The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-08-24

whom no other name but William Harrington would properly ft. Grandfather Hazelrod was . stern but afectionate man, on occasion, and had but one weakness. He was a slave to early rising and addicted to the vice of hard work. Often and often William had labored with his grandfather and besought him, with tears in his eyes, to cast off the yoke. If the tears were not in his eyes when he began, they were generally got there before he reached his peroration. If he could not reach it himself, his grandfather reached it for him with his "tear com- peller," long 1.-the "gsd" of twisted hickory. At such times Bob Cutler, who was coarse and rude, rent the air in his vicinity with clownish laugh ter. "Get on to his nibs' great stick trick" Bob would say, for he had no reverence for even the most sacred act of family corrective discipline.
 When William Harrington refused to go into his cousins pool, Bob ap- piled a discourteous epithet to him and made a swipe at him with his hay rake, which William, who was not 90 meek as he looked, deftly parried with his ox-gad, which he then brought down across Bob's back twice in different places with such effect that that too fresh young ruffler had to sleep on his face for three nights. The race is not always to the favorite nor the battle to the slugger.
 That night, after straining his neck into lump by vainly trying to look over his shoulders at the long diago- nal pa terms in raised work which his cousin William had wrought upon his back with cunning handiwork, Bob Cutler hunted up an old almanac and cut out the page he wanted, and sub- stitutcd it for the July record in that popular work of fiction for the cur rent year. Before the household i retired that night this bold, bad boy cunningly turned the conversation upon the subject of the day of the week, and Grandfather Hazlerod, going to the almanac to settle dis pute, was overjoyed to learn that he had yet another day to finish hayin' in. William Harrington called 1t "hayiDg," but everybody else said "hayin'." However, to make up for this difference of pronunciation, Grandfather Hazlerod said "garding" and William said garden" so they averaged all right.
 Next morning when grandfather routed the boys out at four o'clock in the dark, William came down in his Sunday clothes, and in response to his grandfather's astonished demand for an explanation, told of Bob's mean deception in spite of that rude boys vigorous and threatening pantomime, indicative of human being undergo ing the progress of pulverization by digital concussion, for Bob did not want him to "give away the lake," as he called 1t, too soon. But utgrandfather turned fiercely upon William.
 "Out of this," he roared "take of them dude duds an' git inter yer over- alls before raise lump on ye. Purty pass things is come to-" said the old man, looking around for his tear starter, "when boys is to tell men of my age that they don't know the day of the week" Daniel Webster once said that if he had one- half the gram mar which Grandfather Hazlerod idly and indifferently cast away as a thing of no moment, he would start a society journal or write orations for a living.
 Bob began to laugh at Williams discontinue, but grandfather cut his merriment short. "If you're through