The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1903-05-15
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A LESSON in HUMILITY.
to

T..t..i.-s. l. I 1.
| Inever see one of these fellows swelling
around with their petty larceny pride that
I don't think of a little experience of
mine when l was q boy. An old fellow
| caught me lifting a watermelon in his
patch, one afternoon, and instead of cuff
fling me and letting me go, as I had ex-
pected if got caught, he led me home
by the ear to my ma, and told her what
| had been up to.
Your grandma had been raised on the
oid-fashioned plan, and she had never
heard of these neW-fangled theories of
reasoning with a child till its under lip
begins to stick out and its eyes to fill with
tears as it sees the error Of it's ways. She
fetched the tears all right but she did it
with trunk strap or slipper Your
grandma was a pretty substantial woman.
Nothing of the tootsey wootsey about her
foot, and nothing of the airy-fairy trifle
about her slipper When she was through
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 it till l could recite the Ten
Commandments and the Sunday school
lesson by heart.
There was whole chaper of it. and an
Old Testament chapter at that, but I
L
supper was only two hours OFF, / can
repeat that chapter still, forward and
| backward, without missing word or
stopping to catch a breath.
Every now and then old Doc Hoover
used to come into the Sunday school room
and scare the scholars into fits by going
around from class to class and asking
questions That next Sunday, for the
first time, was glad to see him happen
In, and | 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, simply cut loose and
recited the whole chapter and threw in
the Ten Commandments for good meas
ure. 1t sort of dazed the Doc, because he
had come to mo for information about the
Old Testament before, and we'd never
got much beyond, And Ahab begat Jahab.
| or words to the effect. But when he got
over the shock he made me stand right
UP before the whole school and do it
again. Patted me on the head and said
was an honor to my parents and an ex-
ample to my playmates''
y I had been looking down all tho +,r,a
telling mighty proud and scared but 81
| that ! couldn't help CHANGING up to see the
other boys admire me. But the first per-
son my eye lit on was your grandma
standing in the back of the room. where
she silad stopped FOR moment on her way
up to church, and glarIng at me in q
mighty unpleasant way.
Tell 'em, john she said right out loud
before everybody 3
There was no way to run, for the elder
had hold of my hand, and there was nc
| place to hide, though 1 reckon I could
have crawled into a rat hole So to gain
time, blurted out:
| Tell EN- what, Inam?'
Tell 'em how you come to have your
lesson SO NICE
learned to hate notoriety right then
and there, but Il knew there was nc
| switching her off on to the weather when
she wanted to talk religion So L shut my
eyes and let II come, though 1t caught on
my palate once or twice on the way out
! Hooked a watermelon, man.
There wasn't any need for further par
I ticulars with that crowd, and they sim
ply 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. Al
That was a stwelve-grain dose, without
| any sugar coat. but it sweat more can,
and false pride out of my system than ]
could get back into 1t for the next twenty
years. I learned right there how to be
humble, which is "a heap more importan;
than knowing how to be proud. There are
mighty few men that need any lessons In
that 81 5,, 81 R .s,,5,,ib,s