Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1901-08-08


He's got to nail you and me up against
the coping and tell us all about 'em.
He never takes any account of the
fact that we've raised few of 'em,
and provided 'em with shoes and fair
high school educat lions, and married
one or two of 'em off, and that we had
our little whack at the enjoyment OF
the infantile prattling stunts way
back in the days when there was a
net hanging around the still uncom-
pleted top of the Washington monu-
ment. Nope, he seems to have it doped
out that we just landed here Is or 20
minutes previously from Sirius, the
Dog Star; that we never saw or heard
of a young one before, and that it's
his mission to elbow us into dark cor
ners and hand us two-hour disserta-
tions relative to the almost weird and
alarming precocity of his little four
year-old girl, who, happening to have
seen a dog on the street that morn
ing, points it out to her mamma and
%, mamma, see re bow-wow!'
"Moreove you are supposed to
laugh real loud, you know, over these
tender, appealing little "reminiscences.
Not that he will stop telling you these
delightful little things if you fail to
burst into peals of understandable
merrimept-not at all; he'll go right
on telling 'em to you if the stories
move you to bitter tears. But if you
don't hold your sides and shrek and
beg him to desist if he would not see
you lapse into Mysteries he's liable to
go home and tell his wife that you're a
cold-blooded, heartless duck, and that
he wouldn't be little bit surprised
if you made a practice of surrepti-
tiously twisting little children's arms
just to hear 'em boiler.
"There is never by any chance as
much point or pitch to one of his sto-
ries about his young ones as there is
to yard of rag carpet Of the common
or garden variety. But that doesn't
bother him any. He goes right ahead
pouring 'em out to you, and he always
slaps his thigh over the variations
and tears of pure joy food his lamps,
and it doesn't take more than one
sixteenth of an eye to see that he con-
siders each and every one of his tow
heads sort of animate Joe Miller's
Joke Book when it comes to hot wit.
He generally leads you to the slaugh-
ter when you are suffering from
neuralgia or the consciousness that
you didn't play that big jackpot hand
properly the night before; and if you
are weak and wabbly enough to per-
nit even the ghastliest apology for a
smile to cross your mobile features
you might just as we'll cut the next
two hours out of your prearranged
schedule; you're a goner for that Pc
Rod, or longer.
"He never seems to have reflected
that young ones have been saying and
doing the same identical things ever
since the days when rampageous gla-
ciers were chasing huge tribes of our
forbears across the oozy plains, and
that what the iridescent kidlet of to-
day delivers himself or herself of in
the way of spicy humor was got of
just as like as not by the toddlers who
ate buttons and pins and fell down
stairs in the epoch Of the Hyksos, or
shepherd dynasty of Egypt.
1.-THE only way to handle the man
who is always talking about his young
ones is to hop him the instant he be-
gins. Watch him closely. When you
perceive that his loose, f1abby fea-
lures are beginning to contract into a
grin, you may know that he is on the
point of attempting to make victim
of you, and this is your cue to pick up
the most accessible half-brick and to
hurl the same at him for keeps.
"This is heroic method, but it's
necessary. If you don't put his light
out at once you're nailed, and self
preservation is the first law of nature.
After the coroner has sat upon few
half-bricked specimens of the man
who is always talking about his young
ones, the tribe will gradually diminish
like the Kanakas under the obliterat-
ing influence of the genus gin, known
as 'swipes,' until at length we'll all be
permitted to give personal supervi-
sion to our own little catalogue of
woes. Speed the bright day! I have
spake. That'll be about all, and the
conclave is 'smissed."