The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-10-01

those days meant for lying IN the shade
and reading old files of the Youths Com
panion: their hoes would whack With a
respondent v~iciousness through all of a
precious day or two. The locusts would
sing and the fields would be parched and
everybody they CHANGED TO see while work.
ing near "the big road would look gloomy
and discouraged and say that they never
saw such a long drought; a hawk, wheel
ing high in air, would give its doom-crack-
ing scream, and, worst Of all, when he was
working near his brother that strange In
dividual would lean on his hoe handle and
speculate on how long IL would be until
corn-cutting time in such a realistic way
that one could feel the nasty, dead blades
saving his neck.
The horror of this thought came to him
with all the force and the depressing IN
fiuence with which the realization OF a lie
sentence comes to other prisoners. He was
a picture of abject misery when he reached
the house and as he looked over the dis
mantled dinner table he said he didn't see
nothin' T. eat" His sister made him
ashamed by opening the oven doors and
taking out the dinner they had kept warm
for him. With a sneaking "Oh!" he fell to.
Perhaps for a boy in such deep trouble he
ate a good deal. Three plates full OF pota-
toes, three helpings Of cottage cheese, four
enormous slices of bread spread with but
ter and apple sauce, two pieces Of picked
pork. a plate of succotash, some sliced Gu
cumbers and some bread and jam formed
the first course. Then, after searching the
cupboard for pie, he took a tin cup and
went to the cellar. When he returned ne
sawed off three more slices of bread, i'm
mersed them in the cup of milk and went
out on the back porch to finish his dinner.
Where were his troubles now? Where are
any boys troubles when he has had enough
to eat? Life had emerged from purple
clouds and was bathed in golden sunshine.
The workbench the mulleins and the
thistles-was forgotten in the blissfulness
of the dream that accompanied the super
satisfying of the inner boy. Nothing more
than a big meal ever lies between the boy
pessimist and the boy optimist. He thought
now of the things he would get to eat
''thrashin' time not only at home, but
among the neighbours; he thought of the
hornets nests he would stone and shoot
and burn; of the squirrels he would kill
next fall; of the snakes he would catch
and carry home TO scare the girls, and of
AAC JOy AS NOoAo
that very afternoon as soon as he had
chopped enough stove wood to do over Sun
day. This thought made him bolt the last
few bites Of his dessert, put the tin and
spoon down with a clatter and run for the
woodpile, that he might get away ere his
father and brother returned from town and
found him a task. But, interpoSes my
hygienic friend, did not the boy have indi-
gestion after all that? If he did he never
knew 1t. There was no one to tell him.
Twenty years later he had it after mine
ing over a slice of over-buttered toast and
drinking a glass of sterilized milk; then he
not only had dyspepsia. but he also had an
inordinate longing for his boyhood occupa-
ton, together with that appetite and diges-
ton; longed for a condition under which
he might be as sure of his daily bread in
such quantities at the cost of so little
worry over expenses. He did those things
two decades later, when he had realized his
golden dreams and found they were not UP
to the standard of their recommendation
but that particular summer day he had no
indigestion. Instead, he went swimming
with a full stomach, ate early harvests"
and drank water all the rest of the after
noon, and the only excuse he would muster
next day for not wanting to go to Sunday
school was that he had stumped his toe and
couldn't wear his left shoe.