The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-08-23

The pretty five-year-old boy walked
proudly into the corner grocery and recited.
with the confidence of one whovhas learned
a difficult lesson with precision. II want
a quart of milk and dozen ananas and
a loaf of bread-domestic bread.
THAT shows" said the Little Schoolma am
Indignantly, "how thoughtless people are
about burdening little children with re-
sponsibility 1t would be quite an under
taking for a grown person TO carry a loaf
of bread and a dozen bananas and a quart
of milk. and if he does spill the milk. even
if they are nice about it at home. his little
heart will be crushed with the sense of
failure and disgrace
Some one with the time and gift for it
ought to make collection of indigenous
American proverbs. before We have all be-
corpe educated and cultivated. before the
mild, Individual flavor of the days of pio-
neering lost forever. There are Poor
Richards prudent and thrifty maxims, to
be sure. but those. | suppose. are the pro-
duct of DIR. Franklins teeming brain, not
the genuine. spontaneous fruit of the soil.
What wealth of quaint and pithy sayings
there must be among the negroes, How
the maxims of different parts of the coun-
try would illustrate the character and con-
ditions of their respective sectionsi Here
are three Connecticut ones which / offer
for a beginning:
''My time isn't much more account than
old setting hen's'-said by cripple or
inability to work.
mt IN ira1 nd add In, bo
motto by which our great grandmothers
lived through all their strenuous lives;
whence it comes to pass there is nothing
but the accumulated 'tireds' left for US,
their descendants.
lone egg will do for a pudding. two's
enough, and three's abominable!' There's
energetic economy for you-even economic
ing i'm grammar. because the plural verb
would involve the labor of pronouncing an
extra syllable.
And here is an Illinois one-a rule for
sweetening rhubarb pie in the early days
when there was no fruit in the country,
and sugar enough for the intensely acid
rhubarb was serious expense: Put in
all your conscience will let you-then shut
your eyes and add another cupful."
We are all wasteful of beauty. We do
not take time and thought to get the good
and the uplift of it. The glory of dawns
and sunsets, the magnificence of starry
night, the somber majesty of storm clouds,
the beauty of these glorious Indiana trees
how much of it even the beauty Irving let
pass them without notice. and n, W many
there are that scarcely think of ii at all.
nff MIG he ioh
Of burdens and have their frets and wor-
ries smootheds out. if we would but give
ourselves up for a moment to grateful ap-
probation of this richness and splendor of
beauty that daily surrounds US.
I'm tired, said the Botanical One 81
wish flowers grew as easily and were as
hard to kill as weeds"
''Oh, but don't we all wish THAR cried
the Critical One. See how much easier IL
is to teach fear than courage, for instance.
You may take the utmost care that a child
shall never be frightened, that nobody shall
tell it ghost stories threaten ii with the
ragman or the bOogerman, train it daily
and hourly in the belief that there is moth
ing to fear, and kindle its courage by heroic
stories and, perhaps. if it comes of nat
urally fearless race. you will succeed in
time. But it is the easiest thing I'm the
world to plant the seeds of fear and make
them grow. A little girl who had all her
life regarded insects merely as matters OF
curious interest, once saw a young lady
give great involuntary shudder because
she had espied caterpillar the skirt of
her dress. Instantly she was 'fraid as
DEATH as the children say. of all creeping
things. Another thought mice the prettiest,
cunningest little things till she saw a
woman grab her skirts, scream and jump
UP in a chair, all in one motion, because a
mouse ran across the floor. Henceforth
mice inhabited a chamber of horrors I'm the
childs mind
II have friend said the Good Listener,
IAN intelligent and able man. who once con-
fessed to me that he suffered acutely from
terror in every thunder storm. When a
child he was sent to nuns school, being a