want to carry harps and be angels,
but If only l were Peter Brown,
junior, and had a farm like pa don't
blame ma, of course, but | really do
think the even dozen ought to have
contented her-and, what's more, |
say, so, when pa and | get beyond the
subduing influence Of her eye-for
there's nothing trifling about mas eye
When pa and mas love was young,
and their future a rose-colored rose
there I've heard pa say il a dozen
times, but when a girl happens to be
shackled with a memory like a bey's
pocket upside down and the middle
nowhere, and got that memory from
her ma, l suppose there's to be allow
ances-anyhow, the first giIls got the
benefit of it all in the way of mugs and
coral, and names as fine as fiddles then
there came such disastrous lull in pas
enthusiasm that ma says, when he
painted up from the fields one hot noon
and found out dear old twins waiting,
instead of his dinner, it set him so fran
tic that he threatened to bunch the
whole family together like a string of
fish and do a dark and desperate deed.
But ma just kept on having her own
way-which means girls until by the
time she wound up the home circle
with meat your ~service-she had SO
worn her intellect down at the heels
thinking up double barreled names for
the other dozen, that she handed my
christening over to pa, and pa ever
iastingly disgraced himself, in my esti-
nation, by heartlessly calling me Sis
abs ,lutely nothing but Sis.
If l had been a boy this indignity, at
least--bat there are some wrongs Sc
great that the only thing n can con-
veniently do is to forgive them! But,
though pa has been cheated of his
bishops and senators and things (poor
dear, he never dreams that sons of his
might have turned out farmers like
himself, only not half s good) the girls
have certainly made up his loss in
husbands. Indeed, pa seems to have
more sons-in-law than he knows quite
what to do with-and as to grand.
sonsl
"If one could only feed then
like chickens J" signs poor ma plain
lively.
After that little business talk pa and
I had behind the barn I've settled in
my mind that the Browns have got tt
economize, and l mean to start witt
the grand children by way of a noble
beginning.
"Now look here, NAL say to tn,
dear old soul who is already swearing a
me with big anxious eyes, like a hel
with her feathers rufied, ''this thing
has gone on long enough, and l jus
mean to hitch old Calico to the car
and dump every scrap of sgrandchild a
his own lawful door, do! It's down
right mean in the girls to impose OF
us in this everlasting way-as if Their
wasn't work enough of our owl
~
"There, there, sis" interrupts ma
pathetically, ''they only mean to pleas
pa
Sand a nice way they take to do it
Pas an old man now, and after pinch
ing and shaving all his live for US arm
of girls, what right have they to kee
him pinching and shaving to the last
Oh, you needn't look at me like thai
ma, dear children, like good MAI
ners, ought to be found at home-h
! you, Tom, Dick, Harry, etc., etc. (;
, and when at last l have packed thel
in the wheezy old cart, and we {
, laughing, scratching and squallin
down the road, / feel like Il
r pied piper of Hamelin, only there
no hill with wide, greedy jaws, wal