Passaic City record., 1901-06-15
ABOUT THE PONTOS.

AldCauldy would say 1t. But am not sure,
for | have only got to the third chapter of
tie second volume of his History OF Eng
land yet, and there are four volumes in
all.
You must always try to make your SEN
tences clear, Miss Merideth says to US
every day.
SO explain, in my second clause, that our
dogs--Ponto the First Ponto the Second,
Ponto the Third and Ponto the Fourth
have ceased to live; that they are no more.
And now | think | have made my mean
ing very clear, indeed We are reading
Macaulay's History at school, and Miss
Merideth has given us the task of writing
history of something, or somebody, for
composition next Friday.
She says we must aim to express our
selves with the same purity of speech and
clearness of expression that Macaulay does.
As though we could!
But | suppose she means we must try to
do so. 1t never hurts to try to do things
we'll That I've found out for myself, be-
sides having frequently heard it said
Well, for my composition, | am going to
write The History of Our Pontos.'
! started to write it at the top, as you see,
and then to work in a kind of preface,
TO explain :; 2ut Miss Merideth and Mac
aulay and al! that-so that now | may as
well begin Il ain.
! propose to write the history of our Pom
tos. from oar :ather's marriage down to a
time within tie memory of us children.
How very m CT this sentence does sound
like Macaulay, | do declare!
Pontus tne First was a great yellow dog,
and the handsomest of all the Pontos. He
was given to father the day father was mar
ried, and he was very useful dog.
But | can't say as much about him as |
would like to, for he died when | was very
young. But he was a true, true dog. Fa
ther says so. \ wicked man shot him in
the woods one day, and he died, leaving one
successor-Pontos the Second.
This dog was more like his mother Dido
than his father Ponto. His tail rather
dropped instead of curling over his back
the way his fathers tail did And he was
inclined to be sneaky ad irritable, like his
mother.
But Dido was very sneaky herself She
would fill the pan of sour milk, that mother
set out for the chickens full of dirt, when
she thought no one was looking; and she
was so irritable that once she snapped off
young pulet's head who ventured to eat
out of her dish.
We took young Ponto with us, and we
hoped that bringing him up under different
influences from those his mother would
throw around him would make him differ
ent dog.
But it was in the blood. He would snap
and bite at everything, from a grown-up
human being down to a common house-fiy.
And the habit grew upon him, so that one
day when he got -mysteriously disap-
peared-no one cared.
The moral to be drawn from the life OF
this character in history-Ponto the Second
is that if we wish to be mourned when we
are dead or lost, we must be amable while
we are alive.
Ponto the Third was an adopted dog-that
is, he was not directly in the line of sue
cession of Ponto the First and Ponto the
Second-but we gave him the family name
of Ponto, as well as the family dog kennel.
He was lovely dog. No other word ex-
presses it so well, though perhaps Maraulay
would object to the word as not being ap-
propriate for a dog.
But | think there are exceptions to every
rule, for Ponto the Third was lovely.
The baby could do anything she liked to
him, and he never once bit her, or even
snapped at her.
But the trouble with Ponto the Third was
that he had no constitution. He had always
been delicate and small for the family he
belonged to, and when the whooping- cough
came around, and we children had it, Ponto
took it, too.
He coughed as hard as any of us, and had
all the symptoms-such as red, infamed
eyes, sneezng, fever, and terrible spasms of
whooping.
Aunt Jane wanted him sent to the pound.
She said it was bad enough to have five
children coughing all day and all night
long, without having dog lie under her
window and cough, too. ......
But we children wouldn't hear to such
thing. The ideal Our dear, old Ponto
We went to the gas-works for an hour
every day to breathe the air for our coughs,
and Ponto always went with us.
We made funny enough procession, as
we went along the street, five children and
dog, all coughing away.
When we got well, Ponto did, too; and
that fall, when the smallpox was in China
town, we were all vaccinated and we had
Ponto vaccinated, also, and it took.
But | have always thought the whooping-
cough left his lungs weak, for he died, after
awhile, without any special cause.
But l have always thought he had the con-
sumption, he was so thin when he died, and
sometimes he'd cough.
Rob put up a head-board when he was
buried, and wrote on it:
"Requies dog in peace"
He said he wasn't going to have it: Re
ques cat in peace" and have everyone
think the old cat was buried there.
In Ponto the Fourth were combined all
the excellent traits or the other Pontos,
without any of their failings.
But he met with a terrible death, and it
was all that cruel teamster's fault
We had to move every two years, because
father is a Methodist minister and this
time we had to move l20 miles away.
All our things were piled on wagons and
then we went with them in the wagons
across the plains. Rob and | and Ponto had
to ride on a wagon with one of the team
sters. But he wouldn't really let Ponto ride,
after all. He made him walk behind, tied
to the wagon.
Poor Ponto! All day he walked in the hot
sun, and all the next day. and all the next