Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1897-05-26
Flow HE GOT EVEN.

Tie Boy Waited Year to Pay Ills Father
Bacs.
Laurence Hutton, in an article in
Harper S Round Table tells the fol-
lowing good story of an AIlil fool
joke that his father playlu en- him
and the wa he got even
In my bread and butter days i
was frequent and unhappy victim
OF what Shakespeare calls raging
tooth. A long siege with a certain
lnolar had left me one early spring
day with broken spirit and a
swollen face My father had walked
the floor with me, and had groaned
with me, and had suffered in his
feelings and in his sympathies more
perhaps than had suffered in phys
ical way the patient himself.
He was going that morning to at
tend the funeral of his old friend,
DR.. Mcpherson, and he asked me be-
fore he left the house to which ]
was confined what I thought ]
would like him to bring me back
way of his whenever I was in any
serious condition of invalidism. !
demanded without hesitation a
brick of maple sugar. A very
strange request certainly from
person in my peculiar condition and
one which appealed strongly to his
own sense of the ridiculous.
When he returned at dinner time,
he carried the brick enveloped in
many series Of papers, beginning
with the coarsest kind and ending
with the finest kind, and each of the
wrappers was fastened with it's own
particular bit Of cord or ribbon, all
of them tied in the hardest of hard
knots. The process of disentangle-
ment was long and laborious, but it
was persistently performed, and
when the brick was revealed, 10, it
was just a brick not of maple sug-
ar, but plain, ordinary red clay,
building brick, which he had taken
from some pile of similar bricks on
his way up town. The disappoint-
ment was not livery bitter, for I knew
that something else was coming,
and I realized that it was the first
of April and that I had been April
fooled.
The something else, I remember,
was that most amusing of amusing
books, George Derby's tPhenixi-
ana, - then just published, and over
it I forgot my toothache, but not
my maple sugar. All this happened
when was about 10 years of age,
and have ever since associated
Squibob with the sweet sap of the
maple, never with raging teeth.
It was necessary, however, to get
even with my father. Not an easy
matter / knew, and / consulted my
Uncle John, a youth some six or
eight years my senior. He advised
patient waiting. The father, he said,
was absolutely devoted to The Com
mercial Advertiser, which he read
every day from frontispiece to end
market report, book notices, obit-
uary notices, advertisements and
all and if could hold myself in for
a whole year my Uncle John thought
it would be worth it. The CONNER
cial Advertiser of that date was put
safely away for twelvemonth,
and on the LIST of April next it was
produced, carefully folded and prop
erly dampened and was placed by |
the side of my fathers plate, the
mother and son making no remark,
but eagerly awaiting the result.
The journal was vigorously scanned.
No item of news or of business i'm
port was missed, until the reader
came to the funeral announcements
on the third page. Then he looked
at the top of the paper through his
spectacles, and then he looked over
his spectacles at me, who was very
busy with my bread and milk, and
he made but one remark. The sub
iect, like that of the tailor's bill,
was never referred to afterward be-
tween us. But he looked at the top
of the paper, and he looked at me,
and he said, My son, I see that old
DIR. Mcpherson is dead againl'''