The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1903-04-15
A Lesson
I'm Humility
How Little Johnnie Got a
Lot of False Pride Out
of His System
From Letters From a Self Made Aer'
chant TO Hts Son." BY George Horace
Lorimer. BY permission of Small, MdU-
lard q Co., Publishers, Boston

Inever see one OF these fellows ayyell-
ing around with Their petty larceny
| pride that / don't think Of a little eX-
perience Of mine when I was a boy. An
| old fellow caught me lifting n water
melon In his patch one afternoon, IL
instead Of cutting me and letting me go,
as 1 had expected if 1 got caught, he
led me home by the ear to my ma and
told her what L had been up to.
Your grandma had been raised on the
| old fashioned plan, and she had never
heard CT these newfangled theories or
reasoning gently with a child till It's
under lip begins to stick out and It's
eyes to fill with tears as 1t sees the err
ror OF its ways. She fetched he tears
all right, but she did 1t with u trunk
| strap or u slipper. And your grandma
was a pretty substantial oma Moth
| Ing of the tootsy wootsy about her
! foot and nothing Of the airy fairy trihe
| about her slipper. When she was
| through 1 knew that I'd been licked
| polished right off to a point-and then
| she sent me to my room and told me
| not to poke my nose out OF 1T till L
| could reclte the Ten Commandments
and the Sunday school lesson by heart.
There was a whole chapter of 1t, and
| an Old Testament chapter at that, but
1 laid right into it because 1 knew
ma, and supper was only two our OH.
1 can repeat that chapter still, forward
and backward, without missing a word
| or stopping to catch my breath.
Every now and then old Doc Hoover
used to come into the Su. uy school
room and scare the scholars into fits
by going around from class to class
aud asking questions. That next Sun
day, for the first time, l was glad to
| see him happen in, and 1 didn't try to
escape attention when he worked
| around to our class. For ten minutes
| I'd been busting for him to ask me to
| recite a verse of the lesson, and when
he did IAsimply cut loose and recited
| the whole chapter and threw in the
Ten Commandments for good measure.
1t sort Of dazed the Doc, because he
had come to me for information about
| the Old Testament before, and we'd
never got much beyond "And Ahab
begat Jahab," or words to that effect.
But when he got over the shock he
made me stand right up before the
whole school and do 1t again. Patted
me on the head and said l was IAN
honor to my parents and III example to
my playmates."
had been looking down all the time,
feeling mighty proud and scared, but
at that 1 couldn't help glancing up to
see the other boys admire me. But the
first person my eye lit on was your
grandma, standing in the back of the
room, where she had stopped for a mo-
ment on her way up to church, and
glaring at me in n mighty unpleasant
way.
"Tcll 'em, john" she said right out
loud before everybody.
There was no way to run, for the
elder had hold Of my hand, and there
was no place to hide, though / reckon
I could have crawled into a rat hole.
So, to gain time, 1 blurted out:
"Tell 'em what, mam?'
"Tell EN- how you come to have your
lesson so nice"
1 learned to hate notoriety right then
and there, but I knew there was no
switching her off on to the weather
when she wanted to talk religion. So
1 shut my eyes and let 1t come, though
1t caught on my palate once or twice on
the way out.
"Hooked n watermelon, man"
There wasn't any need for further
particulars with that crowd, and they
simply howled. Ma led me up to our
pew, allowing that she'd tend to me
Monday for disgracing her In public
that way-and she did.
That was a twelve grain dose with
out any sugar coat, but it sweat more
cant and false pride out Of my system
than I could get back into 1t for the
next twenty years. I learned right
there how to be humble, which is q
heap more important than knowing
how to be proud. There are mighty
few men that need any lessons in that