Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1900-03-15
THE DREAM RIDE OF A BOY.


The shooting party had gone away
to his great disgust. 1t was just about
sunrise, the coolest, incest time O day
in India, and his mother was not yet
up, and the servants were busy else
where, so there was nobody to pre-
vent him from wandering to the
boundary of the tea plantation. There
he observed of sudden quite unex-
pected and amazing sight.
Two brown men, one quite old and
the other quite young, were in the
shadow of the trees. They were
stripped to the waist, and the old man
wore cummerbund aud sandals, while
the young, wiry mans legs and feet
were bare. The old man was evident
iy instructing the younger and super
vising lesson far more interesting to
Freddie than the worrying intricacies
of the reading book and multiplication
table. Fish, flash! Flickerty, fick! !
Up in the air, glancing in the mornings
slanting snnbeams. quivered prodi
gious number of knives. They must
sometimes have touched the juggler's
hands, but so deftly did the man fin
ger them that the knives darted about
his head aud body like swarm of
great dragon flies, grazing his ears,
soaring above his turban, swooping to
his knees, but never by any accident
touching the ground until, with a
swift clatter and a clash, they all came
together in the juggler's grasp, and
he laid them down.
Now, the little boys eyes and mouth
were soon very wide open indeed, and
when the feat was over, his uncon-
scious legs had borne him, step by
step, right up to the jugglers, where
his brown hair and pale face and
pretty suit of snow-white duck con-
trasted strangely with their Gusky
skins and bright black eyes and cloths
of glowing colors. He was immensely
interested and rather awed, but by no
means afraid, for he had been born
in India and was accustomed to COM
mune in lordly manner with all sorts
of natives. Even travelling jugglers
were not unknown to him. So when
the swarthy men salaamed humbly to
the little sahib, the boy acknowledged
directness Of one used to being
oteyed:
''Do it again"
The older man turned to the boy at
once with an air of having expected
him, and smiled and salaamed very
low in quite gratifed way. They
obeyed him at once, and the young
native began to perform even more
amusing tricks. 1t was almost terri
flying, but the curious and rather un-
nerving thing was that the old juggler
never seemed to take his eyes of the
boy. The old man gave him mat to
sit on, and smiled into his face with
great piercing eyes, and told him to
be good aud he would see what he
would see. The old man then took a
mango stone from a basket, and care
fully planted it, Then he covered the
spot for an instant with the basket,
and there was the young plant already
sprouting from the earth. Freddie
gasped, and the plant grew and grew
right before his eyes. 1t grew and it
grew and it grew, until in a very short
time it was tree. Then it spread
and it spread, and had many branches
and leaves, and at last little mangoes
began to appear, and they grew and
ripened in marvellous way, until the
fakir plucked big juicy one and gave
j! to the boy, who ate it and found it
delicious. Then the juggler waved
his hands and-the tree was gone.
Goodness me!' cri I'd Freddie, 81
t,1r k1,ck
The old juggler smiled again and
took a coil of rope from the wonderful
basket. 1t was very ordinary rope,
Just, in fact, wash line. But the
fakir threw one end of the coil far up,
and the marvellng boy saw that the
rope spun slowly out, up and up tow
ard the sky, quite straight MS if some
one were hauling at the upper end.
1t went up and up until the end van
ished altogether.
Gracious goody" cried Freddie.
81 don't see how that was doner'
The old man clapped his hands,
and the young man leaped at the rope
at once and seized it and began to
climb up, hand over hand, at tre-
mendous rate, and he went up and up
and up until he also was out of sight.
81 never, never did!' cried Freddie,
who was now limp with amazement.
'Where did he go to?"
"Wherever he wished to CO." the
juggler said. "Does the sahib wish to
go anywhere?"
"Yes," cried Freddie with sudden
harpy thought. "Where my paps
and uncle are hunting"
In moment the iuggler placed the
rope in his hands.
"Climb," said he, and without tax
ing time to think Freddie climbed.